Level 3 · Recommend: the budget figures and the team lead

From numbers to a recommendation

Laura will read this paragraph out at the budget review. It has three parts, sometimes taught as what, how much, so what:

• What did you find? Payroll and typical pay by department, and that Support’s managers are not the most stretched by span.
• How much supports it? Payroll of 5,959,000 for 60 people; a median salary of 81,000 against a mean of 99,317; Angela with 5 direct reports and her team lead with 3, against 7 for the heads of Operations and Engineering.
• So what does it mean? Use medians in the budget pack, and do not fund the second team lead on span alone.

A good recommendation also says what would change it. Four of Support’s nine people joined since 2024, and new staff need more of a manager’s time. Tickets per specialist would show whether that is a real load, so the paragraph asks for them.

Caveats belong in the paragraph

• Small groups. Departments have 2 to 9 people. One hire or one leaver moves an average by thousands, so compare medians and look at the people behind them.
• Compare like with like. Customer Support’s median of 50,000 is lower than Engineering’s 139,500 because the jobs differ, not necessarily because anyone is underpaid. Fair pay is checked within a title: the seven Support Specialists earn between 43,000 and 51,000.
• Structure is not workload. Span of control counts people, not hours. A manager of three new starters can be busier than a manager of seven experienced ones.
• Privacy. The two-person Executive group has an average that gives away both salaries to anyone who knows one. Department pay stays within Finance and HR, and groups under five are left out of any wider report.

The traps in the other options

• Departments instead of titles. “Support is underpaid” compares specialists with engineers.
• The mean as typical. 99,317 is what you get when the CEO’s 285,000 and the heads’ salaries are averaged in; half the company earns 81,000 or less.
• Transparency that identifies people. Publishing small-group averages is publishing salaries. Transparency is done with pay bands per title, not with department means.

The report structure behind this paragraph

In a written report this paragraph is the executive summary. Below it come the objective (the SMART question from the first level), the data and its limits (the check: no duplicates, no missing managers, a salary range that makes sense), the method (sums, medians and a self-join for direct reports), the findings with the chart, the recommendation and the next step: tickets per specialist from Support before the decision is final.