Creating Attractive Remuneration Packages

Key points:

• UK professionals often change jobs in search of better compensation, making attractive packages essential for talent retention.
• Effective remuneration goes beyond base salary to include benefits and perks that tell a compelling story about your company values.
• The best packages align with your industry, company size, location, and philosophy.
• Traditional salary surveys and spreadsheet approaches leave companies working with outdated information while competitors make faster, data-driven compensation decisions.
• Figures provides comprehensive market intelligence: With 5 million real-time data points and exclusive compensation benchmarks, companies can make confident decisions that attract and retain top talent.

According to LiveCareer research data, UK professionals change their jobs on average every 2.6 years, and this frequent movement tells us something important: many view strategic job changes as their fastest route to better compensation. 

Here’s the thing – your remuneration package isn’t just a recruitment tool. It’s your secret weapon for keeping great people around. When employees feel genuinely valued through thoughtful compensation, something magical happens. Productivity increases, sick days drop, and that expensive talent exodus slows to a trickle.

But here’s where it gets tricky. Building an attractive package means juggling multiple components – base salary, benefits, perks, and incentives – without breaking your budget. Get it wrong, and you’ll watch competitors poach your best performers. Get it right, and you'll create a workplace where people stop secretly updating their LinkedIn profiles during lunch breaks.

If your current packages aren’t delivering the results you hoped for, you’re in the right place.

In this article, you'll discover:

• What makes a truly attractive remuneration package (hint: it's not just about the salary figure).
• The essential components that drive employee retention and engagement.
• How to design packages that tell your company's story and reflect your values.
• Why real-time market data beats outdated salary surveys every time.
• Practical strategies to create competitive packages without breaking your budget.

Ready to build remuneration packages that actually work? Let's fix this.

What are the components of modern remuneration packages?

A remuneration package encompasses everything an employee receives in exchange for their work, both the obvious financial bits and the valuable extras. 

Think of it as the complete picture of what makes a job worthwhile beyond just your monthly salary.

Direct compensation: salary, bonuses, and incentives

Your base salary forms the foundation, but smart employers know that’s just the starting point. Performance bonuses and commission structures can significantly boost your earnings, especially when tied to clear, achievable targets.

Then there are the statutory essentials that often get overlooked in salary negotiations. Sick pay protection means you're covered when life throws you a curveball. Maternity and paternity leave packages have improved dramatically, with some forward-thinking companies offering enhanced benefits beyond the statutory minimums.

Additionally, there are pension contributions. Since auto-enrolment began, UK employers must contribute at least 3% of your qualifying earnings to your workplace pension, while you contribute 5%. That’s free money towards your future, and many employers offer even more generous matching schemes.

Beyond salary: benefits that drive retention

Here’s where things get interesting – and where smart employers prove they understand that adults want more than just 'competitive salary' and a coffee machine. The benefits section is usually the most attractive section of any job application and one of the main factors why candidates might prefer one company over another. 

According to CV-Library research, flexible working tops the wishlist for nearly half of UK professionals (47.2%), and it’s not hard to see why. The ability to start early, finish early, or work from home occasionally can transform your work-life balance without costing your employer a penny.

Next, we have the health and life insurance packages that provide genuine peace of mind. When you know your family’s protected and your medical needs are covered, you can focus entirely on doing great work. Many companies now extend this to include mental health support and employee assistance programmes.

Another important benefit is childcare support for working parents. There are different ways you can approach this: on-site nurseries, childcare vouchers, or enhanced parental leave. It might not seem like much, but for a working parent, especially mothers, these benefits can make the difference between staying in work and having to step back.

And then, we have other benefits that often tip the scales:

• Extra holiday entitlement, like your birthday off.
• Professional development budgets.
• Company car or travel allowances.
• Gym memberships or wellness programmes.
• Staff discounts and shopping perks.

Progressive companies are even offering share ownership schemes, giving employees a real stake in the business’s success. When your efforts directly contribute to your financial future, engagement naturally follows.

🔑 The key? These benefits should complement, never replace, fair base salaries.

How to create a stand-out remuneration package

Here's the thing that'll make you cringe: some employers genuinely believe that slapping a bigger number on the salary and calling it a day is peak compensation strategy. 

Meanwhile, the smart ones are over here actually thinking about what their people want (revolutionary, right?).

Start with market research. You can’t compete if you don’t know what you’re competing against. Use benchmark data to understand what similar roles offer in your industry and location. But here’s the thing: don’t just copy what everyone else is doing.

The secret sauce lies in understanding your specific context:

• Industry standards – Tech companies might emphasise equity, while traditional firms focus on comprehensive benefits.
• Company size – Startups often compensate for lower salaries with growth potential and flexibility.
• Location – A £40,000 salary means something very different in London versus Liverpool.
• Role requirements – Customer-facing roles might benefit from performance bonuses, while creative roles value professional development.
• Skills scarcity – Hard-to-find technical skills command premium packages.

Your company philosophy matters enormously here. If you value work-life balance, prioritise flexible working and generous leave policies. If you're growth-focused, emphasise learning budgets and career progression opportunities.

The most effective packages tell a story. They demonstrate that you understand what motivates your people beyond just paying the bills. A well-crafted package becomes a powerful recruitment tool and retention strategy.

🤓 Interesting fact: skills-based compensation is gaining traction, where pay reflects actual capabilities rather than just job titles. This approach can create fairer, more transparent systems that truly reward contribution.

"The biggest challenge I see HR teams facing is making compensation decisions with confidence," says Agnès Chauvigny, VP People at Figures. "You're constantly questioning whether your offer is competitive, whether you're being fair internally, and whether you can defend your decisions to leadership. When you have real-time market data and proper benchmarking tools, those conversations become strategic discussions rather than guesswork sessions."

Use Figures’ real-time market data: the key to staying competitive

Building effective remuneration packages requires more than intuition – it demands reliable, current market intelligence. This is where modern compensation platforms make the difference between guessing and knowing.

The data challenge most companies face

Traditional salary surveys and spreadsheet-based approaches often leave HR teams working with outdated information. By the time last year’s salary data reaches your desk, market conditions have shifted dramatically, hybrid working has evolved again, and your competitors have launched benefit packages you've never heard of.

So, how do you fight this? With the right support, of course. 

Figures provides access to real-time market data points, enabling precise benchmarking across roles, levels, locations, and company sizes. It gives you all the tools to go above simple salary figures and instead understand the complete compensation picture that drives talent decisions.

Recent integration with Mercer strengthens this offering further. The exclusive combination of Mercer's global compensation expertise with Figures’ intuitive platform gives companies access to the most comprehensive benchmarks available. With over 5 million data points (yes, you read that correctly) updated quarterly, this collaboration encompasses all roles and strategic geographies for international companies.

The platform’s key capabilities include:

• Salary benchmarking that shows exactly where your roles sit in the market.

1 – Example of a Market Data dashboard in Figures with filters for a job type, level, and location

• Equitable pay analysis to identify and address compensation gaps – essential for catching red flags where long-serving employees discover they're earning less than the new hire sitting next to them.

2 – People dashboard in Figures showing whether employee compensation is above, on, below, or way below target

• Streamlined compensation reviews that replace Excel chaos with collaborative decision-making.
• Pay transparency tools to prepare for upcoming EU regulations (the clock is ticking!).

Real-world impact

Take Klarx, the construction machinery rental company. Before Figures, they relied on manual spreadsheets and Glassdoor for benchmarking – a process their Senior People Experience Manager described with a “vomit emoji.”

Now, Klarx uses Figures to retain and attract top players, empowering managers with data to make confident compensation decisions. As Filippo Laita explains: "I can see the relief in their faces when I tell them that yes, they can use the data points to make an argument with an employee."

With integration across 30+ HRIS systems, Figures ensures your compensation data stays consistent and actionable across your entire organisation.

Transform your compensation strategy with Figures today

Creating attractive remuneration packages shouldn’t feel like solving a puzzle blindfolded on top of a rambunctious horse. The most successful companies understand that competitive compensation requires reliable data, structured processes, and the right tools to execute effectively.

Throughout this guide, we’ve explored how thoughtful package design – combining base salary, benefits, flexible working, and growth opportunities – creates a genuine competitive advantage. But implementing these strategies requires more than good intentions.

Figures transforms compensation complexity into strategic clarity. With access to real-time data points, frictionless HRIS integration, and newly enhanced Mercer partnership data, you’ll make confident decisions that attract and retain top talent.

Ready to move beyond guesswork? Book a free demo and discover how Figures can revolutionise your approach to remuneration packages – because your best people deserve packages designed for today's market, not last year's assumptions.