ARC collects compensation data for one or more jobs (job titles). The jobs may vary depending on industry and or size of employer. For example, some surveys for printing companies may include titles such as: Press Operator, Binding Machine Operator, or Lithographic Press Operator. Job titles specific to the banking industry include: Teller, Cashier, Account Manager, or Investment Manager. Job titles should be have little overlap and should unique titles that describe the job. For example the following job titles: Secretary A, Secretary B, and Secretary C do not adquately describe the heirarchical relationship between the three job titles.

We determine the median or average compensation paid to employees in one or more jobs. Compensation data, collected from several employers, is analyzed to develop an understanding of the amount of compensation paid. Surveys may focus on one or more job titles, geographic regions, employer size, and or industries. Salary surveys may be conducted by employer associations (e.g., SHRM), survey vendors, or by individual employers.

Survey data is often time sensitive and may become out-of-date quickly. Because of the time sensitive information, surveys are often identified by by the year or quarter in which the data was collected.

The purpose of salary surveys provide a means for comparison of salaries at the company

Summary

ARC results should contain a summary of the data analysis. This summary is useful for understanding trends that are occurring the labor market.

Methodology

Is there a minimum number of responses needed before reporting results? Data should not be reported for too few incumbents. Need to report median salary as well as averages. The mean is the average of all numbers divided by the number of responses. The 'mean' can be affected by extreme values. The median is the midpoint with half of the responses are above that number and half fall below. Please note that in salary data, the median tends to be lower than the mean due to the fact that there is no upper limit to the rates that can be paid for a job. However, the lower limit is zero. Therefore, the distribution of salaries tends to be skewed with a few salaries at the extreme high end of the range. Fact: In salary data, the median will almost always be lower than the mean. Explanation.

Tabulations

At a minimum, survey results must be tabulated by Job Title. This means that the average or median salary should be reported separately for each job in the survey (assuming that there were sufficient numbers of participants to make the analysis meaningful). If the survey includes data from a large number of participants, the value of the survey results will be increased if the results can be tabulated by other employer demographics such as: funding type (public/private), industry, geographic region, size (number of employees or financial measure)

If you want to conduct a salary survey. Feel free to request us.