Want a pay hike? This is your only chance, say UAE employers

Annual increments across the boards are falling out of favour and employers are looking at rewarding those who perform, making this variable pay hike the norm now.

According to a report by jobs website Gulf Talent, pay rises are slower than before. Based on their survey of employers, more bosses are reporting an accelerating shift to performance-based variable pay.

Ones who deliver results are always high up on the list to be awarded financially or otherwise.

This category of employees will come first when it comes to getting increments and bonuses and the trend is more pronounced now as companies get conservative with their spending.

“Those who hit/exceed their targets are ones who deserve it,” Hasnain Qazi, Middle East Business Manager at Huxley Associates had told Emirates 24|7 earlier.

Towers Watson experts also point out that high performers will be in line of increments.
Most companies plan to allocate the larger portion of their salary increase budget to high performers, while a few plan to share the budget allocated to all employees at same rate, its salary budget planning study revealed.

For the majority, nominal pay hikes are what can be expected. Towers Watson pegs the increases at 4.6 per cent in 2017.
“The inflation rate in the UAE during the past two years has been an average of 4 per cent, however, there has been an increase in the pay for employees across all industry sectors,” say the experts.

For the region, Towers Watson projects an increase of 4.6% in the region. Lebanon will have the highest increase in pay growth (5.4%), followed by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait (5.0%), Qatar (4.8%).

The average pay hike may not be that great but the majority of residents in the country are optimistic that the economy, as well as the state of their personal finances, will improve in the next few months, as per the last Bayt.com Middle East and North Africa Consumer Confidence Index survey,

Among the respondents, about six in 10 (60 per cent) said they're expecting business conditions to get better in a year's time, while 48 per cent expect the economy to show some improvement. More than half (51 per cent) feel that their financial situation will improve in the next six months.

Dubai also stood out in terms of consumer perception on the overall economy and confidence in personal finance by an analysis of consumer confidence conducted by the Department of Economic Development (DED).

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