Pay recommendations are specific, actionable guidance on what an individual, role or cohort should be paid — derived from market benchmarking data, internal equity analysis, and the firm's stated compensation philosophy. They bridge the gap between having compensation data and knowing what to do with it.
Most firms that participate in salary surveys have access to market data. Fewer have the capacity to translate that data systematically into pay decisions that are simultaneously market-aligned, internally consistent, and operationally practical. Pay recommendations are the output of that translation process — whether produced internally by HR and compensation teams or through external advisory support.
What Pay Recommendations Cover
A pay recommendation for an individual consultant or a population typically specifies:
- Current market position — Where the individual's current pay sits relative to the market benchmark for their career level, line of business and geography, expressed as a compa-ratio and market percentile
- Target position — Where the firm's target market percentile implies the individual's pay should be
- Recommended action — The specific pay adjustment required to move from the current to the target position, expressed as an absolute increase and/or a percentage
- Timing and prioritisation — Whether the adjustment should be made immediately, at the next salary review cycle, or over a planned multi-year path, and how it should be prioritised relative to other individuals requiring adjustment
- Internal equity check — How the recommended pay level compares to peers at the same level within the firm, to ensure that addressing one individual's market gap does not create or worsen an internal equity problem elsewhere
Pay Recommendations at the Population Level
Individual pay recommendations, when aggregated across a career level or line of business, produce a population-level view of the investment required to achieve the firm's target market position. This is typically expressed as a total cost of correction — the additional salary spend required to bring all underpaid individuals to their target pay level — which feeds directly into the salary increase budget planning process.
Population-level pay recommendations also reveal structural patterns: whether underpayment is concentrated at specific career levels, in specific lines of business, or among specific demographic groups. These patterns are important inputs into both compensation strategy and pay equity analysis.
Pay Recommendations as an Advisory Output
Vencon Research produces pay recommendations as a core advisory deliverable, combining current Consultant Salary Survey data with analysis of the client firm's internal pay distribution, market positioning objectives and budget constraints. The output is a structured set of guidance that HR and compensation teams can use directly in the salary review process, rather than having to derive their own recommendations from raw benchmarking data.
Pay recommendations are one of several advisory outputs available through Vencon Research's advisory practice, alongside compensation model design, job architecture review and pay equity analysis.