Use Data When Setting Raises, But Don't Stop There

How the PayScale Index Fits Into Raise Planning

By Tripp Ritter, PayScale.com

Some high level strategic thinking and data gathering must happen before raises can be given out. From following inflation and local market rate shifts, to considering business goals and budget constraints, HR professionals must be extra hard working and efficient with their time to pull off smart merit increases. How can all of the information gathering be simplified? When do you have enough input to make a smart decision?

The PayScale Index: Which Jobs Do Best?

Is Your Job One of the Winners?

By Tripp Ritter, PayScale

Earlier this week, we saw that The PayScale Index revealed major differences in wage growth among metros. Hold on to your hats, because the differences in wage growth among jobs is even more stark. The leading job's wages raced ahead nearly 10% since 2006. The last place job did so poorly that it has lower wages than in 2006! You can find all the details in the The PayScale Index, but we also have an infographic showing the top and bottom three. Find out how your job fared in the past few years.

The PayScale Index: Which Cities Do Best?

Where are People Making More Money?

By Tripp Ritter, PayScale

The economy, on the whole, is on the way up. If that doesn't ring true, it could be where you live. There are significant differences in wage growth between major metros. The PayScale Index breaks the differences down for you. Is your metro a leader or is it a lagard? Find out now.

Salary by Location

Why Geographic Differentials Don’t Work

For years compensation professionals have used geographic differentials to make decisions about what to pay jobs in locations where they may not have salary data. The theory stands that if you don’t have data for one location, you can use data from another location and adjust it based on the cost of labor in the two cities. While this may be a better option than making decisions without any data on salary by location – it’s not much better.

Employee Compensation Plan Design

Think Ahead: Smart Employee Compensation Plan Design

When it comes to helping HR professionals utilize our tool to build, maintain, or update their compensation program, I hear myself saying over and over again, “remember it’s a tool, but you have to know what you want from the tool before it can be useful.” It is very important for any organization that is going through the process of benchmarking to work through what their employee compensation plan design strategy is prior to trying to interpret external market data. Part of defining your compensation philosophy is knowing who you compete with for talent and how competitive you want to be. Let me provide you some examples of what I mean.

Creating a Salary Benchmarking Plan

The Importance of Creating a Salary Benchmarking Plan

By Staff Writer

In previous posts, we have covered different aspects of salary benchmarking at an organization. From choosing salary benchmarking data sources to getting buy-in at the corporate level, there are plenty of actions to take. But, before you make calls, send emails, do online research and get others involved, there’s a crucial step you can take that will help you produce the best results possible: put together a salary benchmarking plan ahead of time.