Would you like to know what the person sitting next to you is earning?

Global organisational consulting firm Korn Ferry has found that businesses are working toward increasing the transparency of employee pay packets.

Senior client partner with Korn Ferry, Tom McCullen, said open information about remuneration improves business outcomes.

“If employees don’t believe that compensation practices are equitable, this data suggests that they will leave their organisation or, worse, stay but be less engaged and productive,” McMullen said.

In a global survey, Korn Ferry found that the number of employees willing to be open about their pay is improving, but the number is still relatively low.

Around a quarter of respondents said they thought it was okay to share their income information with their workmates and nearly 40 per cent said sharing pay data is more acceptable now than it was five years ago.

When surveying HR staff, Korn Ferry found 75 per cent said a focus on improving transparency around pay was a priority for 2020.

This trend extends to HR teams looking into ways of making pay programs more equitable and ensuring that employees don’t feel undercompensated for their work.

For IT professionals, knowing what everyone else is earning could show a disparity between colleagues as different skillsets pull in varying salaries across the sector.

A range of IT incomes

The specific role of Java Algorithmic Trading Developer has been touted as one of the highest earning non-executive IT roles in the country with an average annual wage of $175,000, according to Seek last year.

A salary survey from recruiters Robert Walters found that cyber security and DevOps roles were consistently higher than many other IT jobs across the country.

Those findings concur with what Hays reported in mid-last year when it published its salary guide, putting security analysts, consultants, and architects firmly in the $100,000 per annum camp alongside data analysts.

But not all IT professionals are earning six figures.

According to Indeed, Australian software engineers are looking at an average income of just over $90,000 per year.

And the yearly salary for front-end developers is around $80,000.

Service delivery roles tend to be at the lower end of the salary spectrum, according to recruiters Michael Page which lists the median salary of a help desk support officer at $62,000.

Pay day for tech skills

The Korn Ferry survey also identified a trend in organisations toward hiring talent with IT skills – largely as a result of digital transformation projects.

Initiatives designed to bring companies into the 21st century (and beyond) have encouraged employers to hire people with niche skills even if there isn't a specific role for them with over three-quarters of the organisations surveyed said they were currently hiring for jobs that they didn't have a year ago in order to have the skills on-hand when needed.

HR teams have also tended to lean more on AI to help guide the candidates through the recruitment process, according to Korn Ferry. Algorithms are also being used to know when employees are planning to quit, although there is some worry that these programs increase staff turnover rather than reducing it.

Do you want to know how much your colleagues are paid? How would you feel about a more equitable pay program? Let us know in the comments.