Salary Surveys are useful for helping an organization to maintain its salary structure’s external equity by comparing its own structure to that of a relevant competitive market. Put more directly, a salary survey can help the organization avoid paying either too much or too little. Salary surveys can be conducted internally by the organization or data generated by the government private consulting firms, or trade associations can be used. There are several common steps to the internally undertaken salary survey process.
1. Select the jobs to be surveyed. This often includes “key jobs” that is, a sample that reflects the organization as a whole.
2. Define the relevant labor markets. Is this a job for which the organization can recruit locally (e.g., secretary), regionally (e.g., accountant), nationally (e.g., professor), or internationally (e.g., trade and commerce manager)?
3. Select the comparison organizations. Choosing organizations of similar size is imported.
4. Decide what information to ask for from the comparison organizations: base salaries, bonuses, benefits, and so forth.
5. Decide on a data collection technique; for example, telephone survey or mail survey.
6. Administer the survey.”