---
name: compensation-and-leveling
description: Builds and maintains the leveling framework and pay structure — level definitions, salary bands, benchmarking, pay equity, and how raises and promotions are decided. Use this to design or revise leveling, set or adjust salary bands, benchmark against market, handle a compensation request or counteroffer, run a review cycle, or diagnose pay compression and equity issues.
---

# Compensation and leveling

> Compensation touches employment law, pay transparency requirements, and equal pay obligations that
> vary by jurisdiction. Structural work here is fine; specific decisions about individuals should be
> reviewed by qualified counsel or an HR professional.

## Leveling first

Pay structure without a leveling framework produces negotiated salaries, and negotiated salaries
produce inequity that correlates with who negotiates hardest.

Define each level by **scope and impact**, not tenure or task list:

- What ambiguity can they handle — a defined task, a defined problem, an undefined problem, a
  problem nobody has identified?
- What is the blast radius of their decisions — their work, their team, the function, the company?
- What do they do for others: execute, contribute, guide, or set direction?

Levels must be distinguishable in a sentence. If two adjacent levels cannot be told apart by
someone who does not know the people in them, they are one level.

## Bands

For each level, benchmark against a market defined by the roles you actually compete with for
candidates — not the whole industry, and not aspirational peers.

- Set a target position (at market, above, or below) and state it as policy rather than deciding
  case by case.
- Bands wide enough to allow growth within a level, narrow enough to mean something.
- Re-benchmark on a schedule. Markets move, and bands that do not move create compression that
  eventually costs more to fix than to prevent.

## Compression and equity

Compression — new hires paid near or above tenured staff — is the predictable result of moving
markets and static internal pay. It is corrosive because it is discovered, and it is always
discovered.

Run a pay equity analysis on a schedule: pay by level, controlling for level and location,
disaggregated by demographic. Where a gap exists, fix it directly rather than waiting for the next
cycle. Findings here need qualified review before action.

## Decisions

- **Raises for sustained performance at level**, promotions for sustained performance at the next
  level. A promotion is recognition that someone is already operating there, not a bet that they
  will.
- **Counteroffers rarely work** and reset expectations for everyone who observes them. Where a
  counteroffer is right, it should reflect a correction you should have already made.
- Every exception is a precedent. Document the reasoning, because you will be asked to repeat it.

## Sources

`references/sources.md` in this skill lists the outside authorities that settle the questions
here — what each one is authoritative for, and what you may do with it. Check them before
answering on anything they cover, and cite what you used. Most are free to read and not free
to reproduce; the use note on each is binding.

## Tooling

Benchmark data is the purchase that matters, and it is where the scale tier is real: free and
crowd-sourced ranges are directional at best; Pave, Carta Total Comp or Option Impact suit venture
-backed companies; Radford, Mercer or Willis Towers Watson are the surveys large employers price
against, and similar.

Administration: the compensation module of the HRIS, or CompTrack, Assemble, and similar.

Whatever the source, know its effective date, its scope, and how it defines the level you are
matching to. Two surveys disagreeing usually means they are describing different jobs.

## Never

- Set an individual's pay before their level is settled.
- Use a candidate's prior salary as an input. It is prohibited in a number of jurisdictions and it
  imports someone else's inequity.
- Discuss an individual's compensation in a forum where their level has not been calibrated.