Salary structure

[Michael Holloway]

Hello there.

I'm considering developing a salary structure based on the company's various functions.

There are no annual compensation raises for us. We review on request, so it would be good to know we're not paying more than we should for the job role they're doing.

When I look at benchmarking tools for certain roles, the top end is far more than we'd ever pay, and they all seem to be aimed for larger companies.

I suppose if we pay the average wage for that particular role, we are at least competitive. I'm simply curious if there is a rule of thumb for a small business.

Thanks for taking the time to listen!

 

[Newchodge]

Pay what you need to pay to ensure you retain your employees.

 

[IanSuth]

A lot of (the poorer) benchmarking tools use advertised salaries, they are untrustworthy for that reason. (If you are not losing staff you want to keep you are likely in the right ball park.)

For instance if you were looking to pay someone in the mid to high £20k's and there is an annual bonus possible etc you would likely advertise the job at £25-30k and hope to get someone at the lower end.

Equally a fair number of agencies will inflate pay rates on adverts to get more views of their adverts, so they would run the same job as "up to £30k" or even c£30k

As for graduate salaries well... the biggest uk graduate salary survey is the one done by Prospects. It is inherently biased as the data capture technique is to attempt to contact all graduates 6 months after graduation and ask them
1. Are you working
2. Is it in a job related to your degree
3. What is your salary

They then treat that sample response as representative of the entire data

The point is that there is a much greater response from those who are in work related to their degree and especially if they are on a silly £. it is also the methodology used by the university's themselves in the stats and league tables on how many grads get jobs etc, I discussed this with the head of the local uni's careers service who said it is wrong and incorrect BUT they had to use the same methodology as others as if they used a more accurate measure the uni would appear less attractive to students.