Salary Benchmarking for a Municipal Government
Government & Public SectorHR & People Operations
One compensation study. Three people, three months, ten cities.
A municipal government's HR team used to spend a quarter gathering job descriptions from comparison cities and matching them to its own roles. Botable does that now. HR reviews the evidence and makes the decisions.
- Organization
- Municipal government
- Industry
- Government & Public Sector
- Team
- HR & People Operations
- Problem
- Research & comparison
The operating problem
Every benchmark began as a quarter-long research project.
Three HR professionals spent three months collecting job descriptions from ten similar-sized cities, then matching each one to the city's own roles by hand. Only then could the pay analysis start.
Public-sector pay is public record, so every comparison has to hold up to scrutiny. The team wanted the research done faster. It did not want software setting pay.
The collection and matching now run automatically. HR still decides.
Before and after path
Before
Job descriptions from ten cities
Match each to a city role
Analyze pay grades
Decide, three months later
Three months per study
After
Collect ten cities' descriptions
Match each to a city role
Suggest a grade for HR to review
HR decides
Ready for review
Before
Three months per study
- 01
Job descriptions from ten cities
- 02
Match each to a city role
- 03
Analyze pay grades
- 04
Decide, three months later
After
Ready for review
- 01
Collect ten cities' descriptions
- 02
Match each to a city role
- 03
Suggest a grade for HR to review
HR decides
What Botable built
The research is done before HR sits down to decide.
- 01
Collect the ten cities' job descriptions
The system gathers job descriptions from the agreed comparison cities. No one on the HR team collects them by hand.
- 02
Match each to a city role
Each description is matched to the closest city role, with the reasoning shown.
- 03
Suggest a grade for HR to review
For each role, HR gets the comparison set and a suggested grade change. HR weighs the evidence and decides.
Evidence
What one manual study cost.
Verified figures from the last study the city ran by hand. Botable now runs the collection and matching, and HR makes every decision.
- 3 months
- Per manual study
- 3 people
- Tied up for those three months
- 10
- Comparison cities collected and matched
- 0
- Systems replaced. Built around the existing compensation process.
Recently deployed
The first automated cycle is in progress.
Each benchmarking study now starts with the research done: the comparison cities' job descriptions collected and matched to the city's own roles. HR reviews the evidence and makes every pay decision.
Start with one gapIs your team rebuilding the same research every cycle?
We will do the collecting and comparing. Your people keep the decision.
Start with one gap