Providing HR professionals information and data to recruit and retain the right people to fulfil MSF’s mission to deliver quality assistance to those who need it the most

MSF primarily consults cost of labour in a given market as basis for the establishment of our salaries. Such data are either scarce for many labour markets in which MSF has operations, or of uncertain reliability for an organization as complex as ours.

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

See a list of recent and upcoming salary surveys.

Download our Benchmarking Brochure (pdf).

See a short presentation on benchmarking: download presentation (pdf).

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.

For that we want to ensure that we are able to 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 wage.

MSF wants to ensure that our mandate can be carried out under the highest quality standards while at the same time ensure that our employees are treated fairly, money and funds are used in a sustainable way and local norms are respected.

There are economic, social and legal reasons why benchmarking is esssential e.g., employees can provide for their families, retain staff, keep the intrinsic motivation, not disrupt the labour market, relevant differences between capital and rural areas, comply with labour laws…

MSF surveys are conducted through a combination of field and desk research.

We analyse the local labour market, the competitiveness of salaries and estimate the minimum living wage (by surveying minimum monthly household expenditure) as well as compliance with internal and external policies.

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.