“The tapering of the nominal salary growth is seen across all economic sectors analyzed by the PayWell study (with exception of IT&C), but the sectors that reported a real average growth rate (higher than inflation) are that of auto manufacturing, industrial products, FMCG, distribution, IT&C, and pharmaceuticals, while banks and retailers have registered salary growth lower than inflation,” PwC said in a press release Sunday.
The highest wage growth levels were registered for management (4.9%), support staff (4.7%) and operational and sales staff (4.5%).
“In the past few years, the effective salary growth rates were significantly lower than those planned the year before and, for next year the trend continues: only 28% of the companies that took part in our PayWell study had already decided upon a salary growth policy, with the average salary planned at the lowest level from the last 5 years: only 5.2%. This reflects not only that inflation expectation is now firmly anchored at lower levels, but also that employers are maintaining a cautious attitude, being very careful at the overall economic growth and not willing to increase salary costs above the productivity gains,” Horatiu Cocheci, Senior Manager, Human Resources Team Leader at PwC Romania, said.
More than half of the polled companies said they are granting performance bonuses. Some 52% of them offer performance bonuses to managers, and one third offer such bonuses to operational and sales staff.
However, the average performance bonus paid by the companies was lower than the planned one and varies across industries from half of the monthly wage to four monthly wages, reads the press release.
The number of companies that offer fixed bonuses is also lower than that in the previous years.
According to PayWell 2013, only 28% of the polled companies grant fixed bonuses to all categories of employees. This type of bonuses is usually offered in the industrial sectors where collective labor contracts include specific clauses. “Fixed bonuses can be either predetermined amounts, with their value varying from RON200 to RON1500, or as percentage of the salary, with an average value of the equivalent of a monthly salary.”
“As to the benefits granted to employees on the Romanian market, there was an increase in the number of companies that offer lifestyle benefits (such as sports activities subscriptions), while for the other types of benefits (social, protection benefits, etc) the same trend as in the previous years is kept,” the press release reads.
The structure of the overall compensation package changed, with a growth of the variable component (performance bonuses and sales commissions), while fixed salaries decreased as a percentage in the overall compensation package, and benefits are at similar levels to last year, according to PayWell Romania 2013.