4 Comp Tools that Drive Compensation Decisions

Compensation decisions have a major impact on business success, from influencing employee engagement, productivity, recruitment, and retention to affecting profitability and compliance. With so much at stake, it’s important to ensure the right comp tools are in place to help with decision-making in your organization.

In the Salary.com Pay Practices and Compensation Strategy Survey Results report, participants cited a number of resources and comp tools used to manage and maintain their organization’s compensation programs. Among the most popular were visual analytics and reporting and survey management software, and we will also discuss artificial intelligence and turnover cost.

Comp Tool #1 – Salary Surveys

Traditional salary surveys gather data from Human Resources departments on what an organization pays its employees. Compensation professionals using these survey results know precisely where the data was sourced and can view a list of organizations who participated in the survey.

As with other types of data, salary surveys have the potential to be misleading if not used carefully. Knowing your competition and honing in on specific job matches will deliver the most accurate, relevant insights.

Download our guide on Navigating Salary Survey Data for more information.

Comp Tool #2 – Artificial Intelligence

While traditional salary surveys provide valuable data, there may be times when you need data that is not available in a particular survey. This may occur, for instance, if your organization’s job descriptions don’t align with the jobs in a survey or if geographic breakouts are not available for your location(s).

Artificial intelligence, or AI, can help fill in these gaps. With machine learning, multiple data inputs from existing surveys and known jobs can be used to predict a price for a job not yet available in a salary survey or in a region not covered.

AI can be used to streamline a number of other HR tasks as well. For more information, download our white paper on Everything HR Professionals Need to Know About Artificial Intelligence.

Comp Tool #3 –Analytics & Reporting

Analytics are an important piece of many business endeavors, and compensation management is no exception. It may be tempting to use Excel for market pricing, as it’s familiar to most people and easily available. But Excel has a number of limitations for this purpose, and more robust tools can provide your organization better outcomes.

For more information, download our eBook on Why Excel is Not the Answer for Compensation Analytics.

Comp Tool #4 – Turnover Cost Calculator

In the current tight labor market, reducing unwanted employee turnover is a top concern of many HR professionals. Measuring the financial cost of turnover in your organization can help secure increased support for programs to reduce voluntary turnover.