Most UK salary data is a year old, self-reported and blended across regions that behave nothing like each other. We research reward against named British comparators, report it in pounds by role, level, sector and region, and show you which employers sit behind every number.
A published salary survey has three structural problems. It reports what participants chose to disclose, which skews toward organisations with tidy grading structures and away from the ones setting the market. It reports a period that has already closed, usually by six to twelve months. And it blends regions, so a figure that is accurate for neither London nor Newcastle gets quoted as the national rate for both.
Total reward compounds the problem. A UK package is base, bonus, car or car allowance, employer pension contribution, private medical, and for senior roles some form of long-term incentive. Comparing two base salaries while ignoring a ten-point difference in employer pension contribution or a three-year LTIP is not benchmarking, it is arithmetic.
Our approach is primary research against named comparators. You tell us which organisations you genuinely compete with for people; we research what those organisations pay for the role and level in question, break it into components, and hand you the underlying records so you can weight the comparator set yourself rather than accepting ours.
Base, bonus and variable pay, car or allowance, employer pension contribution, private medical and long-term incentive, itemised so comparisons are genuine.
You see which UK organisations sit behind each number and can re-weight the set yourself. No anonymous blended average.
Separate bands for London, the South East, the Midlands, the North, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, with London weighting shown as its own line.
Employer National Insurance, auto-enrolment pension and apprenticeship levy exposure modelled so you are comparing true cost to the business.
A written scope first: the roles and levels in question, the comparator set, the regions in play and the reward components you need. That becomes the fixed fee. Research then runs against the named comparators, drawing on primary market conversations, verified market intelligence and the structured records we build through our mapping work.
The deliverable reports, for each role and level: lower quartile, median and upper quartile base; bonus structure and typical payout; allowances; employer pension contribution; long-term incentive where it applies; and total package. Each is broken out by region, with London weighting isolated. Alongside the numbers sits the commentary — where your current bands sit against the market, which specific comparators are moving, and what the realistic cost of correcting a position would be.
Everything transfers to you: the records, the comparator detail, the methodology note and the commentary. It is normal for clients to take a benchmarking deliverable straight into a remuneration committee paper, which is why the methodology is documented rather than proprietary.
Pay review preparation, where the question is whether existing bands have drifted against the market and what correcting them would cost. Offer support on a specific senior hire, where getting the first number right decides whether the process closes. Pay gap and equal pay work, where you need a defensible external reference point rather than an internal comparison.
Location decisions, where the reward differential between London and a regional site is the central variable. Post-acquisition harmonisation, where two UK populations on different structures have to be brought together. And new market or new function entry, where you have no internal reference point at all.
Benchmarking and mapping answer different halves of the same question. A talent map tells you who exists and how competitors are structured; benchmarking tells you what it costs to move them. Most clients commission them together, and when they do, the reward data is drawn from the same researched population rather than a separate source — which is the only way to be certain the two deliverables are describing the same market.
A fixed project fee in pounds, quoted from a written scope covering the roles, levels, comparator set and regions in question. It is not priced as a percentage of anything.
A survey reports self-selected, historic, region-blended data anonymously. We research named UK comparators for your specific roles now, itemise total reward, report by region with London weighting isolated, and hand you the underlying records.
Total reward: base, bonus and variable pay, car or car allowance, employer pension contribution, private medical and long-term incentive where it applies, plus modelled employment cost including employer National Insurance.
Yes, and it frequently is. The methodology is documented, the comparator set is named, and the full dataset transfers to you so the paper can be defended in detail.
London, the South East and Thames Valley, the East of England, the South West, the Midlands, the North West, Yorkshire and the North East, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland — with London weighting shown as a separate line.
Tell us the market, the role or the question. Thirty minutes is usually enough to know whether we can help and what the right shape of project would be — and the fee is always fixed and agreed before anything begins.
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