Coming in September: A Major New Salary, Benefits and Retention Benchmarking Project from Cii

Building on Cii’s previous salary and benefits research, this new project will provide a much broader and more detailed picture of employment across Ireland’s charity sector. It will help organisations better understand current salary levels, employee benefits, working arrangements, career progression, job satisfaction and the factors that influence whether people remain in, or leave, their roles.

The aim is to create a credible, practical evidence base that charities can use to make better-informed decisions about their people.

The final research will support:

• Boards and senior leaders when reviewing salaries, benefits and workforce investment.
• HR and people teams when developing recruitment and retention strategies.
• Managers when considering career progression, workload, flexibility and employee wellbeing.
• Charities when benchmarking roles against similar organisations.
• Cii in advocating for greater recognition of the workforce pressures facing the sector.
• Funders and policymakers in understanding the true cost of attracting, developing and retaining skilled staff.

At a time when charities are facing rising costs, increased demand for services and growing expectations across governance, compliance, digital, fundraising, finance and service delivery, access to reliable sector-specific workforce data has never been more important.

The research will go beyond salary levels to explore what employees value most, where the greatest workforce pressures are emerging and what charities can do to strengthen recruitment, retention and long-term workforce planning.

The findings will provide members with a valuable new benchmarking resource and will help build a clearer national picture of charity-sector employment in Ireland.

The survey will be confidential, with no individual employee or organisation identifiable in the final report. Strong participation across organisations, roles and levels will be essential to ensuring the results are meaningful and representative.

Keep an eye on your inbox in September for full details and the survey link. We will be asking Cii member organisations to share the survey with their teams and encourage as many employees as possible to take part.

By participating, members will help shape an important new resource for the sector and strengthen the evidence needed to support fair pay, better benefits, improved retention and more sustainable charity-sector careers.

If you have any questions about this project, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with Mark Hughes, Director of Communications & Membership Services, at mark@charitiesinstitute.ie.