Often different cadres have their own range of grades organized according to skill requirements that are difficult to compare across cadres. The combinations of grades and cadres provide a series of horizontal and vertical organizational structures. The table below shows how the Ethiopian civil service was organized into cadres and grades in the 1990s. Each grade is assigned a salary scale, with incremental steps leading from a minimum salary to the maximum of that grade. Each roman numeral in the example above represents a whole scale.
Salary scales reward length of service and the accumulation of experience.
An approach being followed in some OECD countries is to link a civil servant's pay to individual performance, as well as to the position. Over and above the base pay and any extras, a civil servant can be offered a bonus depending on the degree to which performance goals are achieved. Rewards to encourage good performance are uncommon in developing country civil services. But examples do exist. In a recent World Bank survey, public officials in sixteen countries were asked whether they knew of any employee in their organizations who had been rewarded for good performance in the preceding twelve months.