Looking to Benchmark Pay?
Acquiring Custom Salary Survey Data
Because they have different salary structures from the jobs of regular employees, it may be necessary to conduct additional, separate surveys for executive, sales, and professional and management jobs.
You may wish to consider the following when determining what you need in a custom survey for your organization:
- Relevant labor market for each job group
- Job matches for your benchmark jobs
- Survey participants and number of incumbents
- Age of the data
- Sample size for the reported jobs
Survey Method
Most salary surveys are now conducted online. Surveys may be conducted by:
- telephone
- mail/email or
- the Internet
We'll discuss each of these options in greater detail so you will know which survey method is the best in any given situation.
Telephone Surveys
A telephone survey may be used to obtain compensation policy data, practice data and pay information on a few jobs.
Telephone surveys may occasionally be used in well-defined industry groups where job comparability has been established or can be easily accomplished. But the downside is that telephone surveys can be unproductive or misused, and government regulations may preclude this practice.
Mailed or Emailed Surveys
Mailed or emailed surveys may be safely used to secure compensation policy and practice data, or a combination of email and mail may be used to conduct the survey. Although this is a common survey approach, assuring job comparability and obtaining useful compensation data can be a problem.
Careful design of questionnaires, or data input documents, and precise definitions of survey terminology help to ensure quality responses. The ultimate quality of the data, however, depends on the respondent’s qualifications, knowledge of the organization's jobs, ability to make solid job matches with the benchmark job descriptions, and dedication to the process. The conscientiousness of the respondent is essential to survey reliability and validity.
As in telephone surveys in the same industry, reliable data may be secured through mailed or emailed surveys. In fact, organizations surveying a widely dispersed industry group or area may have no other choice.
Internet
The Internet is a natural medium to collect salary survey data. Survey questionnaires are posted on the Internet to collect data. Most surveys still collect data in the form of fixed-length files where data is reviewed both statistically and visually.
Some of the newer survey websites verify data input automatically. If it falls within a preset standard error (range), the data is integrated into the survey. The result is that Internet-based surveys can be interactive, "real-time," and reflect data gathered "up to the minute."