When you are matching jobs to salary survey data, two things are needed: an honest internal job description written by the employer and an external job description in the survey.

It is never a good idea to match a job to survey data by job title only. Some employers give high level job titles to lower-level work. And sometimes high-level work is given a low-level job title to keep the wages low.

An honest representation of the job’s responsibilities is needed so a comparison can be made to the survey description.

But I have read many internal job descriptions that are not honest. Example: A marketing manager job description that had the words “strategy” or “strategic” more than 30 times. An operations manager job that read like 50% receptionist and 50% Co-CEO.

Good compensation professionals are skeptical. They ask a lot of questions. They are curious and are almost like private investigators. They make comparisons across the company to other work. They ask questions that make people very uncomfortable when they feel like they are being manipulated.

They know where the dead bodies are buried…or should I say they know where the misrepresented over inflated jobs are. They watch and wait. They are ready to make that job inactive in the HR system so no one else can use it once the special employee or their dishonest manager is gone.

It sucks when the compensation benchmarking process is used to give someone else an advantage or preferential treatment. It does not support pay equity, fairness, or explain-ability. And yet top HR leaders and other executives overrule compensation professionals who have high integrity and make recommendations that are consistent.

To those of you out there trying to implement the fair and consistent decisions that create trust in the compensation benchmarking and pay decision making process, thank you.

To those of you overruling us, may you gather what you have sown in life.

#honestymatters #rewards #compensation #marketpricing #jobdescriptions #hr #humanresources