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Market research shows clear differences in salary levels

Comparing to the British and theAmerican, the European CIO stays faithful to their employers during a longer period of time. Nevertheless his fidelity is not really recompensed: the wages are impressively lower. These are some of the statements of an inquiry performed by the IT recruitment company Harvey Nash and KPMG, which was published on Thursday.

The Strategic Leadership Study from 2007/2008 from Harvey Nash and KPMG were presented at a conference held in Brussels. 137 Europeaan CIOs took part in the survey.

One remarkable conclusion from this study: exactly one third of the interviewed CIOs was more than ten years working for his actual employer. In the UK (which was inquired separately) the percentage corresponds to 19 per cent, against only 13 per cent in the US.

Europeaan CIOs earn much less than their American and British colleagues. The half of them earns less than 100.000 euros annual rate of salary, in America it represents 19 per cent against only 17 per cent in Great Britain. Ten per cent of the European CIOs earns more than 200.000 per year, in America it is twice more. The fact that Europeans receive higher bonnusses does not compensate this difference. “I believe that the earnings will be more equalized”, said Simon Wassal, European Managing Director of Harvey Nash, at the presentation of the statistics. The equality should come, among other reasons, because enterprises are taking a look abroad more often in search of talents, according to Nash.

Maybe the relatively modest earnings are an important factor in further development of the European CIO’s career path. Apparently they don’t intend to stay at the same place for a long time. 41 per cent expects to leave his employer within two years. 65 per cent don’t expect to be working for the same company for longer than 4 years. These statistics are comparable to the ones in the US. 17 per cent of the CIOs is even looking actively for a new job, which means more than in the US. Most commented reasons why a CIO would change job: to embrace a new challenge (60%), participate more actively in the company strategies (44%) and to earn more money (23%).

A small majority of the CIOs (51%) says to have worked between 41 and 50 hours per week. 4 per cent affirms to work more than 70 hours per week.