What You Need to Know about your Cloud Salaries and Benefits

• Benchmark your cloud salaries and benefits
• Offer benefits which promote well-being and an active, healthy lifestyle
• Be flexible with your cloud salary budgets

Having employees is simple, right?

Pay them a salary, they do the work, business grows.

Unfortunately, however, sometimes when you build it they might not come. Or if they do, they might pack their bags and be out the door before you can say “Dress Down Friday”.

A salary offer is only a small part of the picture when it comes to attracting and retaining the best cloud engineers, architects and consultants.

The top talent on the market has access to a plethora of potential cloud job opportunities, so knowing how to attract those individuals whilst balancing the financial books is the key to increasing your recruitment return-on-investment.

Here at InfraView we know all about not only how IT solutions providers work, but also what candidates are looking for in today’s cloud jobs market.

If you’re in need of quick, personalised advice you can give us a call on 020 3617 1040 and one of our team can give their insight.

But for now, let’s learn more about what you need to know about cloud salaries and benefits.

Benchmark Your Cloud Salaries & Benefits

It goes without saying that when looking to recruit and retain the best cloud talent that having a strong salaries and benefits package is essential.

But how can you know what a strong salaries and benefits package looks like?

Our Co-Founder Tim Davey has some great insights about how you can benchmark your offerings.

One way to achieve this is through competitor research. Marketing teams across the globe research competitors to understand better their standing in the market. To use this in cloud salary research, you could use job boards such as JobServe, TotalJobs, CWJobs etc. LinkedIn is a great source of information, offering data on job role salary and benefits as well as employer branding techniques.

There are websites dedicated to business comparisons. The most popular examples of these are Glassdoor and IT Jobs Watch. Whilst Glassdoor reviews on businesses should be taken with a pinch of salt, their salary mapping across sectors and industries is up-to-date and will give you a good idea of what candidates are earning now.

You could talk to an HR consultancy, who have specific knowledge and research to point you in the right direction, although this is the most costly route.

Or, of course, you could talk to a specialised recruitment consultancy like us at InfraView. We only work in the Cloud & IT Infrastructure market with IT Solutions Providers and Managed Service Providers. This means we’re on the pulse when it comes to understanding the desires and current earnings of cloud candidates.

Use our Recruitment Pulse survey to benchmark your current salaries and benefits, as well as numerous other facets to your cloud business. Complete it here.

Using these methods will give you quick and easy insights into what your competitors are offering candidates in terms of both salaries and benefits. Using this information, it will be a lot easier for you to position yourself in the cloud jobs market and to attract and retain better candidates.

Offer benefits which promote well-being and an active, healthy lifestyle

Our Co-Founder Tim Cazemage has discussions with clients every day around salaries and benefits.

Salary isn’t the deciding factor for many candidates when moving onto a new cloud job.

More and more candidates are asking about the company benefits and culture BEFORE salary.

This means that in order to access the top tier of cloud engineers on the market, you need to be offering benefits which promote a healthy, active lifestyle and well-being.

There has been a shift in candidate mentality when comparing cloud job opportunities. The old school benefits including minimum holiday days, statutory sick pay after three days, working in the office when not on client site, standard pension, strict working hour windows etc. Are being questioned on a daily basis.

These benefits take a back seat when a forward-thinking IT solutions provider business offers its cloud candidates a package which has well-being and mental health built into its foundations.

You could include employee well-being programmes, exercise programmes, workplace safety training, ergonomic work areas, better parental leave, career development programmes, training programmes…

There are so many exciting opportunities to offer new candidates and existing employees great benefits to make your business stand out from the crowd.

Be flexible with your cloud salary budgets

Salaries are always a difficult area when attracting good talent.

You don’t want the move to be motivated by money. You want the successful candidate to be brought into the company, the role and the opportunity first and foremost. A decision made purely on the financial aspect can result in issues further down the line.

Of course this doesn’t mean that getting salary negotiations right isn’t important.

It’s crucial that both sides feel like they are being treated fairly.

Will Martin has some advice for cloud solutions providers on negotiating salaries and salary budgets.

You should want your salary budget to be competitive. By benchmarking your salary as discussed earlier, you will have a better idea of how much it should be costing you to attract the level of talent you need. This means flexibility is crucial to ensure you will bring in better candidates who will drive your business forward, increasing recruitment return-on-investment.

This means not trying to get people cheaply. Some businesses may feel they can low-ball candidates in order to lower cost while attracting top cloud talent. Unfortunately candidates are wise enough to see through this, and will only become more and more disheartened as this reflects your company’s culture. Understanding the going rate for candidates at each level of experience, skill and sector will give you the best chance of offering a fair salary.

Investing in young potential is also a great way of increasing return-on-investment with lower budgets. This means giving an individual with less experience the cloud job opportunity, and then upskilling them from within your business. This method is great for longer-term goals as it means you have an individual who knows they are valued, and will increase your return-on-investment further down the line.

But what if you need the very best cloud skills and experience now? Can your budgets stretch to accommodate exceptional candidates? If it can, this will mean that you have an individual who will complete more projects to a higher standard, help upskill their team, and give your customers piece-of-mind. 

Conclusion

In today’s cloud jobs market, salaries and benefits are one of the many ways you can stand out from the competition.

By benchmarking your salaries, you can get a better understanding of how much talent at each level of cloud skills and experience will cost.

Offering forward-thinking benefits which promote well-being and an active, healthy lifestyle will go some way in attracting and retaining the best candidates.

Having flexibility in your salary budget will mean you are able to accommodate better talent, meaning happier customers and an increase in your return-on-investment.

Need help today?

Give us a call on 020 3617 1040 or drop us an email at hello@infraview.co.uk.