Manage salary bands, record compensation changes and apply reviewed salary recommendations.
Access
Compensation pages require the COMPENSATION licence. view_compensation reads bands and history. Compensation reviews also need company-wide compensation access (view_all_compensation), because a review covers many employees; a Department Manager, who holds view_compensation only, cannot open them. manage_compensation enables band/review changes and the pay-equity report, which also needs view_all_compensation. Read and management permissions are separate.
Salary bands
A band contains name, level, grade, minimum/midpoint/maximum salary, currency, pay frequency, effective date and active state. Currency defaults to KES and frequency to monthly. The Salary Bands form saves the name, level, grade, currency, minimum, midpoint and maximum salary, and the position or department the band applies to.
For placement and analytics, an employee's position band takes priority over a department-level band. Inactive and future-effective bands are excluded. When several match, latest effective date wins, then latest creation date. A band with a position covers that position. A band with only a department covers the rest of that department. An employee shows no band until a band is linked to their position or department.
Salary Bands shows placement alerts for employees below the minimum or above the maximum. Compa-ratio is base salary divided by the band midpoint. An employee with neither a matching position band nor a department fallback has no resolved band.
Compensation history
The History page is read-only. A change appears there when a compensation review is applied, or when someone with manage_compensation records one through the assistant.
History records change type, previous/new salary, percentage change and effective date. Supported types include hire, promotion, merit increase, market adjustment, demotion, transfer, annual review, bonus, equity grant and correction.
Base-salary change types notify payroll's salary-structure listener. Bonus and equity-grant history rows do not rebase recurring salary; a history record alone is not a one-off payroll earning.
The server limits history to the viewer's reach. Without view_all_compensation you see only your team's history. The web page also hides the salary columns unless you hold manage_compensation or view_all_compensation.
Compensation reviews
Choose New Comp Review and enter a Review Name, Budget, Effective Date and Budget Type (Percentage or Fixed).
| Status | Available stage |
|---|---|
| Draft / In Progress | Edit recommendations |
| Submitted | Await approval |
| Approved | Ready to apply |
| Applied | Salary changes applied |
| Cancelled | Exists as a status, but no action sets it |
Open the worksheet (the "Recommendations worksheet" icon on the review row) to enter proposed salaries and notes. It rolls up proposed increases against the budget and warns about excess. A rejected recommendation is excluded from the budget increase and application. Only draft reviews can be deleted.
Merit suggestions
Suggestions combine the latest usable performance rating with the compa-ratio band. Ratings are normalised to a five-point scale. No usable rating defaults to Meets and is flagged; no usable compa-ratio uses the middle band. Suggestions can be applied individually or together with Use all suggested and adjusted before saving.
| Compa-ratio interval | Exceptional | Exceeds | Meets | Below | Unsatisfactory |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Below 0.80 | 10% | 8% | 5% | 2% | 0% |
| 0.80 to below 0.90 | 8% | 6% | 4% | 1% | 0% |
| 0.90 to below 1.10 | 6% | 5% | 3% | 0% | 0% |
| 1.10 to below 1.20 | 4% | 3% | 2% | 0% | 0% |
| 1.20 and above | 3% | 2% | 0% | 0% | 0% |
These percentages are the implemented merit matrix, not a promise of an increase.
Submit, approve and apply
Submit locks recommendations from editing. Approval requires submitted status. Apply requires approved status and at least one non-rejected recommendation.
Application re-reads each employee's live salary, writes the proposed salary and records history inside a transaction. A missing employee can be skipped; an invalid proposed salary aborts the transaction. If no change succeeds, application is rejected. Payroll salary-change events are emitted after commit.
The proposed salary remains the target amount; re-reading live salary changes the recorded previous salary and resulting increase, not the recommendation into an automatic percentage recalculation. Apply updates the employee's base salary immediately only when the effective date is today or earlier. A future-dated review reaches payroll and the employee profile on that date.
Pay equity
Pay Equity groups base salaries by gender, one grouping at a time: use the By band / By department toggle. Each cell reports employee count, mean and median; percentage gaps compare against the male median in that group.
For fewer than five employees in a gender cell, mean and median are withheld (n<5). Such a cell cannot supply a gap or its reference median. Groups whose absolute gap exceeds the selected threshold are flagged; the default threshold is 5%.
This is an aggregate comparison of recorded base salary. It does not establish equal work, explain a gap or certify compliance.