Why You Need to Include Offer Data in Your Comp Strategy

Labor markets move fast and can become fiercely competitive, seemingly overnight. For Total Rewards Leaders, staying on top of evolving compensation trends is crucial—and increasingly difficult. 

‍

We often hear a familiar story from compensation leaders that hiring managers and candidates are driving offer conversations. Hiring managers escalate compensation ranges for hot jobs using anecdotes from the market. They either struggle to send competitive offers to attract in-demand talent, or scramble for counter offers to retain top employees who have a better offer elsewhere. While supply-demand imbalances do happen, getting to a defensible "right" decision is nearly impossible for comp leaders, especially when relying on stale data. 

‍

If this happens at your organization, you’re not alone. And now, there’s a solution.

‍

Stay Ahead of the Curve with Offer Insights

Today, we’re excited to launch Offer Insights, the newest addition to Pave’s Premium Market Data. Powered by offer data points from over 7500 customers of Pave and Greenhouse, Offer Insights lets comp leaders understand trends in the candidate market—across salaries and offer acceptance rates. Offer Insights helps companies compete for talent in an ever-changing market.

‍

If you’re still only relying on survey data, your compensation strategy is lagging behind. Considering offer data alongside real-time employee compensation benchmarks gives you a comprehensive view of the market: you have insight into how employees in-seat today are paid, as well a glimpse into where the market is going based on data from offers. Having that holistic picture at your fingertips enables you to compete for and retain the top talent you need to power your business. 

‍

Offer Insights includes:

• Base Salary Trends: Understand trends in current, historical, and market rate base salary offers.
• Acceptance Rate Trends: Track offer acceptance rates over time, across job family, location, and level.
• Hot Jobs: Browse job families where offer values have spiked over the past 12 months.

‍

Curious about some of the ways Total Rewards Leaders and HR professionals leverage offer data to supercharge their comp strategy? Let’s dive in.

‍

Compete for Talent in a Volatile Market

It’s an increasingly common challenge: candidates say they’re getting more compelling offers from other companies. This causes hiring managers to panic that they won’t be able to close candidates for a key role. Then, comp leaders have to drop everything to perform an analysis to justify that the salary bands are accurate. 

‍

Sometimes the market has, in fact, changed for that role, but sometimes it hasn't. Offer Insights gives you more data to have an informed conversation about whether an offer should go out above band, if the band should change outside of a band repricing exercise, or if no action is needed. You could even use Offer Insights to help you reexamine bands for hot roles more frequently in order to stay competitive. 

‍

Better Financial Planning and Forecasting

Staying on top of market trends also means staying ahead of budget asks. As certain jobs demand a higher premium, comp leaders have to work hand-in-hand with finance to justify the additional spend. 

‍

When you need to make new requests from your CFO, it’s important to come equipped with data. Margie Lee-Johnson, VP of People Ops & Talent at Addepar, shared that Offer Insights helped her to do just that. She brought offer trends for Machine Learning Engineering roles into a conversation with her CFO and leveraged the data to get a new budget approved.

‍

“The early data I’ve seen from Pave and Greenhouse gave me the insights I needed—and couldn't find anywhere else—to guide key executive conversations about our Machine Learning hiring and compensation strategy. I got the data and validation I needed to move our strategy forward."
- Margie Lee-Johnson, VP of People Ops & Talent, Addepar

Offer Insights allows you to better forecast and plan your budget. That means fewer fire drills from your hiring managers, and fewer challenging conversations with your finance team.  

‍

Improved Internal Communication and Pay Transparency

Hot jobs, and other jobs that command higher salaries, aren’t just noticed by comp teams. The rise in pay transparency means employees have more information than ever when it comes to comp. 

‍

As you start to field more questions from your employee base, improved internal communication around pay transparency becomes a core part of a Total Rewards Leader’s job. Not only do you need to justify decisions to your finance team, you also need to have answers for your entire organization. Offer data gives you the credibility and backing to explain to a Software Engineer being paid in the 90th percentile, for example, why their Machine Learning Engineer colleague makes 10% more than them. 

‍

Now that the door has opened on pay transparency, employee demands are only going to increase. Offer Insights is built to support you in these sensitive discussions.

‍

How Offer Insights Gives You an Edge

Considering offer trends, in addition to your market data, can make you more confident in your compensation decisions in an ever-changing market. Plus, it gives you the edge you need to compete for the best talent. Understanding both candidate and employee data helps you stay ahead of the curve, allocate your budget where it matters most, and have confidence in which job trends are real (and which are just noise). 

‍

Get the data and backing you need to validate your decisions and empower your teams to have data-rich, transparent conversations.

‍

It all starts with Offer Insights, now part of Pave’s Premium Market Data offering. See it in action—request a demo today.