Acquiring top talent is vital to the success of any company. This is especially true in the creative space where companies are competing for digital savvy pros to leverage new technology to take their marketing efforts to the next level.
In this ultra-competitive environment, you may be scratching your head for ways to attract creative talent to your team. While there are a dozen or so reasons that factor into any candidate’s decision to join a company, or a current employee’s decision to leave for that matter, there is one factor that always seems to play a part—salary.
Why Salary Remains Important
To attract top professionals with the appropriate experience and skill sets, your organization must establish a competitive advantage. For many, this may come in the form of salary. By establishing salaries for creative talent at or above market rate, your company is demonstrating to potential employees that you value your employees and understand their worth.
On the other hand, under-paying your team members creates complacency in the workforce and eventually results in high turnover. Employees who feel they are not properly valued often become disengaged and their performance subsequently declines. If the situation goes unresolved, you stand to lose both people and profit.
Implementing a Salary Structure
Creating and maintaining an accurate salary structure is imperative for any organization. If your salary structure gets out of sync with the overall labor market, you may find yourself paying employees too much and needlessly increasing operating costs, or paying employees too little and having difficulty attracting and retaining talent.
As a general rule, employers should examine their overall salary structure at every three to five years at minimum to ensure it is aligned with the company’s needs and the current labor market.
According to SHRM, this rationale will help catch any issues before they become large enough to affect employee engagement and the organization’s ability to attract and retain talent. Moreover, salary-structure issues are less expensive to address early on. Once things have gotten to the point where the business must make significant upward adjustments, the cost of doing so can be considerable.
Determining the Value of Your Talent
One of the key factors when designing a salary structure for creative talent in your organization is the balance between internal and external pay equity. Internal pay equity refers to an employees’ pay compared with those in similar positions within an organization. External pay equity refers to the employees’ pay compared with those with similar positions outside of the company. By creating a competitive salary structure that takes both these factors into account you are helping to keep your employees motivated and promote harmony within your workplace.
Resources to Help
It’s easy enough to audit internal pay equity, but how do you go about determining external pay rate and how much time and resources should that take? Luckily for hiring managers in the digital, creative and marketing space, Onward offers it’s 2018 Salary Guide with ranges for over 80 professionals. This free resource will help you establish your salary structure for creative talent to position your organization for success.
