What is Your Competitor Doing for Compensation?

In today’s tight job market, it is vital to be aware of what your competitors are offering for compensation and benefits. Although they are necessary and highly sought after by savvy job seekers, the truth is that many employees greatly underestimate the cost of benefits to their employers. Statistically, companies are paying almost half above what employees assume benefits are costing them.

Because the cost of benefits is so high and constantly rising (especially where health care is concerned), it is crucial to your bottom line to not offer more than your competition does; however, offering fewer benefits or lower pay is not an option, either. Decreasing compensation packages will put you at high risk for losing your best employees or top candidates to your competitors. Although this will tighten your company’s overall spend, it will simultaneously strengthen your competition, in turn, weakening your business.

When it boils down to it, how can you know for certain what your competitors are offering? You can’t believe what you read in their job postings. Actual pay and perks will be negotiated beyond starting offers, especially when working with a seasoned candidate. Public and trade group sources can sometimes prove helpful, but unfortunately tend to be inaccurate or out of date. The best place to find the correct information you’re looking for is in yearly surveys including exempt and nonexempt compensation and benefits by state. These surveys can help you research a great deal of valuable information including:

  • Localized salaries. This information details pay scales for hundreds of commonly held jobs, ranging a wide range of fields of percentiles. The data are customized per state, metro area, industry, and company size so you can be sure to pay what’s being offered in your specific market, not nationally.
  • Benefit surveys. This tells you not only what other employers are paying, but also what they are offering for benefits as well as what they are budgeting for increases.  Exempts and nonexempts are clearly separated.
  • Wage-hour and legal advice. Easy to understand descriptions and breakdowns of wage-hour and other compensation and benefits laws at both the federal and state levels can be an extremely helpful reference, especially with laws that vary from state to state and tend to evolve.

One of the key tips to staying relevant and ahead of the curve in business is knowing what your competition is doing. Sometimes this can be a difficult task, and employing the assistance of a professional can make all the difference. If you are looking for the best way to stay on top of the competition when determining your employee compensation plans, contact the experts at Springborn Staffing today!

 

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