The latest edition of the Drinks Association Remuneration Review, conducted by Mercer, is now available for members of the Drinks Association. Mercer provides members with an invaluable source of drinks industry specific remuneration benchmarks for comparison with other industries within Australia, by job and career level from all participating Drinks Association members.
The report also provides comparison information on areas such as gender participation, as well as wider labour market and remuneration trends and insights, with this article sharing just a few of the highlights.
Rupert Griffin, Mercer’s Industry Networks Leader, said:
“This release marks the second edition of the survey since Mercer partnered with the Drinks Association early last year. Despite the challenging environment, it has been great working with members to ensure that we provide meaningful and actionable insights.”
Looking at remuneration and benefits Australia wide, Mercer’s database includes data from over 875 organisations and 450K people in jobs across those organisations. When reporting remuneration movements, they track the same people, in the same job, in the same organisations and the change in their salary from year to year.
Salary Growth
Broadly speaking, Mercer’s measure of national all industries remuneration movements have sat at 2.5% for a number of years before falling to 2% in the middle of 2020 as a result of the economic slowdown caused by the pandemic.
The FMCG sector, including the drinks industry, sits a little above that with median salary growth sitting at 2.2 per cent in the last quarter of 2020.
Over the same period the official measure of wage increase, as measured by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), was 1.4% while inflation (CPI) was 0.9%.
Gender Pay Gap
Mercer’s measure of the difference in salaries between males and females in the same role is 2.6% in favour of males, on average. But, for the Drinks Association’s member companies, the average pay gap is significantly lower at 1.3 per cent which is in line with the broader FMCG category.
Interestingly for winemakers at a mid-career level, salaries for women are 10 – 12 per cent higher than those of their male counterparts. However, this changes at the level of Chief Winemaker where 83 per cent of the roles are held by men although Mercer says that we can expect to see this gender division decline in time.
Mercer Remuneration Sentiment Index
Mercer Remuneration Sentiment Index measures human resources (HR) professionals' outlook for Australian remuneration and the jobs market. Their findings have been positive.
Griffin said, “Post-COVID, people have pent-up savings and consumer confidence is high. With the vaccine on the horizon, Australia is doing a good job of opening up and people are heading back to their local bars and cafés. Exports are performing well and, China notwithstanding, there is strong demand for “Australian made”. People are working smarter and work/life balance has improved for many as hybrid working increasingly becomes the norm.”
It is expected that pay cuts and freezes taken last year will likely be reversed back as the economy bounces back.
TheMercer team are on hand to provide participating members with ongoing support and assistance with interpreting data.
The Remuneration Survey is a Core Service provided to Drinks Association Category One members.