The Deloitte India Talent Outlook 2024 Survey also shows that one in every three organisations in the country is planning to give double-digit increments this year.
While the overall average increment is lower than last year’s, increment projection for 2024 is higher than the pre-Covid levels across all sectors, except IT and business process outsourcing (BPO)/knowledge process outsourcing (KPO).
The survey also predicts that companies are likely to offer double-digit increments to junior management employees but with a high focus on performance-based differentiation.
Deloitte’s report says that organisations may be stricter with their bell curves, making it harder to secure top ratings. However, top performers can still expect 1.8x the increments given to employees with “average” ratings.
For employees rated “below average”, the increment is expected to be lower than last year—0.4x in 2024 compared with 0.6x in 2023.The percentage of employees expected to be promoted in 2024 has come down to 11.5% from 12.3% in 2023, according to the survey, while organisations are likely to maintain a 7.5% increment for promotions to retain key talent.Regarding performance bonuses, one out of every two companies could pay at-target or above-target bonus in 2024. In 2023, the attrition rate had fallen to 18.1% from 20.2% in 2022 due to the slow hiring momentum.
“The average employee in India has made peace with a single-digit increment over the past few years. With attrition and core inflation in check, organisations focus more on performance management strategies to protect and boost margins,” said Anandorup Ghose, partner, CHRO programme leader, Deloitte India. “On a global scale, India continues to be the fastest-growing major economy and could witness the highest increment compared with other geographies.”
Learning and development
Organisations are moving towards a scientific approach to upskilling their workforce using a common skills framework to identify gaps in their talent capability, said Deloitte. While almost three in every four organisations today have a skills framework, almost a quarter of them cannot update it regularly to match their evolving business needs, it said in the report.
The firm said that although CXOs have better visibility of skill demand and supply across jobs, only 30% of companies track and maintain this compared with 19% in 2023. Most organisations prioritise usage and cost efficiency over directly linking learning interventions to financial improvement, it added.