Paycheck India in News - Year 2006

A website for wage queries

This site could be beneficial to job seekers, employees and employers

Employees can answer questions online 
Identity of the respondent will be kept secret 

Bangalore: You may feel quite satisfied or otherwise with your pay cheque. But do you want to know if you are paid as much as your counterpart in the same career in, say, Argentina or Germany?

The answers can now be found on the website: www.paycheck.in, promoted by the Netherlands-based WageIndicator Foundation that maintains close ties with global bodies such as International Labour Organisation.

Paulien Osse, director of the foundation, told presspersons on Tuesday, "Our principle is that the cleaning lady and the truck drivers too have the right to know if they are paid a fair wage and not just corporate CEOs. We have been working since 2000 to create a transparent labour market by posting wage-related information on the public domain."

Currently almost 20 countries, including India, have wage indicator websites and by 2008, as many as 66 countries may have them, according to H.S. Amar of IT Professionals Forum, Bangalore. The Indian website is managed by researchers of the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad and the Indian Institute of Science. "We have compiled enough data related to IT, ITES, finance and insurance and some manufacturing sectors.

The paycheck site works on the basis of questions that have to be answered by an employee online. The Indian site gets about 25 responses a week and the database contains inputs from around 2,000 respondents, said Biju Varkey of IIM.

The data is updated every quarter and information now posted dates back to one year, according to Anjula Gurtu of IISc. Identity of the respondent will be kept secret and only sector-wise and job-wise indicators are taken.

Source: The Hindu

Are you underpaid?

Now finding out is just a click away

AHMEDABAD: Are you wondering if you are underpaid for your qualifications by the industry standards? Are you worried that your employers might be exploiting your talents and that your value could be much higher in another part of the country or the world?

Seeking answers to such recurring doubts could be just a click away now with payroll HR specialist website www.paycheck.in. The online research database website lets you look at pay rates for hundreds of different jobs in all walks of life - private sector, public sector and not-for-profit.

The website is managed by Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) professor Biju Varkkey as part of a research funded by research organisations in the EU. The website is managed by ITPF - IT Professionals Forum, IIM-A and the Indian Institute of Science. Negotiations with other partners in India are under way.

“Salary details are still treated as confidential and secret. Especially in new organised sectors like IT, salaries are not discussed and there is no effort to benchmark them. Although salary information is available, it is not easy or cheap to access. Paycheck’s focus is on answering this persistent question: ‘Am I paid what I should get’?” Prof Varkkey said, explaining the need and concept of the website.

The utility of this data is particularly high for professionals who wish to shift industries or cities and need to negotiate for the new job. Besides, HR consultants and corporates looking to hire in a new sector will also find the data valuable. “The ‘salary checker’ gives an insight into the earnings of working people at different levels in organisations across sectors and their satisfaction levels with the same.

The website hosts free salary checker service available to, and used by people in different occupations. It allows them to compare their salary with that of others doing a similar job. This information will be valuable to trade unions and employees in negotiating salary/pay and for promotion and recruitment,” Varkkey added.

What’s more, detailed reports on salary differentials across gender, ethnicity and age groups, across regions and nations, across occupations and industries, within multinational enterprises and for foreign versus local establishments in national economies are also available.

So where does this data come from? “Paycheck relies on people in all parts of the country, in all sorts of different jobs, to give us information about their employment conditions. Visitors answer a detailed questionnaire - qualitative as well as quantitative - about their salary packages. In return for letting us know about your pay, they get to find about thousands of other people’s pay. We think it’s a good deal,” Varkkey added.

The individual data is collated and segregated industry wise, managerial position wise and processed by a software to produce digested information. With EU funding, the network (wageindicator.org) now encompasses seven other European countries — the UK, Germany, Spain, Poland, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, and Italy — and has already launched in India, China, Russia, USA, Brazil South Africa, Argentina.

Source: DNA India

Earnings of Gates, Becks, Sachin just a click away

NEW DELHI: Nothing arouses more curiosity than your counterpart's salary in another company. And earnings of celebrities raking in mind-numbing moolah. If you are eager to know per minute earnings of the likes of Ambanis and Tendulkars, or figure out how much George Bush, David Beckham, Bill Gates and Kofi Annan mop up, you could do just that at the click of a mouse. paycheck.in and Payscale.com and many more yet-tobe-launched websites are hoping to cash in on the public curiosity.

A collaborative initiative of IIM, Ahmedabad, and IISc, Bangalore, with IT Professionals Forum and Wageindicator, paycheck.in is a free salary checking website where professionals from across the sectors can figure how well, or poorly they are being paid as compared to their peers. All you need to do is to take a salary survey which lasts 10-20 minutes. And you could have fun reading per minute earnings of celebrities, heads of states, sports personalities.

"We are looking at creating perennial revenue streams as the funds may not last long to continue the research. As such we are looking at collaborating with various jobportals, HR consultancy firms for whom our research would bring better insights," says Biju Varkkey, an IIMA professor and a researcher for Paycheck.

Another such initiative based out of Seattle, Payscale.com, has gone further. Apart from salary packages, the website has packed in city and countrywise break up of hourly earnings, bonus, commission, profit sharing, hourly billing rate, vacation weeks, apart from where you stand today and gives a future projection of salary. Payscale.com generates revenue by selling data to third parties. While paycheck.in in India till now is an academic exercise and is funded by the Wageindicator Foundation (WNF), it aims to generate revenue through commissioned research and consultancy as the site grows popular. WNF is a joint initiative of FNV (Dutch confederation of trade unions), the University of Amsterdam/AIAS (institute of labour studies) and Monsterboard.

Analysts see a lot of potential in the concept and expect more such ventures to flow in. R Suresh, managing partner, Stantonchase India, feels that this concept is going to get extremely popular in India as such websites provide role-specific data for junior and middle management employees.

Adds Gautam Ghosh, an HR professional and an Ex-Deloitte hand and an avid blogger: "It needs serious marketing and promotion exercises to gain visibility. As the number of visits increase, it will reduce any discrepancies that are there."

While most appreciate the initiatives, there are some who have their doubts. "It's no doubt an interesting idea, but to make it popular among researchers and consultants pay websites will have to come up with concrete ways to ensure that the data provided by visitors are completely authentic," says Shiv Agrawal, CEO, ABC Consultants.

Source: The Economic Times

Find Out How Great Is Your Pay Packet 

NOTHING arouses more curiosity than your counterpart's salary in another company or the earnings of celebrities who rake in mind numbing moolah. If you are eager to know the per minute income of the likes of Ambanis, Sachin Tendulkars, George Bush, David Beckham, Bill Gates and Kofi Annan, you could do just that at the click of a mouse. Paycheck and Payscale.com and many more yet-to-be-launched websites are hoping to cash in on public curiosity.

Paycheck.in is a collaborative initiative of IIM Ahmedabad, IISc Bangalore with IT Professionals Forum and Wageindicator. It is a free salary checking website where professionals from across the sectors can figure how well or poor are they being paid compared to their peers. All you need to do is to take a salary survey which lasts 10-20 minutes. And you could have fun reading per minute earnings of celebrities, heads of states and sports personalities.

"We are looking at creating perennial revenue streams as the funds may not last long to continue the research. As such we are looking at collaborating with various jobportals, HR consultancy firms for whom our research would bring better insights," said Biju Varkkey, an IIM-A professor and a researcher for Paycheck.

Payscale.com, a similar initiative based out of Seattle, has gone further. Apart from salary packages, the website has packed in city and countrywise break up of hourly earnings, bonus, commission, profit sharing, hourly billing rates, vacation weeks. It also gives you salary projection. Payscale generates revenue by selling data to third parties.

While Paycheck in India, till now, is an academic exercise and is funded by the Wageindicator Foundation (WNF), it aims to generate revenue through commissioned research and consultancy as the site grows popular. WNF is a joint initiative of FNV (Dutch confederation of trade unions), the University of Amsterdam/AIAS (institute of labour studies) and Monsterboard.

Analysts see a lot of potential in the concept and expect more such ventures to flow in. R Suresh, managing partner, Stantonchase India, feels that this concept is going to get extremely popular in India as such websites provide role specific data for junior and middle management employees.

Website to soon display your salary

Ahmedabad, October 19 2006 : SOON you will be able to compare your salary with those of your counterparts in other cities, organisations and countries, all thanks to a new website — www.paycheck.in — that is being developed as part of a research initiative of IIM-A, IISc, Bangalore and IT Professionals Forum of India, Bangalore.

And it is not just the salary description of blue-collared jobs that will be available online for a person to check where s/he stands in terms of getting salary; the website also includes a section on ‘minimum wage checkers’ that will indicate the minimum wage paid in different states of the country.

The website, a part of a series of websites launched with international collaboration across the world, is one of the two websites that include the minimum wage checkers, with the other one being launched in The Netherlands.&

‘‘The new and improved wage data that will be made online through the website will help trade unions. Employers in IT, manufacturing and finance sectors will also decide the wage structure of employees,’’ said Biju Varkkey, faculty at IIM-A who is also working on the project. The project, that is being conducted in 15 differnt countries under the supervision of Wageindicator network, is being funded by the European Union.

The project aims at facilitating wage bargaining by providing a deeper insight into wage structures across occupations, companies, industries, regions and countries. Also, once the data is completed, a study will be conducted that will focus on a comparative wage structure in multinational enterprises in various countries.

The site also aims at reflecting the constraits and limitations faced by workers in the informal sector, which it will eventually follow. Researchers in the country are currently preparing an updated data of minimum wage earned by workers in agricultural and non-agricultural occupations. 

‘‘We have contacted the labour ministry of different states for uploading the data on the minimum wage structure. We have already received most of the data and will be uploading it soon,’’ Varkkey said.

Paycheck.in is currently gathering data through an online questionnaire so reliable wage information could be provided to those visiting the site.

‘‘We launched the website in February and asked people to participate voluntarily in the questionnaire, so that we could provide an updated salary checker in IT, manufacturing and finance sector,’’ Varkkey further said. 

Currently, the site has uploaded pay-checks offered by different sectors prepared by an organisation called Ma Foi. ‘‘We will be able to upload our own data once enough questionnaires are filled,’’ Varkkey said.

Once the data falls in place, a detailed research will be conducted based on the data available from all 15 countries that will focus on the average salary per person, average salary per occupation, salary differences related to region, gender and country apart from giving site visitors a chance to peek into the their own earnings and compare them with other users, informed Varkkey.

Source: The Indian Express