Pay grades and fair increments in E-commerce and D2C brands

In November a D2C founder opens the salary sheet. A picker earns the same as a catalogue executive who joined a year later. A performance marketer hired in a hurry for the sale earns more than the category lead. Nobody planned it. Each offer was settled on the day, to close a vacancy before the sale.

That is how most online brands arrive at pay. Grades fix this. A grade is a named step with a width of pay, a short description of the work, and a rule for who moves up. What follows builds a ladder for a brand with a packing floor, a support desk, a growth team and a few remote staff.

• Warehouse and desk jobs sit in the same sheet but are paid by very different markets.
• Sale-week hires come in at higher offers than people who carried the last sale.
• A good picker is moved to dispatch with no change in pay band.
• Remote performance marketers see each other's offers on job boards.
• Support agents on the night queue get a shift allowance that was never written down.
• Promotions happen when somebody threatens to resign.

Before any grade, group the roles by the work they do. Four families cover most D2C brands.

1. 1

   Fulfilment

   Inward receiving and GRN, putaway, pick, pack, QC desk, labelling, manifest and handover to the courier. Shift lead, then warehouse executive above them.

2. 2

   Customer experience

   L1 and L2 agents, an escalation desk for RTO and NDR cases, a refunds clerk and a quality auditor who samples tickets.

3. 3

   Growth and brand

   Performance marketer, creative editor, social executive, CRM executive, marketplace manager.

4. 4

   Catalogue and operations

   Catalogue executive, merchandiser, category manager, inventory planner and the Shopify or marketplace ops person.

Name the grades by the work, not by the title. A picker and packer is Fulfilment 1. The person who runs a shift, reconciles the manifest and signs the cycle count is Fulfilment 3. Write one paragraph for each grade that says what the person decides alone, what they hand up, and what tools they use. Keep the paragraphs plain. Use the ideas in role design for fashion D2C teams when you write them.

Each band runs from a floor up to a ceiling. Collect what comparable brands pay in your city for each grade. The compensation benchmarking service explains how to gather such data fairly. Then set a midpoint. New hires usually join below the midpoint. Experienced people sit near it. The ceiling is for those who have mastered the grade and stay there. Overlap neighbouring bands a little so that a strong Fulfilment 2 can earn near a weak Fulfilment 3.

Treat variable pay on its own track. Picker incentives tied to pick rate and accuracy, support incentives tied to CSAT and first contact resolution, and marketer bonuses tied to ROAS are separate from the band. Keep the fixed band readable without them.

The pick-pack floor earns by accuracy as much as speed. A wrong SKU shipped means a return, a reverse pickup and an RTO that the courier bills twice. So the Fulfilment 2 band should lean on mis-pick rate, not units per hour alone. Night packing teams on a cut-off before the evening courier run get a shift premium, kept as a separate line.

The support desk is graded on handle time, reopen rate, CSAT and the ability to settle an NDR or a refund dispute without a supervisor. A senior agent who coaches new joiners on the macro library and the escalation matrix is doing Customer Experience 3 work. Pay her for it.

Growth roles are measured on ROAS, CAC and creative turnaround. Catalogue roles are measured on listing accuracy, image rejections from the marketplace and the speed at which new SKUs go live before a drop.

1. 1

   Fix a review calendar

   Choose one review date for the fixed pay, away from the sale season. Run a small review after the peak for the sale-time hires.

2. 2

   Judge against the grade

   Ask whether the person did the work of the grade at the standard the grade describes. Use evidence: mis-pick counts, ticket audits, marketplace rejection logs, campaign reports and cycle count variances. See performance reviews for subscription teams for a way to keep it light.

3. 3

   Hold three kinds of increase apart

   One is a promotion into the next grade. One is growth within a band. One is a market adjustment. Give each a rule and an approver.

4. 4

   Show people where they sit

   Tell each person the grade and position in the band, not the other people's pay. Explain what they must do to move.

5. 5

   Keep a log of exceptions

   Anyone paid above or below the band is entered with the reason, the approver and a revisit date.

The hub page for e-commerce and D2C brands shows more patterns in this sector.