PSD Group IT & Business Change - 2013 Salary Survey & Employment Trends Report. For more information go to:
http://www.psdgroup.com/IT_Business_Change_Salary_Survey_Employment_Trends.aspx
2. 02 03Employment Trends
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Employment Trends
2013
Financial Services & Banking
Within Retail Banking we have seen a high demand for Business Analysts, Project Managers
and Architects with strong integration and migration experience as a result of several high profile
mergers and acquisitions. There has also been a demand for candidates with experience of
working on regulatory and compliance related projects due to a raft of new legislation across the
industry (See Investment Banking and Asset Management below). Mobile and Payments is in the
forefront of many of the banks’ plans and they are investing heavily into the digital technology and
individuals with these skills in order to stay ahead of the competition.
Within the Cards and Payments arena we continue to see a constant demand for resources as the
major players such as Visa, MasterCard and American Express position themselves to be the best
option in offering innovative and easy ways of cashless transactions. Key areas of development
include near field communication, M Wallets, contactless and smart phones. The services in the
public domain are PayPass/Wallet and PayWave, which offer a consistent shopping experience
regardless of how and where consumers shop and makes it easy for developers to integrate into
existing checkout systems.
The market is poised to see an explosion of devices on the market as Smart Phones become
increasingly popular. Contactless payments have reached a critical inflexion point with more than
19 million transactions conducted across Europe in March 2013. Contactless momentum in the
UK has grown significantly in 2013 with 1.5 million Visa contactless transactions being made on
London Buses since December, M&S processing over 230,000 contactless transactions every
week and the Post Office installing contactless payment terminals in all of its 11,500 branches. The
market is still fiercely competitive and we see this as being a strong area of growth for PSD over the
next twelve months.
Within Investment Banking and Asset Management we have seen selective hiring for new
technology projects with greater demand for resources on projects to address regulatory
requirements including FATCA, DODD Frank, EMIR, AiFMD, AML and to streamline operations.
Specifically within Asset Management, the continued trend in outsourcing back and middle office
functions continues to drive demand for resources with experience of working on these projects.
Contractor rates remained steady and in some areas saw an
increase particularly within the niche skill sets.
Sector Overview
The market remains difficult to predict but the demand for
IT and Business Change skills across many of our clients
has remained stable.
Foreword
Welcome to PSD’s IT & Business Change
2013 Employment Trends & Salary Survey,
an essential guide to pay and reward
across all industry sectors.
Over the years of producing this survey we have always striven to
produce a concise, accurate survey that reflects the salary changes in
our ever-changing economy. This year is the broadest survey that we
have ever completed, asking not only our candidates, but also hiring
managers and HR managers to supply their feedback.
Contents
02 Foreword
03 Sector Overview
06 Industry Sectors
07 Contractor Trends
08 Contractor Rates
10 Permanent Summary
12 Role Attraction
14 Social Media
15 Hiring Methods
16 Candidate Search
Methods
17 Summary
2013 has been a challenging year
economically, however the UK IT
market is faring well with demand
remaining consistent when viewed
at a high level. Naturally, there are
winners and losers on scrutinising
the detail. Retail, Software,
Insurance and Travel & Leisure are
among the stronger markets, with
the Investment Banking sector
remaining slower, however at
the time of writing we are seeing
conditions improve.
When looking at the overarching
trends, we see both permanent
and contract demand stable
with the interim market slipping
backwards over the period.
Salaries and day rates are
increasing overall, with some skill
sets and niche applications such
as BI and Analytics being paid a
premium. Business Architecture,
Transformation & Change and
Programme Management remain
in demand as businesses look to
address their operating models to
match the economic climate.
When we look ahead to the
coming 12 months it is difficult
to begin predicting where the
growth will come from. My
personal thoughts are in the area
of analytics and visualisation,
allowing businesses to get to the
true value of their data and using
their findings to identify growth
opportunities not before seen.
I hope you enjoy reviewing the
IT & Business Change 2013
Employment Trends & Salary
Survey; as always we welcome
your feedback and thoughts for
future improvements.
A final thank you to all of those of
you who took the time to answer
our questionnaire and provide
the data on which we built this
report, we appreciate your support
and hope you find the output of
interest.
Chris Eldridge
Managing Director
The Survey focuses purely on IT and Business Change roles.
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04 Employment Trends
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Across many areas of Financial Services & Banking there is a strong focus on data management
and projects to introduce vendor solutions or develop in-house technology in order to address
requirements in this area. Many of these requirements are being driven by the impact of new
regulations within the sector and organisations needing to access and report on a broader range of
data.
Despite the challenging market conditions PSD’s IT & Business Change practice within Financial
Services and Banking sectors has performed well and continues to hire for growth. This is largely
due to our broad coverage across the sector and testament to many of the long-standing client
relationships that we have in place.
During the next twelve months we anticipate that the market will continue to be challenging
with the main areas of demand being around projects to address regulatory requirements, data
management, operational streamlining, integration, outsourcing and payment technologies.
Commerce & Industry
The last twelve months have seen a slight re-focussing in the UK markets, with many clients
having improved confidence in the economy and therefore looking to enhance or increase their
permanent workforce. This could have had some effect on our contract businesses but as part of
the drive towards more senior recruitment, the C&I teams have focussed on utilising our high-level
contacts by starting an interim level business, covering the Technology, HR, Finance and Marketing
divisions. Although the Interim market has been slower than in previous years we have had some
significant business wins in both Technology and HR with the last six months spent in building up
a focussed group of senior interim candidates and working with C-Level executives to fulfil interim
requirements.
Our business has also benefited from increased activity and growth in our proportion of overseas
revenue; so whilst some segments of the British market have been depressed there have been
greater opportunities in counterpart segments in Europe and the Middle East. Although there are
certain issues to overcome in dealing with these markets there are a number of viable and cost-
effective solutions that we have been able to utilise.
The C&I team has seen growth in a number of areas, including Business Services, Leisure and
Travel, Retail and Software Services. However there have also been some sector contractions,
which are detailed in the report, primarily driven by the increased use of low margin agreements
within highly commoditised sectors and a general reduction in recruitment spend. Our C&I teams
have therefore focussed on delivering a high value service at the more senior levels or within the
SME space, where agreements are more relationship-driven. This tactic has been successful in
mitigating the loss of most of the higher-volume but low margin business.
69% of responses were from applicants in the £60,000+ salary
bracket
Generally the market has been driven by an increase in projects that have come on-line due to new
business or legislation requirements, such as Business Intelligence, Management Information and
Big Data or the recognised need for greater data security, where we are seeing more requirements
within Information Security specialists, especially at CISO level. We have also seen an increase in
recruitment at more senior levels where we have had significant levels of business wins around the
Director and CxO level, especially within our permanent and Interim businesses.
Other trends we have noticed have been an increase in Projects to migrate from Windows XP
to Windows 7 (as XP ceases to be supported by Microsoft in 2014) or across all the sectors
an increase in requirements around mobile and e-commerce, including Product Management,
Android and Mobile projects and an increase in skills and roles involving User Experience and
Information Analysis.
In summary the first half of 2013 has not been without macro-economic challenges for the C&I
team but our increased focus on new and emerging technologies and a stronger focus on more
senior level appointments and the delivery of more tailored recruitment services to SME sized
organisations has set us up for an improved H2 in 2013.
IT Employment Trends & Salary Survey 2013
This year the PSD Group IT & Business Change Employment Trends & Salary Survey has been
split into two parts: a standard salary and rate survey for permanent, interim and contract roles
and a report focussing on some of our own statistics for trends in recruitment. We see a number
of interesting trends in our survey, around Social Media and Company Benefits which will be
discussed later in the body of the report. As per our executive search branding we found that
69% of responses were from applicants in the £60,000+ salary bracket, or of a similar level in
contracting.
A number of the statistics have a positive focus, indicating an IT employment market that is in good
health, with 75.1% of all respondents currently either in salaried employment or contracting and
86% having had less than three months out of work in the last year. Also encouraging is that only
3.2% of respondents have had a period of six months or more without work, which is significantly
better than the 7.9% overall unemployment figure, taken from UK Government figures in March
2013. However, it seems that many are still interested in hearing about job offers, with 89.7% being
open to talking about other positions. For the future, 44.9% of respondents are responsible for
hiring and of those over 70% are looking to recruit, either to replace leavers or as a growth plan.
According to our results, 65.1% of secured assignments were through preferred recruitment
partners and 28.6% are through referrals and personal networks, whilst 4.8% applied direct to
organisations. However this doesn’t directly tally with the numbers of applicants who apply direct
to companies which will be discussed later in the report.
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Industry Sectors
The three most common sectors that respondees were employed in were Software & IT Services,
Investment and Asset Management and Leisure or Travel industries. These accounted for 51% of all
responses.
There has been a solid upturn in the Financial Services market, which now accounts for 34.7% of
responses, as opposed to 31.8% in 2012 and there was also significant growth for Leisure and
Travel and Professional services. The table below details the response numbers in order of change.
Industry Sector for current
employment
2013
response%
2012
response% Change
Media 4.1% N/A N/A
Digital & E-Commerce 1.0% N/A N/A
Consumer Electronics and hardware 1.0% N/A N/A
Leisure & Travel 10.2% 3.1% +7.1%
Professional Services 9.2% 5.2% +4.0%
Software & IT Services 22.4% 18.7% +3.7%
Retail Banking 4.1% Under FS 31.8% +2.9%
Other Financial Services 6.1% Under FS 31.8% +2.9%
Investment and Asset Management 18.4% Under FS 31.8% +2.9%
Insurance 4.1% Under FS 31.8% +2.9%
Card & Payments 2.0% Under FS 31.8% +2.9%
Not for Profit (Government, Charities, etc.) 5.1% 3.1% +2.0%
Property and Construction 2.0% 0.5% +1.5%
Pharmaceuticals & Healthcare 2.0% 0.5% +1.5%
Manufacturing 1.0% 1.0% 0.0%
Engineering 1.0% 1.6% -0.6%
FMCG 2.0% 3.6% -1.6%
Telecoms/Communications 1.0% 4.7% -3.7%
Retail 2.0% 7.3% -5.3%
Energy and Utilities 2.0% 7.3% -5.3%
Business Services 4.1% 11.5% -7.4%
The figures indicate a solid upturn in the Financial Services
market
Contractor Trends
We asked a number of contractors to answer questions on their reasons for contracting, what they
expect from contracting and also to ascertain whether there was any impact on the contract or
interim markets due to changes in regulations.
By far the biggest reason given for being a contractor should come as little surprise as being the
financial rewards, as 44.4% cite that as being their main reason for contracting. Following this,
41.3% contract due to lifestyle balance and flexibility of role and a significant proportion of the
rest, 11.1%, are contracting due to a lack, or perceived lack, of permanent opportunities. Others
cited the “Autonomy of working for themselves” and “Having their career in their own hands” as
reasons for pursuing the contract and interim route. The impact of a number of legislations on these
markets has been well documented and we have seen a trend away from PAYE based contract: this
accounts for about 6% of the contracts in the market.
As a company PSD does not have any PAYE contracts on our books, which reflects both this
market trend and the levels of seniority that we operate at. The majority of contractors, 76.6%, now
operate under their own limited company. Although there are about 17% operating through umbrella
companies there does seem to be a trend of people moving away from these to limited companies.
Whether this is due to AWR regulations it is impossible to say, although there are a number of end
user clients, such as Barclays, who will no longer allow contractors on site if they are using umbrella
companies. This may be one way to end the wrangling around Swedish Derogation, but would
probably warrant some further research.
Encouragingly, especially in a difficult economic climate, most contractors (86%) have been in their
present contract for over three months and over 26.6% of contractors we surveyed have had their
present contract for over twelve months. This is the second largest group, behind 3-6 months,
which does indicate a certain amount of stability.
76.6% of responding contractors now operate under their own
limited company
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Employment Trends
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Contractor Rates
In our survey we saw that 47% of contractors we surveyed were on
a day rate of between £400 - £599 per day, which is a reflection on
the level at which PSD IT Contracts operate. This is virtually the same
proportion as in 2012. For other contractors there is also some good
news (although this may not be so for clients), in that the next largest rate
group, which in 2012 was £300-£399, is now the £600 - £699 bracket,
which has increased from 13.5% in 2012 to 17% in 2013. It therefore
seems that there is plenty of activity in the senior levels of the contract
market and rates are stable and, in some cases, increasing.
Interestingly, the one area that appears to be less successful recently is
the Interim sector, where rates have fallen a little. This is broadly in line
with expectations, as we have seen a tightening in that marketplace
in the last 12 months. According to our poll, this year only 1.6% of the
senior interims we contacted were on rates over £1,000 per day, which
is down from 1.9% from last year.
There is much anecdotal evidence from our Interim teams that
candidates are taking longer to find suitable roles and clients are being
more aggressive both on delivery timescales and rates at this level. Of
the contractors surveyed, 76% (2012: 75%) were between £300-£699
per day, so it seems rates are still very healthy.
Rate Band Response %
£100 - £199 1.6%
£200 - £299 6.3%
£300 - £399 12.5%
£400 - £499 23.4%
£500 - £599 23.4%
£600 - £699 17.2%
£700 - £799 4.7%
£800 - £899 4.7%
£900 - £999 4.7%
It would appear that contractor day rates are stable and in
some cases increasing
There does, however, appear to be a slowing in the numbers gaining an increase of rates in the
last twelve months with around only 43.8% of contractors reporting an increase in rate, which is a
fall from 64% or respondees in 2012. This may be a knock on effect from a trend we saw in 2010,
where a number of companies in the Banking and Energy sectors reduced contractor day rates
across the board.
As a juxtaposition, 17.2% received a decrease, although for the rest there has been little or no
change in their rate. What is most encouraging is that only 1.6% of respondees expect their rate to
decrease in the coming year. A full breakdown is shown below.
Contractor Rates
17.2% received a decrease in day rates, although only 1.6%
expect their rate to decrease in the coming year.
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Employment Trends
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Permanent Summary
Similar to Contracting, the market is looking positive for Permanent
employees with pay, salary reviews and benefits all having positive
outlooks. For the 75.7% of respondees who have had a pay review in
the last twelve months and the 12.1% who have had to wait 18 months+
for a review, there is some good news with 51.5% having had a pay
increase. At the other end of the scale 9.1% have had a decrease and
39.4% are unchanged.
For those who have had a change the majority (around 58.8%) have had
a change of up to £4,000. Interestingly, no-one had had a salary change
either between £6,000-£6,999 or £8,000-£8,999 (which may warrant
further investigation); whilst 11.8% had a change of £10,000+. It could
be that a proportion of those who had a pay decrease may have moved
roles or now work in organisations with different salary bands.
51.5% of permanent respondees have received a pay increase
in the last twelve months
Permanent Summary
In our survey the three most commonly offered benefits are: Private
Medical Insurance (62.1%), Life Assurance (48.3%) and Flexible
Working hours (44.8%). In other cases there were group discounts for
the products of the company, especially around Financial Services and
Retail. Interestingly, 10.3% of employed respondees had none of the
benefits that we listed. The full table is shown below.
Nearly 45% of respondees enjoy flexible working hours
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Employment Trends
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We wanted to get some insight into whether organisations were offering
the right incentives to candidates and employees in order to attract
and keep their best assets. We broke down the response into line
managers, HR and candidates. There is some correlation between what
line managers believe that candidates look for and what candidates are
looking for, but there are some interesting differences.
Managers believe that, when hiring, the three most important
enticements to the best candidates are: Remuneration, Company
Leadership and Recognition for Performance with 84%, 82% and 80%
of hiring managers strongly agreeing that candidates will look for these
aspects when looking for a new role. To retain those employees, the
same applies, although with a higher figure, (89%, 86%, 86%). For those
with an HR remit the following were seen as the main reasons people
selected employers: Company Leadership, Remuneration and Employee
Engagement. In the view of hiring managers the least important
attraction for candidates is an open style management culture, with only
54% seeing it as important.
For candidates the top three reasons to join a company are:
Remuneration (81%), Challenging Work (71%) and Company Leadership
(70%); the least important reason they felt was ongoing training (27%).
What did surprise us was that whilst hiring managers feel that career
development planning and employee engagement are very important
(76% & 79%) to the attraction and retention of candidates; candidates
told us that these were far less important for them (32% and 55%).
This could possibly be due to the fact that our survey went to both
permanent and contract/interim candidates and you would imagine
that these aspects of company culture are far less important to those
who are not looking for a permanent role. From our perspective the
fact that Remuneration figures most highly in all instances is not overly
surprising but the fact that neither Line managers nor HR thought that
an open style management culture was as important as the candidates
themselves did could explain why some look elsewhere.
Role Attraction
What attracts candidates to organisations:
their views and the client perspective?
81% of respondees cited remuneration as the key attraction
only 27% cited training
As we have seen, Remuneration is one of the most significant aspects in an employment package
and this also includes, of course, bonuses. We found that the most common bonuses, which made
up over 25% of respondees’ bonuses, were 15% and 20%. Interestingly no-one who filled in the
questionnaire was laying claim to more than 30% bonus and by far the majority of respondents(36%)
had no bonus at all.
Where there were bonuses on offer the majority were dependent on company performance (62%)
and/or individual performance (48%). Some other bonuses are dependent on a number of factors,
which also included Regional, Team and discretionary bonuses.
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14 Employment Trends
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Employment Trends
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Social Media
The impact of Social Media on recruiting
and recruitment.
There have been a number of surveys on the impact of Social Media
on recruitment. Various methods, including Bullhorn Reach, have been
developed to make use of this trend. Around 15.6% of the workforce
we polled were actively engaged in looking for a new role and it seems
that for most people, in IT, recruitment consultancies are still the most
likely route to securing a new position: over 65%. However, there is an
increase in people using their own and social media networks with nearly
29% securing their last role via this method. Interestingly, despite a
number of organisations using their own recruitment teams (such as ITV,
BBC, Jones Lang LaSalle and Emirates), this will still only account for
4.8% of secured roles, even though 45% of workers will apply directly to
a company’s websites as part of their job-seeking process.
Although some organisations have internal recruitment teams there is
anecdotal evidence that they still use recruitment experts to help them
with hard to fill or volume roles, or where they feel there would be such a
high volume response that it is more cost effective to focus themselves
elsewhere and let a recruitment consultant deal with the applicant sifting.
<5% of employees
secured their current
role directly with their
employer
Hiring Methods
As discussed at the beginning of the report, Line Managers and HR
teams still have a high reliance on recruiters, with over 50% of HR
Managers utilising a Recruitment Process Outsource (RPO) or recruitment
PSL model and 78% of Line Managers working more directly with
Recruitment partners. At least 62%, however, are now also spending
a significant amount of time and effort utilising social media networks.
The most quoted site, LinkedIn, ranks almost as high as the leading job
boards when it comes to preferred methods for end users advertising
roles.
One aspect that did come to light was that Line Managers seem to recruit
less from their own networks than HR believe and RPOs appear less
utilised by hiring managers than HR teams, with the bulk of recruitment
still being completed by specialist recruitment partners.
Our survey shows that
LinkedIn is almost as
important as traditional
job boards when it
comes to sourcing
candidates for roles
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Candidate Search Methods
What is perhaps most interesting is that when applicants are looking for new roles they still tend to
focus mainly on 3 main areas: traditional Job boards, Social Media and company websites. There are
still also a sizeable number who will also use recruitment consultancies’ websites to apply for roles
(26.7%). However the greatest trend is that over 60% will also use a social media site to look for their
next position, the most common tool being LinkedIn with 70% of applicants using this regularly.
Surprisingly, even though nearly a quarter of HR teams use Twitter to advertise roles, no respondees
we asked listed Twitter as a route to securing a new position. This could be a reflection on this market
segment, or candidates may use job aggregators, such as twitjobsearch.com. However it could
merely be that Twitter directs them to the roles on other sites and these are listed instead. There were
also differences between HR and Line managers when looking to use platforms, with Line managers
utilising their own company’s website more than HR and social media sites less. Also they were more
likely to use a greater variety of job boards but have less focus on each one.
While nearly a quarter of HR teams use Twitter to advertise
roles none of the applicants we asked listed Twitter as a route to
securing a new position
There is still a significant place for recruitment organisations in the
recruitment plans of our clients and the majority of candidates do still
tend to work via recruitment organisations. However both clients and
agencies still seem to face a number of challenges around a more
effective use of social media as the number of applicants placed versus
the social media activity, seems to lack correlation.
Perhaps the most interesting piece of information we have gleaned from
this study is that there is variance between what candidates tell us they
look for in their next employer and what those employers believe are the
biggest inducements. This would be an area that would warrant further
evaluation. We hope you have enjoyed reading the report and would
welcome any feedback on the issues we have raised.
Summary
From a recruitment perspective it seems
that the IT market is still slightly affected
due to overlying economic trends, but both
contract and permanent recruitment needs
appear strong heading into the next twelve
months.
10. Employment Trends
2013
Contacts
PSD
Should you have any queries regarding the survey, please contact
either Antony Gascoyne or Laura Fox on the contact details below:
The SURVEY team focus
Antony Gascoyne
Director
antony.gascoyne@psdgroup.com
http://uk.linkedin.com/in/
antonygasoyne
Commerce & Industry Contracts with
particular expertise in Broadcast,
Newspaper, Publishing and Digital Sector
Laura Fox
Associate Director
laura.fox@psdgroup.com
http://uk.linkedin.com/in/laura-fox
Financial Services & Banking Contracts with
particular expertise in Retail Banking.
SENIOR IT MANAGEMENT team focus
Cyr Cornberg
Director
cyr.cornberg@psdgroup.com
http://uk.linkedin.com/in/cyr-
cornberg Commerce & Industry - Contract & Interim
Geoff Eaton
Director
geoff.eaton@psdgroup.com
http://uk.linkedin.com/in/geoff-
eaton
Financial Services & Banking - Contract &
Interim
Chris Borgars
Director
chris.borgars@psdgroup.com
http://uk.linkedin.com/in/chris-
borgars
Commerce & Industry and Financial Services
& Banking - Permanent
Chris Eldridge
Managing Director, IT & Technology
chris.eldridge@psdgroup.com
http://uk.linkedin.com/in/
christophereldridge IT & Technology