The ICG Salary Survey was my way of giving back to the 3000 strong community of Communicators in India. The first-of-its-kind study was an attempt to understand salary trends in the Corporate Communications function and standardise benchmarks within the communications industry.
The ICG Salary Survey provides its own reason for existence. These are two things that stood out for me as I worked the data:
1. The extremely wide variation in salaries within experience levels that indicate a need for balance. It is a given that considering the breadth of industries and sectors and the huge difference in skill sets, the salary bands are bound to be huge. But what was unexpected was folks with salaries of Rs.5-10L even at very high experience levels or those with salaries of Rs.50L-2Cr in the first decade of their career. While we could disregard a couple or two, there were clear clusters to indicate these outlier values were real and not errors.
2. The gender data that’s at once both promising and depressing. Women start of with lower salaries. For the first decade, their median salaries are way lower than men but their number keeps increasing. However, 10 years into their career, we slowly see the drop offs starting to take root. By the time they’ve spent 25+ years in comms, they’re down to just 43% of the workforce from a peak of 71%. When the drop-offs begin is also where we see their salaries coming up. It takes women a decade on an average before they feel comfortable enough to negotiate better, build wider networks, gain more qualification, and demand their place under the sun.
Of course, this is the first survey, and the results are not foolproof. There are gaps and some of these can be filled only with multiple iterations spread across years. Nevertheless, this is a strong solid start, and if you wish to understand where you stand as an in-house Communications professional, do check out the study.
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