If you’re trying to figure out what to pay people, and whether your current comp packages are competitive enough to keep them, you need reliable market data, not guesswork. That’s where the Culpepper compensation survey comes in. Published by Culpepper & Associates, these surveys give employers access to detailed salary and total compensation benchmarks across industries, job families, and geographies. They’re widely used by HR teams and consultants alike to make smarter pay decisions.
But here’s the thing: compensation surveys are only useful if you know how to read them, apply them, and choose the right one for your situation. A lot of growing companies invest in survey data and then struggle to turn it into an actual pay strategy. That’s a gap we close every day at Soteria HR, where we help small to mid-sized organizations build compensation structures that attract talent, reduce turnover, and hold up under scrutiny. Benchmarking is one of the first conversations we have with clients who are scaling.
This article breaks down what the Culpepper compensation survey actually includes, what it costs, how companies use it, and how to decide if it’s the right fit for your organization. We’ll also cover its strengths, its limitations, and practical tips for getting real value from the data once you have it.
What the Culpepper compensation survey includes
The Culpepper compensation survey covers a wide range of roles, industries, and pay components. Rather than giving you a single number per job title, it delivers layered compensation data that lets you see how pay varies by company size, revenue, geography, and industry sector. That layered approach is what makes it useful for organizations trying to build pay structures that are both internally consistent and externally competitive.
Survey Categories and Job Families
Culpepper publishes surveys across multiple categories, with a strong focus on technology, life sciences, and professional services roles. The surveys are organized by job family, which means you can look up specific functions like software engineering, finance, HR, sales, and operations and see compensation data broken down by level, from individual contributors all the way up to senior leadership.
Within each job family, Culpepper breaks roles into scope-based job matches rather than relying purely on titles. This matters because "Senior Manager" can mean very different things at different companies. Using scope and responsibility to define where a role falls gives you a more accurate read on the market, instead of forcing a messy comparison between jobs that share a title but little else.
Geographic and Industry Cuts
One of the most practical features of the Culpepper data is how it handles geography and industry segmentation. You can filter results by country, region, or metro area, which is critical if you’re hiring across locations with different labor market conditions. What you’d pay a mid-level software developer in Austin looks very different from what the same role demands in San Francisco.
Location adjustments are one of the most common steps companies skip, and skipping them leads to pay structures that either overpay in low-cost markets or lose candidates in competitive ones.
On top of geographic cuts, industry-specific data lets you compare your compensation against companies operating in similar sectors. A biotech startup and a regional manufacturer might both employ an HR Director, but the market rates for that role can differ significantly depending on the industry context and what candidates in that sector typically expect.
Total Compensation Data, Not Just Salary
Base salary only tells part of the story, and the Culpepper surveys account for that. The data includes total compensation breakdowns covering base pay, short-term incentives like bonuses, long-term incentives like equity and stock, and in some surveys, benefits information as well. That full picture matters when you’re assessing whether your overall package is competitive, not just your starting offer.
For companies that use variable pay, the bonus and incentive data is especially useful. It shows what percentage of employees at each level receive bonuses, what the target and actual payout amounts look like, and how those figures vary by industry and company size. If you’re building or revising a bonus plan, that context helps you avoid designing something that misses the market entirely.
Each survey typically reports compensation at the 25th, 50th, and 75th percentiles, with the 90th percentile included in some editions. These markers let you decide where you want to position your organization’s pay strategy, whether you’re aiming to match the median or lead the market to attract stronger talent.
Who should use it and why it matters
The Culpepper compensation survey is not a one-size-fits-all tool, and not every organization will get equal value from it. It works best when you have specific roles to benchmark, enough structure to act on the data, and a real reason to care about where your pay sits relative to the market. That said, a broader range of companies can use it than most people assume.
HR Professionals and Compensation Specialists
If you work in HR or manage compensation directly, this survey gives you credible, defensible data to bring into pay conversations with leadership. Instead of relying on informal salary research or outdated ranges, you can walk into a comp review with structured percentile data by role, level, and geography. That changes the quality of the conversation and the confidence behind the decisions you make.
The best compensation decisions are not made by gut feel. They are made by people who understand what the data says and know how to apply it to their specific situation.
HR professionals also use Culpepper data to audit existing pay structures, identify where current salaries are falling below market, and build the business case for adjustments before the company loses people it did not expect to lose.
Growing Companies Without Formal Comp Structures
You do not need a full compensation team to benefit from survey data. Many of Soteria HR’s clients are companies in the 20 to 150 employee range that are scaling fast and realizing their informal approach to pay is starting to create problems: inconsistent offers, frustrated managers, and candidates turning down roles because the numbers are not competitive.
For these organizations, Culpepper data provides a structured starting point for building pay bands and job levels that actually reflect the market. Rather than guessing or copying what a larger competitor publicly discloses, you get access to current data across a relevant peer group. That foundation makes every future hiring and retention conversation easier to navigate with confidence.
Smaller companies also benefit from using third-party survey data as an objective reference point when internal salary conversations get sensitive. The data removes some of the personal friction from those discussions.
How Culpepper pricing typically works
Culpepper does not publish a fixed public price list, which means the cost of accessing a Culpepper compensation survey depends on several variables: which survey you need, whether you participate as a data contributor, and how many geographic or industry cuts you want included in your report. Understanding these factors upfront helps you budget accurately and avoid surprises when you reach out to request access.
Participation vs. Purchase
The most direct way to get Culpepper data is to participate in the survey by submitting your own compensation data during the data collection period. Organizations that contribute data typically receive access to the results at a significantly reduced cost, sometimes at no charge depending on the survey. This participation model is common across most major compensation survey providers and rewards companies that help build the dataset.
If you can time your comp review cycle to align with Culpepper’s data collection windows, participation is almost always the smarter financial move compared to purchasing results outright.
If you miss the participation window or prefer not to contribute data, you can purchase the survey results directly. Prices for a single survey report generally range from several hundred to several thousand dollars, depending on the survey scope, the number of job families included, and any additional geographic or industry segmentation you request.
What Drives the Cost Up
Several factors push the final price higher than the base rate. Requesting custom geographic cuts, such as metro-level data for specific cities, typically costs more than standard regional breakdowns. Adding industry-specific filters beyond the default segmentation also increases the price, as does purchasing multiple surveys from the same release cycle to cover different job families.
Company size plays a role too. Larger organizations with more complex benchmarking needs often purchase enterprise-level access or bundle multiple surveys, which changes how the pricing conversation goes. For smaller companies with a tighter budget, the most cost-effective path is usually to identify the one or two surveys most relevant to your workforce and participate in those rather than attempting to purchase broad access across multiple datasets.
How to use survey data to set pay ranges
Getting access to Culpepper compensation survey data is only the first step. The real work is turning those percentile figures into pay ranges your managers can actually use when making offers, running reviews, or responding to counteroffers. Without a clear process, you end up with a spreadsheet full of numbers that never make it into your hiring decisions.
Choose your target percentile first
Before you build a single pay band, decide where you want to position your organization in the market. Most companies anchor to the 50th percentile, meaning they aim to pay at or near the median for each role. Others choose the 75th percentile to compete aggressively for talent in tight labor markets. Your choice should reflect your recruiting strategy, your budget, and the criticality of each role to your business.
Picking a percentile target is a strategic decision, not a technical one. Get leadership aligned on it before you build any ranges.
Build pay bands around the market data
Once you know your target percentile, use that figure as the midpoint of each pay band. A common structure sets the band minimum at roughly 80 to 85 percent of the midpoint and the band maximum at 115 to 120 percent. This gives you room to place employees at different points within the range based on experience, tenure, and performance without blowing past your market anchor.
For example, if the 50th percentile for a role is $80,000, your band might run from $66,000 to $94,000. New hires with less experience typically start in the lower third. Fully performing employees who have been in the role for a while sit in the middle. Employees who consistently exceed expectations and are difficult to replace can move toward the top of the range.
Layer in your internal context
Market data gives you the frame, but your internal pay relationships still matter. Check that the ranges you build from survey data do not create compression between managers and the people they lead, or between tenured staff and new hires in similar roles. Adjusting for internal equity alongside external benchmarks is what produces a pay structure that holds up in real conversations.
Common pitfalls and how to avoid them
Even when you have access to solid data, mistakes in how you apply it can undermine the whole effort. The Culpepper compensation survey gives you accurate, layered information, but that information only produces good outcomes when you handle it carefully. Several common errors show up repeatedly when companies try to move from raw survey data to actual pay decisions.
Matching roles by title instead of scope
Job title matching is one of the fastest ways to get the wrong number. If you look up "Operations Manager" and apply the median salary without verifying that the scope, team size, and responsibilities actually align with your role, you are building ranges on a flawed foundation. Culpepper organizes data by scope-based job matches for exactly this reason, so use that structure instead of defaulting to whatever title your company happens to use.
The most expensive comp mistake is not overpaying. It is underpaying the roles that matter most because you matched them to the wrong market benchmark.
Take the time to document what each role actually does before you run any comparisons. Scope documentation protects you from title inflation and helps you anchor each position to the right data point.
Treating survey data as permanent
Survey results age quickly. A report published 18 months ago may not reflect current conditions in your labor market, especially in fields where demand has shifted. Relying on outdated figures to set pay ranges causes you to fall behind without realizing it until people start leaving or declining offers.
Build a regular review cycle into your compensation process. Most HR professionals update their benchmarking annually, or more frequently for roles in high-demand functions. Set a calendar reminder so the data you act on stays current.
Benchmarking pay without addressing the full package
Focusing only on base salary while ignoring bonuses, equity, benefits, and flexibility leaves you with an incomplete picture of your competitiveness. Candidates compare total packages, not just the number on the offer letter. If your base salary hits the 60th percentile but your total compensation falls below the median, you are likely losing candidates to competitors who offer less in salary but more overall.
Next steps for confident pay decisions
The Culpepper compensation survey gives you a strong foundation, but data alone does not build a compensation strategy. You still need to match roles accurately, choose your target percentile, construct pay bands, and check your internal equity before any of those numbers become useful. That process takes time, and if your organization is still building its HR infrastructure, it can feel like a lot to take on alongside everything else you are already managing.
That is exactly where having an experienced HR partner changes the outcome. Soteria HR works with growing companies to translate market data into clear, defensible pay structures that attract the right candidates and keep your best people. You do not have to figure out the nuances of compensation benchmarking on your own. If you are ready to build a pay strategy that actually holds up, schedule a consultation with the Soteria HR team and let us help you get there.
