Beyond the mirror
lumi shows you where you stand and stops there, on purpose. Some questions have no benchmark to look into yet. Others have one, and still need somebody to make the call.
Where the mirror stops.
Two kinds of question the platform is not built to answer — and both of them still need answering.
There is no benchmark to look into.
Specialised roles, a market that is only a few years old, or a sector whose organisations have never had a structured way to compare notes. The data does not exist yet, so somebody has to build it.
The data is in, and nobody will make the call.
lumi cites the figure and leaves the decision alone — that is the rule it is built on. A decision needs someone who will say what they would do, and put their name next to it.
A benchmark nobody has built is not a gap in your knowledge. It is a gap in the market.
Looking for pay data? lumi's own panel deliberately excludes base pay — it benchmarks everything else in reward. Salary and pay-level benchmarking is run here instead, as standalone consultancy work, outside the platform.
Bespoke forums & surveys
Pay and reward intelligence for a sector that does not have any yet — built from scratch, and run to the same standards as lumi's own panel.
Ongoing
Bespoke forums
A sector benchmark built around a founding cohort, running to a shared survey and reporting cycle round after round.
- Format
- A standing member group
- Cadence
- Recurring survey rounds
- Includes
- Forum governance
Example — the Offshore Wind Reward Forum, built for UK offshore wind O&M roles with a founding cohort of operators.
Single round
One-off pay benchmarks
One closed pay survey for a defined group of organisations who want a clean read on where they sit now, without standing anything up.
- Format
- A closed cohort, one round
- Cadence
- One survey, one report
- Includes
- A results session
Best for — a group that wants the number this year, and will decide about a standing forum after they have seen one.
How a forum comes together.
Five things, in this order. The fifth is the one that decides whether a forum is still running at round three.
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1
Scoping
Which roles, and which organisations, the benchmark needs to hold to be worth reading — then bringing that cohort together.
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2
Survey design
A submission template mapped to each member's own grading structure, rather than a one-size-fits-all form nobody can answer.
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3
Validation
Every return checked and queried before it enters the data, so the report holds up when somebody pushes back on it.
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4
Reporting
A members' report with suppressed, comparable results — and a session to walk the cohort through what it says.
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5
Governance
How the forum runs, how confidentiality is handled, and how the survey is allowed to change between rounds.
Forums only
Bespoke sector. Same standards.
The cohort and the questions are built for you. How the data is handled is not up for negotiation — it is lumi's own method, on a smaller pool.
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One definition
Every organisation answers the same question, mapped onto its own grades — not a generic form filled in seven different ways.
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Checked before it counts
Every return is validated and queried with the member who sent it, before it goes anywhere near a median.
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An agreed effective date
One date the whole cohort reports to, so a round compares like with like instead of averaging twelve months of drift.
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Nothing below five
When fewer than five organisations answered a question, the whole card is hidden — on screen, in the report, and in the slides that come out of it.
Reward consultancy
An outside view on your own reward position, grounded in data — and willing to make the call lumi will not.
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Pay and grading structure
Whether the framework you are running still fits the organisation you have become — and what it would take to move it.
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Incentive and allowance design
Bonus, commission, shift and offshore premiums, flexibility payments — built around the behaviour you are paying for.
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Market positioning
What “on market” should mean for your organisation, argued out — not a percentile handed over without a view.
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Reward governance
The policies and the process that keep pay decisions consistent, explainable, and defensible a year later.
Where lumi shows the data, this is somebody sitting with it — drawing on the panel where it is relevant, and on sector surveys, published data and direct market intelligence where it is not.
Consultancy is quoted per engagement and is not part of the lumi platform membership, which is quoted separately — talk to us about either. Who runs it, and what lumi will and will not claim, is on the about page.
Not sure which one you need?
Tell us what you are trying to work out — a sector-wide benchmark, a one-off pay read, or an outside view on your own position — and we will point you the right way.
Book a call