Case Study: Everyturn Mental Health – Executive Salary Benchmarking
Scope
Everyturn Mental Health commissioned NRG to undertake a comprehensive salary benchmarking exercise across its Executive Leadership Team. As a nationally operating, purpose-led organisation delivering complex mental health services, Everyturn wanted to ensure its senior remuneration framework remained competitive, equitable and aligned with its long-term strategic ambitions.
The brief focused on five Director-level roles spanning Finance, Strategy & Transformation, Operations & Performance, Quality Governance & Risk, and People & Digital.
The key objectives were to:
Assess the competitiveness of current executive salary structures
Compare remuneration across the mental health sector, the wider charity sector, and cross-sector markets
Review associated employee benefits and reward structures
Identify material differences in market positioning
Provide clear, practical options to inform future remuneration strategy
The exercise required careful consideration of sector funding pressures, public accountability, and Everyturn’s values-led culture, alongside the need to attract and retain high-calibre executive talent.
Solution
NRG implemented a structured three-stage benchmarking methodology:
1. Scoping & Data Collection
We worked closely with senior stakeholders to understand organisational context, growth ambitions, governance structure and the detailed scope of each Director-level role. This ensured accurate role-matching and meaningful comparisons.
2. Market Benchmarking & Analysis
We benchmarked against comparable organisations across mental health charities, health and community service charities, NHS Trusts and Integrated Care Bodies, social housing providers, and selected public and private sector organisations.
Data was drawn from live and advertised roles, published accounts, Charity Commission and Companies House records, and NRG’s proprietary executive salary database. Salary data was analysed across lower quartile, median and upper quartile levels to provide a robust market range.
We also reviewed executive benefit provision — including pension contributions, annual leave structures, life assurance, wellbeing support and innovative reward mechanisms — to assess the strength of the overall employee value proposition.
3. Reporting & Strategic Options
Findings were presented in a detailed, role-by-role report supported by comparative salary tables and clear narrative analysis. We outlined a range of strategic options, including targeted salary adjustments, phased alignment approaches, structured band reviews, and the potential introduction of performance-related elements.
Results
The benchmarking exercise provided Everyturn with a clear, evidence-based understanding of how executive remuneration differs across sectors and organisational types.
Variations in remuneration between the mental health sector, the wider charity sector, and broader cross-sector comparators
Differences influenced by organisational scale, geographic footprint, commercial complexity and regulatory environment
Divergence in how functional roles such as Operations, Finance, Strategy and Governance are positioned and valued across markets
A broadly aligned but evolving landscape of executive benefits, with opportunities for differentiation through non-financial rewards
Most importantly, the project enabled informed, strategic discussion at Board level, grounded in robust external data rather than assumption.
Everyturn now has a defensible and transparent evidence base for executive pay discussions, clear insight into market variation and sector dynamics, structured options to align reward strategy with growth ambitions and organisational values, and a framework to embed ongoing benchmarking into its annual review cycle.
This assignment demonstrates NRG’s capability in delivering nuanced executive benchmarking within regulated, purpose-led sectors — combining rigorous market intelligence with practical, governance-aware recommendations.
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