When someone asks me what the steps are in the market pricing process, I share the following:

Review job descriptions.
Research, choose, and purchase compensation survey data.
Match employer jobs to survey data based on job responsibilities and not job title. Document decisions and determine job value.

And then typically, if the employer is big enough, the following is done.

Develop and assign pay grades and base salary ranges to jobs based on job value.
Compare pay grades to employee pay. Recommend changes (if needed) and determine impact on budget.
Get approvals from key stakeholders.
Communicate and implement the pay grades and employee pay changes.

Step 1 – Having accurate job descriptions is important. It is the foundation for all the other decisions.

And often it is done quickly, or the words chosen aren’t a good representation of the work being performed by employees.

Years ago, I was market pricing a Marketing Manager job. I searched for the word “strategy” and found that it showed up more than 40 times in the document. I didn’t trust the manager who wrote the job description, so I asked to interview the employee doing the work.

The job description I wrote based on the employee’s description of the work was very different from what the manager described.

Be skeptical and ask questions. Don’t make assumptions and don’t believe everything you read.

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