Salary.com Sees Largest Industry Increase in Compensation Technology Adoption and Tenure According to New Independent Research

Also Finds salary.com Leads Industry in Trusted HR-Reported Market Data

Findings from the newly published 2021-2022 Compensation Technology Buyer’s Guide, an independently researched guide to the best of HR compensation technology, highlight Salary.com as a market leader in system capabilities and innovation, making it a powerful resource and tool that businesses use to help drive top performance. Drawing insights from in-depth interviews and a survey of 856 firms conducted by Lighthouse Research & Advisory, the Guide provides unbiased, neutral views of the technology landscape to support compensation and HR leaders. This year’s report highlights the considerations, concerns and action steps companies are taking to ensure they can address a dynamic labor market and pressing concerns around pay equity and transparency.

Finding: CompAnalyst® Market Data ranks as top source of HR-reported market data

In 2021 all data sources showed increased usage over 2019. For the first time, HR-reported aggregate market data  overtook salary survey data as the most accurate, with Salary.com’s CompAnalyst Market Data ranking as the top source of HR-reported market data.

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Data types ranked most to least accurate by compensation practitioners:

1. HR-reported aggregate market data (surveys of surveys)
2. Salary survey data
3. Employee-reported data
4. Emerging sources of data (predictive data based on signals relevant to compensation)
5. Free/open data

“Employees are feeling empowered to have compensation conversations and they’re rightfully demanding transparency and accountability,” said Katie Stukowski, Vice President of Solutions consulting at Salary.com. “Given the complexities of today’s labor market, HR departments need to have multiple trusted data sources to back up how they make their salary decisions. Every manager needs to be able to explain how an employee’s pay is determined.”

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Finding: Greater adoption of technology solutions

Throughout the last year, change management has been a constant for companies navigating the impact of the global pandemic, particularly as it relates to evolving workplace trends and related pay. These dynamics are fueling growth in the compensation management space.

According to Ben Eubanks, Chief Research Officer at Lighthouse Research & Advisory, “Use of virtually every system increased compared to our last reporting period, validating our position that the market is growing fairly rapidly for compensation management technology.” Also, the answer choice ‘We do not use a compensation system’ fell by more than 50% compared to two years ago.

The report found that Salary.com is relevant across all sizes of employers, from SMB to enterprise, supporting its impressive growth and traction: in the last six months, Salary.com saw increases in product tenure of 14% over the last measurement period, more than any other system, and the company’s new implementation rate continued at 14% as well.

Notes Eubanks, “The company’s recent trends in customer acquisition reflect much of what we’ve seen in our data. There has been shuffling in the enterprise space in search of the right provider, and the small and midsize market has grown significantly in the last 12-24 months, driving customer growth.”

Finding: Technology providers are working to address the issue of pay equity

The 2021-2022 Compensation Technology Buyer’s Guide also identified some unique benefits that Salary.com provides its customers when it comes to addressing pay equity. JobArchitect was highlighted for its ability to establish and document comparable work, which Eubanks notes is the keystone of pay equity analysis. It also highlights CompAnalyst®’s robust pay equity reporting and dashboards, which offer a variety of ways to examine pay data, determine issues and identify gaps in pay equity. As the report notes, together JobArchitect and CompAnalyst power critical insights into pay gaps, identify which are justified under the federal and local laws, and help design remediation and communication plans.

Other highlights from the Compensation Technology Buyer’s Guide:

• Low performers in the study were 50% more likely to be using spreadsheets or nothing at all to manage their compensation function.
• Unlike low performers, who are primarily concerned with cost as a reason to change providers (41% of responses), high performers’ first priorities are ease of use (42%) and quality of customer support (37%).
• In general, more recent implementations of cloud HR technology lead to higher employee engagement and more visibility into the operations of the business, and payback for 8 out of 10 firms happens within the first year.

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