Companies will increase salaries and also headcount, says Mercer's Remuneration Survey

There might be sentiments of layoffs and a slowdown in job market, but the Mercer's Total Remuneration survey shows a different picture. According to the survey, all the seven sectors that were surveyed, six of them have projected an increase in salary to be 10% in 2018. Shared services was the only sector that projected salary increase at 9%.

This is also one major difference from last year from last year, says Ruchika Pal, India Practice Leader, Global Mobility at Mercer, when all the sectors projections were in the range of 8-13% and this year they all converged at 10%.

55% of these 791 companies that were surveyed are also expecting to increase their headcount. Last year, only 48% companies indicated hiring intentions in the next 12 months.  "It is not replacement hiring but they will be adding new roles and positions to the existing workforce. This is largely because of the nature of jobs is changing due to new technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotics etc and employers are increasingly hiring for new skill sets," says Pal.

The overall actual attrition witnessed in 2016 was 11.5%, with the highest attrition reported in the Shared Services sector at 19.4%, followed closely by the life sciences sector at 14.0%.

There is a marginal downward trend from last year, where the overall attrition has gone down by 1.8%, from 13.3% to 11.5%. There is an increase in attrition in the consumer sector, which is facing greater challenges of retaining talent.

From a retention standpoint, R&D and sales professionals across levels, continue to challenge organisations while from a hiring standpoint organisations find it hard to attract engineering and sales professionals.

The research ecosystem in India presents a significant opportunity for multinational corporations and several MNCs continue to shift their research and development (R&D) base to India.

Additionally, things have been looking positive for the Indian manufacturing sector as the Government has looked to make India the next manufacturing destination in the world.

There has been success with the likes of Chinese smartphone makers, Taiwanese electronics major, Swedish auto maker and the likes, setting up big manufacturing units in India. All this is driving engineering as well R&D jobs to be rated as hot-jobs in India- tough to hire and retain, said the report.  

Actual variable pay of 15.0% delivered in 2017, was similar to the target percentage, indicating that business performance in 2016 was aligned more to "meeting expectations", rather than "exceeding expectations". So, it was business as usual.