Salaries benchmarking: Salary Benchmarking Guide: Best Practices, Tips and Techniques

Опубликовано: October 29, 2022 в 5:57 pm

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Категории: Miscellaneous

Salary Benchmarking Guide: Best Practices, Tips and Techniques

Salaries represent most businesses’ largest single line item. By performing salary benchmarking, companies can both control that expense and compensate employees fairly to minimize attrition. This comprehensive guide provides all the how-to steps and best practices you need to understand the salary benchmarking process.

Inside this article:

  • Why is benchmarking important in the compensation and benefits functions?
  • How to do salary benchmarking
  • Elements of salary benchmarking
  • What are compensation or salary best practices?
  • Job matching methodologies

What Is Salary Benchmarking?

Salary benchmarking, also known as compensation benchmarking, compares one company’s job descriptions and pay ranges to similar jobs in other organizations. The process shows the average or market salary for each job. Benchmarking — and then using that data to adjust where necessary — is essential to retain staff and recruit new talent.

When benchmarking salaries, HR departments must consider attributes such as company size, industry, training, location and necessary education. This analysis is particularly crucial when creating positions because a company must set a competitive salary scale to attract the right recruits.

Teams track their competitiveness through metrics including the pay range midpoint, which is the average that an experienced staff member would expect in salary. Companies often add data and analysis to a compensation benchmarking template that they tailor for each role. Benchmarking committees or consultants can then present comprehensive reports to hiring managers and other stakeholders.

Salary is only one element of compensation, albeit an important one. Overall compensation may include, for example, employer contributions to retirement or other saving plans, paid insurance, paid time off or stock options. So look at a salary benchmark as one key element in an overall compensation picture for a given job.

Read our compensation metrics and KPIs article to discover salary metrics and formulas. Also, see our article on HR analytics to learn about tracking and analyzing metrics.

Key Takeaways

  • Salary benchmarking helps companies attract and keep quality talent by ensuring they provide competitive compensation.
  • Compensation benchmarking helps control labor costs, which in turn helps manage operations costs.
  • Salary benchmarking can help to highlight and remedy pay inequities in your company.

What Is Compensation Benchmarking?

Compensation benchmarking, which is related to salary benchmarking, is the process of comparing salaries and benefits between organizations. A company first defines duties for its roles and then matches those to jobs in peer companies.

Why Is Benchmarking Important in the Compensation And Benefits Functions?

Benchmarking helps with compensation budgeting. This budgeting, in turn, helps with cost management. A set salary/benefits budget allows room to reward valued talent. Paying competitive wages also reduces costly staff turnover.

Compensation and benefits also contribute greatly to employee engagement. When employees feel fairly compensated, they tend to perform better and are less likely to seek employment elsewhere. To learn more about compensation and benefits, read our employee compensation article.

What Is the Purpose of Salary Benchmarking?

Salary benchmarking helps companies make data-driven decisions. It removes the guesswork and reduces favoritism. By setting a pay range for each job, a company can vary compensation according to staff skills, longevity and performance.

Salary benchmarking also ensures companies pay competitive market wages and helps them recruit quality candidates and reward and retain current employees.

What Are the Advantages of Salary Benchmarking?

The advantages of salary benchmarking are that it controls salary costs and ensures that wages are fair. Benchmarking also contributes to better job descriptions and salary and benefits transparency.

Salary benchmarking may seem like an arduous task. But, once done, it forms a pay structure that you can adjust and update without extensive additional research. It can make the company more profitable.

How to Do Salary Benchmarking

You can complete salary benchmarking in three main steps. These high-level steps include choosing data sources that line up with your company, aligning the data with your compensation strategy and creating salary ranges. Read our how to do compensation benchmarking article for a more detailed, step-by-step process.

Choose data sources that work for your organization

To choose data sources that work for your organization, consider alignment with your job descriptions, industry and location. Then consider the data’s age, completeness and accuracy.

Data may be available from free surveys, but those sources may not offer the most accurate salary picture. Paid, aggregated data may be more precise. When weighing that cost, consider that it can be time-consuming to manually compile and analyze data from multiple sources.

Apply a compensation strategy

A compensation strategy describes how your salaries and benefits align with the overall company goals. Do you want to be seen as having highly competitive salaries and benefits to hire the very best people, or are you more middle of the road?

A defined compensation strategy can show which businesses you’ll compete with to attract talent. The practice also indicates how you will respond to salary requests from current and prospective employees.

Create salary ranges

A set of fixed salary ranges can help you predict and manage salary costs while reducing pay inequities among staff. Use benchmarking and analysis to provide a data-driven basis for pay grades. It is important to communicate to employees the criteria for various pay levels.

Elements of Salary Benchmarking

The elements of salary benchmarking include compensation strategy, salary surveys and job matching. Together, they help you find the correct data and then analyze and interpret it.

Compensation Strategy

A compensation strategy or plan describes how a company intends to align HR costs with its overall goals. A compensation strategy helps promote salary equity internally. It also defines a competitive approach to attracting new talent.

To set a compensation strategy, you first need to look at your organization’s goals. What do you want to achieve this year? Longer term? What skills are needed to get you there, and what does that talent cost? Include the CEO, board, top leadership and other stakeholders as you brainstorm: If you want to grow the business, think about rewarding salespeople. If employee retention is an issue, benchmarking may shed light on compensation solutions.

Consider your financial goals and changes you could make in your company culture to help with retention. Gathering this information provides a framework for creating pay ranges and insights into how adjusting benefits may help.

Once you know what you want to achieve with your compensation strategy, look at what your budget allows and make necessary adjustments.

Salary Benchmarking Surveys

Salary benchmarking surveys help experts and managers set pay ranges for a company by pinpointing the average salaries for roles with very similar job descriptions. The data is specific to industry, geography and company size.

While HR teams could gather this data manually from multiple free sources, many choose to work with leading salary survey companies such as Aon, Compensation & HR Group, Croner, Culpepper, Korn Ferry and Willis Towers Watson. Survey companies sometimes specialize in industries.

Even with the best consultants and sources, there’s no substitute for industry insights born of long experience, so ensure that senior people review data that will be used to set pay grades.

Job Matching Methodologies

Job matching methodologies analyze a position to define its importance and assign the proper pay level. There are four methods for evaluating jobs: ranking, grading, point-factor and factor comparison. Each has its benefits.

Some specialists group these methodologies into two categories: quantitative and non-quantitative. Non-quantitative methods include ranking and grading. Quantitative methods include point-factor and factor comparison.

  • Ranking method: This method ranks jobs based on their difficulty and/or value to the company’s overall aims. It is critical with ranking to start with detailed job descriptions to ensure fairness and remove personal preference. This method does not gauge market salaries.

    You may find job ranking complex in a large company. If this is the case, group jobs according to types, training levels or experience.

  • Grading method: The grading method involves dividing one job into grades according to skills, education or responsibilities. For example, a trainer position could have grades for Trainer 1, someone with a degree but no experience; Trainer 2 with five to eight years of experience; and Trainer 3 for those with eight or more years under their belts. Companies may find this easy to do for straightforward roles, less so for hybrid jobs.

  • Point-factor method: The point-factor method weights jobs on the value of skills, responsibilities or other attributes and assigns points for each. The higher the overall score, the higher the pay level. This method rates the importance of duties for a department or company but does not consider how other departments or companies rate duties or a role’s market value. The point-factor approach may not reflect a job’s market value.

  • Factor comparison method: Similar to the points method, the factor comparison method distinguishes factors for each job and then finds the market value. This approach is complicated and may be challenging to communicate to employees but could be useful in companies where individual roles span a variety of duties.

Job Evaluation Methods

This chart shows how quantitative and non-quantitative job evaluation methods flow and differ.

Approaches for Benchmarking Hybrid Jobs

Benchmarking hybrid jobs may require other approaches. In small companies and startups, people may wear more than one hat, such as technical writer and web manager. To decide the salary for a hybrid job, consider these four approaches.

  • Blending method: For the blending method, determine which roles someone performs, gather data for all relevant roles and compile a composite to reveal the average salary. This approach may make it difficult to establish pay ranges.

  • Internal equity method: For this method, look inward to review similar jobs, duties and skills within the company and correlate salaries. Ensuring pay equity is important for keeping your best workers and complying with laws against wage discrimination. Read our employee retention guide to learn more.

  • Highest responsibility method: In this method, you consider the highest-level role performed by someone who wears several hats. If you need to fill that position again, you will have to offer pay at that rate. For example, company, location and experience level may be determining factors for a technical writer/web manager.

  • Duty frequency: Duty frequency is a key factor for figuring out hybrid role benchmarking. Determine which role someone performs during, say, 70% of the workday. Then that role serves as the basis for deciding the job title and pay.

Great! You’ve got salary benchmarking methodologies down.

Now it’s time to get an ERP that utilizes HCM software to better make those decisions.

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How Do Employees Respond to Compensation Benchmarking?

Employees generally respond well to compensation benchmarking because it can keep salary and benefits packages transparent and equitable. Employees appreciate knowing they receive the same pay as others in comparable jobs within and outside the company. Therefore, benchmarking helps to retain staff.

However, employees might react negatively to information about salaries and benefits — for example, if they learn that someone with similar skills or job experience receives more money. Establishing pay grades based on market rates can help companies implement data-based pay ranges for all staff and supply objective explanations for pay assignments.

Compensation benchmarking should consider not only market salary rates but also benefits packages. Benefits can include employer contributions to retirement or other saving plans, paid insurance and paid time off. Salary is only one piece of the puzzle.

What Are Compensation or Salary Benchmarking Best Practices?

Compensation or salary benchmarking best practices include picking the right competitors and jobs to benchmark. HR teams should also work with department managers and use the resulting data to create a thorough, accurate report.

  • Consider the salary benchmarking big picture. Consider how benchmarking will affect salaries and bonuses, incentives, employer contributions and benefits, and your promotion and hiring plan.

  • Define why you are benchmarking. Because benchmarking takes time and effort, your company should agree on which roles require it and your goals.

  • Choose the right competitors. Benchmarking from the right companies is crucial to an effective result. Consider the companies you would recruit from or where your staff finds employment when they leave. Be sure to include peers in the same locale, industry and size.

  • Limit what you benchmark. You don’t need to conduct a compensation benchmarking analysis on every position annually or semi-annually. Consider staggering positions to be analyzed, but stay flexible in case a particular role rises in importance or a skillset starts to be scarce.

  • Review salary and benefits. Compensation does not consist of just evaluating an employee’s pay. Compare not only salary but also incentives, bonuses and benefits to understand the complete compensation package.

  • Work with department managers. Suppose HR conducts the benchmarking process without a salary consultant. In that case, they are well-advised to work with hiring managers to accurately describe job duties and responsibilities, not just what everyone thinks each role entails.

  • Use reputable salary surveys and data sources. You want the external data you benchmark to be as accurate as possible. Keep in mind that compensation consultants have the training to source and analyze data. Engaging a salary professional may be worth the expense.

Why Should You Invest in an Integrated HCM Solution?

Salary benchmarking is a complex but vital part of HR and operations that can also boost morale and reduce costs. But to ensure good results, benchmarking also relies on volumes of internal and external data.

To help make salary benchmarking more efficient, busy HR managers and staff need an enterprise-wide human-capital management (HCM) solution. An integrated suite of apps should track the many pay grades for each role, benefits packages, rewards and eligibility criteria. An HCM becomes your one-stop-shop for managing all stages of the employee lifecycle, with the bonus of compliance tracking and reporting.

Read the HCM guide to learn more about how an integrated HR platform can help you.

NetSuite Human Capital Management Solution Simplifies HR

Quality data is key to salary benchmarking. Many companies are already collecting this information, but important data stores may be in disparate locations. That’s why it’s essential to store salary and benefits in a central repository where HR pros can use it to make informed decisions. NetSuite provides a powerful, centralized HR data solution so managers can efficiently access all the internal salary and benefits data needed for compensation benchmarking.

Leverage internal HR data with the power of the cloud’s number one enterprise resource planning system with SuitePeople from NetSuite. Oversee payroll, benefits and performance management in one human capital management platform. The solution empowers employees with self-service capabilities for time-off requests, contact updates, peer recognition and more.

Salary Benchmarking FAQs

Why is compensation benchmarking an important best practice?

Controlling compensation plans help companies control costs. Compensation benchmarking is an important best practice that helps senior leaders define salaries and benefits, attract top talent and keep morale among existing employees high.

How does compensation benchmarking help set salary ranges?

Compensation benchmarking analyzes internal job descriptions and compares them to external roles. With this approach, a company can set salary ranges and use market averages for salaries to define minimum, midpoint and maximum pay grades.

The salary range process includes the following steps:

  1. Decide on a compensation strategy. This plan shows what skills and experience a company needs to meet its short- and long-term goals.
  2. Analyze the job to define the exact duties and responsibilities. After conducting thorough research, a company may decide to redefine the job.
  3. Evaluate and rank jobs. Evaluation involves comparing job duties to those of similar internal and external positions. A company ranks positions to show how valuable they are to its operations.
  4. Define a salary range. The range describes the minimum and maximum a company will pay someone for a given role.
  5. Create pay grades or job grades. Pay grades define increments in a salary range based on experience, longevity, skill and performance. Pay grades offer a path for employees to advance to positions with more authority and pay without having to join another company.

What are the ways to decide the companies for benchmarking in salary surveys?

Tracking current salary trends can be difficult for an HR professional who already has a full plate of duties. HR often turns to salary consultants who select the best competitive matches and maintain databases of competitive statistics.

If you must conduct benchmarking on your own, consider these approaches. If your business hasn’t matured into its vision, choose competitors you want to emulate. Look for companies in the same industry with processes you want to echo. Or look at benefits programs in locales with an active job market.

What is a salary benchmarking process?

Salary benchmarking is the process of evaluating a company’s internal job salaries based upon their external value. Salary benchmarking involves analyzing the main components of each position and comparing these positions to similar jobs in other companies. Organizations primarily rely on compensation surveys, government labor databases, and the assistance of compensation consultants for accurate job market data.

Why should HR leaders care about salary benchmarking?

Salary benchmarking helps compensation managers create competitive salaries. Though compensation isn’t the only important aspect of a job, it’s obviously an essential factor, as everyone wants to bring home a respectable paycheck. Moreover, competitive compensation demonstrates how much the company values its employees and their contributions. In a particularly competitive job market and an unstable economy, offering an appropriate salary is key to attracting candidates and retaining talent.  

How can HR leaders implement an effective salary benchmarking system?

To build a comprehensive salary benchmarking system, HR leaders can incorporate these steps:

  • Design a plan that will serve as a roadmap. Write up an in-depth salary benchmarking plan that includes the long- and short-term goals, a timeline, the budget, the necessary resources, and the purpose. Outlining these components enables compensation managers to establish competitive salary benchmarks for each job. Keep in mind that the plan can be flexible—it’s not set in stone.  
  • Make sure every job in the company has a description. Job descriptions are a necessary prerequisite to salary benchmarking. Often, organizations may use different job titles for the same or similar roles. Thus, the descriptions enable the identification of synonymous positions. For example, an organization focusing on salary benchmarking for Customer Success Managers may come across the titles: Sales Managers and Customer Success Engineers. While the titles differ, the descriptions may overlap. According to salary.com, HR professionals should compare descriptions that share 80 percent of the same responsibilities and requirements.    
  • Consider where to collect data from. The quality of the data determines the accuracy of the salary benchmarking, so salary benchmarking should stem from reliable data and a solid benchmarking process. Options include domestic and global participant surveys and aggregated employer-reported data. In some cases, companies use employee-reported crowdsourcing as an additional source of information.   
  • Use the compensation philosophy as a compass. Considering both the compensation philosophy and the external salary benchmarks enables compensation managers to build competitive, fair salaries that align with the budget and reflect the company’s approach toward compensation. Defining and integrating a compensation philosophy can contribute to a positive business reputation and employee experience.

Why should salary benchmarking be a part of modern HR strategy?

HR leaders should integrate salary benchmarking into their strategy to keep pace with the fluid, global job market. Salary benchmarking helps HR build attractive, competitive salaries that can directly improve the employee experience and fuel higher levels of employee engagement.

Benchmarking: what it is and where it is applied

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Competitive analysis helps a company adjust its product to improve its market position. We understand how to apply benchmarking and what this method gives the company in practice

1

What is benchmarking

Benchmarking is a set of techniques that allow you to study the experience of competitors and implement best practices in your company. As a rule, this tool is used to compare your business with the best companies on the market, that is, with benchmarks. Business processes, business approaches, production costs, product quality, customer satisfaction can be used as criteria.

Such an analysis allows top managers to make informed decisions when developing a company’s strategy – to determine who to look up to in the market (or to establish that the company itself is a leader), determine the company’s targets and development model.

Benchmarking as a market analysis tool began to be used by companies in the second half of the 20th century. One of the first companies to use this method in practice was Rank Xerox during the crisis in the late 1970s. Then the company lost a significant part of the market, giving way to Kodak, Canon and others. To regain its former competitiveness, Rank Xerox compared its performance with competitors on the following points: production costs, the way copiers are assembled, customer satisfaction, and so on. This helped the company optimize business processes, including by reducing distribution costs, and become a leader in its segment of the copier market.

2

How benchmarking differs from KPIs

Benchmarks (reference indicators) are benchmarks for comparing a company with the performance of others. And KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are set targets in accordance with the company’s adopted strategy. As noted by business strategy consultant Bernard Marr, it is advisable to first conduct benchmarking, and then set KPIs based on this analysis. For example, a laptop manufacturer can analyze the performance of competitors and improve KPIs for annual performance.

“The difference is that KPI is more of an internal work, focused on the characteristics of the company and the result of agreements between management and performers. Benchmarking is always a view from the outside, a description of the already established activities of competitors or reference companies,” explains Denis Konanchuk, Director of the Corporate Training Department at the Moscow School of Management Skolkovo. He notes that in practice there are often situations when companies simply transfer benchmark indicators to their KPIs; but this, he says, is misleading, as it does not take into account all the contexts in which the company exists.

3

When to use benchmarking

According to Natalia Pavlova, KPMG Strategy and Operations Consulting Practice Manager in Russia and the CIS, benchmarking is used in practice in two cases.

When it is necessary to compare the company’s performance with the best market practices in order to choose the direction of the company’s development and areas for efficiency improvement.
In the second case, target KPIs for the business are determined based on average market values ​​or levels of market leaders. As Pavlova explains, there may be cases in a company when new technologies are being introduced and top management does not understand what effect to expect from them. Then it is difficult for management to set motivating, but at the same time achievable goals without benchmarking. “Or, for example, a conflict of interest may arise between different parties to the business, in which it is “profitable” for one of the parties to underestimate the expected effects. In this case, the availability of objective market data can be of great help in dealing with resistance, and ultimately in achieving positive changes,” she explains.

4

Types of benchmarking

There are several types of benchmarking:

  • Comparative analysis. It includes the collection and comparison of quantitative data (key performance indicators). Benchmarking is usually the first step companies take to identify performance gaps.
  • Practical analysis . It includes the collection and comparison of high-quality information about how the company operates, how people, processes, and technologies work.
  • Internal analysis. In this case, the indicators of different divisions of companies, departments, product lines are compared.
  • External analysis. Involves comparing the performance or practices of one organization with other organizations with similar business processes.

5

Pros and cons of benchmarking

Experts interviewed by RBC Trends say that benchmarking is used today by companies to solve any business problem. At the same time, Natalia Pavlova notes that an important condition for benchmarking is qualitative data. She notes that this method is effective only when the comparison is carried out correctly. “For this, it is important that companies with a similar business model, target audience and other relevant parameters are selected (compare “apples with apples”). Moreover, the same indicator in different companies may have a different calculation methodology, so the consultant must analyze whether such data can really be used for comparison or if methodology unification is required, ”says Pavlova.

Pros

If a company has managed to collect qualitative data for comparison, then benchmarking will have a number of advantages:

  • Speed ​​ . Benchmarking allows you to quickly improve the quality of products by analyzing the advantages of competitors.
  • Prevention . Analysis helps to prevent the occurrence of difficulties and loss of profit by studying someone else’s bad experience.
  • Applying best practices . This method gives the company the opportunity to optimize its business by applying the best solutions of competitors.
  • Availability . Benchmarking does not require significant financial and time costs.

As Denis Konanchuk notes, benchmarking in general opens up a lot of room for improvement within the company itself, when the question is posed – why are the best companies doing well, while we are not yet?

Cons

  • Doesn’t answer the “how” question

Despite these advantages, benchmarking has a number of disadvantages. According to Denis Konanchuk, the limitation of this method is that it answers in detail the question “what should be done”, but gives few clues to the question “how”. “Benchmarking is the tip of the iceberg, it gives the upper measurable indicators, targets. But the secret to success is how to achieve them. And there is no one correct strategy and “golden” solution. All companies are different in context, corporate culture, resources, and so on,” he says. According to the expert, benchmarking should be followed by a creative process of developing new non-standard solutions by managers – this will allow them to find their way to market success.

  • Does not work in innovation

The second major limitation, according to Konanchuk, is that benchmarking works mostly on finished projects that need improvement. “For example, when there is a product, but you need to change the processes to make it a little cheaper or better. Or vice versa, when there is a well-established process and you are looking for an opportunity to make new products and solutions on it. In this case, you can “spy” on competitors,” he says. But benchmarking doesn’t work well in the innovation zone, when a company has to deal with two or more unknowns. Most likely, benchmarking will not be applicable when a company wants to release a new product, but does not fully understand what it should be and how to make it.

6

Benchmarking examples

Internal benchmarking. It is often used in network companies with branches in other regions. An example of using this method is Hewlett-Packard. At one time, the corporation lost to its competitors from Japan. Competitors managed to establish the production of new products faster and better. Then HP conducted a benchmarking study of R & D departments in the branches and divisions of the company to maintain competitiveness. Comparison of the performance of different departments of companies was carried out according to the BET criterion (break-even time, project payback period). As a result of this study, Hewlett-Packard implemented a Six Sigma methodology that helped streamline processes and remain competitive in the marketplace.

External benchmarking. During the pandemic, this method has become one of the ways to transfer employees to remote work. Companies that did not have remote work experience could analyze how the strongest competitors do the transition to remote work and how this affects their performance. Benchmarking also helps to answer the question of how expedient it may be to transfer some of the staff to outsourcing.

Natalia Pavlova gives an example where benchmarking helped a company move part of its employee functions to a shared service center (SSC) while reducing headcount. “In one of our projects, the corporate center set the task of reducing the cost of services for personnel processes transferred to the SSC. Benchmarking the number required to perform individual processes and comparing the speed of operations showed that it is possible to carry out staff reductions through robotization and organizational changes. At the same time, the benchmarks showed exactly in which operations the gap from market values ​​is the largest,” she says. According to her, after the analysis, the number of SSCs was reduced by 30% due to point improvements in seven business processes of the company. At the same time, as Pavlova notes, in this case, the task of optimizing the number of people met with strong resistance from the SSC; but the benchmarks gave management a strong argument in favor of their decision, making the project possible.

7

How to benchmark

Benchmarking consists of several steps:

  1. Planning . The company must determine what part of its business it wants to improve and with whom it will compare itself.

  2. Collection of information . At this stage, it is necessary to collect information about how business processes are carried out in the company, what are the key indicators of the company, and also collect similar information about competitors. Competitor data can be obtained through open sources on the Web, through expert opinion, customers, suppliers; in some cases, this can be done by contacting a competitor company directly.

  3. Data analysis . Once the information is collected, a report is produced and management discusses the next steps to achieve better company performance.

  4. Application in practice . The key stage of benchmarking, which involves adjusting / changing the company’s business processes based on the analysis done.

  5. Results monitoring . Monitoring the company’s performance will show the effectiveness of the changes. It can be done over a short or long period of time depending on the desired results.

Experts interviewed by RBC Trends note that due to growing competition, benchmarking has become one of the most common tools for managing companies. At the same time, says Denis Konanchuk, the approach to benchmarking is changing. “If earlier many companies wanted to choose a standard for themselves from their industry, something similar to the current business, today many are trying to “spy” and compare themselves with leaders in other markets, since many business models and solutions in the modern world are well transferred from one industry to another,” he says.

Updated on 09/30/2021

Text

Victoria Saitova

Research, benchmarking and work with the image

In the world of modern business, not only the quality of the product or service that the company represents is important, but also the image of the company itself.

In the early 2000s, it was possible to select a highly qualified employee for the company’s team to a greater extent due to the size of the proposed salary. Today, potential employees look at the official part of the salary, the social package, the company’s office, reviews about the brand as a whole and individual divisions, and so on.

Therefore, it is obvious that HR should make full use of classical marketing tools to build effective work in the field of selection, motivation and retention of key employees of the organization, says Olga Shturmina , director of B2B marketing projects Airwaves CG.

What marketing tools and techniques are needed in the work of the HR department

1. Research

When receiving the task of finding and hiring a specific employee, a competent HR specialist should ask himself the question: do the job parameters presented by management meet the requirements of the market. Job search services and resumes regularly review average salaries by profession, but the recruiter should also consider what the profile of a real person who fits the requirements of the job is.

See also: When HR needs marketing: tools and techniques

For example, a manager may see a 40-year-old male with a university degree and more than 10 years of experience in corporate law as a director of legal affairs, while the salary offered will correspond to a specialist with a level of experience of no more than 5 years and under the age of 30 years.

The difference between the expectations of the director of the company and the actual offer on the market most often turns into the fact that it takes more time to fill the vacancy. And this negatively affects the efficiency of the company. The ability to conduct research and adjust management expectations or make timely changes to the job profile significantly saves company resources in the long run.

Case study: The head of an IT company set the task of finding a project manager certified in accordance with international project management standards and having at least 5 years of experience in this field. The financial motivation of an employee consisted of a salary and a bonus part based on project completion indicators. The average project time is 6+ months. Therefore, motivation for a completed project is paid no more than once every six months.

Considering that projects tend to be delayed even with an experienced leader, real wages turned out to be significantly lower than market supply. Motivated refusals of candidates who fully satisfy the director’s idea of ​​a project manager led to an adjustment of the requirements for the candidate. The analysis of vacancies and resumes showed that the time spent on searching for a candidate could be minimized if a simple marketing research of the market had been carried out at the time of the formation of the vacancy description.

2. Benchmarking

Benchmarking is the analysis and implementation of the best practices of competitors. HR professionals need this tool to analyze the effectiveness of their own work and make changes and improve interaction with the staff and the labor market as a whole. Of course, there is a regular exchange of experience at various conferences and exhibitions. But research directly “in the field” provides more information and objective benefits for work.

Benchmarking tasks can be solved by:

  • monitoring job descriptions from competitors,
  • monitoring feedback on a competitor as an employer,
  • interviewing employees who worked or were interviewed by a competitor,
  • creating a resume profile and interviewing a competitor.

Benchmarking technique is good because it gives not static results in the form of a large number of numbers, but real data on successful solutions of competitors that can be successfully applied in your company. At the same time, benchmarking implies the possibility of using open observation techniques, when specialists from HR departments of competing companies can get advice from colleagues on the mechanics of interest.

Case study: A wooden house manufacturing company was looking for a digital marketer. An example of a successful implementation of promotion on the Internet was the website and social networks of a similar company in another region. Since the recruiter did not have sufficient competencies to evaluate a candidate for a vacancy, we analyzed the archive of vacancies of a competitor company, evaluated the description of a similar vacancy and contacted the HR department of this company directly with a request to talk about the criteria and mechanics of selecting this candidate. During the discussion, we exchanged experience, which allowed us to reduce the time for closing the vacancy. The companies also found common ground and subsequently entered into a partnership agreement.

3. Working with the company’s image

An HR specialist can organize work with personnel for an infinitely long time, use effective methods, but if the company does not have a completely adequate leader (both in general and in a separate unit), then negative feedback cannot be avoided. A few negative ratings will not destroy the company’s reputation, but regularly updated reviews indicating specific names and positions can cause a big headache for an HR specialist.

Case study: A company operates in the consumer goods market. The range of products ranges from medium plus to premium level. The company is Russian, has been operating on the market for more than 10 years, among the clients there are famous people. When looking for sales floor specialists, it becomes difficult to attract employees who are interested in the company. Despite the attractive compensation package, the specialists refuse the invitation, as there are a large number of reviews on the Internet about the poor performance of the claims handling service.

See also: Qualities of a modern HR specialist

It’s simple: the sales floor specialist’s motivation is tied to the sales volume of the product. If there are negative reviews, the specialist concludes that the client will also easily find this information and prefer to buy products from another company. Consequently, achieving the target sales target does not look as simple as at first glance. The company has already corrected this line of work, and the response to complaints from customers has become more efficient and better. But it didn’t work to remove negative reviews or motivate consumers to leave positive ones.

These are just basic marketing tools that can be used to improve the efficiency of work with personnel in a company.