Three operating contexts where 22-grade structures still earn their keep — and three where wide bands now outperform. Saudization and Emiratization grade-banded compliance, hot-cluster premium accommodation, and pay-transparency-ready governance are pushing MENA reward leaders toward broader bands. The migration question is governance, not aesthetics.
Saudization and Emiratization regimes are easier to evidence inside a narrow-grade scaffold. Where compliance reporting drives the architecture, narrow grades remain the right answer.
GenAI engineering, advanced analytics, and senior commercial talent require the in-band variance that 22-grade structures suppress. Wide bands accommodate the cluster premium without breaking the global grid.
Disclosure regimes reward architectures whose internal logic can be told as a story. Wide bands with explicit progression rules outperform narrow grids whose mechanics live in a spreadsheet.
First: nationalisation regimes that report at grade-band level — narrow grades make the evidence trail easier to maintain. Second: heavily unionised or works-council environments where collective agreements are written against grade steps. Third: regulated industries with formal job-evaluation regimes built into prudential reporting.
First: technology-led functions where role definitions move faster than annual job-evaluation cycles. Second: organisations operating across two or more GCC markets where a single cross-market grid needs to absorb local-market variance without re-grading the role. Third: pay-transparency-ready environments where the in-band progression rules need to be defensible in writing.
The visible difference between a 22-grade structure and a wide-band structure is the chart. The actual difference is the governance: who approves an in-band move, on what evidence, against what calibration cycle. Migrations that change the chart without changing the governance produce the same compression problems they were meant to solve.
Evalio's view: design the governance first, choose the band shape second, and treat the chart as the output, not the input.
The full briefing — including market dispersion, role-cluster pricing, and the workforce-cost model — is delivered through governed channels with appropriate source-rights handling. There is no public download.
Public-safe perspective. Not legal, tax, regulatory, actuarial, financial, or final compensation advice. Country and market figures referenced in the full briefing are indicative and source-rights dependent.