Set Pay by Structure, Not by Negotiation
Most growing businesses set a salary by what the last candidate asked for. Within two years nobody can explain why two people in the same role earn different amounts. We benchmark your roles against the market in your city, build pay bands and grades, and write the increment policy so it applies the same way every time.
What is compensation benchmarking and salary structures?
Compensation benchmarking compares what you pay for each role with what the market pays for the same role in the same city. The result is a set of pay bands and grades, a written increment policy and a list of roles paid outside the band, so offers and revisions follow a structure instead of whoever negotiated hardest.
The starting point
When businesses ask us for this
- Every offer is a negotiation, so the person who bargains hardest earns more than the person who does the same job better.
- Two people in the same role have different salaries and neither you nor your managers can say why in one sentence.
- A good employee resigned for a competitor's offer, and you found out afterwards that you were paying them well below what that role now costs.
- You gave a large increase to keep one person and heard within a month that everyone else knew.
- Freshers are earning close to people with three years' experience because every new hire was priced at the market and nobody was brought up to it.
- Increments are decided in March by whoever is in the room, with no rule for what a strong year should earn.
- You cannot say what a new hire in a role may be offered without asking the founder.
- You are about to add a second city and do not know whether to pay the same salary there.
What the work covers
GullyHR benchmarks the roles you hire and pay for, against the market in the cities where you hire. We build the grade structure and the pay band for each grade, place every current employee in it, show who sits outside the band and what closing the gap would cost, and write the increment policy. Where your pay is already sensible we say so. You decide where in the market you want to sit, which gaps to close now and which to phase, and what you can afford. This is a defined consulting engagement, not an ongoing pay-administration service.
Roles are benchmarked by city, not by national average.
A salary for the same role differs between Bengaluru, Pune and a tier-two town. We benchmark each role in the city where you hire for it, state the source of each figure and how much data sits behind it, and mark the roles where there is too little data to benchmark honestly.
Grades and bands replace case-by-case pricing.
Roles are grouped into grades by the size of the job, not by title. Each grade gets a band with a minimum, a midpoint and a maximum. A new hire is offered inside the band, and a manager can see how much room an employee has before they hit the top.
Everyone is placed against the band, and the outliers are listed.
We place every current employee in their grade and show who is below the minimum, who is above the maximum and who has been at the top for years. Each outlier comes with the cost of correcting it and a suggested way to phase it.
The increment policy is written down.
What an increment is based on, when it is decided, how a promotion differs from a revision and what happens to someone at the top of the band. The policy is short enough that a manager can read it before a review conversation.
Benefits are reviewed, not just salary.
Fixed and variable pay, allowances, insurance, leave and the statutory components are looked at together, so you can see what a role actually costs and what the employee actually receives. Statutory treatment is confirmed with a qualified professional.
The structure is built to survive the next hire.
Offer approval limits, a route for exceptions and a yearly review date are set, so the structure stays current instead of becoming the next thing nobody trusts.
The process
How it runs
Record the starting point
We take your current salary data, the offers made in the last year and the pay-related reasons given in exits. This is the baseline every later report compares against.
Define the roles and group them into grades
We agree the list of roles to benchmark, group them by the size of the job and settle the number of grades the business needs now, not the number a larger company has.
Benchmark each role in its city
For each role we gather market data for the city where you hire, state where each figure comes from and how many data points sit behind it, and flag the roles with too little data.
Choose where you want to sit
We show what it costs to pay at, above or below the market midpoint for each grade. You decide the position for each grade, and the reason is written down.
Build the bands and place everyone
Minimum, midpoint and maximum for each grade, with every employee placed. We list the people outside the band and the cost of bringing each into it.
Write the increment policy and the benefits review
The rule for revisions and promotions, the approval limits for offers and exceptions, and a review of fixed, variable and statutory components.
Hand over and set the review date
The structure goes into your records and, if you use it, the GullyHR platform. A yearly review date is fixed so the bands are refreshed before they age.
What you receive
- A benchmark for each role, by city, with the source and the number of data points shown beside each figure.
- A grade structure that groups your roles by the size of the job.
- A pay band for each grade: minimum, midpoint and maximum.
- A placement of every employee against the band, with those below the minimum and above the maximum listed.
- A costed plan for closing the gaps, with a suggested phasing for you to accept or change.
- A written increment and promotion policy.
- Offer approval limits and a route for exceptions.
- A benefits and statutory components review, for confirmation with a qualified professional.
Who it is for
- Founder-led businesses where every salary was agreed one at a time and nobody can describe the logic.
- Companies that have lost people to better offers and want to know where they actually stand.
- Businesses opening a second city or a plant, where the same role will be paid differently.
- Teams about to hire a senior layer or a batch of fresh graduates and unsure what to offer.
- Companies preparing for a funding round, a due-diligence review or an audit, where pay needs to be explained.
- Businesses that have just introduced grades or levels and need a pay structure that matches them.
Why GullyHR.
Pay structure only holds if the processes around it hold. GullyHR writes the job descriptions the grades depend on, sets the offer approval route in the hiring process, configures grades and bands in the HR system so payroll inputs follow them, and links the increment policy to the review cycle. The same team that benchmarks a role also knows what the role actually does in your business, because we have already written it down.
Design the process
Map how the work runs today, then write the procedure, the forms and the approval route it should follow.
Strengthen management
Settle the structure, the roles and the decisions each level can take without the owner.
Develop people
Train the managers who have to run it — the review, the difficult conversation, the handover.
Automate HR
Configure the agreed process in software, so the document and what people actually do stay the same thing.
The difference
What changes
- Offers are made inside a band the hiring manager can read, without a call to the founder.
- You can explain why two people in the same role earn what they earn.
- Pay-related exits are understood: you know which roles are below market and which are not.
- Increments follow a written rule, so the conversation with the employee is about their year and not about the budget.
- The cost of closing pay gaps is a number you decided to accept, not a surprise.
How we are measured
Before work starts, we record where you stand. Every later report compares against that baseline.
We choose the measures with you at the start, from the list on this page, and only the ones your data can support. We do not promise a result. We promise a baseline, and a report that shows the change against it, whichever way it went.
This engagement is measured on
- Share of roles paid within their band
- Offer acceptance rate
- Pay-related exits, as recorded in exit interviews
The measures we choose from
Time-to-hire
Days from approved vacancy to accepted offer.
90-day attrition
New joiners who leave in their first three months.
Annual attrition
Leavers over the year, by team and by manager.
Payroll and statutory errors per month
Corrections after the run, and returns filed late.
Open compliance gaps
Obligations without an owner or a due date.
Employees with written goals
Share of the team that knows what it is measured on.
Review completion rate
Reviews finished on time, not just started.
Manager training coverage
Managers who have been taught the part of the job they were promoted into.
Ways to engage us
- Pay position check
- A short look at where you stand: a handful of key roles benchmarked, a first view of who is outside a sensible range and a recommended next step. Useful before a large hiring plan or a retention conversation.
- Salary structure project
- The defined project: benchmarks, grades, bands, employee placement, increment policy and benefits review, delivered as documents and a walk-through with your senior team.
- Structure with performance and incentives
- The pay structure built alongside goal setting and incentive design, so what you reward matches what you measure.
- Yearly refresh
- A smaller piece of work each year to update the benchmarks, re-place employees and adjust the bands before the increment cycle.
Good to know
Questions we are asked
It is comparing what you pay for each role with what the market pays for that role in the same city, and using the comparison to build pay bands and a written increment policy. The point is to replace one-off negotiations with a structure you can explain.
We use published salary surveys, current job-market data and your own offers and exits, and we show the source and the number of data points beside each figure. Where there is too little data to benchmark a role honestly, we say so instead of producing a number.
We show what each choice costs and where it puts you against the market. You decide where to sit for each grade. The decision and the reason are written down so the next person can see why.
Yes. The same role pays differently in Bengaluru and in a smaller town, so each role is benchmarked in the city where you hire for it. If you hire remotely, we agree with you which market sets the price.
Then the report says so. A benchmark that finds nothing wrong is still useful, because it gives you a structure and a policy you did not have in writing, and a baseline for next year.
We review the components of pay and benefits together so you can see what a role costs. The statutory treatment depends on your establishment and state, so we recommend you confirm it with a qualified professional, and we coordinate that if you want us to.
Compensation and rewards strategy covers the principles: how you want to pay and reward. Benchmarking starts from market data, role by role and city by city, and ends in bands and a policy. Many businesses do the strategy first. Some start here because they have a specific problem.
It depends on the number of roles and cities. We agree the scope after a first conversation and give you a timeline in writing before work starts.
No. The structure works in a spreadsheet. If you run the GullyHR platform, grades and bands are configured in the system so payroll inputs and offers follow them.
Prefer to talk first? +91 80958 58589 · hello@gullyhr.com