Optimize your workforce budgets with confidence built on defensible data
Get Mercer’s Total Remuneration Survey (TRS) to benchmark compensation and build defensible increment strategies across 140 markets.
Why TRS matters?
Across Asia, HR reward professionals and CFOs are under intense pressure to contain payroll costs while keeping the workforce engaged and productive. Rapid changes—AI-driven role shifts, rising healthcare costs, talent shortages, and inflation—mean yesterday’s pay data is quickly obsolete.
TRS delivers employer-submitted, multi-market compensation and total remuneration intelligence so you can act timely, confidently, and defensibly.
Six real-world problems HR and CFOs face and how TRS helps
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Outdated or inaccurate market data: Traditional sources are often months behind, producing decisions based on stale or poorly matched job data.TRS benefit: Client-submitted data across 50,000 organizations and a consistent global methodology give you up-to-date, high-fidelity benchmarks by role, industry, and location.
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Data gaps for emerging roles and niche skills: Tech, data, AI, and other emerging roles are poorly represented in generic surveys, making benchmarking and pay decisions risky.TRS benefit: Granular job families and industry slices increase visibility into high-demand, niche roles so you can target retention spending precisely.
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Pay compression and internal equity risk: Market moves push new-hire pay above long-tenured employees, damaging morale, and retention.TRS benefit: Compa-ratio and internal benchmarking tools show where compression exists and quantify corrections needed to restore equity and reduce turnover.
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Tight budgets and the need to prioritize: When broad increases aren’t possible, people managers must decide where limited funds will deliver the greatest impact.TRS benefit: Use TRS to identify critical roles and markets where targeted increases will improve retention or business performance, avoiding blanket hikes and preserving budget efficiency.
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Regional pay variation and remote work complexity: Cost-of-living and market pay differ widely across cities and countries, complicating compensation policy for hybrid/remote teams.TRS benefit: Market-level datasets and consistent methodology let you compare costs across locations and design geographically fair pay strategies.
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Justifying and defending increment budgets to finance and the board: CFOs demand clear ROI and defensible evidence before approving increment spend.TRS benefit: Market-backed evidence and scenario modelling provide the business case, linking pay adjustments to reduced turnover, lower replacement costs, and improved productivity.
What TRS delivers?
Base salary |
|
| Total guaranteed cash compensation |
|
| Total cash compensation |
|
| Total direct compensation |
|
| Total remuneration |
|
588
Participants from all surveys
6,851
Jobs
3,098
Reportable jobs
410,520
Incumbents
Industry breadth: High tech, life sciences, consumer goods, chemicals, mining & mining services, automotive, power, and general industry.
What makes TRS unique?
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When designing employee compensation, organizations should use two lenses: external benchmarks, such as the Total Remuneration Survey (TRS), and employees' needs and preferences. Combining market data with internal insights helps target pay and benefits allocations precisely, so adjustments are felt where they matter most.
Yosef Budiman
Director & Career Products Leader, Mercer Indonesia
Use cases that convert TRS data into actions
Scenario 1: Your organization plans to expand into new markets – which location to choose?
Your regional CEO is planning to set up a regional technology hub in Southeast Asia and is deciding between Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok. You have been tasked with sourcing talent data and reporting on cost differences between the two markets.
Before TRS:
- Reliance on generic, AI-generated public data that may lack accuracy.
- Compensation information gathered from disparate, inconsistent sources across markets.
- Outdated or infrequently refreshed data that does not reflect recent local market shifts.
After TRS:
- A harmonized, multi-market dataset that enables accurate cost comparisons between Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok.
- A single, on-demand platform for up-to-date compensation and talent intelligence, speeding workforce planning and decision-making during market expansion.
Scenario 2: Mergers & Acquisitions – which roles should you inherit and which roles to create?
Your organization is preparing to acquire an independent technology vendor in Korea specializing in AI-driven analytics to enhance its AI capabilities and acquire skilled talent. You have been tasked with reporting on pay and talent structures post-merger.
Before TRS:
- Limited visibility into the acquired company's compensation and talent frameworks.
- Manual and fragmented data collection leading to inconsistent pay structure comparisons.
- Difficulty in identifying critical roles and aligning retention strategies effectively.
After TRS:
- Vital due diligence tool that provides clear insights into inherited pay structures to harmonize compensation post-merger.
- Identification of high-demand roles to strategically focus talent retention investments and optimize costs.
- In-depth understanding of market conditions enabling targeted talent retention efforts to avoid broad, inefficient pay increases.
Pricing and participation schedule
| TRS Price (USD) Participant | TRS Price (USD) Non Participant |
|---|---|
| $11,150 | $22,300 |
- Participation window: March/April – June/July 2026
- Results delivered: October 2026
When the stakes are high—tight budgets, regulatory scrutiny, and intense competition for talent—decisions must be evidence-based, defensible, and outcome-oriented. Mercer’s TRS combines scale, methodical rigor, and advisory expertise to help you target increments where they matter most, demonstrate clear ROI to finance, motivate leaders to adopt a growth mindset, and retain the talent that drives your strategy.
Frequently asked questions:
Even with constrained budgets, TRS is essential. It helps you prioritise actions—adjust pay positioning, refine allowances, identify roles that need urgent action, or redesign benefits to achieve retention without blanket increases.
More affordable options often lack scale, granularity, or consistent methodology across markets. TRS’s employer-submitted data and breadth make your decisions more defensible to finance and leadership.
Workforce dynamics change rapidly. Annual participation ensures you track trends, test prior assumptions, and maintain defensible, current benchmarks for budgeting and pay decisions.
TRS is used by HR, reward teams, finance, business leaders, and regional decision-makers for workforce planning, M&A, budgeting, and strategic talent investment.
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