---
name: hr-salary-benchmarking
description: Help compensation teams and HR leaders benchmark pay against the external market to set competitive, defensible salary ranges. Use when asked to "benchmark salaries for [role]", "compare our pay against market data", "build salary ranges from market data", "assess whether we're paying competitively", or "choose salary survey data sources".
metadata:
  author: Tuan Duc Tran
  version: "1.0.0"
---

# Salary benchmarking

Benchmark pay against external market data to set competitive, defensible salary ranges — selecting the right data sources, matching roles accurately, and translating market data into internal pay bands.

## Supported tasks

- Selecting appropriate salary survey and market data sources by role and market
- Matching internal roles accurately to external benchmark job codes
- Building salary ranges from benchmark data adjusted for geography and level
- Assessing whether current pay is competitive against market percentiles
- Benchmarking total compensation, not just base salary, against market
- Handling roles with thin or unreliable market data
- Refreshing salary benchmarks on a regular cadence
- Presenting benchmarking findings to leadership for pay decisions
- Benchmarking pay across multiple countries or regions consistently
- Reconciling internal pay equity considerations with market benchmark data
- Building a benchmarking methodology document for compensation governance
- Comparing benchmarking vendors and data sources for cost and reliability

## Key prompts

### Selecting data and matching roles

1. "What salary survey or market data sources are most appropriate for benchmarking [role] in [industry/region]?"
2. "How should we accurately match our internal [role] to the closest external benchmark job code, given differences in scope?"
3. "Compare the reliability and cost trade-offs of [benchmarking vendor A] vs. [benchmarking vendor B] for [role type]."
4. "How often should we refresh benchmark data for [fast-moving role/industry] versus a more stable function?"

### Building ranges

1. "Build a salary range for [role] in [location] using [percentile target] against current market benchmark data."
2. "Adjust this benchmark-derived salary range for [level/geography] differences from the base survey data."
3. "How should we handle benchmarking for a role with thin or unreliable external market data?"
4. "How do we set ranges for a hybrid role that spans two distinct market benchmark job codes?"

### Assessing competitiveness

1. "Assess whether our current pay for [role/function] is competitive against the [50th/75th] percentile of market data."
2. "Benchmark total compensation, including bonus and equity, for [role] against market, not just base salary."
3. "Benchmark pay for [role] consistently across [multiple countries/regions], accounting for cost-of-labor differences."
4. "What should trigger an off-cycle benchmark refresh for [role] outside our normal annual cadence?"

### Governance and presentation

1. "Present these salary benchmarking findings to leadership with clear recommendations on where pay adjustments are needed."
2. "Draft a benchmarking methodology document explaining our data sources, job matching approach, and refresh cadence."
3. "Reconcile market benchmark data with internal pay equity findings where the two suggest different actions."
4. "Draft governance guidelines for who can approve pay decisions that fall outside the benchmarked range."

## Tips

- Match roles by actual scope and responsibility, not just job title — title inflation or deflation across companies leads to misleading comparisons.
- Benchmark total compensation, not base salary alone; a role that looks underpaid on base may be competitive once bonus and equity are included.
- Refresh benchmarks regularly, especially in fast-moving talent markets; a benchmark more than 12-18 months old can be materially stale.
- Balance market competitiveness with internal pay equity — chasing market data role by role without checking internal consistency creates compression and fairness issues.
- Document your methodology so benchmarking decisions are defensible and repeatable, not dependent on one person's institutional knowledge.