What if You Took Advantage of the Summer Months to Strategically Plan Your Salary Increases?

Summer, often associated with a slowdown in business activities, is the perfect time to anticipate your human resources needs, review your salary structure, and plan upcoming raises in the year. Take advantage of this quieter period to gain perspective, structure your approach, and prepare the next steps with clarity.

This article provides a framework that is both strategic and pragmatic, with concrete advice for managers, business owners, and HR professionals who wish to use compensation as a lever for performance and retention.

With less operational pressure, summer offers the necessary space to:

• Analyze your teams’ performance
• Review your salary progression grid
• Adjust salary scales and update market benchmarks
• Conduct budget simulations

These are foundational elements for optimizing workforce investment, which is one of the largest expenses for many organizations. While these efforts are important year-round, summer is especially conducive to this strategic reflection. It also gives you time to analyze your options and make informed budgetary choices before the fall, when decisions often need to be finalized quickly.

Before defining a budget, make sure your salary base is clear and up to date.

Here are the key steps:

1. Ensure your salary structure is current (see the ten key checkpoints below)
2. Analyze past increases and their impact
3. Consider economic outlooks: project inflation scenarios and expected market salary increases (see the section “Determine your increase rate”)
4. Define increase ranges by level, role, or team according to your organizational realities
5. Integrate into your annual financial forecasts (budgets)
6. Run realistic simulations based on individual performance and internal equity

Your salary structure is the foundation of your compensation management.

Here’s what you need to check:

1. Salary scales by role and job family, ideally with progression zones linking individual performance to salary evolution
2. Target ranges by hierarchical level to ensure coherent compensation management based on responsibilities
3. Adjustment mechanisms
4. Up-to-date market data (benchmarks) to maintain competitive positioning
5. Inflation and market trend adjustments
6. Clear link between pay and performance
7. Internal consistency: ensure horizontal equity among individuals in comparable roles;
8. Bonuses and incentives: define criteria and distribution terms
9. Consideration of other working conditions and benefits in the overall salary positioning (savings plans, leaves, vacations, remote work, insurance, etc.)
10. Employee compensation communication: to promote transparency, understanding, and buy-in

Once your salary structure is validated, the next step is to determine your salary structure indexation rate.

The Ordre des conseillers en ressources humaines agréés provides a very useful salary forecasting tool. The 2026 forecast tool will be available in September (in French only).

The results of our 2025 Quebec Total Rewards Survey, with data collection completed in May, offer a solid indication of projected increases by organizations, especially in the uncertain context that has prevailed since early this year. We invite you to consult our article: Beyond Uncertainty: Making our Organizations Strong, Agile, and Sustainable.

The increase rate applied to your salary structure will then allow you to project your total raise budget based on each team member’s position within their salary scale.

SMEs often face constraints that can significantly impact budgets, such as rapid growth or high turnover. That’s why it’s essential to focus on a total rewards strategy. Summer is an ideal time to identify gaps between your teams’ needs/interests and your business needs, in order to fine-tune your strategy and align your actions more effectively.

In this context, offering innovative working conditions with high perceived value is a smart approach that optimizes the return on investment in total rewards.

For more details on optimizing your total rewards budget: A Distinctive and Coherent Total Rewards Strategy.

SMEs often have greater flexibility than large companies to reposition their working conditions, including: benefits, bonuses, recognition, professional development, vacation, personal days, sick leave, remote work, travel, mobility, etc.

Integrating these elements into your strategy helps you get the most out of every dollar spent and enhances the appeal of your offer—beyond base salary.

The results of our 2025 Quebec Total Rewards Survey are available free of charge to support you on this topic.

A good compensation strategy is useless if it’s not well understood. Start preparing your communications now: key messages, response scenarios, and communication tools. Be proactive, as transparency, anticipation, and recognition are your best allies for building trust and driving engagement.

Perceived value is the real value!

You may also consider a total rewards statement to communicate the full range of benefits offered.

1. Collect internal data and validate your market positioning: Gather salary data, individual positioning, market comparables, and working conditions.
2. Review your salary structure: Update scales, progression zones, internal gaps, and external benchmarks.
3. Review other working conditions: Assess your overall positioning considering offered benefits (RRSPs, time off, remote work, etc.).
4. Review your total rewards offering: Adjust or enhance complementary elements to maximize perceived value.
5. Identify financial components to plan: Project individual progression, indexation, bonuses, incentives, and payroll impact.
6. Run budget simulations: Explore different increase scenarios, including all labor-related costs (e.g., bonuses).
7. Validate with management: Present analyses, discuss strategic directions, and adjust budget items.
8. Incorporate decisions into 2026 forecasts: plan salary envelopes and adjustments in your overall financial planning.
9. Prepare communications and contract updates: Define messages, response scenarios, and communication tools to deploy in the fall.

Take advantage of the summer season to take control of your compensation practices. A thorough and strategic planning process will not only help retain talent but also control costs in a constantly evolving economic environment. The HR function can be a strategic lever for organizations. Since compensation is one of the biggest costs, a strategic approach to managing it is essential.

Solertia can support you from planning to implementation, with practical tools, reliable data, and expertise tailored to your reality.

Need help? Contact us, we have the tools and expertise to support you!