The ZMG Compensation Guide 2025: a Must-Have for Talent Strategy Leaders

In today’s competitive talent landscape, organizations can no longer afford to rely on outdated compensation structures or gut-feel decisions. The launch of the ZMG Compensation Guide 2025 by the ZMG Group’s Research and Talent Intelligence (ZMG-RTI) Practice introduces a timely and strategic resource for HR leaders, recruiters, and business executives seeking to make informed decisions about talent management.

A Guide Shaped by Market Realities

The Philippine labor market has been evolving rapidly. With over 50 million workers across four generations, and a fifth on the horizon, employers face mounting challenges in attracting and retaining top talent. Drawn from decades in the recruitment industry and rigorous analysis of the market, the ZMG-RTI Practice has long noticed the growing misalignment between employer expectations and employee demands, as observed from longer time-to-fills to rising attrition rates.

The ZMG Compensation Guide 2025 was developed in response to these challenges. It drives a data-first approach to workforce planning, equipping stakeholders with actionable insights into compensation decision-making.

What Makes the Guide Stand Out

While most available reports focus solely on either salaries or benefits, the ZMG Compensation Guide 2025 consolidates both key pillars into a single, comprehensive resource. It features:

• Up-to-date salary and benefits data across three job levels: individual contributors, managers/supervisors, and executive management.
• Wide industry scope, covering 20 key sectors, with special attention to high-growth areas like logistics, manufacturing, construction, and property development.
• Analysis across nine core business functions, including finance, IT, HR, and sales.
• Generational preferences and employee considerations beyond pay, such as company culture, flexible work setups, and career development.

Strategic Benchmarking for Smarter Decisions

Compensation benchmarking is a cornerstone of an effective recruitment strategy. In the Philippines, where the labor market is both young and diverse, organizations face a unique challenge: how to remain competitive without compromising financial sustainability.

The ZMG Compensation Guide 2025 addresses this by offering granular insights into compensation trends across functions, industries, and job levels. This includes outlier information in executive compensation, generational preferences, and breakdown of compensation (base pay vs benefits).

But benchmarking is not just about matching market rates. It is about aligning compensation with business goals, talent availability, and employee expectations. In a market where time-to-fill metrics are increasing and job offers are frequently declined due to misalignment, strategic benchmarking helps organizations make deliberate, data-informed decisions that reduce hiring friction and improve retention.

Understanding Employee Expectations

Filipino professionals nowadays are more intentional, mobile, and career-oriented than ever. The access to information has empowered job seekers to evaluate potential employers and job offers with clarity. They look beyond salary and assess other considerations such as company culture, work-life harmony, and growth opportunities.

The ZMG Compensation Guide 2025 captures these evolving expectations. It highlights how different generations prioritize different benefits, such as mentorship for younger employees, continuing education for tenured staff, and flexible work arrangements across the board. 

Understanding these preferences is essential. Employers who fail to adapt risk losing top candidates to more agile competitors that recognize and respond to current market realities. The guide helps organizations tailor their offerings to meet the needs of today’s workforce, ensuring they remain attractive and relevant in a fast-changing talent landscape.

The ZMG Compensation Guide 2025, likewise, emphasizes the importance of company culture, showing that employees who feel aligned with their organization’s values are significantly more engaged. This is particularly true among executives, where having the right culture fit can notably influence overall business decisions and outcomes.

Real-World Applications

During the ZMG Compensation Guide product launch, one of the case studies presented by the ZMG-RTI practice highlighted a client facing persistent attrition in a function critical to operations. However, despite ongoing hiring challenges, the organization was reluctant to adjust its compensation structure due to concerns about maintaining internal equity.

This scenario reflects a common dilemma in today’s Philippine talent market, where traditional pay philosophies are being challenged by the realities of market-driven compensation. As talent becomes more mobile and informed, organizations must evolve from a purely internal equity mindset to one that also considers market equity or paying competitively based on what employees can get paid elsewhere.

Using ZMG’s bespoke Salary and Benefits Analysis, the client in the featured case study was able to benchmark their pay against market standards, identify gaps, and initiate strategic conversations with leadership. The result was a more competitive compensation package that reduced turnover and lowered recruitment costs. This reflects ZMG-RTI’s approach in helping organizations align their business strategies with current market realities to address challenges and remain competitive.

The ZMG Compensation Guide 2025 empowers leaders in navigating this shift and making these kinds of data-informed decisions. It provides the clarity and confidence needed to adapt compensation strategies to today’s dynamic talent market conditions.

A Strategic Tool for the Future

The ZMG Compensation Guide 2025 goes beyond a benchmarking report. It is a strategic tool designed to empower organizations in navigating and thriving in today’s fast-evolving talent landscape. Championing the ZMG-RTI Practice’s data-first philosophy in talent management, this guide aims to further equip leaders with relevant insights needed to make informed decisions that foster sustainable growth and long-term success.