• What is benchmarking?

Benchmarking is a way of collecting data on the pay rates for similar jobs in other organisations to establish the market rate and track movements in those rates. Salary benchmarking helps reward professionals set competitive salaries and support staff retention.

• Where do you get the information for Pay Benchmarker?

Pay Benchmarker is continually updated by our in-house team of specialist researchers. We collect information from named organisations across a wide range of sectors directly from HR managers via research programme. In a small number of cases we collect data from the trade unions, primarily for agreements in the public sector.

• Why is it important to benchmark?

Salary benchmarking gives employers the ability to compare salaries against competitors and provides an understanding of the market rate, helping organisations stay competitive. It also keeps stakeholders up-to-date with the latest salary trends in their industry.

• Do you have data on by sector?

Pay Benchmarker covers all sectors of the economy. Data can be filtered by both sector (ie public or private) and industry.

• How do I benchmark a role using Pay Benchmarker?

Pay Benchmarker’s user-friendly interface allows you to find the market rate for a job role at the click of a button. Filter thousands of salaries by job family, job title, job level, region, and sector. Interactive charts populate automatically. The handy reset button wipes any search and allows you to start a new salary search.

• Can I benchmark a role within a certain region?

Pay Benchmarker covers all 12 UK regions (formerly the government office regions), plus a wider area covering the London commuter belt. Filters allow you to examine data on Regional Pay, London pay and an overview of salary levels including both.

• How many users can access Pay Benchmarker?

Pay Benchmarker is available as an annual subscription for three users, further users can be added at an additional cost. As Pay Benchmarker is accessed via a website address, the tool can be used from any location. Once registered as a subscriber, simply log in at any time to access the data.

• How many salary records are held in Pay Benchmarker?

The database contains around 10,000 salary records covering over 200 jobs from 1,00 firms, all of which can be interrogated by region, sector and size. Pay Benchmarker also has the functionality to export bespoke charts and tables with ease. The pay awards section of the tool contains details of around 800 pay awards collected each year.

• How often is Pay Benchmarker updated?

The data is being continually updated with Pay Levels and Pay Awards are updated monthly as a minimum.

• How do I know which job level to choose when benchmarking?

We have developed our own job levels matrix. The job levels have been developed to reflect the hierarchy and different levels of work and responsibility found in many organisations. The Pay Benchmarker glossary is built into the system and provides a detailed breakdown of the levels. We pride ourselves on excellent customer care, so if you are unsure of the level of your role, we are very happy to help. Our researchers are also very familiar with the levels our competitors use and can help you translates how the levels compare if you require.

• Does Pay Benchmarker show benefits also?

Pay Benchmarker consists of two databases of information, collected by our in-house research team. The first, Pay Levels contains salaries which can be filtered by job family, job title, job level, region, and sector. The second, Pay Awards contains details of annual pay increases which can be filtered by sector, number of employees, union recognition and long-term deals. We also offer a benefit handbook in the reports section of our website.

• Can I export the data straight from Pay Benchmarker?

Yes, both Pay Levels and Pay Awards have export functions for the tables and charts.

• Does figures does Pay Benchmarker provide?

Selecting a job title will initially display the average, median and upper and lower quartile summary figures of the midpoint/market rate for all the jobs in our database, both in named and anonymous organisations. Where there are jobs of different levels of skills and responsibility included under the same job title, then the market rate for each job level is included in the summary calculations.

• Does Pay Benchmarker provided data on annual pay rises?

Yes, the Pay Awards database contains details of pay rises by company name. We collect around 800 pay awards annually. Data can be filtered by date and time period, with data going back over 10 years. Data can also be filtered by sector and industry. You can also filter further looking at types of increase, number of employees, union recognition and long term deals, and these are all explained in the in-built Pay Benchmarker glossary.

• Do I have to provide our pay information if I subscribe to Pay Benchmarker?

No, it’s not compulsory but we always encourage subscribers to participate in our research, there is an option to provide data but withhold your company name.