Global compensation and employee benefits survey results are a feast for HR and pay professionals. They offer a smorgasbord of data and insights to solve a range of compensation challenges and satisfy your need for rewards intelligence. Yet, sometimes you need something more discrete for specific jobs, levels, regions or situations. You have questions, and the answers to them may not immediately present themselves.
In these instances, custom studies and pulse surveys can be useful to collect data and provide the exact information being sought. Organizations only get the specific cuts relevant to the questions that need answers.
Smaller, custom cuts enable organizations to make decisions quickly. Moreover, smaller and medium-sized businesses find the robust data and expert analysis and advice particularly valuable from an intelligence and expertise perspective.
When browsing your menu of data, remember that, sometimes, also ordering a la carte solutions can enhance your approach to developing competitive rewards.
Take what you need, leave nothing behind
Global surveys are valuable tools when a broad variety of data is needed. But for some organizations that’s too much information. They only need specific pieces of data. These reports can cover really any topic. Some more common examples of these very specific reports include:
- Custom reports based on needs, including evaluating competitiveness (e.g., internal grade, department, business unit)
- Valuation of other compensation payments, such as cash allowances and benefits not typically included in global surveys
Hot topics require a quick response
Attracting and retaining talent has never been harder. Changing demographics and employee expectations combined with accelerated digitalization and a need for discrete skills has led many organizations to look for data that typically aren’t included in global surveys. Custom studies and pulse surveys can cover a broad array of topics such as:
- Jobs with union agreements
- Company car policies after changes in taxation laws
- Salary-increase information in response to extreme shifts in economic factors
Access what you want, when you want it
A global database provides a broad overview of information across regions, industries and company sizes. However, sometimes organizations want distinct data pulled from that pool of data, and they want it on a regular basis. Custom studies that compare the competitiveness of total rewards programs against the market and can include organizations that were not originally included in global surveys. These studies deliver information like:
- Monthly salaries
- Annual bonuses
- Benefits
- Other market trends
Savor your organization’s distinct flavors
No two organizations are run the same, which makes understanding your own company’s structure important for knowing whether you’re functioning at the highest performance possible. Diving into internal salary grades or job areas is available in global surveys and can be extracted, but other data may need to be collected from the market. Taking a more discrete approach provides intelligence on topics that organizations find helpful, including:
- Internal salary grades
- Job areas
Add expert cooks to your kitchen
For many HR teams, there’s always a lot of work to do and not enough hands to do it, and that’s especially true in smaller or newer organizations. In these cases, your data partner should be able to analyze data or deliver analyze data or deliver custom studies to provide intelligence and analysis that makes it easy for your organization to take action. Examples of these partnerships include:
- Training new, in-house compensation analysts on how to handle the organization’s data
- Advice on how to analyze data and work with the results
- Explain new concepts on human resources such as employee value propositions, employee experience and so on
Increase the sophistication of your palate
Employees who are new to HR or compensation can be overwhelmed by the amount of data, how to find what’s important and the best way to apply it. Your data partner should be able to send experts into the organization to train these staffers on how to deliver what the organization needs – not to mention improve their own skills and career development. Topics that organizations typically look for include:
- How to work with salary structures related to organization needs
- How to read, analyze and use the organization’s compensation data
Effectively and efficiently satisfy your data cravings
Every organization has its own unique needs that data
partners should strive to understand and satisfy. Custom studies and pulse
surveys are cost efficient and, ideally, are quick to turn around. This makes
them accessible to businesses of all sizes and shapes. It also is important to
ensure your partner delivers high-quality, timely data based on a strong survey
methodology. That is what will deliver the best intelligence and insights to
your reward decisions.
