Compensation benchmarking for Flexible Packaging Manufacturers: pricing printers, laminators and slitters
In a flexible packaging plant, one printer who walks out to a rival takes colour sense that no manual holds. Benchmarking shows which roles you must price carefully and which you can pay at the local rate.
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Share your requirementsWhy compensation benchmarking matters in flexible packaging manufacturers
Without a benchmark, raises on the printing floor are decided by who complains last. A good printer hears of a rival offering a little more, says nothing, and leaves on a Saturday. The laminator and the colour matcher do the same. Meanwhile pouch making helpers get a rise every time anyone asks, because they are many and loud. The owner then pays more where skill is cheap and less where it is scarce, and finds out only at the exit interview.
Good looks like a short table of every floor role with the local range for it, the pay each person actually gets, and a note on where your plant sits. The printers and colour matchers sit at or above the market. Slitting and pouch roles sit at the market. Shift duty, solvent area allowance and night work are shown separately so nobody confuses them with skill pay.
How to set it up
1. List every floor role with its real pay
Take printers, laminators, colour matchers, slitters, pouch operators and film stores staff. Write basic, shift allowance, solvent area allowance and average overtime for each person, from your own muster and pay sheets.
2. Gather local pay for the same roles
Ask your last few leavers and new joiners what they were offered elsewhere. Talk to two or three suppliers and neighbouring plants. Note the range for each role, not one figure, and keep the source beside it.
3. Mark the scarce roles
Printers who can hold colour over a long run and laminators who read bond by feel are scarce. Mark them as roles to pay at or above market. Mark slitting and pouch work as roles to hold at market.
4. Compare and fix the gaps
Place each person against the range for the role. Fix the largest gaps among your best printers first, and let a raise follow skill and tenure. See compensation and rewards strategy for how bands and allowances fit together.
5. Review once a year, and after any exit
Redo the table each year and again whenever a printer or laminator leaves for pay. Keep the old versions so you can show how your bands moved.
Check these first
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These take an afternoon and use your own records.
- List the printers and laminators who joined or left in the last year and what each was paid on the way in and out.
- Count how many pouch and slitting staff earn more than a printer's assistant with the same tenure.
- Read the last three offers a rival made to your people, if anyone told you, and note the role and the figure.
- Check whether solvent area duty and night shift are paid as separate lines or hidden inside basic.
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
Start with your own leavers and joiners, since they tell you what the market really paid. Add what two or three suppliers and nearby plants will share. Use a range per role and note where each figure came from, rather than one number.
Not automatically. Compare what each is worth to you in rejected rolls and customer approval. In many plants the colour matcher is rarer than the printer. Put both against the market and decide from the gap, not from habit.
Once a year is enough for most plants, plus a quick check whenever a key printer or laminator resigns citing pay. A benchmark older than two years usually describes a market that has already moved.