Compensation & Benefits

Consider your broader Employer Value Proposition.  Research shows that pay is important, and you should benchmark your salaries so that they're competitive.  At the same time, research shows that people also consider other questions when assessing a potential employer: 

• Do I believe in what the organization is working toward? Will I be making a differnece? 
• Will I have the chance to learn and grow? 
• Will I like and be inspired by the people I'm working with? 

Make sure that you are highlighting the many unique opportunities that working for your organization provides someone--whether it's growth, flexibility, impact, or building their personal network. 

Research has generally shown that pay-for-performance strategies, like giving bonuses, actually decreases performance.  While you should explore what is most common in your context, partners who have introduced performance-based bonuses have typically later removed them, so we do not recommend them.  Performance can be very subjective and difficult to measure, and adding a bonus to them can add unncessary pressure and harm culture. 

There is no single answer for this.  Here are a few things you might consider: 

• What is sustainble for your budget and competitive within the market? 
• What are you incentivising? Growth in role? Moving to new roles? Taking on management? Are there multiple pathways for growth?
• How are you acknowledging people's contributions to the organization over time? 

Whatever you ultimately decide, it is a best practice to apply it consistently to all employees within the organization. 

This depends on your talent philosophy.  You might consider:

• Local or international NGOs
• Schools and education organizations
• Private sector companies or consulting firms. 

Consider where people who join your staff would likely work if they didn't work for you.  You might also look at data from multiple sectors and then set a philosophy for how you you aim to compare. 

First, set your compensation philosophy to help you to know which markets you want to be competitive with.  Also, make sure you have clear job descriptions for the role. Think about which roles are similar to the role you’re looking at so that you can level within a salary band. (For example, market benchmarks may be different for a technology role vs. a teacher coach role vs. a CEO role). Then, look at average pay for those roles and adjust your salary from there, based on your philosophy.

See the advice above for benchmarking more broadly. You might look at executive directors of similarly sized NGOs. Or you may want to look at regional directors of larger businesses. When setting CEO salary, you’ll want to consider the span of salaries from teachers to the lowest-paid staff in the organization to the CEO to make sure that you and your board feel comfortable with the span. You may also want to consider re-visiting salary benchmarks for the CEO as the organization grows in size and complexity and the base of funding is more stable. You might also reach out to other CEOs of Teach For Organizations in similar countries to ask them to share their salary benchmarks. Having external benchmarks to justify the choice of salary will be helpful, and in many contexts, a committee on the board would propose and approve CEO salary.

We do not currently have data on this. However, if you’re interested to participate in a future study that would allow you to see how your organization compares to others in the network, please email us to indicate your interest.

Whatever you do, you should do consistently. If you do this with one employee, you should do it with all employees, and it should be reflected in your philosophy.

You should decide what works best in your context. That said, a number of organizations have been embracing greater transparency with a positive impact not only on equity but also on staff engagement.