Is it possible to remove Grades from a Grade Ladder and continue to use them afterwards?

Using Oracle EBS 12.1.3

We have a Number of Grades in a Grade Ladder which has been used for years without issue.

The powers that be have now decided that they no longer wish to have Grade Steps, and as such these Grades will now have a simple Min and a Max.

However, they wish to continue using the Grades themselves.

I've removed the various interstitial Grade steps so we only have a Min and a Max per Grade, but it's still a Grade Ladder situation where we don't actually want one.

Attempting to just remove the Gardes gives the error message: "Employee Placements exists for the Grade. Cannot Unlink Grade from the Default Grade Ladder."