At the beginning of November, Spinnaker released its annual Salary Reviews and Bonus Projections Information Exchange report to members of their Maritime HR Association who had participated in the survey. This survey is one of the most important in Spinnaker’s calendar as it allows members to see what the industry is allocating for their pay and bonus reviews for the year ahead.
More members took part this year in the survey than in previous years which could reflect the instability in the market and the need for reliable compensation data. With the increasing cost of living and energy prices due to the volatility of the current geopolitical situation, determining the right salary increases is a real dilemma for HR teams across the globe.
Spinnaker’s reports cover 30 countries from across the Americas, North, West and Southern Europe, India, the Middle East, Africa, Emerging and Developed Asia and the data included in the survey is representative of around 30,000 employees.
In order to create a comparison, alongside this maritime-specific data, we also looked at the ‘World at Work Salary Budget Survey’ (published in July 2023) and the IMF Economic Outlook Database to gather 2024 projected increase budget data and estimate inflation rates across ALL industries and not just maritime.
The maritime-specific report that Spinnaker published, shows that the projected budget increases in the shipping sector are higher than the corresponding 2023 inflation rates in roughly 57% of global locations. This is nearly 20% more locations than last year.
When planning salary increases for 2024, almost half of the respondents in our survey based these on staff performance and in both 2022 and 2023, no pay freezes were observed.
The majority of respondents pay bonuses to all eligible staff and in most cases, bonus levels are similar regardless of office location although significantly more respondents anticipate lower bonuses in 2024 when compared to 2023. In all job families, the likelihood of receiving a higher bonus increases with seniority.
Find out more about that salary and bonus information that Spinnaker provides on our website.
