Negotiating salary? Here's what you should know

An annual salary of Rs 30 lakh sounds fantastic, doesn’t it? Come placement time at top business schools and such astronomical salaries seem the norm. Average salaries are quoted in seven figures and the highest pay package is worth a crore. All this attracts students in droves to pursue management courses, their belief cemented by the fact that the money they invest in fees will be recouped in a couple of years. So why does it take most of them longer to repay the education loan? Simply because the actual salaries they take home are much less than those quoted to them. 


Dushan Kapoor (name changed) was offered the post of an HR executive at an annual salary of Rs 2.75 lakh. He expected his take-home pay to be about Rs 20,000 after deducting tax and the Provident Fund contribution. However, his happiness was shortlived when he saw the salary break-up a few days later. “The company had included accommodation, telephone reimbursement and meal coupons in the package, which reduced my take-home pay to Rs 15,000 a month,” he says. 

The salary you actually take home 

Don’t be envious if you know someone who quotes his cost-to-company (CTC) as Rs 1 lakh a month. In all probability, he’s pocketing only Rs 70,000 (see Decoding your first salary slip). “ CTC is an expected income, but how much you get is subjective and is known at the end of the year. This is because a large chunk is the performance-linked bonus,” says Sunil Goel, CEO, Global Hunt, a headhunting firm.“The bonus usually comprises 10-20% of the CTC, but what you get in hand is 65-75% of the figure that was quoted,” says Kris Lakshmikanth, managing director at HR consultancy firm, The Headhunters India . 

Delhi-based Kamal Singh (name changed) has recently got an offer of Rs 7.5 lakh a year through campus placement. “My annual variable pay is Rs 1.5 lakh,” she says. But does she have any clue about her take-home salary? “I am not very sure of that. I think there will be a tax outgo, but I don’t know if there are other deductions,” she admits. 

Singh should check with her prospective employer as various factors included in the CTC are not given in monetary form. For instance, employers may provide health and life insurance covers to employees and show the premiums paid by them as a part of your total salary. Other factors that bloat your CTC are the expenses incurred on training you, subsidised meals provided in the cafeteria, transport facility, etc. 

In the case of international job offers, there are other issues that you may have to deal with. Delhi-based Bhaskar Khanna got an offer of 50,000 dirham from a Dubai-based company, but he rejected it. “Initially, the offer seemed attractive, but when I enquired about the cost of living there, I found that the rental and transportation costs were too high. I would have barely managed to save anything,” says Kapoor. An international offer should also be evaluated in terms of the economic conditions and tax structure in that country. 

What you may get if you stick around 

Funds under some category heads can be availed of after a certain period of time. These include gratuity and retention bonus. The 4.81% contribution made towards gratuity is often included in the CTC, but you will only get it if you work with the same employer for at least five years. The retention bonus can sometimes be as high as 15% of the CTC. However, it is paid only after 2-3 years of working with the company. 


Your Provident Fund amount is the only payment that is guaranteed no matter how many years you work or with whom. While a 12% deduction from your basic salary towards Provident Fund is mandatory, companies have begun including the matching contribution to be made by them as a part of the CTC. 

Keep your boss and spouse happy at the same time

Is there a single recipe that can keep your boss and spouse happy at the same time? Yes, if you are prepared to knock down the wall that separates work and personal life and treat both as inclusive and interdependent halves of the same coin. 

That’s increasingly happening in today’s corporate world as the lines between home and office are getting blurred and people are wired 24X7. And with Blackberrys, smartphones and tablet PCs, the trend is accelerating. These devices even allow for high quality video conferencing and, together with new network technologies, permit secure use of the corporate database from remote locations. 

“The demarcation between work and life is getting rapidly eroded as both halves constitute one journey,” says Niketh Sundar , head of global HR at UST Global , an IT services provider. And the key adopters of this new culture are particularly the young, tech-savvy Gen-Y who are perfectly at home working their fingers on various gadgets. 

Companies too are pushing the trend. Unmesh Pawar, head of HR at Accenture BPO, says that the maturing of jobs offshored to India necessitates an agile talent pool that is capable not just of quality delivery but beating deadlines, irrespective of India’s traffic congestion, commuting fatigue and personal responsibilities. It’s critical for them to perform tasks while on the go. Companies are not bothered about the number of hours their employees put in. What matters is to get a job done and done well. 

Praveen Kamath, global head (talent acquisition) at Wipro BPO, says there is no balance between work and play today as people work across geographical boundaries, functions and time zones. “One has to manage daily chores, family and personal entertainment within a 14-16 hour schedule. So one has to plan one’s time well and give equal justice to life and work,” he says. 

Drawing boundaries difficult 

However, counsellors find that such planning is far from easy. Says Archana Bisht, director at 1to1help.net, which provides counselling services to companies, “With BlackBerrys, you are always connected. People can choose not to respond, but they can hardly part with their phones even at home. So individuals are missing out on their personal time. They are not able to draw boundaries.” 

The organization has come across instances where wives of software professionals complain about their husbands locking themselves up in a conference call when they reach home early. “It’s partly the individual’s fault of not choosing to switch off the phones at home like they do in meetings or conferences. Though emails can be answered the next day, there is that itch to do it as soon as your BlackBerry beeps. It’s more of a habit in a connected world,” Bisht says. 

But employers are beginning to create options to help employees. “A happy spouse makes a happy and productive employee,” stresses Balan K , an HR advisor. In keeping with the larger objective of more productivity, Accenture has created flexi-curity — a job that comes with flexibility and security. This would include a provision to work from home, going to office on alternate days, granting adequate time to settle family and health issues and even giving time-out for adoption issues, says Accenture’s Pawar. 

An IBM employee who requested anonymity said he recently encountered a serious family crisis, wherein he had to spend quality time at home to work out a solution. “My HR realized the gravity of the situation and granted me a flexi working option. So even as I took my wife out for a vacation, I stayed connected to the office and worked. The beauty is that she didn’t even realize that I was killing two birds with one stone as I multitasked and sent mails to clients,” he said. 

J P Morgan Chase allows people to work from literally anywhere. “The company invests in setting up connectivity infrastructure at the residences of employees to facilitate seamless workflow. Employees are allowed to access the office network from anywhere via a Blackberry or iPad,” says an employee of the company. Such flexibility is a real boon to employees, and more women are exploring it, says Savitha H , a Capgemini employee. 

But it’s not just companies who are eager to have employees connected. Employees too have a fundamental urge to do so as they want to be kept in the loop about all developments centering around their employer, customers and partners 24X7. It’s called mutual encroachment and, whether you like it or not, that’s the new world we are entering. 


“On my Blackberry I have deactivated the alert that comes when an email lands. Kept it only for SMS. I have a tendency to reach out for the phone the moment it beeps or rings. My family gets very irritated, especially if it happens at meal times. It’s also a struggle to keep my eye away from the blinking light that alerts you about mails. My husband can draw demarcations more than I can.” - 

Priya Chetty-Rajagopal | VP AT STANTONCHASE INTERNATIONAL 

“We have come across instances where wives of software professionals complain about their husbands locking themselves up in a conference call when they reach home early. It’s partly the individual’s fault of not choosing to switch off the phones at home like they do in meetings or conferences.” -