Salary benchmarking is specifically concerned with external equity, where an organisation is able to test their own pay practices against an outside market. This market can be different for different jobs, depending on where an organisation loses key resources to, or recruits key resources from.

The overall aim and guiding principle is to continually manage the job and pay range within your organisation, bearing in mind the issue of external parity and thereby enabling internal equity in your pay decisions.

How do you ensure on-going market relatedness and retention of critical and scarce skills?

• Conduct benchmarking annually on a range of representative benchmark positions, or for every position in your organisation
• Request annual benchmark market data for national benchmarks i.e. across all industries, except where skills are considered specific to your industry. In the case of benchmarking of specific and specialised skills, an agreed comparator group could be identified for a more targeted comparison
• Thus, different types of salary benchmarking may be appropriate.
• National benchmarking across all industries and all regions:
• the database used includes information from our in-house salary survey database covering over 700 organisations within South Africa

National benchmark information is available in 2 forms:

• You can request a benchmark/s from 21^st Century, and a customised report will be sent to you
• You can subscribe to RewardOnline, 21^st Century’s web-based salary survey. Your subscription gives you access to a live database of salary information, across a large range of jobs and industries and regions.

Benchmark information is available for all pay-related data:

• Basic salary
• Total Guaranteed Package
• Benefit practice

In addition to external salary benchmark information, we can assist with:

• Development of pay scales / a salary structure specifically for your organisation
• Guidelines regarding annual salary increases
• Indications of local and international remuneration trends
• Guidance regarding expatriate pay practice.