NEW DELHI, FEB 21:
India belies all indications of a global slowdown, at least in relative terms of monthly pay cheque vis-a-vis other Asian countries.
India has outpaced Asia-Pacific yet again with the highest salary increase in the region, followed by China and the Philippines, projecting a 9.5 per cent and 6.9 per cent salary increase in 2012, respectively, reveals the annual salary increase survey of Aon Hewitt, the human resource consulting firm.
Salary increases in India are projected to be 11.9 per cent, marginally lower than the actual increase of 12.6 per cent in 2011, the survey indicates.
The research covers 550 organisations across 19 industries, focusing on five different employee groups from manual workforce to senior management. The data have been collected during the period November 2011-January 2012.
Pharmaceutical industry
Mr Sandeep Chaudhary, Practice Leader, Compensation Consulting, Aon Hewitt, says: “The frontrunner for this year’s salary increase is the pharmaceutical industry, with a projection of 13.3 per cent for 2012, riding high on surging year-on-year growth with a CAGR of 11 per cent. Projected salary increases for most industries have slipped by around 0.3 to 2 percentage points from last year, given current economic volatility and cautious business sentiments.”
Variable pay
Junior and middle management are expected to get the highest increase for 2012 (12.3 per cent to 12 per cent, respectively), a trend that has been consistent for the last decade.
Also, spending on variable pay as part of total compensation has been steadily inching upwards for the last decade.
Senior management see 23 per cent of their total compensation as variable (up from 16 per cent in 2001) and even the lowest rung entry staff get approximately 13 per cent of their total compensation (up from 10 per cent in 2001) as variable pay.
Attrition rate
The highest attrition rate is seen in IT /ITes, retail and financial institutions. “These have high attrition rate owing to them being labour-intensive, buoyant and cost-competitive, so the churn-out rates are very high. In insurance, there is unprecedented level of attrition at sales and agency level jobs owing to low skills needed for the job and also increasing numbers of entrants with little or no differentiation,” Mr Chaudhary says.
