Over the last three years we have been negotiating with the business for changes to the Development Frameworks in Retail and Commercial. Whilst in principle they were a good idea, like the similar systems that went before (remember Skills Ladders?) they have become stuck in a bureaucratic AXA quagmire and everyone pretty much agreed they were no longer fit to purpose.

Backdated to the 1st October, the development and remuneration awards for Associates and Senior Associates who were on the Development Frameworks has now been replaced with a much simpler and straight forward system (the number one rule Unite in AXA insisted on with the company – keep it simple!)

This has seen a large number of staff received (backdated) pay awards and has helped in part relieve the issue around pay compression at the bottom of Associate and Senior Associate pay scales caused by increases in the Real Living Wage out stripping pay awards.

This is however not the end of the story. We need to ensure that future increases to the Real Living Wage don’t catch-up or outsrip the new process and also have to deal with the issue of Professionals who are still on their own Development Frameworks, so we continue to be engaged with the business on these topics.

Over 400 of you completed our recent survey on Professional grade pay distribution and the results were as follows:

In favour of Manager Discretion – 16%

In favour of Pay Matrix – 72%

No preference – 7%

Don’t know – 5%

We have communicated the result to the company and we engage with them further on the subject.

By way of comparison when we last asked staff about Professional grade pay distribution (in 2019) the results were as follows:

In favour of Manager Discretion – 35%

In favour of Pay Matrix – 45%

Don’t know – 20%

For a few years now the pay awards for Professional grade employees have been decided by the individual determination of their manager, rather than the pay matrix as previous, which is still used for Associate and Senior Associate Grade awards. This year however, given the cost of living crisis and soaring inflation, we agreed with the company that to ensure an element of certainty in what Professional staff would receive, that their pay awards would be decided using the pay matrix.

We are now engaged in discussion with the company as to whether annual Professional pay awards going forward should remain within the matrix or revert back to manager discretion.

It is argued that manager discretion is more nuanced and allows managers the ability to fix discrepancies. Counter arguments are that there is a lack of transparency, that to give one employee a higher award, it is at the expense of their colleagues due to the fixed pay pot, that there is no demonstrable benefit to the business in improvement retention or staff satisfaction and that managers time could be better used elsewhere.

As we represent Professional grades for consultation in AXA Commercial, AXA Retail and AXA UK Centralised Functions (IT, HR, Finance etc), we want to hear from you and what your thoughts are as to the approach you would prefer to see going forward by competing this short survey (click here)