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QUESTION:  For executive compensation analyses, can I change the organization size from revenue to fiscal year budget?  

 

In the Nonprofit Comparables Assessor (CA), users may only select either revenue or assets for the organization size.

 

In the Salary Assessor (SA) and the Executive Compensation Assessor (XA), the organization size dimension is fixed.  The size dimension built into the application is based on the position, the industry, and the area selected.

 

Not all jobs report salaries by the size of the company or organization.  For example, salaries for an Electrical Engineer are reported by years of experience and not the size of the company. On the other hand, higher level jobs tend to report salaries by the size of the organization.  For example, the compensation of a Chief Executive Officer is reported by the size of the company and not by years of experience.

 

For jobs with wages reported by the size of the company, the application utilizes one of four possible company size dimensions: revenues, assets, fiscal year budget (FYB), or # or employees (an alternative selection for industries measured by FYB).  The manner in which data for a particular industry is gathered determines which of the four size dimensions is utilized.  For example:

 

1.   If the majority of industry data is gathered by the company size dimension of revenue, then revenues are used by the application as the size dimension for the industry.

 

If you have selected an industry which is based on revenue (sensitive to organization revenue size), then you will only be able to view data based on revenue.  If you have selected an industry which is based on assets (sensitive to organization asset size), then you will only be able to view data based on assets.  The same would be true for fiscal year budget or # of employees. Whether or not a job is reported by organization size or experience cannot be changed by the user.

 

Most executive positions (Director level and above) are reported by one of the four organization size dimensions, while most non-executive positions are reported by years of experience.  This generality is based on the fact that higher level jobs tend to pay more in larger companies.  One could safely assume that the CEO's responsibilities for a 100 million dollar company are greater than the CEO's responsibilities for a one million dollar company.  Thus, one would expect the compensation for the CEO of a 100 million dollar company to be higher than the compensation of a CEO of a one million dollar company.

 

However, most non-executive positions (below Director level) are reported by years of experience as the primary variable.  For example, accountants with the same job description, the same experience, and the same job performance will (as a group) tend to have comparable salaries which are not meaningfully affected by company size. However, the Salary Assessor allows the user to select “Include revenue in the analysis of lower level jobs.” This allows the user to view the effects of organization size beyond what is already explained by experience.