Celebrating 30 Years of Excellence in Remuneration

In 1994, Strategic Pay was founded by Dennis O’Callaghan, and SP10 & the New Zealand Remuneration Survey were owned by PWC.

At this time, New Zealand’s minimum wage was $6.13, with the average annual income being $28-30k. We also had a national lead government, with Jim Bolger as president.

Further afield, the Friends tv show premiered, Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as President of South Africa, the channel tunnel was built, and the original animated Lion King movie premiered.

Between 1994 & 2004, the SP10 methodology & New Zealand Remuneration Survey was initially owned by PWC (which temporaril rebranded to Monday), then was sold to IBM. In 2004, Strategic Pay purchased the SP10 methodology & New Zealand Remuneration Survey.

At this time, our esteemed Chair, John joined the business, along with one of Shareholders Don. The pay and employment taskforce was also created by the New Zealand Government.

In 2005 Strategic Pay opened its Wellington Office at Level 1, 85 The Terrace.

In 2006 Strategic Pay opened its Dunedin Office at 40 Filleul Street.

In 2008, Strategic Pay continued to grow by acquiring Higbee Schaffler & launching the very first version of SpectREM – our bespoke database system.

In 2009, we launched our flagship benchmarking report: The New Zealand Benchmark report, which was backed by detailed remuneration data from approximately 100,000 employees across 500 organisations.

In 2012, Strategic Pay continued it’s growth by acquiring Moyle Consulting, and our flagship New Zealand Remuneration Survey reaches a huge milestone of 100,000 incumbents.

At this time, Strategic Pay also launched the first version of Rem On-Demand and started reporting on pay gaps in the CEO Report.

Strategic Pay opens its Christchurch office at Level 1, 22 Bartlett Street in Riccarton, and its Hamilton Office at the Waikato Innovation Park.

A few years after launching Rem On-Demand, we developed PayCalculator, a tool designed to help people make informed decisions and streamline salary review processes. At the touch of a button or two, PayCalculator enables people to compare the latest remuneration market values from multiple Strategic Pay survey reports.

Strategic Pay opens its Tauranga office at The Kollective in Tauranga South.

In 2017, Strategic Pay went through a complete branding overhaul.

In 2018 we launched our very first Pay Equity Tool to help organisations measure & manage pay gaps.

In 2020 we launched our first Pay Equity Booklet, which provides analysis into pay equity in New Zealand. We reported an overall gap of 17.7%.

In 2021 we took another big step in our pay equity journey, by partnering with mindthegap, New Zealand’s first voluntary pay gap registry.

We also launched our 2nd Pay Equity Booklet, which reported an overall pay gap of 18.5%, an increase from 2020’s 17.7% figure.

10 years after it reached 100,000 incumbents, our flagship New Zealand Remuneration Survey reached 200,000 incumbents.

This year we released our 3rd Pay Equity Booklet, which showed an overall pay gap of 16.7%, lower than what we had reported in 2020 & 2021. We also launched the new cloud-based version of SpectREM, and added the ability to measure ethnicity gaps in our Pay Equity Tool.

After the successful roll-out of cloud-based version of our internal database SpectREM, we launched a vastly improved version of Rem On-Demand. We also launched our completely  revamped website.

Only 2 years after it reached 200,000 incumbents, our flagship New Zealand Remuneration Survey reached another big milestone: 300,000 incumbents.

At this time:

• NZ’s average annual income is $53,040,  76-89% more than the $28-30k average annual income in 1994.
• Mid-level specialists (400 SP10 points) earn approximately $90,724, 115% more than the $42,250 they were earning in 1994
• CEOs (1200 SP10 points) earn approximately $371,538, 235% more than the $110,851 they were earning in 1994

What’s next for 2025 and beyond? We’ll continue to explore ways we can advance our bsuiness operations, and help our clients even more. One exciting development is our AI project, which aims to reduce the time required to submit surveys – make sure to subscribe to our blog to be kept in the loop.