Research Report
The Compensation Analysis Gap
5 min read · July 10, 2025
There’s a backlog building.
Across enterprise comp teams, critical analysis work is piling up—quietly, invisibly, and at massive cost.
Everyone wants to analyze:
But let's be honest, most of this never gets done.
Comp teams know what to analyze, they just can’t get to it
In our conversations with top comp leaders, the same theme emerged: They want more comp analysis, but there aren't enough people on the team to do it.
Headcount is lean and the business wants answers fast. So comp teams triage and focus on the fires: offers, ranges, merit cycles, and calibration.
This leaves strategic analysis to be bumped, deferred, and forgotten.
Until the CFO asks why a $3M grant is misaligned, or an SVP wants to know why their department’s attrition spiked.
Where the comp analysis gap hurts most
The work is clear and the value is proven, but the gap keeps growing.
63% of comp leaders want analytics that surface trends and outliers. AI isn’t just for efficiency, it’s a new lens for comp strategy.
This isn’t a data problem. It’s a bandwidth problem.
You already have access to:
What you don’t have is time.
Not for a new dashboard, a quarterly refresh, or one more request that starts with “Can you look into...?”
AI agents
79% of TA teams want an on-demand comp partner. Recruiters are ready to self-serve if the agent can deliver clear, trusted guidance.
Four takeaways for comp leaders
Here we focus on markets where technology, innovation, and capital can unlock long-term value and drive economic growth.
Analysis isn’t a nice-to-have, it’s a margin issue.
When billions in pay go unexamined, so do millions in potential savings and missed opportunities. You can't optimize what you don’t analyze.
Agents don't just assist,
they get stuff done.
They can identify patterns and surface insights without waiting to be asked, and best of all, shrink your analysis backlog to zero.
Strategic comp work gets squeezed out by urgent tasks. They get stuff done.
SkillGuard examines the context of each skill to ensure it aligns with the job responsibilities outlined in the job description.
The analysis gap will define the next generation of comp teams.
The difference between teams that act and teams that react? Agents. One group spends, the other stewards.
The analysis comp leaders wish they could do already exists but it’s buried under a mountain of manual work.
The only question is: Will you keep deferring it, or let AI do it for you?
