Reward surveys are useful for a whole workforce. For one executive role they are close to useless, because the survey median for "Finance Director" covers a £90,000 job in a charity and a £400,000 job in a listed group.
When a Board asks us whether an executive package is right, we do something narrower.
Pick the comparators, not the job title
Ten to fifteen organisations that a candidate for this role would realistically come from or go to. Similar size, similar complexity, same or adjacent sector. The Board usually names half of them in five minutes; the other half come from our market map.
Find out what those roles actually pay
For listed companies the remuneration report gives you most of it. For private companies it comes from conversations: with people who hold the roles, people who have recently left them, and people who have recently turned them down. We have those conversations as part of every search anyway. The data is current because it is from this quarter, not last year's survey.
Compare the whole package
Base salary is the easy part. The comparison that matters includes bonus opportunity and how often it pays out, long-term incentives, pension, car and the softer terms: notice period, non-compete, flexibility. A role that pays £20,000 less in base with a bonus that actually pays out is often the better package.
Report a position, not a range
The output is one page per role: where the current package sits against the comparators, what it would take to be at the median or upper quartile, and what we think the market would do if the person left. Boards can act on that. They cannot act on "the range is £150,000 to £250,000".
When to do it
Before a search, so the package in the brief is one the market will accept. Before a succession decision, so an internal promotion is priced correctly. And before a renewal conversation with an executive the Board wants to keep. Doing it after the person has resigned is too late, and it is when most organisations do it.