A new salary survey released today has indicated that job satisfaction among UK IT service management (ITSM) professionals is on the rise.
European service desk and IT support organisation, the Service Desk Institute (SDI), surveyed 257 ITSM professionals from across the UK and found just over half were satisfied with their salary (52 per cent) and felt valued by senior management (55 per cent).
Respondents were also confident in the face of recession, where 65 per cent stated that the economic climate would not have an impact on staffing levels. While 41 per cent said recession would not hinder the growth of their service desk function, despite the fact that over a third of recruitment budgets had been reduced.
Howard Kendall, SDI chairman, said: "Historically, ITSM has battled poor retention and low job satisfaction but these survey results show that the industry has turned a significant corner in recent years."
He said more organisations were realising the value of the IT service desk to their business and that this was reflected in competitive salaries and opportunities for career development.
Broken out though, the survey revealed pay disparity still existed according to gender and role. The greatest disparity in pay among men and women was 4.5 per cent at IT service desk manager level and the lowest was 1.3 per cent at service desk analyst level.
Despite this, more female ITSM professionals (49 per cent) were satisfied with their salary than their male counterparts (46 per cent). And over a third of the survey respondents were female (37 per cent), indicating that ITSM was proving an attractive career choice for women in IT.
By geography, unsurprisingly, the highest ITSM earners were based in London, with the second highest earners based in the East Midlands, where multinational media providers, large law firms and global IT applications developers from within the private sector are based. But, by contrast, Wales was found to be the region consistently offering the lowest pay bracket across all job levels.
The survey also showed that ITSM professionals in all job levels earned more in the private sector than their public sector counterparts, with private sector IT service desk managers earning up to seven per cent more.
