Salary Banding Examples, Formats

Why not look at the Federal system and any local governments that utilize such a system. Then adjust compensation for your area and industry.

Our salary bands range +/- 20% of the "norm" for each range. Then we break the band into "quin-tiles" and pay based on performance or knowledge of job. We have written descriptions of what it takes to be in each quin-tile, but the expectation is if you are not new at your job you should at least be in the 3rd quin-tile, where the "norm" lies.

The salary for the norm in each band is separated by approximately 10%.

Adding to Jill;
When dealing with people outside of the US, age and education can also get factored in (yes...I was appalled. I'm just grateful I wasn't asked to include race and gender).

Generally we prefer to break out COLA regions as well (really cost-of-employees). Most of the major accting firms have decent surveys, as well as does Salary.com, etc.

Norms I have dealt with have been similar as far as banding goes.

In more complex situations where skill, age, seniority, geo, etc come into play, we try to regress or weight the factors so that they are taken into account proportionately. You can then plot salaries against the factors and see if they stay within a respectable range.