Compensation Consulting Services
Rigorous compensation work for mid-market companies, PE portfolio companies, and government contractors. Senior expertise on every engagement.
Compensation is one of the highest-leverage levers an organization controls — and one of the most consistently under-managed. Most growing organizations have pieces of a comp program: a salary spreadsheet, a survey subscription they barely use, a merit cycle that runs on gut feel. What they rarely have is a system.
The Barksdale Group provides principal-led compensation consulting across practice areas each designed to deliver working infrastructure rather than advisory documents. Every engagement is led directly by Stephen McGillivray — a practitioner with over 16 years of hands-on experience leading full compensation functions at organizations ranging from PE-backed defense contractors to international nonprofits to high-growth technology companies.
Whether you need a focused project, a comprehensive comp build, or ongoing fractional support, the engagement starts with a clear-eyed diagnosis of where you are and what you actually need.
Compensation Consulting
Senior-level compensation consulting for organizations that need rigorous analysis, defensible deliverables, and direct access to the practitioner doing the work.
End-to-end compensation program design and execution. Most engagements combine market analysis, structure design, and implementation support — delivered with the documentation your team can actually use going forward. Suited for organizations that have outgrown their current approach and need a practitioner to rebuild from the ground up.
Compensation Strategy
Regression-based salary structure design, pay philosophy development, and implementation modeling connecting your ranges to market data and internal equity.
Salary structure design built on regression-modeled market data and a documented pay philosophy. The output is a defensible, auditable structure — not a spreadsheet with ranges someone guessed at. Includes midpoint progression analysis, compa-ratio distribution review, and implementation modeling for any population in or out of range.
Salary Benchmarking
Market pricing using Mercer, Radford, Payscale, and other major survey sources. Every match documented with quality ratings and aging methodology.
Market pricing using published survey sources including Mercer, Radford, Payscale, and others — with documented job matching, aging factors, and geographic differentials. The result is composite market rates your team can defend to a CFO, a board, or an OFCCP auditor. Not estimates. Not Glassdoor.
Executive Compensation
Short- and long-term incentive design, board-ready compensation analyses, and executive pay benchmarking aligned to governance standards.
Short- and long-term incentive design, board-ready compensation analyses, and peer group benchmarking for mid-market and PE-backed organizations. Built for companies that need legitimate exec comp work without paying Big Four rates for a team of five people.
Job Architecture
Job family frameworks, leveling guides, FLSA classification, and position management for organizations scaling or integrating acquisitions.
Job family frameworks, leveling guides, FLSA classification, and position management for organizations scaling, integrating acquisitions, or bringing discipline to a historically ad hoc structure. The foundation that everything else in comp depends on.
Pay Equity & Compliance
Proactive pay equity analyses, OFCCP audit preparation, and pay transparency compliance for organizations subject to state and federal requirements.
Regression-based pay equity analysis that identifies statistically unexplained pay disparities across gender, race, and other protected categories. Includes remediation scenario modeling, OFCCP audit documentation, and SCA/FAR compliance frameworks for government contractors.
M&A Compensation
Due diligence support, employee population analysis, harmonization modeling, and retention program design for pre- and post-close integration.
Due diligence population analysis, compensation harmonization modeling, and retention program design for pre- and post-close M&A work. Direct experience integrating a 520-person defense contractor acquisition — including job mapping, below-minimum gap analysis, and stakeholder communication — informs every engagement.
AI Compensation Tools
Custom analytical tools, Excel companion suites, and AI-augmented workflows that turn compensation data into decision-ready intelligence.
Custom-built analytical tools in Excel, Python, and Power BI that turn your compensation data into decision-ready intelligence. Market pricing assistants, offer recommendation engines, pay equity screening dashboards, and merit cycle frameworks — built on your data, owned by your team.
GovCon Compensation
DCAA-defensible salary structures, SCA/FAR compliance, OFCCP audit preparation, and clearance-level differential models for government contractors.
Specialized compensation consulting for defense contractors and government-adjacent organizations. DCAA-defensible cost structures, FAR 31.205-6 compliance, SCA wage determination integration, and OFCCP audit readiness. One of the few independent practitioners with direct internal GovCon experience in the DC metro market.
Built for HR leaders who own comp as part of a broader role
The Barksdale Group works best with HR Directors, VP People, and People Ops leaders at organizations where compensation is owned as part of a broader role — and where the work needs to get done right, get done fast, and stay owned by your team when the engagement ends.
Ideal clients include PE portfolio companies managing rapid growth or integration, defense contractors navigating the regulatory demands of government contracting, mid-market scaling companies building their first real comp infrastructure, and nonprofits managing competitive pay on constrained budgets.
If you are not sure which service applies to your situation, start with a free 30-minute consultation. Most clients come in describing a symptom — "we're losing candidates on offers" or "our CEO keeps overriding the ranges" — and leave with a clear diagnosis and a recommended scope.
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