Total compensation tool

Zweig Group announced the introduction of its 2019 Total Compensation Tool, a dynamic spreadsheet that provides additional information for firms when addressing compensation for their employees. All the statistics from architecture, engineering, and construction firms that Zweig Group has tracked for decades — base salaries, bonuses, total compensation, bonuses as a percentage of base salaries, years of experience, and hours worked — are analyzed for 125 of the most common job titles in the AEC industry.

The tool is divided into three major tabs. The first one is the Charts tab, which displays an overall view of any job title available in the dropdown box using nothing but graphs. The two major charts on the page show a salary breakdown and total compensation plotted against years of experience.

Next, a demographics section shows who filled out the survey according to the employee’s age and gender followed by the firm’s staff size and growth rate. To round out the tab, we included results on if this employee typically received a bonus and/or was eligible for overtime.

In contrast to the Charts tab, the Analysis tab offers the data in statistical form. In addition to being able to select a specific job title, users are able to select a specific statistic and see the breakdown between the different firm demographics. For example, to see bonuses for project managers in the civil engineering department, the Total Compensation Tool shows the mean, median, lower quartile, and upper quartile for the position overall, followed by the statistical splits between staff size, age range, gender, and region.

The Regional tab is the final tab and perhaps the most interesting of the group. This tab not only provides the typical regional analysis that Zweig Group uses (New England, Middle Atlantic, Pacific, etc.), but also breaks it out by subregion and state. The dynamic chart in the middle of the page automatically sorts the states in descending order to better visualize where each state fares for a certain statistic and job title.

With the overall Total Compensation Tool or one of Zweig Group’s region-specific subsets (West, Central, East), firms will be well equipped with data to benchmark their compensation tactics. While Zweig Group’s salary surveys are by no means obsolete, the Total Compensation Tool presents an opportunity for firms to take that extra step towards perfection.

The 2019 Total Compensation Tool is available at https://shop.zweiggroup.com/products/2019-total-compensation-benchmarking-tool.

Tyler Thompson is Zweig Group research manager. He can be contacted at research@zweiggroup.com.