Compensation Consulting

Compensation Consulting That Delivers Infrastructure, Not Slide Decks

Most mid-market companies reach a point where ad hoc pay decisions stop working. The signs are predictable: offers take too long, turnover climbs in roles you cannot afford to lose, a candidate asks "how did you arrive at this number?" and nobody has a good answer, or a PE operating partner asks to see the compensation structure and there is nothing to show.

The Barksdale Group provides senior-level compensation consulting for organizations with 200 to 2,000 employees. We build the infrastructure that makes pay decisions faster, more defensible, and less dependent on any single person's institutional knowledge: salary structures, job architecture, market pricing, pay equity analysis, incentive design, and the operational tools your team needs to run the program after we leave.

What Makes This Practice Different

You work with the person who does the work. This is a principal-led practice. There is no partner who shows up for the kickoff, disappears, and returns for the final presentation while junior consultants build your deliverables. The practitioner who designs your salary structure is the same person who ran compensation for a 1,700-employee defense contractor and built compensation programs at Mercer, Korn Ferry Hay Group, and SullivanCotter.

You get tools, not just recommendations. Every engagement produces working tools: Excel workbooks with formulas (not hardcoded numbers), Python scripts for pay equity regression, offer calculators calibrated to your structure, and merit recommendation models your team can operate independently. We build the infrastructure and hand you the keys.

The timeline is compressed, not the quality. AI-augmented tools handle the mechanical data processing that consumes most of a traditional engagement timeline. The analytical judgment still takes human expertise. The result is faster delivery for work that often takes traditional firms significantly longer to complete.

The work is designed for your buyer, not for ours. PE-backed companies get infrastructure built for operating partner scrutiny and integration readiness. Government contractors get DCAA-defensible methodology and FAR compliance documentation. Growth-stage companies get structures designed to absorb headcount growth without constant manual intervention.

What Compensation Consulting Engagements Typically Include

The scope depends on your starting point and what you need. Common engagement components:

Compensation Philosophy Development. We facilitate the strategic decisions that anchor everything else: target market percentile, pay mix between base and variable, transparency posture, and the principles that guide pay decisions across the organization. This is a 2-3 hour working session that produces a documented philosophy statement your leadership team has actually agreed to, not a boilerplate document nobody references.

Job Architecture and Classification. We organize your roles into families, levels, and grades with defined career progression criteria. More on job architecture.

Market Pricing and Salary Structure Design. We match your jobs to published compensation surveys, build composite market rates, and develop regression-based salary structures. Every number is traceable from survey data to grade midpoint. More on our methodology.

Pay Equity Analysis. We run regression-based statistical analysis to identify pay disparities that correlate with protected characteristics after controlling for legitimate factors. More on pay equity.

Incentive Plan Design. Annual bonus plans, sales incentive programs, and long-term incentive frameworks. For PE portfolio companies, we design management incentive plans aligned with value creation theses. More on incentive design.

Governance and Policy Documentation. Offer approval matrices, off-cycle increase policies, exception handling protocols, and the operational playbook that ensures consistency after the engagement ends.

AI-Powered Operational Tools. Custom market pricing engines, offer calculators, merit recommendation models, and pay equity screening dashboards. More on AI tools.

How Engagements Work

Discovery (Week 1-2). We audit your current state: existing structures, policies, job framework, data quality, and the specific problems that triggered the engagement. We define scope, timeline, and success criteria.

Build (Weeks 3-8). This is where the infrastructure gets built. The specific sequence depends on scope, but typically follows: philosophy and architecture first, market data and structure second, pay equity and tools third.

Train and Transfer (Weeks 9-10). We train your HR team on every tool and process, run real decisions through the new infrastructure with guidance, and deliver recorded walkthroughs your team can reference permanently.

Our CompForge program formalizes this into a structured 10-week delivery framework. Standalone engagements follow the same methodology with scope tailored to your specific needs.

Who This Is For

• Mid-market companies (200-2,000 employees) that have outgrown ad hoc compensation practices
• PE portfolio companies that need defensible compensation infrastructure within 90 days of close
• Government contractors that need DCAA-defensible pay structures
• Companies facing pay transparency requirements that need reliable salary ranges for job postings
• Organizations preparing for M&A activity where compensation due diligence will be part of the deal process
• HR teams that need senior compensation expertise without a full-time hire

What You Get

Every engagement produces tangible deliverables, not just advisory:

• Compensation philosophy statement
• Job architecture with family taxonomy, leveling framework, and FLSA classification audit
• Market pricing workbook with documented survey matches
• Salary structure model in Excel with formulas
• Employee placement analysis with compa-ratios and implementation cost modeling
• Pay equity analysis with regression methodology and remediation scenarios
• Compensation policies and governance documentation
• AI-powered operational tools (offer calculators, merit models, equity screens)
• Operations playbook and recorded training