As a human resources professional, salary reviews are an important part of retaining and motivating your employees. By offering competitive pay, you can attract and keep top employees and show how much you value your current staff.

However, salary reviews can also be a delicate balancing act. You want to be fair and competitive, but you also need to consider the overall financial health of your business. From a human resources point of view, here are some tips to help you get through salary reviews:

Set clear expectations

Use market data

Let’s say you’ve set up a meeting to talk about Mark’s salary. Mark is a top-performing Machine Learning Engineer who works in Barcelona.

Mark has worked for the company for almost three years. In the past year, he has done a great job leading a lot of projects and has taken on a lot of new tasks and responsibilities.

His qualifications are in high demand, so you know for sure that he has been offered other jobs. Also, previous reviews indicate that he is dissatisfied with his current salary. He is a valuable asset, so the company wants to keep him and is willing to pay him a fair amount, but only what the market will bear and what is in the budget.

This will definitely be a great step toward keeping Mark. There are, of course, other things that could be done to give him a great place to work where he can keep growing and learning.

Consider individual contributions.

Communicate openly.

Document the process