Petra Dubois· HR Business Partner, Meridian Health Systems
Asked in Job Architecture & Careers ·
We're a UK-headquartered industrial software company, about 2,100 people, and in March we completed the purchase of a 340-person business in Poland and the Czech Republic. They have five broad bands and titles that were handed out fairly freely; we have nine levels across two tracks.
Integration leadership wants everyone on our levels by January. Finance wants pay harmonisation deferred for at least a year. My worry is that if we level first, we will publish a level for each person that their pay visibly does not match, and about a quarter of them would sit below our range minimum.
Has anyone levelled first and lived with the mismatch? Or did you hold the levelling until there was money to back it?
3 helpful · 3 insightful · 4 replies · 181 views · 4 following
Accepted answer· by Oscar Lindqvist
What settled it for us was splitting the below-minimum group from everything else. Level everyone on the job, on the January date. For people under the range minimum, agree with finance a two-step catch-up with dates written down, and tell those individuals the dates. For everyone else, harmonisation can genuinely wait. Finance objected far less to a costed number for 80-odd people than to an open-ended 'harmonisation'. Also check how many of the below-minimum cases are really over-titled; about a third of ours were a level lower once we looked at the work properly.
Read in the conversation ↓
Elif AlvarezCRP
Director, Total Rewards, Kestrel Aerospace
Level first, but do not publish ranges to the acquired population until you have a funded plan. We did this with a 500-person acquisition in the Netherlands in 2023: levels communicated in month four, ranges in month fourteen.
In between, managers were told the level described the job, not a pay promise. It was uncomfortable but nobody resigned over it.
Compensation Consultant, Tidewater Utilities
I'd push back on that. In our case (US healthcare technology, 180 people acquired) the levels leaked into the range conversation within weeks, because the ranges were already on our intranet for everyone else. If your ranges are visible to existing staff, assume the acquired staff will see them the day they get a login.
We ended up finding the money for the below-minimum group early, roughly 1.1% of acquired payroll, and I wish we had budgeted it at the start.
HR Business Partner, Beacon Retail Group
Accepted answer
What settled it for us was splitting the below-minimum group from everything else. Level everyone on the job, on the January date. For people under the range minimum, agree with finance a two-step catch-up with dates written down, and tell those individuals the dates. For everyone else, harmonisation can genuinely wait.
Finance objected far less to a costed number for 80-odd people than to an open-ended 'harmonisation'. Also check how many of the below-minimum cases are really over-titled; about a third of ours were a level lower once we looked at the work properly.
HR Business Partner, Meridian Health Systems
Thanks all. I ran the numbers this week: 83 people below minimum, and on a second pass 27 of those look over-titled rather than underpaid. Going to finance with a two-step catch-up for the remaining 56 and keeping the January date for levels.
