Our Compensation Philosophy

Stanford is committed to providing a fair and competitive staff compensation program that will attract, retain and reward high-performing employees at all levels. The university is also committed to providing a total staff compensation package tied to the attainment of individual and group results and the achievement of organizational goals.

Primary principles that guide our staff compensation program

• Pay what a job is worth.
• Recognize and reward individual and group performance.

The staff compensation program is designed to meet certain key objectives:

• Transparency: Provide managers and employees access to job-related content, pay guidelines and salary ranges.
• Flexibility: Support a diverse, decentralized organization to accommodate differences and changes in job requirements, job market and economy.
• External Competitiveness: Reflect pay rates for comparable jobs within the relevant labor market.
• Internal Comparability: Provide pay guidelines that ensure similar jobs are paid equitably across the organization.
• Recognition: Reward performance through salary increases, bonuses and incentives; extraordinary performance and contributions are further rewarded at a level that signifies the value of the employee to the organization and encourages retention.