Schools planning expansion face countless strategic decisions—where to add capacity, how to staff new programs, when to open additional campuses. But one critical element often gets overlooked until problems emerge: compensation strategy.
When compensation planning lags behind growth, schools encounter predictable challenges. Uneven salaries across campuses create resentment. Unclear pathways for advancement leave talented educators wondering about their futures. Critical leaders leave during growth phases—exactly when you need them most.
Having worked with numerous schools navigating expansion, I’ve observed that the schools achieving the most sustainable growth are those that think strategically about compensation from the beginning. They build pay systems designed to evolve alongside their expansion rather than systems that quickly become obsolete.
How Schools Outgrow Their Compensation Systems
Growth exposes the limitations of compensation structures that worked fine at smaller scale. This happens in several predictable ways.
New Roles Without Homes
As you expand and add schools or programs, you create roles that didn’t exist before—perhaps a managing director position or a multi-campus coordinator. Suddenly you need job levels you’ve never had, and you need to determine what these roles are worth in the market to set appropriate pay. Without a structure that accommodates these roles, schools make ad-hoc decisions that create inconsistency and confusion about how compensation works.
Unclear Role Placement
Even when you’re not creating entirely new positions, expansion often means adding roles you’re unsure how to place within your existing structure. Is this new position at the coordinator level or the manager level? What’s the market value? How does it compare to similar roles already in your organization? Without clear frameworks, these decisions become subjective and vulnerable to the influence of whoever negotiates most effectively rather than what’s fair and sustainable.
Unrecognized Additional Duties
Growth typically means existing staff take on expanded responsibilities—leading cross-campus initiatives, mentoring new hires, coordinating expanded programs. How do you recognize and reward these contributions? Without thoughtful stipend structures or role progression frameworks, schools either under-compensate people taking on critical growth work, or they create inconsistent recognition that feels arbitrary to staff.
The challenge isn’t that these situations arise—they’re natural consequences of growth. The problem is when schools address them reactively rather than proactively, creating compensation decisions that feel rushed, inconsistent, and disconnected from any coherent strategy.
Building for Your Future Self
The most important principle in growth-ready compensation planning is this: build systems that meet your future self, not just your current reality.
If you’re planning to grow from $8 million in revenue with 80 staff to $20 million with 160 staff over three years, you need a compensation program designed for that future organization, not your current size.
Why Future-Focused Planning Matters
When schools build compensation systems only for their current state, they quickly outgrow those structures. This forces reactive decision-making—creating exceptions, making rushed adjustments, implementing inconsistent solutions. These reactive decisions erode staff trust. When people see exceptions being made without clear rationale, when compensation decisions feel arbitrary or rushed, they lose confidence in the system and in leadership.
Market Parameters Shift With Growth
One critical aspect many schools overlook: market parameters change as you grow. Your size, budget, and scope all influence what roles are worth in the market—particularly for leadership positions.
Frontline teacher salaries don’t typically shift dramatically when a school network grows. But executive salaries do. An executive director leading a single 400-student school and an executive director leading a three-campus, 1,200-student network operate at different scopes and should be compensated accordingly.
The last thing you want is critical leaders leaving during a growth phase because their compensation didn’t evolve alongside their expanding responsibilities and the organization’s growth. Planning ahead—looking at what comparable organizations at your projected future size pay their executives—positions you to retain your leadership team throughout expansion.
Balancing Three Critical Levers
Sustainable compensation strategy during growth requires balancing three levers: market competitiveness, internal equity, and financial sustainability.
The Tension Between Levers
These three elements exist in tension. Pushing hard on one lever shifts where others must fall: being highly market competitive might strain financial sustainability; prioritizing financial sustainability might compromise market competitiveness; bringing in new staff at market rates might create internal equity issues with current staff.
The goal isn’t perfection on all three—it’s finding the right balance for your specific organization and being intentional about trade-offs.
Market Competitiveness
Research where pay sits in the market to understand what being competitive actually means. This involves identifying benchmark organizations (similar size, sector, location) and comparing your compensation for equivalent roles. Pay particular attention to growth-critical positions and areas where talent is hardest to find. You may need to be more competitive in some areas than others based on strategic priorities.
Internal Equity
One of the most painful and trust-eroding situations schools face during growth: “New folks are coming in and they’re paid more than I am, and I’ve been here longer.”
This scenario plays out repeatedly when schools focus exclusively on market competitiveness without attending to internal relationships. You bring in new staff at current market rates, but your experienced, long-tenured educators were hired years ago at lower rates and haven’t received increases that keep pace. The result: less experienced new hires earn more than your most valuable, experienced staff. This destroys trust and drives attrition of exactly the people you most need during expansion.
Internal equity requires regularly auditing how people in similar roles with similar experience are compensated across your organization, then addressing gaps systematically.
Financial Sustainability
Even the best compensation strategy fails if it’s not financially sustainable. You must be realistic about what your budget can support not just this year, but as you grow into your projected future state.
This is where hard trade-offs often emerge. You may need to be at or above market for growth-critical roles while staying closer to market in areas where hiring is easier. You might use targeted stipends for high-need positions rather than across-the-board salary increases. The key is making these trade-offs intentionally, communicating them clearly, and ensuring they align with your stated compensation philosophy.
Growth as Opportunity
School growth creates genuine opportunities to invest strategically in your people. When you build compensation systems grounded in clear philosophy, anchored to competitive market rates, and designed for fairness across all roles, you can attract needed talent while rewarding educators already doing incredible work.
Strategic compensation during growth isn’t about cutting costs—it’s about investing wisely so everyone is paid what they’re worth, trust in leadership is maintained, and your most valuable asset (your people) stays engaged and committed through the expansion journey.
About the Author
Jennifer Svendsen, PhD, is a Partner at Edgility, bringing over nine years of experience in consulting and human resources. With a background in cancer research, she leverages her research and analytical skills to deliver best-in-class talent equity practices for her clients.
In her role at Edgility, Jennifer is dedicated to cultivating meaningful client relationships and driving research and development of first-rate compensation and talent programs. She engages with her clients through a collaborative and empathetic approach, ensuring their unique needs are met with tailored, data-driven solutions.
Reach out to her at jsvendsen@edgilitytalent.com
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