With a solid compensation framework, market data and leveling in place, you should be ready to create your first salary bands. If you need more guidance, also check out our complete guide here.
Once your bands are set, review them with leadership. Effective communication is key to ensuring the project’s success—without it, even the best salary bands won’t be understood or used properly. We’ll guide you through communication steps and provide templates to help engage your team.
Communication with the leadership team
You're convinced salary bands are essential to promote transparency, attract and retain talent, and streamline pay decisions. But before diving in, you need leadership buy-in.
Onboarding them will help:
Re-align on key topics
Show the positive impact on daily operations
Validate project costs
Before starting, clarify these key points with your leadership team:
Starts with the why: Align on why salary bands matter now, what they solve, and what the team will achieve.
Compensation philosophy: Review your compensation policy, or check out our guide if you don't have one.
Transparency: Decide how transparent you'll be and who will access different levels of information.
Implementation costs: Plan for project resources, tools, and potential off-cycle salary increases for employees below the new ranges.
🛠️ Template to communicate with your leadership
Communication with team managers
Building salary bands shouldn’t be seen as just another “HR project”—it’s meant to solve real issues for your team and managers. You need managers onboard for two key reasons:
Input and validation: Their insights are critical to ensure the bands reflect their teams' realities.
Advocacy: Once implemented, they’ll promote the bands to their teams. If they aren’t convinced or don’t understand them, the project could fail. You don’t want managers saying, “It’s just how HR wants to do it…”
Involve managers at key milestones, ensuring they’re aligned and engaged. Use clear templates to support these communications.
Project kick-off
Once the project is approved by leadership, communicate the details to managers, whether or not you announce the kick-off company-wide. In this communication, make sure to cover:
Why: Explain the purpose (transparency, talent attraction, fairness, etc.).
Current framework: Review the existing compensation structure.
End result: Describe the outcome (salary bands by role, part of the company’s compensation policy, integrated into processes).
Methodology: Outline how salary bands will be built, key parameters, and tools.
Next steps: Clarify upcoming actions and how they’ll be involved.
Bands review and validation
After creating and adjusting salary bands, it’s time to review them with managers to ensure they fit each team. This step confirms alignment, reinforces understanding of the methodology, and reviews individual impacts for their team members.
Share the bands in advance so managers can prepare, allowing meeting time to focus on validation and any edge cases. Depending on your organization, it may be helpful to involve the Talent Acquisition team alongside managers during this process.
Pre-roll out training
All your bands are validated, and so are the individual impacts; the next milestone is the roll-out, and before getting there, you want to make sure managers are 100% ready to be your champions! Make sure they know the following:
Where to find global information about the framework, methodology, etc.
What are the next steps in terms of communication to their direct reports (those impacted and the others)
How will they use the salary bands in their day-to-day once the roll-out is over (hiring, comp reviews, promotions, etc.)
Communication with impacted employees
When building salary bands, avoid considering current employee salaries. Once you position employees on your new grids, you may find some are below or above the range, or misaligned in terms of compa ratios.
Review this with managers, ensuring that their direct reports are correctly leveled based on performance expectations before discussing salary. These meetings should involve HR and be followed up with written communication to document the discussion.
Here are some tips for handling different scenarios:
Employees below range
If an employee is below the salary range for their level, the goal is to bring them up to at least the minimum of the range. If they are performing as expected, consider placing them closer to the midpoint of the range.
If budget constraints prevent immediate adjustments for everyone, plan with your finance or leadership team to correct this over time, while giving impacted employees visibility into their status and future expectations.
Employees above range
For employees paid above the new range, handle this carefully:
Leveling first: Confirm their current level and explain why they are positioned there, focusing on performance (competencies, delivery, behavior).
Explain the range: Clarify how the salary range was built, the methodology, and the data used.
Position in the range: Show where they stand and explain they are overpaid for their current performance level.
Impact: While you won’t reduce their salary, inform them it will be frozen until their performance justifies their current pay, likely upon promotion.
Be prepared to explain any compensation discrepancies to peers if needed, emphasizing reasons such as early-stage risks or unique expertise, and how this will be corrected over time.
Communication with the whole company
You don’t want your well-crafted salary bands to go unnoticed once they’re built and validated. It’s important to introduce them across various stages of the employee lifecycle and ensure everyone knows how they were built, why, and how they’ll be used moving forward.
This sets a strong foundation for future compensation discussions, ensuring everyone is aligned and using the same tools. Based on your desired level of transparency, provide employees with detailed information about the bands, including a guide to avoid misunderstandings.
This final communication can significantly impact long-term engagement. Done right, it will become a point of pride for your team, rather than something forgotten or misinterpreted.
Before rolling out, ensure you've:
Validated all salary bands with leadership and managers
Reviewed individual impacts with managers and finance, and communicated them to employees
Clarified how the bands will be used in the future
Don’t forget that salary bands are a never-ending topic to monitor; keep an eye on their market alignment, review them regularly, communicate and educate newcomers about it, make sure managers are comfortable with them.