Comp and Coffee

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. Ve...

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 re...

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 c...

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 c...

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 t...

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 ke...

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 ...

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 compensatio...

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 late...

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...