Analyzing Salary Surveys

Using Benchmark Jobs

Benchmark jobs are commonly found in multiple organizations and used to make pay comparisons with comparable jobs within or outside of the organization. (They are important jobs when establishing the organization’s internal hierarchy since market data for benchmark jobs is readily available in salary surveys.)

When selecting benchmark jobs for your organization, it is important to ensure all major job functions, job families and career levels are represented. Benchmark jobs will preferably have multiple incumbents but not always so.

Benchmark jobs then serve as an internal anchor for non-benchmark jobs

Matching Benchmark Jobs

If you are conducting a custom industry survey, when matching your benchmark jobs to those of survey participants, a helpful guideline is to attempt to match 50% of the jobs in the company. It will vary, up or down, depending on your organization and available salary surveys.

As a general guideline, a benchmark job should match 70% of the job content with the survey job description. Avoid matching jobs based on job title only. For example, a Marketing Associate may be consistent with either a Marketing Assistant, Marketing Coordinator, Marketing Specialist, etc., depending on the salary survey and organization. Also, avoid title inflation.

The quality of your data and survey job matches will influence the quality of your annual compensation plan. So always try to get the highest quality data you can.