Payscale Peer Officially Replaces Cascade’s Regional Pay Survey

Cascade is excited to have successfully launched our new compensation platform Payscale Peer last fall and we are happy to announce our spring participation period is about to begin. If you’ve previously participated in Cascade’s Regional Pay survey, now is the time to register and submit your data for Payscale Peer as this replaces our Regional Pay Survey in 2024.

We believe this change will provide new compensation reporting options for our members (such as real-time data reports, online dashboarding, competitor comparisons, and national data sets), while still maintaining the great regional data that you know and appreciate.

With this information in mind, let’s dive into what is Payscale Peer, why the change, and what this means for our members.

What is Payscale and the Peer Platform?

Payscale is a compensation software and data company that helps employers manage employee compensation and remain competitive in their respective markets. One of their online tools is the Peer platform, which is an on-demand employer-reported market data source for organizations to enter their pay data and then compare to others, using a variety of filters and scopes on the data.

The Peer platform consists of data submitted for over 5,000 benchmark positions that span all industries, departments, and levels. This data is employer-reported and is reviewed and validated by data and compensation professionals both at Cascade and Payscale. The data set available in the platform is refreshed daily with the most recent eligible data so you can access the most recent compensation reports available.

Payscale Peer offers several unique compensation reporting tools that are of great value to employers. Aside from the daily data set updates, Payscale Peer offers unlimited data cuts, custom industry filters, competitor comparison (with anti-trust limitations), a national data set, and more. With all these features, Payscale’s Peer platform is set to be a great tool for organizations in their efforts to remain competitive in their compensation offerings.

Why change from Cascade’s annual Regional Pay Survey to Payscale Peer?

There are several reasons that Cascade decided to move survey platforms. Most pressing of these has been the past two years’ extreme fluctuations in salary ranges. From the impact of the “Great Resignation,” to recruitment/retention salary hikes, to inflation and changes in the economy, compensation data has become exceedingly volatile.

While our Regional Pay Survey provided data aging options, it was limited in its ability to reflect these frequent changes for organizations needing current trending data. With Payscale Peer, organizations will be able to see the most recent eligible data available, anytime they log in. This should help organizations stay on top of salary trends and remain competitive in the ever- shifting workplace environment.

There are additional benefits to the Payscale platform that we are excited to share. Examples include the ability to choose organizations to compare to by name (within limitations), online dashboarding, and the ability to narrow down compensation data by zip code. The Peer platform also contains compensation data from members of other Employer Associations across the country, so a national database is available for comparison. Finally, Payscale has the ability to link many HRIS systems, so organizations will not have to manually update their data after the first year. When linked, any changes you make in your HRIS will automatically update in Peer. All this and more is available in the platform. Join us in our upcoming Payscale Overview Webinar to learn more!

What does this change mean for Cascade’s members?

We began our transition into Payscale Peer with a fall participation window. Those participants have now been brought into the Payscale system, and we have opened our spring participation window. Participate before March 29th to be included in this second participation window!

The Regional Pay Survey has now sunsetted. For those interested in receiving regional and/or national compensation data, you will need to participate in Payscale Peer and purchase access to the site.

Previously, members had the option to participate in the Regional Pay Survey to get the reports for free. With the retirement of that survey, we will be transitioning to a new member benefit for surveys. Normally a $6,500 value, Cascade members will have a vastly reduced price to access unlimited job pricing from over 5,000 jobs, up‑to‑date data pulls, online dashboarding, and direct competitor comparisons. Pricing of Payscale is based on membership status and number of full-time employees (FTEs).

All organizations that would like to access the Peer platform will need to participate – there is no non-participant option. However, organizations can still choose to participate in Peer without a fee. For those that wish to participate to improve the available data set for the individual job reports, no fee will be generated. Only those wishing to get access to the online Peer platform will result in the above fee. If you are interested in participating, you can register to participate here.

For organizations that only need limited compensation data, we do offer a free member benefit. Member organizations will be able to request two individual job reports per year at no charge. This new benefit is intended to continue providing free compensation data to organizations with few jobs or those who only need to price new jobs they are recruiting for.

Conclusion

We covered a lot of ground in the article above, and we are sure you have more questions. Cascade will provide additional information through emails and in our upcoming survey webinars, which can be found here. You can also check out our Payscale Peer website for more information.  For those interested in participating, you can sign-up to participate here.

We hope you are as excited as us for this new way of collecting and reporting compensation data. Thank you for your continuing support of Cascade surveys!