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What Determines a Business Continuity Professional’s Salary?

Salaries for Business Continuity professionals continued to increase in the year 2000.  According to our salary survey, 85.2% enjoyed an increase with the average being slightly over 12%.  Only 5.3% of all professionals surveyed experienced a decrease in their salary.  This was mainly due to transitioning from contract to full-time work as well as receiving less in bonus pay.  The final 9.5% of those surveyed did not receive an increase in their salary.  Several of these professionals did receive a base salary increase, however, the bonus was less than the previous year.

Business Continuity professionals received salary increases by both staying with their current company (some receiving promotions) as well as accepting positions with new companies.  According to our survey, those of you who accepted positions with new companies enjoyed the greatest increase in your salary.

The most frequently asked question about what determines the salary of a Business Continuity professional is: Will achieving a Business Continuity certification increase my salary? 

BC Management’s Annual Salary Survey

●Cheyene Haase

We took a close look at this question and we found some mixed results.   Average salaries for certified professionals increased by about 6.8%, while non-certified professionals enjoyed roughly a 23.2% salary increase.  After analyzing the responses we discovered that this large increase for non-certified professionals came from an incredible bonus payout for 2000. 

The table below shows the average salary for both non-certified and certified professionals without taking into consideration the other factors that determine one’s salary, such as years of experience in the BC/DR field.  A majority of those professionals without a certification had on average more experience (10+ years) in the Business Continuity than those with a certification.

In order to determine if it really pays to be certified, we compared the average salaries of non-certified versus certified professionals based on years of experience in Business Continuity.  According to these numbers, it pays to earn a professional certification.

According to our survey, those professionals who increased their level of certification were rewarded with higher salaries.  Since most of the survey respondents possessed a professional certification from the Disaster Recovery Institute International, we focused on the difference in salaries between the three different certifications awarded by the DRII. 

There was a significant increase in salary from the ABCP to CBCP to MBCP; however, salaries seemed to drop with those who had 2+ certifications.  When taking a closer look, those professionals were in industries that paid lower salaries, such as the government.  The survey also showed those professionals being involved in environmental contingency planning versus business or information technology.  Below are the results for 1999 and 2000 average salaries for the different certifications. 

Please review the insert that lists other professional certifications appropriate for the Business Continuity field and other related fields.  We do hope to receive a better response from all certified professionals next year so we may analyze the salaries more appropriately.

There was also a difference in salary for Business Continuity professionals depending on their industry specialization.  The survey showed that those professionals in the banking, consulting, telecommunications, brokerage, healthcare, and manufacturing industries enjoyed the higher salaries.  A majority of Business Continuity professionals who responded to the survey came from the banking or consulting industries.

Obviously the years of total work experience combined with Business Continuity expertise will affect a professional’s salary.  The survey noted a significant increase for those professionals with 3-4 years experience in Business Continuity.  We took a close look at what affected this sharp increase in the salary. We found that ¾ of those surveyed with 3-4 years of BC experience were in the consulting or financial industry.  We also found that over half of them ranked themselves at an 8 or above in an IT knowledge rating as well as ¾ of them possessed either an ABCP or CBCP. 

A majority of those surveyed at the 6 years of BC experience level happened to be based in more rural areas, which would attribute for the drop in salary.  The salary dropped significantly again for those professionals at the 20+ years level of BC experience.  Most of the professionals surveyed at this range were either in the government or utility industry or they were from a rural geographic location.

The survey showed the greatest fluctuation when professionals ranked themselves on their IT knowledge.  Overall salary did increase in correlation with greater IT knowledge, but this was a very subjective portion of the survey.

The next big question is how does travel affect the BC professional’s salary?  There were some interesting results in this portion of the survey.  To make things a little more interesting we decided to analyze the percentage of job positions and the corresponding salaries within each travel category.

The table below shows the travel categories (in blue), which are expressed by percentages.  The positions under each travel category show whom traveled as well as their average base, bonus and total salaries. 

The survey revealed that a majority of those surveyed traveled 50% or less.  There were numerous high-level Business Continuity professionals who traveled very little, such as Directors and VP’s.  We also noticed that the more a BC planner, coordinator, or analyst traveled, the higher their salary was.  A majority of those who traveled 50% or more were in the consulting industry, thus leading to higher bonuses.

Next we analyzed salary based on position.  We noted that again the consulting positions were among the top paying.

How does an advanced degree affect the salary potential of a Business Continuity professional?  The survey showed there was an increase from no degree to MBA, however, there was a decrease for those possessing a Master of Science as well as a Ph. D.  When taking a closer look we found that those surveyed at these levels were either in low paying industries or were relatively new to the field with 3 years or less in Business Continuity experience.

The final interesting question is how do these average salaries differ across the country and world?  Unfortunately the responses to this survey, being its first year, covered mainly the US.  We did receive some very strong responses from the United Kingdom as well as Canada.  Included is a list of the average salaries across the world.  We did not include the states or countries that we did not receive a reasonable number of responses from.

It wasn’t surprising to see California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Virginia commanding the top salaries.  These are also the same locations where the greatest demand for Business Continuity professionals exists.

BC Management would like to thank everyone who took the time and effort to complete last year’s salary survey.  We hope this information is useful and helpful for everyone in the Business Continuity field.

For more information please contact:

Cheyene Haase

BC Management

19744 Beach Blvd., #201

Huntington Beach, CA 92648

Phone: (866) 969-8006

            (714) 969-8006

Fax:      (714) 969-8336

Email: chaase@bcmanagement.net

Website: http://www.bcmanagement.net