North American employers expect to work with the same pay budgets for increases (around 3%) as 2012, according to research by Kenexa.
Its 2013 Compensation outlook survey, which questioned 1,497 organisations in the US and Canada, found that 17% of respondents have budgeted more than 10% of payroll for variable pay, down from nearly 30% of respondents who said the same in 2012.
A vast majority (86%) of respondents have a formal compensation philosophy, but nearly a third (31%) of those do not communicate it to managers or employees.
Across the 69% of respondents that do communicate this philosophy to staff, 28% rely on managers to deliver the message about pay, while 72% leave it to HR or top management.
Only a third (32%) of respondents provide managers with training on how to talk about compensation, and less than half (48%) provide managers with tools to help ensure a logical connection between pay and performance in the process.
