TrustRadius Insights for PayScale Insight Lab are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.
Pros
Fantastic customer service: Many users have praised PayScale for its fantastic customer service. Reviewers have mentioned that they had a great relationship with their Relationship Success Manager and Account Executive, highlighting the excellent support provided by the PayScale team.
User-friendly interface: PayScale has been described as the most user-friendly tool among the options users have tried. Its intuitive nature has been highly appreciated, making it easy for reviewers to navigate and use the platform effectively.
Customization options: The ability to customize pay structures, create favorites, and create new jobs on the fly is a feature that many users liked about PayScale. This flexibility allows users to tailor their compensation practices according to their specific needs and requirements.
PayScale Insight Lab is mostly being utilized by the HR department to benchmark compensation and to determine competitive compensation for our employees. It is a very useful tool to ensure that we are compensating our employees fairly and based on their knowledge, skills as well as location. We will soon be inputting the data provided into our HRIS and Payroll system which has a compensation management feature so that managers can utilize the data to assist them in their merit increase or salary adjustment decisions during performance reviews.
Pros
Provide Salary Range Based on Location & Industry
Great Tool for Compensation Management
Provide Useful Data for Succession Planning & Career Advancement
Cons
Filter Inaccurate Data Collection from Potential Salary Inflation
Likelihood to Recommend
It is suited for a range of organization sizes and it is well suited for those who wants to do compensation research with market benchmarking. I believe that Payscale Insight Lab is beneficial to have even for a small business owner for headcount cost analysis purposes or just to be informed of what the ongoing market rate is for a role. This will be less appropriate for very small business owners with non-complicated positions or a franchise owner working with fixed salary ranges company-wide.
VU
Verified User
Professional in Human Resources (51-200 employees)
I have set it up to report on all positions in our company and run a monthly report to see how we’re aligned with our desired median rate.
Pros
The ability to align with your particular geographic area.
Ability to modify skills in the job description.
Very user-friendly. You don’t need a manual in order to use it!
Cons
It’s time consuming to initially set-up. But once you’re there, reports run very quickly.
Likelihood to Recommend
Some employees are convinced they are not being fairly compensated. Once we had all positions defined correctly, we could see in some instances this was correct, but in others, we were within the median we wanted to be. We also found some that are way over. In some cases that’s ok but in others not. We have concrete data to work with and more transparency with PayScale Insight Lab.
We use PayScale Insight to help keep an active pulse on the cost of labor for our various markets. We use the tool across the US and UK. It not only helps us remain competitive to market but it also helps us ensure alignment to our comp guidelines.
Pros
I can benchmark a role for a particular labor market, and review the details to best understand how the years of experience are relative to compensation.
Cons
It would be great if there were helpful tips on the dashboard to ensure I'm utilizing the tool to its fullest capability.
A simplified way should be developed to create job leveling for roles. The process seems more manual than it should.
Likelihood to Recommend
For live data as to what the market is paying, Payscale is great!
VU
Verified User
Professional in Human Resources (501-1000 employees)
PayScale Insight is used to track pay trends across the entire company. We also use it to view, on a high level, trends in compensation. We also use it to help set pay when we take on new employees. Each year, we run a bulk report, and then discuss who should have a pay adjustment in addition to whatever merit raise they may have earned.
Pros
Easy to read reports
Good visual displays
Easy to add extra duties and certifications to pinpoint a pay range
Cons
Some newer roles don't have data
Likelihood to Recommend
PayScale is great when you want to sync what the current pay rate is to what the market is indicating the trend of compensation is. It isn't the best for keeping all employee detail in the system. (It doesn't really help to add performance data in as that's also kept in our performance system, and multiple sections for scores can't be compared).
HR uses PayScale Insight to benchmark our jobs against market data. We use it to evaluate our salary ranges to ensure they are aligned with market data; this is a review process we do every 2-3 years. We also use Insight to house employee data to evaluate internal equity, salary range penetration, etc. This system has allowed us to ensure we remain as competitive as possible in order to attract and retain good talent.
Pros
Payscale has a significant number of job profiles for which you are able to gather market data on. We have roughly 120 jobs at our company and we were able to match all but two, which are very niche to our industry and company.
Insight offers amazing analytical capabilities. We have employees in other states, so Payscale helped us to create labor markets for each area in which we employ someone so to be able to ensure we are paying them accurately to where they live relative to the DC-market. This contributes to ensuring equitably and fairness with our pay practices.
Insight does a great job at allowing you to ensure accurate matches. In addition to an array of titles, you can also customize your match with years of experience, education levels, supervisory duties, certifications, specialized skills, and a few other details as applicable, all that contribute to the finalized mid-point match calculated. You can also choose different industries, company sizes, and locations to match against your data.
You are able to create total comp statements, which was a new offering for our employees.
Cons
I think there is always room to add more titles and niche industry data to their offerings. It would be cool to see an offering that allowed you to submit a request to have a particular title/job to their data listings and Payscale can see who else might be requesting the same kind of niche position.
It would also be helpful if there was a way to store past salary data for employees.
Likelihood to Recommend
If you have a large employee base and you are trying to remain competitive from a compensation perspective, this tool is well suited to help you accomplish this goal. If you are not a comp expert, they have experts on hand that can help you through projects or just answer basic questions.
We're using PayScale company wide to benchmark, grade, and review market comparators in similar roles across the organization. We have PayScale and Mercer data cuts and we've had very good success finding matches for the majority of our roles to date. The ability to bring the grading process in-house has been a great cost saving opportunity for us as we work towards compensation calibration and pay for performance. We're able to build our compensation strategy on a solid foundation that was not possible before due to the cost of outsourcing the market comparison function.
Pros
Their customer service is fantastic. I absolutely adore my Relationship Success Manager, I still have a great relationship with the Account Executive that brought us on board.
The tool has some hiccups but overall, of the three tools I demo'ed, it is the most user friendly. PayScale is transparent about the issues they are experiencing and what is on the horizon for improvements of the tool. We all expect some things to go a little wrong or not be the as user friendly as WE THINK it should be, and I appreciate that PayScale acknowledges that and is transparent about what's in the works for improvements along the way.
I like the ability to customize pay structures, create favorites, and create new jobs on the fly. I've really enjoyed working in the tool and I'm excited to get our data cleaned up so that we can use all PayScale reporting and dashboards have to offer.
Cons
The data export is a little wonky and I tend to have regular issues with it. I report them each time and I get honest, timely answers. I am able to snip straight from the tool, but I think it would be more efficient for me and external users of the information if I were able to consistently export through the tool a great output.
I wish we could set up a regular file feed and wouldn't have to do manual uploads.
Likelihood to Recommend
I think for a very large organization (I came from +18k benefit eligible employees) it would be very difficult to keep this tool organized because of the manual uploads. It seems to work very well for us, at less than 500, and there are a lot of perks to having the flexibility to change the uploads as we see fit.
We used Payscale Insight to help us price and benchmark our jobs. Our goal in using the software and tools was to ensure that we were paying and/or offering current and potential employees a fair market rate. While we focused our use within the HR department in generating reports and benchmarking, we used the data across the organization where needed. This allowed us to ensure internal equity while keeping competitive with what is going on in the market. We were also able to address any transparency concerns with our employees by revealing how we used data to drive our compensation practices.
Pros
Providing data so that you can ensure you are paying your employees fair and competitively with the market. You are able to make data-driven, confident decisions about compensation that enhance retention and trust between employee and employer.
Payscale's customer service team is wonderful and always available. Moreover, they are often open to providing more customized solutions if your need is a bit different than the standard package.
Research into multiple labour markets/locations is a useful tool as we often have to account for differences across our office locations, which can sometimes cross borders and large geographical areas. This ensures that we don't take a blanket approach to compensation and can account for regional differences where required.
Cons
Job titles can prove to be a challenge as they sometimes do not connect as well as you'd hope. This may require some extra work on our part to fit our needs into what Payscale provides. Generally, this is a small concern, but it is still something that should be updated to keep with some of the changes in titles/roles.
It would be great if Payscale offered an online tool/area for watching recorded webinars or training sessions rather than having to do it live. As others have mentioned, with a busy schedule, it is sometimes challenging to find the time to watch live. Having a database would help ensure that the training can be accessed at any time.
Options to perhaps break down some of the data in reports to provide to others who are less versed in the contents of the report and the overall system. I'd prefer to have to explain less of what is presented and let the data speak for itself where possible.
Likelihood to Recommend
If you're looking to price or benchmark the roles in your organization, Payscale Insight is a great tool to have on your side. You are able to ensure that you use updated market data and can be confident that you are making an informed compensation decision. However, in situations where the individual or individuals using Payscale Insight have to consistently translate the compensation data to those not well-versed in compensation practices, it can prove challenging. If you already have a well-managed and effective compensation strategy in place, Payscale Insight might not be the best investment overall. With that said, it's important to be proactive, so it might prove useful to consider how to future-proof your compensation practices/data with the use of Payscale.
We used PayScale to get market salary data to help benchmark industry and area salary information. This helped us see where our pay structure fit.
Pros
PayScale has been great for our organization for benchmarking market salaries and wages for our positions.
The service was great as well, in that we were able to send our job descriptions over to have our jobs matched with the market.
The market reports have been extremely helpful and are easy to understand, and being able to see a breakdown between total cash, base salary, and bonus has been great.
Cons
We didn't get a match for all of our positions without having to modify things a bit. That's reality, though, as we have some unique jobs that we understood might be difficult to benchmark going into it.
The service is a-la-carte, so our subscription didn't provide us with unlimited salary data.
Likelihood to Recommend
PayScale is a good fit when you have in mind exactly how many jobs you want to benchmark and get data for. If you have several jobs and you're looking for salary information on all of them, the price will increase exponentially.
We use PayScale within the human resources department to provide compensation data to our organization's decision makers and to support ongoing pay strategies. It's also useful for comparing positions to find the right description that meets the role and expected pay range. It allows us to address pay issues on an organization-wide and individual basis.
Pros
PayScale provides us with up-to-date data to help make compensation decisions for our organization.
PayScale's team is not only knowledgeable in their product, they also have insight into best practices and strategies.
Cons
Integration with our HRIS would be ideal.
Providing more focused resources to provide to senior leaders who make most of the final calls.
Likelihood to Recommend
PayScale is particularly suited for mid-sized organizations which don't have the typical resources of an enterprise solution. The setup for jobs and structures provide several areas for customization, such as niche licensing, that may affect compensation. It's also helpful with better defining existing positions that have further developed over time. For example, we just transitioned a job class to a new assistant manager class partially based on the descriptions provided by PayScale.
We are a rural company and had many issues finding real time data to make compensation decisions. PayScale solved that problem for us. By providing them our job descriptions, we can get accurate - real time data within minutes. It has definitely made us more confident in our compensation decisions, whether it be a new hire or an existing employee.
Pros
Provides up to 3 different market data points
Customer service is amazing - feel as though they are part of your company
Real time accurate data
Cons
I am uber satisfied with the system and when I am having technical issues, I simply call or email. They are always quick to respond.
Likelihood to Recommend
PayScale makes a difference for quick decision making and validating conversations with employees or future employees that want to see how we arrive at our compensation structure.
