How to Decide Which Jobs to Include in Your Compensation Study

When determining which jobs to include in your compensation study, start by identifying all of the unique jobs within your company, including the number of people in each job and their pay grade, if utilized, within the organization.Ideally, you want to have at least 70% of your employee population represented.

They’re critical to your business.
While all jobs may be important to keeping your company running successfully, you should be sure to include all of the critical jobs in your compensation study to ensure market competitiveness. These may be single incumbent jobs (e.g.,
chief executive officer), but still add great value to the business.

They are part of broader initiatives.
If the compensation study is intended to support broader initiatives (e.g., short-term incentive plan design), jobs may need to be added to reflect the eligible population.

Their grade level is not sufficiently represented.
When assessing pay grades, it is best practice to have at least three to five jobs per grade, preferably more. Add jobs to the list, where appropriate, to meet this threshold.

They have high turnover.
Jobs having issues being filled may be selected for the study to better understand why they aren’t being filled and if a change in compensation could be the solution.

They’re well represented.
If you are trying to remove jobs from your list, you may want to target roles that are overrepresented (again, try to have at least three to five jobs per grade, preferably more, included in the study).

They are similar to other jobs that are already included.
When jobs are similar in level and responsibility (e.g., administrative assistant - marketing and administrative assistant - human resources), you may choose to price only one of them.

Their roles are unique to your company.
Jobs that are unique to your company are also candidates for removal. These jobs may have few market matches available anyway.

They never stay open for long.
If a job is always easy to fill, the position may be attractive enough in the market and most likely wouldn’t need compensation changes. However, a compensation study may be helpful to understand if pay levels are set too high.