Compensation now on top of the agenda The changing macro environment has created a new set of challenges and priorities for European Tech talent. Hiring, both at the senior and junior level, is no longer a top-ranking challenge for founders, implying a cooling of the heated talent acquisition race witnessed in 2021 and 2022. In its place, for founders re昀氀ecting on the past year and looking at the next 12 months, the challenge of man- aging compensation now comes in 昀椀rst. This mirrors the current macroeconomic climate, as both companies and employees are feeling the pressure of managing spend, in昀氀ation, and the ongoing cost of living crisis. Interestingly, while working remotely became a common practice in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, founders are still grappling with the challenges of managing a remote team. Each company is unique, and 昀椀nding the best solution for remote team members has been a top-two ranking culture challenge for two years running. Notably, the challenge of managing layoffs has fallen to the bottom of the list, according to 2023 survey re- spondents, both in terms of their experiences over the past year, as well as looking forward into 2024. What have been your company’s three biggest people & culture challenges in the past 12 months? And what do you anticipate to be the biggest challenges in the next 12 months? Past 12 months Next 12 months Compensation Managing a remote team / team members Managing company culture Organisation design Senior hiring Mission alignment Retaining talent Training and development Junior and mid-level hiring Layoffs 0 20 40 60 % of respondents Notes: Numbers do not add to 100 as respondents could choose up to three options. Founder, Sources: C-level, and Department head respondents only. Respond- ents who selected "Other" are excluded from the data. 161 | Talent