IUCN

International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is a global conservation organisation with the Head Office in Switzerland, and around 1,000 Secretariat staff worldwide. Caroline Knightley is the HR manager of the UK office.

IUCN is a membership union uniquely composed of both government and civil society organisations. It provides public, private and non-governmental organisations with the knowledge and tools that enable human progress, economic development and nature conservation to take place together. IUCN is the global authority on the status of the natural world and the measures needed to safeguard it.

“IUCN are based in the David Attenborough Building, which brings together 11 different conservation organisations to enhance collaboration between the institutions and better support the goals of conservation,” says Caroline Knightley, HR Manager of IUCN Cambridge Office.

“Competitive benchmarking is a valuable tool and I have been actively encouraging the other organisations in the building to join up to the Croner system to improve the validity of the data for the unique roles our industry offers”

Croner collect data through our Reward department’s continuous research into pay & benefits across the UK. The data is regularly updated, ensuring it is reliable and always up to date. IUCN subscribed to this service to benchmark the roles within their organisation, comparing their current salaries against the external market across job titles, job bands, turnover bands, employee bands and industry sectors, as well as across all regions, counties and UK towns.

“Previously, we conducted ad-hoc benchmarking exercises; however, we have introduced some changes to the remuneration policy, which require annual labour market benchmarking. We work with Croner to provide this benchmarking information.

“The job roles we provide are unique to the conservation sector, recruitment for these niche roles can often be a challenge. We are based in the centre of Cambridge, a booming technological hub – and this affects the everyday cost of living. It is therefore essential we have a firm understanding of our local competitiveness for salaries and benefits.”

Benchmarking your salaries is the best way to remain competitive in your industry, location and market. For IUCN, having accurate salary benchmarks was a priority and Croner’s support helped achieve that goal:

“Croner have been really helpful in guiding us through the process of labour market benchmarking. In particular, Elyshia has been patient and supported us effectively to ensure that our job roles are correctly evaluated and we have selected the most relevant filters for the benchmarking reports so the output data as accurate and useful as possible.  

“A member of the Croner team has also come to our office to give a presentation about the benchmarking process to our staff; this helped gain additional buy-in from the staff and add validity to the process.”