Compensation Benchmarks & Plans

Every company should strive to understand how best to compensate its employees thoughtfully and strategically. A formal compensation plan is a vital leadership tool that will help guide decisions around pay increases, budgeting, professional development investments, benefit programs, and organizational structure.

They also play a vital role in:

• Ensuring equitable practices
• Improving attraction and retention
• Addressing disengagement and productivity issues

With every compensation plan project, we:

• Consult with you and your executive team to set a compensation philosophy that supports your organization's strategic plan.
• Review roles and job descriptions, identify compensable factors, and prepare for accurate job matching in the marketplace.
• Benchmark your current positions using our comprehensive compensation database, including leading market data surveys.
• Establish salary ranges and assign roles to ranges.
• Conduct compa-ratio analysis to determine the placement of roles relative to pay range midpoints.
• Review position placements, identify internal pay equity or compression concerns, and create strategies for dealing with out-of-range salaries.
• Set a compensation policy to guide pay/salary administration moving forward.

A compensation philosophy is a formal statement documenting your organization's approach to employee compensation. It:

• Defines your competitive market position in relation to base pay, variable compensation, and benefit opportunities.
• Explains the "why" behind employee pay and creates a framework for consistency — making it a powerful tool for attracting, retaining, and motivating employees.
• Increases organizational transparency. When your managers can easily explain your pay philosophy, compensation conversations become much easier and more equitable.

A well-designed compensation philosophy supports your organization's strategic plan and initiatives, business goals, competitive outlook, operating objectives, and compensation and total reward strategies.

Short for "comparison ratio" a comp-ratio is a way for assessing the competitiveness of an employee's pay level.

We calculate it by comparing an employee's current compensation to the position's market average, giving you insight into whether their pay is above, below, or spot on with the rest of the market.

Understanding an incumbent's compa-ratio can help you better attract and retain talent, as well as evaluate internal equity. Compa-ratio is evaluated based on current incumbent pay (or an average thereof) compared to a range's midpoint.