Survey season is upon us, and for compensation professionals, that means navigating the complex lifecycle of managing salary surveys — from gathering participation data to analyzing and applying results. This process can feel tedious, time-consuming, and overwhelming, especially with the quick turnaround between receiving results and making compensation updates.
But there’s good news: Payscale is here to help you tackle survey season more efficiently than ever before with powerful tools to streamline your work and strengthen your compensation practices.
The survey season lifecycle
Every year, compensation professionals face two critical phases: participation season (February–May) and results season (August–December). Right now, many are deep into the results phase, which peaks in October and November. Survey data is being delivered back and decisions need to be made quickly. This can be one of the most challenging times of the year, as teams balance the need to integrate new data with the need to ensure pricing accuracy and alignment across multiple roles and locations.
With survey season at its peak, you may feel the pressure of having to turn around matches quickly and accurately so you can move into the phase of analyzing and delivering compensation data to support your year-end merit cycles. That’s why we’re excited to introduce a new feature to help you work smarter, not harder: AI Match Suggestions in Payfactors.
AI Match Suggestions: smarter pricing with less effort
Matching your company’s jobs to survey data can be a tedious, manual process — especially when the data or job codes change year over year. That’s where AI Match Suggestions in Payfactors comes in to transform this painstaking task into a streamlined, data-driven experience.
With AI Match Suggestions, you can:
- Boost efficiency by updating pricings faster with AI-suggested job matches
- Enhance accuracy with full control over your pricings, whether you select AI recommendations or find your own matches
- Increase confidence in your pricing decisions, knowing you’re making informed choices
The feature leverages advanced AI to analyze and compare jobs from your survey library, delivering the top five most relevant job matches when previous matches are unavailable. This dramatically reduces the time and effort required to update pricings. Instead of manually sifting through survey jobs, you can simply review and accept AI-generated suggestions.
Unlike competitors who rely on manual processes, Payscale’s AI-powered approach delivers unmatched speed and precision. As leaders in AI-powered comp technology, in compensation, we’re solving the efficiency and accuracy challenges that others haven’t addressed, giving you a distinct advantage in your compensation management processes.
Launching AI Match Suggestions during survey season ensures you have the tools to make fast, accurate pricing updates and stay ahead of the competition. It’s not just about working faster; it’s about working smarter and getting the most value out of your survey data.
A quick overview: the new Surveys Experience in Payfactors
Released last month in Payfactors, the new Surveys Experience was designed to make the survey season lifecycle more manageable. Whether you’re in the results phase, participation season, or somewhere in between, the new Surveys Experience provides:
- Utilization metrics to help you see the value of your surveys and make the most of your investments
- A visual timeline and centralized survey statuses so you can track where you are in the survey season at a glance
- A guided participation workflow to help you navigate next year’s participation season with ease
Additionally, as you prepare for the next participation season, Payfactors’ guided workflows help you follow survey best practices, ultimately improving the quality of your data year over year.
Don’t forget about MarketPay
MarketPay delivers benefits this survey season as well with two feature releases that help strengthen your survey results. First, AI Match Suggestions (beta) is now running in MarketPay, bringing similar job-matching efficiencies to this platform. Plus, Propagate Matches, which was released last week, helps you apply job matches across multiple territories at once, ensuring consistency and saving hours of manual work when applying survey results.
These enhancements in both Payfactors and MarketPay demonstrate our commitment to simplifying your workflow, reducing your time spent on tedious tasks, and empowering you to make even stronger compensation decisions.
Consistent data growth
Payscale has made significant progress in growing its data recently as well. The Peer Auto-Match feature has been widely adopted, resulting in the addition of 30 new jobs, 200K+ incumbents, and 193 new organizations participating in Peer. The HR Market Analysis dataset also added 373 new jobs this quarter. This ongoing data expansion ensures that Payscale provides relevant, high-quality compensation data to complement survey data for a holistic view of the market.
Looking ahead
Survey season doesn’t have to be daunting. With tools like the new Surveys Experience and AI Match Suggestions, you can streamline your survey management process, boost the accuracy of your data, and reduce the manual work involved. Payscale continues to invest in these innovations to help you manage survey participation and results more easily, with a clear vision to deliver even more enhancements that improve pricing accuracy and efficiency.
As survey season continues, we encourage you to explore these tools and see how they can help your team work smarter, not harder. Whether you’re in Payfactors or MarketPay, these features are designed to meet your needs and set you up for long-term success.
Want to learn more? Speak with a Payscale representative today.
