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Employee Compensation Challenges: Determining What to Offer

Recently I asked for some help in preparing for a local session on employee compensation challenges. I had some good responses and wanted to share some of the insights and advice with everyone. I’ll be sharing two blogs on the topic: determining what to offer employees and how to get managers on board. 

The number one response that HR professionals said was most difficult was figuring out what to offer. In the video I talk about some of the key ways to determine that information, including using local salary surveys for the cheapest and most accurate information. I would encourage companies to avoid using free, unverified tools like salary.com for building compensation structures. In addition, I discuss the importance of having an overarching compensation strategy to drive decisions from a high level. Check it out!

Employee compensation challenges video

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So what about you? Is this an employee compensation issue that you face? I’d love to hear about your experience.

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4 responses to “Employee Compensation Challenges: Determining What to Offer”

  1. HR Compensation Challenges: Getting Managers On Board – upstartHR

    […] ← Employee Compensation Challenges: Determining What to Offer […]

  2. Scott Stamm Avatar
    Scott Stamm

    Hi Ben –

    It strikes me that there is a middle ground that you didn’t address – sites like the Bureau of Labor Statistics and their state-level counterparts (such as in Texas, through the Workforce Commission). This is data that is publicly available, and its not sourced from employees, but through employers. Are there the same reliability issues?

    Thanks!

    1. Ben Avatar
      Ben

      Hey, Scott! Great suggestion! I have had limited success with the data I have pulled from BLS sources due to the timeliness or the accuracy at a local level. It might be nice for overall validation but it’s hard to get granular enough in the times I really needed to use it. If there is state level information (we don’t really have that here in Alabama) then that would eliminate some of that problem. Good call!

  3. Scott Stamm Avatar
    Scott Stamm

    My company uses a PEO for payroll and benefits, and they have been a good resource on HR issues as well. Through them I’ve had access to comp surveys from PayScale, and I’ll admit I do appreciate some of the granular breakdowns they provide. That said, through BLS I can get data statewide, or broken down by MSA (Metropolitan Statistical Area), as well as WDA (Workforce Development Area) – two different ways of breaking up geography. Once I took the time to figure out how they broke down their data, I found that BLS was reasonably close, and I could download their reports for easy access from my desktop on short notice (rather than the week that it takes to get PayScale reports).

    Sorry to hear Alabama isn’t as robust – I sure mileage varies from state-to-state, but BLS is definitely worth a look!

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