Perfectly Aligned.
We design grades, grants, incentives and benefits as one system, so pay reinforces the strategy instead of drifting away from it.
“Benchmarking breeds sameness. Strategy demands difference.”
Most pay programmes copy the market. The ones worth having decide where to break from it.
02 / 05—The architecture
Four layers. One decision.
Base pay sets the floor. Benefits hold people through the parts of life that have nothing to do with work. Variable pay moves behaviour inside a year. Equity ties someone to an outcome years out.
Most organisations tune these separately, in different quarters, owned by different people. That is where the money leaks — not in any single layer, but in the seams between them.
See how we work on eachNew to the framework? Read our guide to total rewards, or try the free salary band calculator.
01 / 04What we build
Six disciplines. One reward architecture.
Equity, executive pay, incentives, benefits, structures and merit are usually run by different people who never compare notes. We treat them as one system, because that is how an employee experiences them.
Equity & Long-Term Incentives
Option pools, RSU grant sizing, ESOP mechanics, cliff and vesting design. We model dilution and expected value before anyone signs a grant letter.
- Stock options & RSUs
- ESOP structuring
- Pool & dilution modelling
- Retention grant design
Executive Pay & IPO Readiness
C-suite pay design that survives scrutiny. Peer group construction, NRC papers, and the disclosure groundwork a listing demands — done before the bankers ask.
- C-suite pay design
- IPO & listing readiness
- Board and NRC papers
- Governance & disclosure
Variable Pay & Sales Compensation
Quotas, accelerators, caps, clawbacks. Payout curves get pressure-tested against last year’s actuals, so the plan pays for performance rather than for luck.
- STI & bonus plan design
- Quota and commission models
- Payout curve modelling
- CRM & payout integration
Employee Benefits Design
Medical, life and accident cover, retirals, wellness, family support and flexible allowances. Costed, benchmarked, and weighted toward what people actually use.
- Health & insurance cover
- Retirals & financial wellbeing
- Family and caregiving support
- Flexible benefit allowances
Pay Structures & Benchmarking
Job architecture, grade bands and market data you can defend in a room full of sceptics. Pay equity audits included, plus the philosophy document that settles next year’s argument.
- Job evaluation & levelling
- Salary bands and ranges
- Market benchmarking
- Pay equity audits
Performance & Merit Systems
Merit matrices, rating distributions, and appraisal forms managers will actually finish. We brief the managers too — a good matrix applied badly is still a bad outcome.
- Merit increase matrices
- Appraisal & rating design
- Total rewards statements
- Manager enablement
The spine of it
Structure is where the other five get settled.
Grades, ranges and midpoints decide what an offer can be, what a merit increase costs, and where an equity grant starts. Without them, every one of those conversations reopens from scratch.
Ranges widen as scope widens, and adjacent grades overlap deliberately — so a strong performer can out-earn a new joiner a grade above without the structure breaking.
Pay structures & benchmarkingIllustrative structure, indexed to the lowest midpoint — not client data.
02 / 04Why a boutique
Large-firm rigour without the large-firm bench.
Big consultancies sell you a partner and staff the work with analysts. We are small on purpose. Fewer clients, senior hands on every file, and the agility a large bench cannot buy.
Same three pieces every time — the people, the structure, the money. What changes is how they are arranged for your business.
Senior people, no pyramid
The consultant who scopes your work is the consultant who does it. Nothing gets handed down a bench.
We stay past the design
Design is the easy half. We stay through communication, manager briefings, and the first cycle that runs on the new plan.
Big-firm training
Decades built inside Fortune 500 reward functions, top-tier consultancies, and startups that scaled fast and messily.
Where we know the terrain
Technology & Startups
Equity-heavy packages, headcount doubling mid-cycle, and bands that have to hold while the org chart moves.
Financial Services
Deferral, malus and clawback under a regulator’s eye. Incentives that reward the right kind of risk.
Professional Services
Partner economics, utilisation-linked pay, and reward models built around client outcomes rather than headcount.
Our sweet spot
Companies between 50 and 500 people, at the point where informal pay decisions stop scaling and a real structure has to replace them.
03 / 04How we think
People. Purpose. Pay.
Benchmarking breeds sameness, but strategy demands difference. Our framework connects three questions that most reward reviews answer separately, and then wonders why the programme pulls in three directions.
People
“Who enables that value?”
We identify the roles and capabilities that actually move the number, and separate them from the ones the org chart merely flatters.
Purpose
“Why do we exist? What do we uniquely create?”
Rewards get anchored to the mission and the identity, which is what tells you where contribution genuinely occurs.
Pay
“How do we recognise them?”
Compensation is designed around outcomes rather than inputs. That is the difference between a cost line and a strategic lever.
Read them in order. Purpose defines where value is created, people are the ones who create it, and pay is how that contribution gets recognised. Answer one without the other two and you have a policy, not a strategy.
“You cannot buy commitment. But you can reward contribution that flows from shared mission.”
— Manit Mittal, Chief Executive Officer
04 / 04Where to start
Tell us what is broken in your pay programme.
Bring the merit cycle that ran over budget, the grant table nobody can explain, or the band structure that stopped holding. Half an hour, and you will leave with a view on it either way.