The best managers don't just protect their people, they build the case for why keeping them is good business.
The stakes
Over five years of building a creative team from the ground up, I kept running into the same pattern. People were growing faster than their titles. Three different people on my team were operating a level above the job they had been hired into, carrying scope that any org chart would have put on someone more senior. In every case, compensation hadn't caught up to what they'd already become.
That gap doesn't stay quiet for long. It shows up as a resignation letter, an outside offer, or a slow erosion of trust that's much harder to rebuild than a pay gap is to close.
Building the framework
The first time, I didn't have a framework yet, so I went into dive-and-save mode because they were too valuable to lose, and that person stayed rather than taking the outside offer. The second time, I recognized the shape of the case I needed to build. By the third, I had a repeatable process my CMO could walk into a room with.
Three pillars
Every proposal rests on the same three pillars.
Proof of impact.
Traces specific outcomes, like production efficiency or ad performance, directly back to the person behind them.
Market benchmarking.
Uses current data for the equivalent role, so the conversation starts from a number instead of a feeling.
Cost of inaction.
Translates replacement into real terms, recruiting timelines, ramp time, and what stalls while the seat sits empty.
SHRM estimates replacement costs at 50 to 200% of annual salary once you account for lost productivity, recruiter time, and training. On a team built from the ground up with no bench, that risk was not hypothetical. Losing any one of them meant rebuilding a function, not backfilling a seat.
My role
This was mine to build, from spotting the risk early to researching and writing the case that got it approved. I don't bring leadership a request, I bring a decision that's already been made easy, with the data, the benchmark, and the cost of doing nothing laid out clearly enough that saying yes is the obvious next step.
Timing mattered as much as the research. Some proposals moved ahead of a departure notice. Others aligned to a formal review cycle. One formalized a verbal commitment a leader had already made, turning approval into a formality instead of a fight.
The results
All three were approved, each one signed off by the CEO, CMO, and CFO. All three people stayed on the team for more than two years afterward, and their scope kept growing the whole time, which tells me the case wasn't just about closing a pay gap. It was about correctly valuing people the business already depended on.
The requests themselves were disciplined, not aspirational. Each landed under the combined market average for the role, even after the increase. Good research doesn't just build a stronger case, it also knows where to stop.
What I would change
The framework works, and it is still fundamentally reactive. I built three individual cases over five years when the better outcome would have been a leveling process that caught the gap before it became a retention risk. Each proposal succeeded on its own terms and each one was also evidence that our review cycle was not seeing what I was seeing. What I would build now is the upstream version, a regular scope-versus-title audit for the team, so the case gets made during planning rather than during a resignation window.
Key takeaway
The lasting result wasn't three retained team members. It was a framework, strong enough to earn buy-in before it ever reached the CEO, and repeatable enough to make the next case faster to build.
The team
Manager, Research & Case Development | Sojin Rank |
Talent Acquisition Partner | Christine Burch |