Korn Ferry's Global Total Rewards Pulse Survey
Insights on total rewards strategies, benefits, and salary benchmarking—from over 5,500 companies. Explore the latest results.
You’ve built a total rewards strategy to help you find and keep top talent—but is it differentiated and keeping pace with the wider market?
Korn Ferry’s Global Total Rewards Pulse Survey gathers insights from organizations worldwide, offering the latest data on total rewards programs, business outlook, and salary increase benchmarking.
If you design, create, and update total rewards packages for your organization, this is an essential read.
Our Latest Global Total Rewards Pulse Survey—the Results Are In
The results of our latest survey on Today's Reward Challenges conducted in June 2026 are now available.
This edition reflects responses from 5,512 organizations across 135 countries, providing a global perspective on how companies are navigating economic uncertainty, evolving workforce expectations, and changing total rewards priorities.
Reward Strategy
- Organizations are responding to economic volatility not through broad cost-cutting but through more disciplined and targeted rewards optimization.
- AI is becoming the new operating context for pay, skills, mobility, and job architecture, yet most organizations remain in the early stages of maturity and are still struggling to turn ambition into execution.
- Retention is shifting from “pay me more” to “make me more marketable.” Career mobility, skills growth, leadership trust, and future-capability now sit at the center of the total rewards agenda.
- Reward communication remains a major weakness, with manager capability emerging as a critical success factor in explaining pay decisions, transparency requirements, and AI-related changes to employees.
Business Outlook
- General sentiment remains positive despite market uncertainty, with 90% of organizations expecting revenue growth.
- Across most major markets, there is either no change or a slight decrease in projected 2027 total salary increases compared with 2026.
Stay ahead of today’s reward challenges and how they are shaping total rewards strategies.
Download the full report to explore the insights and 2026 and 2027 salary forecasts.
