Greetings to our CompAnalysis clients and friends!
We hope you enjoy our early autumn 2009 newsletter.

Contingency Hiring: Avoiding bad decisions while watching costs

It seems as though a number of employers are now taking advantage of the current high unemployment rate to experiment with a “try before you buy” approach to hiring new employees. This practice is viewed by some as a way to watch costs during a volatile economy, and by others as a less risky way to make employment decisions.

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Pay Compression: The Silent Threat
September 15, 2009
@ Pacific West HR Conference - sponsored by the Professionals in Human Resources Association (PIHRA)
Contact www.pacificwesthrconference.org

Three Ways Social Media will Change the Role of Human Resources

Social media are now perceived to be changing human resources departments’ roles and functions. A recent CompAnalysis pulse survey, conducted among small and large employers in the S.F. Bay Area, indicated that 95% of the 60 organizations who responded to the question believed that social media (blogging, Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, etc.) would change HR’s role to some extent.

We expect to see rapid changes in social media usage and perceptions in business and society in general. Consequently, human resources professionals need to be aware of, and plan for, how this new phenomenon will affect their employees and the structure of the workplace. Of course, the social media in general are just one additional form of communication. The material in this article relates solely to the human resources aspects of this topic, not the many other management concerns and opportunities, such as marketing and customer service, that are being impacted by social media.

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Although U.S. companies in 2009 paid employees the lowest base salary increases in 33 years, funding for variable pay reached its highest level ever, according to a survey summary released Aug. 11 by HR consulting firm Hewitt Associates. Hewitt defines variable pay as performance-based compensation that must be re-earned each year by employees, and is driven by performance of the company, employee, or both. For 2010, employees can expect “a similar mix of compensation payouts,” the survey said, with companies' variable pay budgets projected to remain the same and base salary increases slated to rise somewhat. Source: The Employers Group

(Don’t forget to order your report)

We're pleased to announce that the latest edition of the 2009 CompAnalysis Greater San Francisco Bay Area Compensation Survey will be published at the end of September. This is the only report that is exclusively focused on up-to-date Bay Area pay and benefits data, reporting salaries and related information from over 150 local employers within the nine Bay Area plus two Central Coast counties.

As most of you know, the Bay Area is the highest-paid metropolitan area in the U.S. According to he latest National Compensation Survey conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor, salaries here, on average, are 19 percent higher than the national average. This means that local pay data are a must for establishing job-specific compensation levels for the jobs in your organization.

Order your copy now to receive it immediately upon publication. To purchase or find out more about the survey, click here.

Questions? E-mail Rita Haronian or call her at 510-763-3774 x100.

“The Greater San Francisco Bay Area Compensation Survey is a great resource for us…it's the only complete source of solid pay data specific to the Bay Area.”

Birgit Hueglin-Wood
MedAmerica

This is the time of year at which many employers are thinking about what salary increases to budget for the coming year. In this volatile economy, the question is both

more pertinent and more difficult to answer than in other, more “normal” years.

Prior to 2009, we routinely recommended annual salary increase budgets in the 3.5% – 4.5% range based on projected survey data and feedback from our clients. 2009 has broken that trend as we entered, endured, and currently appear to be recovering from one of the worst economic downturns since the Great Depression.

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