Director of Compensation / Benefits
Career Area: Human Resources
Occupation Group: Human Resources Specialists
Salary
Percentile wages tell how much a certain percentage of an overall population in a geographic area or within a given industry or field makes. The percentile wage estimate is the value of a wage below which a certain percent of workers fall.
An example would be the 25th percentile, 25 percent of workers employed in that occupation earn less and 75 percent earn more than the estimated wage value. At the 75th percentile, 75 percent of workers employed in that occupation earn less and 25 percent earn more than the estimated wage value.
A typical Director of Compensation / Benefits earns the following wages (national and state):
State
The average salary in North Carolina for those pursuing this career is $109,458
National
The average salary in the United States for those pursuing this career is $110,400
What Does a Professional in this Career Do?
In charge of design, implementation, compliance, and evaluation of a company's compensation and benefits programs. Manages staff members of the compensation and benefits team. Advises senior management team on employee compensation topics.
Employment Trends
The job demand and job growth statistics shown here were derived from job posts over the past year. Expected job growth projections are extrapolated from year-over-year job post listing history.
Job demand and job growth is expected at the following rates:
| Location | Growth | |
|---|---|---|
| North Carolina | 78 | +9.7% |
| Nationwide | 2546 | +2.9% |
Skills
A professional in this position typically utilizes the following skills in the course of everyday work in this exciting and challenging field:
Baseline Skills
The following are baseline skills every Director of Compensation / Benefits is expected to have in order to experience success in this field:
- Communication Skills: The ability to convey information to another effectively and efficiently.
- Microsoft Excel: Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet developed by Microsoft for Windows, macOS, Android and iOS. It features calculation, graphing tools, pivot tables, and a macro programming language called Visual Basic for Applications.
- Teamwork / Collaboration: Experience working in collaborative efforts with a team to achieve a common goal or to complete a task in the most effective and efficient way.
- Planning: Working experience with the process of thinking about and organizing the activities required to achieve desired goals.
- Problem Solving: Problem solving consists of using generic or ad hoc methods, in an orderly manner, for finding solutions to problems.
Specialized Skills
These skills are specific to working in this career:
- Budgeting: Experience planning how the financial resources of a business or department are to be allocated during the next business period.
- Project Management: Project management is the discipline of initiating, planning, executing, controlling, and closing the work of a team to achieve specific goals and meet specific success criteria.
- Human Resource Information System (HRIS): A Human Resource Management System or HRIS (Human Resource Information System) is a form of HR software that combines a number of systems and processes to ensure the easy management of a business's employees and data.
- Benchmarking: Benchmarking is comparing one's business processes and performance metrics to industry bests and best practices from other companies.
- Executive Compensation: Working experience of Executive Compensation, which differs substantially from typical pay packages for either hourly workers or salaried management and professionals in that executive pay is heavily biased toward rewards for actual results.
Distinguishing Skills
Any Director of Compensation / Benefits that possesses the following skills will stand out against the competition:
- Market Pricing: In economics, market price is the economic price for which a good or service is offered in the marketplace.
- Compensation Strategies: The compensation strategy is derived from the HR Strategy and it defines the position of the organization on the job market, the level of the total cash, the main bonus principles in the organization and rules for the base salary setting.
- Workday: Working experience of Workday, which is an on-demand (cloud-based) financial management and human capital management software vendor.
- Compensation Administration: Compensation administration is a segment of management or human resource management focusing on planning, organizing, and controlling the direct and indirect payments employees receive for the work they perform.
- Compensation Analysis: Compensation of employees (CE) is a statistical term used in national accounts, balance of payments statistics and sometimes in corporate accounts as well.
Experience
This position typically requires the following level of experience. The numbers presented in the pie charts below were derived from actual job posts over the past year. Not all job postings list experience requirements.
| Experience Required | % |
| 0 to 2 years | 3% |
| 3 to 5 years | 19% |
| 6 to 8 years | 32% |
Many of the programs offered through NC State are designed for working professionals who need additional credentials to enhance existing work experience.
Students who do not have the expected level of experience may wish to look into internship and employment opportunities.
Common Job Titles
It is possible to find work in this field in positions commonly listed as the following job titles:
- Director, Compensation
- Director Of Compensation
- Director Of Benefits
- Of Global Compensation Programs
- Compensation Director
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