Eight markets. Eight different sets of rules.
Talent intelligence is only as good as its grasp of the market it describes. Pay conventions, collective agreements, employee representation and the limits on what research may lawfully record all change at the border. Each page below is written for its own market rather than translated from a template.
Where we research, and what changes in each one
Open a market for its pay structures, regional breakdown, data sources, legal limits and fee bands.
United Kingdom
London · Manchester · Birmingham · Leeds · Edinburgh · Bristol
Pay normalised for employer National Insurance and pension, ASHE-anchored benchmarks, and notice periods that decide the real timeline.
United States
New York · Bay Area · Austin · Boston · Chicago · Seattle
Thirty metro markets with their own wage curves, equity-heavy senior packages, and state pay-transparency rules that change what you may ask.
United Arab Emirates
Dubai · Abu Dhabi · Sharjah · DIFC · ADGM
Free zone and mainland employers counted separately, Emiratisation as a parallel market, and packages rebuilt from basic, allowances and gratuity.
Germany
Munich · Berlin · Frankfurt · Hamburg · Stuttgart · Düsseldorf
Collective agreements that set the pay, works councils that set the timeline, and a Mittelstand holding capability the big names do not.
Netherlands
Amsterdam · Rotterdam · Utrecht · Eindhoven · The Hague
CAO scales without which a benchmark is unreadable, the 8% holiday allowance, and part-time working that makes headcount the wrong unit.
Belgium
Brussels · Antwerp · Ghent · Leuven · Liège
Three working languages as the sharpest filter, automatic wage indexation, and a Brussels institutional market with its own career logic.
Austria
Vienna · Graz · Linz · Salzburg · Innsbruck
Fourteen salary payments a year, near-universal collective agreements, and a capital that runs Central and Eastern Europe.
Australia
Sydney · Melbourne · Brisbane · Perth · Adelaide · Canberra
Superannuation inside the package, modern award floors, five capital markets across three time zones, and visa-dependent supply.
Four things that break a cross-border study
These are the errors we see most often in intelligence built centrally and applied everywhere.
Pay is not comparable until it is normalised
Austria pays fourteen salaries a year. The Netherlands adds a statutory 8% holiday allowance. Belgium adds a thirteenth month and double holiday pay, then indexes the lot automatically. Australia puts superannuation inside the advertised package, and the US loads senior pay with equity. Comparing base salary across those markets tells you almost nothing, so every benchmark we hand over states what it includes and on what date.
Collective agreements decide what ‘market rate’ even means
In Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and Belgium, a large share of employees sit under a collective agreement that sets pay by group and step. Benchmarking an agreement-bound population against an open-market band produces a figure that is not wrong so much as meaningless. We name the agreement and read the benchmark against it.
Employee representation changes the timeline, not just the process
Works councils in Germany and Austria, the ondernemingsraad in the Netherlands and joint committees in Belgium have consultation rights that add a scheduled phase to any structural decision. A plan that treats that as a formality slips by a quarter.
What may lawfully be recorded differs by jurisdiction
GDPR applies across the European markets, the UK runs UK GDPR with the ICO, the UAE has a federal PDPL alongside separate DIFC and ADGM regimes, Australia applies the Privacy Act rather than GDPR, and the US is a patchwork of state laws. We research to the standard of the market being studied and document which one applied.
Before you commission a multi-market study
Talent intelligence services
The seven modules, what you receive, and what each one is for.
What it costs
2026 fee bands in four currencies, and the eight variables that move them.
Our methodology
Eleven stages, three source tiers, and how confidence is graded.
Platforms and providers compared
Software, research firms, consultancies and in-house teams — honestly.
Talent mapping by market
The named-population layer, across the same eight markets.
The resource library
Every guide, market page and answer in one place.
Deciding across more than one market?
Tell us the decision and the countries. We will say what is researchable in each, what it will cost, and how long it realistically takes.
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