Using the Compensation assistant
The Compensation Assistant helps your hiring teams and people managers make decisions that align with both the main compensation drivers in your organization, and the individual’s characteristics at the time of hiring, promotion, transfer, or reemployment. It is essential to ensure equitable compensation decisions as your workforce evolves.
You can access the Compensation Assistant from the navigation menu under Sustain > Compensation Assistant.
This article walks you through the procedure to follow to use the Compensation Assistant tool effectively and make sure you maintain pay equity in your organization, from selecting a reference dataset to interpreting the results, followed by a section on managing presets.
The following list details the steps to use the Compensation Assistant, effectively:
Checking the reference analysis
The Compensation Assistant is based on a reference analysis. Upon first entering the Compensation Assistant (or when the analysis has been updated), you must click the icon to choose an analysis, as illustrated in the following figure:
Selecting a reference analysis
Before running the Compensation Assistant, confirm that you're using the most correct analysis. A pop-up will alert you if your dataset is outdated (for instance if it is using November 2023 data).
If you need to update the dataset, go to Reference Analysis at the top of the page, click Show the analysis selection list button, and select the most recent or relevant analysis from the list.
Creating input for candidate information
Once the reference analysis is confirmed, you will be asked to input the candidate’s characteristics for all the variables used in the compensation model. These values are then used to calculate the compensation recommendation. These characteristics will help ensure fair pay and prevent any pay gap from arising.
The key parameters required depend on the compensation model variables from the pay equity analysis, for example:
Location: place where the job will be contracted or performed (example: Location 2),
Grade: employee's grade within the company (example: Grade 7),
Employee level: level at which the employee will be in the company (example: Level 2),
People manager: information indicating whether this candidate will be a people manager,
Job family: job family to which the employee will belong (example: Finance),
Seniority in group: number of years of experience or seniority of the candidate in a similar position.
The following figure illustrates the Employee parameters window:
Employee parameters window
Creating comparison groups
By creating a comparison group in the Compensation Assistant, you will be able to compare the suggested salary to internal groups of employees. To create such group, click the + Comparison group button illustrated below:
Comparison group icon
To define a comparison group, you can add filters based on any field in your dataset. Note that there are certain filters you can add using the shortcut when defining the employee parameters. You can always see a summary of the active filters at the top of the section, as well as the impact of the filtering on the size of the comparison group. You can easily add as many comparison groups as you like and, for a better overview, you can give each group a descriptive name.
To demonstrate this feature, we will create two comparison groups that include all employees in Grades 6,7, and 8, and then all employees in Finance and level 2, as illustrated in the following figure:
Filtering by grade
Filtering by Job family and Employee level
Comparing the suggested compensation to external benchmarking data
If external compensation benchmarking is available and has been uploaded into the system, you can click the drop-down list to select your compensation benchmarking table. For more information about the upload of external benchmarking data into your system, refer to Compensation benchmarking data.
Once you have selected your compensation benchmarking data file, you need to choose which categories apply to the candidate and to which category you want to compare the suggested compensation, as illustrated in the following figure:
External benchmarking comparison
As with comparison groups, you can easily add as many compensation benchmarking groups as you like, and give each group a name. You can use the icon to access the compensation benchmarking settings, where you can view the tables and upload new ones.
Running the Compensation Assistant
After entering the candidate’s details and potential comparison groups, click Run Compensation Assistant button.
Note that, since the compensation suggestion only takes into account the factors included in the underlying compensation model, it is important to have a compensation model that reflects the company's compensation structure, i.e. covers all (measurable) factors that affect employees' compensation. For example, if "Job role" is the only variable in the pay model, the compensation suggestion will be close to the average compensation of that job role. If factors like responsibility, education, and experience have an impact on compensation, these factors need to be included in the compensation model. Finally, we note that the same compensation model does not need to be used to meet the requirements for equal pay certifications and to support improved internal compensation determination.
Interpreting the results
Suggested compensation
At the top of the page, you will see the suggested compensation and the suggested range, as illustrated in the following figure:
Suggested compensation
Furthermore, you can provide a name for the result and choose whether it should be visible to other users.
Comparison overview
The Comparison overview section brings together the main results from the Compensation Assistant allowing you to compare the suggested compensation with both the internal comparison groups and the external compensation benchmarking as illustrated in the following figure:
Comparison overview
The overview gives you clear view of the details on filters and compensation benchmarking. For detailed amounts, scroll down to the Comparison summary section.
Detailed comparison
The Detailed comparison section presents the distribution of wages in an internal comparison group as a histogram, as illustrated in the following figure:
Detailed comparison
The x-axis displays the wages and the y-axis displays the number of employees that fall into each interval. You can easily toggle between the comparison groups at the top, where you can also see the number of employees in each group. To see more or fewer details, click the icon to control the number of columns.
Suggested compensation breakdown
The Suggested compensation breakdown offers a breakdown of the contribution of each employee characteristic is displayed. This shows how each compensation driver influences the final compensation number, as illustrated in the following figure:
Suggested compensation breakdown
For instance, according to the example, grade and location contribute significantly to the compensation (for instance, 23.0% and 12.7%), while an aspect like seniority in the group contributes a smaller percentage (for instance,1.8%).
The base value, identical; to the one in the compensation model, represents the theoretical lowest-paid employee. This value forms the foundation for all predicted compensation and salary suggestion. Additional amounts are then added based on the specific input variables, reflecting higher salaries.
Finally, the basis for the compensation suggestion is presented, showing the values used to calculate the new employee's suggested compensation and their approximate contribution.
You have now run all the steps of the Compensation Assistant and reviewed the results. By following these steps, you can make data-driven compensation decisions that help maintain equity within your employee base. The Compensation Assistant is a critical tool for ensuring that your organization stays on track with its pay equity goals, even as new hires or role changes occur.
Creating & using presets in the Compensation Assistant
To streamline your use of the Compensation Assistant and avoid repeatedly entering the same configurations, you can create and use presets. Presets enable you to save and reuse specific compensation configurations for future hiring, promotions, or role changes. This feature is particularly helpful when hiring for the same role multiple times, saving time and ensuring consistency across your team.
Saving a compensation configuration as a preset
While running a compensation suggestion, you can save the results as a preset for future use. To do so, proceed as follows:
Click Run Compensation Assistant.
Select Save as Preset.
Provide a descriptive name for the preset (for example, "Hiring for Marketing Manager Role"). The descriptive name will help identify the preset for future instances.
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Fill in the Employee parameters that you want in the preset, as illustrated in the following figure:
Preset section
When using the preset, these values will be pre-filled in the configuration.
Click +Comparison group to add a group or click +Compensation benchmarking to add benchmark data.
You can choose to set the preset as visible to others within your team, allowing them to reuse the configuration as well.
This is an note/information message.
Once a preset is defined, you can select it from the drop-down list.
Reusing a preset
To reuse a saved preset, proceed as follows:
Navigate to the Compensation Assistant section.
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Under Presets, select the Named results, as illustrated in the following figure:
Named results section
Apply the named result when you are hiring for the same or similar roles.
Presets save time and ensure that the configurations for compensation are consistent across different hiring processes. Thanks to them, you can efficiently apply consistent compensation models without needing to manually configure the same parameters repeatedly, making it easier for your team to maintain pay equity in multiple hiring or role reassessment scenarios.