Salary Band and Pay Range Builder Workbook for California Employers

You get an Excel workbook and a 34-page guide that turn your jobs into pay bands, write the pay scale line for every posting and show where each employee sits in the range.

Who it is for

California employers with 15 or more employees who must put a pay scale in every job posting.

HR leads and owners building their first pay ranges without a compensation department.

Consultants who set up pay structures for small employers.

What is inside

• Excel workbook with 16 sheets: job leveling, market data, band design, pay check, compression, posting range, logs, pay history, yearly plan and more
• Two copies of it: one with a fictional employer filled in so you can see every sheet work, one blank
• Band math done for you: minimum, midpoint, maximum, spread, overlap, compa-ratio and range penetration, with minimum wage and exempt salary floor checks
• 34-page guide with 8 fill-in forms and a plain-English page of the California pay scale rules, each with its official source and the date checked
• 14 lines of copy-and-paste wording for postings, recruiters, requests, offers and manager conversations
• Bring your own market data: the workbook holds none and supplies no market rates

What it is not

Not legal advice and not a pay equity audit. It collects no race, ethnicity or sex data. It does not decide whether a job is exempt, and it does not carry local or industry minimum wage figures. The Pay Equity Audit Workbook is the next step when you want to test pay across groups.

About the author

By McKinley Malbrough III, J.D., MS-HRM. Founder of Urban Human Resources and Online Facilitation Skills. Certified WNBA player agent. Former certified NBA agent. McKinley holds a J.D. but is not a licensed attorney.

Important notice: this is educational material, not legal, tax or financial advice. Forms, formulas and wording are starting points to adapt to your policies. Involve a licensed attorney when a pay question raises a legal issue. No outcome is promised. Created with AI assistance and reviewed by the author. Not affiliated with any organization named.

These are general HR tools, not legal advice. For a situation with legal stakes, talk with an employment attorney.