Shane Scott of recruitment company SSR Personnel reports on the latest salaries to affect job seekers and those worrying about the economy.
According to SSR, middle to senior management salaries within the cleaning industry have increased by a substantial mean average of 6% over the last twelve months. This payment comes at a time when employers have increased productivity and tightened up on service levels.
In almost all sectors there has been a freeze on advertised rates, but SSR reports that offers to new staff show increasing salaries by a margin of 10%. This, suggests Shane Scott, is a sign of firms not reacting to the bad press of an impending mid-cycle recession. This will also indicate that there will be a slowdown in senior managers moving, as the uncertainty of the employment market bites job seekers.
Basic salary levels for the sales / BDM sector have remained stable, with an average of 3.25% per cent increase on basic salaries. There has been a steady climb in paying high basic salaries to the top BDMs in recent months, however SSR are reporting there is a marked resistance to increase these levels due to robust competitiveness within the bidding stakes and lack lustre results coming from the increased competitive efforts. There has been no hint of a downturn in demand for sales and business development managers, but if the Bank of England is right and inflation moves upwards, the thought of job cuts will move to redundancies in this exposed area as firms trim their costs to cut overheads.
Salary ranges customarily vary considerably, with the Greater London region commanding the highest salaries and the rest of the UK paying an average of 10% lower in the middle management sector. It is interesting to note though, that at senior management level (director and CEO), this regional variation is less evident and near harmonisation has been seen. However, as might be expected, some roles do pay less, notably in the rural areas of the North of England, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Regional variations are nowhere near as high as those differences found in the top 50 companies, where significant variations can be seen between the salary packages of the top corporate leaders. Whilst there appears to be no external logic to the reasoning for these differences, performance expectations and management style (or values) do seem to offer an explanation. This is evidenced when you look at the selection processes of the major employers, who clearly tailor their efforts to different personality types (see Myers Brigg et al). The success of these senior roles is all too apparent.
The table below is a guideline (based on vacancies over the last twelve months) of the basic salaries being offered in January 2008 (Just click the images to see a larger version).
With the onset of the new financial year, the jobs market continues to be buoyant with steady growth across most market sectors and the continued search for top-calibre candidates. One question that most jobseekers ask is does the size of the company determine salary?
The simple answer is yes. Larger firms do offer better benefits, better basic salaries, better choice of location to work from and, perhaps, job security. But they are not as creative in meeting the needs of staff charged with business development. SSR has seen the incomes of BDMs in smaller firms, almost always matching or on occasion exceeding those of their large firm counterparts and this poses an interesting dilemma for job seekers; do they downsize employers for income or change to the potential job security of the larger firms?
The industry has always been a magnet for migrants, notably at the coal-face. However, recent trends have shown that immigrant cleaners have quickly moved to supervisory roles and once grasping the vagaries of the English language, are moving into junior management roles. The good news is that firms are not cutting compensation levels to keep these staff, and retention seems to be the order of the day. However, despite trend, the sector could benefit greatly from management newcomers entering the market place to provide healthy competition and fill the gap left by 7% attrition leaving the industry.
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Recruitment Special June 2008