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EXERCISE 10
DEVELOPING AND IMPLEMENTING A PAY SURVEY
In this exercise, the student is introduced to the “tail that wags the dog.” Pay surveys in the past
30 years have emerged from being merely additional pieces of information collected to assist
compensation managers to set rates of pay to being the whole ball game. For many compensation
managers, certain surveys or compilations of specific surveys determine the recommendations to be made
for changes in the existing pay structure. This exercise and its accompanying checklist provide an
overview of what the compensation specialists must do when they are thinking of implementing their own
survey or going out into the market place and searching for those that have already been conducted that
will provide the desired information.
The objectives of this exercise are:
1. To introduce the student to the area of compensation surveys.
Teaching Hints
The message that must be conveyed to the student is that developing, implementing, and
completing a survey is a good-sized task. Here again, large amounts of time can be quickly consumed if
A few examples of how failure to spend sufficient time and energy can hurt are:
2. Failure to adequately describe jobs where information is being requested, resulting in improper
matches or failure to match.
4. Failure to check data for accuracy at every step where data are being transcribed from one file to
another, permitting transcription errors to occur.
Answers to Assignment
1. Data Collection Form (for each benchmark job to be included within the survey):
Job Summary: (a 30 to 50 word summary of job; if a summary is not readily available, the
Dictionary of Occupational Titles may provide a good first draft for a summary)
Pay Data:
Maximum Pay of Assigned Pay Grade _____________
(if job is assigned to a pay grade)
Please list actual rates of pay
assigned to all employees in this
job: 1.____________
2.____________
3.____________
4.____________
5.____________
etc.
2. Mail and e-mail surveys are the most common way to collect the data. Face-to–face interviews
3. The summary sheet (see next page) would be appropriate. Employee benefits could be
summarized in a similar manner. Since employee benefits are such an important part of the total
compensation package, the survey and summary should not omit them.
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COMPENSATION SURVEY PACKAGE
PAY SUMMARY SHEET FOR EACH JOB IN THE SURVEY
Job Title: Job Code:
Job Summary:
Reporting Data
Number of firms __________
Actual Pay Data
Number of firms reporting __________
Lowest reported pay __________
Range Data Reported
Number of firms reporting __________
Lowest reported pay range __________
Ranking of Reported Pay
Pay shown below is rank-ordered from low to high. If the first value begins at “0,” the list is in
deciles. If the first value begins at “1,” the figures are actual pay. (Deciles were used when more than
25 individual pay rates were reported.)
0
1 6 11 16 21
2 7 12 17 22
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4. It is ideal if a survey can be conducted and data processed, summarized, and returned to recipients
in 30 days. Sixty days is probably more realistic. In any event, all efforts should be made to complete
SURVEY DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION TIME ANALYSIS FORM
ACTIVITY TIME
1. Identifying benchmark jobs
3-4 days
4-10 days
3-4 days
5-10 days
5. Collecting data
30-45 days
4-5 days
3-5 days
8. Developing a summary
1-2 days
1-5 days
Total Time Required
54-90 days