Compensation Surveys: The Basics & How to Conduct One

Designing and implementing a compensation strategy that attracts and retains employees is a tricky but critical part of every organization’s HR operations. To make informed decisions about your compensation approach, you need accurate, relevant information, and that’s where compensation surveys come in.

Compensation surveys help tremendously when benchmarking your organization’s compensation structure. However, for many companies and nonprofits, knowing how to kickstart the process can be challenging. 

To help your organization understand where to gather accurate information and how to conduct these surveys, we’ll cover everything you need to know about compensation surveys, including:

• Compensation Survey FAQ
• Conducting a Compensation Survey
• Using Your Survey Data to Improve Your Compensation Strategy
• Partnering with Astron Solutions for Your Survey Needs

When properly conducted and applied to your organization’s current compensation strategy, compensation surveys can provide insights to optimize the employee experience and boost retention.

Compensation Survey FAQ

What is a compensation survey?

Also known as a salary survey, a compensation survey collects and analyzes actionable data on wages across an industry or specific role. This data provides key insights into job roles and their salaries, helping employers create compensation strategies, determine whether their existing strategies are fair, and recruit competitively.

A compensation survey can focus on job titles, geographic regions, organization size, departments, industry norms, and more, and generally reports on cash compensation. The survey data is usually made up of quantifiable aspects of compensation, like:

• Base salaries
• Increase percentages/amounts
• Merit increases
• Salary ranges
• Starting salaries
• Incentives/bonuses
• Allowances and benefits
• Working hours

Finding pre-existing surveys that fit your organization’s unique needs may be a challenge. Many nonprofit organizations and businesses turn to HR consultants and other outside experts for help administering custom surveys. These professionals will work with you to help create and facilitate the best survey to meet your needs.

What are the benefits of compensation surveys?

Compensation surveys can provide a look into how other organizations engage with their employees. Specifically, salary survey data from similar organizations has the following benefits for HR leaders:

• Aid in salary benchmarking. The results of a compensation survey give you insight into what the highest and lowest salaries for a role in your industry are, providing you with a solid range of what you might offer your own employees.
• Help your organization design total rewards compensation packages. A total rewards approach to compensation is crucial for fairly compensating your team members while sticking to your organization’s budget. The total rewards philosophy takes a holistic look at compensation, encouraging employers to offer both indirect and direct forms of compensation to employees.
• Ensure your organization keeps up with salary trends. When you consistently review compensation survey results, you will have a better sense of sector trends. For example, you might notice salary hikes for a specific position. Keep up with your industry by obtaining data from salary surveys and re-evaluating employees’ salaries at least annually.
• Make sure your organization recruits and retains the best employees. With the right compensation and salary plan for each role, you can better attract top candidates. Regularly reviewing salary surveys gives you the data you need to offer competitive total rewards packages that keep employees engaged.
• Create a culture of consistency and transparency. When you are open and honest about referring to compensation survey data, your employees will know exactly where you’re getting their salary numbers from. Also, consistent use of survey data shows not only your team but also interested candidates that your organization is dedicated to transparent compensation practices.

What are common compensation survey challenges?

The benefits listed above may have you thinking, “Why wouldn’t I use compensation surveys?” However, there are some challenges associated with salary surveys, like:

• The time and money needed to create one. This is especially challenging if your organization is conducting a third-party custom survey that includes unique and niche job roles.
• Legality concerns. Revealing or barely concealing survey participants’ individual data is against the Department of Justice’s Anti-Trust Guidelines. Reputable surveys that comply with applicable legal guidelines can alleviate participant concerns in this regard. Options include buying survey reports from well-known companies that specialize in collecting and reporting data for their sector, or hiring a third party to conduct a salary survey for your sector. Consultants conducting custom surveys will take measures to anonymize participants, such as only reporting group data. 
• Inaccurate data. Bad data will lead to skewed compensation results, risking that you create job postings with salary ranges that don’t align with industry norms, fail to attract candidates, or promise vast overpayment. 
• Risks of turnover. If an employee discovers a salary benchmarking mistake after being hired, or if there is any salary adjustment (especially a downward adjustment), that new hire may quickly leave. Without fair compensation, your team can expect employee dissatisfaction, disengagement, and increased turnover.

How much do compensation surveys cost?

The cost of compensation survey data will vary based on your industry and the survey’s scope. For example, if you want access to survey results for a specific region, you may pay less than you would for data from an entire country.

Additionally, if you’re working with an external expert to conduct your own salary survey, your survey cost will depend on how niche your industry and job titles are, as well as how long it takes to gather the data. If you are planning to work with a third party, ask about pricing upfront.

If you’re looking for free resources to gather general compensation insights and test the waters, here are a few to explore:

• The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
• Job Boards/Job Descriptions
• Employee Reviews (from sources like Glassdoor, Comparably, or Indeed)

However, be cautious when using free sources. These reports are often out of date, focused on general rather than niche roles, and may even be inaccurate. 

Who can help my organization conduct a compensation survey? 

If you’re looking to purchase access to salary data, you need a reputable vendor that prioritizes legal and ethical research methods. To design and administer your own salary survey, consider working with a consulting firm that specializes in compensation, like Astron Solutions.

Conducting a Compensation Survey

Considering both the benefits and challenges listed above, a salary survey might not be 100% necessary at all times for all organizations. However, it can definitely ensure you’re fairly compensating and engaging your employees, which should always be a top concern.

If you’ve already decided that you’re interested in using a compensation survey, you’re probably wondering how to actually conduct one.

A customized survey that you conduct with the help of a compensation consultant is the best option. A customized compensation survey has several advantages, including:

• Being able to target competitors with the closest match to your organization
• Collecting the most current compensation data
• Specifying the exact information you want rather than digging through multiple generalized surveys to find what you’re looking for
• Ensuring legal compliance throughout the process

Conducting a third-party custom survey means you need to figure out the right audience to contact and come up with the key questions that will aid your organization. But, as you learned in the previous section, conducting your survey consists of more than just asking people how much they’re paid. There are legal and privacy aspects to consider, so it’s necessary to partner with a reputable service that can ensure you’re on the right track.

Using Your Survey Data to Improve Your Compensation Strategy

Once you have compensation survey data, you may wonder how to put it into action. Consider the following ways that you can use your data to level up your compensation strategy:

• Write or update job descriptions. Whether you’re recruiting new talent or clarifying expectations for individuals who are already employed in a certain role, salary data can inform what responsibilities and experience are linked to certain levels of compensation, empowering you to write job descriptions that are accurate before, during, and after the hiring process.
• Secure buy-in from leadership on changes to your compensation strategy. Much like your employees, your organization’s leaders need to know the “why” behind compensation strategy updates and adjustments. Survey data can back your decisions, and provide the evidence that your organization’s leadership needs to sign off on changes.
• Determine how to strengthen your compensation strategy with total rewards. You may discover that while your organization isn’t in a position to pay the most competitive cash salary, you can fill out your compensation packages with a more holistic total rewards approach that includes indirect forms of compensation such as traditional benefits, an employee recognition program, and special perks.
• Adjust compensation during performance review season. By frequently reviewing salary data, you can know the most competitive and fair compensation adjustments to make during performance reviews. And, you’ll be more prepared to tie those changes closely to performance.

The great thing about working with a compensation consultant to create and administer custom surveys is that you can also rely on their expertise to interpret the results and use them to make strategic improvements to your current compensation approach.

Partnering with Astron Solutions For Your Survey Needs

At Astron Solutions, we offer a variety of expansive HR consulting services, including creating and conducting custom salary surveys for organizations and associations in unique fields. With over 20 years of experience, we can help leaders like you with:

1. Custom-developed surveys to address your unique compensation and benefits needs. We research industry trends and gain a collaborative consensus on the questions you want. Then, with a web-based survey tool, we’ll send out invitations to all of your potential participants.
2. Confidentiality with your organization and employees. To protect participants’ data, we’ll report on collected information in averages and not release any organizational information to other parties. All reported fields are also only shown in group summaries. Individual responses are not displayed.
3. Meeting all legal antitrust requirements. We are very familiar with the evolving guidelines surrounding compensation surveys. To comply with the Department of Justice’s current guidelines, data is only shown for positions and statistics soliciting five or more responses. Further, all survey data are a minimum of three months old.
4. Detailed reports that go past survey results. Not only do we summarize the compensation survey findings, but we also document the data submission process, legal compliance, and guidance on how your organization should interpret the data. You can receive reports in PDF or access a secure password-protected website.

Astron Solutions works with you to not only create a comprehensive and detailed compensation survey but empowers you to take action with the results. According to National Director Jennifer Loftus,

Annual and quarterly ‘hot job’ salary surveys are a key part of Astron Solutions’ services. We take pride in working with associations and private employers to help them obtain the total rewards data they need, while ensuring legal compliance throughout the process. We very much enjoy conducting custom surveys!

Wrapping Up

Though they come with their own set of both benefits and challenges, compensation surveys can be a great help to organizations looking to take their compensation strategies to new heights. Use the information in this guide to determine whether using salary survey data is right for your organization at this time, and if you decide to conduct a custom survey, make sure to partner with the right consultant.

Looking for more information about the world of HR? Check out these additional resources:

• Nonprofit Human Resources Demystified: An Ultimate Guide
• Pay Transparency: What It Is & How to Navigate New Laws
• Beginner’s Guide to Compa Ratio: What It Is & How to Use It