India has highest pc of pay hikes

Bangalore: India has reported the highest average salary increase at 13.9 per cent and employees in the IT-enabled services industry received the highest hike of 17.9 per cent, according to a Salary Guide brought out by Kelly Services India.

"This increase is of no surprise and is the highest in the Asia region since there has been heavy investment in India from global companies," Kelly Services Country General Manager, Achal Khanna said on Monday.

She said India continued to maintain its competitive advantage for providing a combination of the most cost-effective and high quality manpower.

"Given the current economic climate, companies need to pay added attention to their existing salary packages and compensation benefits because it will make a key difference in retaining good talent," she added.

Kelly Services' 2006 Salary Guide studied 140 positions from entry-level to senior ones.

The guide visited traditional mainstay sectors like banking, call centres, engineering and technical, finance, human resources, information technology, logistics and warehousing, office support and sales/marketing/advertising.

Achal Khanna said that the survey acted as a good barometer for both employees and employers about where the job prospects were in India in the coming months.

As a leading staffing services company in the country, Kelly's was able to source information from key human resources decision-makers and uncover these trends.

The guide, claimed to be the first of its kind, gives a complete insight of trends in the salaries structure in industries and organisations.

Kelly's said brisk recruitment by organisations would continue for the rest of 2006, but there was increasingly unmatched demand for emerging skill sets.

Based on the information and trend data collected from specialised operation units, and experience from dealing with clients, both local and MNCs, Kelly's said that with a major boost in construction and manufacturing, high automobiles sales and higher consumer spending, the overall recruitment outlook was encouraging.

This was reflected in the salaries and demand for talent.

The study said IT, ITeS, telecom and pharma were leading the pack when it came to high salaries and instant job offers.

A majority of companies in these sectors were in expansion mode and they needed talent to support the expansion.

Khanna said the survey was also an useful indicator to the market in so far as prospective employees could learn skill sets that would be useful to other sectors of the economy.

Referring to the banking and finance sector, the guide said the industry was seeing great demand in the entry-level positions.

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Bulk hiring was expected to continue for six to 12 months.

There was a huge demand for experienced professionals to manage the wealth of high net-worth individuals as well as retail investors.

Hiring for niche back-end and operational positions continued to increase.

On call centres, it said there was a huge requirement for experienced and English-speaking workforce in the sector, resulting in greater employee churn, forcing companies to use attractive means to retain their talent.

Overall, employment prospects lay in real estate, manufacturing, automotive and heavy engineering.

With demand exceeding supply, competition for talent would be even more significant in 2006, compared to last year.

Hence, employee retention was becoming a critical issue.

On the IT industry, it said India's software companies were expected to create 2.3 million jobs by 2010 and an additional 6.5 million indirectly.

With huge demand, salaries were bound to go north. With multinational and Indian organisations on a major hiring spree, it will be talent that will be in shortage.