By Sharon McKnight, SPHR, BLR HR Technical Writer

If you’re a one-person HR department or a generalist who’s been assigned to “figure out compensation,” you might feel the way I did about a decade ago when I received that same assignment. I didn’t even know where to begin, much less what needed to be done. Luckily, though I was a one-person HR department, I worked for a subsidiary of a larger corporation with a very knowledgeable compensation manager and had access to national and regional salary surveys.

But survey data are only part of the compensation puzzle. I also needed practical tools to manage the compensation program. I juggled spreadsheets and text documents to cobble together a system for keeping up with compensation, but it was always a struggle. If you’re in the same boat I was in, and I suspect that’s the case or you wouldn’t be reading this, you might be in need of effective compensation management tools.

As a Compensation.BLR.com® subscriber, you already have access to comprehensive salary survey data. What you might not know, however, is that you also have a very useful system to help you manage your compensation program. At your fingertips is a tool to help streamline setting salary ranges — it’s called the Compensation Analyzer (nonsubscribers click here for more information.)

Just click on the “Tools” tab above to find an online management resource that not only includes the salary range for any position in your organization but also makes it easier than ever to compare your organization’s pay scales, grades, and salary ranges against those of other employers. You also have instant access to built-in job descriptions, industrial classifications, geographic comparisons, employer size variables, and more — including the ability to build a database of your positions and salary range data — and generate reports on that data.

The BLR Compensation Analyzer delivers the data you need to set salary ranges that retain top talent, make smart and defensible decisions about employee pay, and control payroll expenses. For example, you can compare current employee pay with rate ranges and salary data from BLR® surveys, automatically compute range penetration and compa-ratio, sort and filter salary data, and export data to your own spreadsheet.

Additionally, you can benchmark your jobs to BLR survey data and see how they compare with different demographic slices (i.e., industry, employer size, geography); identify flight risks and have the data to support that assessment; and add data from other surveys to compare in a single, easy-to-use report.

The Compensation Analyzer is a snap to learn, and start-up is as quick as 1-2-3. Just add your job titles, rate ranges, and departments using our simple interface. Then, with a few clicks, compare your employee pay with rate ranges in BLR survey data, benchmarked jobs, and external surveys. You’ll also be able to quickly produce the reports you need to back up every pay range decision.

Last, but not least, access is protected via a unique username and password, so there's no chance that another party will be able to see it. The BLR Compensation Analyzer uses SSL (Secure Socket Layer) to encrypt the information passing between your browser and our server, which stops anyone from accessing your data.

Whew! Now that all that marketing stuff is out of the way, let me just say one more thing — I wish I’d had the BLR Compensation Analyzer a decade ago (nonsubscribers click here for more information.)

Sharon McKnight, SPHR, draws from more than 20 years of management experience, including 6 years as a Director of Human Resources, to write about HR and employment law issues for BLR. Her experience, in both operational and human resources management, provides her with a practical approach to issues facing human resources professionals and the frontline managers they coach. She achieved her SPHR (Senior Professional in Human Resources) certification in 2007 and is a member of the Society for Human Resource Management.