GreatWork Blog

Building better workplaces through compliance, culture, connection

Looking ahead to 2026, many employers have started mapping out their salary budgets, with the prevailing expectation being that salary increases will remain steady.

With annual increase season coming up for many employers, one question we hear often is, “What should we do when employees are at or near the top of their salary range?” Whether it’s due to tenure, limited advancement opportunities, or tight salary bands, this is a moment that calls for strategic attention. How you handle it impacts equity, morale, and your ability to stay competitive.

Despite the economic uncertainty in the U.S. right now, organizations are still pushing forward with including variable pay as part of their overall compensation strategy and compensation programs.

Bonus plans at all levels of roles are still in action and seek to provide extra pay for meeting specific outcomes and goals, on top of the employee’s agreed upon base salary. 

Cascade is excited to continue its second year with our online compensation platform, Payscale Peer! This innovative platform offers our members enhanced compensation reporting options, including real-time data reports, online dashboarding, competitor comparisons, and regional and national data sets.

“We can’t afford to give you a pay increase this year.”

“Your work performance hasn’t met expectations, so you aren’t receiving a salary increase this year.”

These are hard messages, both to deliver and receive. Many times, we keep constructive feedback, “bad news,” and other information to ourselves because we are concerned about navigating the potential reaction(s) others may have about what we share.

We ask ourselves questions like “will I make things worse?” or “what if it negatively affects our relationship?” Discomfort and challenging emotions can rise in the acute moment when the interaction occurs. In the long-term, it may be just the message they needed.

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.

Cascade’s new compensation platform, Payscale Peer, is now open for participation. Payscale Peer is an online compensation platform that collects regional and national data on 5,000 benchmark positions. Payscale Peer currently has 2,200 participants nationwide, representing over 6 million employees.

As you probably already know, Payscale Peer is replacing Cascade’s Regional Pay Survey.  We think you’ll love this new option.  Even better, it further enhances our Compensation Team’s resources to provide exceptional support for your strategic compensation challenges. We’ve been getting questions about how we plan to use Payscale to better help you in your compensation work, so we thought we’d give you some insights around the work our team does.

Cascade’s new compensation data platform, Payscale Peer, is now open for participation. Payscale is an online compensation platform that collects regional and national data on 5,000 benchmark positions. Payscale currently has 2,200 participants nationwide, representing over 6 million employees. This platform will be replacing Cascade’s traditional Regional Pay Survey in 2024.