Grading & Pay Structures

Pay grades represent a level of compensation for employees in a certain position. Pay grades can also describe the internal wages a company assigns to a group of similar jobs. A salary range is a span of numbers from low to high that represent the minimum and maximum wages employers can pay an employee. These numbers may be used both internally and externally with job candidates and current team members or among human resource professionals and executive leadership.

Used in both public and private companies, these items function as a part of compensation planning for HR and payroll specialists. Hiring professionals use pay grades and salary ranges to communicate wage expectations to prospective employees. These figures serve as data points to share the market value of a job and provide both employers and employees the ability to assess how compensation meets their needs in the workplace.