Draft:Croner Company

The Croner Company is an American professional services and management consulting company that provides compensation-related strategies, solutions, and survey data to corporations, grantmaking organizations, and nonprofits.: The firm was established in 1978 and bases its operations in San Rafael, California.

The Croner Company's current services include
 * Compensation, incentive, and equity plan structure and design
 * Pay equity and geographic differential analyses
 * Annual sector-specific compensation benchmarking surveys and reports

Clients served by The Croner Company include organizations at all stages of growth, ranging from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies, in the entertainment, digital/online services, software game development, animation and special effects, as well as philanthropic organizations and non-profits.

History
Mel Croner and J. P. "Pete" Culver, who had partnered together at Arthur Young & Company (now Ernst & Young), launched The Croner Company in 1977. The new firm focused on providing strategic management, organizational design, and compensation advisory services for the financial services, real estate, and healthcare sectors. The original headquarters office was in San Rafael, California. The company's first client was California Vision Service Plan.

In 1982, The Croner Company conducted its first compensation benchmarking survey. This survey, sponsored by the Northern California Hospital Council (NCHC), analyzed and reported on hospital-based physician pay in the region. Other notable clients who received compensation advisory services from The Croner Company in the first few decades of the company's operations included Broderbund and Industrial Light & Magic.

The Croner Company relocated to an office in Kentfield, California. in 1985. In 1989, Hali Croner joined The Croner Company. She became President and CEO in 1998.

In 2016, The Croner Company acquired the Lasnik-Broida Compensation Survey of Foundations from its founder, Elaine Lasnik-Broida. The acquisition provided The Croner Company with a means to expand its compensation consulting services to grantmaking organizations.

The Croner Company moved its headquarters office to a new San Rafael location in December, 2019.

Compensation Benchmarking Surveys
In 1989, Hali Croner launched the company's first compensation benchmarking survey, the Croner Software Games Survey, in collaboration with leading software games companies in the United States. An international version of this survey was launched in 2007. The Digital Content and Technology Survey was first conducted in 1996 to provide benchmarking data for emerging job functions in internet-related commerce and technology.

In 2002, The Croner Company initiated a partnership to conduct two compensation surveys for Content & Connectivity Human Resources (a.k.a. "C2HR," formerly "CTHRA"). The first of these two annual surveys analyzes pay, amenities, and a wide range of compensation factors for content development jobs in the digital, media and entertainment industry. The second survey analyzes similar for compensation data connectivity provider companies in the cable, satellite and telecommunications industries.

The Croner Company also began conducting annual compensation surveys for sectors including animation and special effects (beginning in 1994) ; entertainment (beginning in 2013) ; and local media companies that broadcast content and sell local advertising for cable, television, and radio (beginning in 2013).

Compensation Consulting Services
Since its founding, The Croner Company has provided a wide range of consulting services regarding compensation and pay practices. The firm's services are provided to corporate corporate clients as well as grantmaking and non-profit organizations.

Emerging Compensation Topics
The Croner Company has responded to several emergent issues in the 2020s that affect corporate, grantmaking, and non-profit organization compensation strategies:
 * The "#metoo" and "Black Lives Matter" social movements are among many factors that increased corporate emphasis on diversity, equity and inclusion ("DEI") since at least 2020. In response to this emphasis, the Croner Company has developed pay equity analysis tools and strategies for organizations for numerous clients.
 * Also since 2020, primarily in response to the COVID-19 epidemic and other factors that have disrupted work location policies and practices, The Croner Company has conducted custom surveys and created tools and strategies for clients to help them establish geographic pay differentials and adopt hybrid work location strategies.
 * Pay transparency laws in many U.S. states and municipalities have disrupted compensation standard practices and driven a need for consulting services from service providers like The Croner Company to help corporations adopt and revise hiring and pay strategies.