Build Fair, Competitive and Sustainable Compensation
Most salaries in a growing business are set by negotiation, one candidate at a time, until nobody can explain the differences. We help you decide what each role is worth, build salary ranges around that decision, and give you rules for increments, incentives and promotions that hold up when questioned.
What is compensation and rewards strategy?
Compensation and rewards strategy is the set of decisions a business makes about how it pays people: where it wants to sit against the market, how roles are ranked and grouped into grades, what salary range applies to each grade, how much pay is fixed and how much depends on performance, and on what basis increments, incentives, promotions and recognition are awarded.
When businesses ask us for this
- Two people doing the same work are paid very differently, and the only honest reason is what each of them asked for at the interview.
- You matched a counter-offer to keep someone, word travelled, and now other people are asking why they should not do the same.
- Increment season arrives and you decide every number yourself, late in the evening, working from last year's figure and a general sense of who deserves what.
- A candidate declined your offer and you still cannot say whether the problem was the amount, the structure of it, or the level you placed the role at.
- The sales incentive is argued over every quarter, usually about whether a payout is due on the order, the delivery or the money actually collected.
- Someone was promoted, the designation changed, and nobody could say what was supposed to happen to their salary.
- Salary cost is climbing faster than revenue and you cannot see which function or which level is driving it.
- People resign citing pay, and you suspect that for at least some of them the real issue was that good work went unnoticed.
What the work covers
GullyHR works as your compensation consultant. We review how people are paid today, run the job evaluation with your leadership team, build the grade structure and salary ranges, design the variable pay, incentive, increment, promotion and recognition rules, and write all of it into documents your business owns. You provide the salary data and the business context, decide the market position you want to hold, confirm the budget and approve every number. Statutory aspects are flagged for confirmation with qualified professionals. This is a defined consulting project, with a shorter diagnostic and a monthly advisory arrangement available where they suit you better.
Your pay philosophy is settled before any number moves.
We put the ground rules on paper with you: the position you intend to hold against the market, how much of pay is fixed and how much is performance-linked, what justifies a difference between two people, and how openly the structure is shared.
Market reference is assembled from the sources actually available to you.
Published salary surveys, recruitment consultant quotes, the offers and counter-offers your own hiring has produced, and salary data from recent joiners and exits. We say what each source covers and where it is thin, rather than presenting one figure as the market rate.
Roles are evaluated on what the job carries, not on who holds it.
We agree evaluation factors that suit your business, such as decision-making, span, technical depth, commercial impact and consequence of error, then score every role against them in a facilitated session with your leadership team. The scoring is documented so it can be repeated.
Evaluated roles are grouped into a grade structure your managers can use.
Roles with similar evaluation scores sit in one grade, and each grade gets a plain description of what work at that level looks like. Existing designations are then mapped onto the grades, so a job title stops deciding pay by itself.
Every grade gets a salary range with a minimum, a midpoint and a maximum.
We build the ranges, place each current employee inside or outside them, and cost what correcting the outliers would take, in one step or staged across review cycles, so you are deciding against a budget rather than against a feeling.
Variable pay is defined by measure, timing and approver before it is offered.
Who is eligible, what the payout depends on, whether it is measured on company, department or individual result, when the result is declared final, when payment happens, and how joiners, leavers and part-year cases are treated.
Sales incentives are written so a payout can be settled from the document.
Target basis, payout slabs, ramp for new joiners, order against collection, credit for team and channel deals, caps and the clawback rule when an invoice is not realised. Worked examples are attached so the scheme reads clearly to the sales team.
The annual increment cycle runs on a stated basis, not case by case.
A budget approach, a matrix linking performance rating and position within the band to the increase, treatment of probation and part-year joiners, an exception route with a named approver, and a published cycle calendar managers can plan around.
Promotion and pay increase are separated, and both get criteria.
What must be true for a role change, the evidence expected, whether a vacancy or an expanded scope is required, who recommends and who approves, and how pay is treated on movement, including where a promotion carries no immediate increase.
Recognition is designed so appreciation does not rest on salary alone.
Award types, what each is given for, who nominates and who approves, how often it runs and what it costs. We also agree what recognition must not be used for, so it stays credible instead of becoming a rotation.
How it runs
Confidential data handover
Pay data is handled separately from the rest of the engagement. We agree who at your end shares the salary register, who at GullyHR sees it, and in what form, with masked employee identifiers where you prefer, before any analysis begins.
Current pay picture
Every employee is plotted against role, tenure and last performance rating. You see where pay differs without a reason you could state aloud: same-work gaps, joiners above long-serving staff, and people sitting well outside any sensible range.
Philosophy session
A working session with you, and with finance where relevant, to settle the market position you are paying to, the fixed and variable mix, and how much of the eventual structure will be shared with employees.
Job evaluation and grading
Roles are scored against the agreed factors in a facilitated session, grouped into grades, and given level descriptions. Designations are mapped afterwards, so a title change cannot quietly become a pay change.
Market reference
We assemble the salary references available for your roles, industry and city, note where each source is reliable and where it is not, and place your current pay against them for the roles that can be compared honestly.
Band design and costing
Ranges are built for each grade and every employee placed within them. Correction of the outliers is costed under a few options, immediate and staged, and taken to you with the budget implication of each.
Plan design and back-testing
The variable pay scheme, sales incentive, increment matrix, promotion guidelines and recognition programme are drafted, then run against last year's actual cases. Any rule that would have produced an outcome you would not have approved is changed.
Leadership sign-off and manager briefing
You approve the philosophy, the grades, the ranges, the plans and the cost. We then prepare and run the manager briefing: what is said, what is not said, and how to answer the questions that follow the announcement.
First cycle alongside
GullyHR stays with you through the first increment or incentive cycle run on the new framework, reviews the exceptions raised, and adjusts the rules that did not survive contact with real cases.
What you receive
- A written compensation philosophy note stating your market position, the fixed and variable mix, the internal parity rules and how much of the structure is published.
- A job evaluation record and grade structure: the factors used, each role's score, the resulting level, and every existing designation mapped to a grade.
- A salary band workbook holding the minimum, midpoint and maximum for each grade, current employee placement, the outlier list and the costed correction options.
- A salary structure template showing how cost to company (CTC) is broken into components, in a form your payroll can actually process.
- Variable pay and sales incentive plan documents with eligibility, measures, payout slabs, timing, caps, clawback and worked payout examples.
- An increment framework covering the budget approach, the rating and band-position matrix, the exception route and the cycle calendar.
- Promotion guidelines and a recognition programme outline, each with criteria, nomination and approval route, and pay treatment where it applies.
- A manager briefing pack and employee communication note carrying the questions managers will be asked and the answers agreed with you.
Who it is for
- Businesses where salaries were fixed by negotiation as people joined, and the differences can no longer be explained by role, grade or performance.
- Companies where funding, a large order or a new location has pushed hiring, and offers are being made without any reference range to work from.
- Owners who still decide every increment and every counter-offer personally, and want a basis their managers can apply without coming back to them.
- Sales-led businesses where the incentive scheme is renegotiated each quarter and payouts are disputed after the result is already banked.
- Companies with an HR team that runs payroll and appraisals well, but has no framework sitting behind the pay decisions those cycles produce.
- Businesses preparing for an investor discussion, a due diligence or a customer audit, where salary cost and structure will be examined.
Why GullyHR.
Compensation work fails where it meets real people. Drawing a band chart is the easy part; telling a long-serving employee why a new joiner sits above them is not. GullyHR builds the framework, costs the correction with your finance team, writes the increment and incentive rules, briefs the managers who will hold those conversations, and configures grades and bands in the GullyHR platform if you want them held there. The same team designs it and trains the people who run it.
What changes
- You can explain why two people are paid differently, and the explanation is the same one every time you give it.
- Increment season becomes a decision about budget and rating rather than a series of individual negotiations.
- An offer to a candidate is made against a range, so hiring at market rates stops disturbing the people already on the team.
- Your leadership team shares one view of what each level of work is worth to the business.
- Incentive payouts are settled from the scheme document instead of argued at the end of the quarter.
- Recognition reaches people for reasons everyone can see, so salary is not the only way you show appreciation.
Who does what
| Activity | GullyHR | Your team |
|---|---|---|
| Salary and employee data | Specifies the format needed, works on a restricted or masked extract, and returns analysis only to the people you nominate. | Provides the current salary register, appraisal ratings and incentive payout history, and decides who may see them. |
| Job evaluation | Proposes the factors, facilitates the scoring session and documents the result so it can be repeated for new roles. | Leadership and department heads attend the session and confirm what each role actually carries today. |
| Market reference | Assembles the available published and industry references and states the limits of each source. | Shares recent offers, counter-offers, consultant quotes and exit information from your own hiring. |
| Band cost and budget | Models the correction options and shows the cost of each against the current salary bill. | Finance confirms what the business can carry, and the owner decides the position to take. |
| Statutory treatment of pay components | Builds the structure with statutory components in mind and flags what needs confirmation. | Confirms treatment through your chartered accountant, labour consultant or advocate before implementation. |
| Announcement and letters | Prepares the manager briefing, the communication note and the revision letter formats, and runs the briefing. | Decides how much is published, issues the letters and holds the individual conversations. |
Where the software fits
The GullyHR platform can carry the framework once it is agreed. Grade, level and band sit against each employee record, salary revision history and letters stay in the document centre, performance ratings from the review cycle are available when increments are worked out, and salary cost can be reported by department, grade and location. Access to pay data is controlled by role, so a manager sees what the job needs without the register being open to everyone. Using the platform is optional. The framework is written to work with the HR and payroll system you run today.
Ways to engage us
- Compensation diagnostic
- A short review of how people are paid today, the internal parity picture, the salary cost trend and the state of your incentive schemes. Ends with a findings note and a recommended sequence, so you can decide what to fix first.
- Compensation structure project
- The full piece of work: philosophy, job evaluation, grades, salary bands, costed correction options and the salary structure template, delivered with the manager briefing and communication support.
- Incentive and increment design
- A bounded project for businesses whose structure is broadly settled but whose variable pay is not. Sales incentive scheme, bonus plan, increment matrix and promotion guidelines, back-tested against your own past cases.
- Appraisal cycle support
- GullyHR works alongside your team through one increment or appraisal cycle, sits in the moderation and exception discussions, and reviews what the framework produced against what you expected.
- Monthly advisory
- Ongoing access for offers, counter-offers, out-of-cycle requests and quarterly incentive questions, for owners who want a second view on pay decisions without a full-time HR head.
Questions we are asked
It is how a business decides what to pay and on what basis. It covers the market position you are paying to, the ranking and grading of roles, the salary range attached to each grade, the split between fixed and performance-linked pay, and the rules for increments, promotions and recognition.
Usually when pay differences can no longer be explained, when a counter-offer has unsettled a team, when increments are being decided one case at a time, or when hiring at current market rates has placed new joiners above existing staff. Incentive disputes and an unexplained rise in salary cost are the other common triggers.
We assess the current salary register against role and performance, your offer and increment letters, appraisal ratings, incentive schemes and payout history, any existing grade or designation list, and the salary cost trend. You receive the philosophy note, job evaluation record, grade structure, band workbook, plan documents, increment framework and briefing pack.
Yes. Where you have an HR manager or team, they run the analysis with us and own the framework afterwards, so the next new role can be evaluated without calling us back. The framework is documented to sit in whatever HR or payroll system you already use, and is configured in the GullyHR platform only if you want that.
After a consultation. We look at how many distinct roles need evaluating, whether more than one entity or location is involved, whether sales incentives and recognition are in scope, and what salary and appraisal data already exists. The proposal then states the workstreams, the artefacts you receive, who is involved from your side and the review points.
No. GullyHR does not publish salary figures. Benchmarking uses published surveys and industry sources available for your roles and city, the offers, counter-offers and consultant quotes your own hiring has generated, and salary information from recent joiners and exits. We state the limits of each source rather than presenting a single market rate.
It can, where correcting a clear internal gap is the right call, and it may not, where the problem is the structure of pay rather than its level. The band workbook shows the cost of each correction option before you commit, including staging it across review cycles, so the decision stays with you and your finance team.
Pay data is handled separately from the rest of the engagement. We agree who shares it, who at GullyHR sees it and in what form, with masked employee identifiers where you prefer. Analysis goes back only to the people you nominate, and confidentiality terms are signed before any register is shared.
That is your decision, and we help you take it deliberately. Some businesses publish the grade structure and the range, some publish only the grade, and some keep both with managers. We set out what each level of openness commits you to and write the communication for whichever you choose.
Yes. Sales incentive design is often taken as a standalone piece, particularly when quarterly payouts are being disputed. We work from your targets, sales cycle and collection reality, write the scheme with worked examples and a clawback rule, and test it against your previous year's actual deals before it is issued.
The structure is built with statutory components in mind and anything needing confirmation is flagged. Statutory interpretation, filings and legal opinion sit with qualified professionals, meaning your chartered accountant, labour consultant or advocate, and GullyHR coordinates with them where you want us to.
Not necessarily. Evaluation needs an accurate picture of what a role carries, and that can come from a working session with the people who manage it. Where job descriptions exist we use them, and where they are missing or outdated we capture the role content during evaluation, which you can turn into descriptions later.
Prefer to talk first? +91 80958 58589 · hello@gullyhr.com