In management consulting, employee salary scale construction is a widely practiced task for long. Often times, there are clear procedures for job analysis, evaluation and grading. However, I've encountered difficulty in systematically designing salary scale along job grades & horizontal steps. I understand the procedural issues like labour market scale/industry/sector wage, firm capacity etc.
Any insight/resource on valid and practical approach to design salary scales?
I think the professional experience and academic qualification of the employee may also be considered.
Sectoral agreements within a collective bargain process may provide a wage scale!
Just like Sarabia suggests to look into sectoral agreements, I believe that you could benchmark your industry pay scales to mirror that of a similar organization.
In my experience though, organizational pay scales are very specific to the company. More pay scales lead to a narrow managerial scope or a broad scope. Is the pay scale based on similar positions with different longevity for such position like a step increase for longevity with the company? If you are restructuring an organization's pay scale system, in its entirety, will you want this to be based on position? Will you conduct comparative analysis of the job market to be competitive? Will you be able to adjust to commensurate job experience of knowledgeable workers?
I will say again, there are so many specifics involved in this that are truly specific to the organization. It would be very difficult to provide insight into what should be done in your situation. My best advice is to get am organizational committee or taskforce, depending on scale, and write down what you want the system to do, write down contra ideas, and do a comparative analysis of what you want. Once you know what you want in the new pay scale and what you hope to accomplish with it, and the unknown negatives are identified, then you can proceed further with pay scale change.