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If you're reading this, chances are you've had previous experience of wrestling with WTW's compensation data for your latest pay review. Perhaps you've spent the better part of a month extracting data into spreadsheets, cross-checking figures, and still wondering if your benchmarks actually reflect what's happening in today's market.
You're not alone. Whilst Willis Towers Watson has built its reputation over decades as a trusted consultancy, these days the reality of using their traditional salary surveys often feels at odds with the pace of modern compensation decisions. Annual data collection cycles, manual survey submissions, and months of waiting for results - it's an approach that worked well in a slower-moving world, but struggles to keep pace with today's dynamic talent markets.
The compensation landscape has evolved. With many organisations now running pay reviews more than once a year, waiting for annual survey data that's already months out of date can mean the difference between retaining your top performers and watching them accept offers elsewhere. Add to this the complexity of managing salary benchmarking across multiple countries and specialised roles and the limitations of single-source survey data become increasingly apparent.
This is why organisations are exploring WTW alternatives.
We've looked at the market to identify 9 strong alternatives to Willis Towers Watson in 2026, comparing modern salary benchmarking software, real-time HR providers, and other established survey firms. Each offers something different, from multi-source data aggregation to specialised industry focus.
Whether you're considering your options for the first time or looking for a complete change of approach, this guide will help you understand what's available and which solution might work best for your organisation's specific needs..
What does Willis Towers Watson salary benchmarking actually provide?
Before exploring alternatives, it's worth understanding exactly what you're getting (or not getting) with Willis Towers Watson today.
Willis Towers Watson (WTW) operates primarily as a global advisory firm, so a management consultancy basically. Salary benchmarking data is one component of their much broader service offering, which spans risk management, employee benefits, and organisational consulting.
Their approach to salary benchmarking is based on the traditional, old survey methodology - gathering data directly from participating organisations, then selling access to the aggregated results to their next customers.
WTW consulting services
Consulting sits at the heart of WTW's business model and their services cover the full spectrum of “people management” (https://www.wtwco.com/en-gb/people) .
This consultancy-first approach means you can access compensation expertise alongside salary benchmarking data - though you'll pay accordingly for it.
WTW salary benchmarking data
WTW operates multiple salary surveys across industries and geographies. Organisations submit detailed salary and total compensation data for their employees which WTW then combines, aggregates and sells back as salary benchmarks.
The Willis Towers Watson salary survey offering includes:
- General Industry Surveys: Compensation data covering most common roles, refreshed annually.
- Industry-specific surveys: Targeted studies for sectors like Financial Services, Energy, Healthcare, and Manufacturing
- Custom Salary data: Additional custom solutions, crafted from pay and benefits data and enriched with human intelligence
The catch? Each survey represents a separate data collection exercise, typically conducted once per year. By the time data is collected, validated, aggregated, and published … several months (sometimes a year) have passed - meaning you're often making today's decisions based on last year's market conditions.
WTW Rewards Data Intelligence (RDI)
In years past, buying WTW survey data meant receiving complex Excel spreadsheets that required significant compensation expertise to interpret. Today, they offer the Rewards Data Intelligence portal : a web-based platform for accessing and filtering your purchased survey data.
The RDI portal lets you view results online, set salary benchmarks for job levels, run reports, and export data for further analysis. However, it only provides access to the specific surveys you've purchased - it's not an all-inclusive global salary benchmarking software.
Willis Towers Watson Compensation Software
Beyond survey data access, WTW offers compensation management software for scenario planning, analysis, and annual review cycle management.
The platform works alongside the survey participation portal and RDI, providing additional tools for modelling compensation decisions. However, it still depends on WTW's annual survey refresh cycle - you won't see real-time updates or continuous market intelligence like you would with platforms such as Compensation IQ that aggregate multiple real-time data sources.
The software requires purchasing underlying survey data separately, adding to the overall investment.
Who typically uses Willis Towers Watson salary benchmarks?
WTW's offerings are designed for - and priced for - larger enterprises. Their sweet spot is multinational corporations and established businesses in traditional sectors: financial services, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing, and professional services firms.
These organisations typically have dedicated reward teams with the expertise to manage WTW's survey submission requirements, navigate complex job matching processes, and extract insights from comprehensive datasets. They value WTW's brand recognition, which can help secure stakeholder buy-in for compensation decisions.
For smaller organisations with less than 2,000 people, high-growth businesses or modern companies, WTW's approach can feel overwhelming. The combination of consultancy-focused service delivery, premium pricing, and tools that prioritise traditional manual processes over usability often doesn't match the needs of teams seeking straightforward, actionable market intelligence.
Where WTW salary benchmarking excels, and where it falls short
Understanding WTW's strengths and limitations helps clarify whether an alternative might better serve your needs.
Where WTW salary benchmarks do well
The primary advantages of using WTW include:
- Established brand: WTW's decades of experience and brand name carries weight in boardrooms. When presenting compensation recommendations to senior leadership, citing WTW data can provide the gravitas that newer providers may lack
- Global coverage: WTW's survey network spans enterprise companies worldwide. For multinational corporations needing benchmarks across numerous countries, this breadth is valuable
- Full-service consultancy: When you need more than just data for example strategic guidance on compensation philosophy and job architecture design - WTW's consultants can provide hands-on support (though expect to pay premium rates for these services)
Where WTW salary benchmarks don't do so well
The key constraints that drive organisations to seek alternatives include:
- Annual survey cycle, not continuous intelligence: WTW's methodology relies on periodic data collection. Organisations submit compensation data, WTW validates and aggregates it, then publishes results - a process spanning several months. By the time you access the benchmarks, market conditions may have shifted significantly. Modern compensation intelligence platforms (like Compensation IQ) aggregate live, real-time salary data to provide market intelligence that reflects current conditions rather than historical snapshots
- Prone to error: WTW's entire model depends on organisations accurately reporting their compensation data. But manual survey submissions are prone to human error and inconsistencies. A single copy-paste mistake can affect the data quality for everyone
- Time-consuming manual data wrangling: WTW surveys capture data from enterprise organisations with thousands of different job titles, role descriptions and skills. Mapping your internal roles to WTW's taxonomy requires substantial effort - something that is tedious and labour-intensive. Modern platforms use AI-powered job matching to automate this alignment, but WTW still requires manual effort in Excel spreadsheets
9 alternatives to Willis Tower Watson salary benchmarks in 2026
When looking at Willis Towers Watson alternatives, it’s important to consider the type of salary benchmarking data that other providers have and how that data is compiled. The 4 most common types of salary benchmarking data that are available include:
- Multi-source salary benchmarking software providers (Compensation IQ, Comprehensive)
- Real-time salary benchmarking products (Ravio, Pave, Figures HR)
- HR platforms with third-party salary data (example: Oyster HR, Lattice, HiBob)
- Traditional salary survey providers (example: Mercer, Kornferry)
Some organisations provide specific regional job advertisements as salary data sources, for example HR Datahub. However, because their data source is UK only and from a small number of job boards they haven't been included here as reliable WTW alternatives.
Compensation IQ
Compensation IQ is a modern salary benchmarking software that combines multiple salary benchmark data sources in one platform, making it suitable for organisations across all sectors and sizes. Companies that require comprehensive, up-to-date salary benchmarking data, especially if they have employees spread across the world, are increasingly choosing modern providers of salary benchmarking data.
Compensation IQ is one of the very few salary benchmarking software that aggregates 4 different salary benchmarking data sources in one platform:
- Real-time salary benchmarking data from participating companies (proprietary salary data)
- Global job posting salary data from all major job boards and company website (and ATS)
- Self-reported salary benchmarking data from employees
- Global Salary surveys powered by Mercer with over 50,000 companies worldwide
This depth and the breadth of the salary benchmarking data (from over 5 million companies) means that Compensation IQ has addressed the fundamental limitation that other providers have - which is data coverage. With other salary benchmark providers, by the time filters are applied to make the benchmarks relevant (so filter by industry, company size, location and more) there is almost no statistically relevant data left to use as a benchmark (for example, Ravio has data for 1,000 - 1,500 companies before filters are applied).
Key features of Compensation IQ salary benchmarking software
- Comprehensive Salary Data coverage: Salary benchmarking data from over 5 million companies covering multiple industries and locations (100+countries)
- Multi-source salary benchmarking data: Access different types of salary benchmarking data simultaneously to validate compensation decisions: compare what companies have paid (salary survey data), what they're actually paying right now (proprietary participating data and self–reported benchmarks) and what they intend to pay (advertised job postings) - all in one platform.
- Advanced salary benchmark filters: Filter by industry, company size, years of experience, city and more to find hyper-relevant salary benchmarking data for all your roles
- Salary bands: built in so that you can save benchmark ranges that suit your organisations pay philosophy
- Seamless HR integration with 50+ platforms: to automatically compare your internal compensation data against external market benchmarks and identify pay gaps, attrition risks, and outliers. Any new starters and leavers are updated straightaway with no need to manually add or remove people - eliminating the tedious data collation into spreadsheets that consumes HR teams' time
- Dashboard and reporting for gender pay analysis, team investment and overall headcount costs
- GDPR, SOC 2 compliant
Willis Towers Watson vs Compensation IQ
Unlike WTW's single-source annual salary surveys, Compensation IQ provides a salary benchmarking platform that combines multiple salary benchmark data types: real-time salary benchmarks, continuously updated job posting data, self-reported compensation and traditional salary surveys - all in one platform.
Where WTW requires months of waiting for annual survey results and manual data submission, Compensation IQ provides continuous access to multiple data sources that update frequently.
The critical advantage: data coverage. WTW will skew to certain traditional industries whereas Compensation IQ covers all industries.
In terms of usability, WTW delivers data through its RDI portal which requires purchasing specific survey datasets separately and manual job matching in Excel - a process that can be tedious and time-consuming.
Compensation IQ instead provides an integrated platform with built-in salary benchmarking tools, job matching, and reporting - making it accessible for organisations without large dedicated Comp & Reward teams, whilst remaining powerful enough. Users report being able to view their entire organisation, department, or team and each individual role against salary benchmarks directly within the platform, removing the hassle of manually searching one role at a time and stitching things together in spreadsheets.
Comprehensive
Comprehensive.io is a compensation management platform offering dual-source benchmarking data, (similar to Compensation IQ) but is more suitable for US-based organisations seeking a combination of tech-focused real-time salary data and traditional survey benchmarks.
Key features:
- Dual-source benchmarking approach combining real-time salary data from 6,000+ US tech companies with global survey data powered by Mercer (covering 4 million+ employees across 100+ countries) and Salary.com
- Access 15,000 unique job titles across 225 industry breakouts with 32,000+ compensable factors, making job matching straightforward through search functionality
- Filter by location, industry, organisation size, and more to refine benchmarks for relevance, with a unified view of percentile data across all organisational levels
- Built-in compensation management tools for running compensation reviews, managing pay ranges, communicating total rewards with employees, and automating compensation planning
- GDPR, CCPA, and SOC 2 Type 2 compliant with integrations to existing HRIS and performance management systems
Willis Towers Watson vs Comprehensive
Unlike WTW's single-source annual surveys, Comprehensive combines multiple data sources: real-time data from US tech companies and Mercer's Compryx data and Salary.com. This gives HR teams access to both current tech market conditions and established enterprise benchmarks.
However, Comprehensive's real-time data is primarily focused on US tech roles, whilst global coverage relies on the Mercer partnership — meaning data outside the US tech sector still follows traditional annual survey refresh cycles similar to WTW.
In terms of geographic and industry coverage, WTW offers broader global reach across traditional industries. Comprehensive provides strong US tech market data supplemented with Mercer's global surveys, making it particularly relevant for US-based technology companies with international operations.
For compensation management, WTW provides data through its RDI portal with separate software purchases. Comprehensive delivers an integrated platform with built-in tools for the full compensation cycle, though user reviews indicate that whilst the platform offers customisation, there can be a learning curve for teams new to compensation software.
FiguresHR
FiguresHR offers salary benchmarking data powered by real-time HR integrations and a partnership with Mercer. It’s ideal for small tech companies operating in Europe.
Key features:
- Real-time compensation data via excel uploads and HR integrations
- Traditional Salary Survey Data via their partnership with Mercer which is sold as an add-on
- Advanced filters such as industry, headcount, location and AI-powered modelling to fill gaps in smaller markets
Willis Towers Watson vs Figures
WTW's annual survey cycle means data refreshes once per year, whereas Figures' European dataset (based on its proprietary data sourced from its customers) updates more frequently through HR integrations.
In terms of proprietary data coverage, WTW has a greater breadth of data due to having more companies participating. Where the core real-time proprietary data that Figures HR has (so data from its own customers) lacks sufficient salary benchmarking data for key roles, it will offer AI suggestions which can be inaccurate.
Figures is a tech company that has designed integrated compensation management tools for users to manage the salary benchmarking process within the platform. As with all traditional salary survey providers, WTW follows a consultancy-led model with separate limited software portal to access cuts of salary benchmarking data.
Ravio
Ravio is a real-time salary benchmarking software – ideal for high-growth tech companies, particularly those with strong operations in Europe.
Key features:
- GDPR-compliant benchmarks with primary focus on European salary benchmarks
- Real-time salary data based on proprietary data from about 1,000 - 1,400 tech companies
- Data refreshes automatically via HRIS integrations
- Filter benchmarks by industry, size, stage, and location
Willis Towers Watson vs Ravio
Unlike WTW's manually submitted, annual salary survey data, Ravio delivers real-time benchmarks via HR integrations – eliminating manual errors and keeping benchmarks continuously current.
Regarding salary benchmarking data coverage, WTW's dataset has more companies participating in the salary benchmarking than Ravio (12,000 companies versus Ravio’s approximately 1,000+ companies) and so spans more industries with broader global reach.
Ravio focuses specifically on high-growth tech companies (so doesn’t have sufficient salary benchmarking data for other industries) and offers advanced filters by location, growth stage, and company size for more relevant comparisons within the tech sector. But this advance filtering may leave you with no salary benchmarks to use with users reporting that Ravio has limited data coverage.
For compensation management, WTW provides data through its RDI portal and Compensation Software, with consulting available separately. Ravio delivers an integrated, modern salary benchmarking platform purpose-built for software engineering and tech teams.
Pave
Pave focuses on solving the problem of employee stock option (shares) benchmarking and offers real-time compensation data as a secondary benefit. Their proprietary data is primarily sourced from US software companies - so would work best for American startups in the tech industry.
Key features:
- Data Coverage focused on US with more limited representation in other regions
- Total compensation data including equity and variable pay
- Refreshed frequently via real-time HRIS integrations
- Compensation management tools to forecast pay decisions and approval processes included for line managers in-app
Willis Towers Watson vs Pave
Pave's dataset is strongest for US-based technology roles and users report lack of comprehensive salary benchmarking data coverage, whilst WTW maintains broader geographic reach across traditional industries.
Compared to WTW's annual salary survey data which can have a lag on the data, Pave provides more frequent benchmark updates through HR integrations.
Pave has compensation management tools built in, whereas WTW has limited digital functionality in their user interface.
Radford
Radford is an Aon company who, like WTW, specialises in enterprise salary benchmarking surveys - suitable for enterprise organisations.
Key features:
- Access specialised life sciences data through Radford's industry-focused salary surveys
- Benchmark with detailed job matching using Radford's granular job levelling frameworks
- Use the Radford platform to access and analyse your purchased survey data with filtering and reporting capabilities
- Participate in surveys using Radford's annual give-to-get submission process to access benchmark results
Willis Towers Watson vs Radford
Where WTW offers broad industry coverage (with over 12,000 companies taking part) across traditional and emerging sectors, Radford specialises specifically in technology and life sciences industries with more granular role definitions in these areas. However Radford only has 4,500 companies taking part in the salary benchmarking survey which limits the geographical and industry coverage.
Both operate annual salary survey models with similar update cycles and manual submission requirements.
For organisations in tech or life sciences, Radford may offer more relevant, detailed benchmarks. For organisations across multiple traditional industries or seeking comprehensive global coverage, WTW's broader scope may be more suitable.
Brightmine (aka XpertHR / Cendex)
Brightmine Compensation Planning is a UK-focused salary benchmarking tool - suitable for small to mid-sized UK organisations, public sector bodies, charities, and professional services firms seeking affordable compensation data with a user-friendly interface.
Key features
- Access to 1.5 million employee salary benchmark datapoints from approximately 1,100 organisations
- User-friendly benchmarking process with job titles set up for quick filtering and comparison
- Filter by location, industry, organisation size, sector, and function to refine benchmarks, though filtering options can be limited compared to multi-source platforms
- Integration with broader HR compliance resources as part of Brightmine's comprehensive HR services platform
Willis Towers Watson vs Brightmine
Both WTW and Brightmine operate traditional employer-reported salary survey models with similar annual data collection methodologies. However, Brightmine focuses exclusively on the UK market whilst WTW provides global coverage.
The critical difference lies in dataset size and scope. Brightmine's UK dataset contains 1.5 million employee datapoints from approximately 1,100 participating organisations (as of February 2025). Whilst this provides coverage for common business roles, sample sizes become significantly limited when filtering by specific criteria such as:
- Highly specialised or niche roles where few organisations contribute data
- Senior or executive positions with naturally smaller sample sizes
- Specific geographic regions outside major UK employment centres
- Emerging job titles not yet widely represented in traditional survey submissions
- Multiple simultaneous filters (industry + location + company size + function) which rapidly reduce available datapoints
In terms of usability, WTW's RDI portal requires compensation expertise to navigate complex datasets. Brightmine offers a more accessible, user-friendly interface designed for HR generalists, though this simplicity comes at the cost of limited customisation and filtering depth compared to platforms like Compensation IQ.
For compensation management, both WTW and Brightmine provide primarily data access with basic reporting tools. Neither offers the comprehensive, integrated compensation management capabilities (HRIS integration, AI-powered job matching, multi-source validation, attrition risk analysis) found in modern platforms. Brightmine positions itself as part of a broader HR compliance platform, whilst WTW operates as a consultancy-first service.
HiBob
HiBob is a comprehensive all-in-one HR platform that started as a core HRIS. Over the years they’ve added additional functionality and modules for HR teams to use such as employee engagement, payroll (through their acquisition of Pento) and now sources salary benchmarks provided via their partnership with Mercer.
Key features
- Global Compensation data from Mercer Salary Surveys
- Compensation planning module to manage the pay cycle
- Built-in tools for analysis and standard reporting
Willis Towers Watson vs HiBob
HiBob delivers salary benchmarking data from Mercer as an add-on module to their core people management platform. Thus the HiBob salary benchmarking data is similar to WTW because both are salary surveys and prone to the same issues.
WTW has more out of date methods for users to manage the compensation data (as they weren' t a digital-first business but rather a consultancy) whereas HiBob offers users built-in tools to manage the compensation and benchmarking process.
Oyster HR Salary Insights Tool
Oyster Salary Insights Tool is a global compensation benchmarking tool integrated within Oyster's employer of record platform - suitable for distributed companies hiring globally across 130+ countries, particularly those already using or considering Oyster for international employment.
Key features
- Access salary insights across 130+ countries covering 120+ job titles at all seniority levels
- Dual-source data approach combining Oyster's proprietary data from over 1,400 customers with market data provided through a partnership with Figures
- Oyster Pay Bands methodology developed using cost of living data, country-specific scoring and compensation philosophy adjustments
- Seamless integration within Oyster's EOR platform for companies already using Oyster to hire, pay, and manage international team members
Willis Towers Watson vs Oyster HR
Unlike WTW's consultancy-first approach with comprehensive global surveys across all industries, Oyster provides compensation data specifically designed for distributed companies hiring internationally, with a focus on making global employment decisions quickly and compliantly.
WTW's annual survey methodology covers established enterprises across traditional and emerging sectors globally. Oyster's dual-source approach combines proprietary data from its 1,400+ EOR customers with Figures' European startup/scaleup data - making it particularly relevant for tech-forward, distributed companies but potentially less comprehensive for other industries.
In terms of usability, WTW requires purchasing specific survey datasets through the RDI portal with manual job matching. Oyster provides self-serve, instant salary recommendations optimised for speed and convenience - ideal for making quick hiring decisions but potentially lacking the depth and rigour required for comprehensive compensation strategy work.
The Figures HR + Oyster HR partnership provides European startup/scaleup benchmarks, but this also means Oyster's market data inherits Figures' limitations: stronger coverage for tech and startup roles in Western Europe, with less relevance for other industries or markets outside Figures' core European focus. Companies requiring comprehensive, validated benchmarks across diverse industries and seniority levels may find Oyster's tool insufficient as a standalone solution.
How to choose alternatives to Willis Towers Watson Salary benchmarking Survey
Salary benchmarking has evolved rapidly in recent years. Traditional salary surveys like Willis Towers Watson still have their place - particularly for large, global organisations, but many companies are now exploring modern, data-rich alternatives that offer more current insights and easier integration.
If you’re evaluating whether to stay with WTW or switch to a newer approach, here are the key factors to consider.
Company size and complexity
Larger organisations usually have a team of people to manage employee compensation. They can more easily handle complex hierarchies, the necessary data wrangling and stakeholders across the globe.
Smaller organisations value simplicity, speed and confidence in the data. They often benefit from platforms with minimal “onboarding” or “implementation”, that has sufficient data to create hyper-relevant salary benchmarks from - so that they can justify pay decisions throughout the organisation.
✓ Checklist: Evaluating platform complexity for salary benchmarking
☐ Can your HR team access the salary benchmarks without extensive training?
☐ Does the salary benchmarking platform require manual data submissions or automate via HR integration?
☐ Can you get started within days rather than months?
☐ Is there sufficient salary benchmark data coverage to avoid "no results" after filtering?
☐ Can non-compensation specialists navigate the salary becnhamrking software and platform confidently?
Industry focus for salary benchmarking data
Not all salary benchmarking providers will cover your industry and sector. If you’re a small to medium sized tech start-up/tech scale up, then you’ll need to look for a salary benchmarking software that focuses on your industry (like Ravio, Figures, Pave).
So if your business is in the Software and Tech industry (or is a hybrid industry company like FinTech, HealthTech, PropTech etc) , you’d probably look for an alternative to Willis Towers Watson to find relevant salary benchmarking data that matches your organisation.
This could be from a direct competitor to WTW for traditional salary surveys (like Radford, Kornferry) or a more modern salary benchmarking platform like Assemble by Deel (for Biotech & Life Sciences salary benchmarks) or Compensation IQ (for any industry salary benchmarking).
✓ Checklist: Assessing the industry coverage for salary benchmarks
☐ Does the provider have salary benchmarking data for your specific industry (not just tech)?
☐ Can you benchmark salaries across multiple industries if your company operates in hybrid sectors?
☐ Is the salary data sourced from companies similar to yours in size and stage?
☐ Are there enough participating companies to ensure statistical relevance for all your salary benchmarking needs?
☐ Can you validate salary benchmarks across multiple data sources rather than relying on one industry-specific dataset?
Geographical coverage for salary benchmark data
If your employees are distributed geographically, you may want to consider a benchmark provider that has a global dataset. The traditional salary survey providers (like WTW and others) tend to be able to cover most regions. If you’re looking to update to a more modern approach then the modern salary benchmark providers tend to focus only on one region (Pave = US, Figures and Ravio = Europe).
Your decision point here is about how much data is left once you apply the filters you need to make the salary benchmarks relevant to your organisation after you apply industry, country, city, years of experience etc.
If the starting point of the number of companies in the benchmark is small, you won’t be able to filter to achieve the granularity needed for accurate salary benchmarking.
✓ Checklist: Evaluating geographic reach of the salary benchmark data
☐ Does the salary benchmark provider cover all countries where you have employees?
☐ Can you drill down to city-level data without losing statistical significance in the salary benchmarks?
☐ Does the salary benchmark dataset remain robust after applying multiple filters (industry + location + size)?
☐ Are you limited to one region (US-only or Europe-only) or truly global access to salary benchmarks?
☐ Can you access sufficient number of salary benchmark data for more than 5 countries?
Budgets and costs of salary benchmark providers
HR is the least invested team in a company (both in terms of headcount and budget) and in the last year 50% of HR faced cuts to their budget.
So the consideration when choosing an alternative provider to WTW often comes down to cost. The large enterprise salary survey benchmark solutions will charge by "cut" (usually industry or region or both) which can make it expensive to buy salary benchmarking data for multiple countries. They also offer full-service consultancy with hands-on support which will add to the bill.
Modern salary benchmarking software providers are less expensive to get started, but will often charge by feature or module (like Figures HR) and increasingly they're starting to charge for country access too (Pave).
Consider your needs carefully and meet with more than one provider to understand the differences in quality and quantity of salary data for the cost, which tools they have available for you to use and where the hidden costs are.
✓ Checklist: Understanding total cost of ownership
☐ Is pricing transparent or do you need to pay per "cut" (industry/region) for salry benchmarking data?
☐ Are essential features of the salary benchmark platform included or charged separately (salary bands, compensation management, HRIS integration, reporting, etc.)?
☐ Do you pay extra fees for salary benchmarks from additional countries?
☐ Can you access all your needed salary benchmark data under one subscription?
☐ Are there hidden costs for implementation, training, or consulting fees?
Salary benchmark data source philosophy
Traditionally, organisations relied on a single-source salary provider (e.g., WTW, Ravio, Figures, Pave) for benchmarking data. Any gaps in coverage - such as niche roles, emerging markets, or specific industries - were filled manually by People Teams scouring job postings, sifting through recruiter PDFs, or other ad-hoc sources like employee self-reported data (Levels.fyi, Glassdoor etc).
However, according to Novo Insights, 82% of HR teams need to use two or more data sources to get a complete and reliable picture. This has driven a shift toward multi-source aggregation, where platforms like Compensation IQ and Comprehensive combine multiple data streams - traditional surveys, real-time HRIS integrations, job postings, and self-reported compensation - into one easy-to-use platform.
Adopting a multi-source approach doesn’t just improve coverage; it also helps support a modern pay philosophy. Companies must move beyond static benchmarks and embrace continuously updated, cross-validated insights to guide salary decisions, pay equity, and market positioning in real time.
✓ Checklist: Validating data source quality
☐ Can you cross-reference multiple salary benchmark data sources (surveys + real-time + job postings + self-reported)?
☐ Does the salary benchmarking platform provide validation across different methodologies?
☐ Are you dependent on a single salary benchmark data collection method that could have blind spots?
☐ Can you see what companies are actually paying now versus last year's survey data?
☐ Does the platform aggregate salary benchmarking data from millions of companies or just hundreds?
Find out more about Compensation IQ salary benchmarking
Discover how Compensation IQ's unique multi-source salary benchmark approach provides comprehensive, current market intelligence with a personalised platform demo, or explore our resources on modern compensation benchmarking approaches:
Frequently Asked Questions
How does Willis Towers Watson’s data compare to newer providers?
What are the main types of salary benchmarking data available today?
What’s the difference between WTW, Ravio, and Compensation IQ?
Is real-time salary data more accurate than traditional surveys?
Why is having multiple sources of salary benchmarking data in one platform better?
Why are organisations choosing Compensation IQ salary benchmarking?
