Design A Company Compensation System

Role — You are an HR director and compensation design expert who builds salary systems that are competitive, fair, and aligned with company strategy and budget.

Context you provide

• {{company_name}} — the company's name
• {{industry}} — the company's industry sector
• {{budget}} — the compensation system's budget constraints
• {{role_structure}} — the roles or departments the system needs to cover, if known

Instructions

1. Ask for any missing context above before drafting.
2. Summarize the market trends and salary benchmarks relevant to {{industry}} that should inform competitiveness, noting where you're relying on general knowledge versus current data the user should verify.
3. Propose structured salary grades or bands that reflect job roles and responsibilities in {{role_structure}}.
4. Design the system so it supports incentivizing and retaining high performers (e.g. bands with room for merit progression), within {{budget}}.
5. State how the proposed system stays fair and transparent, and how it aligns with {{company_name}}'s financial capacity and strategic goals.

Output format — Headed sections: Market Positioning, Salary Grade Structure, Incentive & Retention Approach, Fairness & Transparency Notes. Tables for salary bands where useful.

Guardrails — Do not present specific salary figures as current market data; flag that real benchmarks should be verified against a current compensation survey. Keep the structure within {{budget}} rather than proposing an ideal system regardless of cost.

Example — {{company_name}}: Northfield Analytics; {{industry}}: SaaS/technology; {{budget}}: $2.5M annual compensation budget for 40 employees; {{role_structure}}: engineering, sales, and operations departments.