How competitive is your salary as manager?

Bthe meaning of “manager.” As de- in its 2018 survey, they are people managers classified in five different “managerial bands” that include supervisors, managers, directors, assistant vice presidents and vice presidents.

classified as manager, senior manager, group manager and senior group manager to cover many fancy job titles that organizations use. The survey cov

- tinationals across all industries and job functions nationwide, 90 percent of which are based in Metro Manila.

WTM is a global network of consultancies on risk management, insurance brokerage and advisory, with its roots dating back to 1828. It is considered the third largest insurance broker in the world, according to Wikipedia. I have known WTM by its old, pre-merger name — Watsons Wyatt since three decades ago when I engaged them for several of my employers’ consulting and training needs.

Now, here’s the interesting part. The highest competitive base pay of managers is pegged at P4.8 million which includes guaranteed bonuses on top of the legislated 13th month pay. Divided by12 months, the monthly base pay is P400,000 per manager. The pay may

leaves, club membership, foreign travels,

The question remains the same: How high is high? How competitive?

The average annual base pay is pegged at P2.2 million. The lowest pay is at P1.3 million. In my computation of

supervisors receiving P468,000 base pay per annum or P39,000 per month.

highest and lowest pay. Instead, let’s focus on the annual average pay of managers pegged at P2.2 million or P183,000 a month. If you’re a manager similarly situated and receiving below this average, say at an indecently low rate at P130,000, what

Would you rebel right away? Would you plan to jump ship? Of course not.

such as weighing the pros and cons of both monetary and non-monetary aspects of your current package compared

good look at what you’re enjoying now with your current employer.

They include your seniority rights, your current age, potential promotion, happy work relationship with people and the emotional and psychological

- ers, including those little things like the

But wait, note that the WTM survey covers multinational companies. They

vice president, senior vice president, -

and the CEO. If you’re not part of any multinational organizations, better to think twice before complaining to HR and to your boss about your belowindustry base pay.

If your Human Resource Department is good, it should initiate the survey as the result could be self-serving. It must initiate an annual salary survey to evaluate your company’s competitiveness within the industry, and not necessarily all industries, which could be tedious and time-consuming, not to mention that commissioning an objective, professionally-done survey by WTM and other similar consultancies is not cheap.

Here’s one trick. If you want your CEO to approve a salary survey, include his position as well as the COO, EVP, SVP and FVP.

At times, your competitors may cover both multinationals and nonmultinationals. If you are successful in securing this type of survey, then that would be the best part. Without an annual industry survey, your organization may end up in the dark,

the so-called war for talent. At times, your competitors would be happy to poach your best and brightest guys as

so has the purpose to paralyze competition, access trade secrets, and more.

The trouble is that organizations know this age-old ploy and would

required to sign a non-disclosure, non-poaching, and non-competing agreements with the quit claim.

If your organization is small and doesn’t have the money to pay for an industry survey, then prepare to be the training ground of managers so they can move on to big-time players in due time. The other option is that your HR could do the practical approach of benchmarking with at least three industry players. It should be easy that way if objective criteria are agreed upon by the participating companies.

The criteria include job title, length

simplify the data by asking only the low, average, and high pay for each

- verted into peso value and separately

simplify further, agree only on the

If the players have agreed to the survey, the result is shared with all participants through a system or on-the-spot sharing of a one-page data sealed in an envelope

identity of participating companies.

Of course, convincing competitors to agree on something is more chal-

have to choose between making or buying a survey. What’s important is to have a competitive mindset about your human capital and the products or services you’re selling.

If you’re not receiving a competitive salary, then what does it tell you about