Competitive Issues on Compensation

What’s your compensation philosophy? What about your compensation strategy? How are you going to compete with companies for that sought-after talent? Or are you worried about competing at all? We all know that a competitive compensation strategy can help you retain better talent. Taking a look at your current compensation plan and understanding how it stacks up to other organizations can help identify where you are or aren’t effectively competing for talent.

According to the recent 2018 Agribusiness HR Review, 42.59% of Canadian participants compete with other employers by offering higher compensation and 44.05% of US participants noted the same. There are certainly companies doing due diligence to determine their competitiveness within the market. Companies that have recently completed a compensation study may be able to better determine if their pay practices are in line with their compensation strategy. A little over half (53.57%) of participants have conducted a compensation study within the past year in the US and 44.45% of participants in Canada also completed a compensation study within the past year according to the 2018 Agribusiness HR Review. Within that same survey, it was noted that in the US, 95.04% of companies increased salaries during the past 12 months and of those that received an increase, the predominant average increase received by employees during 2017-2018 was 2.6% to 3.0%, (26.19%). This data continues to affirm that companies are increasing wages across the agriculture industry, making it even more important to remain competitive for quality talent.

It is always a good time to review your organization’s competitiveness in the compensation arena. Whether you intend to lead or lag the market, having sound compensation data to back up your plan will certainly give the organization more confidence as it is administered.

If your organization is looking to do a market-based compensation study, AgCareers.com’s Compensation Benchmark Review is a great way to benchmark your company’s positions within others in the agriculture industry. Email compensation@agcareers.com for more information about the Compensation Benchmark Review and receive the data you are looking for today.