What makes up the Total Remuneration Package
Historically, we have tended to discuss topics such as pay, benefits and pensions in isolation from one another. In truth, they are all components of an interconnected package.
This holistic approach is distinctive to Imperial in the Higher Education sector - we set our own frameworks and approaches to pay and benefits, driven by our ambition to compete with comparable world-leading institutions. Our pension schemes, however, are multi-employer pension schemes with the design of the scheme and costs collectively agreed between the Trustees of the schemes and all employers.
Total Remuneration pie chart
What we spend on TRP
Our goal is to maintain our position as a world-leading institution, and our people are the cornerstone of this. This requires significant investment.
More than half of our annual spend goes towards our people, which in 2019/20 totalled £567m. The amount we spend on TRP, however, is not unchangeable. We are able to rebalance our overall package to reflect the priorities of our staff. Each component, however, is interconnected: changes to one part will have a resultant impact on all parts. Informing this are two key factors that influence what we can spend on TRP:
How we decide what we spend
Benchmarking
If we want to attract, support and retain the best, we need to understand what our competitors are offering and how we compare. In July 2022, we published our second benchmarking report - a comprehensive, public assessment of how our overall remuneration package compares with both national and international comparators. This is part of our commitment to make information on remunerations more transparent and accessible for all.
Affordability
In building a TRP that is appropriate for our status as a world-leading institution, we need to make sure that our approach enables not just excellence, but one that is sustainable over a long-term period. This means that we need to ensure what we spend on TRP is affordable within what we generate and balanced with the other commitments we have. Over two thirds of our income comes from research grants, contracts and tuition fees. Much of this funds the delivery of research or courses. With what remains, we’re always trading off investments in different areas – salaries, building refurbishments, running costs etc. On average, we’ve spent £120m per year on the ‘core estate’ over the past 6 years, compared with an average of £570m per year on staff.
Principles of TRP
Remunerations and Nominations Committee
The Committee is made up of four external Council members who annually review Imperial's reward strategy to ensure that remuneration is being managed in a fair and equitable way. It will also review and approve the application of the Imperial's pay relativity criteria for the President and the Provost, their senior staff direct reports and members of the University Management Board (UMB).
This review is informed by:
- Details of the across-the-board local pay award and any variation to benefits for all staff
- Summary information on the application of discretionary pay adjustments for all staff
- The annual equal pay audit
- The annual gender and ethnicity pay audit (and other specific protected pay audits as published)
- Pay ratios and relevant comparator information
- Information on numbers of staff earning a total salary of more than £100,000, with trend data on average increases for the previous five years compared to average increases for all staff over five years
- Detail of the individuals earning over £150,000 and the justification for any variation to pay (above Imperial across-the-board increase) reported on an individual basis and with reference to Imperial's pay relativity criteria applied to all staff.