Most employees spend their careers feeling confused about compensation, how it works, what’s negotiable, and what’s actually going on behind the scenes.
In this episode, Sandrine Bardot breaks down how salaries are actually set, what professionals consistently get wrong about negotiation, and why the psychology of pay matters more than most people realise.
From how companies build and allocate salary budgets to the best moments in your career to push for more, to the concept of procedural justice and why it shapes whether employees accept or reject pay decisions, this is the compensation conversation most workplaces never have.

Sandrine Bardot is a senior Performance and Reward advisor, founder of The Bardot Group, and a Transformational Performance and Reward Architect working at the intersection of strategy, governance, executive compensation, performance, and human capital.
With more than 30 years of experience mostly across EMEA, including over a decade advising organisations across the Middle East, Sandrine brings deep technical reward expertise, corporate leadership experience, regional judgement, and Board-level advisory perspective. She advises Boards, Nomination and Remuneration Committees, CEOs, CHROs, Heads of Total Rewards, family business leaders, and senior decision-makers on the performance and reward systems behind strategy execution.
Her work spans executive and Board remuneration, incentives, reward governance, performance management, job architecture, pay equity and transparency, nationalisation- linked reward design, pre-IPO readiness, and the modernisation of legacy reward models.
Before founding The Bardot Group, Sandrine held senior Performance and Reward roles at Majid Al Futtaim and Mubadala, and worked with organisations including Apple, Microsoft, Airbus, Philips, and Fiat.
She is known for her candour, cultural intelligence, and ability to help organisations design reward systems that are practical, explainable, governable, and defensible under scrutiny.

References:

Sandrine Bardot LinkedIn profile

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