Does Compensation Need an Intervention?

Intervention as defined in Wikipedia:
“An intervention is an orchestrated attempt by one or many people – usually family and friends – to get someone to seek professional help with an addiction. . . “

The intervention I’m talking about is Compensation’s addiction to market surveys. You know, the obsession with minutiae that, while intellectually stimulating and causing delightful endorphin rushes, nevertheless is not quite the “be all and end all” it once was. And this may become even more true in the future.

I know this may seem like heresy to WorldatWork graduates who believe that market surveys are part of the holy grail. The truth is they worked fine when life was much simpler and jobs could easily be matched. I’m talking about a world before mass globalization and inter-connectedness --- and where business strategies from company to company were similar. Then you could be reasonably sure that a Software Programmer's duties/responsibilities were the same from company to company. Maybe you even had the luxury of matching to a specific industry, revenue size, location, etc.

But the world is not so simple today.  Surveys can't provide us with solid matches for jobs that have responsibilities/duties that are anything but a match. Call them “hybrid” jobs.  They are becoming more commonplace. Even Career Builder has a separate category for them now.   They also can't identify companies for us that have the same business strategies so we can be reasonably confident we are matching the same critical jobs with similar values. They can't provide data on freelance jobs. Data for these jobs is difficult to come by and they are becoming more and more popular --- at least in the  high tech industry. 

Yes, I know some of these factors have been present to some extent in times past.  But when I hear someone saying “there’s nothing new under the sun” my teeth clinch.  It's just not true.

The business environment has changed.  Not acknowledging this fact is to deny the obvious. The difference in company business and branding strategies, variety of job types and unique combinations of jobs are much greater than before and are likely to grow even greater.

Can we accept the possibility that some of us may have an addiction to surveys?  Does using them just feel too good?  Do we refuse to admit they don’t provide us with the kind of data we need anymore?  Does the fear of all these changes just make us want to hold on to them tighter? If so, this may call for an intervention.

If we can help each other see these changes then we can understand and accept that surveys are giving us fewer and fewer answers anymore. If so, maybe we need to find another way to get our thrills.

What do you think?

Jacque Vilet, President of Vilet International, has over 20 years’ experience in Global Human Resources with major multinationals such as Intel, Texas Instruments and Seagate Technology. She has managed both local/ in-country national and expatriate programs and has been an expatriate twice during her career. Jacque has the following certifications: CCP, GPHR, HCS and SWP as well as a B.S. and M.S in Psychology plus an MBA. She belongs to SHRM, Human Capital Institute and World at Work. Jacque has been a speaker in the U.S., Asia and Europe, and is a regular contributor to various HR and talent management publications.

Comments

[Ross]

If I had a hybrid job that did not fit a survey description, I would adjust it accordingly and use in-house job evaluation to assist. My starting point would typically be a market survey of a closely related job.

A previous post from Ann Bares says this:

The 70% Rule: A Guide to Market Benchmarking

When working to match an organization's jobs to published compensation surveys, and especially when involving line managers and supervisors in this matching process, I have found it helpful to use something I call "the 70% rule".

The rule works in this way: When trying to assess whether or not a survey job description fits, or matches to, one of the organization's jobs, we use 70% as our guidelines. If the survey job description appears to capture 70% or more of the job content, then we call it a match. If it doesn't meet the 70% criteria, we don't use it.

http://www.compensationforce.com/2008/02/the-70-rule-a-g.html

[Jay Schuster]

Jacque, you are directly ON TARGET as usual. Surveys are an 'easy out' for a profession that has begun to leave brains at the door. Oh my, I could go on and on. All Worldatwork can do is surveys and pamper advertisers. They even stopped giving the Keystone Award which was for contributions to the field because the system is designed to prevent significant contributions.

Self-serving surveys lead to 'me-too compensation planning'. If you ask someone why they are recommending some practice or other force them to go beyond saying, 'It is competitive practice' and ask "Why" the organizations that report that practice do what they do and what the results of it might be.

This goes far beyond merely copying the pricing of a job from the 'market'. It goes to the foundations of reward planning: What is the role of performance? How will skill and competency growth be recognized? Who will participate in variable pay and what metrics will be used? YIKES!!!!

Good piece as usual. You have 'nailed' the point again!!!!

[Jacque Vilet]

Ross --- if you read my post from the past on hybrid jobs (hyperlink provided) you would see that the jobs I am referring to are ones that differ from ones of past matching issues. These are parts of 2 or more jobs that have been combined --- each bearing no relationship to the others. In these cases I would say that the 70% rule would not apply. See the IBM examples in my hybrid post. My point is that these types of jobs are becoming more and more common. For this and other reasons there is a growing inability to match jobs in surveys.

[Jacque Vilet]

Thanks Jay. You said it better than I did.

[Harold]

When I went to the Careerbuilder site for hybrid jobs, many were for engineers that work on hybrid cars or IT people who work on hybrid software. There were very few people who crossed functions. ERI has a program for valuing those jobs.

[Jay Schuster]

ERI provides quality results due to some excellent work by our own Jim Brennan and a guy named Dave Thomsen. These kinds of guys created ERI and it is the best tool.

It does NOT however give strategic or tactical direction to a total rewards program. THAT is to be 'engineered' by whomever heads the reward program.

Is that YOU?????

[Dan Walter]

surveys, surveys, surveys.

They should be like someone else's recipe is for a great chef. A guideline and some ideas that must be nuanced to create something unique and perfect.

Instead they are like a step by step youtube recipe for someone who never cooks. They slavishly follow along and do exactly what they are told, never knowing what is wrong or what can be better.

[Jordan Beherndt]

It seems like some of you haven't really ever experienced a deep dive into PayScale's data and methodology. PayScale's data takes into account the skills and other factors that make jobs unique, rather than generic job title matching. It is crowd sourced data that utilizes modern validation and technology to create better matches directly from incumbents who are incentivized to input accurate information. If you haven't had the opportunity to really learn what PayScale is doing from someone at the company, as a comp pro it might be beneficial to take a moment to learn more.