Working at a startup means crazy working hours, uncertainty, and dealing with a lot of complexity, but at least you will get paid well for it. According to the 20th edition of the Aon Hewitt annual Salary Increase Survey 2015-16, early stage companies and startups will offer the highest salary increase of 15.6 per cent during 2016, followed by life sciences at 11.6 per cent and electronic and print media at 11.2 per cent. On an average, salaries in India Inc will see an increase of 10.3 per cent this year. The last year’s survey had projected an average increase of 10.6 per cent. Among the sectors with lowest projected average salary increase are financial institutions at 8.8 per cent and metals industry at 9.3 per cent.
The survey is based on compensation data collected during December 2015-January 2016 from 700 organisations. According to the survey, companies across industries are continuing to take a cautious stance and are not going for aggressive pay increases. Over the last few years, while employee expectations have gone up, data shows that companies are managing these higher expectations carefully and are not getting swayed by it. The focus on performance differentiation is far higher with a larger proportion of budgets being allocated to higher performers.
Investing in key talent emerged as a major trend. Key talent would mean high potential and hot skills apart from high performers. The payout gap between an average performer and key skills is growing year on year and was 63%, the highest so far. Additionally, in the last five years, the percentage of employees with top performance rating has dropped by close to 30%, implying that organisations are not hesitating to differentiate sharply on the basis of performance. India Inc places only 8.2% of its overall population at top rated. This number has significantly dropped in the last five years.