Bonus payments for IT staff without formal IT
qualifications are on a downward spiral as more companies turn
towards offshore outsourcing.
For the forth quarter in a row, offshore outsourcing has had a
negative impact on bonuses, an analysis of pay rates in the US and
Europe by Foote Partners has revealed. Over the past two years
bonus rates for staff with application programming and enterprise
applications development skills have fallen by 20%.
"This is premium-skills pay that has traditionally been used to
retain and motivate workers. As more programming work is
transferred offshore, or at least directed away from IT
full-timers, premium pay becomes unnecessary," said director David
Foote.
Bonus payments began to slide in 2003. The skills affected closely
matched the skills that were being outsourced, the research
revealed. Pay bonuses offered for IT staff without recognised
certificates fell by 2% during the year ending 2004, to an average
of 6.6% of base pay - equivalent to a 16% decline since 2001.
Over the past 12 months IT professionals with networking,
messaging, enterprise applications, and application development
skills have seen the largest drop in bonus pay.
IT professionals with recognised qualifications and certificates
have been less badly hit by the decline, however. Their bonus pay
fell by an average of 5.6% in 2003, equivalent to 6.5% over the
past two years, buoyed by strong demand for workers with project
management, information security, enterprise systems and network
skills.
The survey of 42,000 North American and European IT workers found
that the most sought-after skills were information security,
networking, project management, IP telephony, Linux and web skills.