Members of Mercer Select may request that Mercer’s Information Research Center (IRC) undertake customized research (for an additional research charge). Members may submit a request via the Request Form . A researcher will contact the Select member to discuss and confirm the request and the charges associated with the request.

Mercer’s IRC is a comprehensive resource center for information on employee benefits, compensation, and human resource issues. Skilled information professionals use a variety of services, online databases, statistical and survey data, and an extensive collection of periodicals to research questions related to retirement, health and welfare, performance, and other human resource issues.

Services

The IRC’s experienced research staff can assist you with your information needs, including obtaining articles from newspapers and journals, researching HR and employee benefit trends, and providing customized research on specific topics. The IRC does not provide legal or other consulting advice or services.

• Document retrieval: The IRC provides copies of full-text articles from newspapers, trade publications, academic journals, and other sources.

-          Examples: Articles from Business Week, Fortune, Harvard Business Review, etc...

• Benchmark data: The IRC maintains an extensive collection of surveys with prevalence and benchmark data on HR policies and practices as well as the full range of traditional and non-traditional employee benefits.

-          Examples: Prevalence of defined benefit plans, wellness programs; average salary increase projections; average turnover rates

• Custom research: The IRC conducts literature searches, extracts survey data, and accesses proprietary resources to respond to inquiries on a full range of employee benefit, HR, and business topics.

-          Examples: Adoption benefits, 401(k) automatic enrollment, and HR outsourcing trends

Resources

• Information professionals: The IRC’s information professionals have expertise in retirement, health, HR issues, and business research.

• Proprietary resources: The IRC has contracts with numerous service providers and vendors to share articles and reports. The resources provide full-text access to thousands of publications including newspapers, journals, and benefits, compensation, and HR magazines.

• Data: The IRC collection includes hundreds of surveys on employee benefits and HR policies and practices. Data can be extracted from these sources to benchmark trends and provide prevalence data.

Charges

The charges for Select research will depend on the nature of the request and the time and resources required to conduct the research, including any additional fees to obtain copyright permissions. Researchers will provide charge estimates before responding to requests.

Contact us

To learn more about Select research services or to submit a request, use the Research Request Form. Researchers are available weekdays from 8:30am to 5:30pm eastern.