Top tech workers likely to get salary increases this year

The Australian employment market is suffering through slow wage growth but if you’re a top tech worker, you’ll likely get a pay rise this year.

Almost every local tech boss surveyed by recruiter Robert Half is planning to award salary increases to an average of 21 per cent of their IT staff with an average increase expected to be eight per cent. This is well above the national wage growth of two per cent.

As IT employers battle an ongoing skills shortage, offering a competitive salary in order to secure top talent is often the most persuasive incentive, particularly in an employment market where 82 per cent of Australian CIOs finding it more challenging to source qualified IT professionals compared to five years ago, the recruiter said.

Robert Half believe CIOs are now realising the need to reevaluate their employee’s salaries with 98 per cent of 1000 Australian office workers responding to another survey saying they would be willing to accept another job offer with a higher salary. They would do this if they felt they were not being paid a fair salary by their current employer.

Companies that fail to regularly review their employees’ compensation risk losing their top performers to the competition, which is particularly true for IT workers as jobs in the tech sector are growing, said Andrew Morris, director of Robert Half.

There will be 722,000 workers in the tech sector in 2020, up from 600,000 in 2014.

“In this booming market, IT professionals with niche skillsets are finding themselves in high demand and are more likely to gravitate towards higher paying roles. Employers who do not regularly benchmark their employees’ salaries against industry standards will risk having their top performers gravitate towards more competitive pay packages elsewhere,” said Morris.

He suggested that employers should regularly review salaries and consider benchmarking salaries as an investment with a solid return rather than as an unwarranted expense. This can result in the retention of top performers and uninterrupted and uninterrupted productivity.

“Awarding a competitive salary can also serve to distinguish the organisation as an employer of choice, particularly in a skills-short market with growing scrutiny over wage growth,” said Morris.

“For employers who are not in a position to award higher pay, these reasons need to be properly communicated to any employees who feel they are underpaid. Managers need to address employee concerns about salaries and discuss alternatives for reviewing salaries in future. Providing a timeframe on when they will receive a salary increase, as well as the necessary steps required by the employee to achieve this, is essential to keeping team members motivated,” he explained.

Meanwhile, the top three tech positions in demand in Australia are cyber security specialist, full stack .Net developer, and cloud engineer.

A CIO or CTO with highly relevant experience for a role can expect to earn $250,000 in Brisbane; $380,000 in Melbourne; $300,000 in Perth; $300,000 in Sydney; and $260,000 in Auckland, according to the recruiter’s research.

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