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LEVELING
GUIDE
The following is intended to help you articulate
the various levels within your organization, share
the best steps for developing levels, and determine
the overlap between organizational levels and
compensation.
Why and how might you need or want to differentiate various levels
within your organization? Some levels are more commonly found from
organization to organization, and some are more specific to each unique
organization.
A brief note on Job Families: in HR circles, a Job Family will refer to
the group of jobs (all levels) within a specific function. For example: HR
Director, HR Manager, HR Generalist.
Purpose of Levels
•Clearly delineates each role within the organization.
•Specifies the authority (decision-making), level of responsibility, and typical knowledge, skills, abilities,
and experience afforded to each role.
•Creates a career path within a job family or across job families.
•Enables a fair and unified structure within and across functions.
Developing Levels
The amount and type of levels you define should depend on the size and the degree of hierarchy you’d
like to see in your organization. Are you basically a flat organization with few levels? Or are you a more
top-down organization?
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Common Levels and Their Role
These are meant to serve as guidelines to the typical roles you might find. Some organizations have
more involvement or inclusion than others, so the descriptions would be altered to represent the
appropriate level of participation. Additionally, some positions fall between each of the levels represented
below (Sr. Director, Sr. Manager, etc). This guide is intended to facilitate your conversations about each
of these roles.
LEVEL
CORE RESPONSIBILITY
C-Level
Develops organization-wide strategy
VP
Develops the strategy for the department and works
across teams to align functional strategies with other
functions to create an overall organizational strategy
Director
Develops the strategy for the function, supports
the development of a plan to operationalize or
implement the strategy
Manager
Develops the plan to operationalize or implement the
strategy; develops the day-to-day tactical plan
Supervisor
Oversees the day-to-day implementation and
execution
Individual Contributor
Carries out the day-to-day work
Advanced
Sometimes acts as a lead,
typically has higher level of skill,
certification, experience, etc
Proficient
Solid knowledge of how to
perform the daily work
Entry Level
Sometimes a training role,
learning the basics of the daily
work
Connecting Pay to Levels
Within a job family, pay may be connected to the levels by ensuring that each level falls in a separate
pay grade with a different pay range for each pay grade. The range midpoints should be at least 1015% apart, depending how many levels you have. For example, if you have VP, Manager, and Individual
contributor levels, the ranges should be further apart to allow for greater differentiation between the roles.
If your organization has every level listed above, and the ones in between as well, stick to the narrower
midpoint differentials.
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Across job families, positions in the same level may or may not fall in the same pay grade. This will
depend on a couple of factors: your philosophy of pay, organizational size, and technical nature of some
of your roles. Some organizations will decide that they want all their Managers in one pay grade, all their
Directors in another, and their VPs in a third. This can work in organizations that are either smaller, very
values-based, or whose primary product or purpose is not especially technical in nature.
Deciding to place positions within the same level into different pay grades should be based primarily
on the market value for the position, as well as the internal value. Market pay will differ by function,
with more technical positions typically receiving higher values. Science, Engineering, Medical, IT,
and sometimes Finance Directors are typically found in higher pay grades than HR or Administrative
Directors, for example.
Process for Developing or Articulating Clear Levels
1. Decide that you want to examine or develop the structure of your positions relative to one another.
Gain support from your execs and put together a cross-functional project team (if appropriate).
2. Determine how many levels you need within each job family, and try to normalize across all job
families.
3. Articulate the differences between each level in terms of core function, decision-making authority,
level of responsibility, budget responsibility, knowledge (education and certification), skills, abilities,
experience, etc.
4. Decide how you want to connect your internal levels to pay structure. Is it a 1-to-1 ratio or do you
want to assign pay grades based both on level and market value, which may imply multiple pay
grades for each level?
5. Assign your incumbents to each level based on their definitions you created, not based on their
current pay.
6. Communicate the plan to managers & staff as appropriate.
About PayScale
Creator of the largest database of individual compensation profiles in the world containing 40 million
salary profiles, PayScale, Inc. provides an immediate and precise snapshot of current market salaries to
employees and employers through its online tools and software. PayScale’s products are powered by
innovative search and query algorithms that dynamically acquire, analyze and aggregate compensation
information for millions of individuals in real time. Publisher of the quarterly PayScale Index™, PayScale’s
subscription software products for employers include PayScale MarketRate™, PayScale Insight™, and
PayScale Insight Expert™. Among PayScale’s 2,500 corporate customers are organizations small and
large across industries including Mozilla, Tully’s Coffee, Clemson University and the United States Postal
Service.
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