Human Resources Global Salary Report, October – December 2013

The Chapman Consulting Group tracks the base salaries of the Human Resources leadership roles that we place around the world on a quarterly basis. These figures should not be used to directly compare salaries from one geography to another, because the work that we do tends to be different depending on the market. For example, in Europe and the U.S. we tend to work on global HR roles with worldwide responsibilities; in a geography such as the U.A.E we tend to work on regional HR roles with multi-country responsibilities across the Middle East and Africa; and in a market such as Indonesia we tend to work on domestic HR roles that have countrywide responsibilities.

Looking back at the fourth quarter of 2013, in a number of markets, such as the Philippines, Japan, and Australia, the salary levels for the roles that The Chapman Consulting Group handled represented the strongest of the year. This suggests an increase in the average salary levels of senior HR roles generally. However, in other key markets, such as the U.S., South Africa, and the U.A.E., we saw much stronger salary levels for senior HR positions at the beginning of the year, as opposed to the end of 2013. Consequently, it’s difficult to extrapolate universal trends in hiring sentiment on a global scale across this 12-month period. We would need to examine the results on a more local or regional scale to determine the direction of individual HR markets.

On a regional basis, Europe and the United States still command the highest HR salaries globally, primarily because the lion’s share of Global HR roles sit in these regions. However, the salary levels for roles based in Hong Kong, Singapore, China, Japan and Australia are increasing and are now not far behind the U.S. and Europe. The other regional HQ locations of Latin America, Africa and the Middle East still currently languish slightly behind Europe, North America and Asia Pacific, so it will be interesting to watch how this develops in 2014. We look forward to releasing the salary details of our search work in Q1 of 2014 and examining these trends in greater depth.

To view previous salary data, please visit http://chapmancg.com/news/hr-salaries