Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has a Global Pay Policy Framework that provides a structure for setting salaries for MSF staff, ensuring consistency, transparency, and accountability across our organisation.
The framework aims to avoid unjustified differences in pay and increase transparency in how salaries are set, as well as support accountability in the use of MSF funds for staff rewards.
Jobs in MSF are graded using the Global Grading Framework to assign a level based on the requirements of the job. The higher the level, the higher the salary.
MSF bases our salaries on what people with similar jobs in similar sectors are paid. MSF undertakes regular benchmarking to identify this. MSF’s reference market is the NGO sector. The way this is applied depends on the staff group:
Country-based staff are MSF employees who are recruited and contracted to work primarily in that country, their work does not entail being internationally mobile except in specific or exceptional circumstances. MSF bases salary for these staff on the local NGO labour market of the country where they are working and living, while ensuring that no one earns less than the appropriate living wage in each location. Salaries are positioned at the median of this reference NGO market for most country-based staff, with flexibility for leadership and specific professional profiles.
Mobile staff are staff who are recruited and contracted to undertake international assignments in different countries. They are not linked to a specific context or country. MSF bases salaries for mobile staff on the global INGO market, benchmarking what people working globally and doing similar jobs for other NGOs earn.
Key elements of MSF’s Global Pay Policy Framework include:
- MSF aims to provide a salary that enables all staff to cover the costs of everyday living in the country where they work (i.e. a living wage). MSF has developed our own methodology for this and uses it as a key indicator when setting and reviewing starting salaries, with the goal of ensuring that these meet at least the living wage in all locations.
- Conducting recommended salary review cycles to enable consistency in how MSF benchmarks salaries.
- Providing transparency in pay differences to ensure staff understand the reasons for pay differences.
- Providing a consistent approach to determine the components of individualised pay, which are intended to recognise elements that an individual brings, primarily through their experience, that MSF wants to value.