Broadbanding is another way to think about organizations and job structures. How a person is paid is just as important as what a person is paid.

It is a way of reducing the number of salary grades and widening pay ranges to conform to organizational needs (usually following reorganization or other significant event).

It refers to the collapsing of job clusters, or tiers of positions, into a few wide bands for purposes of managing career growth of individuals and administering the delivery of pay.

It is salary management with a few, very wide salary ranges (bands). Traditional systems, frequently based upon a point system format, have 10 or more overlapping salary ranges (usually called grades). The salary spread (minimum to maximum within a grade) may be small (5 to 30% in some cases) to 40 to 50% in others. In broadbanding, there may be as few as 3 to 5 salary ranges, with 6 to 8 being more common. Band spread may be 100% or more. For example: Band 1 may be from $20,000 to $40,000 (a spread of 100%); Band 2 may be from $22,000 to $45,400 (a spread of 106%); and Band 3 from $30,000 to $65,000 (a spread of 117%).