Confidence up, bonuses too
Confidence among Westchester business owners bounced back in the fourth quarter of 2011 as increasing numbers of employers planned to give holiday bonuses, according to a recent survey.
The Westchester Business Confidence Index, a quarterly report produced by the Business Council of Westchester and DataKey Consulting L.L.C. in Mount Kisco, registered a 54.2 rating for the fourth quarter of last year, up from a third-quarter rating of 41.6.
Some 120 business owners were surveyed for the index, which is scaled from 1 to 100 with a rating of 50 indicating that an equal number of businesses are optimistic about the future as are pessimistic.
“There”™s definitely a general sense of cautioned improvement,” said Ted Miller, founder and president of DataKey Consulting.
Miller said several of the owners surveyed gave employees holiday bonuses for the first time in at least three years.
“At one of the companies that (gave bonuses) it was a total and wonderful surprise to their employees,” Miller said. “There was no expectation of anything ”“ people are in general just glad to be among the ranks of the employed.”
Of those business owners and chief executives who told Miller they would be awarding bonuses this year, some indicated they would be giving company-wide bonuses while others said they were limiting bonuses to management-level employees.
Despite the increased confidence, most employers are unlikely to grant across-the-board salary raises at this time, Miller said.
“There are definitely signals that things are getting a little better here but the CEOs are cautious and they don”™t want to ramp up their fixed costs with higher salaries yet,” he said.
Instead, many employers are implementing targeted salary increases for various positions in which the work-load and responsibilities may have increased over the past year, Miller said.
“They”™re doing this spot-checking and adjusting where appropriate,” he said.
Terrence Keppler, White Plains branch manager for global staffing firm Robert Half International, said there has been a surge in confidence among Westchester”™s business owners.
“We probably haven”™t seen this confidence or increases in this salary range since the 2006-2007 time frame prior to the downturn,” Keppler said.
He said the salary increases and bonuses reflect an increasingly competitive hiring environment, particularly for positions in the fields of information technology, accounting, financial services and business analysis.
“The market over the last year and a half has seen an increase in hiring and as the market is becoming more competitive, clients aren”™t just hiring but are increasing their salaries and extending bonuses to their staff to retain them and to attract the top talent,” Keppler said.
Prior to a sharp drop experienced by the Westchester Business Confidence Index in the third quarter of 2011, the index had posted increases in five consecutive quarters, topping out at 66.3 in the second quarter of last year.
While the federal government sputtered through the second half of 2011, a heightened sense of urgency on the part of the county and state governments ”“ coupled with several major business deals that happened in Westchester during the fourth quarter ”“ likely resulted in the more positive reading, said Marsha Gordon, president and CEO of the Business Council of Westchester.
“The leadership of the governor and of (County Executive Rob Astorino) and the fact that there was both bipartisan agreement on the state and county level on the budgets really showed the business community that the elected officials recognize the importance of working together and moving forward,” Gordon said. “Here in Westchester it was not going to be politics as usual when I think in the third quarter people weren”™t sure.”