Why I Created The Treasury Salary Survey

To have Mike on board with me. This is one of the most important sessions. I'm at the conference and this survey is much more than the numbers. It really dives into the sentiments of folks and so it's incredibly insightful. And so, Mike, I'm thrilled to have you on board with me today. So welcome to the session.

Well, it's one of my favorites because I've loved doing the salary survey for many years now, which will explain and we'll go through. I'm passionate about it because it's one of the chief questions I always get asked by. People said, oh, what about my, you know, new jobs, you know, new opportunities? What does my resume look like? And then the key question is, what should I be paid? You know, what's the market doing? And, you know, and everything else. And I just love talking about it.

All right, so this is a little roadmap for our journey. Today. We're going to give a little survey overview and I'll let Mike, I'll run through some overview and then I'll let Mike really share his insights. Why this survey is important, why he started doing it, and things that have changed in the survey and little focus. And I love the, love the questions. I know you'll love it too, if you haven't taken the survey yet. We have not closed the survey just because we want to get as many responses as possible. We're almost at 450 responses. After this great conference, we're going to get to a thousand and then we're going to talk about salaries and benefits and some of the questions I really thought were really relevant. Office, remote working trends. And then we'll talk about employee sentiments, which I like to call employee happiness, which is obviously very important. So just a quick overview before I let Mike dive in. For me, when I was considering and I've always wanted to work with Mike and when he offered, I was thrilled. This is an amazing survey. It actually dates all the way back to 2002. Right. I think Mike's original vision was to offer a picture of salary ranges and market trends. But for me, since I've started following, it's really expanded more to focus even more on sentiments related, job satisfaction, overall fulfillment. And really what really is exciting to me is Mike explores the why behind these sentiments. And so what the survey shows and what other research Mike has done shows that it's not just all about the money. Now the money is important, but in addition to the money not being everything, you have to really consider the total package. And then again you can still take the survey at HTTPs treasurysalary.com so Mike, I'll let you step in here and tell us a little bit about your crown jewel.

Well, I'll go back to the beginning of it. The origin actually started before I started the treasury recruitment company. I work for another financial recruitment company. You guys can find this out on my LinkedIn profile. I won't name and shame them, but shame on them. It drove me mad. My ex boss, he used to work, walk up to me said right Mike, we want to do a survey this year. All right, okay, great. You know we're going to in depth and stuff like that. No, no, no, what's your the most junior treasury analyst on our database? Okay, it's about this number. And he said okay, what's the most senior? I went well this number, okay, that's your range and what do you think is the average? And I went well, it's about this roughly. They were just made up numbers and it drove me mad and actually to this day I still feel passionate about it. And so back when I started, as you say back in 2002, a long time ago now, a few less gray hairs, I thought you know, let's start to do it. I did it, you know, with some of my clients at the time, you know, we did a 150 survey was just a little snapshot, little group and everything else and it grew and grew and grew. And our salary survey a few years ago we got up as far as sort of 700 people and then we changed our system and everything else and I came back to it this time and I thought we've got to do this. We did a great survey about two, three years ago. It was too in depth, it went too, too big, it was unwieldy. We've come back and now this is focusing on the value for you guys out there. So we get your salaries, we do it on a global SC. Ernie said there will be up over the 500 I reckon I just love it. It's just so good.

All right, thank you sir. Just want to also point out that Mike is giving us the exclusive preview here. Mike and I are going to work together on a survey report which will be available to you and also note anyone that takes the time to fill out the survey, you will get that report as well. So again we're going to take a, going to take a high dive here and I know it's going to happen. You all are going to be so excited. So we are going to kind of whet your appetite a little bit here. So one of the things that we looked at obviously is the demographics have a really good, really good mix here. Kind of the most senior level. I went ahead and combined all these, the group, Global Treasurer, Treasury Director, Treasury Manager, Treasury Analyst, Assistant Treasurer, International Treasurer and then treasury consultants. So I just wanted to share this to show that there's a really strong demographic there. So it wasn't really focused in terms of one treasury title. And that's really important to Mike and I. We want to make sure that we're supporting you throughout your career. And so what's really hard, especially at a company that you're at once you're underpaid, it's almost impossible to get paid what you're worth. And so for those of you that are just in, not just starting out, but those of you that are treasury analysts, we want to make sure that you're being paid what you want to be paid, especially if you like your company. Because as you earn that next job title, we need to make sure that you're paid to your market. And as much as we love our jobs, we all deserve to get paid what we're worth. And so again, the demographics by countries, continents, whatever those, I'm not very good. We have Australia, I think that's continent, Mike. I don't know, I think I flunk geography. But just a few of the biggest pieces here, the US in the uk I'm kind of happy that go US we overtook the uk. I'm just teasing, Mike. So we love it from across the globe. So we love all of our UK folks and all across the world we appreciate everyone's impact. The more information that we have, the more valuable it's going to be to you and your countries is apples to apples, right? And so I think that's why when you look at the passport, there's just so much information, there's so many variables and that go in there in terms of location that it's really the high level insights that are going to matter. And so again, just a global survey. Look at this pretty graphic here. I'm getting pretty fancy here. And so just, I'm sorry, I have to get a little US centric, Mike, because a vast majority of our folks are from the US now there's much more information on the UK respondents and all over the world that you'll be able to get in the survey report and just wanted to show again for our US folks, we have a very good mixture across states, of course, Illinois, New York and California. Usually the Highest. Not too much exciting here. Okay. All right, so let's look at that base salary data. Come here. And so again, we need to. It's kind of gives you a good benchmark. One of the things that struck me was the consultant number was so high. But you have to take that with a little bit of grain of salt just because the consultants. Right. You're not getting your insurance taken out and all those good things. So, Mike, I'll just ask you to jump in here. In terms of the market conditions, what have you seen in terms of one base salary? But then overall compensation package would be.

Nice to actually see. What's the word? One thing I would say let's just go back a stage, people taking part in the survey, just to explain to them that the people watching this today, you're getting highlights and that's all you're ever going to get. The only people that get full access to the survey are the participants. So if people like, you know, an HR person wants to know some details, we'll talk to them about some of the highlights and they say, oh, no, I'd like the full survey. You can't have it. The only people that get it are the treasury professionals that take part in it, because that's our thank you to you for doing it. Now, going back to these base salary figures, these are going to change. And actually it'd be nice to sort of see a bit live and, you know, sort of as another person takes part. You know, the base salary might rise for group treasurers and then it might drop down a bit because these are the averages to some of the people. And people have asked me, they said, where have I seen it going? I've seen all of these. It would have been great to have this data. We did it back in 2019. In 2020, we wanted to run the survey. There was a minor thing called a pandemic going the way. So we paused it. There we went, hang on. So now we're getting back. And also the survey we've got now is exactly what we wanted. It's a working survey that actually helps you guys. So, you know, it's got on here the base salary. But that's not all we measure. We measure base salary, we measure compensation, we measure bonus, we measure what other benefits you get. So this exactly as Ernie's put there is a bit of a snapshot. You know, these will change and they will grow up and stuff. It'll be interesting to see how these change over time. And just to give you an idea, as Ernie Said, here, he's giving you a snapshot now. And people said, well, hang on, this will be out of date. And a lot of the surveys, I know there's some big official, you know, surveys from some of the associations now, they're great surveys, but they sometimes don't give you the granularity. And also it takes three or four months for these guys to produce it. That's not the case with us. What will actually happen is that every, you know, every three to four months we will be updating the information. And in actual fact, my dream is to have this live data. We're not there yet, but we will be soon. Sorry. I get passionate about it. Sorry.

No, I love it. Yeah. I think the other thing that Mike and I work on, and I'm bringing this up, Mike, because I'm happy to lead this charge. There are some tools out there that, right. That let you have dropdowns and you can kind of select it. Right. So it's apples to apples for some of the key survey results. And so that's all exciting as well. And then just interesting, as Mike mentioned, and this was interesting to me on many levels. One of the things that the survey measures is the type of employee benefits. And so we want to make sure that we're taking into consideration. And one of the things that I don't think this was ever explained enough to me. I used to help HR and I don't think people understood the value of our healthcare and our 401k match. And I think that's a big thing that we as professionals need to understand. And those of us that have jumped into the consulting world or run our own show there, there's a lot of extra cost there. Right. If you want to cut that tentacle. So let's make sure we understand that. Interesting. You know, just some things. Gym membership, man, I could use that right now. I put on the COVID I don't know what. Too many pounds. Match. Pension match. Pension. 401k. Incredibly important health insurance. Right. That is so key. Well, here in the US it's just. It's kind of a nightmare. The premiums are going up, even the match. When I was in Treasury a long time ago, our health insurance was free, which was phenomenal. That just doesn't happen anymore. A pretty big number for employee discounts, and I think that's probably a little bit more prevalent across the pond. Flex time, work from home, and we'll talk about that a little later, which is a benefit. And then child care, which is off the charts. Amazing if anyone can get that, because I had a few children in childcare even many years ago and it cost more than my mortgage payment. Right. And then season ticket loan. Wow, that's kind of amazing. So, Mike, have you seen any growth, I mean, just since the survey started, right, even five years ago, have you seen any of these particular benefits becoming more common?

I think they become more common as you get more senior, which in a way is actually wrong. If you like, when do you need more child care? When do you need more help? When do you need the employee discounts? Well, actually, when you're probably at the beginning part of your career and you have less disposable income. You know, one of the other things that we survey and the survey goes into is about your happiness level and are you happy with your boss, are you happy with your company and whether. How they view treasury and things? And what I've noticed in the past, people have said, and we get the happy and sad bit later, which Ernie will come onto, but it's not just about these benefits. These benefits are key, but a lot of the time you only get them when you're, you know, at the senior management team. Well, actually, they don't necessarily need them so much, so in a way it's the wrong way round. You know that childcare. Exactly. As you said there, and you mentioned about that in the early years of your career, you know, your kids might be young and everything else. How much are they helping you out with childcare? You know, one in ten. It's like, really, you know. Whereas you get in the health insurance. Yeah, that's a key benefit. But again, that's one of the things that I think is a little bit backwards in a way. But we'll come back to that as well.

Yeah, no, that's amazing. Yeah. That's one of the slices we'll definitely take as we start to go in is, you know, we'll get a sense of that as well, the senior levels and look at those benefits across those different job titles. Can you mention that? Just to dovetail off that, when I used to work, again, it was a great company, Franklin Electric, they used to. They used to offer stock options to people that were at the manager level, which is unusual in the us. And so some people that were there before me, unfortunately, they were managers and they stayed in manager positions and by the time they retired, they were millionaires just from their stock options because the company had done so well. And so part of that is vesting them in the success of your company in a young level. Right. You want to inspire happiness, you want to inspire retention. Give them a piece of the pie, right when the company does well. So I think that's incredibly important. And for me, if I was the CEO at a bigger company, profit sharing, that would be amazing. And I would take that all the way down to folks. And so I think that's something to consider. So let's talk about work from home policies and trends. This is incredibly important nowadays. And this is, like, fascinating. And Mike and I both get passionate, but this was, like, fascinating to me. And I know I'm not easy to impress, and especially it's hard for Mike to impress me, but I was impressed with the questions that Mike came up with.