Friends,

The months are whittling down towards the end of 2025, and things are moving at breakneck speed.

There’s a quote that nicely sums up how I feel, both about my ambitions for the next couple of months, and the reflections I have on the past 2 years of being a solopreneur.

Here I am, finding myself closing my books in August. Something I never thought I’d be doing in year 2 of solopreneurship. Yet entirely necessary, as I fervently close out the projects I’m working on, and build some momentum with the side projects I’ve been pursuing.

Throw into the mix that I’m back in Brisbane next week for ‘Something Digital’ (say hi if you’re there) and the remaining weeks of 2025 are quickly disappearing.

But it's these deadlines that fuel my constant drive to do more, and perhaps also the reason why I feel like I've achieved so much in 2 short years of solopreneurship.

Who’d have thought that a desire to help companies get pay right, would spawn a newsletter, podcast, community, and a massive virtual summit?!

Not me.

These moments of reflection are important, and I hope this inspires you to reflect on your journey. Whether it’s 2 years or 10.

I’d love to hear what you’re most proud of achieving.

Matt

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You’ve written your comp philosophy, built your bands, and bought the data. But here’s the kicker: how often should you refresh it all before the market runs away from you? From hot roles that demand frequent updates, to factors that can make your data last years, this piece breaks down when “set and forget” turns into risk.

Reading time: 6 minutes

You’ve written your compensation philosophy. 

You’ve built your job level framework.

You‘ve bought your market data.

And with that, you have a beautiful set of compensation bands that have been helping you make pay related decisions.

(let me just pause here to say well done 👏)

But the weeks roll into months, until eventually you start to think “wait, how often should we refresh these bands?”

It’s a question I get a lot, and with good reason.

Everyone knows the market for salaries is constantly moving, and so it’s important to have a rough idea of how often you want to refresh your bands, to maintain alignment.

It can be helpful to know this for a few reasons.

I’m going to give you a quick and dirty response, followed by a few things to consider more broadly, because like almost everything in the People profession: it depends.

First, the most common answer I give to this question.

For 90% of startups and 90% of roles, a once per year band refresh tends to be more than sufficient.

In reality though, the answer is a little more nuanced.

In essence, you want to refresh your data before your bands stop working for you.

I.e. before they no longer attract or retain people to do the job you need done.

A couple of things I tend to factor in when I determine how often a salary refresh needs to happen:

This is exactly what is sounds like. When roles are 🔥 hot 🔥 the growth of that role’s value will outpace the general market.

Think 10% instead of 2% 👈 that’s a problem if you’re not on top of it, because you’ll soon fail to hire people and your current team may be more easily lured away.

Case in point: AI skills.

If you hire these roles today, I’d go so far as to say you need to be testing the salary market every 3-6 months to ensure your bands keep pace.

This means you might have a two tier refresh cycle.

How will you know when a role is hot? 🤷

When it comes to band width, I tend to find that the narrower the bands, the more frequently you’ll want to update your data.

Put another way, broader salary bands have a longer life expectancy.

Why? 

If you have big broad, sweeping bands, the relatively minor increases in market data from year to year are unlikely to stop you hiring. Instead, you just end up using the upper part of the band more.

I’ve seen some companies get away with 2+ year cycles using these kinds of wide bands.

On the contrary, the narrower your bands, especially if you’re using salary ‘points’ or ‘tiers’ (two words for the same thing), the more likely it is that you’ll need to update your data to ensure the market isn’t running away from you.

If you don’t have any hot roles, you’ll likely be fine with a once per year update frequency.

Remember that pay is analytical, but humans are irrational. You also need to think about how your refresh frequency will land with your people.

With all the talk about cost of living, people tend to confuse an increase in the price of bread and milk with what should be an increase to their salary.

Sticking with a once per year cycle is going to satisfy your people in 99% of circumstances because it feels like their pay is keeping up with the cost of living.

It gives them reassurance that you’re not just in a set and forget mode, and that you’re ensuring their salaries up to date.

If you’re doing your job right, and hitting the right refresh frequency, you’ll never know it. You’ll continue to be able to attract and retain people as per normal.

On the flip-side, here’s two signals that tell you it’s too late, and the market has run away from you:

Now remember that your comp philosophy is targeting a percentile, so be sure to remind yourself on what ‘paying 50th’ means (as an example).

Targeting 50th means approximately half your market pays more than you. So if 80% of your offers are being knocked back, that’s a sign you’ve fallen too far, too fast.

To sum this all up, you should probably refresh your data annually. But there may be reasons to shorten or lengthen that cycle, even if only for a few role types in your workforce.

Hit reply and let me know how often you refresh your data and why.

Here’s three things that may also be of interest to you: