Paula Ibrahim· Compensation Manager, Lumen Biosciences
Posted in New Member Welcome ·
I left a senior compensation analyst post in 2020 to raise my children and care for a parent. Last month I started three days a week in the reward team of a university in Melbourne, roughly 7,000 staff.
Some things are exactly as I left them. Others are not: pay transparency is on every agenda, the surveys I knew have changed their job levelling, and my colleagues talk about skills-based pay as though I should know what they mean.
I would welcome a blunt summary of what moved while I was out, and I would like to hear from anyone else who came back after a long gap and how the first few months felt.
7 helpful · 5 replies · 101 views · 1 following
Reward Partner, Larkspur Manufacturing
Welcome back. Blunt summary as asked: transparency has gone from a nice idea to law or near-law in a lot of places, so ranges now get published and have to stand up to being read by employees. Remote and hybrid work forced everyone to have a position on location pay. Skills-based pay is discussed far more than it is practised.
Senior Compensation Analyst, Halcyon Financial Group
I returned after four years out in 2022. The first two months I felt slow and told myself so every day. By month four I realised the fundamentals had not moved: jobs, markets, ranges, judgement. The vocabulary had. Give yourself a term.
Liam EriksenGRS
Senior Compensation Analyst, Independent
Dalia RasmussenWWP, CEP
Benefits Analyst, Northwind Logistics
Fellow university reward person, in Scotland. Higher education has its own additions: pay for casual and sessional staff has had a lot of scrutiny in the last few years, and I believe particularly so in Australia. Worth asking early who in your team owns that.
Compensation Manager, Lumen Biosciences
Thank you, all of you. I asked the skills question in our team meeting and got three different answers, which made me feel considerably better. Sessional pay turns out to sit with a colleague two desks away.
