EDITORIAL >
The killing game
Written by: Philippe Riboton

THE RELATIVE STABILIZATION on the salary scene, as illustrated by our cover story this month, isn't necessarily good news for a lot of employees and managers. Gone with the wind are the days when anybody with just a little experience but a lot of promising communication and presentation skills could make a few extra thousands by simply moving overnight to the competition. Open positions in the most attractive companies are getting scarce, and the scramble to grab them is becoming tougher and tougher. The recruitment process in most organizations is getting longer, not to mention far more sophisticated - as shown by the current development of assessment centers that are helping companies to compare several candidates for the same job on a single platform. But this is all welcome news for employers, as they are getting far more and better choices between candidates and are no longer under time pressure to accept the first "adequate" candidate that shows up. In other words, the Czech market has finally moved from being employee-driven to become employer-driven. However, this long awaited transformation - which comes after so many years of turbulence - is becoming a killing game for a lot of employees and managers, as most of them must accept a pay cut as a welcome gift when they move jobs, while simultaneously being asked to deliver results in a new environment. This is demonstrated by an increasing number of companies with policies for compensating employees on a performance-based scheme. Sure, there are still a couple of areas where "salary fever" is still on, as new investors are still coming in and will do whatever necessary to get hold of the few experienced people, but these are more the exception than the norm. Thankfully the market has reached maturity, and people are finally getting paid on the value they really produce instead of what they promise in a sales pitch.