When your CEO asks "why are we paying this?" — do you have an answer?
Build your compensation structure once — then every offer, promotion, and pay decision runs through it. Consistent outcomes, documented rationale, and a governance record that survives the question every growing company eventually faces.
Pay decisions get made in a vacuum — inconsistently, reactively, and without a record of why. Offers feel arbitrary. Ranges are hard to explain. Someone asks what it takes to get promoted, and there's no real answer. Most companies aren't missing data. They're missing the structure behind their decisions. And with pay transparency laws expanding across 25+ states, the companies without documented ranges are the ones most exposed.
Decisions made without structure, consistency, or a record of why.
The only structured alternative — slow, costly, and the knowledge leaves with them.
Pay decisions aren't documented. When someone asks why, there's no answer.
Starting from scratch each year because nothing was versioned or saved.
Walks you through philosophy, job architecture, and salary bands, step by step.
A complete compensation structure — built in one guided workflow, owned by you, and designed to hold up as you scale.
An immutable governance snapshot — every override, every rationale, every version.
Your structure updates as you grow — and every future decision runs through it. Nothing happens in a vacuum.
No comp background required. You answer the questions, Stratum builds the structure. Every decision documented. And after setup, every offer, promotion, and pay exception stays connected to what you built.
Industry, headcount, locations, and who you actually compete with for talent. This shapes every decision downstream.
Walk through your pay stance, role structure, and salary bands. Plain language throughout. Context at every step. Every decision confirmed by you before anything locks.
Your comp philosophy, job architecture, salary bands, and a governance snapshot — the official record of every decision made. Exportable. Updatable every cycle.
After setup, Stratum becomes the system that governs your compensation decisions. Every offer, promotion, and pay exception runs through the same philosophy, structure, and context you defined. Consistent outcomes. Clear rationale. A record of why every decision was made.
Most comp tools stop at outputs. Stratum turns them into decisions.
The Offer Decision Engine
Once your structure is built, every pay decision your company makes runs through it. An offer comes in — Stratum pulls internal comps, checks against your bands, applies your philosophy, flags any risks, and surfaces a recommendation with rationale. A manager approves or overrides. Either way, it's logged.
That's not a workflow tool. It's the system that governs how compensation decisions get made.
It becomes the system of record for every compensation decision your company makes.
Every decision that runs through Stratum makes your system stronger — and your governance record deeper.
The companies that get this right aren't bigger or better resourced. They just decided to build the infrastructure before something broke.
Stratum was built for companies like yours.
Whether you have no comp team, a lean comp team, or an HR leader who inherited a mess, existing tools weren't built for you. Stratum was. It also gives you a structured foundation you can carry through growth, restructuring, or a merger, instead of rebuilding from scratch every time.
Every completed session produces a permanent record: your philosophy, every decision, every override, and an effective date. The document that survives leadership changes. Used for leadership alignment, audits, and future scaling decisions.
Stratum catches internal conflicts before you lock anything in — flagging when your percentile target, budget, and range structure are working against each other. Most companies don't see these issues until they're already dealing with them.
No job descriptions? No problem. Stratum generates role summaries, maps them to families and levels, and asks you to confirm before anything is locked.
Upload your employee data and Stratum surfaces who's below minimum, who's compressed, and what it costs to fix it — across three budget scenarios.
What companies pay $30,000 for — built in one session, owned by you, versioned as you grow.
Written statement of your pay position, talent market, and structural decisions.
Families, tracks, levels, and definitions. Normalized titles across the org.
Min, midpoint, max for every role. Three budget scenarios. Full audit trail.
Compa-ratio, range penetration, and equity flags per employee.
Model headcount growth, merit cycles, geo expansion — without touching live data.
Versioned record of every decision made. Exportable. Updatable each cycle.
Every wizard decision, contradiction flagged, and override documented.
Role-specific one-pagers with talking points for every hiring conversation.
Offers, promotions, and pay exceptions routed through your structure with rationale generated automatically. Every decision connected to your context.
We're onboarding companies in waves — early users shape the product. Free during beta.
Free during beta. No credit card. No spreadsheets.