Introduction
The Hong Kong Council of Social Service (hereafter the "HKCSS") has conducted annual NGOs Salary Survey (hereafter the "Survey") for the social service sector since 2003. Overseen by a Working Group composed of representatives from the social service sector, experts from the business sector and human resources management profession and conducted by an independent survey consultant, the Survey aims to provide the most updated reference to assist Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs) in positioning their salary and benefits strategies to attract, motivate, reward and retain staff and revamping the relevant human resources management practices to meet the challenging operating environment.
In the past decades, the operating environment of the social service sector has kept on changing. The introduction of the Lump Sum Grant Subvention (LSGS) has transformed the resources management of the NGOs in the social service sector, especially in human resources management. NGOs are given the freedom to manage their staff structure, staff-mix and the level of salary and benefits under the new funding mode. To facilitate NGOs in determining the levels of salary and benefits with flexibility to meet their organizational requirements, more relevant and timely reference on the salary and benefits policy and strategy of the sector should be made available.
The scope of the Survey and salary data covered have been modified to cope with the changing environment and practices of the sector. Apart from covering the salary data of full-time staff in-post whose salary structure does not strictly follow the Master Pay Scale (the "MPS"), more comprehensive information on salary structure with both starting and maximum salaries has also been collected since 2012. The enhancement provides a better understanding on the salary structure of the benchmarked positions of the sector. Without the contributions from the Participants and the Working Group, and the professional service rendered by the survey consultant, the Survey cannot be accomplished to provide the social service sector with valuable reference on the practices on salary and benefits. Over the past years, the number of participants has doubled. This year, a record high is achieved, with 106 Agency Members participated, with 16 of them being new participants. In regards of the reference date of the salary data, the same date, 31 October, as per the past surveys, was selected. This is to note that the approval of annual civil service salary adjustment by Legislative Council was delayed to late October of 2017, instead of August in the past few years.