Are you getting enough?

Beverley Head
Monday, 24 August 2009 08:11

IT Industry - Market

After a year when salary and headcount freezes have been the norm for IT workers, peak industry body, the Australian Information Industry Association, plans to open the kimono early next month revealing just what you are worth.  

The survey also explores employers’ intentions in terms of future salary increases. It will show that almost one third of organisations will not be offering salary increases in the 2009/10 year.  For those which are budgeting increases, the average will be just 2.1%.

In the past the AIIA’s Salary Survey and Remuneration Packaging report has been available only to subscribers, but this year the AIIA is running events in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane where all attendees will be provided with an executive overview of the findings. Subscribers prepared to pay $3,000 still get the nitty gritty know-how – but for $70 even non AIIA members can find out what they should be getting paid.

Judging by the Olivier Job Index released at the beginning of August, which indicated that the slide in the recruitment market was bottoming out, IT workers could be forgiven for hoping they might expect some modest salary increase in the coming months. Certainly demand for IT&T workers was stronger, jumping 8.38% in July according to the Olivier index.

Fuelling their hopes further is the news from analyst Gartner, which recently revealed that early polling of Australian CIOs signalled a modest increase in ICT budgets this year.

However according to the AIIA its salary survey reveals that many organisations are still planning to reduce, or abolish this year’s and next year's salary increases for some, and in many cases, all staff. Many organisations are also asking staff to accept reductions in pay for fixed periods of time (usually accompanied by reduced working hours) in response to declining revenue and/or demand for products and services.

The AIIA’s survey of 32,000 tech sector employees (including contractors) has been conducted by remuneration specialist Hewitt CSi.

Registration for the September events is available at:
http://www.aiia.com.au/event_details.aspx?ID=266140f1-f48a-de11-b09b-005056b917dd