India tops Apac list for salary hike

NEW DELHI: India Inc tops the list among Apac countries with a projected salary increase of 9.4% in 2018, revealed data from Aon India’s Salary Increase Survey. China comes second with an increase of 6.7%.
The study, which surveyed around 1,000 companies across 20 industries, said companies in India gave an average pay increase of 9.3% last year. It marked a departure from the double-digit increments given by organisations earlier. The projections for 2018 are expected to be similar, highlighting increasing prudence being displayed by companies, while finalising pay budgets.

“Despite an improvement in macro-economic forecasts, salary increases remain at the same level as was projected in the last fiscal,” said Anandorup Ghose, partner at Aon India. “With increasing maturity, HR budgets are being realigned towards top performers as opposed to the broader population.”

Pay increases are becoming more nuanced, Ghose added. “We are increasingly seeing a multitude of factors impacting salary increases, such as size of the company, business dynamics within the sub industry, nature of talent requirements and quite obviously, performance,” he said.



Focus on performance is getting sharper every year across sectors and companies. Top performers are getting an average salary increase of 15.4%, around 1.9 times the pay increase for an average performer.

Moreover, there is significant drop in the percentage of people in the highest-rating bracket. Pay increases for top and senior management are consistently going down.

However, there is reason to cheer for people in sectors such as professional services, consumer internet companies, life sciences, automotive and consumer products, as these continue to project a double-digit salary increase for 2018. The attrition rate in India has come down from an average 20% in previous decade to 15.9% in 2017.