Review Employee Compensation

Flow · 7 controlled steps

1. 01

   Charter the compensation review

   Define the question, scope, authority, and evidence before examining an outcome.

   • — Classify the trigger as regular cycle, role change, market signal, retention concern, employee or manager request, internal relationship, data issue, or qualified equity review.
   • — Define employee or population, components, effective period, decision deadline, budget context, and downstream owner.
   • — Name data, compensation, finance, architecture, payroll, equity, benefits, employment, labor, tax, and other required owners.
   • — Set confidentiality, privilege, access, and communication boundaries.

   Responsible

   Compensation partner or People partner

   Output

   Compensation Review Charter

   Decision

   Is this a valid compensation review with sufficient scope and authority?

2. 02

   Verify work, structure, and employment context

   Anchor the review to approved work and current conditions.

   • — Verify current role profile, family, track, level, title, position, manager, location, schedule, employment type, and effective dates.
   • — Compare actual work with the approved mapping and identify material drift.
   • — Confirm applicable salary range, incentive plan, equity framework, premiums, allowances, collective terms, and policies.
   • — Route role, classification, labor, or employment discrepancies to qualified owners rather than repairing them through pay.

   Responsible

   Compensation partner or People partner

   Output

   Verified Compensation Context

   Decision

   Is the work and structural foundation reliable enough for compensation review?

3. 03

   Verify compensation data and history

   Build one accurate component-level record before interpreting pay.

   • — Reconcile base pay, hourly rate, incentives, equity grants, premiums, allowances, and other included components with authoritative records.
   • — Capture effective dates, currency, work percentage, location basis, schedule, grant terms, prior decisions, and approved exceptions.
   • — Keep cash, incentive, equity, benefits references, premiums, and working conditions separate.
   • — Correct data defects through source-system owners and document unresolved limitations.

   Responsible

   Compensation partner or People partner

   Output

   Verified Compensation History

   Decision

   Is the compensation record sufficiently accurate and comparable?

4. 04

   Analyze internal and market relationships

   Locate pay within the company’s intended structure and relevant labor context.

   • — Compare current pay with the applicable range, position-in-range logic, internal reference roles, relevant peers, recent decisions, and approved legitimate factors.
   • — Use current market evidence matched to actual work, level, talent market, geography, and data quality.
   • — Identify compression, inversion, out-of-range pay, geographic inconsistency, stale relationships, or structural issues.
   • — Describe evidence and limitations without treating market percentile as an automatic answer.

   Responsible

   Compensation partner or People partner

   Output

   Compensation Relationship Analysis

   Decision

   Which internal and external relationships are relevant and sufficiently supported?

5. 05

   Analyze contribution and legitimate factors

   Apply only authorized factors with evidence and consistent meaning.

   • — Identify which approved factors may affect pay for this decision type, such as sustained contribution, capability use, experience relevant to work, location, shift, certification, scarcity, or prior commitments.
   • — Use the authorized contribution review as an input without converting its conclusion mechanically into pay.
   • — Document how each factor is evidenced, interpreted, and applied in comparable cases.
   • — Identify missing, inconsistent, duplicative, or potentially inappropriate factors for qualified review.

   Responsible

   Compensation partner or People partner

   Output

   Compensation Factor Record

   Decision

   Which factors legitimately explain the current relationship or support consideration of change?

6. 06

   Test consistency, equity, affordability, and risk

   Evaluate the whole-system effects before proposing options.

   • — Review relevant comparison groups and unexplained differences using verified data and qualified methods.
   • — Test compression, inversion, precedent, range integrity, career relationships, retention exposure, affordability, budget timing, and multi-period effects.
   • — Identify employment, labor, transparency, discrimination, tax, equity, benefits, securities, payroll, or jurisdiction questions for qualified owners.
   • — Separate descriptive signals from causal or legal conclusions and preserve privilege where applicable.

   Responsible

   Compensation review owner

   Output

   Compensation Consistency and Risk Review

   Decision

   Which issues are supported, which remain uncertain, and which require qualified investigation?

7. 07

   Form options and hand off the analysis

   Present decision-ready alternatives without making or communicating the decision.

   • — Form no-change, correction, base adjustment, lump-sum, incentive, equity, premium, staged action, structural review, or other permitted options as applicable.
   • — For each option, document rationale, amount or method, timing, cost, internal effects, precedent, risks, conditions, and uncertainty.
   • — State the review owner’s recommendation where authorized and distinguish it from approval.
   • — Transfer the exact package to the compensation decision owner and record acceptance or returned gaps.

   Responsible

   Compensation review owner

   Output

   Compensation Review Record · Compensation Decision Intake

   Decision

   Is the package complete enough for an authorized compensation decision?

Connections

Seams · 11 hops within 2 steps

Upstream and downstream neighbourhood over public reference processes only. Each hop shows the trigger, carried objects, and what the receiving process loses if the producing step is skipped.

Roles

Systems + Data

Measures

Evidence + judgment

Draft reference standard. Requires qualified compensation, employment, labor, pay-equity, discrimination, classification, payroll, benefits, equity, securities, tax, finance, privacy, regulatory, and jurisdiction-specific review before deployment.