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You can make out it is the season of increments when there are regular news reports of strikes and agitations. Air India pilots are threatening industrial action. Their fat pay cheques have been delayed, so they might have justification. At Coal India Ltd (CIL), consumers have demanded a reduction in coal price, so the 12.5 per cent increase from January 1 has been rolled back. The workers have demanded a pay hike, so the management has agreed to a 25 per cent raise. The initial offer was 10 per cent. The government has demanded a dividend hike, so the public sector major has agreed to shell out Rs 5,684 crore.
It is not just the public sector. Workers of Reliance Textiles at Naroda, the first unit set up by Dhirubhai Ambani, have gone on strike, ostensibly to protest against a ban on the use of mobile phones in the workplace. “We are also demanding a salary hike,” says the employees union.
Incidentally, the mobile – which can be taken to include all such communication and cooperative working devices — is not as trivial an issue as it may first seem. According to Cisco’s 2011 Connected World Report, 57 per cent of employees in India say they would accept a job option that paid less but offered device flexibility and remote accessibility. The survey says that this shows that for the next generation mobility matters more than money.
Reliance workers want job mobility, though it may not be the traditional meaning of the term. Elsewhere, all employees are always on the side of more mobility; it gives them a chance to change jobs and improve their prospects. Of course, labour seldom has mobility in India, which is why getting that first job becomes so important.
Employers, on the other hand, prefer low attrition rates — the reverse of mobility. Come increment season and you will find lots of surveys talking about low attrition rates and single-digit pay hikes. This is often wishful thinking. In the IT and BPO (business process outsourcing) sectors — where some companies witness 100 per cent attrition — salary hikes need happen regardless of the state of the economy or the company’s financial health. The best HR managers can do is to postpone the hikes to a different financial year.
These deferred payments could act as a golden handcuff too, if the employee has to forfeit the money if he leaves before a certain period. Employee stock options — something similar — have fallen out of favour. Infosys chairman emeritus N.R. Narayana Murthy’s driver may have become a “crorepati” because of such options. But in today’s dismal market conditions, the options are more than likely to be underwater. (That’s jargon to reflect a situation when the market price of the shares is less than what you paid for it. Besides, options are no longer corporate favourites as they have to factor them into their accounts.)
So what are the headlines saying this year?
• Double-digit salary hikes? Just forget IT — What IT CEOs say
• Salary hikes back in double digits — Kelly Services
• Double-digit salary hikes await employees this year — Ma Foi Randstad survey
• India amongst top 10 paymasters in the world — MyHiring survey
• It’s goodbye to fancy salaries in foreign banks — (Because the Reserve Bank has imposed a ceiling)
• Time to celebrate! Salary hikes are very likely this year — Grant Thornton survey
Where does this leave us? Clearly, the surveys are bringing cheer. Employers, on the other hand, are trying to talk down the market. This is particularly true of the IT sector, where salaries are high anyway.
But these are the companies that go down year after year as India’s best employers (see box). They have a position to maintain. In July 2011, the beleaguered Satyam deferred its salary hike. In October 2011, salaries were hiked by 12-20 per cent. Single-digit hikes, did we hear? For healthy companies, it is likely to be double that.
INFOTECH RULES
The best companies to work for in 2011
Infosys
TCS
IBM
Wipro
Microsoft
Accenture
Larsen & Toubro
ICICI Bank
Airtel
