Question 1

Does Stratum approve or deny pay decisions?

Accepted Answer

No. Stratum analyzes the decision, applies the company's configured governance, explains the evidence and recommends a defensible path. A human makes the decision and Stratum preserves the rationale.

Question 2

How is this different from benchmarking platforms or our HRIS?

Accepted Answer

Benchmarking tells you what the market pays. Your HRIS records what ultimately happened. Stratum is the layer in between: it uses your own framework, people data, context and decision history to recommend what should happen next.

Question 3

Who is Stratum for?

Accepted Answer

Growing U.S. companies with lean Total Rewards and People teams. Typical users are a VP of People, Head of Total Rewards, Compensation Manager or People Ops Lead.

Question 4

What is design partner access?

Accepted Answer

Private access for compensation and People leaders who run real decisions through Stratum and shape what gets built next. It is not a public self-serve trial.

Question 5

How is compensation data handled?

Accepted Answer

Security is a core product requirement, not something added later. Each company's data is tenant-isolated, access is controlled and scoped to the people who need it, and Stratum collects only the data a compensation workflow actually requires rather than everything an HRIS holds. The decision logic is explicit and auditable, and every figure the product shows traces back to a range, a configured company rule, a candidate input or a planning assumption — Stratum does not invent pay numbers. We plan to pursue SOC 2 as Stratum moves toward broader production use.

Question 6

Does Stratum ensure legal or pay compliance?

Accepted Answer

Stratum helps teams apply their configured compensation policies consistently, surface relevant considerations and preserve the rationale behind decisions. It does not replace legal advice, and the company remains responsible for its employment and pay compliance obligations.

Question 7

Do we need a mature compensation program before using Stratum?

Accepted Answer

No. Stratum is built to take what you have today — mature, incomplete or messy — identify what exists, what is missing and what needs clarification, and turn it into a governed framework you review and lock.

Question 8

What can Stratum decide today?

Accepted Answer

External Offer is the decision engine available now. Other decision types are coming soon.

Question 9

What role does AI play?

Accepted Answer

Rules govern. AI explains. Humans decide. AI helps read and summarize context such as a resume or interview scorecard, and it drafts the explanation — but the recommendation rests on your configured rules and your data, and a person confirms any material interpretation before it affects the decision.

Question 10

Does Stratum replace our HRIS or benchmarking tool?

Accepted Answer

No. It sits alongside them. Stratum reads job, level and employee data, and uses your benchmark sources for ranges. You keep the systems you already have.

Question 11

What is kept with each decision?

Accepted Answer

The inputs, the checks that ran and what each one found, the recommendation, the human rationale and the framework version the decision cites — so a comparable decision six months later starts with context instead of from scratch.

More than the decision. The infrastructure underneath it.

Benchmarking

Stratum

HRIS

Start where your compensation program is today.

Build

Rebuild

Govern

One decision. Four audiences.

Questions people actually ask

Help shape how compensation decisions get made.