170
EXERCISE 11
GATHERING PAY SURVEY DATA
With this exercise, the student uses pay surveys from three sources to (1) match benchmark jobs,
and (2) establish proxy (proposed) market rates of pay for each surveyed job. Students may obtain pay
survey data from the following exhibits in Exercise 11:
11-5 Watson Wyatt Data Services—Report on Office Personnel Compensation (OP)
11-7 Watson Wyatt Data Services—Report on Professional Personnel Compensation (PP)
11-9 Watson Wyatt Data Services—Report on Top Management Compensation (TM)
11-11 The Survey Group Management Compensation Survey
In discussing the process of matching benchmark jobs, the instructor should point out that
students should carefully examine job descriptions/summaries before “matching” jobs. Students should
also understand that although two jobs may have the same titles, that the job content might not match.
Another way to match job content is by using the same job evaluation method. Exercise 11 contains a
form (Exhibit 11-3) with FES Points for Benchmark Jobs. If students have access to other surveys and
job descriptions, they could evaluate the jobs to verify matches with Olympia’s benchmark jobs.
If there is time, the instructor might want to ask students to conduct a real survey for one or more
of the benchmark jobs. This would help them to understand the time required to gather and summarize
survey data.
Notes for completing the spreadsheet, “Gathering Pay Survey Data”
Instructors may wish to walk the students through the process of obtaining pay survey data.
The following are remarks about the pay data obtained from the three survey sources:
Olympia Community Survey: The midpoint data selected from the Olympia Community Survey is the
mean. Pay is reported as an annual rate.
171
Most of the jobs can be found in the Report on Office Personnel Compensation (OP). The midpoint rate
of pay selected for the jobs in this survey is weighted average.
Watson Wyatt Data Services—Report on Office Personnel Compensation (OP)
Watson Wyatt Data Services—Report on Supervisory Management Compensation (SM)
Watson Wyatt Data Services—Report on Professional Personnel Compensation (PP)
Watson Wyatt Data Services—Report on Middle Management Compensation (MM)
The Survey Group Surveys: Students will need to use both the Benchmark and Management Surveys. The
entry in the Matching Job Title/Survey column of the spreadsheet includes both the Survey Title and TSG
Job Code. Numeric codes are from the Benchmark Survey and alpha-numeric codes are from the
Management Survey. The pay statistic selected is the Weighted Average (Incumbent Data) from the
Route 128 cut of data for the Benchmark Survey and the Weighted Average Base Salary (Incumbent
Data) for Technical Companies from the Management Survey. However, in the case of Data Entry