Can the Internet Help You Hit the Salary Mark? - online salary surveys

Workforce, Jan, 2001 by Susan J. Marks

Quick decisions and the right salary offer can mean the difference between nabbing the perfect job candidate and losing out to the competition in today's tight labor market. Enter the Internet. With its economies of time and scale, it might be just the ticket for time-strapped HR officials. Now, companies large and small can access salary and survey data either from third-party aggregators and consultants or simply by keeping tabs on the job market via the virtual want ads anytime and almost anywhere. All it takes is an Internet connection.

Determining competitive salaries typically requires HR officials to analyze reams of data, including salary surveys that fill thick three-ring binders, take up huge spreadsheets, and can cost thousands of dollars. There are hundreds of surveys, with all kinds of price tags. Some of the well-known consultants that offer subscription or for-purchase surveys are William M. Mercer; Radford Surveys, a division of Aon Consulting Worldwide; Hay Group; Towers Perrin; and Watson Wyatt Data Services. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics also has surveys, but the data isn't as current.

Just getting the data in hand can take up valuable time, as does matching job descriptions with job openings, extrapolating numbers, and adjusting them for geographic differences. For small companies without designated full-time HR staff or those that can't afford sometimes expensive surveys, the whole process can be out of reach.

The Web can change all that. It's about issues of data richness and reach, says Paul Platten, national practice director Strategic Rewards for Boston-based Watson Wyatt. Strategic Rewards is the name for the company's salary management and compensation area. The company currently is beta-testing Reward, a salary planning and evaluation tool.

But the Internet is a new kind of tool, and companies' use of the technology as well as the available options are limited. Today, the Internet is just one more way to get the same information. How it's delivered is irrelevant, says H. Michael Boyd, a human resourcing strategies research analyst with Framingham, Massachusetts-based International Data Corporation. For many companies, it's also too cumbersome to cut through the volumes of survey data on the Web.

Companies today still like to have the paper in hand, agrees Edward W. Straub, New York-based president of Compensation Consulting Group, Aon Consulting Inc., the powerhouse that includes Radford Surveys, online as Radnet.com. Radnet is a Web-based database of compensation data and practices that allows clients who participate and purchase the survey to click on the site, plug in data, and manipulate it for their needs.

Acceptance is growing, however. Over the last 12 months, as people have become more comfortable with the Internet, Straub says, he has seen a dramatic increase in salary-and compensation-related Web sites coming online and in companies turning to Web delivery. He predicts an accelerated increase in the next couple of years because of the speed and cost savings of the Internet. "I also believe that we will find that hiring managers in general will start using the Web probably more aggressively than HR ... often as part of negotiating a salary and dealing with recruiters. Hiring managers would like to have tools they can reach out to quickly and get a ballpark figure on what a job is worth, what the elements of a total compensation might be."

Here are three different-size companies that capitalize on the Web in salary benchmarking. Each has its own approach to using the Internet, yet all recognize the time savings, efficiencies, and even drawbacks of the process.

Small company

Just because a company is small and may not have deep pockets or want to pick up the tab for compensation consultants doesn't mean its HR staff can't benchmark salaries accurately and competitively with the help of the Internet.

Vancouver-based StockHouse Media Corporation is one company that does just that. The international provider of online financial content and community development products has 210 employees in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, Japan, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Shawnee Love, StockHouse global director of human resources, uses the Web in combination with traditional benchmarking methods when pegging salaries for everyone from Web designers and developers to secretaries.

E-mail is a main communications tool that Love uses to request salary data from professional groups she belongs to such as the Human Resource Management Association and High Tech Exchange Group, or to participate in salary surveys. She and her staff also informally keep tabs on going rates and trends in the marketplace and at specific companies via job boards, industry organizations, online databases, and company Web sites. "We source information that is both industry-related as well as functionally related and of varying geographies, such as state, provincial, country-wide versus marketing, sales, HR, tech, etc.," Love says.