Market Pricing Steps

Step

1. Identify Benchmark Jobs

  • Benchmark jobs are jobs that are well known and can be found in similar form at other institutions.Benchmark jobs represent jobs across the institution across job families, departments, and pay levels, and typically represent a large number of employees
  • Job profile titles developed within the Job Category Framework will be used to select benchmark jobs. Examples of job profile titles likely to be benchmarked include:
    • Academic Advisor, Instructional Design Specialist, Resident Director
  • Not all jobs at OSU will be benchmark jobs. Sibson recommends that around 50% of jobs be benchmarked to provide adequate data to develop a market-based salary structure

2. Identify Appropriate Survey(s)

  • Appropriate surveys come from recognized publishers and contain detailed and complete information from relevant surveyed industries and jobs
  • Surveys will need to include overviews of job responsibilities to ensure jobs are matched accurately

3. “Match” OSU Jobs to Comparable Jobs in Surveys

  • Jobs are matched based upon a position’s job summary and essential functions (not solely by job title) as well as other details, such as education / experience requirements and the reporting structure
  • A survey job is typically considered a match if 70% or more of the job’s responsibilities are the same as the benchmark job
  • If possible, jobs should be matched to more than one survey source, using one match per survey source

4. Select Appropriate Survey Scope/“Cut”

  • Market data cuts are often organized by industry, size, and geography/location
  • The appropriate survey cut is selected depending on the comparison market for each benchmark job
    • Comparison markets for different employee segments are defined in the Compensation Philosophy (see slide 13)

5. Make Necessary Adjustments

  • Adjustments (premiums or discounts) may be applied to survey matches to adjust for differences between the job and the survey job (e.g., difference in experiences/skills, scope of job responsibilities, level, etc.)
  • Adjustments generally range between 5% - 15% of the survey job match

6. Update the Data to a Common Point in Time

  • As surveys typically have data with different effective dates, it is necessary to “update” all the data to a common point in time using an update factor
  • To determine update factor values, Sibson conducts an annual “survey of surveys,” examining pay increase trend data from a variety of sources