Compensation Surveys The Right Way — Don’t Make My Mistake

Before I returned to Merces Consulting, I spent many years working on my own and raising my family.  During that time I managed to keep busy doing independent consulting, the majority of which was spent conducting market surveys for local hospitals and other compensation related activities.  In doing so, I learned a valuable lesson that I’d like to pass along …

When I was employed as a Compensation Specialist for a hospital many years ago, we had a practice of calling other peer hospitals to trade salary information.  We never colluded in the sense of “our hospital will pay this much if your hospital agrees to pay that much”; there was no nefarious intent.  It was a simple exchange of information (usually salary range, effective date and average hourly rate) that we would then review with management and use to base our own decisions on, to ensure we were competitive. …