Check out the best IT employer: Dataquest-IDC survey

The average salary increase in the IT sector during 2009 was down at 1.4%, according to a Dataquest-IDC survey.

Employees under two years of experience earned a 2% increase in salary, while those between 2.1 to 5 years had their salaries cut by 7%. Those between 5.1 to 10 years got an average salary hike of 5% and those with over 10 years experience earned a 4% salary increase.

In the survey, HCL Infosystems emerged as the best employer in the IT industry, followed by iGate, Rolta, RMSI and SAS Institute. HCL jumped up two positions from last year, while iGate slipped one notch to No. 2.

The survey covered 200 IT companies of which 31 companies were short-listed for the final round. For the first time, India’s top four IT companies declined to take part “as layoffs and salary re-alignment leads to dip in IT employee morale”, the survey said. The top four IT firms employ about 40% of the IT professionals in the country.

Seven new entrants — R Systems (6), Perot Systems (7), Ingram Micro (11), Sify Technologies (13), Infogain (17), Unisys (18) and Novell (19) — made it to the Top 20 Best Employers in IT list.

The employee attrition rate came down to an average of 15%, from 18% last year. A majority of IT employees said they changed job for better salaries and compensation (53%), overseas postings (38%), better job security (18%), flexible working hours (18%) and training and development (9%). While the average retention rate, defined as percentage of employees retained out of the total employees as on March 31, 2008, improved to 85%, from 79% in 2008, Hexaware Technologies showed a remarkable retention score of 100.

The study also reveals that companies have become more transparent in their communication with employees giving them a sense of belonging. They have also gone ahead and adopted a higher degree of professionalism in their dealings with employees as well as customers or suppliers.

Another key finding is that more employees are satisfied with the interest shown by their companies as well as their immediate seniors in helping them strike a worklife balance compared to last year. The study reveals that there is a drastic fall in the number of people who feel that their job is secure within their company.

Agencies