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Reward Philosophy

Purpose #

dxw’s Reward Philosophy outlines our position, approach and guiding principles when it comes to rewarding staff for the valuable work they do. It helps to align expectations and keeps us accountable in terms of our decision making around pay and reward.

Context #

Our decision making is guided by our values and principles. We have increased in size, become employee owned and remote first, all of which will influence the approach we take to rewarding staff. As we continue to evolve it’s important that we review our Reward Philosophy regularly to ensure it reflects who we are, aligns with our ambitions, values and financial position. 

Our Total Reward proposition (salary, benefits and additional compensation) has been created and adapted by listening to what our staff value. We recognise that “reward” is a personal concept and staff will place value on different things. It’s important that we keep listening to ensure that this offering provides the most value to the most people.

Principles #

We’ve tried to keep it simple when thinking about the principles that underpin our Reward Philosophy. They reflect employee feedback, along with our commercial responsibilities.

1. Transparency #

This means being open and clear about how staff are rewarded at dxw. Sharing the relevant data, information and context to ensure staff understand what we are paid and why. This includes clarity on what factors influence changes to pay and reward and the processes and frameworks that exist which enable these changes to happen.

Commitments linked to transparency:

2. Fairness #

This means rewarding our staff fairly for the work they do. Decisions related to pay and reward should be objective and not influenced by any specific characteristics or demographics.

Commitments linked to fairness:

3. Competitive #

This means having a salary and benefits offering which is competitive when compared against the external market we are operating in, allowing us to find and retain great people. 


Commitments linked to being competitive:

4. Commercially sensible #

This means ensuring that any decisions made relating to pay and reward are financially sustainable in the longer term. We will act within the parameters of affordability and consider the current financial climate we are operating in. 

Commitments linked to being commercially sensible:

Processes and Frameworks #

1. How we make decisions on pay increases #

We have an annual pay review in October, where we aim to award pay increases to as many staff as we can. This will depend on affordability and our financial position at the time. 

This aligns with our “commercially sensible” principle. 

Our current priority when making decisions on pay increases is our commitment to paying at the median position of the market for our roles. This means we won’t necessarily, for example, give a fixed percentage increase to all staff but instead prioritise staff who are lower in the market range for their role, reducing any gaps which may exist.

This aligns with our “competitive” and “fairness” principles.

We will communicate what this means in terms of how many staff will receive a pay increase and what additional context was taken into account when making these decisions. Following our annual pay review we will update our internal metrics to show the impact this has had on our pay position and pay gaps overall.

This aligns with our “transparency” principle.

There may be some pay awards outside of the annual pay review, though we expect these will be fairly limited. This could be to recognise a promotion, change of role or increase in responsibility. We may also occasionally make changes to pay to respond to the position in the external market, such as challenges with hiring or retention for key roles. Any changes will be reflected in our internal metrics.

2. External Benchmarking #

As outlined above, we have committed to benchmarking our salaries against the external market regularly, in line with business needs and changes in the market. We have invested in an external benchmarking tool which allows us to do this in a consistent and robust way. The tool enables us to compare our reward package against a wide range of technology companies. The People team collaborates with the wider business to match our internal roles with an external equivalent. This allows us to build out a unique salary range for each role which takes into account seniority, skillset and the current demand in the external market. Benchmarking our roles in this way is new to us and so over the next 12-18 months we will be figuring out how to incorporate these salary ranges into our existing salary structures.

Although today our staff will have varying positions on our salary ranges, our target market position is the median (50th percentile). We will provide high level data to staff which shows to what extent we are over or under the market median and our progress against this target over time. 

3. Total Reward #

Although paying a competitive salary is important to us there are a variety of other benefits, and ways of working, that we hope contribute positively to our working culture at dxw, including our mission and values. These different elements make up our Total Reward proposition (salary, benefits and additional compensation), which helps us hire and retain great people. 

Our proposition has evolved over time and includes a number of recent additions, such as our Holiday Purchase Scheme and Medical Cash Plan, as well as a home office budget and flexible approach to working which has been part of dxw for much longer.

You can find more information in our benefits section of the Playbook or read a summary of what we offer below:

Please note: whilst we strive to maintain and grow the list of benefits we offer, many of these are discretionary and there may be changes to certain incentives at any time reflecting the needs of the business. 

Changes to this page must be approved by a member of the Senior Leadership Team.

Last updated: 19 June 2024 (history)