The rate for the job

It's the start of the year and we're all contemplating how much money we haven't got following the holiday excesses and hoping that the local church mice are in generous mood. What better time, then, to make sure you're getting your due and proper from your employer?

This is a tough time of year for anyone involved in retail – after the madness of the Christmas rush comes the carnage of the sales, when, let's face it, the British shopping public is not necessarily at its most polite. To cap it all, the silly season has left many of us with scarcely a brass farthing to our name. Right now that end of January pay cheque seems an awfully long way away doesn't it? It is only natural at this time of year to take stock of your work and finances, and, not to put too fine a point on it, how to make more money in the coming year.

But should you be looking to move onward and upward, it is important to have a benchmark against which to measure what you might reasonably earn given your current career path. Fortunately enough, recruitment advertising and marketing specialists Adgrafix has put together a rather detailed piece of remuneration analysis for the retail industry and have been good enough to give us a peak at the headline figures.

The survey, primarily intended for those actually responsible for setting pay and benefit guidelines, is based on an original questionnaire of well over 2,000 retail workers. Covering a wide range of jobs titles and sub sectors of the retail industry, it looks in particular depth at store management positions. The Adgrafix study (all 93 pages of it) slices and dices the information in a multitude of ways that combine to form an authoritative overview of the sector.

As is the nature of salary surveys, the figures should be regarded as a guide to the average salary rather than as definitive absolutes. Don't go kicking your boss' door down based on the survey alone at least. Due to the varied and complex nature of the industry, fluctuations in salary can be considerable, with associated benefits being removed or added to make up for shortfalls. Even the nature and name of the company can affect salary levels, as can location, individual company policy and historical difficulties recruiting for specific positions. Nevertheless, the study remains an exceptionally useful benchmarking tool.

Salaries

Without dedicating a catalogue's worth of pages to it, there is simply no way to cover the myriad of information on each of the twenty different job types in this article. So instead, we've decided to focus on three distinct job types: store managers, buyers and HR Managers. Before the rest of you throw any toys out of prams, further information on each job type will be released on our website in the coming few months. For full details of the survey and pricing, please look at the contact details at the end of this article.

Store Management Roles

With more than 480 store managers contributing their details, the survey contains a huge variety of data from store managers running two-person outlets to store managers in control of giant warehouse-style stores with hundreds of staff and turnover in excess of £55m. As such the salary bandings in the preceding table reflect the diversity of potential store size. Where the bands are wide, the lower figure will obviously refer to roles looking after smaller stores / turnovers / headcounts, while salaries at the upper end will be for larger stores with greater responsibility.

Buyer Roles

These much sought after roles can offer a very structured, clearly defined career path and, particularly where fashion is concerned, constitute the more ‘glamorous' end of retailing. Not unexpectedly, the Adgrafix survey revealed that to a large extent salary is a function of responsibility. Management of people at buying level appears to make a good degree of difference. More interestingly, however, the study actually puts figures to this correlation. A buyer with no direct reports will average around £30,000 as a basic, while the figure increases in line with responsibility:

1 or 2 direct reports – adds around £6,000

3 or 4 direct reports – adds around £12,000

5 plus direct reports – adds around £20,000

Bonuses are a major feature of buyers' jobs, and more than two thirds of buyers were taking home bonuses of more than £5,000, and 15% taking home bonuses in excess of £15,000.

The table below indicates salaries for buyers working across different industries:

HR Manager Roles

The HR job type varies according to work location, and the survey compiled results from store-based HR managers as well as head office-based managers. According to the study's figures, head office-based HR Managers averaged around £6,000 – £8,000 more than their store-based counterparts, although store-based HR Managers at large format stores could earn in excess of £50k.

Regional Differences

The data from the Adgrafix study would seem to indicate that the old North/South divide remains very much in evidence within the retail industry. To a reasonable extent this is to be expected as salaries mirror the regional cost of living. Thus, unsurprisingly, survey respondents from London and the South East reported the highest levels of average salary. However, that's not to say that the study didn't reveal some surprising information. The high rank of Wales and the South West in the table below is something of a surprise. These are not always areas necessarily associated with top end paying retail vacancies and the data perhaps reflects the industry's ongoing development of new markets and need to attract the right personnel to facilitate this expansion.

Again, to provide the geographical pay bias for every job role covered by the survey would have been impractical. Instead, we've pulled out survey data from workers with four specific job titles – Department Manager, Store Manager, Merchandiser and HR Manager – to help illustrate the regional differences. As the second highest average paying region, the Eastern region may seem unusually high up – however, bearing in mind that the Eastern region is traditionally known as one of the more difficult in which to recruit, it could well be that retailers have to pay more to attract the right candidates – this is particularly true of more the senior positions in the table.

Topping the pay scale

With information on all retailers at all stages in their careers, we thought it'd be of interest to see which industry sectors offer the best careers in terms of strict earning potential. The table at the bottom of the page opposite comprises a common retail management position (store manager) and common head office position (Buyer).

While these salaries are not necessarily the ‘top whack' available, they are representative of the types of pay on offer to Store Managers or Buyers who are at the top of their game. The figures are based on the average of the top 2 or 3 best paid respondents.

The food sector, no doubt helped by the ever increasing size of supermarkets/hypermarket stores, typically provides the best earning opportunities for store managers, with available packages of almost £100k. The fashion and multiple/department sectors also pay healthy salaries at the upper end, in excess of £50k and both with bonuses of over £10k.

While it is probably safe to assume that no data was collected from store managers of large retail park stores within the babys / childrens, entertainment / gifts / cards and the footwear sectors, due to the relatively low top end pay, there is an implication that these sectors do not hold many opportunities to progress beyond the bands stated.

Looking at pay levels for buyers (senior buyers are listed separately in the survey) it seems that buyers dealing in hard goods (electrical / telecoms and home / furniture / DIY) have the potential to earn the largest average basic salaries and bonuses of around £20k. Buyers working in the food, fashion and health / beauty sectors can all aspire to around £50k, although bonuses tend to be smaller in the health / beauty sector.

Of course there are going to be exceptions to these rules, you might feel that the representation of your sector/function doesn't reflect your personal experience. This is inevitable when trying to assess an industry that employs roughly one person in every ten working in the UK today. Nevertheless the Adgrafix study provides an invaluable benchmark against which to judge the pay scales of individual organisations.

For more information

Salary banding information on different job titles to those published above will be available on the Appointment website, www.theappointment.co.uk over the coming months. If you are a corporate customer, and are interested in purchasing the full Adgrafix Retail Pay and Benefits Survey 2006/7, please contact Helen Jones on 0208 347 2803 or email survey@adgrafix.co.uk.