HOT Salary Framework
HOT is passionate about transparency and equity. More than three years ago, HOT chose to be more transparent about salaries by rolling out a published salary framework in January 2019. Since then, we have continued to learn and develop our framework in striving to be a more transparent and equitable global organization.
Our most recent learning is that this framework provides HOT a platform from which to have conversations with staff about their salary and their perspectives on pay equity. As a result of these insightful conversations, we have enacted certain changes that we believe have led to more equity.
Starting in mid-2020, we undertook a review to ensure our framework is transparent, fair, and meets the demands of a complex, global workforce. We did not throw the first framework out the window. On the contrary, we found it provided the necessary structure for determining salaries but needed tweaking and additional resources behind it.
In 2022, we introduced developments in our location factor to make its application more consistent and to compress the gaps between the lowest to the highest location band, while still considering local labor markets. This helps us continue to be competitive and attract and retain mission-driven talent, while also not adversely interfering with local labor markets.
Our goals around compensation have not changed - we still want to ensure a transparent, consistent, and equitable process for all staff, regardless of position, location, gender, or any other distinguishing characteristic. We are always learning in this process and will continue to make adjustments to ensure fairness.
The HOT Salary Framework
The HOT Salary Framework is based upon a formula made up of four factors that, when multiplied together, determine a HOT employee’s annual salary or contractor’s hourly rate.
For Contractors’ hourly rate:
Role Base & Salary Scale
The Role Base Salary is the value of work for each role in the organization based on the job description (not job title), career level, specific skills, level of supervision, education, etc. that the role requires. This is a number in USD that serves as the benchmark pay for each position in our organization. HOT partners with PayScale.com to get accurate, US national market-based salary data benchmarked to organizations sized at 150 staff in the non-profit humanitarian sector. Working with the Insight Lab at PayScale, we created an organizational salary scale (all in USD).
The Role Base Salary amount is calculated at the 50th percentile of the market within Payscale’s Insight Lab platform by comparing that role to similar positions based on the job description. Note that Payscale.com publishes salaries publicly based on job title; these may not reflect the calculated salaries based on job description (not job title), career level, specific skills, level of supervision, education, etc. This ensures that the role base salary is within our scale to ensure equity at the same time it is competitive within the sector.
After choosing the Role Base Salary, we apply a Non-Profit Factor of 95% that is already incorporated in the salary scale above. The Non-Profit Factor reflects HOT’s identification as a non-profit organization within the wider labor market.
HOT Salary Scale [in USD; non-profit factor not applied as well as the location factor and personal capital factor not yet applied].
Each role falls within a specific grade on the scale above, identified between the hiring manager, HR, and Finance Teams at the creation of the position before any hiring is done. Certain job levels can span more than one grade, which allows for additional staff growth in those roles. Each position posted on hotosm.org includes the relevant grade from our (HOT) salary scale and the applicable salary range depending on experience. The location factor comes into play once the actual location or tax home of the chosen candidate is confirmed. This could be subject to a variance of up to 20% from the salary posted.