Our work
In 2023 MSF employed nearly 70,000 staff worldwide. 50% of MSF’s total budget of 2.3 billion EUR was spent for salaries. As a socially responsible employer we want to ensure that these salaries are fair, decent and competitive. At the same time we have a responsibility towards our donors and the people and patients in our 70+ countries to use our resources responsibly and efficiently.
For this, we need reliable labour market insights that inform decision makers. In many countries in crisis such insights and data are either scarce, or of limited usability for a medical humanitarian organisation of our size and complexity.
Our team of researchers and specialists therefore conducts regular market analysis in the countries in which we locally employ people. The studies take the form of in-depth interviews with representative employers from the local labour market to discuss general working conditions, compensation and benefits.
All our studies are compliant with strict confidentiality procedures. We share the anonymized results of our surveys free of charge with all participating employers. For sample reports please visit our resources page!
For any questions or cooperation requests, please contact us: benchmarking@oslo.msf.org
Check out our vacancies in field and head office
Download our Annual Report 2023 (Annual Report 2022) (Annual Report 2021)
Download our Benchmarking Brochure (pdf).
See a short presentation on benchmarking: download presentation (pdf).
Why benchmark?
MSF employs people for a broad range of jobs and skills levels who all ensure that MSF can deliver quality health care to those who need it – all over the world.
To do this, we recruit the best, most committed professionals. We often work in locations that lack accessible information on common market practice, cost of living and decent living wages.
MSF wants to ensure that our mandate can be carried out respecting the highest quality standards and accountable use of funds, while at the same time our employees receive fair compensation and local regulations and rules are respected, and without harming the market norms.
There are economic, social and legal reasons why benchmarking is essential for us: employees can provide for their families, talent is attracted and retained, avoidance of disruption of the labour market, MSF complies with labour laws…
MSF surveys have been systematically conducted through a combination of field and desk research since 2012.
We analyse the local labour market, the competitiveness of salaries and estimate the minimum living wage as well as compliance with internal and external policies.
How is it done
The benchmarking methodology is a disciplined approach for determining the relative importance and value of different jobs, and the critical relationships between. It ensures that jobs are compared based on requirements and accountabilities, and not by title, status or other bias.
In order to ensure that jobs of similar requirements and accountabilities are compared, emphasis is put on the core content of each function, reflecting the level of responsibility (knowledge, skills and supervision level) and complexity of tasks.
The methodology provides consistent guidelines for every step of the process, from identification and selection of appropriate organisations, training and tools for the execution of interviews, ensuring that accurate and most needed information is provided, to the final analysis process.
Remuneration elements benchmarked are Total Guaranteed Cash (Gross basic Salary + all fixed Allowances).
Salaries are compared not based on title, but based on job requirements and accountabilities. This way we ensure that we are comparing positions of similar complexity, while also taking into consideration the structure, nature, and size of the organization we are comparing MSF with. These are the guiding principles in the interviews between MSF and participating companies.
Participating comparators typically consist of a majority of NGOs and humanitarian organizations, international and local private businesses, and public institutions. The Ministry of Health as well as the UN are always included if possible. The spread within the participating comparators is designed to obtain a picture of the entire labour market.
Interviews are mostly performed individually and face-to-face with each participating comparator organisation, covering all aspects from policies and practices, comparable functions, to experienced HR and organizational challenges.
Positions to be benchmarked are selected primarily based on the feedback and needs of the mission, and typically cover positions which are challenging to attract, recruit or retain, which are critical to the mission, and which can be observed in the market.
TERMINOLOGY
Total Guaranteed Cash: the minimum base wage plus fixed, cash allowances for a given function.
Remuneration: is the total compensation that an employee receives.
Median: the numerical value separating the higher half of a data sample from the lower half.
Example: Eight participants (from A to H) indicated their salary for the function Guard below. The median in the example below shows that half of the participants pay less than 110 and half pay more than 110. The average tells us that the market is paying 244 on average. The picture is more accurate using the median rather than the average, as extreme values (from participant H) then do not affect the results.
| Function | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | Median | Average | |
| Guard | 100 | 100 | 110 | 120 | 90 | 110 | 120 | 1 200 | 110 | 244 |
Lower Quartile (Q1, 25th percentile): the number that divides the lower half of a set of data into two equal halves.
Upper Quartile (Q3, 75th percentile): the number that divides the upper half of the data into two equal halves.
Reference Market: selected market against which a company wishes to compare itself (i.e. labour market, industry, sector, specific positions etc.). The full composition of participants involved in this benchmark survey.
Monthly Household Expenditures: the sum of the reported expenses for a typical family within a given location, divided into six (6) cost categories: Rent / Housing, Utilities, Food Basics, Basic Non-Food Items, Transportation, and Education.
Inflation: a general increase in the prices of goods and services in an economy over some period of time.
CPI: a measure that examines the weighted average of prices of a basket of consumer goods and services, such as transportation, food, and medical care. It is calculated by taking price changes for each item in the predetermined basket of goods and averaging them.
Monthly Household Expenditure Survey (MHES)
Data are also collected from lower-level employees on monthly cost across six (6) categories of expenditure. The respondents may provide a range in which they expect costs per category to be. The average value in the range is used, in order to provide a modest cost of living, while still being within what respondents consider realistic.
The qualification for being statistically significant (i.e. allowing the use of a median value), is based on the 95% confidence interval surrounding the median. A 95% confidence interval surrounding our estimated median is a range in which we are 95% certain that the median truly is. Thus, the narrower a confidence interval is, the more likely it is that our estimate is accurate. Generally, a confidence interval will narrow with an increasing number of respondents. The size of the confidence interval was then assessed relative to the estimated median. If the size of the interval was larger than 50% of the median, the estimate was considered unreliable. Note that the test of reliability was carried out on a per-category of expense level.
