Custom benchmark surveys offer organizations a powerful tool to gain deep insights into compensation and rewards practices specific to their industry or unique business needs. These tailored surveys allow companies to go beyond generic market data, providing them with precise, relevant information to make informed decisions about their talent strategies.

By designing their own surveys, organizations can control various aspects such as:

1. Comparison groups: Select peers that truly reflect their competitive landscape
2. Data points: Focus on specific roles, skills, or compensation elements most relevant to their workforce
3. Geographic scope: Target local, regional, or global markets as needed
4. Industry specifics: Capture nuances unique to their sector or niche

The resulting data enables companies to create highly competitive rewards policies, understand and adopt best practices within their comparator sectors, and effectively align their compensation strategy with broader business objectives. This customized approach ensures that organizations can attract, retain, and motivate top talent while maintaining cost-effectiveness and internal equity in their compensation structures.

The Annual Compensation Planning Survey is a vital tool for organizations seeking to develop competitive and effective compensation strategies for the coming year. This comprehensive survey collects and analyzes data from a wide range of companies across various industries, providing a detailed snapshot of current and projected compensation trends.

Key components of the survey typically include:

1. Salary increase budgets: Projected overall, merit, and promotional increase percentages
2. Variable pay practices: Prevalence and target amounts for bonuses and incentives
3. Differentiation by performance: How companies allocate increases based on employee performance
4. Special compensation actions: Prevalence of off-cycle adjustments, sign-on bonuses, or retention awards
5. Industry and regional variations: Breakdowns of data by sector and geographic location
6. Economic indicators: Inflation rates and other factors influencing compensation decisions

By participating in and utilizing this survey, organizations can benchmark their compensation plans against industry peers and market standards. This information is crucial for making informed decisions about salary adjustments, ensuring internal equity, and maintaining competitiveness in the talent market. The survey results also help companies anticipate emerging trends and adjust their strategies accordingly, balancing the need to attract and retain top talent with budgetary constraints and overall business objectives.

Accurate and reliable data is the foundation for making informed decisions on executive pay levels. At Eckler, we understand the critical importance of leveraging comprehensive and high-quality compensation data to provide true data-driven insights. Our team has extensive analytical resources at their disposal, including access to leading industry compensation databases. This allows us to go beyond surface-level information and conduct in-depth quantitative analysis tailored to your organization's specific needs.

Our data-agnostic philosophy ensures we take an unbiased, objective approach to benchmarking executive compensation. We rigorously analyze data across multiple dimensions, including:

1. Peer group filtering (industry, size, geographic location, etc.)
2. Role/position matching and scope of responsibilities
3. Performance metrics and alignment with pay levels
4. Total compensation components (base salary, incentives, benefits, perquisites)
5. Internal pay equity across the leadership team
6. Market pricing intelligence and pay positioning strategy

By delving deep into the data for your competitive peer group, we can provide actionable insights to design compensation programs that attract, retain, and motivate top executive talent. Our data-driven benchmarking equips you with the knowledge to pay your executives fairly and competitively in line with your strategic goals.

Leveraging our extensive reach and relationships across the national business landscape, Eckler conducts an annual national benchmark compensation survey. This comprehensive study compiles data from hundreds of organizations spanning diverse industries, sectors, geographic regions, and sizes. By tapping into this vast pool of compensation intelligence, we can provide clients with a true apples-to-apples comparison of how executive pay packages align with the broader market.

The national survey is meticulously designed to capture key data points that give a 360-degree view into competitive compensation levels and practices. It covers detailed information such as:

1. Base salaries
2. Annual/short-term incentives (bonus, commission, etc.)
3. Long-term incentives (equity, retirement/savings plans)
4. Perquisites and benefits
5. Total compensation summaries
6. Performance metric weightings and targets
7. Pay mix analysisand leverage across components

With this level of robust market data, our consultants can slice and dice the information in virtually unlimited ways to provide customized benchmarking analyses tailored to each client's specific needs. The national survey equips you with defensible, credible market reference points to confidently set competitive compensation for attracting and retaining elite executive talent.