We were delighted to have Jairus Ashworth and Simon Kennedy, two of Aon’s Partners, present their review of the Reward market again this year. Now in its 6th year, this is always one of the calendar highlights for Sydney’s senior Reward professionals.
With around 100 guests in the room this year, and drawing upon Aon’s research across total rewards, people performance, and human capital, Jairus and Simon provided a unique insight into the world of Reward in 2019. Despite still being in a market representing the slowest wages growth on record, Jairus commented that there was still “lots of cool stuff going on”! In a segment he titled ‘Real Talk’, he cut to the heart of how businesses were going “off-piste” with a number of tricks and means to ensure more significant pay rises occurred when needed – including out of cycle and ad hoc payments, and also using contractors to keep perm salaries off headcount.
They shared the headline numbers gleaned from their global surveys, describing the state of play in employee rewards and the increases that different areas of the market have obtained. That said, the “about 3%” rule remains consistent across the board as it has for many years now. They also discussed the impact of the royal commission and the regulatory activity on variable rewards and executive pay in financial services, as well as commenting on the ups and downs of having pay transparency within organisations.
Jairus finished with a bit of fun in announcing “The Jobbies”! After scanning more than 200,000 job titles in their global database, he announced his favourites for shortest and longest job title, as well as the most bizarre and most direct. He concluded by announcing his all time dream job was “Global Chocolate Lead”!
Thank you to those who were able to join us and to QBE for providing the space to host this year’s event.
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