Seeking Better Ways to Conduct a Salary Survey: How Do You Ensure Competitive Pay?

Hi,

If anybody can help me in conducting a salary survey on my own behalf, I would be obliged. What I am currently doing for my company is simply acting as a job seeker and applying to jobs on portals. When I get calls, I ask for salary information and mention that I am not interested. Additionally, I check the "salary offered" details from competitor companies in their job postings. Is there a better way to check the salary ranges for different profiles? Help me out as we want to ensure that our salaries match employees' expectations and industry standards.

Gunjan

Gunjan,

Let me know if you also do recruiting and the different methods you use for recruiting. I can help you with a couple of methods to conduct a salary survey.

Yes, I am also handling recruitments for my company. I am utilizing Monster.com for recruitment purposes and conducting campus placements.

I will make you understand this with the help of an example - Let's say you are looking for an MBA – Finance from an average college with about 2 years of experience and has done a lot of Financial Planning work. Now you have 2 options here. If you want to do a salary survey of your competitors who are in the same business as you are, OR you want to do the salary survey of the above profile from companies who are not your competitors but have those kinds of profiles as mentioned above OR both competitors and in general.

Now log onto Monster. Pick up at least 5-10 CV's of a similar profile to what you are looking at from your competitor Company. Call them up as your Company or as a Consultant (I prefer Consultant) and share that you have an opening with you for which you are looking for candidates (make sure you make the opening interesting enough that they should get pretty interested in that). Once they say that they are interested, engage them in a conversation (long or short, your wish) and in the end check with them their salary (specifically check their fixed salary as a lot of people share their CTC when someone checks on their salary). To make this whole thing more genuine, check with them on their Notice Period and expected salary.

In the same flow, check with them why they are looking for a change (Now that's a question to which quite many people open up like anything, telling all their pain points and why they are looking for a change) and that's where you can slowly touch the issue that "how is their Current Company in terms of giving annual salary hikes" and lot many times on this you get some real good data which you can utilize in the future.

By doing the same exercise with about 5-10 candidates (from your competitor Company or other Companies) you will get a broad or a close range of salaries what the above-mentioned profile is drawing in the market and that will be reliable to a large extent because you have got the figures from those people who are actually drawing it.

Understand that people might tell you a slightly different salary from actually what they are drawing but again people don't fudge it too much.

From the different salary figures data that you get, you can average out the salary that an MBA Finance with 2 years of experience is drawing in the market.

What you have to remember is that your target companies from which you are talking to the candidates should be at par or close to your company in business parameters.

Although it is a lengthy process, it usually gives good results.

The second method will be from all the different campuses that you have a tie-up with.

Ask them to send data related to salary figures (Average/Max/Min) what your competitors are paying on the campus.

Thirdly, when you interview people for the different positions in your company, definitely check with them about their current fixed salary and make a database for them so that if next year you have to interview someone for the same role and you check the salary from the person, then you will be able to gauge how much the difference has come in between a year for the same role.

What I mentioned above are cost-free methods to get an insight about the salary drawn and you can do it on your own.

Well, Prashant, I also did something similar when I needed it for my organization. However, we should have a platform or media for accessing such information, especially in the West, particularly in the US, where you can actually gather a lot of information from various surveys conducted from time to time. We have been encountering numerous difficulties regarding this matter, and I am certain that many other HR professionals face similar challenges.

Saurabh

Saurabh,

That's what I mentioned "Cost Free" & "On your own " methods. As i said they are beneficial when one doesn't want to spend money on a Comp Benchmarking especially firms /co's with small headcount then I guess that it can be used to get an "insight" and not a exact understanding.

One really wants to get a precise comp benchmarking then Comp Specialist Companies like Mercer, Hewitt etc. can be engaged for a salary survey but then they will come with a price even if you buy Comp data reports from them (heard that they charge decent amounts). Even though if you will engage a small vendor to do the same it will also incur cost.

Another method was sending questionnaires to target audience to get the salary info to make a consensus. Wasn't really successful as I tried that even myself. But still others can give it a shot.

I know in US a lot of survey keeps on happening in reference to salary benchmarking & people actively participate in those survey & quite a few times reports on that are also free to get.

Out here “I GUESS “it's not the case. Out here what I have seen that the frequency of these kinds of survey is not all that high + people are not too enthusiastic to share their salary information & mostly one has to pay to get an access to these reports.

Well, I think, as you said, it is all because we do not want to be transparent sharing our salary information but at the same time are very interested to know the same about others.

Saurabh

"Exactly."

The thought that knowing "my salary" shouldn't let me down in front of my peers or my batch people is another cause. If people know each other's salary, then many times it creates a lot of turbulence in the department as everyone thinks that they are worth more than what they are getting and questions why the other person is paid more when they are doing the same job.

Dear Saurabh and Prashant,

Thanks a lot.

I feel unless one goes for a typical survey, it's very uncertain to find out the exact salary. Although I have gone through the resumes of people with similar profiles, I never called them up. I think it is a good option as many companies don't hire professional surveyors. Above all, no matter what we pretend to find out and get, most bosses don't take these figures into consideration when giving increments. That's ironic but true. I did a survey for many employees, but in the end, they received increments based on the employer's perception. Somewhere, we all have this complex about sharing our details with others.

Nice discussion.

Thanks

Gentleman,

Compensation or remuneration practices in India are not uniform. Because compensation or remuneration elements are different in nature and practice, or in other words, the basic philosophy of remuneration differs from organization to organization and employer to employers.

If you take benchmark jobs for a salary survey, the job description also varies from company to company, which will end up in job title match instead of job matching.

Further, for a good survey point, you have to select criteria of employers/companies and specific region to ascertain the cost of living elements and market pricing of the benchmarked jobs.

I think it won't be difficult to conduct such a salary survey if you request your organization and competitors to participate in the salary survey for ascertaining the worth of benchmark jobs or take services of professional consultants for the secrecy of data if other companies express reservation and insist on the secrecy of data. Only a third party can assure data sharing secrecy.

If there is no hindrance, you can offer a joint survey by the representatives of participant companies to involve in the salary survey and share survey results with an open-minded approach. Then you develop a data collection tool of questionnaires covering compensation elements and range from minimum to maximum benefits and cost analysis of the benefits as part of compensation packages. Then conduct an analysis of data for the minimum-mid-maximum salary range for each benchmarked job.

These are guidelines for managing your salary survey.

Partha

Salary Survey Methodology

Let me share my views with you. Please correct me if I am wrong. When we conduct a salary survey, it is advisable to select at least 12 companies for a comparative study. While selecting companies, take into consideration their:

- Market capitalization.
- Revenue generated.
- Geography.
- Complexity of the job.

Ensure there is no mixing up of jobs with domestic, regional, and international scopes. We can then use web portals for the study. Select CVs from 10 to 12 companies that are similar to our company. Contact them and inquire about their current CTC, increments received over the last 2 years, bonuses, pay for performance, etc. (These are all my own methods).

Group each person's job into categories like Sales, Admin, IT, HR, etc., and also by years of experience. The range of salary can be determined (min-mid-max) and then presented to your management.

Regards,
Suresh M.G.