With work now under way on updating the questionnaire for the next Computer Staff Salary Survey, CELRE has held a user group meeting at its Sutton offices to take advice on ways to make the survey more useful to reward managers and IT specialists.
If you would like to find out how to participate in the November 2008 Computer Staff Salary Survey, please call CELRE on 020 8652 8590.
Rob Willock, CELRE’s commercial manager, opened the meeting by outlining development plans for CELRE now that it has become part of the XpertHR Group within Reed Business Information.
The coming months will see a great deal of work to promote involvement in both the Computer Staff Salary Survey and other surveys carried out by CELRE, along with substantial investment in technology to improve participants' online access to pay data.
Mark Crail, managing editor at CELRE, highlighted some of the key findings from the May 2008 report, including a 5.7% year-on-year increase in basic salaries plus bonuses – the highest rate of increase since November 2001.
He also put the findings into a broader economic context, pointing to evidence of a fall in the voluntary resignation rate as an indicator that employees were anticipating a tougher time in the jobs market as the economy worsened.
Looking ahead, with business confidence in freefall, economic growth forecast to drop to just 1% in 2009, or worse, and high rates of inflation putting pressure on pay bills, the picture appeared pretty grim.
However, there were also indications that inflation could fall back by the beginning of 2009, lessening the pressure on employers to hike pay rates, and most commentators believing that the slowdown would not lead on to a recession.
Paul Campfield, managing director at CELRE Consultancy, talked about the development of the Skills Framework for the Information Age – used by many employers to provide a recognised model for benchmarking competencies and building job descriptions.
CELRE is an SFIA accredited partner and has worked with the SFIA Foundation and British Computer Society to agree a clear mapping arrangement between the seven job levels in SFIA, the nine job levels in the BCS's ISM, and the 11 job levels used by CELRE.
This mapping arrangement is available on request to participants in the CELRE Computer Staff Salary Survey.
Participants in the meeting were then shown a demonstration of the new CELRE Job Pricing online module, which will go live this autumn. The new service was warmly received.
In more general discussion about the survey, one reward manager at the meeting asked how they should code hybrid roles, where an individual’s responsibilities covered a number of functions.
The solution was to use the generic function code. For example, where a job included elements of code 52 (database analyst) as well as 53 (performance diagnostics) and 59 (applications support), the correct code would be 60 (technical support – generic).
There was also some debate about the use of job level 18 (consultant). This is intended to be a level appropriate for senior professional experts who may manage projects or provide high-level technical advice but do not manage staff. It is not for external contractor consultants.
The advantage of CELRE’s job levels over those of other survey providers is that they enable senior and very senior technical specialists to be graded at higher levels equivalent to those used for managers.
An expert moving beyond level 20 might, therefore, become level 18 as they became more senior. At still more senior level they could then become level 16 – a grade also applicable to department managers.
In November’s Computer Staff Salary Survey it is likely that level 18 will be renamed subject expert/consultant to reflect its proper use.
CELRE would like to thank those who came along to the meeting. With more than 500 survey participants, it was not possible to invite all those with an interest to take part, however, we do plan to hold further meetings in future where we hope to meet more survey users.
Further information about the CELRE Computer Staff Salary Survey. To participate in our November 2008 survey, please call CELRE on 020 8652 8590.
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