Ever since the pandemic, employees have been demanding more Paid Time Off (PTO) and other forms of leave. And that's understandable--most of us realized during the crisis that we all need to spend more time with our families and enjoy life outside of work.

People often use terms like "employer's market" and "candidate's market" to describe how hard or difficult it is to recruit. But for some people, it is always a candidate's market. These are people qualified for hot jobs: positions where employer demand is greater than the supply of available talent.

We’ve had clients say to us, “The younger generation doesn’t understand the value of our benefits package and we’re losing them to slightly higher base salary offers. We know the competition’s total package is not as strong as ours!”

Most companies prefer not to tinker with their compensation strategy — unless they absolutely must. Salary structures are difficult to get right, which is why it's tempting to adopt an "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" approach. But your compensation strategy doesn't exist in a vacuum. External factors are constantly impacting employee expectations, whether you like it or not.

One of the most common pieces of hiring advice is this: "always make sure that your salary offer is close to the market average". That's great in theory, but in practice, you're left with one big question: what is the market average?

We’ve talked before about how it’s sometimes hard to communicate Total Rewards to employees, especially younger workers. Employees don’t always see beyond their paycheck, and employers struggle to show the value of less tangible benefits.