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Table of Content Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 3
I. GDAP Survey Cycle Enrolment .............................................................................................................. 4
1. The GDAP Qualification Form new GDAP clients only ................................................................. 4
2. GDAP Submission Countries .......................................................................................................... 6
II. Defining the GDAP Contacts ................................................................................................................. 6
III. Central Data Submission ....................................................................................................................... 7
1. Downloading Your Customized Data Collection Kit ...................................................................... 7
2. Working with the Data Collection Kit (DCK) .................................................................................. 8
a) Organization Data ..................................................................................................................... 9
b) Global Questionnaire .............................................................................................................. 10
c) Global Job Matching Booklet .................................................................................................. 14
IV. Global Data Audits .............................................................................................................................. 15
1. Downloading Your Global Audit Workbook ................................................................................ 15
2. Working with Your Audit Workbook ........................................................................................... 15
V. Policy & Practice Questionnaires – Administered Locally ................................................................. 18
1. Downloading Your Policy & Practice Questionnaires .................................................................. 18
2. Working with Your Policy & Practice Questionnaires ................................................................. 19
3. Downloading Your Policy & Practice Data Validation Files ......................................................... 21
4. Working with the Policy & Practice Data Validation Files ........................................................... 21
VI. Access to Market Results .................................................................................................................... 23
Summary ..................................................................................................................................................... 25
Appendix 1. Audit Summary – Audit Workbook (Global Questionnaire quality check) ............................ 26
Appendix 2. Audit Summary – Benefits, Policy & Practice (EMEA) ............................................................ 27
Appendix 3. GDAP Access Form – example ................................................................................................ 28
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Introduction
This document has been designed to give you an insight into Mercer’s Global Data Acquisition Program (GDAP). Its content should be sufficient enough to allow you to comprehend various aspects of the global data collection process, complete the GDAP submission successfully and be a participant in all required Mercer surveys.
Should you have any questions, please contact any GDAP Team member:
Anna Morawiec-Bartosik ([email protected]) Filip Czeszejko-Sochacki ([email protected]) Marta Zalewska ([email protected])
What is the Global Data Acquisition Program?
The purpose of the Global Data Acquisition Program is to simplify and streamline the data submission process for clients participating in multiple Mercer surveys. The Program is a solution designed to integrate the core local participation activities (organization data and employee payroll information) on a global level, with the assistance of one dedicated Mercer representative. The group of surveys available through GDAP is constantly being extended to ensure improvement of the quality of service. How Does It Work?
The whole process begins at the end of the year, preceding the year of actual submission. In December, each client is asked to establish the list of countries and surveys they would like to take part in via GDAP. The DCK is sent to participants in February, which gives enough time to collect the data and complete the questionnaire.
1. In January and February the GDAP Team communicates the submission deadlines and confirms contacts for GDAP submission with all the participants via e-mail.
2. The actual submission takes place in April. Your headquarters provide the GDAP Team with a Central Submission, consisting of Organization Data and Incumbent Data.
Around the same time the Policy & Practice cycle starts. Apart from the incumbent-by-incumbent figures, Mercer also collects descriptive benefit policies prevalent in the client’s organization. For this purpose, country Policy & Practice (P&P) Questionnaires are used, which vary slightly country by country. Usually the local representatives are responsible for providing the GDAP Team with these parts of the data.
The next step of the GDAP process is the data validation, where your representatives are addressed with data quality issues, all gathered in Excel files. Each type of data issue that has been
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indicated is presented with the appropriate audit and should be resolved. Please note that separate sets of audits are sent to individuals managing the Central Submission (Audit Workbook) and to your colleagues submitting the P&P information for each of your countries (Data Validation Files).
In order to assure delivery of accurate results, Mercer performs multiple complex tasks related to data processing during data submission and data validation steps. These include procedures such as various quality and consistency checks, data consolidation and aggregation, and applying statistics. Please note that it is crucial for each participant to provide the data to Mercer in line with the submission deadlines, related to both the Central Submission (Global Questionnaire and Organization Data) and the country by country benefit information (P&P Questionnaires). The schedule needs to be followed to ensure the data is processed on time and is included in the appropriate surveys.
The final stage of the GDAP process is delivering the surveys’ results to the clients via the Mercer WIN platform. All participants are asked to deliver a list of global contacts that should receive access to final Mercer reports. 2014 GDAP in Numbers
• There were 37 distinct organizations participating in the Program in 2014 (37% increase year over year).
• As much as 1610 clients’ entities took part in the Program in 2014 (62% increase YOY). • Our clients submitted 438,977 incumbents overall (59% increase YOY). • The scope of the data covered 103 TRS countries (7,3% increase YOY).
I. GDAP Survey Cycle Enrolment
The first step of the GDAP data submission process is what we call an enrolment. It is divided into two separate parts. The purpose of the first step is to determine whether a company is suitable for participating in the Global Data Acquisition Program. The second part focuses on determining the list of countries to allow in the P&P submission.
1. The GDAP Qualification Form new GDAP clients only
This form is dedicated to new clients (GDAP prospects), who have not been previously participating in the Program. It can be found under: https://surveys.az1.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_8Amc6bbdY0PXAsl.
If this does not apply to your organization, please proceed with the next step.
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The purpose of this part of the process is to clarify whether your company may take part in the GDAP and give Mercer an overview on how to set up your submission. Please note that this is very important, as your organization needs to meet several technical requirements to enter the Program:
1. First of all, you need to have a HRIS system (payroll database) implemented, to be able to submit your data to Mercer via GDAP. It is the initial condition to be fulfilled, as we need to make sure that your compensation data is organized in an integrated manner. Otherwise, it will not be time or cost effective for you to participate in the Program.
2. The Employee numbers (EEIDs) used in your organization have to be unique so we are able to process your incumbent data through our systems. Unique EEIDs are also critical if you provide some compensation elements separately (please refer to the Global Questionnaire section) – it is the only way we can be sure that accurate linking of all payroll components to your employees is possible.
3. Please verify whether you store Mercer Universal Position Codes (MUPC®) in your central database, if you have a correlation table between your jobs and Mercer positions or if you do not use MUPCs® at all. In case you do not store Mercer MUPC® codes directly in your HRIS, it is crucial that you are able to provide any tools that will allow GDAP representatives to link your employees to the appropriate Mercer job codes. Please note that in Mercer TRS surveys MUPCs® are essential for the data points to be represented in the market results. If linking of your employees to Mercer benchmarks is not feasible, participation in GDAP most likely will not be possible and country participation will be at risk.
Depending on your business structure and available resources, you may dedicate one or multiple representatives to conduct various stages of the GDAP incumbent and non-incumbent submission. It is essential for us to confirm the representative(s) of your organization whom we will be able to contact on the Audit Workbook stage. In case you have any additional thoughts you would like to share with the GDAP Team at this point, we encourage you to insert your comments on the last page of the Qualification form.
Please note that after you submit the GDAP Qualification Form, your answers will be carefully analyzed by the GDAP Team. As soon as the assessment is complete, Mercer representatives will reach out to you via e-mail to communicate whether the GDAP submission process would be beneficial for your company.
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2. GDAP Submission Countries
After the successful enrolment to the GDAP, the next important step is providing a comprehensive list of countries that should be included in the scope of your GDAP process.
Why do I need to provide it at this stage?
First of all, we need to make sure that a list of the locations you would like to participate in is in place, so we may use it to set up the P&P submissions. We need the list of your GDAP countries to be able to conduct the submission cycle, therefore please make sure to provide the list on time.
II. Defining the GDAP Contacts
Providing the GDAP Team with the list of countries needs to be complemented with a list of your representatives that will be responsible for submitting the data.
The GDAP submission is divided into two separate parts: Organization Data plus Global Questionnaire and Policy & Practice Questionnaires (non-incumbent, country-by-country benefit information). Please note that the first part is usually provided by one dedicated contact or a few of your representatives working together on the Headquarters level. The second part might be provided by one or several contacts centrally, by regional representatives, by local representatives or a combination (please see the next section for a detailed description).
Please remember to provide to the GDAP Team, via e-mail, the contact details of your organization’s representative(s) responsible for the Organization Data and Global Questionnaire submission (name, surname, e-mail address and telephone number).
It is also critical that you send the list of contacts for the country by country P&P submissions. If you are a new member, fill in the GDAP Contact Form, as explained below. If you have already taken part in the GDAP surveys, you will receive an enrolment file where you will be asked to provide the data.
The GDAP Contact Form is an Excel file consisting of four separate columns. To provide the list of your representatives in the appropriate manner, please insert the details specified in the headers. The first column (Country/ Survey) should contain the list of surveys you will be participating in. In the second column, please put Company IDs or SMI Codes (unique internal codes representing each organization participating in Mercer surveys) for the entities that will be participating in a given survey, so we are able to differentiate your business units. Please note that the ID values should be unique – each of those should represent exactly one company you will be providing the data for. In the third and fourth column just insert the name and e-mail address of your organization’s representative who will be responsible for a given survey. Please note that if you do not include all the above information, Mercer will not be able to prepare and send you the P&P questionnaires. If the files are not distributed to you
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and therefore you do now submit them, you may not be considered a participant in some of the countries. It can result in non-participant fees being charged.
III. Central Data Submission
This part of the GDAP Manual covers the core element of the survey cycle – the remuneration and organization data submission. The purpose of this section is to give you an overview on how to download, fill in and submit your Data Collection Kit (DCK). Descriptions of the most important compensation components are also added, to help you familiarize yourself with their characteristics and the impact they have on the process.
1. Downloading Your Customized Data Collection Kit
In the beginning of every year each Data Collection Kit is prepared and uploaded to the GDAP website and optionally to the iMercer accounts of the individuals involved in the GDAP submission process. All of the files are prepared in Excel formats - .xlsx and .xlsm by default. There is a possibility to create the files in .xls on your request, in case a DCK needs to be compatible with older versions of Excel (1997-2003). Each Data Collection Kit consists of the following three files:
• Global Organization Data (GL_ORG_0015_ClientID*) • Global Questionnaire (GL_INC_0015_ClientID*) • Global Job Matching Booklet (GL_JMB_0015_ClientID)
*ClientID – a unique number used by the GDAP Team internally to differentiate clients.
To download and submit the GDAP materials, please:
1. Go to www.imercer.com a. Click on Login/Register button at the top right corner . b. Enter your user ID (this is your e-mail address) and your password. c. If you are a new user or have forgotten your password, use the “Forgot password?”
option, provide your e-mail address and your temporary imercer.com password will be emailed to you.
2. Select "My Participation" from the Quick Links section. 3. Select and download your 2015 Data Collection Kit files. 4. Save the files on your computer. 5. Fill in the data into the questionnaire. 6. Once completed send to the GDAP Team.
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It is also possible to download the Data Collection Kit materials directly from the GDAP site. Please note that there are the following files available:
a. Organization Data b. Job Matching Booklet – four versions:
- TRS/MBD – TRS whole world, CA&US MBD - TRS APAC – Australia, Bangladesh, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia,
Japan, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, New Zealand, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam
- TRS non-APAC – Europe, Middle East, Latin America, North America - All codes (TRS, MLS, TRS industry modules)
c. Global Questionnaire – five versions: - Whole World - APAC - EMEA - Latin America - North America
2. Working with the Data Collection Kit (DCK)
It is recommended to start the submission process with the Organization Data file followed by the Global Questionnaire. The first file is used to collect data on your business units taking part in Mercer surveys, while the second one covers the employee data. While working with the Global Questionnaire, please be sure to use the Global Job Matching Booklet to map your jobs to the MUPC®. Linking your positions to the Mercer benchmarks is what we call a job matching, which has to be performed by each participant, to make the submission process possible.
Please note that if your submission lacks benchmarking to MUPC® codes, it will not be accepted and therefore your data will be excluded from Mercer surveys.
Below please find a comprehensive description of the structure, data content, data formats and specific fields you will find in the GDAP Data Collection Kit. This guide should be helpful in providing support for individuals engaged in the process of organization and remuneration data submission. The instructions are complemented by a series of webinars which, in the form of visual materials, will take you and your colleagues through an independent and smooth data preparation, submission, auditing and correction.
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a) Organization Data
The submission process begins with the Organization Data file (GL_ORG_0015_ClientID). This document should list all the entities (corporate units, companies, business units) for which you are going to provide the incumbent data. The structure of the entities often follows the country fragmentation – in each location there is one business unit operating. In case where multiple business units exist in one country, it is crucial to input the full required information on each of the units for which the employee data is going to be submitted. The figures supplied here are the basis for the employee related detailed data. Several fields included in the Organization Data determine some employee indicators computed by Mercer, e.g., Position Class (PC®). It is crucial for you to provide them, otherwise we are unable to process your employee data.
The Organization Data file is divided into three tabs:
1. Basic Information 2. Guide & Manual 3. Organization Data
Please note that only the Organization Data tab has to be filled in, and the three questions in Basic Information tab have to be answered.
The first tab of the file – the Basic Information – focuses on gathering some core information on the Job Matching. The initial question checks whether you will be providing MUPC® codes to Mercer. In this section you are also asked to confirm if Mercer representatives may change the benchmarks you provide, in case when the MUPC® codes are out of scope for a given survey or incorrect. The third question concerns the PC® valuation – please verify whether you are an eIPE® user and if you will therefore be able to provide Mercer with ready Position Classes® - PCs).
The second tab, Guide & Manual, contains a set of guidelines that should help you to familiarize with basic rules and the content of the Organization Data.
The third tab - Organization Data - is the essential part of the document. It consists of several sections, some of them containing various fields crucial for data process:
- Entity Information section - this is a core part of the Organization Data. Please note that the fields with the highest significance are: Your Company Identifier (the unique code that will be used to differentiate your entities , e.g., your internal company code or Parent Company name plus business line and country), Name of Company, Country, Type of Organization, Type of Ownership, Industry Sector and Sub-sector, and City Located or at least Region for entities in China.
- Organization's Activities (Product or Service based organizations). Please note that Product activity is related to all organizations whose primary focus is goods manufacturing. Services should be used only by those organizations who provide services to individual customers, as well as to other companies.
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- Financial information – Net Sales Revenue or Assets as well as currencies should be supplied, we will not be able to process the employees data without this information.
- Financial information – to be filled in only by banking/financial companies. - Headcount (FTE) – please provide the full-time equivalents for the last financial year, for each
entity taking part in the GDAP submission.
Please remember that the lack of any of the core elements of the Organization Data (Activities, Net Sales Revenue/Assets, Headcount) for any of your entities may result in excluding this particular business unit from our surveys.
b) Global Questionnaire
The Global Questionnaire (Global Incumbent Data Questionnaire, GL_INC_0015_ClientID) is the central file for the employee (incumbent) data. Although it is independent from the Organization Data file, we link all of the incumbent records you provide in the Global Questionnaire to the entity information. For example, one of the crucial fields, the Position Class®, is calculated based on the input provided in the Organization Data file.
The purpose of the Global Questionnaire is to match the client’s remuneration components stored in the HRIS database with Mercer’s database headers. In case there are any core data elements indicated as missing in the central HRIS during this exercise, they should be supplied additionally from external sources. This may be done by filling in the Global Questionnaire with the missing values taken from other centralized sources. The GDAP Team will assess whether any other solution, other than the fully integrated, central submission, may be more beneficial in your case and inform you about a possible deviation of the standard process.
Global Questionnaire file comprises of six tabs:
1. Instruction 2. Guide 3. Data Definitions & Matrix 4. Incumbents 5. LTI Plans 6. Survey Regions
1. The Instruction tab gives the contact details of GDAP Team representatives who can be reached in case of doubts or questions in area of submission process or any general issues . The introductory tab also gives a few tips and recommendations on the file content and the data input (e.g., Employee Workplace).
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2. Guide tab provides some general descriptions to the appropriate sections of the Global Questionnaire.
3. The Data Definitions & Matrix tab is a good starting point for dealing with the submission of incumbent data. This part gives a comprehensive explanation about specific fields which should be filled in within a given country. This tab is an important reference source, which aims at guiding your representative(s) through the process of filling in the data in the Incumbents tab. All the fields considered as the most significant are marked as 1 – Obligatory in the column Data Priority Level in the Data Definitions & Matrix tab and are marked in red in the Questionnaire tab.
The Definition and Example Data columns are helpful in choosing the appropriate data and inserting it with the right format applied.
4. The Incumbents tab is divided vertically into seven sections, each containing very specific data fields. These seven sections include:
1. Employee Information 2. Base Salary 3. Guaranteed Allowances 4. Short-term Incentives 5. Benefits 6. Company Cars 7. Long-term Incentives
To assist your representatives in the process of completing the file, the above mentioned tabs have been described below.
The Employee Information section is crucial to identify the unique characteristics of each employee. The Unique Employee ID, Your Company Identifier and Country Name (or Country Code) are all necessary fields, without which it is impossible to process the data. Other necessary fields are: the Employee Workplace (City/ Region, critical in China), Work Time Percentage (FTE), Your Job Title, information on Expat Contract (if applicable) and the Geographic Scope.
- Unique Employee ID – unique numeric/other format identifier within the client’s corporate structure. The uniqueness allows Mercer to track the whole structure of a single employee’s compensation.
- Company Identifier – there has to be the same naming as in GL_ORG’s Company ID column (located in Organization Data tab), as it is used to link employees to business units they work in.
- Work Time Percentage (FTE) – indicates whether the incumbent is employed on a full time basis (100) or partial basis (e.g., 50 for a half-time employee). The format of the data is numeric, with values between 1-100.
- Geographic Scope of Incumbent’s Role– reflects the scope of employee’s duties in geographic terms.
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Two even more significant fields are: Position Code (Mercer Universal Position Code - MUPC®) which you should supply directly and Position Class which is provided by the eIPE® users only. There is also a possibility to purchase the Job Matching service, in that case your employees will be matched to MUPCs® by Mercer. For the clients who do not use eIPE®, Mercer will calculate PCs® based on the information provided in the Organization Data file. All PCs® sent by the eIPE® users are verified by Mercer, based on the Organization Data input.
The Base Salary section is the core part of an employee’s remuneration structure. The most important fields are Monthly Base Salary or Annual Base Salary and the Currency in which a given salary is paid, as well as the Number of Months Paid (either 12 calendar months or more). Please note that it should be a pure base salary - the additional payments (e.g., 13th Salary Payment in Latin America) are a part of the Guaranteed Allowances component.
The Guaranteed Allowances section is the most extensive part. It includes the core allowances available around the world. Whether these are obligatory or not depends on each country’s specific requirements (by law) and preferences (e.g., cultural), together with the employer’s policy and employee’s status in the corporate structure. The most common allowances are: meal, transport, housing, vacation and shift allowances, as well as 13th and 14th Salary Payment. Many of those, as mentioned above, are required by law in some countries, and therefore their value must be provided.
Some less recognized components which might require an explanation are:
- Annual Flexible Allowance Package – this is a sum of the flexible allowance package components, which the employees are allowed to choose from to compose the desired combination.
- 13th Salary Payment/14th Salary Payment – those should be provided additionally to the regular number of salaries indicated in the Number of Months Paid from the Base Salary section, if applicable.
In the Short-term Incentives (STI) section the eligibility must be filled in for all the employees. It indicates whether specific components of the STIs, as listed below, are applicable to the employees. If the eligibility is not provided, we will assume that a given employee is not entitled to a bonus.
Please find below the explanations of some basic terms concerning STIs:
- Actual (value/%) – indicates the real value/bonus as a percentage of the base salary earned by the employee on the data effective date. It usually does not equal the value of the target.
- Target (value/%) – the bonus value/percentage that is targeted for a given employee. - Maximum (value/%) - the maximum bonus value/percentage that a given employee may
receive (e.g., when the performance exceeds expectations).
Please note that all of the compensation fields are described in the Data Definitions & Matrix tab.
The Benefits section is country specific, similarly to the allowances section, although less expanded. The benefits structure depends heavily on the employee’s position within the organization
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and on the job leveling structure. All country applicable fields for Mercer surveys for given employees should be supplied.
Please note that the list of obligatory fields in the Company Cars part of the Global Questionnaire may differ slightly, depending on your choice of the Type of Company Car Benefit. Please remember to fill in fields such as Car Purchase Price, Leased Car Payment/Cost Annual Amount, etc. only if it corresponds with the previously selected car benefit. To give you an example - if you choose: 4. Annual allowance instead of Company Car and at the same time provide a value in the Car Purchase Price, it will be indicated as a discrepancy in the Global Audit Workbook.
The Long-term Incentives fields included in the Incumbents tab contain only the basic information we require regarding this particular remuneration component. Please note that further LTI details should be provided in a separate Global Questionnaire tab – LTI Plans.
As mentioned, the Incumbents tab is the list of the employees’ remuneration data provided in seven sections, according to Mercer’s methodology. It is crucial to submit all available information for each employee, taking into consideration the compensation elements applicable.
The general rules for data input include:
- In case no data is needed or available – the field should remain blank, please do not input ‘N/A’ or ‘-‘.
- In case the value equals “0” – the “0” should be inputted. - For fields like Car Engine Size, Car Manufacturer/Model and similar, the data shouldn’t reflect
any additional information. So, for the above mentioned fields, it would be “2.5” and “Volvo S60” respectively.
- When a % value is required, it can be given in a simple and consistent value format (1 – 100) or % format (1% – 100%). The important issue here is to keep the percentage relation (share) and not enter the actual value.
Please remember that the lack of any of the core elements of the Global Questionnaire (MUPC®, Base Salary) for any of your incumbents, will result in excluding this particular employee from our surveys. If all of your employees from a given country are excluded, you will be treated as a non-participant in this location.
5. The LTI Plans section applies to the companies offering LTI rewards. Please note that the Eligibility fields are obligatory. If the provided answer is ‘No’ then no further details should be supplied in this section for a given incumbent. In case the answer is ‘Yes’, the remaining fields in the section (depending on LTI Plan Award Type) should be completed.
Please note that all of the LTI fields are described in the Data Definitions & Matrix tab.
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6. The final tab, Survey Regions, provides a list of regions within countries, which should be used as a reference for employee location. Following this reference list assures that consistency is maintained between client’s data and Mercer’s database content and allows the GDAP Team to transfer e.g., Chinese data to the appropriate province/city survey database.
c) Global Job Matching Booklet
The Global Job Matching Booklet is a purely referential document. Although it is quite condensed, at the same time it provides a panoramic view on the Mercer job matching methodology. The Introduction part of the document summarizes the principles of Mercer’s approach to assessing the MUPC® and PC®.
The Job Matrix tab is a net-structured list of all Mercer’s jobs. It is linked (by the Details hyperlink) with the next tab of the tool, the Job Catalogue. While the former shows the complex structure of job matrixes, the latter is a more detailed description of all jobs captured by Mercer in the relevant survey or a group of surveys. There are 19 job lists for APAC, one for EMEA, one for Latin America and separate lists for the US, Canada and MLS surveys globally.
In the process of job matching executed by your organization, it may be beneficial to use both tabs. The Job Matrix can be treated as a source of reference for finding the relevant job in the hierarchy, according to the variables like job family, career stream, career level and tier. After using the Job Matrix it is advisable to subsequently go to the Job Catalogue, to check the job descriptions included in the ‘Common Duties and Responsibilities’ and ‘Key Activities’ columns. Additionally, in the last few columns of the third tab, you can check whether the chosen position (MUPC®) is present in a given country/region. You can check it also by clicking on the cell with a code or title in the Job Matrix. There are two general tips that can be given regarding job matching:
- Matching should be done top-down: i.e. it is recommended to start with top positions and go to lower positions (from executives and managerial to professional and para-professional), and then from more general to more specific jobs.
- While doing job matching, it is advisable to disregard the internal job title, as the process should be done based on the job content (key activities included, common duties and responsibilities – in short the job characteristics).
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IV. Global Data Audits
The Data Validation is a direct continuation of the data submission process. When you provide raw data to Mercer, it is uploaded into our system. Afterwards, the data is carefully checked and analyzed, in order to identify quality issues. As a result of these checks, a Global Audit Workbook is created. It aggregates all of the data discrepancies detected during the analyses.
Please refer to the next two sections to learn how to complete your Data Validation Process.
1. Downloading Your Global Audit Workbook
As mentioned earlier, the distribution of the Audit Workbook (AW) is similar to the one associated with the Data Collection Kit.
To download your Audit Workbook, please:
• Go to www.imercer.com o Click on Login/Register button at the top right corner. o Enter your user ID (this is your e-mail address) and your password. o If you are a new user or have forgotten your password, please use the ‘Forgot
password?’ option, provide your e-mail address and your temporary imercer.com password will be emailed to you.
• Select "My Data Validation" from the Quick Links section. • Select and download your 2015 Global Audit Workbook. • Save the file on your computer.
Once completed, send it to the GDAP Team.
2. Working with Your Audit Workbook
Overview
The global Audit Workbook (AW) has been designed to allow the GDAP participants to resolve the data discrepancies indicated during the quality analysis of their submission. Each file presents all of the issues in a user-friendly way, to ensure quick responses from clients are possible.
Please note that the AWs often differ in terms of content, depending on the scope of the identified problems, the number of submitted incumbents, the participating entities or compensation elements that were provided. Each of the Audit Workbooks created by the GDAP Team contains a set of the following core worksheets:
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• Introduction – includes basic instructions regarding Audit Workbook review such as the description of severity level of the data issues. Please familiarize yourself with its content, as it will be useful when you are working with your global AW file.
• Audit Summary – covers the list of issues indicated in your submission. Each discrepancy is represented by a proper audit. Please see further details in ‘Reviewing your Audit Workbook’ section.
• Organization Data Audits – this tab groups all of the discrepancies identified in your Organization Data file. Please note that in your AW there may be one or several “Organization Data Audits” sheets, depending on the number and type of generated audits.
• Incumbent Data Audits - this tab groups all of the discrepancies identified in your Global Questionnaire, related to incumbent data. Please note that in your AW there may be one or several “Incumbent Data Audits” sheets, depending on the number of generated audits.
Please note that your Audit Workbook may contain some additional tabs, e.g., LTI Audits.
Additionally, it may happen that a separate sheet is created if there are a lot of audits generated for a particular compensation element.
Reviewing Your Audit Workbook
After you familiarize yourself with the general Audit Workbook information and Instructions tab in your AW, please focus on the Audit Summary tab next. The “Audit Summary” can be considered as the table of contents of your Audit Workbook.
Every row contains information on one kind of issue identified in your submission. If there are 70 rows displayed in the tab, it means that 70 different kinds of issues have been identified. Please note that each row has 7 columns, each giving a separate piece of information related to a given audit:
1. Data Type – shows the audit source. “Organization Data” means that the issue is related to the Organization Data file and “Incumbent Data” indicates that the audit has been generated based on the Global Questionnaire data.
2. Audit Message – displays a list of issues identified in your data that need to be resolved. 3. Question - indicates the action needed from you to resolve a given audit. 4. Mercer Default Action - contains the assumptions Mercer will follow if your answer for a
given issue is not provided or is not sufficient. 5. Severity Level – this column indicates the importance of the highlighted issue:
Essential – if the issue is not resolved, Mercer will not be able to process the part of the data it concerns (e.g., we may exclude some of your incumbents from the statistics). If an issue is applicable to all incumbents within the country, you may not be considered as a participant for this location, if it is not resolved properly. Important – concerns important data fields, will affect survey results if they are not resolved.
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Nice to have – not concerning any crucial elements but should be provided if possible. 6. #Failed – shows the number of incumbents or the business units a given issue is related to.
Please click on the hyperlinks inserted in this column to be automatically transferred to the first row of data a given issue is concerning. All of the fields that relate to a given audit are highlighted in the appropriate color, in accordance with the Severity Level. When adjusting the results in the marked fields, please be sure to add a comment in the “Audit Summary” that the values have been changed.
7. Overall Instructions – the audit resolution can be inserted in this column, but only if it is the same for all records where a given issue occurred.
Please see below an example of an Audit Workbooks. We strongly recommend to familiarize yourself with the GDAP webinars, relating to the most important steps.
Example Let’s assume that you have submitted your data to Mercer via the Global Data Acquisition
Program, your input has been checked by the GDAP Team and you received an Audit Workbook with the audits listed in “Audit Summary” tab exactly as in Appendix 1.
Please note that usually the number of issues indicated in Audit Workbooks is larger but for the purpose of this exercise it has been limited.
Let’s start with the most important issues presented, the ones that are indicated in red. In order to resolve the problem, please familiarize yourself with the Audit Message and Question first. As you can see, there have been blank values indicated in the FTE field of your Organization Data. The audit’s Severity Level is “Essential” – that means Mercer will not be able to process your data correctly if the fields are left empty. Please click the 2 hyperlink in the #Failed column, to be transferred to the appropriate tab (one of the Organization Data tabs).
As soon as you move to the tab, you should have the first cell with the “Your Organization's Headcount (FTEs) for the current year has not been provided.” value in the Audit Message column selected. You may filter the first column by this particular text . There should be many different columns in the sheet, covering various types of organization information. Please identify for which of your entities the audit was generated and scroll to the right, until you find the appropriate column (highlighted cell or Client Response as per Appendix 1).
Please fill in the FTE figures for the two business units related to the issue, save the changes and add a comment (e.g., “done”) in ‘overall instructions’ in the Audit Summary tab or in column B – ‘Client response’ in the appropriate row.
The next audit – “Year of employment is empty.” – has been generated due to missing information in your Global Questionnaire. Please click the 4 hyperlink in the second row of the #Failed column. You will be redirected to one of the Incumbent Data Audits tabs. Please look up a column with fields highlighted according to Severity Level (in this case it will be “Year of Employment Entry”). Please fill in
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the year of employment for the four records that have been indicated. Remember to add a comment in the “Incumbent Data Audits” tab in column B (“Client Response”) for each of the highlighted employees or in the Overall Instructions field in the “Audit Summary”.
The last issue that is presented in the “Audit Summary” tab is “The Annual Transportation Allowance seems to be high for this country” audit. Please click the 2 hyperlink. As soon as you are redirected to the appropriate tab in the AW, please look the highlighted column up (“Transportation Allowance”). To resolve the issue, please verify whether the Transportation Allowance figures that you have included in your Global Questionnaire are correct. If there are any incorrect amounts, please adjust them accordingly. After the review of this audit is completed, please write a comment in the “Incumbent Data Audits” tab in column B (“Client Response”) for each of the highlighted employees or in the Overall Instructions field in the “Audit Summary” (e.g., “corrected”, “values are correct”, “multiple by 12 to get annual values” or input the correct values there).
The above exercise should be helpful in resolving the issues that could be indicated in your Audit Workbook. In case you need any further information, please feel free to refer to the GDAP webinars available on the GDAP website or contact the GDAP Team.
V. Policy & Practice Questionnaires – Administered Locally
Overview
Previous sections of this document covered various aspects of the organization and incumbent data submission and the auditing process. Additionally to the incumbent by incumbent compensation figures included in the Global Questionnaire, Mercer also gathers general policy information on benefits, short-term incentives, long-term incentives, cars etc. prevalent in your organization in each country. Please note that if you do not provide the P&P submission for a given country, you might be excluded from the database for this particular survey.
1. Downloading Your Policy & Practice Questionnaires
To download your P&P files, please:
• Go to www.imercer.com. o Click on Login/Register button at the top right corner o Enter your user ID (this is your email address) and your password. o If you are a new user or have forgotten your password, use the ‘Forgot password?’
option, provide your email address and your temporary iMercer.com password will be e-mailed to you.
• Select "My Participation" from the Quick Links section.
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• Select and download your 2015 Policy & Practice files (e.g., Mercer 2015 DE Questionnaire SMI Code).
• Save these files on your computer. • Once finalized please save the files, and submit your data using:
https://apps.imercer.com/upload/.
2. Working with Your Policy & Practice Questionnaires
Overview
Please note that the Policy & Practice (P&P) questionnaires may differ between regions and across countries. Although Mercer is working towards unifying the tools among the different locations, there is a strong reason behind the current variety. Please note that in different countries there are various remuneration components prevalent in the market. In some locations a given part of the remuneration package might be very important, whereas in other countries they might not be present at all. To assure delivering sufficient market information, Mercer aims at finding a balance between representing a comprehensive structure of market data, and maintaining its transparency.
Every P&P questionnaire contains a set of core tabs. Although the data sets gathered in particular countries may differ from one another, there are some important pieces of information that are present in a similar format in the majority of TRS surveys. Below you will find a list of basic tabs prevalent among the European questionnaires:
1. Introduction It includes general information on the survey and questionnaire. You can find the P&P questionnaire’s table of contents there, as well as the submission deadline and information on how to submit the file.
2. Guide This sheet contains descriptions of all the tabs included in the P&P questionnaire, as well as the most important definitions related to Mercer TRS surveys. It is very useful to get familiar with this part of the questionnaire, as you will find here hints on data entry, as well as various definitions.
3. Company Data This part of the P&P questionnaire was designed for the purpose of collecting general organization information. Please note that the fundamental data related to your entities is gathered centrally in the Organization Data file. In the P&P questionnaires you are asked for information such as Expatriate Population, Salary Review Policy and Hiring Intentions.
4. Workforce Metrics This sheet includes questions on workforce composition and retention in your organization. The input is used in the Mercer Workforce Metrics: Benchmark Report.
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5. Short-term Incentives This tab collects aggregate policy information on various STI components, such as variable bonuses, sales incentives and the percentage of employees entitled to these STIs.
6. Long-term Incentives This sheet includes questions related to compensation programs with performance and vesting periods of no less than a year, that your organization provides to the employees.
7. Benefits This part of the P&P questionnaire contains detailed questions related to benefit policies prevalent in your organization in a given country, such as medical plans, pension plans and long-term disability. The input is used to create country specific prevalence reports and valuation of each employee’s benefits. Please note that some of the fields in this section may be marked with dots – these are critical for benefit valuations and therefore have to be submitted. This tab’s content varies the most between countries.
8. Company Car This covers information on policies of company car benefit’s type, differentiated by the purpose or the use (e.g., car as a benefit, car required to perform a job, allowance in lieu of company car).
General Rules
Please note that it is difficult to give a detailed instruction on filling in the Policy & Practice Questionnaires across the world in this manual. When working with your files, please refer to the guidelines inserted into your P&P questionnaire. We also encourage you to view the appropriate GDAP webinars and take part in Participation Webinars, during which you will get familiar with Mercer’s methodology and have an in-depth view in the questionnaire. We also encourage you to contact the appropriate Mercer country consultant in case of any specific queries. All contact details are available here: http://www.imercer.com/content/TRScontacts.aspx
Please take into consideration the hints below:
• Please take special care when filling in the Contact Information. Providing information such as the Contact Name and E-mail Address is crucial, as the person indicated in this section will receive the P&P Data Validation File (DVF) for a given submission. The appropriate fields may be included in the “Company Data” tab or in a separate sheet.
• Always familiarize yourself with the “Guide” and “Instructions” tabs included in the P&P questionnaires. The information they contain will help you save a considerable amount of time by streamlining P&P questionnaires submission and minimizing the number of errors you will be asked to resolve in the Data Validation step.
• A few of the tabs in the P&P questionnaires contain filter questions (e.g., Does your organization pay a variable bonus to any of your employees?). If there is a “No” answer provided, some of the fields in a given section are greyed out or hidden. Please do not fill
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them in, as it will be indicated as a discrepancy during Mercer’s data checks and you will be asked to remove those values.
3. Downloading Your Policy & Practice Data Validation Files
The Data Validation Files (DVF) are distributed the same way as the Policy & Practice Questionnaires. The difference in uploading the files is that instead of the „My Participation” section, the files are uploaded into the „My Data Validation” section.
To download your DVFs:
• Go to www.imercer.com. o Click on Login/Register button at the top right corner. o Enter your user ID (this is your e-mail address) and your password. o If you are a new user or have forgotten your password, use the ‘Forgot password?’
option, provide your email address and your temporary iMercer.com password will be e-mailed to you.
• Select "My Data Validation" from the Quick Links section. • Select and download your 2015 Data Validation Files. • Once you resolve all audits please save the files, submit your data using:
https://apps.imercer.com/upload/.
4. Working with the Policy & Practice Data Validation Files
Previous parts of the document contained a section dedicated to, among others, the Global Questionnaire Data Validation. As described earlier, the P&P questionnaires submissions require validation in a similar way to the central submission with incumbent data. How Does It Work?
When you submit a Policy & Practice questionnaire, your answers are uploaded directly into our systems. There are various checks performed, so we can anticipate any issues with the supplied data. Although it is very similar to the Global Questionnaire processing, please note that it does concern only policy information provided on a country level. Mercer checks for all the issues and discrepancies among the answers you provide on the plans related to benefits, short-term incentives, long-term incentives, cars, etc. When the validation is completed and the data is verified, the input is used for the purpose of TRS Policy & Practice Reports and benefit valuations.
Although the graphic design of the P&P Data Validation File (DVF) may be different for each region, the way it is structured is to some extend consistent among the countries. Please note that the Data Validation File looks like the Policy & Practice questionnaire you submitted but has one additional tab – Audit Summary. In each file the structure of the summary tab is similar to the one indicated below:
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• Data Type – Column containing a hyperlink to the indicated issue for each audit (it may also contain the name of the appropriate section, the number of questions for the indicated errors and a hyperlinks to the appropriate place in the DVF).
• Audit Message – Description of the indicated issue. • Audit Clarifications – Explains what actions are needed from you to resolve a given audit. • Mercer Default Action – Informs about assumptions Mercer will follow if you will not be able
to apply the appropriate corrections. • Severity Level – this column indicates the importance of the highlighted issue:
Essential – if the issue is not resolved, Mercer will not be able to process the part of the data it concerns (e.g., we may exclude some of your incumbents from the statistics). Important – not crucial for the processing but concerning important data fields and will affect survey results if not solved. Nice to have – not concerning any crucial elements but should be provided, if possible.
• # of Rows Flagged– is blank for countries submitted via GDAP. • Overall Instructions – column in which you may insert comments or answers.
Please note that the list of elements included above concerns DVFs for the EMEA region and there might be some regional differences observed in files prepared for other locations.
Example
We will now focus on resolving P&P DVF audits, to give you an example on how the issue should be handled when you are asked by Mercer to apply corrections to your submission. Let’s assume for the purpose of the exercise that you received a DVF with the “Audit Summary” exactly as the one pictured in the Appendix 2.
The first of the indicated audits is related to question 2.4 on the Short-term Incentives tab. To resolve the issue please click the hyperlink to be transferred to the appropriate section of the P&P file. Each of the fields indicated as an error are highlighted in green (according to the Severity Level). To fix this you only need to review the provided values, confirm they are correct (and if so, write the appropriate comment in overall instructions) or adjust them, if too high numbers were provided by mistake.
The next audit concerns the Occupational pension plan benefit. After clicking the hyperlink you will be redirected to the proper cell in the questionnaire. Please always remember to familiarize yourself with the Audit Message and the Audit Clarifications and resolve the issue accordingly. In this case, probably there were some details of the occupational pension plan provided, although in the filter question opening the section it was stated that no occupational pension plan is currently being offered in the company. In this case a “there is no occupational plan” comment in the Overall Instructions column would be sufficient, so we may delete any unnecessary values.
The third audit concerns the Life Assurance Benefits – it seems that they are available for all incumbent groups except Executives. Since such situations are very uncommon, in this case you will be asked to verify whether it was not provided by mistake. In case there is no correction provided, Mercer will assume for benefit valuation purposes that this benefit is exactly the same for all incumbents and copy the information between the employee groups.
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For more detailed instructions please feel free to contact a Mercer consultant responsible for a particular market. The list of contacts can be found on the following page:
http://www.imercer.com/content/TRScontacts.aspx.
VI. Access to Market Results
Once the submission process is completed and your data is validated, Mercer will deliver the Market Results. Please note that all of the TRS surveys are scheduled to be published according to the schedule available on the GDAP site and the dates differ country by country. If you would like to check the timeline for any surveys not listed on this site, please feel free to reach out to the country consultants. To make sure the whole process runs smoothly, the GDAP Team will ensure that deadlines are adhered to. How to Receive Market Results?
At the end of August please download the GDAP Access Form from the GDAP site. The form will be provided as an Excel spreadsheet. The file contains the following columns:
- Country/Survey (essential) Please insert countries or surveys you would like to receive access to. Each record has to be provided separately for each person required to have access to a given survey.
- Business Unit/SMI
Please indicate the business units or SMI codes (unique codes representing each organization participating in the Mercer surveys) for each of the countries provided, so that Mercer is able to determine which company a given record relates to. Although it does not matter if you have only one entity per country or when your representatives will be receiving accesses to Market Results only, it is crucial for delivering My Data figures. It will prevent the possibility of granting access for a person meant to be able to view figures for Entity A to the data linked to Entity B. Please see below, “Access to Market Results” and “Access to My Data” points, for more detailed descriptions.
- Contact Name This column should contain the names and surnames of your representatives that should receive access to the Mercer surveys.
- Contact E-mail (essential)
Please insert the e-mail addresses of your representatives that should receive access to the Mercer surveys. The provided e-mail addresses will be used as iMercer logins through which your representatives will be able to access the survey results in Mercer WIN.
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- Access to Market Results (essential) Please indicate whether a given representative should receive access to the Market Results. This functionality allows an individual to see aggregate market statistics for a given country.
- Access to My Data (essential)
In this column you are asked to verify whether a given representative should receive access to My Data. Please note that this functionality allows to see the dataset that you have submitted for a given survey within a single entity. You may allow or deny your employees the access, depending on your company’s confidentiality policy. Important: Your employees are differentiated in the database by individual Employee IDs ONLY - any personal information (such as first and last name) is deleted during data processing.
To better understand the concept, let us review the example of the GDAP Access Form included in Appendix 3.
The first column of the table contains the survey names for which the accesses should be granted. Please note that some of the records occur more than once – it depends on the number of entities linked to the My Data functionality in a given survey, as well as the number of representatives that should have access to a particular report.
The second column should contain all of the entities for which you submitted data to the surveys you are requesting accesses for. As you can see, in this example the data has been submitted for multiple organizations for most of the countries. Please note that all the datasets are directly linked to the My Data functionality in Mercer WIN, so you are able to view the figures for each of your companies separately.
The next columns contain the names of the employees who should receive access to the Mercer surveys, their e-mail addresses and information whether the access should include Market Results and/or My Data. For example, for the United States Anna will receive accesses to the Market Results and My Data for Mercer and Marsh entities, while Filip and Marta will have access to the Market Results only.
Important: Please note that if you don’t add or if you delete any business entity or country you won’t receive any access to this particular country’s Market Data or business unit’s My Data.
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Summary
The GDAP Manual has been created to present the Global Data Acquisition Program and to explain how the process works, in order for you to comprehend all aspects of the global data collection, complete the submission successfully, and be a participant in all required surveys.
This document takes you step by step through all the stages of our process, starting from GDAP survey enrolment and defining GDAP contacts. It presents detailed instructions concerning the Central Data Submission, including (but not limited to) details of working with your central Data Collection Kit and a thorough introduction to the types of information Mercer collects in the surveys. You are introduced to Mercer GDAP questionnaires together with their particular purpose and characteristics. Furthermore, the Data Validation Process is carefully described to you so you can feel comfortable while working with the Audit Workbook for the central submission and the Data Validation Files for Policy and Practice Questionnaires. To facilitate your use of these files, Mercer has provided some examples which build your understanding of data audits’ structure and content. As being able to access the Market Results is crucial to every client, a detailed instruction on how to receive the final data was also included.
Thank you,
Global Data Acquisition Program Team
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Appendix 1. Audit Summary – Audit Workbook (Global Questionnaire quality check)
Data Type Audit Message Question Mercer Default Action (If not corrected, Mercer will take the following actions)
Severity Level
# Failed Overall Instructions (if not detailing for each record)
Incumbent Data Year of employment is empty. Please provide year of employment.
Mercer will leave empty. Nice to have 4
Organization Data Your Organization's Headcount (FTEs) for the current year has not been provided.
Please provide your Organization's Headcount (FTEs) for the current year.
Mercer will leave empty unless your Headcount (FTEs) can be updated from the public domain; the Organization's Data will not fall into a refinement in the published report.
Essential 2
Incumbent Data The Annual Transportation Allowance seems to be high for this country.
Please verify provided annual value.
Mercer will leave the value unchanged. Mercer may exclude this incumbent from market statistics at later stages of data cleaning.
Important 2
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Appendix 2. Audit Summary – Benefits, Policy & Practice (EMEA)
Audit Summary Data Type Audit Message Audit Clarifications Mercer Default
Action (If not corrected, Mercer will take the following actions)
Severity Level # of Rows Flagged
Overall Instructions (Use to notify Mercer how to address a broader issue and you are not providing corrections for individual rows.) (Client Use Only)
Grouping: Short Term Incentives [Short Term Incentives] (2.4)
Your answer is significantly above typical range.
Please verify your answer.
Mercer will exclude the provided information.
Green
Benefits [Occupational pension plan benefit]
You have stated that your organization does not provide Occupational pension plan benefit, but further details have been provided. Mercer removed these details.
Please confirm you approve the change.
Mercer will assume the changes made are correct.
Red
[Life Assurance Benefits]
You have stated that Life Assurance Benefits is not available for Executive Plan / Policy but previous employees group is eligible.
Please verify if you provide Life Assurance Benefits for Executive Plan / Policy.
For benefit valuation purposes Mercer will assume that Executive Plan / Policy is the same as for previous employees group.
Yellow
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Appendix 3. GDAP Access Form – example
Country/ Survey Business unit/ SMI
Contact Name Contact email Access to survey results
Access to My Data (access to company's incumbent data)
Belgium - TRS Mercer Belgium Anna Morawiec-Bartosik [email protected] Yes Yes Belgium - TRS Marsh Belgium Anna Morawiec-Bartosik [email protected] Yes No China - Executive Remuneration Survey Mercer China Filip Czeszejko-Sochacki [email protected] Yes No Finland - TRS Mercer Finland Anna Morawiec-Bartosik [email protected] Yes Yes Finland - TRS Mercer Finland Filip Czeszejko-Sochacki [email protected] Yes No Hungary - TRS Mercer Hungary Anna Morawiec-Bartosik [email protected] Yes Yes Hungary - TRS Marsh Hungary Filip Czeszejko-Sochacki [email protected] Yes No Ireland - TRS Mercer Ireland Anna Morawiec-Bartosik [email protected] Yes Yes Norway - TRS Mercer Norway Anna Morawiec-Bartosik [email protected] Yes Yes United States - TRS Mercer US Anna Morawiec-Bartosik [email protected] Yes Yes United States - TRS Marsh US Anna Morawiec-Bartosik [email protected] Yes Yes United States - TRS Marsh US Filip Czeszejko-Sochacki [email protected] Yes No United States - TRS Marsh US Marta Zalewska [email protected] Yes No
