Over the past two to three years, while monitoring trends between tech businesses and developers in the North East, we've noticed a significant increase in salary levels.
The region’s tech sector is growing at a huge rate, leading skilled developers to be in high demand. This has created a lack of emerging talent across the region, creating a problem for employers, especially those wanting to attract and retain the best talent for themselves.
As a business owner, whether you have a digital business, SaaS product or any kind of tech company, you can likely agree that deciding on salary is becoming increasingly difficult, so here’s some advice on how you can retain your developers and keep them happy.
1. MAKE SURE YOU DO A FAIR SALARY REVIEW
As mentioned above, you can compare developer salaries within the region – through your own findings or by engaging with an expert like Ronald James* who can provide this data for you.
2. OFFER ATTRACTIVE BENEFITS
Unlimited holidays, flexi-time and work from home are almost standard among employers now – and it’s a great way to create job appeal without increasing salary – anything that will save on the employee’s commute or give back flexibility.
3. BE A GREAT PLACE TO WORK!
This is becoming increasingly important as lots of tech companies and digital agencies now have cool places to work with things like table tennis, break out areas, kitchens and free lunches, so for a developer moving on they will be used to these facilities and looking out for them.
4. LANGUAGES AND FRAMEWORK
Technology-driven devs want to be working with the latest tech – if you have set frameworks, giving them the opportunity to implement new tech or having a side project to expand their skill set will keep them engaged and interested.
5. PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Do you have a designated project manager? This will help developers to see their progress through to the end goal of their tasks which will help to keep them motivated at work.
Another problem lies with the range of salaries being offered to developers, posing the risk of you paying inflated salaries’ compared to other businesses. Advertised salaries through job adverts with other companies aren’t necessarily what the developers actually getting paid once they accept a job, so it’s very important you have a clear, true reflection of what you are offering.
We can help
If you'd like advice on the above or to receive a FREE bespoke developer salary report to benchmark developer salaries in your business please contact james@ronaldjamesgroup.com
