The mechanics
The shape
Every band, drawn to scale. Paste a roster below and your people appear on it.
What the move costs
Current structure against proposed, and the bill for getting there.
The bands
Name the grades and this becomes the table you circulate.
| Grade | Minimum | Midpoint | Maximum | Spread | Progression | Overlap with prior | Headcount | Median pay | Compa |
|---|
What the structure is doing
The things that only show up once the whole thing is drawn.
Where you sit against market
Put in the market midpoint you trust for each grade. Survey median, a benchmark you bought, your own accepted offers. Leave a grade blank and it is skipped.
| Grade | Your midpoint | Market midpoint | You vs market | To hit target |
|---|
Your people on it
Optional. Nothing you paste leaves this page.
One person per line. The short form is grade, salary or name, grade, salary. Paste a header row and it reads your column names instead, so Name, Level, Base Pay, Department, Rating works as it comes out of the system. A group column unlocks the group comparison, a rating column drives the merit matrix. Tabs or commas both work, and formatted currency is handled.
| Grade | Headcount | Median pay | Median compa | Range penetration | Below min | Above max | Where they sit |
|---|
Range penetration is where the median person sits between the floor and the ceiling of their own band. Zero percent is on the minimum, one hundred is on the maximum. It answers a question compa-ratio cannot: how much room is left.
No people on the structure yet
Paste a roster and every grade gets a line here: how many people, what they earn, and how much room they have left inside their own band.
Where everyone sits
Band position, from below the floor to above the ceiling. The middle two segments are the people your structure is actually built for.
Compa-ratio distribution
Every person against their own grade midpoint. The lit bars are the people your structure is built for. The red ones are outside their band entirely.
| Person ▲▼ | Grade ▲▼ | Pay ▲▼ | Compa ▲▼ | Flag ▲▼ | Cost to fix ▲▼ |
|---|
Nothing to look at yet
Paste a roster and anyone below their minimum, above their maximum, or sitting at a compa-ratio that will not survive a review shows up here, priced.
| Group | People | Median pay | Median compa | Gap vs largest group |
|---|
Compa-ratio is the fairer comparison of the two, because it measures each person against their own grade midpoint rather than against everyone else's pay. A median pay gap can be entirely explained by which grades a group happens to sit in. A compa gap cannot.
Add a group column to compare
Include a fourth column in your paste, such as department, location, or job family, and this compares median pay and median compa-ratio across those groups.
What it costs
The same structure, priced. These are the numbers a finance partner will ask for before they ask anything else.
Model the increase
The matrix every comp cycle runs on. Higher performance pays more, and people already high in their band get less of it, because the band is the constraint.
| Performance | Under 0.90 low in band | 0.90 to 1.00 | 1.00 to 1.10 | Over 1.10 high in band |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Exceptional | ||||
| Strong | ||||
| Solid | ||||
| Developing |
Cells are the increase percent. Columns are where a person already sits against their own grade midpoint. If you do not carry performance ratings, leave the rows alone and read the middle two.
What each person gets
Applied to the roster you pasted, with the band checked afterwards.
| Person | Grade | Pay now | Increase | New pay | New compa | Note |
|---|
The matrix needs people to spend on
Paste a roster and this prices the matrix against your actual population, tells you what it costs as a percent of payroll, and flags anyone the increase would push out of their band.
Show your work
Bring the arithmetic, not just the table.
How grade 4 is built
Every grade is derived the same way. Change the mechanics above and this follows.
- Bottom grade midpoint0
- Compounded across steps1.000
- Midpoint0
- Spread0%
- Minimum, midpoint ÷ (1 + spread ÷ 2)0
- Maximum, minimum × (1 + spread)0
Conventions used, because they are not universal. Range spread is (max − min) ÷ min. Midpoint is the arithmetic mean of min and max. Overlap is (lower max − upper min) ÷ (lower max − lower min). Compa-ratio is salary ÷ midpoint of that grade. Band penetration is (salary − min) ÷ (max − min).
Worth knowing: where spreads are equal, that overlap formula reduces to 1 − progression ÷ spread. Overlap is not a dial you set. It is the consequence of the two you did set, which is why it moves every time you touch either one.
Where this lands in an actual conversation.
Three ways this changes something. Pick one. Do not open with all three.
Cost the floor before anyone asks you to
If people sit below their own minimum, that is a number with a date on it. Bring it forward with the fix priced, and it is a plan. Wait, and it is a finding.
Check that a promotion actually pays
Take your two most common promotions and run the midpoint-to-midpoint number. If the step is smaller than what a strong performer gets for staying put, the promotion is a title change and your managers already know it.
Fix the structure, not the exceptions
Every off-cycle adjustment you approve is the structure telling you something. If you are making the same exception repeatedly, the band is wrong, not the person.