Salary increase in India among the highest in APAC this year

India is among the front-runners with a 10.8 per cent average salary increase this year, ahead of countries like Indonesia at 9.5 per cent, China at 8.6 per cent and Philippines at 6.7 per cent. Mature markets will see lower increases with Hong Kong and Singapore both at 4.5 per cent, Australia at 3.5 per cent and Japan lowest at 2.5 per cent.

According to the Towers Watson 2015-16 Asia Pacific Salary Budget Planning report, almost 87 per cent of respondents plan to allocate a larger portion of their budget to high performers. The high-tech industry stands out with 11 per cent companies planning to allocate the entire budget increase to high performers. Predictably, in countries where overall salary increases tend to be higher, good performance is also better rewarded.

In India, salary increase for the ‘highest-performing’ employees average 12 per cent, which is 30 per cent higher than ‘average’ performers and nearly twice the regional average. When it comes to variable compensation, the report highlights that ‘pay for performance’ is much lower in India compared to some other markets. In India, 1.69 months’ average base salary has been handed as bonus/variable compensation to employees, lower than 1.93 months in China and 1.81 months in Hong Kong, Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia.