3 Key Tips For Streamlining Salary Review Workflows

Salary reviews are key drivers of employee retention. With the ability to motivate teams in a tight labour market and build trust in an uncertain financial landscape, regular salary check-ins have never been so important for UK workers.

According to Emma Parkin, Head of Propositions at The Access Group: “Only 32% of employees believe their pay is fair, yet research shows that pay process fairness is 5.4 times more impactful on employee satisfaction than the actual compensation amount.”

If your company churn out poorly managed reviews, this could have serious consequences for your retention rate. If your workers believe that their pay is not fair, you’ll quickly experience company-wide disengagement and higher turnover rates, which could cost your large business millions.

With that said, it could be time to put your own salary review process to the test. With plenty of tech on the market designed to streamline your review workflow, we’ve put together a guide to mastering the salary review process in 2026.

A powerful salary review workflow – the benefits

A positive salary review process can boost retention and engagement in the workplace.

In fact, studies show that UK workers’ pay satisfaction is directly linked to a high-performing workforce.

With a powerful salary review workflow in place, some of the key benefits your company could experience include:

• Higher retention rates. This is a given, but competitive pay structures instantly motivate employees. If you’re battling other business giants in a tight labour market, regularly reviewing worker salaries could help you retain top talent and keep your team engaged.
• Improves decision making. If your salary workflow is supported by technology such as AI-powered analytics, you instantly get valuable insights into compensation trends, budget impacts and salary disparities that can help inform future decisions that naturally align with business budgets and goals.
• Builds trust. If you are transparent with your pay decisions, you build trust with your employees. Keeping workers in the loop regarding their projected salary increases helps them feel valued and reduces uncertainty, which has been known to be a key driver of disengagement.
• Drives diversity and inclusion. Regular pay reviews help identify and address potential pay gaps. This is crucial if your company prides itself on its commitment to equality.
• Streamlines cost management. A well-structured salary review structure is the key to improving cost management across the company. Defined salary ranges and clear rules for any increases make it simpler to generate realistic budgets, forecast any future expenses, and maintain financial stability.

 

3 tips to improve your salary review workflow in 2026

In an uncertain financial climate, both UK businesses and UK workers benefit from a robust salary review workflow in 2026.

With a wide number of tools, tricks and strategies to leverage, let’s dive into some of the best ways to improve your salary review workflow for the best retention rates in your industry.

1. Invest in an HRIS with a built-in salary review feature
Start by investing in a Human Resources Information System (HRIS) that has the functionality for salary reviews. Not only will this save your team time spent on manual tasks, but completing a salary review in Excel is a recipe for human error.

If you’re a large organisation, you’ll likely have disparate systems or manual spreadsheets spread across different departments. This is a one-way ticket to data silos and inconsistencies that can all affect your salary review workflow.

Investing in a centralised enterprise HR software like PeopleXD Evo is the key to storing all employee salary data in one place. An HRIS system does the administrative work, so you don’t have to.

With all data in one location, AI-powered HRIS systems can conduct company-wide analysis to identify market benchmarks and compensation trends that automatically inform the next salary review.

2. Utilise data analytics for informed approvals

On the topic of data analytics, another way to streamline your salary review workflow is to shift from ad-hoc decisions to data-driven approvals.

If your HRIS system has built-in AI capabilities, your HR team can use it to track and identify factors that influence an employee’s pay review, such as comparing internal pay to external market data.

Better still, HR teams can use analytic tools to spot potential retention risks that may require a pay review more urgently.

The key driver of success here is automated routing. The ability to gain approvals based on predefined rules, such as a recommendation within a salary band or flagging outliers for further review, speeds up your HR team’s workflow and reduces those pesky administrative bottlenecks.

3. Automate budget allocation and tracking

If you invest in an HR system with a compensation management feature, you can also automate your budget allocation process.

This ensures that during a salary review, the budget is distributed fairly across departments to eliminate potential pay gaps.

Some systems can even help you calculate a salary budget based on personalised factors such as employee performance and experience.

Better still, thanks to AI in the HR sector, businesses can access budget information in real time and respond easily to calculated changes ahead of a pay review.

The bottom line here is that with automated budget systems in place, managers can allocate pay rises more effectively, without having to do all of the heavy lifting.

Wrapping up

As we welcome real-time analytics and automated budgeting to the HR sector, transforming your salary review workflow has never been easier.

With powerful HRIS systems on their side, managers can now make informed decisions about their team’s compensation in seconds, making it easier to retain top talent, remain transparent with the team and ensure that workers feel valued in their role.

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