The Data Doktor
Volume 1, Number 4
May, 2005

The Right Match: Better Job Matching Benefits Everyone

Does your company view survey submission as all pain and no gain? Many firms dedicate the least resources possible and plod through a submission with no expectation of gleaning a thimble-full of information from the process. That’s too bad, because not only do they get what they expect out of the process—nothing—the quality of the survey data we all use suffers.

In this issue of the Data Doktor I’ll discuss three ways you can derive value from the survey submission process. Those three ways come down to 1) job matching, 2) job matching, and 3) job matching.

Seriously, with the right processes and tools for job matching, survey submission can inform your staff and improve your knowledge about pay and positions, not only within your company but in the market at large. As an added benefit, it can also help prepare for and even reduce those pesky call-back questions from your survey vendors.

But first…

Self-promotion department

Meet the Data Doktor in the Big Easy. Come by the NPKtools booth (#641) at the WorldatWork 50th Annual Conference & Exhibition, New Orleans, May 22-25. Let me know what’s ailing your compensation crew and maybe we can discuss it in a future issue.

If you haven’t already done so, it’s not to late to download my Survey Submission Checklist, a comprehensive, 9-page road map to guide you through all the steps of preparing salary survey submissions.

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Three steps to better job matching

Job matching adds value if at the end of the process you know more about your own jobs or the survey market jobs than you did before. This requires developing contacts both within your firm and among external organizations (i.e. survey participants) to better understand how markets are defined and managed.

1. Move job matching to the line / staff managers closest to the job.

Jobs are no longer the static classifications they once were. Companies are continuously creating and redefining positions to respond to market forces, and work in general is becoming more complex and specialized. This makes it harder than ever for compensation staff to stay current with the wide range of job definitions.

Tapping into the knowledge of the managers closest to the job can help enrich your understanding and improve job matching. However, to get them to review responsibilities and levels, you must make the process simple. Ideally, you will provide your managers with a single, well organized report that enables them to easily compare the duties and scope for each of the survey jobs and recommend match changes where appropriate.

You can do this in Excel. First develop spreadsheets containing the company matches for each survey and then use the Excel Vlookup (see our Analyst’s Corner) and the company job code as the reference key to array the survey job descriptions with each company job. Sorting company jobs in ascending level within each career ladder will also ease the manager’s pain.

Of course it’s much easier to do all this with a modern tool like our CompXpert, which automates the production of reports for job matching and collects manger input to an online database. Figure I below shows the report comparison for SBS Industries’ Senior Process Engineering Specialist. Click to see full size image.

2. Use productivity tools to review and validate job matches

Survey job descriptions are open for interpretation. This is especially true when you involve non-specialists in the process. This means you need to review and validate all that wonderful input you get from your managers. But if you spend as much time reviewing the match recommendations as you would have spent doing the matching, then you haven’t created value.

One recommended option is to compare the job match for each incumbent against the market distribution for the matched survey job. Figure II below is a screen shot from CompXpert showing a comparison of company pay for a Senior Electrical Engineering Specialist and the market distribution for the matched survey job.

Figure II – Job Match Validation, Potential Overmatch

The validation screen compares incumbent base pay (brown box) against the survey market distribution (blue & green boxes). In this example, very few incumbents are paid at levels comparable to the manager-recommended job match. This might warrant a discussion with the manager to see if the recommendation is really on target. However, where incumbent matches are generally at the same levels as the market (see Figure III), then compensation staff’s review burden may be minimal.

Figure III – Job Match Validation – Check for Data Outliers

The Job Match Validation reports can also be used as an efficient screening tool to identify and exclude data outliers. In Figure III, two employees are paid well outside the market envelope. Should these be included in our survey submission?

Employees with “redlined” pay (e.g. base pay above the grade maximum) may not represent the company’s standard pay policy and therefore should be excluded from survey submissions

Figure IV – Redlined employees and data QC

Angela Smith is a new promotion to the grade and her pay is near the grade minimum (80% of midpoint). Angela’s pay is representative of the firm’s pay policy. Rebecca Smith’s comparatio is 1.272 which exceeds the 125% grade maximum. Rebecca’s pay is a case of redlining, and her data should be excluded from the submission. Redlined pay often triggers quality assurance questions from vendors, which can sap valuable internal resources.

Again, you can do all this with Excel, but CompXpert makes it much easier.

3. Attend survey job matching meetings:

Job matching is more than comparing job descriptions and scope. All those other survey participants who make up “the market” are also interpreting what the survey job descriptions mean. Many job descriptions are sufficiently general that they could be matched one grade higher or lower. Vendor-hosted job matching meetings are often negotiated sessions to agree on how to match. If you don’t attend you won’t have the “secret decoder ring” for job matching! If you can’t attend, ask for the meeting notes.

In sum…

Job matching can be a time consuming process. Sharing the pain with line managers can substantially improve your matching, improving the quality of submissions and ultimately your market pricing recommendations. Productivity tools can make the process less onerous for all and improve quality control.

About the Data Doktor

I am Lindsay Scott, managing partner of NPKtools, a compensation analysis software, consulting, and outsourcing firm. I am a former Hay consultant, where I focused on software development, information analysis, and information delivery. I have an MBA from Duke University, and before joining Hay, I consulted on energy, economic and regulatory issues as a senior management consultant for EDS, Energy Management Associates, and DRI/McGraw Hill.

I like to believe that my background as a market analyst in broader industry settings gives me a unique perspective on compensation markets. I definitely believe that understanding pay markets can be an important ingredient in company competitiveness. I hope that the Data Doktor will help compensation professionals bring better information to bear on company decision-making—and thereby raise their profile as organizational contributors.

The Data Doktor is a free bimonthly newsletter packed with useful insights, tips, and solutions for everyday compensation analysis and planning problems. We probe the secrets of salary surveys, provide suggestions for market pricing, and describe best practices and software tools that can help compensation management add more value to the organization.

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