Analyzing Salary Surveys

Custom Surveys

Adherence to the Federal Trade Commission Safe Harbor Guidelines should be considered before making a decision to conduct your own survey. To ensure compliance with the FTC Safe Harbor Guidelines, surveys should be conducted and managed by a neutral, third party, such as a consulting firm, trade association or a survey provider.

It is expensive and can be time consuming to conduct a custom compensation survey, but it may be worth it if you need to:

• survey specific jobs or data requirements

OR

• survey a specific industry or geographic area with limited survey data

It is also important not to duplicate the work of other salary survey providers when conducting a custom salary survey. This will help avoid duplication of costs and effort by participants and sponsors. The number of participating companies will be higher if they find value in the custom survey.

It may actually be more effective to make a peer group selection from an existing salary survey that has the data you need, rather than conducting a custom survey.

When your organization decides to conduct its own survey, there is much to be said for attempting to interest other organizations to co-sponsor the effort. If this is possible, the costs may be shared. The joint effort might also result in an informal group of organizations that see the advantage of periodic surveys.

Whether or not other organizations accept co-sponsorship, a steering committee consisting of representatives of some of the involved organizations is a good idea. These committee members will be helpful in planning the survey and in securing survey participants.