You don't have to be on a compensation island all by yourself

But we also felt very disconnected because maybe because of the secrecy, I don't know, but felt very disconnected at times from my other colleagues in HR and also from the business.

And I was kind of in a box.

working away, looking at all the numbers, requiring very specialised knowledge.

And I think another reason maybe why sometimes people feel isolated is because compensation teams are often very small within an organisation as well.

I think there's some data from our compensation best practice report that for organisations up to 5,000 people, I think was the benchmark in our survey, normally two comp people is the average, which doesn't sound like a very lot.

So why do many compensation professionals feel like they're carrying these responsibilities alone? Why do they feel disconnected and why do they feel isolated? Jenny, do you want to start us off here? What makes it difficult for comp teams today? Why do you think they feel so isolated?

You know, I think so much has changed over the last even just the eight and a half years I've been here at PayScale.

And I think kind of when I was thinking about, you know, what are maybe those trends that have come up making it more difficult or having the teams feeling more isolated is, you know, I think first priority.

how fragmented the talent market has become.

Pre-pandemic, if you were a company in Denver, you were primarily competing for talent in Denver.

And now, remote work has completely changed that equation.

And

we have clients competing nationally, sometimes globally for the same roles.

And that added complexity of that same role in Austin, Texas, is going to cost something very different from San Francisco to even Raleigh, North Carolina.

And so a lot of clients, I think they're starting to ask, how do I build a compensation strategy that's competitive in multiple markets? How do I attract the talent that I need without lowering my budget? And I think too, another piece of it, and as you mentioned of kind of previously compensation was so much more private, but we've had this big shift with transparency and what employees expect to know and hear and understand.

And employees now more than ever, I think, want to understand not just what they're paid, but why they're paid that way and then what their growth opportunities look like.

And as we've seen, you know, kind of over the years, 10 years dropped and people aren't staying necessarily for decades at an organization.

And so if an employee doesn't understand their compensation or necessarily see a path to growth, you know, they're going to start looking elsewhere.

And I think, too, you add in that.

transparency legislation and the fact that salary information is available everywhere online.

And there's so much information that I think, too, it's oftentimes there's so much information out there, but not necessarily maybe the context provided for their specific organization and how they handle compensation.

But because of that, though, I think it's also made comp become impossible to ignore.

It's not a back office function anymore.

It is really directly connected to whether you can attract and retain your best people.

And so I think when we talk about that kind of compensation island problem, it's not just these teams hiring.