Employers use the material to make local or regional comparisons when it’s time to hire.
January 13, 2007
An Olathe business specializes in providing data crucial to companies’ ability to find and keep talented workers.
Compdata Surveys annually publishes a 23-volume Compensation Data study, which provides salary, pay practice and benefit information for 539 job titles in 39 states. The company also produces separate, detailed studies on benefits and executive compensation.
Compensation Data, the company’s top seller, breaks pay information out into metropolitan and rural areas. That way, employers can make local or regional comparisons when setting wages instead of going by a statewide average.
Theresa Worman, vice president of business development, said the studies can help determine pay rates and raise budgets.
“Businesses use this to be competitive,” she said. “A lot of times they have to answer the question, ‘How high is up?’ They’ve got to have an idea what the competition is doing.”
In the past few years, Compdata has begun providing information on more categories of benefits and has added data on recruitment practices.
“We have an educated work force,” Worman said. “Companies have to be quick on their toes to make changes and to make their compensation program a successful part of their business plan and culture.”
Compdata’s research is based on survey results from about 5,000 companies. The company has 30 to 50 employees — hitting the higher number when surveys are conducted.
Businesses that purchase a 2007 study, which lists at $849, get $500 off by participating in the survey.
“Everything about the pricing structure is designed to encourage participation in the survey,” Worman said.
There’s nothing unorthodox about that approach, said Don Linder, compensation practice leader for WorldatWork, a Scottsdale, Ariz.,-based human resources association.
“In order to get good data, there have to be incentives like that,” he said.
Worman said the survey results are used by Fortune 500 firms and companies not large enough to have a human resources department.
Compdata’s research differs from salary surveys performed by trade associations, she said. While those studies measure jobs within a specific industry, they generally don’t include pay data on jobs that overlap with other sectors. A bakery may pay accountants well by baking industry standards, but how does its pay compare to other industries? Compensation Data answers that question.
Worman said that within the past two decades, companies conducted pay surveys among themselves. But this trend has faded because competition and federal antitrust rulings have combined to push businesses to third-party companies such as Compdata.
“Very few if anybody does that anymore, which is very good for these salary houses,” said Linder at WorldatWork.
Although not its primary business, Compdata also provides customized surveys for trade groups, such as the Missouri and Kansas hospital associations.
“You’ve got to be very competitive in what I call these very high-demand sectors,” said Michael R. Dunaway, senior vice president for field operations for the Kansas City Metropolitan Healthcare Council, a local office of those hospital associations. “Health care is one of those that is really hot right now.
“The health-care survey provides opportunities for all hospitals to do a couple of benchmarks throughout the year.”
In addition to using the industry-specific survey, hospitals use Compensation Data to compare wages for jobs in which they compete against other industries. Worman said hospitals in Kansas City and St. Louis face keen competition from casinos for hourly workers in jobs such as maintenance, food service and housekeeping.
Suzanne Kimmich, a senior compensation analyst for Tenet Healthcare in St. Louis, said the Compdata health-care survey offers information not available elsewhere.
“We can run a query and find out what the average rate is for a nurse with seven years of experience,” she said.
Still, Dunaway and Kimmich said multiple surveys — not just Compdata resources — are used to try to get the most accurate pay data.
Linder said companies use survey data to put wheels on their compensation strategy. After deciding where they want to land on the pay ladder (for example, the 50th percentile), businesses use survey data to affix hard numbers to jobs.
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