Published on the 20/04/2018 | Written by Jonathan Cotton
It’s an endless refrain from the tech industry: There’s a skills shortage, stupid! Maybe this time your boss is right…
New research commissioned by specialised recruiter Robert Half and published as the 2018 Robert Half Salary Guide, says that while the average Australian employee considers themselves overworked and underpaid, employers are finding themselves in an unusual position: Skilled IT workers are suddenly well placed to negotiate higher salaries.
The reason for IT department’s new negotiative muscle? Good old supply and demand.
According to the report, eight in 10 (82 percent) of Australian CIOs say they are finding it more challenging to find qualified IT professionals compared to five years ago. That’s a consequence of increased demand for specialised skill sets, rise of new technologies and a rapidly changing threat landscape.
“In a market characterised by slow wage growth, 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 IT sector are growing,” says Andrew Morris, director of Robert Half Australia.
The report says that 97 percent of Australian CIOs are now planning to award salary increases to around a fifth of their IT staff, with the average increase of around eight percent.
“In this booming market, IT professionals with niche skill sets 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.”
The in-demand IT positions? Cyber-security specialists, full stack. Net developers and cloud engineers.
And when the going gets tough, the tough petition the government. The first of July will see the launch of the new Global Talent Scheme, a visa programme designed to attract highly skilled global talent to Australia (think publicly-listed companies sponsoring experienced senior executives), targeting the tech industry especially, and part of the federal government’s seemingly endless revisions of immigrant worker provisions.
The Global Talent Scheme (PDF) is separate from and in addition to the Temporary Skill Shortage (“TSS”) visa program which came into effect in March. The changes will see the former 457 temporary skilled worker visa replaced with the more stringent 482 temporary skill shortage visa (after complaints from trade unions that the former scheme was, of course, taking jobs from Australians).
Minister for Jobs and Innovation Michaelia Cash says the stats back up the move: “Industry figures say globally mobile, highly skilled and experienced staff can act as ‘job multipliers’ in Australian businesses, helping them to hire more local staff and fill critical areas of need.”
But one wonders: Do we actually have a skills shortage? Or is it more like a pay gap? As we move into an increasingly global business environment, perhaps we’d do better to accept the realities of that market and commit to being competitive employers – offering competitive salaries – along with everything else.
As Morris continues: “Employers should regularly review salaries and consider benchmarking salaries as an investment with a solid return, rather than as an unwarranted expense, as it can result in the retention of top performers 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.”
