The real salary is the one that isn’t counted.

Worker demands have changed. Besides financial salary, factors like clear objectives, career plans, and flexible work structures are increasingly important for talent retention. This is the opinion of Luís Pires, Team Talent Manager, shared in Human Resources Portugal, which can be read in full:

The relationship between employees and employers has evolved significantly since the Industrial Revolution. It was from this major moment, beginning in the 19th century, that this relationship has constantly evolved, adapting to market conditions and demands in various contexts.

The famous satire on modern times, starring Charles Chaplin, already provided us with a vision of the working conditions of the time, which would be utterly unthinkable today.

In recent years, financial salary has lost its place as the primary motivational factor in attracting and retaining talent and has made way for a new concept – emotional salary. Clear objective definitions, career plans, flexible work structures that allow choosing between a face-to-face, hybrid, or fully remote work regime are some examples of concepts that are increasingly considered by employees.

In an extremely competitive market, against the backdrop of the current business context where the search for the best talents begins as early as the first year of college, companies needed to stand out. Human Resources realized that reinvention was necessary, often of their own internal structure, whether in terms of inter or intra-departmental communication or even in terms of the business model.

An example of this reinvention, as a way of attracting and retaining talent, is remote work. Although it emerged as a necessity due to the major pandemic since 2020, today it is an optional model, and companies that opt to allow this flexibility to their employees will clearly be one step ahead of their competition.

In the technology sector, where it makes even less sense – in many of its professions – to have a mandatory on-site work requirement, we are currently facing an even more worrying phenomenon: people have become numbers, and numbers have become rules. Due to a large supply versus low demand for opportunities, there has been an extremely high turnover. There is strong turnover in teams, both among employees who have been with companies for many years and those who have recently joined, due to market evolution with attractive financial offers from competing companies. The result has been a disinvestment in the company-employee relationship and even a disinvestment in the careers of their people.

However, people seek challenging projects that allow them to evolve, even if it means taking a step back in their financial salary. They look for companies that invest in their future by creating performance evaluation processes with a solid structure that act as accelerators for their careers and have departments with training capacities that adapt to their needs. Lastly, and above all, they seek more human companies. Those whose main objective is to strengthen ties with their people will certainly be victorious in a world that is becoming infinitely digital, but where the human and personal touch is still very important.