Enhance your Google search skills for Compensation research

We all use Google at least once a day. Yet, we have never been formally trained to perform efficient searches and apart from AND and OR, most users still type a question and hope for the “proper” answer. Let’s face it, when you are looking for targeted information (like when doing specific research for Compensation…

Two uses of LinkedIn Groups for the Compensation professional

In today’s edition of Sunday Skills I want to cover a little-used source of information for Compensation & Benefits professionals. With over 150 million members, LinkedIn is a great repository of knowledge and goodwill. An obvious source of information and expertise is to browse the Answers section and look if anyone has asked a question…

Should you rely on free compensation data from magazines and recruitment organisations?

Recently a few recruitment organisations have issued free “salary guides” for certain countries or industries. Magazines, whether business oriented or focused to the individual consumer, also run regular reports and guides with exciting titles like “Are you paid enough ?”. There are even websites where you can get free pay information (say, regarding a position…

Get laser-focused Compensation information with Alerts

In today’s edition of Sunday Skills, I want to complement a recent post I made about RSS and how subscribing to different blogs, online newspapers / magazines and other websites can help a Compensation manager maintain their skills and industry knowledge – for free, in a just a few minutes per day. Google Alerts complement…

Of average salaries in Europe

A while ago, a Sales Director asked for “an average salary for a sales/account manager in IT company selling specialty software within Europe”. I wish it were that simple but there is no such thing as a “salary in Europe”. For the same job, each country will pay different salaries. Salaries are normally always expressed…

The safeguards in salary benchmarking

Here is a paraphrase of a LinkedIn question asked recently : “How do you make sure each role benchmarked for salary purposes has the same responsibility ? Is there legislation on this ?” This is a question a Compensation specialist often gets from managers. Here is what you can reply when you get that question…

High Pay Commission report tackles excessive high compensation

Since the beginning of the global crisis, the topic of Executive Pay has been a major point of focus for many observers, journalists, economists, governance and  remuneration specialists, as well as the “man on the street”. Recent developments in the US have included the implementation of stricter rules regarding Say on Pay (shareholders voting on…