Background
- Location: Brighton
- Size: 20 employees
- Sector: Not-for-profit
- Omny engagement date: July 2024
Concordia is a Sussex-based charity that seeks to build international peace and equality through work and volunteer opportunities. Its mission is to support people in developing skills and gaining experiences so that they can thrive. The not-for-profit sets out to achieve this by running programmes that change lives and nurture global citizens who care about each other, their local communities, and the world.
Challenge
When Concordia engaged Omny Group for HR support through an ongoing Collaborate partnership, their employees’ base salaries were largely determined at the point of recruitment, following the National Joint Council (NJC) pay scales. This framework is negotiated nationally between local government employers and trade unions.
As part of the organisation’s tailored and agreed People Plan, the decision was taken to review whether its current salaries were fair and reasonable when compared to wider pay data within the charity sector and against similar roles.
In addition, they sought to determine whether the NJC pay scales remained a suitable and effective framework for setting pay within the organisation, or if an alternative approach would better support fairness, competitiveness, and organisational needs.
Solution
The Omny HR team conducted a salary benchmarking exercise to assess the organisation’s internal job salaries in comparison to their external market value.
This provided insight into whether current pay levels were competitive, fair, and aligned with sector standards, and enabled the Concordia leadership team to make an informed decision about the continued suitability of the NJC pay scales.
This salary review project was undertaken in addition to the everyday people support provided by the Omny Group, including the close collaboration between Omny HR and Concordia’s CEO and Senior Management Team to:
- Strategically shape all areas of their people practices
- Introduce new HR policies
- Craft employee engagement surveys
- Introduce efficient recruitment processes
Lana and Omny HR have been wonderful to work with. Lana brings high standards, attention to detail, great listening skills and good humour, alongside a commitment to ensure the organisation and staff team have excellent and fit-for purpose procedures, policies and support in place. In particular, I appreciate Lana’s careful foresight and planning in a delicate consultation process as well as her professional navigation of the different audiences’ detailed feedback and requirements – trustees, staff and senior team – and her determination to ensure the process ran smoothly for all
Results
Following the initial pay and salary review project, the organisation utilised the benchmarking data in its decision to move away from the National Joint Council pay scales.
While the NJC framework provided a useful structure, the data – combined with expert insight and recommendations from Omny HR – demonstrated that adopting a more market-based approach would allow greater precision and flexibility in employee compensation and reward strategies.
This shift also enables Concordia to manage staffing costs responsibly, in line with tight budgetary constraints (which is particularly important in the charity and not-for-profit sectors).
The Omny HR team has now completed the consultation period and is implementing the new and improved pay policy and salary thresholds.
