Club surveys allow groups of employers in specific industries, with similar specialist roles, to come together and agree to anonymously share pay data, revealing market conditions. At Innecto, we run club surveys across a range of industries. It could be anything from luxury casinos, TV production houses, to professional membership bodies.

Our pay and reward survey for Sporting Bodies is now in its 4^th edition, providing valuable insight for the UK’s sporting sector. Over the years, the survey has developed to include market salary data for over 50 key roles in the sporting sector, covering areas such as performance, sponsorship, development, and public relations and communication.

Here are some of the key findings from this year’s survey:

• Pay is slipping: In the wider economy we have seen fairly steady growth of salaries at an annual rate of around 2% over the past few years. However, within the Sporting Bodies survey we have seen pay steadily decline since 2012; down 7% on average over the last four years. This is particularly interesting given that the average pay award for participants this year matched the wider economy at 2%. The decline is possibly due to the significance of the London 2012 Olympics acting to retain long serving employees who have since departed allowing for recruitment at lower salary levels, or simply a reflection of redistribution of funding by UK Sport since 2012.
• Wealth: We have also seen funding change within the survey population. Traditionally, participants that received the majority of their funding through commercial sales (i.e. ticket sales and sponsorship agreements etc.) have consistently paid higher salaries. This continues to be the case with commercial participants paying on average 25% above the median. However, the proportion of commercial funding for all participants is growing. In many cases, this is to replace a fall in government funding or other grants, but we are interested to see what happens to pay over the next few editions of the survey where more and more sporting bodies are competing for commercially minded talent.
• Gender pay reporting: In addition to quantitative market salary data, club surveys also allow for qualitative data gathering. For the Sporting Bodies survey we interview all the participants to understand their reward policy, practice and future agenda in more detail, from which key themes and trends are written up and included in the report. One of the findings, mirroring wider industry, is that gender pay reporting is a concern but only just over half of employers have taken positive steps to prepare for the legislation. Mercer recently published results of its research which found that only 54% of organisations are currently actively analysing their gender pay gap, ahead of the introduction of the reporting requirements in April 2017.

If you would like to know more about the Making Sport Happen: Pay and Conditions in the Sporting Sector 2016 survey, please get in touch with me: ian.glendinning@innecto.com. Similarly, if you would like to know more about how our club survey pay intelligence can help, we would love to hear from you: 020 3457 0894.

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