Most Belgian companies plan to increase their employees' base salary and make promotions in 2025. However, when it comes to giving bonuses, they are more selective.
More than nine in ten (94%) Belgian companies plan to grant an increase in their employees' base salary rise – the fixed amount the employee receives for the working hours performed.
This is a significant bump from last year's 82% and an increase of 37pp from 2022, the annual ‘Salary Budget poll’ by HR consultancy Hudson, based on a survey of 299 Belgian organisations, showed.
However, the raise people will receive is not expected to be significant. The percentage of companies planning to grant salary increases of more than 2.5% has fallen from 28% for 2024 to 17% for 2025.
Bonuses and promotions
Employees are also more likely to receive promotions from next year. Around two in three (64%) companies surveyed will set aside a separate budget for promotions – up from barely 30% last year.
"As in previous years, most organisations budget less than 1% of their total salary bill for promotions, excluding indexation," Hudson noted. "About 20% of organisations now plan to allocate more than 1%."
Meanwhile, 80% of organisations are planning to set aside a separate budget for variable pay or income – an additional part of people's income that is not fixed but instead depends on targets or performance, such as bonuses – by 2025. This is also a significant increase from 39% last year. 40% of organisations plan to allocate more than 5% of the total salary budget to bonuses.
However, not everyone will benefit: 58% of businesses do not budget bonuses for blue-collar workers, and 30% will not do so for white-collar workers. This means it will mainly be executives and management positions that can look forward to variable pay.
"As job levels rise from blue collar to senior management, organisations are more inclined to allocate higher percentages to variable pay," said a senior manager at Hudson, Wouter Beuckels. "More than 20% of organisations budget more than 20% variable pay for senior management, indicating a stronger emphasis on performance-related pay at higher levels."
Could wage indexation be done better?
Nine in ten organisations anticipate that wages will automatically rise due to Belgium's system of indexation of wages next year. Several HR companies have already confirmed around one million people in various sectors will see their wages rise automatically next year.
Hudson's survey showed the majority of companies estimate that the index increase will range between 2% and 4%, while only one in three organisations anticipate an index increase of more than 3.5%, even though the expectation of the index committee predicts many white-collar workers covered by PC200 can currently expect 3.52% more pay.
Beuckels stressed that this system takes a chunk out of companies' budgets and that Belgium should reconsider the current system. "There is nothing wrong with the principle, only how it is applied without any nuance. Why not [use a] tiered indexation that wouldn't apply above a certain wage ceiling? It would give a lot of companies a bit more breathing space."
