Compensation benchmarking
Salary research against real market data for your roles, your industry and your region, rather than a national average that means nothing locally.
Compensation & job structure
As businesses grow, titles, responsibilities and compensation drift apart. Nobody decided it should be that way. It happened one offer, one counteroffer and one promotion at a time, and now it is hard to explain.
What this is for
None of these are decisions anyone made deliberately. They are what accumulates when every offer is negotiated on its own.
You paid market rate to get her in. The person who has been there four years finds out, and the conversation that follows is not really about money.
One runs a team and a budget. The other does not. Both are called Manager, so both expect to be paid like one.
You do not know what the role is worth, what the others earn, or what precedent you are setting. So the answer comes down to how the conversation feels.
You went above the range once to keep someone. That number is now the floor for everybody at that level, and nobody remembers why.
Clear roles. Thoughtful pay decisions. Better organizational structure.
What is covered
Brandi's full compensation and structure list, from the market data through to the org chart.
Salary research against real market data for your roles, your industry and your region, rather than a national average that means nothing locally.
What each role actually does, written properly. Everything else on this page depends on this being right first.
Roles grouped into levels so a title means the same thing across the business and a promotion means something specific.
A minimum, midpoint and maximum for each level, so every offer and raise has a defensible place to sit.
Whether a role is genuinely exempt under the rules rather than because it is salaried. The most expensive thing on this list to get wrong.
What has to be true for someone to move up, and what that move is worth, decided before the conversation rather than during it.
Variable pay tied to things people can actually influence, with the rules written down before the period starts.
Organisational charts, roles and responsibilities and career paths, so people can see the structure they sit inside.
How it works
Current roles, titles, pay and who reports to whom. Often the first useful output is simply seeing it all on one page.
Real salary data for your roles in your region, so the discussion is about numbers rather than impressions.
Levels, ranges and guidelines, with a plan for moving anyone who sits outside them. You decide the pace and the budget.
We do not set your pay. We give you the market data, the structure and the ranges, and you make the calls with the budget you actually have. A structure you cannot afford to implement is worse than none.
They understand that small businesses need HR solutions that are professional but also realistic and affordable.
They understand that every business is different. Their recommendations are specific to our company rather than generic HR answers.
They took our HR processes from scattered and reactive to organized and professional. We finally feel like we have a real HR department supporting us.
Questions
Published compensation survey data matched to your roles, your industry and your region. That regional part matters more than owners expect. A national average for a role can be well off what the same job pays in Houston, Beaumont or Baton Rouge, and paying to a national number is how businesses either overpay or lose candidates.
That happens, and it is useful to know even when it is uncomfortable. We do not expect anyone to fix it in one month. Usually it becomes a phased plan across a year or two, starting with the roles where the gap is widest or the flight risk is highest. You set the pace against your budget.
That is your call and there are reasonable arguments both ways. Some businesses publish ranges and find it reduces the number of speculative raise conversations. Others keep them internal and simply use them to make consistent decisions. We will talk through both, and note that some states now require ranges in job postings.
Job board postings tell you what people are advertising to attract candidates, which is not the same as what the role actually pays once someone is in it. They also skew high, skew recent and rarely match your scope. Survey data is matched to the real job.
Because it is the one on this list that costs money when it is wrong. Paying a salary does not make someone exempt. If a role has been classified incorrectly, unpaid overtime accrues over a period of years and applies to everyone in that role rather than one person.
Yes. A single role benchmark before you make an offer is a common and inexpensive way to work with us, and it is a much cheaper conversation than correcting the number a year later.
Twenty minutes, no pitch. Brandi will tell you what she would take on, what she would leave with you, and roughly what it costs. If you are not ready for us yet, she will say so.