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Countdown to Compference: Market Reports

I’m thrilled to be joining some of my PayScale colleagues in presenting at Compference 16 next week, where I’ll be partnering with Kaylyn Messer, Senior Customer Success Manager, to talk about understanding and using our salary data reports. It’s an exciting opportunity to speak directly with our customers about PayScale and how they can best utilize our products to be fair, transparent, and modern in their approach to compensation.

In our presentation, I’m looking forward to emphasizing some really valuable parts of our market reports that sometimes people miss.  There’s so much going on, and so much available data, sometimes it’s easy to miss some key points.  Without spoiling the surprise for those who will be able to attend live, I wanted to share my favorite things about our market reports:

  • Salary data is a result of finding appropriate benchmark jobs for your organization’s positions and then pricing them in your labor markets. The trick is that “the market” isn’t the same for everyone; you need to define it based on the composition of your talent landscape. If you’re a small software company, don’t just assume that your labor market is comprised of other small companies, especially if you’re located in a tech hotbed like Seattle or San Jose. Thinking about your talent competitors will help ensure the data you get is reflective of your market so you can confidently use it to inform your pay decisions. Once you do, you’ll find that the data really clicks.
  • With PayScale’s online platform, you can easily view different cuts of comp data to see how factors like organization size, industry, and location affect pay for your jobs. There’s no need to purchase separate cuts for different segments of your workforce; it’s all right there in your Benchmark or Insight account based on the way you define your Labor Markets.
  • In addition to salary information, PayScale’s products offer analytics tools that can illuminate stories within the market data, including these three must-have reports: the Market Differential Analysis Report, which highlights labor cost differences across locations; the Hot and Cold Jobs Report, which details changes in pay for specific jobs and allows customers to spot market trends; and the Ranges to Market Report, which calculates the deltas between customers’ range midpoints and the current price of their jobs to evaluate the alignment of their pay structures to their market targets.
  • Once you’ve defined your market, matched your jobs, and chosen your target percentile, the resulting pay data can be used as the foundation for a market-based pay structure. Some organizations may choose to develop job-based pay ranges, typically an approach more common among smaller organizations—those with 20 jobs or less—as it can be too cumbersome and inflexible for larger organizations with more jobs and multiple locations. A grade-based pay structure is often more suitable for those larger organizations and provides an opportunity to effectively balance external and internal job value.

If you haven’t yet registered for Compference 16, I encourage you to do so today. Compference 16 is certified for continuing education credit by both the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) and Human Resources Certification Institute (HRCI). I hope to see you there!

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Kari Van Hoof
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