Executive Pay Benchmarking for St Oswald’s Hospice
Client: St Oswald’s Hospice
Sector: Hospice Care | Charity | Healthcare
Service: Executive Pay Benchmarking
Scope
St Oswald’s Hospice is one of the North East’s most respected charitable healthcare providers, delivering specialist palliative and end-of-life care across adult and children’s services. Alongside its clinical work, the organisation operates a significant fundraising and retail function, creating a complex leadership environment.
Operating in a highly competitive and regulated sector, the hospice recognised the importance of maintaining a clear, evidence-based understanding of executive remuneration. Senior leaders and trustees were keen to ensure that pay structures remained fair, transparent, and aligned with both organisational values and wider market practice.
NRG was commissioned to undertake a comprehensive executive pay benchmarking exercise, with the aim of providing independent insight into market positioning, sector trends, and comparative pay differentials. The project was designed to support informed governance, long-term workforce planning, and sustainable reward decision-making.
Solution
NRG developed a structured benchmarking programme tailored to St Oswald’s scale, service model, and governance framework.
The analysis was built around four carefully selected comparator groups:
• UK hospices of similar scale and complexity
• The wider national hospice sector
• Health and care charities delivering place-based services
• Large values-led and service charities outside the hospice sector
Using proprietary executive search data, published accounts, live vacancy analysis, and independent regulatory sources, NRG produced a robust comparison of remuneration levels across these markets.
Significant emphasis was placed on accurate role matching and contextual analysis, ensuring that comparisons reflected differences in organisational scale, service complexity, funding models, and geographic location. Potential distortions, such as London weighting and unusually large national organisations, w
ere carefully managed.
The final report combined detailed data tables with clear narrative analysis, highlighting variations between sectors and identifying how different organisational models influenced remuneration levels. Practical recommendations were included to support future pay planning and governance discussions.
Results
The benchmarking exercise provided St Oswald’s with a clear, objective view of how executive remuneration compared across relevant sectors and organisational types.
Key outcomes included:
• Improved understanding of market differentials between hospices, health and care charities, and wider not-for-profit organisations
• Greater visibility of how organisational scale and service complexity influenced pay levels
• Enhanced insight into regional and national market dynamics
• A stronger evidence base to support trustee and executive decision-makingThe review also highlighted opportunities to strengthen the wider employee value proposition through non-financial benefits and flexible working arrangements, reinforcing a holistic approach to reward.
By combining sector knowledge with rigorous market intelligence and a collaborative, values-led approach, NRG enabled St Oswald’s to engage confidently with remuneration and workforce planning issues, while remaining aligned with its charitable mission and public accountability.
Client feedback on the Salary Benchmarking Report
“As a Board, we are acutely conscious of the responsibility we hold to our patients, families, supporters, and wider community. Every decision we take must balance financial sustainability with our commitment to providing outstanding, compassionate care
NRG supported us with a comprehensive and highly professional benchmarking review focused on our senior leadership team, at a time when having clear, independent evidence was essential. Scot and his team took the time to understand St Oswald’s values, culture, and the unique challenges of running a major hospice charity, ensuring that the work was closely aligned with the range of services we offer to our patients and families rather than relying on generic comparisons.
In addition to salary benchmarking, the review also examined our wider employee benefits, including pension provision and other progressive benefits offered across the sector. This gave the Board a much more rounded understanding of our overall employment offer and how it compared within the wider health and charity landscape.
The quality of the analysis and the clarity of the final report gave trustees real confidence in our discussions and decision-making. It enabled us to engage openly and constructively with sensitive issues around reward, retention, and long-term leadership stability, knowing that we were working from a robust and objective evidence base.
The work was delivered in a collaborative, thoughtful, and transparent manner, with practical recommendations that reflected both our ambitions and our responsibilities as a charity. It has provided us with a strong foundation for future remuneration reviews and for supporting the ongoing development and retention of our senior team.
I would have no hesitation in recommending NRG to other hospice and healthcare charities seeking a trusted, values-led partner who genuinely understands the importance of governance, accountability, and community trust.”
Steve James, Chair, St Oswald’s Hospice
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