How to benchmark a salary with public data in under an hour
Most pay decisions in UK SMEs are made by asking a recruiter, glancing at two job boards, or copying what the last person earned. There is a better way, it is free, and most people have never opened it. Here is the exact method.
Step 1: turn the job title into a SOC code
The Office for National Statistics classifies every UK job under the Standard Occupational Classification. Find your role's code with the ONS occupation coding tool. Search the actual duties, not the title on the contract, because titles flatter and duties do not.
The trap to avoid: always work from SOC 2020, not the older SOC 2010. The codes were renumbered between versions and some mean entirely different jobs. Code 1171 in SOC 2020 is health services and public health managers and directors. The same number in SOC 2010 was officers in the armed forces. Quote the wrong vintage and your benchmark is about the wrong profession.
Step 2: pull the percentiles from ASHE
The Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings is the most robust pay dataset in the country, built from employer payroll returns rather than self-reporting. Download the occupation tables, find your SOC code, and take three numbers for full-time employees: the 25th percentile, the median and the 75th percentile.
A worked example from a real engagement: for SOC 2020 code 1171, the 2025 provisional figures show a full-time median of £61,573 and a 75th percentile of £80,002. Two numbers, sourced, in about ten minutes.
Check whether the release you are reading is provisional or revised, and say which in your write-up. The revision matters less than knowing which one you quoted.
Step 3: triangulate with sector scales and live evidence
ASHE tells you the national shape of the market. It does not know your sector or your size. Add two more sources:
- Published pay scales for your sector, if they exist. NHS Agenda for Change, local government scales, charity frameworks and university grades are all public. If your role maps to one, it is the strongest anchor you can cite.
- Three to five live job adverts for genuinely comparable roles, same accountability, similar size of organisation, roughly your region. Record the advertised ranges and the dates. This is your evidence of the market this quarter, not last year.
Three independent source types, one page of notes. That is triangulation, and it is what separates a defensible number from an opinion.
Step 4: write the range, and the reason
Now write two sentences. The first states the range. The second states where in the range this person or hire should sit, and why: experience against the role, sector premium or discount, what the organisation can sustain. If you cannot write the second sentence, you do not have a recommendation yet, you have a spreadsheet.
Where this method runs out
Honest limits: small-sample SOC codes get suppressed or wobbly at the percentiles, London weighting can swamp a national median, and ASHE measures base pay while your competitor might be paying in bonus and car allowance. For most roles, in most SMEs, the hour of work above still beats anything a generalist recruiter will tell you for free.
When the role is board-level, contested, or about to be published under a transparency requirement, that is when the free method needs reinforcing with judgement, wider sources and footnotes that survive scrutiny. That is exactly what a Payband Benchmark is: £750, fixed, one page, five working days.