Certification gets an added bonus

Skills-related bonus pay for IT staff is on the up, but companies are spending much more strategically.

Total bonuses paid to staff with specific technical skills or certifications have increased three per cent over the last three months, according to research from Foote Partners, a corporate management advisory firm.

Between 30 and 40 per cent of IT staff are paid some form of bonus - officially or unofficially - because of the technical skills or certifications they possess.

But rather than offer a blanket approach to financial incentives, employers now prefer to pay larger bonuses to 'impact workers' who have multiple skills and specific experience to get the job done. The study also shows a trend towards a project-oriented use of compensation.

"Companies are a lot less willing to stockpile skills," said David Foote, president and chief research officer at Foote Partners. "They're spending money on upper echelon workers to keep people they can't afford to lose."

The study of 29,300 IT workers and 1,840 employers also found that certification is increasingly recognised as proof of IT competence.

A Foote in the door

Foote explained: "There's a lot more accountability needed because money's a little tighter. Certification shows a person has a commitment, but people are very wary of vendor qualifications. We're seeing the highest growth in vendor-independent certification.

"The new wave of certification means that you have to be good at a lot of things. IT professionals have to be like Swiss army knives. Having a technical skill isn't enough."

The study highlighted enterprise resource planning, Sun Solaris, Windows NT and Linux among the skills that do not command the financial incentives they used to.

Non-certified skills which pay strong bonuses include web development, enterprise application integration and programming languages such as C++, Java and Visual Basic. Project management, networking and security earn the highest average certification-linked bonuses.

"Companies realise that they need to do a much better job of auditing systems for intrusions and building more security into systems," said Foote. "They are spending a lot of money clearing up a mess that should never have happened."