Compensation benchmarking for Packaging Machinery Makers: pay for fitters, testers and road engineers
A packaging machine maker depends on fitters who tune machines to a customer's pack and service engineers who travel at short notice. Benchmarking shows what these two groups earn elsewhere.
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Share your requirementsWhy compensation benchmarking matters in packaging machinery makers
Packaging machine makers often pay the shop by grade and the service team by whatever was agreed at joining. The fitter who can make a filler run on a difficult film earns about the same as one who cannot. The service engineer who spends twenty nights a month away is paid only a little above a shop colleague. Both groups talk to rivals, and the shop only learns the gap when one of them resigns with an offer in hand.
Benchmarking sets out the facts. You gather offers for assembly fitters, trial technicians, control technicians and service engineers from candidates, leavers and peers. You set them against your pay sheet by skill step. Then you write a travel and call-out rule that service engineers can read. This does not mean matching every offer. It means choosing where to lead, where to match and where to let go.
How to set it up
1. List your pay by role and step
For fitters, testers, control staff and service engineers, write base pay, usual overtime and travel payments. Mark who can tune a machine to a customer's pack alone, as that skill sets the step.
2. Collect offers with their source
Record offers made to candidates, what leavers accepted and what peers tell you. Note the role and city. A figure with no source should not be used in decisions.
3. Compare by skill, not by title
A fitter who can fix a jam on site and one who only assembles frames are different. Compare each with the matching skill step. Our compensation benchmarking service follows this approach.
4. Write the travel and call-out rule
Set what is paid per day away, for nights and weekends, and how travel and stay costs are met. Service engineers who understand the rule complain less and travel more willingly.
5. Decide where to lead and where to match
Pick the few roles where losing someone would hurt delivery or the customer most, and decide to pay at or above market there. Be open about the rest.
Check these first
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These take an afternoon and use your own records.
- Compare the pay of your best service engineer with an average shop fitter and ask if the gap fits the travel.
- Count service engineer resignations in the last two years and where they went.
- Check whether two fitters of the same skill are on very different pay.
- Read how overtime during trial weeks appears on pay and whether it is consistent.
GullyHR can do this with you. Read how we approach compensation benchmarking in general, or share your requirements and we will tell you where to start.
Questions owners ask
Decide a clear rule for call-outs, nights and weekends and write it down. Treat it as part of pay, not a favour. Engineers who know what a late call earns are readier to accept it.
Usually yes. The skill to make a machine run on the customer's pack is rare and decides acceptance. A modest skill allowance, tied to a written step, costs less than a failed trial.
Once a year at a fixed time, and again if a key engineer leaves over pay. Keep the offer log through the year so the review is quick and honest.