Three in four companies plan wage hikes

The shortages of workers, particularly skilled ones, defining the current economic climate have improved their bargaining position vis-a-vis employers. 

According to Randstad’s HR trends survey of business executives for 2023, 66% believe job seekers have unrealistic salary expectations. Indeed, this figure has increased by 17 percentage points compared to 2022.

However, employers will nonetheless need to increase wage expenditure. As a result 54% of firms plan to recruit and 75% will implement pay rises to retain staff, as 74% of employees say that if they find better pay or more favorable working conditions in a competitive company, they will leave their current job. Tellingly, Greek companies are planning to increase employee wages, with the majority (36%) ranging between 1% and 5%. There are 4% that plan to provide a wage increase of 16% or more in 2023.

Moreover, due to seasonality, recruitment is increasing rapidly. In March, 61,912 new salaried jobs were created, the most for this month since 2001. Thus, the balance of payroll employment flows in the first quarter was positive by 57,487 jobs.

Due to the fact that the majority of Greek businesses believe job seekers’ wage demands are unrealistic they are unable to find competent executives and the attraction of skilled staff is considered one of the most important challenges for 72% of companies.

The Randstad survey was conducted from December 2022 to the end of March 2023, with the participation of 440 executives.

It shows that Greek companies identify three key areas of challenges that will significantly impact the labor market for the current year. These are increased costs (45%), ensuring and guaranteeing productivity (42%) and managing high energy costs (37%). Apart from employees’ unrealistic expectations, the companies also cite as an additional difficulty in filling jobs the lack of work experience or expertise (51%), and the lack of the right combination of skills (42%). What’s more, the survey also showed companies cite the difficulty of maintaining both employee engagement (59%) and developing top-performing talented leaders (55%) as significant barriers.

To address these challenges, businesses themselves recognize that they need to turn to training or education programs (68%) to move toward salary increases (56%) and to implement the hybrid working model (34%).