Salary untouched by slowdown: Study

BANGALORE: A study conducted across 150 leading corporates in India by Hewitt Associates to understand the impact of economic slowdown on compensation and salary trends in India has found that 63 percent of the organizations surveyed said that inflation and rising input costs have been discussed and considered in the context of their salary increase budgets for 2009.  However, the year 2008 has still seen a strong average salary increase of 14.8 percent. The global economic slowdown, US sub-prime crisis and rising inflation have caused Indian companies to revisit budgets for 2009; and the average salary projections for the coming year are lower by a percentage point at 13.9 percent.

The survey revealed that performance linked pay goes up for middle and senior executives and that the focus is on redeployment of manpower and increasing productivity.

Companies are looking to balance the pressures of inflation and lower HR budgets by increasing productivity (57 percent) and redeployment of manpower (31 percent). Meanwhile 30 percent of them stated that they have increased performance linkages to counter fixed pay increases. Only 20 percent of the organizations surveyed mentioned a hiring freeze or slowdown.