Despite the inclement financial environment, healthcare service sector employees seem pretty satisified with both their role and remuneration
There’s more to this industry than pharma companies though, and this month we take a look at the data supplied by 105 individuals working for agencies on the service side.
Broken down, 36 per cent of these respondents were account managers; 10 per cent said they worked in PR; 10 per cent communications; 10 per cent worked in marketing and 8 per cent in medical writing. Advertising, editorial/publishing, brand/product management, digital and other comprised the remaining proportion.
As we saw for pharma employees last month, it seemed more top jobs were in mainland Europe, with 21 per cent of respondents who were paid in Euros saying they earned €125,000 or more compared to 1 per cent of those paid in GBP who earned £125,000 or more.
At 23 per cent, the greatest proportion of GBP earners fell into the £35,000 to £44,999 bracket, while the figure was just 6 per cent in the corresponding Euro group.
Those paid in Euros were better earners all round, with 74 per cent making at least €55,000. This compared to 39 per cent who earned £55,000 or more.
Broken down, the second and third most common salary bands among service companies for those paid in Euros were €85,000 to €94,999 (14 per cent) and €75,000 to €84,999 (12 per cent).
For those paid in GBP, the second and third most common salary bands were £45,000 to £54,999 (20 per cent) and £25,000 to £34,999 (15 per cent).
However, the contrast in these figures may have been affected by the number of people paid in each currency – 12 per cent of respondents gave their details in Euros compared to 88 per cent who gave their details in GBP.
When looking at annual salary increases, it seems that the poor state of the economy has taken its toll on many companies, with 35 per cent of respondents saying their earnings had remained flat. Of those who did receive a pay increase, 30 per cent said their salary had improved by 1 to 3 per cent – in line with both the European average and inflation, as mentioned in last month’s article.
Of those who received a larger increase in salary, 15 per cent of respondents improved their earnings by 4 to 6 per cent, 6 per cent by 7 to 9 per cent, while 13 per cent said their salary had risen by 10 per cent or more in the past year.
Are you satisfied?
Despite the large proportion of service employees who received no increase in pay, salary satisfaction was still relatively high.
Of those who completed the survey, 19 per cent said they were ‘fully satisfied’ and 52 per cent were ‘somewhat satisfied’. This compared to 26 per cent who were ‘somewhat dissatisfied’ and 3 per cent who responded with ‘very dissatisfied’.
As with the results we covered last month, things were just as positive when people were asked to consider their overall job satisfaction.
For service employees, 29 per cent said they were ‘very satisfied’; 55 per cent ‘somewhat satisfied’; 12 per cent ‘somewhat dissatisfied’; and just 4 per cent were ‘very dissatisfied’.
Although the pharma and non-pharma results did tend to follow a similar outlook for several questions, one area of major discrepancy was that of bonuses.
As mentioned in the last article, 93 per cent of pharma employees said they received a bonus, compared with just 53 per cent of service sector respondents.
The size of bonus was lower too, with the majority of service respondents for both GBP and Euro groups saying they belonged in the lowest category of £/€1,000 to £/€5,999, with this proportion amounting to 63 per cent and 57 per cent, respectively.
The next band up – £/€6,000 to £/€10,999 – had the second largest proportion of respondents, although some people did still fall into the top band of £/€21,000 or more, but this was weighted towards those paid in Euros at 14 per cent compared to 6 per cent for those paid in GBP.
In terms of benefits, a pension plan was again the most common, with 73 per cent of respondents saying they received one, while the next most popular was healthcare insurance at 61 per cent.
Less common benefits included maternity leave (51 per cent); flexi-time (33 per cent); paternity leave (32 per cent); legal advice (10 per cent) and child care (6 per cent).
Internal training was a popular service provided by an employer, with 70 per cent of our surveyed population saying they received such deal.
Half of our respondents received specialist training from external sources, while less common skill development initiatives included a mentoring programme (25 per cent) and graduate training (14 per cent).
There was very little support for academic qualifications, however, and only 5 per cent said their employer provided bursaries for postgraduate studies, such as an MBA or MA.
In terms of demographics, our most common respondent was a young female living in the UK.
It seems the gender bias on the agency side of things is still definitely geared towards females who accounted for 68 per cent of respondents.
The relative youth of the sector was also highlighted in our results too, with 40 per cent of respondents aged between 25 and 35.
The next most common age group was 36 to 45, with 34 per cent falling into this range, while 21 per cent of respondents were aged somewhere between 46 and 55. Just 3 per cent were under 25 and 2 per cent were 56-64. Nobody in the service sector who completed the survey was aged 65 or more.
Location-wise, 88 per cent said they were UK-based, 10 per cent were based elsewhere in the EU and 2 per cent were in Switzerland.
For all the survey results, view the PMLiVE Salary Survey 2012 Slideshare presentation on PMLiVE.
