FDs dish out pay rises

by Catherine Woods - Friday, 7th November 2008 -

As we enter a recession, retaining your good employees is crucial. That's why some finance directors are hiking up wages for their staff.

Evolve Energy FD Nusrat Shah says the company feels inflationary pressure most keenly when it comes to wages.

“The cost of living is going up so they expect their salary to follow suit. That’s challenging when you’re trying to manage everything else in the business,” she says.

Evolve will turn over around £25m this year. Shah says the company has undertaken a “pretty significant” wage benchmarking analysis and while she admits it’s not in a position to give significant pay increases, “we are actually looking to give the majority of employees an increase next year”.

Steve Winetroube, the FD at audio/visual entertainment group Metrodome, is also planning to beef up employee pay packets.

He says: “We believe we’ve got a good team and we don’t want to lose anybody because of market forces. We felt it would have been wrong to introduce pay freeze at a time when there’s high inflation.”

AIM-listed Metrodome recently returned to profitability for the first time in several years. In its interim results for the six months to 30 June 2008, revenue grew 31 per cent to £3.5m with headline operating profit of £130,000.

Picture source

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