I help organisations create a transparent and consistent approach to compensation
The challenge
Compensation is often shrouded in secrecy, a black box of subjective assessments and random figures that are difficult to verify. This can lead to one-off salary calculations, significant frustration, confusion, and ultimately, a lack of trust in the process.
“We want to show salary bands on job adverts but don’t have any”
“We’re starting to hire in new locations and don’t know what to pay”
“We want to understand whether we’re paying our people fairly. Our employees don’t think we do!”
“We’ve signed up to a few salary providers and don’t know which one to use”
“We don’t have a compensation philosophy”
The finance team are struggling to accurately forecast the costs (salary and equity) for future hires
The solution
I’ve distilled this historically complex and messy process into a guide, detailing not only the ‘what’ but more importantly the ‘how’, consisting of the decisions and steps you need to take in order to make pay transparency a reality in your organisation.
It’s helped 50+ organisations from around the world, of all shapes and sizes create a compensation philosophy and salary structure to meet their needs.
A typical engagement looks like this…
Step 1: Project set up & discovery
‘Gathering insights to make sure what we build meets you needs now and as you grow’
- A review of any content that has been put together to date on compensation, including info performance management, career development and promotions.
- Run a 1hr session to deep dive into the content and discuss the next steps for the build.
- Define who will be involved in the project and the part they will play. We want to make sure the salary benchmarking exercise and the building of the compensation philosophy is inclusive.
Step 2: Defining your organisational structure and levelling the team
’Getting your entire team speaking the same language’
In any salary benchmarking exercise you need to map employees to the right benchmarks in an objective manner. We’ll use a ‘common language’ listed below, which is largely dictated by the benchmarking provider you choose, but in essence is globally recognised so you can switch between providers should you wish quickly and easily.
- Job Family - this is the function a role is a part of, often discernible by the department or team this role falls in at your company.
- Track - Are they managing people or processes?
- Level - this is how senior / experienced the person is and the scope of responsibility that their role covers. The levelling framework we use will again be largely dictated by the salary benchmarking provider you choose.
- This is the part of the project which will take some time and involvement from the managers.
- We’ll work together to figure out what the best levelling process is for your organisation based on size and time commitments.
- It will typically look like something below and once we have finalised the what steps we will take in regards to levelling, we can the train managers on the process.
- Location - where in the world are they performing their work.
Step 3: Defining your salary benchmarks
’Ensuring we use relevant and reliable data’
- I’m data agnostic when it comes to salary data and work with all the main benchmarking sources. If you’ve not signed up to any yet, then we can walk through them together and I’ll make recommendations on which ones are best based on your circumstances.
- The data market is fragmented, so where appropriate, we can combine sources to create a set of benchmarks that are right for your organisation, so you feel confident in the decisions you make when it comes to paying ‘market rate’.
- I’ll also help you make sense of any data that doesn’t progress or is simply missing by using regression models - learn more regression here.
Once we have our data we’ll create salary bands for each job family and role, defining the market rate, how wide they need to be and how much overlap you want (if any) between levels.
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Depending on where you’re located in the world and how much data your salary provider has, we’ll formulate a location based pay strategy that is both fair and fiscally responsible.
To determine the target value of a new hire grant, the Justly calculator uses a % of the the base salary for every role/level in the company. This is a pretty standard approach that most companies use.
We’ll work together to define %’s that work for you based on your cap table and pool size.
If you wish to go beyond just new hire equity, then let me know and I can introduce you to the https://www.equitypeople.co/
Step 4: Analysing your market position
‘Carry out a pay equity audit to identify where you are under/over paying’
- The compensation calculator will allow you to:
- Uncover where pay inequities exist by level, dept., gender and race
- Identify which percentiles you are currently paying in and how much it might cost you to move to a more aggressive market position
- Discover what it will cost to bring employees who are underpaid to your desired market percentile and create department budgets
- Accurately forecast the costs for future hires
- It contains a compensation formula that is flexible enough to adjust for factors like experience and location, without the need to research and look up salaries online each time a new team member arrives or a pay increase request is made.
Step 5: Document, train & launch
‘Communicating how it all works and making sure all the hard work sticks’
This is all about communicating the how and why your company pays the way it does, based on your company’s culture, values, and financials.
We'll help you figure out what your comp philosophy and strategy is. We’ll use a template to get us off the starting blocks, and work together along with your other key stakeholders to craft something that accurately reflects your organisation.
We’ll dive into:
- Defining when pay reviews will happen, what the process will look like and exceptions to this
- How you want to tie pay back to performance and progression
- Defining how transparent you wish to be. Hint: we don’t have to show everyone each other’s salaries.
- Explain to employees your approach to location based pay
- The compensation philosophy template isn’t all about base salary. There are placeholders for you to slot in other elements that make up your total reward offering (equity, benefits & perks, bonuses etc).
- A ton of FAQs which call come with pre-baked answers which we’ll go through together and validate based on your philosophical beliefs
Before launching, we’ll make sure all your people managers are confident when it comes to talking about pay.
- Session length = 1.5hrs
- Max of 8 people per session
We’ll dive into answering the following questions + more:
- “I don’t feel I’m being paid fairly and I would like a pay rise”
- “Why was Alice levelled as IC2 and I am IC1? We are doing the same work”
- “Hooli have approached me and offered me £5,000 more than what I’m earning here”
- “I have a candidate wanting a salary that exceeds what we’re paying our current team. Can we go outside of our current salary bands?”
I’ll work with you to define how to launch the comp philosophy and everything that goes with it, especially when introducing levels for the first time which may make some team members nervous.
I have tried and tested launch content, from a company wide all hands launch deck, right through to example emails for people managers to send to their direct reports.
Key deliverables
These can vary depending on project objectives, but the ones listed below are typically the ones you’ll end up with at the end of the project.
How I work
A standing weekly 1hr call that we use to brainstorm on a particular topic.
Async catch ups over Slack or email = 1-2hrs
1-2hrs making customisations to the presentations we’re working on or reviewing content that has been tailored by you.
You’ll be working with just me. I’m staying small on purpose and building a one person business. Why? Learn more here.
I’m online 9am-7pm UK time to answer any questions and keep you moving in the right direction.
Costs
Project duration | 1-2 months |
Time | 3-5 days |
Materials | £4,500 |
Total Cost (excl VAT) | £7,350 - £9,250 |
I work on a day rate model, tracking time used which is shared with you.
Estimated times listed above are based on average but can vary by organisational size and what is already in place. Once we speak, I’ll be able to give you a more accurate number.
The materials are made up of a number of templates, from the comp calculator and comp philosophy, to the manager training decks and pre-written emails. We’ll use these together to get the creative juices flowing, helping you move quickly and save time, so you can focus your energy and attention on the parts that really matter.
You also have lifetime access to the compensation calculator, allowing you to upgrade to a new version anytime you wish (most clients update on an annual basis).
For sure!
- 20% discount is available for charities and non-profits.
- 15% discount for companies who use Charlie HR
Out of scope
While progression and performance are intrinsically related to compensation, the scope of work will not involve re-designing or building these processes from scratch.
We’ll discuss how pay is linked to them and discuss how any of your existing processes you have in place, and make sure these are accounted for in regards to any processes we’ll be introducing.
We’ll look at the numbers that come out of any external data source to make informed decisions, however, by default, the calculator won't benchmark against against variable compensation.
Why? I’ve learnt that every organisation approaches variable pay differently, which makes it incredibly difficult to build a one size fits all model for benchmark purposes.
If this is something that is very important to the project, then we can discuss the level of customisation required and scope out this work.
We’ll look at the numbers that come out of any external data source to make informed decisions, however, by default, the calculator won't benchmark against equity.
Why? I’ve learnt that every organisation approaches equity differently, which makes it incredibly difficult to build a one size fits all model for benchmark purposes.
If this is something that is very important to the project, then we can discuss the level of customisation required and scope out this work.
If you wish to go beyond new hire equity and dive into the areas below then please let me know and I’ll introduce you to the https://www.equitypeople.co/ who I partner with on these projects.
- Employee scheme audit
- Refresher grant system
- Budget and scenario modelling
- Employee education
FAQs
- Yes. There are two other ways I can help:
- I work on an hourly rate of £175 per hour, and ca provide advice on any existing processes this way.
- Head over to and find one that helps you fit your immediate needs. We can then work on an hourly rate should you need support using a template.
Of course. While I’m a huge advocate of pay transparency, I understand that it’s a journey and not one that can be rushed. We’ll work together to get you moving in the right direction and don’t worry, we don’t have to put salary bands on job adverts if you don’t want to 😃
Yes. All the materials shared with you are yours to edit and keep.
Yes. I help clients refresh their benchmarks every 6-12 months i.e. during performance reviews or annual market movement assessments.
- Upgrade your Justly compensation calculator to the latest version.
- Migrate employee information from your existing calculator to the new one.
- Make any custom changes required based on previous work.
- Upload and refresh the external benchmarks.
- Give you a quick demo of any new features.
Cost = £1,250
This cost can vary depending on the number of salary benchmarking sources you wish to use and complexity of any custom work.
No. We’re not a salary benchmarking provider. Costs for salary data from providers such as Radford, Mercer, Figures, Pave etc are not included.
We’ll talk about which data set is right for you during our initial calls, and if you need to purchase data then you’ll need to arrange this contract separately with the vendor.