United Response

United Responsible is a charitable organisation. They provide a range of support services for adults and young people with learning disabilities, autism, mental health needs or physical disabilities. Mark Ospedale, Director of Corporate Services tells us about the organisation:

“We operate in the not-for-profit social care market, providing care and support to people across England & Wales. Our head office is in Wimbledon, London, but we have around 450 sites across England and Wales. As we support people in their homes it’s important to have a good level of coverage across the country.  We employ 3,500 people overall.

“The organisation has been operating for 47 years now and we signed up with Croner in 2019.”

Mark is experienced in benchmarking across the organisation, and previously utilised a variety of sources to do so. He fills us in on his method:

“It’s myself who looks after salary benchmarking for our employees. I’m looking to train more of our HR team to be able to assist with this, but ultimately it’s myself who presents the results to the board.

“I’m used to having an approach where, when it comes to benchmarking roles, I will have a variety of surveys at my disposal. I like an online approach, where I can make comparisons between roles, sectors, and locations.

“When I was doing this I was looking at a number of different providers for the surveys. I looked at Croner, but also a couple of competitors. What made me opt for Croner’s service in the end was the ability to upgrade and improve job evaluations which had fallen by the wayside a little bit. Your solution provided that—other providers didn’t.”

“The SalarySearch software is intuitive and easy to use. I find it incredibly useful. We signed up because we wanted our benchmarks to be as objective as possible, and SalarySearch helps us with that. It gives me broader information too, which I’ve not had before. This includes things like employee benefits, pensions, company cars, etc.

“Knowing the benchmark for inside and outside of London is also useful, as is the ability to switch locations and find the national average.

“One of the primary roles we benchmark for is support workers and social care workers. They’re obviously at the forefront of our organisation and need to be rewarded correctly. With so many employees across the country this can be tricky. One of the attractions of the Croner service is that we can always looks at different sectors and locations.

“As we work in the voluntary sector we’re well aware that we don’t have the same resources as an organisation in the private sector. However, it’s still good to compare, and SalarySearch allows us to do this.”

“What we really like about the system is that it lets us drill down into the specifics of each role, giving us an accurate benchmark for the roles we need. I’ve not got a single complaint about the service so far. The SalarySearch does exactly what it says on the tin, which is what we need.”