As any experienced compensation practitioner would agree, from time to time you will find yourself faced with someone who doesn’t think much of your job. In fact, they’re pretty sure that they can do it themselves. “Just give me the survey report and I’ll flip the pages until I find what I need.”
Have you heard that one before? Scary, isn’t it? And just a bit condescending as well.
This suggestion may initially be made under the guise of saving time (“You’re so busy”), but it’s actually a bid to gain control over what they see is their dependence upon you as the one who analyses and reports on the competitive marketplace.
They may even say that they have obtained a survey of their own that they want to be used.
Flipping Pages
From the perspective of this skeptical client, all that you’re doing is matching the internal job title with that from the survey source. Simple. So, all one needs to do is to grab the highlighted figure from the designated page (it will be obvious) and, voila! Market pricing complete.
Aside from the insulting implications of this attitude that demean your objectivity and professionalism this simple self-taught process will certainly deliver the WRONG figure most if not all the time. Remember that these clients will be looking for a figure that will support their pre-conceived beliefs, so their objectivity will have left the room. They know the answer and want to see a figure that they can use to support it (picture someone running down the hallway waving a piece of paper). They will then tend to ignore such cautionary variables in the data as:
- Industry type
- Revenue size
- Geographic considerations
- Aging of data
- Matching the job content vs. title
- The reputation of the survey
- Challenges to survey methodology and cleansing
Consider the client “process” as it will run its course; job titles may be matched instead of job content, which sends you to a page in the survey report. The most provided/highlighted figure will be grabbed if it fits with the client’s internal criteria (what they’re looking for). Once they have the chosen figure, they will then flaunt that “answer” as what the survey is reporting. The variables listed above are usually dismissed as smoke and mirrors aimed at confusing what is an otherwise straightforward report. In other words, if they like the number they see, everything else becomes distracting chatter.
If perchance the figures offered don’t agree with the client agenda, figure adjustments may be made based on stronger vs. weaker job matches, greater/lesser complexities involved, senior vs. core jobs or even the tenure (experience) of internal staff. Sort of like molding clay (the survey) into the desired end product (the answer).
Not exactly a process recommended by compensation experts.
Give Me the Data
Now, this is a bit more contentious issue. Every now and then someone will ask/demand to see the raw survey data from which you reported a market figure. This is only asked when the client doesn’t agree with the figure reported, so they want to see the data themselves. They want to see if they would come up with the same answer. In other words, they didn’t get the answer they wanted, and they don’t trust you.
I have never been asked for the data prior to submitting my report.
During my career, I have NEVER agreed to this, either during my extensive time working in Corporate America or more recently as a global consultant. Thankfully I had bosses who agreed with me, but you might not be so lucky.
The tact I took was that market analysis was the responsibility of Human Resources and that we have professional staff trained to objectively analyze the data variances provided by survey reports. As such we are unable to hand the process over to the least objective players – the client. We would be happy to discuss our findings at length, but it is our responsibility to properly evaluate and analyze the data before reporting our findings.
Guess what? If you do provide the raw data, I’m willing to wager that they will find an alternative view of the competitive marketplace.
When dealing with clients I have found it helpful to make the point early on, that most often reported survey data provides more of a “Pricing Guide” suggestion than an “Aha!” moment. The data doesn’t purport to tell you what you should be paying but it suggests guidelines of what others are commonly paid for like jobs. At that point, the decision (what to do next) becomes an internal one.
Chuck Csizmar CCP is the founder and Principal of CMC Compensation Group, providing global compensation consulting services to a wide variety of industries and non-profit organizations. He is also associated with several HR Consulting firms as a contributing consultant. Chuck is a broad-based subject matter expert with a specialty in international and expatriate compensation. He lives in Central Florida (near The Mouse) and enjoys growing fruit and managing (?) a clowder of cats.
Creative Commons image "Angry Tiger," by Guyon Moree
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