To ~howlgarnish’s point, this is how I got my most recent promotion and it was very much a case of myself and my direct manager arguing against an opaque HR/Payroll team who generally didn’t approve promotions. no egos to damage in our immediate area by pushing hard.
The biggest issue we encountered was arbitrary requirements in the paper documentation of the role we were aiming to move me into, including a ‘hard’ requirement for an engineering degree with honours, which suddenly became less of an issue when the argument was ‘im going to accept another role but you can match it with x salary and title’ in a polite discussion with department head.
This will only apply to very large companies though, ymmv.
In larger companies management, HR and compensation are all separate teams, and a decent manager will be negotiating "with" you and "against" the other two to get your salary match.
The biggest issue we encountered was arbitrary requirements in the paper documentation of the role we were aiming to move me into, including a ‘hard’ requirement for an engineering degree with honours, which suddenly became less of an issue when the argument was ‘im going to accept another role but you can match it with x salary and title’ in a polite discussion with department head.
This will only apply to very large companies though, ymmv.