Salary and benefits benchmarking

Benefits and compensation benchmarking for attracting and retaining top talent

Our recruitment market intelligence team provide benefits and compensation insights using a wide variety of data sources, combined with a methodical approach.

Using our established data model, we identify UK salary and benefits trends across roles and sectors to support organisations in making effective recruitment decisions.

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What problems does salary and benefits benchmarking solve?

Companies often come to us wondering whether their salary and compensation packages are in line with those offered by similar organisations. Few employers have access to benefits and compensation benchmarking specific to their business; this can be an invaluable guide to combat potential issues affecting overall business success, including:

Talent lost to competitors

Without the ability to benchmark benefits and compensation packages against the market, you risk failing to appeal to the best candidates. Your competitors could be knowingly offering preferable benefits or higher salaries.

Poor use of time

Trawling through reports for meaningful results can be time consuming. Unlike bespoke benefits and compensation benchmarking, Salary Surveys alone do not always provide the specific data you need to make the most accurate bespoke job offerings.

Financial penalties

Some UK organisations face regulatory pressures to ensure employees are paid market value. Involvement in anti-competitive behaviour, e.g. overpaying talent, could result in substantial fines.

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Please complete the details about the hiring intelligence you require to assist us with building a quote for you. Someone from the team will be in touch to deliver your quote.

Key Salary & Compensation insights in Ireland

SS Blocks

%

of businesses are giving pay rises in 2024

%

of professionals are looking for a new job in 2024

2.3 Years

Average tenure of professionals

%

of professionals are confident about job opportunities in this sector

%

of professionals are expecting a pay rise in 2024

Hiring Manager? Benchmark your teams salaries

If you’re growing your team or simply need to retain the talent you have, the Salary Survey gives you the insights you need to have the right team in place to keep your business moving forward.

Find out my team benchmark

Candidate? Find out your salary with an individual salary guide

Whether you’re looking for a new role or preparing for your end-of-year appraisal, the Salary Survey will arm you with everything you need to know to get what you deserve.

Find out my salary

What are the key benefits salary and benefits benchmarking?

Using salary and benefits benchmarking will benefit your company in a wealth of ways.

Increase retention rates

Attract a wider talent pool

Make reliable decisions

Bridge the pay gaps in your organisation, with relevant and non-biased benefits and compensation benchmarking. Using a combination of our data, publicly available insights and the knowledge of our experts.

Find out how more about how these services can benefit your business by requesting a quote.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why should I use a salary guide?

To find out what a reasonable salary is for the job and industry you are in or are thinking of moving into, use a Salary Guide to discover the average pay for someone with a similar level of experience as you and view your earning potential.
What are the benefits of using a salary benchmarking guide?

Whether you're due a pay rise, promotion, or bonus, a Salary Guide allows you to review accurate market salary and pay averages to see how you can compare to others in your sector. Having accurate data-led salary information will help identify exactly how much you should be earning so you ca prepare to negotiate your salary in your next performance review.
When is the best time to negotiate my salary?

Salary reviews often take place during the annual and half-year employee performance review periods. Make sure you take this into consideration and time your negotiation right. If the annual pay review is in January, and you call the meeting for February, you're likely to have missed the boat. In such a case, November would be the most suitable time here.
What is the salary benchmarking process and why is it important?

Salary benchmarking is the process of comparing salaries across the market for a particular job and providing a range and average for a particular role which can help guide an employer's decision-making on pay or bonuses during appraisal period or when making a new hire. The benchmarking process is essential for assessing and comparing pay and compensation packages in relation to the market and of those provided by competitors. Pay and compensation benchmarking can also provide significant competitor advantage, through the retention and attraction of top talent and enhancing an organisations reputation.
How to do salary benchmarking?

In partnership with a data collection specialist, a benchmarking tool offers a fully comprehensive list of salary ranges and averages based on location, experience level and more. You can view the latest salary range and averages in the 2023 salary guide.
How should employers evaluate employee pay & compensation during performance reviews?

Salary and compensation reviews often take place during the annual and half-year employee performance reviews. In tangent with the employee performance scoring, you can use a salary benchmarking tool to inform the pay and compensation review process. The tool also gives good insight into market trends in-demand skill sets. So, use performance reviews to see where the employee fits relative to the external jobs market and avoid losing in-demand talent through effective pay and compensation strategies.

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Find out more about how bespoke salary and benefits benchmarking can benefit your business

Request a quote

Why partner with the Robert Walters Market Intelligence team?

Our agile mindset allows us to build collaborative partnerships with businesses to provide bespoke compensation and benefits benchmarking reports that meet their specific requirements. This allows businesses to leverage on our sophisticated global research team, the latest market software, diverse & broad candidate network and subject-matter experts.

We use a wide variety of data sources combined with a methodical approach to ensure the accuracy and validity of our data, with in-depth statistical rigour to provide strong market analysis.

FAQs

What is salary/compensation and benefits benchmarking?

Benefits and compensation benchmarking is a vital tool for organisations seeking to optimise their salary and benefits packages. By comparing their compensation packages with industry standards, companies can attract and retain top talent, improve employee satisfaction, and remain competitive in the ever-evolving job market.
When is the right time to start benchmarking?

We suggest beginning your benefits and compensation benchmarking process 3 months prior to the start of the hiring project / end of the financial year, as this is an ideal time to assess and plan required headcounts. Benchmarking is also a beneficial tool for business expansion, as it identifies which talent competitors are utilising to support their business. This is particularly valuable if you are growing within different regions, as it highlights the key areas where you could be more cost effective. If you are experiencing employee attrition, the benchmarking service can help to uncover whether your competitors have more appealing offerings, so that you can ensure your packages will attract/retain talent. 
What information does the salary and benefits benchmarking service include?

We provide the lower 25th and the top 75th percentile of all salaries benchmarked, as well as both mean and median averages of all data collated. This data is then separated into the various locations that are of interest, with each of the job titles listed. You can request a sample of the report to find out more about what is included..
Where does the data come from?

Using a combination of our own recruitment data, paid for data partners, publicly available insights and the knowledge of our recruitment experts, we build bespoke overviews of the compensation and benefits required to attract the best talent. All data collated is internally checked to ensure maximum validity..
How many data points do you use?

Our data points differ depending on our clients overall requirements, such as what industry, sector, job role or location is of interest. Our Market Intelligence team aim to take a minimum of 20 values – where there is not 20 data points, we source additional postings directly from google advanced commands, web-scraping, job boards and desk research. If the area of interest is very specific, such as a niche job title, we will be entirely honest with the amount of data we can provide before any commitments are made.
How do you analyse the data?

The team standardises terminology against various job specifications, filling in any necessary fields manually. Each job title / data row is analysed, looking for the matching contract rates. To accurately calculate the value, the bottom 20%, as well as outliers of double minimum value, is removed.
How bespoke is the service?

We can break-down our compensation and benefits benchmarking data into several categories: company size, industry, location, sector and job title. As long as the data is available, we can tailor this to meet your requirements and provide compensation and benefits benchmarking data..
Who is benefits and compensation benchmarking useful for?

We find benchmarking compensation and benefits data is particularly valuable for: HR teams, Procurement Officers, Finance Directors, CFOs, CIOs, IT Directors and any other team members who are usually involved in financial decision making..
What is the approximate cost of the service?

Our cost is completely dependent on how many person hours delivery will take. We have a team of in-house analysts who will provide accurate quotations upon discussing your bespoke requirements.
What is the usual turnaround time?

Depending on the complexity of the project, our usual turnaround time is between 6-8 weeks from you providing the team with your final requirements.