How Can HR Professionals Conduct a Salary Survey Without Third-Party Help?

Dear All,

I am aware that a lot of fellow users have posted this query here with not much response and success! My question is simple - how can you conduct a salary survey without involving a third party/service provider such as Hewitt, Mercer, etc.? If you do not have any of these resources, what is the best way to solicit responses, and how do you go about the entire process? I am talking right from the start, i.e., job classification, grading, to the normalization phase.

I would consider this as a chance to seek as many responses as possible from my fellow HR professionals, including the seniors, so that all those who have asked this question before get their answers.

Regards,
Sajal

Hi!

Please find my comments on each of your statements:

"How can you conduct a salary survey without involving a third party/service provider such as Hewitt, Mercer, etc.?"

Comment: You will have to do it yourself or assign it to one of your staff.

"If you do not have any of these resources, what is the best way to solicit responses and how do you go about the entire process? I am talking right from the start, i.e., job classification, grading to the normalization phase."

Comment: Soliciting responses in a compensation survey can be done in several ways. Two popular methods are the questionnaire method and oral interviews (in person or via telephone).

The concepts "job classification" and "grading" are not compensation survey terminologies. These are concepts that belong to Job Evaluation. Of course, you can get the job class and job grade of the positions you are surveying by including them in your questionnaire or asking about them during the conduct of the oral interview.

I would highly recommend that people like you seek professional help in the conduct of the survey. Getting the data and preparing a good compensation benchmarking matrix and graph that can be used as a basis for top management decisions are different things. Cost-wise, the conduct of a compensation survey may not necessarily be inexpensive if it is done in-house. Sometimes, buying the regular market reports published by reputable firms is cheaper, better, and more reliable.

Best wishes.

Ed Llarena, Jr. Managing Partner Emilla Consulting

Tel: 00632-787-0423 (landline) (mobile) (helps improve corporate governance worldwide, especially in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and the Pacific Region)

I appreciate your comments and agree with what you have mentioned; one limitation, of course, is cost, on which I really cannot do much. Any other pointers that you can provide me with?

I think we can create questionnaires about:
- basic salary
- bonus
- social and medical insurance
- benefits

We can also ask the following questions:
- What are the best policies?
- What are not good policies in our company?

Regards