To play Devil's advocate (I actually always rather enjoy salary surveys), who would it benefit? UK engineering salaries are pretty much a free market, employers will pay just what they need to attract and retain the right candidates, which for an individual employer for an individual role in an individual part of the country can easily be 20-30% or more away from the median in either direction. So personally I do tend to find that, although interesting, they're often not particularly useful. The argument goes that if you're not paying enough you know it because you can't find staff, and if you're overpaying you know it because your competitors undercut you. So that it all tends to sort itself out.


In fact, back in the days when I used to recruit I remember having furious arguments with HR, who loved living by salary surveys, where I would point out that we needed to pay what we needed to pay to find the right staff (because of where we were based we had a very small pool to choose from), and if that meant we had to pay a "graduate" salary to a non-graduate then tough!


It's very interesting to compare the situation in the UK, where individual salaries are pretty much secret, with, say, Scandinavia where they tend to be open and published. I honestly wouldn't like to say which works better, I suspect the Scandinavian system is fairer overall but perhaps doesn't allow so much for individual situations. Sorry, that's a bit off topic...   


Not trying to say I disagree that a salary survey should be run; rather, I'm trying to flush out what makes a good and useful salary survey by thinking about what the end benefits would actually be and to whom?


I will say my personal view is that to be really useful to either job seekers or employers it has to be very granular for role, industry and location in the country, unfortunately to the point where it can be quite hard to get significant data and to make it readable. And also, and this is where the IET (and IEE before it) always struggles, it needs to cover engineering staff both inside and outside the Institutes. Most engineers are not members of a PEI, those that are tend to work in very specific industry sectors which can have quite different salary structures (not necessarily higher or lower, just different) to those with few PEI members. And it's hugely important to recognise both.


But very interesting suggestion, look forward to seeing where this goes! 


Cheers,


Andy

To play Devil's advocate (I actually always rather enjoy salary surveys), who would it benefit? UK engineering salaries are pretty much a free market, employers will pay just what they need to attract and retain the right candidates, which for an individual employer for an individual role in an individual part of the country can easily be 20-30% or more away from the median in either direction. So personally I do tend to find that, although interesting, they're often not particularly useful. The argument goes that if you're not paying enough you know it because you can't find staff, and if you're overpaying you know it because your competitors undercut you. So that it all tends to sort itself out.


In fact, back in the days when I used to recruit I remember having furious arguments with HR, who loved living by salary surveys, where I would point out that we needed to pay what we needed to pay to find the right staff (because of where we were based we had a very small pool to choose from), and if that meant we had to pay a "graduate" salary to a non-graduate then tough!


It's very interesting to compare the situation in the UK, where individual salaries are pretty much secret, with, say, Scandinavia where they tend to be open and published. I honestly wouldn't like to say which works better, I suspect the Scandinavian system is fairer overall but perhaps doesn't allow so much for individual situations. Sorry, that's a bit off topic...   


Not trying to say I disagree that a salary survey should be run; rather, I'm trying to flush out what makes a good and useful salary survey by thinking about what the end benefits would actually be and to whom?


I will say my personal view is that to be really useful to either job seekers or employers it has to be very granular for role, industry and location in the country, unfortunately to the point where it can be quite hard to get significant data and to make it readable. And also, and this is where the IET (and IEE before it) always struggles, it needs to cover engineering staff both inside and outside the Institutes. Most engineers are not members of a PEI, those that are tend to work in very specific industry sectors which can have quite different salary structures (not necessarily higher or lower, just different) to those with few PEI members. And it's hugely important to recognise both.


But very interesting suggestion, look forward to seeing where this goes! 


Cheers,


Andy