Key Findings: Mercer’s 2019/2020 Canada Compensation Planning Survey 

The results are in from Mercer’s 2019/2020 Canada Compensation Planning Survey, and even with a competitive labor market and increasing concerns over attraction and retention, companies still appear to be holding the line on salary increase budgets.

Here are the key findings from our 2019/2020 Canada Compensation Planning Survey to help you understand the key trends as you head into salary budget planning season.

The total increase budget includes merit increases, cost of living adjustments, across the board increases, promotional increases and additional increases.

The average total increase budget in 2019 was 3.0% and the average projected total increase budget in 2020 is 3.1%.

2019 actual and 2020 projected merit increases for non-union employees have increased slightly by 0.1% from the past three years, at 2.6% and 2.6% respectively. Just over half of organizations (57%) plan to keep budgets the same from 2019 to 2020.

Organizations continue to differentiate base pay by performance.  Eighty-seven percent of organizations still use individual performance to drive base salary adjustments, up slightly from 2017 (83%).

When planning for 2020, 72% and 70% of organizations, respectively, put retention and attraction concerns at the top of the list, which is a significant increase from prior years.

More than 650 organizations provided data for to Mercer’s 2019-2020 Canada Compensation Planning Survey from May to June of 2019. The full report provides additional analysis on salary increase budgets by industry, geography and employee performance level. Purchase the full report here.

Download the Executive Summary of our 2019/2020 Canada Compensation Planning Survey