Comp and Coffee

Every compensation decision has a person on the other end of it. But compensation professionals are also balancing the needs of employees, recruiters, finance and executive leadership — often with data and processes that struggle to keep pace with a changing world of work.  When Peh Teh joined Payscale two years ago, he brought a technology perspective to a profession shaped by complex decisi...

AI is changing how work gets done, which skills organizations need, and how the value of certain jobs may evolve. But are organizations’ job architectures and compensation strategies keeping pace?  Job architecture has traditionally provided the structure organizations use to define roles, establish career paths, and guide compensation decisions. As AI reshapes responsibilities and the skills...

For many years, pay for performance has been a core principle of compensation.  Perform well, earn more. Contribute more, receive a bigger increase. Reward the people who create the most value.  Simple enough in theory.  But today’s workplace is making that model harder to defend.  Employees expect more transparency around how pay decisions ar...

For the longest time, compensation has revolved around an annual rhythm.  One yearly market data refresh. One compensation planning cycle.  But that rhythm no longer matches the pace of today's workforce.  Jobs evolve faster than ever. Skills become outdated in months instead of years. AI is changing work, labor markets shift overnight, and new pay...

For years, organizations could define a role and expect its responsibilities to remain relatively stable. Today, that assumption no longer holds.  AI is reshaping work. New skills emerge constantly. Responsibilities evolve faster than organizations can update job descriptions, job architectures, or compensation frameworks.  The result? Employees are doing work that doesn't...

Jobs aren't changing once every few years anymore. They're evolving constantly.  Skills are shifting, AI is reshaping roles, and organizations are redefining jobs faster than traditional job architectures can keep up. At the same time, Talent Acquisition and Compensation teams often evaluate talent through different lenses. Recruiters are responding to hiring realities and...

Compensation has never been more visible, more complex, or more connected to business outcomes. Yet many HR and compensation teams are expected to manage pay transparency, market movement, budget planning, manager enablement, and executive expectations with limited resources and little specialized support. In this episode, we explore why compensation expertise has become one of the most valuable r...

Flight risk is rarely loud. Most of the time, it shows up quietly in compensation data long before it shows up in resignation letters. Across organizations, roles, and levels, the same pattern is emerging: the market is moving faster than internal pay structures. New hires are coming in at higher rates than tenured employees in similar roles. Certain jobs are consistently priced higher externally...

Compensation professionals are no longer asking whether AI will change their work—they're asking how, where, and how fast.  Teams are experimenting with tools like Claude, Copilot, and ChatGPT to help analyze data, draft communications, support pay decisions, and streamline compensation processes.   Vendors are rolling out AI features and workflows in their products.    At the same time, leaders a...

For the last three years, organizations across Europe have been preparing for the biggest shift in pay transparency and pay equity regulation in a generation. The EU Pay Transparency Directive promised to reshape how employers think about compensation — from pay structures and job architecture to reporting obligations and how employees access pay information.  Now, the transposition deadline has a...

Compensation is no longer just an HR process. It is a business decision that executive teams are paying close attention to.  In this special podcast episode, adapted from a recent Payscale webinar, Chief Product Officer Lexi Clarke and Chief Financial Officer Philip Watson discuss how organizations can rethink compensation reporting to better align with business goals and executive expectations. ...

For decades, organizations have talked about paying for skills instead of jobs.  The idea is simple. Reward people based on what they can do, not just the role they hold.  But in practice, it has always been difficult to execute.  Skills are hard to define, harder to measure, and nearly impossible to track consistently across a workforce.  At the same time, the market is shifting fast.  AI-related...

Recorded live from WorldatWork Total Rewards 2026 in San Antonio, this special episode of Comp and Coffee gives you an inside look at the launch of Payscale Intelligence Cloud. Host Ruth Thomas is joined by Chief People Officer Lexi Clarke to share what they are hearing on the ground, including a key insight that 54% of practitioners are struggling with disconnected tools, systems, and processes,...

The gender pay gap has widened.   New data from the 2026 Gender Pay Gap Report shows the uncontrolled gender pay gap increased from $0.83 to $0.82, meaning women earn 18% less than men on average. That difference translates to $14,300 per year in lost earnings, and over $1 million across a career.  At the same time, organizations are navigating a new era of pay transparency legislation, tighter co...

When budgets shrink, performance pay is put to the test.  The 2026 Compensation Best Practices Report tells a clear story: budgets are tighter, bonuses are shrinking, and organizations are reaching for simpler pay strategies to get through the year.   Today we're exploring what happens when compensation decisions prioritize administrative ease over strategic intent — and what leaders can do about...

In this episode of Comp and Coffee, Ruth Thomas sits down with Stacey Harris, Chief Research Officer at Sapient Insights Group, and Amy Stewart, Payscale’s Manager of Content & Research, to unpack how HR and compensation leaders can turn data into strategic, defensible decisions. We explore the latest research on HR systems, compensation trends, and the growing role of AI in pay and talent managem...

Pay decisions do not live in isolation. They shape hiring speed, retention, employee trust, and ultimately business performance.  According to Payscale’s 2026 Compensation Best Practices Report, 63% of organizations believe their compensation policies drive positive business outcomes. That confidence shows up in measurable ways, including lower voluntary turnover, faster time to fill, and stronger...

HR and compensation leaders are facing a new set of challenges and opportunities in 2026. From new pay transparency laws to AI-driven decision-making, the landscape is shifting fast. This episode unpacks what is in and what is out for the year ahead and explores the trends that will define the future of work. Email: coffee@payscale.com for listener questions and suggestions. Payscale End-of-Year r...

Everyone agrees that pay matters. What they do not agree on is what it means. HR talks about fairness and equity. Finance talks about cost and ROI.Legal talks about compliance and defensibility. Leaders talk about performance and business outcomes. These perspectives are all correct, yet they often conflict. When they collide, compensation decisions lose clarity, employees feel confused, and manag...

Another conversation about pay transparency? We know what you are thinking, haven’t we already covered this?  But the truth is, 2025 changed everything. From a wave of new state laws in the U.S. to Canada and the EU rewriting the playbook, pay transparency has moved from policy talk to daily reality. With 2026 around the corner, the stakes are only getting higher.  In this episode of Comp and Coff...

At HR Tech 2025, AI stole the spotlight, but not everyone was convinced. Amid the hype and bold claims, HR and compensation professionals were asking tougher questions: What’s actually working? What’s just marketing? And how can AI really make their jobs easier? In this episode of Comp and Coffee, host Ruth Thomas sits down with Peh Keong Teh, Chief Product Officer at Payscale, Olivia Sedler, Prod...

In a year of tight budgets and increasing expectations of pay transparency, pay conversations are more critical than ever. Skipping, delaying, or diluting these conversations can erode trust and leave employees disengaged. In this episode of Comp and Coffee, host Ruth Thomas is joined by Payscale leaders to explore the “compensation telephone game,” share how HR trains managers to deliver clear me...

Pay transparency laws are forcing the conversation—but alignment is what makes it stick.  When it comes to pay transparency, HR, Legal, and leadership often speak in different “dialects.” HR frames it around equity and structure, Legal around compliance and risk, and leadership around outcomes and cost. The challenge? These perspectives rarely align into a shared understanding that employees can t...

Salary budgets are tightening — but strategy doesn’t have to.  Payscale’s 10th Annual Salary Budget Survey reveals that planned pay increases for 2026 are dipping slightly from 2025, with economic uncertainty replacing competition for talent as the top driver of budget changes. But even in a cooling pay environment, HR and comp pros have a window to realign strategy before Q4 — if they have the ri...

Fair pay means nothing if no one believes it. That’s the wake-up call from Payscale’s latest Fair Pay Impact Report. Despite rising wages, transparency laws, and improved market conditions, employees don’t believe they’re being paid fairly—and it’s costing businesses their best people. In this episode of Comp and Coffee, host Ruth Thomas is joined by Lexi Clarke and Kate Peter—three women in the C...