The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development said human resources executives expected to increase basic pay rates by a median 5% - unchanged from the previous two quarters and the joint-highest readings since the survey started in 2012.The survey of 2,000 employers took place between June 9 and July 5, before Prime Minister Rishi Sunak offered aPrivate-sector wage growth expectations of 5% found by the CIPD were in line with those in a recent Bank of England survey of businesses.
The CIPD said businesses were also becoming more likely to match or exceed pay offers by rivals for their staff. Two fifths of firms said they had made a counteroffer to keep staff in the past year. Just over half of those firms said they were resorting to counteroffers more than previously, compared with 9% who said the opposite.
Where a counteroffer was made, in 38% of cases it matched the competing salary and in 40% of cases it exceeded it. However, almost a third of employers believed counteroffers were ineffective at keeping staff. "For some employers, counteroffers may only be valuable as a short-term option and ... employees will move if wider aspects of the job, such as workload, autonomy and environment, don't meet their expectations," the CIPD said.