Salary, Compensation and Benefit Surveys

Salary Guide for the Gulf

What are Salary Surveys?

Salary Surveys are tools used to determine the median or average salary paid to employees in one or more jobs. Salary data collected from several employers, is analyzed to develop an understanding of the amount of compensation paid. Surveys may focus on one or more job titles, countries of residence, employer size and turnover, and or industries.

Why are salary surveys important?

Salary surveys ensure that a company does not overpay their employees which would damage their profitability while at the same time it ensures that employees are not underpaid for fear of losing them to competition or other employers.

Genesis Executive Search provides executive compensation structures for the UAE and GCC markets and has over two decades of expertise in undertaking salary surveys in the Gulf. Our methodology to carry out the survey at a very specific time ensures very accurate results. We do not rely on salary data available from sources including our own database, but we carry out the salary survey assignment on the date of the requirement adhering to the below methodology.

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Every website has a story, and your visitors want to hear yours. This space is a great opportunity to give a full background on who you are, what your team does and what your site has to offer. Double click on the text box to start editing your content and make sure to add all the relevant details you want site visitors to know.

If you’re a business, talk about how you started and share your professional journey. Explain your core values, your commitment to customers and how you stand out from the crowd. Add a photo, gallery or video for even more engagement.

Wage, Compensation and
Benefits Survey

Understanding Compensation and Benefits

Our recruitment consultant understands the client's business, candidate profile, the required job description, and candidate culture to get an understanding of the profile to target. It is important since the salary comparison of an Indian with 5 years UAE experience will be very different from an American with 3 years of Bahrain experience.

Industry Based Candidate Profiling

A candidate's profile may vary depending on qualification, skill set, culture, years of work experience, company, and industry. This understanding is extremely important to find the closest competitors, businesses, and final candidates. Language and regional expertise make a 30%-60% difference to the final report if not carefully evaluated.

Salary Data Collection

Once target companies are identified, our resource consultant then gathers 13-15 different parameters on which the comparison will be made and proceeds with speaking, meeting, and verifying details.

The final survey result may be shared with the target candidate.

Salary Report Generation

All the data is collated and tabulated in a project report. Each report contains 3 targeted companies, each with a profile very similar and closest to the client requirement.

The report contains basic salary, housing allowance, travel allowance, a company maintained car, commissions, bonus, working hours, medical insurance, Annual tickets, reimbursements, phone and call allowance, laptop, any fixed cash allowance, family visa expenses, appraisal.

The report is finally presented to the client with a brief explanation of each parameter in line with local laws and regulations.

Salary and Compensation Parameters

The different compensation parameters for structured profile analysis and Review and as per UAE law are

Fixed Costs

Basic Salary
House Rent Allowance (HRA)
Transportation Allowance
Medical Insurance
Annual Return Airfare
Gratuity
Leave Salary

Variable Expenses (depending on the structure and company policy)

Vehicle and its maintenance
Education Allowance for children
Overtime
Recreation Allowance (Gym membership etc)
Commissions (monthly/quarterly or yearly)
Bonus
Profit-Sharing

We can help you with a salary guide for the UAE.

Sample Salaries Based on Job Titles

The below salary data though fairly accurate, is expected to have a variation between 10%-20%. Salaries in the UAE vary based on local experience, qualifications, and language skills. Different industries also pay differently for example oil and gas, engineering or banking tends to pay more than other industries for general positions. Employee's out of the DIFC and government organizations earn more too. Salary grades are better structured with most multinationals, though recent years have seen an improvement in having more structured pay scales for local companies. Subcontinental candidates, have been easier to find and hence have tended to be most economical to hire, followed by the native Arabic speaking and the western or eastern expats. This difference can be as much as twice the salary paid.

Approximate Salary Ranges