Compensation Consulting
for Organizations in Northeast Ohio
For HR and business leaders who need competitive, strategic, and defensible pay decisions, guided by experienced consultants and a proven methodology.
We help you price jobs, address pay equity, design salary structures, and build total rewards strategies with the data, analysis, and guidance you need to make decisions confidently and implement them successfully.
30-Minute Compensation Consulting Session
Talk through your compensation challenges and get practical answers and advice from a compensation expert.
Our Compensation Methodology & Process
1
Compensation Philosophy
We’ll work with you to create a clear, written approach to pay that reflects your mission and values, helps attract and keep great people, and gives your organization confidence in how pay decisions are made.
2
Market Pricing Study
We look at essential functions for each role, find the best match in the market, and customize it to your organization’s size, industry, and geography.
3
Base Pay Structure Design
In this phase, we’ll build a clear organization-wide pay structure with salary ranges that’s fair, competitive, creates internal alignment, and serves as a framework for career progression.
4
Incubment Pay Analysis
We’ll review employees’ current pay, compare it inside and outside the organization based on experience, performance, and tenure, and provide recommendations and cost impacts to ensure pay is fair, competitive, and aligned with your goals.
Our Compensation Services
Every organization’s compensation needs are different. While our methodology provides the foundation, we customize our services to what you actually need right now. Here’s how we can help:
When you need to articulate your compensation strategy:
Compensation Philosophy & Total Rewards Strategy
We help organizations define a clear compensation philosophy, and then we can consult on the how, the total rewards strategy that aligns pay, incentives, and other rewards with business goals.
What you get:
A clear compensation philosophy paired with a total rewards strategy that includes base pay, bonuses, and non-monetary rewards.
Why it matters:
When your philosophy and rewards strategy are aligned, pay decisions are consistent, defensible, and easier to communicate. Your team understands what you offer and why, and leadership can make trade-offs confidently and within budget.
When you need to know if your pay is competitive:
Market Pricing Studies
We can benchmark your roles against local, regional, and national compensation data so you know exactly where you stand and what you need to do to stay competitive.
What you get:
Custom market analysis matched to your actual jobs (not just job titles), industry-specific data, and clear recommendations on where adjustments make sense.
Why it matters:
Stop guessing whether you’re paying enough or too much. Get the data and context to make informed decisions about every role.
When your roles don’t match standard salary survey titles:
Market Pricing for Complex and Hybrid Roles
We help you benchmark blended or hard-to-match roles so you can make pay decisions with more confidence when jobs span multiple functions or don’t fit neatly into standard survey data.
What you get:
Custom market pricing based on the actual scope of the role, not just the title, along with blended benchmark analysis and recommendations you can use to support pay decisions.
Why it matters:
Using the wrong market match can lead to overpaying, underpaying, and tougher decisions around hiring, retention, and internal equity.
When you need to build or fix your pay structure:
Salary Structure Design
We design (or redesign) your salary structure so every role has a clear pay range that’s fair, competitive, and aligned with your organization’s goals.
What you get:
A complete base pay structure with salary ranges, grade levels, and progression paths that make sense for your company size and locations.
Why it matters:
Employees understand how pay works, managers can make consistent decisions, and you have a framework that grows with your organization.
When you’re worried about pay equity or fairness:
Incumbent Pay Analysis
We analyze your current employees’ pay to identify gaps, inconsistencies, or equity issues, then give you a roadmap to address them.
What you get:
A detailed review of who’s paid what and why, comparisons based on experience and performance, and specific recommendations with cost impacts.
Why it matters:
Address fairness issues before they become retention problems, legal risks, or culture issues.
When you need to get executive compensation right:
Executive & CEO Compensation
We provide straightforward, data-driven insights on compensation for all levels of leadership, including CEOs as requested by their Board, using credible market data from the largest employer-reported databases.
What you get:
Benchmarking and evaluation for executive roles with organization size and revenue context.
Why it matters:
Attract and retain top leadership with pay that’s competitive and defensible without overpaying or creating internal inequities.
Most Compensation Consulting Stops at the Data
Most compensation providers give you data, but not the guidance to interpret it for your organization, justify decisions, and implement changes with confidence.
You Get a Data Dump Without Context
Market reports that show you the numbers but don’t explain how to apply them to your actual roles or what to do when jobs don’t match perfectly.
Recommendations You Can’t Defend
Consultants hand you data without the rationale or backup you need when leadership asks, “Why should we trust this?”
Implementation Falls to You
The project ends with a deliverable, but you’re on your own to figure out how to present it, get buy-in, and roll it out.
Here’s How We’re Different
We help you from defining the problem to making the decision, combining certified expertise, validated market data, and a collaborative approach to deliver recommendations that are clear, defensible, and ready to be implemented.
You get data you can defend
When you work with ERC, you don’t just get market pricing, you get customized benchmarking matched to your actual roles, with the context and justification you need to explain your decisions to leaders and peers internally.
- We map your jobs to the most accurate market data based on responsibilities, not just titles
- Our consultants are physically located in Northeast Ohio and our local and regional data is second-to-none
- We explain what the data means and how to use it in conversations with leadership, finance, or employees
You get guidance that leads to action
We don’t hand you a report and walk away. We stay involved to help you understand findings, model cost impacts, and plan rollout so you can implement recommendations.
- We review results with you in detail after each phase of the project and answer questions as they come up
- We help you model different scenarios and cost implications before making final decisions
- We provide practical guidance on communicating changes to employees and getting leadership buy-in
You get a dedicated team
Our consultants are full-time members of the ERC team with deep expertise, access to robust, market-leading compensation data, and a network of HR and talent experts they can pull in when needed.
- You work with certified compensation professionals who’ve done this work inside organizations
- Our consultants have access to trusted datasets to cross-check, validate, and tailor insights specifically for your organization.
- You can tap into our broader service offerings for additional support (HR strategy, employee training, performance management)
Nicole Doria, Senior Compensation Consultant
Nicole brings over 15 years of extensive compensation experience to ERC. Nicole’s areas of expertise include the development, design, and implementation of base salary administration programs, variable and incentive pay plans, merit pay for performance planning, executive compensation, and equity and stock award administration.
Nicole has a bachelor’s degree in business administration with a concentration in human resources management and labor relations from Cleveland State University. She is a member of WorldatWork, an organization of total rewards professionals. Nicole is also a Certified Compensation Professional (CCP).
How Kyocera SGS Precision Tools Reduced Costly One-Off Pay Decisions With A Compensation Analysis & Strategy
Kyocera partnered with ERC to complete a market pricing study, build a structured base pay framework with geographic differentials, and review incumbent pay to identify where current pay aligned with the market and where internal equity might be at risk.
Frequently Asked Questions
We do. ERC has served Northeast Ohio employers for more than 100 years, and our compensation consultants are based here. We hold deep data and expertise across Cuyahoga, Summit, Lorain, Lake, Geauga, Medina, Portage, and Stark counties.
That local depth comes from our own data. Northeast Ohio employers report wage and salary data to us through the , which gives us a first-party regional benchmark that national firms working from purchased datasets have a hard time matching.
We also have access to national and global compensation data. If you have employees in Columbus, Charlotte, or Phoenix, we can price those roles too.
We work with mid-sized organizations of roughly 50 to 1,000 employees. Most of our clients have an HR leader or a small HR team, often an HR department of one, and no compensation specialist in house.
Organizations come to us for market pricing, compensation strategy, and pay structure. We also take on projects specific to sales compensation, executive compensation, bonus and incentive plans, and pay transparency or pay equity.
Plenty of our clients have locations and employees across the country. Our consultants work from Northeast Ohio and support U.S. organizations of any footprint.
Yes. Salary structure design is one of our core services, and the budget question is often what gets the project approved.
Once we have your structure and your incumbent pay analysis, which is the review of where each current employee falls against the new ranges, we can show you what it costs to bring people up to their range minimums, what a phased approach looks like across multiple budget cycles, and which adjustments are urgent against which ones can wait. You walk into your budget conversation with a number and a defensible reason for it.
Yes. Base pay is where most engagements start, and the conversation usually widens from there.
We work on compensation philosophy and total rewards strategy, which covers how base pay, variable pay, benefits, and non-cash rewards fit together and what your organization wants each one to accomplish. We also design bonus and incentive plans, sales compensation plans, and executive and CEO compensation programs, including our .
If competitive salaries are still losing you candidates, the answer often sits somewhere else in the package. Our is a good starting point.
Four things drive the number.
How many roles you need priced. Pricing 25 benchmark jobs costs less than pricing 200 individual positions.
How complex those roles are. Standard roles match cleanly to survey data. Hybrid roles that combine two functions, or roles specific to your industry, take more analysis to price defensibly.
How many locations you have. Multi-state and multi-market employers need geographic differentials built into the structure.
How much of the work you want us to carry. Some clients want the data and the recommendation. Others want us in the room when it goes to the leadership team.
Tell us what you’re trying to solve, and we’ll scope and quote it before you commit to anything. You can also to talk it through first.
Most engagements run several weeks to a few months, depending on scope and how quickly we can get your job descriptions and current pay data.
Incomplete job documentation is the most common thing that slows a project down. If your descriptions are out of date, we’ll tell you early so you can decide whether to update them first or have us price from what your managers say the jobs involve today.
A compensation consultant supports projects ranging from tactical to strategic. Ours specialize in market pricing, salary structure design, incumbent pay analysis, compensation philosophy, total rewards strategy, and retention strategy.
On the tactical end, that might mean pricing a handful of hard-to-fill roles before you post them. On the strategic end, it might mean building the philosophy and structure that governs every pay decision your organization makes for the next five years.
Start with credentials. Look for a Certified Compensation Professional, or CCP, which is the standard credential in the field and is issued through WorldatWork.
Then look at the data behind the recommendation. Ask which surveys they use, how they match your jobs to survey jobs, and whether they’ll show you the methodology. A consultant who can explain how they arrived at a number is a consultant who can help you defend it.
Then look at experience. Someone who has held compensation roles inside organizations, across several industries, brings judgment that a data subscription alone leaves out.
Our consultants hold CCP certification, work full time in compensation, and draw on Northeast Ohio wage data alongside national survey sources. Nicole Doria, our Senior Compensation Consultant, has more than 15 years in compensation and holds her CCP through WorldatWork.
Get Pricing or More Information
Get pricing for ERC’s Compensation Consulting services. Have questions? Speak with an expert to learn more.
