Average salary hike is expected to be around 9.4 per cent in 2018, according to global professional services firm Aon.
The annual Salary Increase Survey in India shows that companies in India gave an average pay increase of 9.3 per cent during 2017, marking a departure from the double-digit increments given by organisations since the inception of this study.
The study analysed data across 1,000-plus companies from more than 20 industries.
Focus on performance
“The focus on performance is getting sharper year-on-year. A top performer is getting an average salary increase of 15.4 per cent, approximately 1.9 times the pay increase for an average performer. Moreover, the bell curve is sharpening with a significant drop in the percentage of people in the highest rating,” Aon said in a statement.
Anandorup Ghose, Partner at Aon India Consulting,said, “Despite an improvement in macro-economic forecasts, salary increases remain at the same level as was projected in the last fiscal. With increasing maturity, HR budgets are being realigned towards top performers as opposed to the broader population.”
Sectors such as professional services, consumer internet companies, life sciences, automotive and consumer products continue to project a double-digit salary increase for 2018. Over the past three years, consumer internet companies, however, have seen a significant drop of 250 basis points from 12.9 per cent to 10.4 per cent projected for 2018.
IT sector projections
“Interestingly, the Hi Tech/Information Technology sector, which has gone through a spate of upheavals in recent times, is projecting an average hike of 9.5 per cent in 2018, whereas the third party IT services that provide majority of the employment in India are projecting an average hike of 6.2 per cent,” it said.
The attrition rate in India is seeing a continuous downward trend as the overall attrition has come down from an average of 20 per cent in the previous decade to 15.9 per cent in 2017.