Compensation Survey: What it is, Types & Benefits

About 32% of employees feel they earn less than others in similar roles, and 77% are unhappy with their pay, which affects how they perform and stay motivated. With this in mind, a salary survey is necessary as it collects reliable pay data, identifies salary gaps, and ensures your pay is fair and competitive.

But what exactly does this survey mean? This quick guide explains what a pay survey is, including its importance, types, and common challenges. Along the way, you’ll come across possible pay surveys that can be an asset to your organization.

What are compensation surveys?

Compensation surveys refer to the collection and analysis of data on employee pay, including salaries, bonuses, benefits, and other perks. The main purpose of a pay survey is to help organizations see how much different jobs pay in the market.

Through this, organizations can design competitive compensation strategies based on real market data. Compensation and industry experts suggest looking for the following when choosing a salary survey:

• Large sample size: Ensures the data is accurate and reliable

• Industry-specific data: Reflects pay practices in your field

• Recent information: Shows current market rates

• Relevant location: Accounts for regional pay differences

• Reasonable cost: Offers useful data without being too expensive

Salary.com, one of the top compensation survey providers, offers these key features in its surveys. It helps organizations improve their compensation programs with reliable, updated, and comprehensive salary survey data from over 15,000 unique job titles across 225 industries in the U.S.

Why are compensation surveys important?

Pay surveys are important for various reasons. Here are some benefits of salary surveys that organizations can gain from:

• Benchmark pay: Surveys show what other companies pay for similar jobs, providing accurate salary information that helps organizations match their pay to market rates and remain competitive.

• Support pay decisions: Reliable salary survey data helps HR and managers make informed decisions on base pay, salary increases, promotions, and pay changes.

• Promote fairness: Surveys help spot pay differences and show industry standards, making it easier to keep pay fair and consistent across job roles and departments.

• Attract and keep top talent: Competitive pay based on market data helps bring in skilled candidates and keep top performers. In fact, about 74% of HR professionals say low pay is the main reason employees leave.

• Maintain legal compliance: Surveys help ensure that compensation practices meet legal requirements, reducing the risk of wage violations or discrimination claims.

Achieve these benefits with Salary.com's Compdata Surveys, which provide pay and benefits data from thousands of U.S organizations to help you build competitive employee compensation packages.

Types of compensation surveys

Salary surveys come in different types, each designed to focus on a specific area. These include:

1. National compensation surveys

   These surveys collect data across the country to show overall compensation trends. A common example is the National Compensation Survey (NCS) from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. They help organizations understand labor market trends and plan broad pay strategies.

2. Industry-specific pay surveys

   These surveys collect comprehensive data within a specific industry. Industry surveys offer useful benchmarks for roles unique to that field, like nurses in healthcare or engineers in tech. Companies use them to keep pay for specialized jobs competitive in their sector.

3. Regional salary surveys

   As the name suggests, these surveys collect compensation data for a specific area, such as a city, state, or region. They are useful for companies that hire locally and want to align their pay with local market rates.

4. Custom pay surveys

   These surveys are conducted for a specific company or a small group of companies. They’re used when other surveys don’t have the exact data needed for unique jobs or specific pay details. Custom surveys give more detailed and focused results.

Speaking of custom surveys, Salary.com offers solutions to collect the specific compensation survey data you need. They create and run surveys that give you insights to make smart and fair compensation decisions.

Challenges of using compensation surveys

While pay surveys are invaluable for making informed pay decisions, they come with a set of challenges that organizations need to be aware of:

• Outdated data (timeliness)

  Salary surveys are usually released once a year, so the data may be 6–12 months old. In fast-changing job markets, using old data can result in pay that’s no longer fair or competitive.

  Luckily, some tools like Salary.com's salary survey resources are updated monthly. They provide job market prices based on location, industry, and company size, using salary data from 350 to 400 HR-reported surveys.

• Job matching and classification issues

  It can be hard to match your company’s jobs to the standard job titles in surveys. The same title can mean different things at different companies, and if participants rank jobs differently, the data may not be accurate for comparison.

• Differences in methods and data quality

  Different survey providers use different ways to report and collect data, which can cause inconsistencies when comparing results. Data quality also depends on how accurate the submitted information is, and manual entry can lead to mistakes.

• Sample size and representation

  Survey data is only reliable if the sample is large and relevant. If it is too small or doesn’t reflect the right industry, region, or company type, the results may not be useful for making decisions.

FAQs

Here are some common questions about pay surveys:

How much compensation surveys cost?

Costs vary, but getting reliable U.S. pay data for your industry, company size, and location typically ranges from a few thousand dollars. Compensation survey companies and compensation consulting firms, like those offering Mercer salary surveys, may charge more based on the level of detail, number of jobs, and whether the survey is standard or custom.

These compensation reports also can cover areas like equity compensation, executive compensation, and more.

What is the purpose of compensation surveys?

As mentioned, the purpose of compensation surveys is to provide organizations with important market data so they can review and compare their pay practices with competitors. These survey reports offer data driven insights into hourly pay, total cash compensation, salary ranges, and salary trends.

Using detailed reports helps organizations evaluate and adjust their pay programs to stay competitive and support employee retention.

How do organizations benefit from using compensation surveys?

Organizations use salary surveys to set fair and competitive pay based on market rates. This helps attract and retain talent, manage costs, promote fairness, improve satisfaction, and comply with new pay transparency laws in 2025.