Viaplay Group

Olof Svensson

Reward Governance Authority

The most important factors when balancing employee expectations with business needs are trust, transparency, and clarity. In my experience, employees do not necessarily expect identical outcomes, but they do expect decisions to be fair, understandable and consistently applied. When people understand how decisions are made and that all employees are treated equally, they are more likely to accept outcomes even when those outcomes are not exactly what they hoped for.

At the same time, organisations operate within financial realities. Reward programmes must be sustainable and support long-term business performance. This means balancing investment in people with affordability, competitiveness, and strategic priorities. I believe the most successful organisations are those that communicate openly about this balance. Transparency about principles and salary structures often has a greater impact on trust, acceptance, and long-term business performance than simply increasing compensation budgets.

A New Era of Workforce Expectations

Workforce expectations have evolved significantly over the past decade. Employees increasingly expect transparency regarding how pay is determined. My feeling is that in the beginning of my career, many employees primarily cared about what they earned. Today, they are just as likely to ask why they earn what they earn, how pay is determined and how career progression influences compensation. I also find that employees are increasingly looking beyond salary alone and evaluating the overall employee experience, including flexibility, wellbeing, development opportunities, and work-life balance.

Recent regulatory developments across Europe have accelerated this trend by placing greater emphasis on objective and defensible pay practices. As a result, organisations need to invest more effort in job architecture, pay governance, and manager capability. As the number of questions from employees is growing, managers are increasingly expected not only to make pay decisions, but also to be able and equipped to explain and justify them.

"The best reward professionals are not simply experts in salaries and benefits; they understand the business."

That shift raises a broader question: What does it take to make rewards decisions that are both fair and sustainable?

One lesson stands out above all others: fairness and equality (and the sense thereof) is not achieved through good intentions but rather through disciplined processes that are anchored at, and supported by, the top of the organisation.

Many organisations assume that managers will naturally make fair decisions. In reality, fair outcomes require clear frameworks, objective criteria, reliable data, and appropriate governance. Without these foundations, inconsistencies emerge over time and might become the source of lawsuits in the future.

Another lesson is that transparency improves decision quality. When managers know that a decision may need to be explained to an employee, a union representative, or even a court, discussions become more evidence based.

There is sometimes an assumption that fairness comes at the expense of business flexibility. I have found the opposite to be true. Organisations that are perceived as fair typically spend less time managing employee relations issues and more time focusing on performance and development.

Building a Career in Compensation and Benefits

First, develop strong analytical skills. Compensation and benefits increasingly require data-driven decision-making, and professionals who can interpret data and translate it into practical recommendations create significant value.

Second, invest time in understanding the business. The best reward professionals are not simply experts in salaries and benefits; they understand business strategy, organisational priorities and financial performance.

Third, do not underestimate the importance of communication. A technically correct reward decision can still fail if it is not explained in a way that managers and employees understand.

Finally, my strongest believe is that transparency alone does not automatically create fairness or equality, so be cautious and think about the purpose. Transparency does not automatically create more understanding, fairness or equality. I would, for example, avoid publishing salary ranges in job ads as they, in my view, need to be so broad that they offer little practical guidance. You should also keep in mind that transparency can unintentionally favour the most confident and vocal employees, who may simply gain more arguments in pay discussions than their less outspoken colleagues. The real goal should not be transparency for its own sake, but helping employees understand how pay decisions are made, which factors influence them, and what they can do to progress. When compensation is explainable, transparency becomes meaningful rather than merely visible.