Their challenge
Following a long pay negotiation period with trade unions, and experiencing some difficulties with attracting new talent, there was a desire to review their compensation and benefit strategies to ensure better alignment with the market and best practice generally, which in turn would help to inform future decision making. However, the composition of their 270-person workforce is a fairly unique one, comprising of a mixture of technical engineers, maintenance operatives and office support teams. Add to this the specialist nature of Rolling Stock industry, Arriva TrainCare found it difficult to know which market to position themselves against for reward purposes.
Our solution
Innecto was engaged by Arriva TrainCare to undertake the task of benchmarking the pay and benefits package given to its technical and support staff. A thorough review of potential survey options was conducted, with a particular focus on finding a robust data source that could report on technical roles. Through their partnership with their sister-consultancy, QCG, Innecto were able to recommend using the industry-specific QCG Rolling Stock and Maintenance Roles survey to supplement a wider market survey as the best fit solution.
In the first phase of the benchmarking exercise, Innecto reviewed all roles at Arriva TrainCare and successfully matched them against the benchmarking methodology. This enabled Innecto to provide analysis on the pay competitiveness for each individual staff member. In the second phase of the project, Innecto created a report detailing the market stance of Arriva TrainCare’s benefits offering, with the combined end results of the project giving a clear overview of how the total reward package compared to other organisations, where its existing strengths were, and where there was a need for improvement.
The outcome
The results of the pay benchmarking exercise were delivered using Innecto’s dynamic online tool, PayLab, which helped Arriva TrainCare to easily visualise their market competitiveness. Its ability to filter the results by organisational grade and business division meant internal trends could be understood at a glance and the costs involved in bringing staff members up to the right market position simply viewed. With this information, the HR team at Arriva TrainCare could kickstart pay discussions based on actual market knowledge with the Executive Group and approach their next round of pay negotiations with a more informed sense of confidence.
