Ravio

Compensation philosophy 🤝 employee benefits A well-designed benefits package isn’t about fun perks – it should be an intentional reflection of your compensation philosophy, reinforcing the company's values, goals, and culture. As Vaso Parisinou, Ravio’s Chief People Officer, put it when we interviewed her for our recent employee benefits guide: “If your company prioritises transparency, that should show up in how benefits are structured and communicated. If you focus on attracting top talent, you may lean into market-leading
benefits like flexible working or generous parental leave.” Here’s a couple of examples. Wise’s company mission is “money without borders” – and this is woven through the employee benefits offering, with benefits like: 🔹Work from anywhere for 90 days per year 🔹Flexible working (decided on team by team basis) 🔹Mission days to bring global colleagues together Netflix has a core principle of “almost no rules” when it comes to work culture, and employee benefits reflect this with schemes like: 🔹Unlimited parental leave (manager discretion) 🔹Unlimited holiday days Start with what your company stands for, and you’ll build a benefits package that’s truly meaningful to the employees you want to be part of your team.

“I wanted the team to stop having to worry about pay, and instead be able to focus on delivering great work” This was one of the key aims behind Kaylie Boogaerts’ initiative to introduce a public pay calculator – ensuring a standardised and transparent approach to employee compensation at Checkly. If the team felt confident that pay and progression were being taken care of by the People team with their best interests at heart, then they’d have the headspace to focus on their jobs. That would benefit the team as individuals, but also the company as a whole. Kaylie has seen this come to fruition since implementing a public pay calculator, and a consistent process for reviewing pay throughout the year. Several members of the Checkly team have told her that they feel they’re able to be more open and honest in their 1:1s now too, because they don’t have to constantly be thinking about building up evidence towards their next performance review and salary increase. Here’s the full list of reasons that went into the decision ⬇️ Would openly sharing how salaries are calculated make sense for your company? Let us know your approach in the comments!

What level of pay transparency are other companies aiming for? With the EU Pay Transparency Directive creeping closer, this is a hot topic within our Rewards community. We asked 80 Reward Leaders about their plans for implementing transparent pay practices in their current company. The majority (45%) are opting for a partially transparent approach – giving employees access to only their own salary band by default. 30% are introducing full transparency – open salary bands wherein employees have access to all salary bands within the company. Only 2% of the Reward leaders we surveyed are planning to introduce open salaries where employees have access to the individual salaries of their peers. How does this align with your plans? 🤔

Thanks to everyone who joined yesterday’s Reward Hours! As we host more of these discussions, we’re finding that community and connections are absolutely crucial in the Rewards space. Yesterday’s session focused on aligning Rewards strategy with business goals. One thing became crystal clear. Reward leaders are expert jugglers 🤹♀️ Keeping the long-term compensation strategy aligned with business goals and priorities, whilst short-term changes (both within the company and externally in the macroeconomic environment) are constantly causing those goalposts to shift. Thinking strategically whilst also battling day-to-day operational needs – from fixing a payslip issue to handling a department lead who needs a different approach for their team. And all of that whilst often being a sole operator or a very small team. As Vaso Parisinou highlighted during the conversation, peer-to-peer connections are vital in this context. Having peers who understand these challenges and can offer ideas for solutions, or simply a support system when times are tough. We’re becoming more and more certain that spaces like our monthly Reward Hours sessions are much needed – a huge thank you to Vaso for hosting and to Figen Zaim and Anastasia Efremova for joining us to share your experiences and advice 👏 If you missed yesterday’s discussion, we’ll link the recording and key takeaways in the comments section below, as well as the link to register for next month’s webinar.

Market adjustments are a must for every compensation review. The core purpose of a compensation review is to ensure that compensation remains fair and competitive for all employees – aiming to maximise retention and avoid regrettable attrition. Staying aligned to the wider market is key to this. That means that your compensation review should include: 🔸 Sourcing up-to-date compensation benchmarking data 🔸 Refreshing salary bands in line with that data 🔸 Taking into account each employee’s new salary band position when deciding on compensation adjustments by analysing compa ratio (or salary range penetration) – if market benchmarks have shifted then the employee’s compa ratio may have dropped, and this should be rectified at compensation review. Of course, depending on your company’s compensation philosophy, you may also include merit increases (often at manager discretion) or cost of living adjustments too – a tool like a merit matrix can be helpful for this.

Salary trends for sales teams 📊 The median salary for a P3 role in Direct Sales has increased across most countries and growth stages, with the exception of The Netherlands and France. Unlike the P3 level for Direct Sales, the M3 level shows an almost consistent decline in median salaries. In fact, the only two countries to increase salary for this role and level is the UK (just marginally at 0.6%) and Sweden at 2.7%. Sweden is notable across all roles for a significant increase in median salary – partly due to the growing strength of Ravio’s benchmarking data for Sweden, but also due to inflation declining significantly in Sweden, and Sweden becoming a more and more attractive location for tech companies to set up base. However, for sales, even Sweden has a modest increase at the M3 level – this compares to an 8.2% increase in median salary for an M3 Software Engineer in Sweden and a 5.8% increase for M3 Product Management. For more insights like this, get your copy of our latest Compensation Trends report, linked in the comments below 👇

Last call! Join 200+ other Reward Leaders for a discussion on how to effectively tailor compensation to a company’s unique goals, priorities, values, and culture. Our next Reward Community Office Hours is taking place at 2pm GMT / 3pm CET – and we’d love to see you there. Can’t make that time? Register anyway, and we’ll send you the recording afterwards. Register now ➡️ https://lnkd.in/ehpejWBv

How do you prepare line managers for conversations about pay? Whilst Reward teams own company-wide communication on compensation, line managers are more often the ones having 1:1 conversations about pay with their team members. It’s crucial that managers are able to effectively articulate how compensation decisions are made at the company, and that they speak about pay with empathy. As a starting point, manager training on compensation should always include: 🧑🏫 Educational workshops on key compensation concepts and how they’re used within the company’s own compensation philosophy 🎭 Training sessions on how to communicate about compensation with direct reports, including role-playing scenarios like sharing pay review outcomes 📝 Documented guidelines to refer back to at any time, including templates or example language where possible for practical advice. We also asked a few Rewards experts for their advice on how to make that manager training as effective as possible – here’s what they said: Eamonn Stanley ➡️ Understanding typically varies across a team, so gauge where your management team is at with compensation knowledge first, and use that to build a tailored plan – which might include different cohorts with different starting points. Vaso Parisinou ➡️ Use data to cement understanding. That could be internal data like salary band positions, to highlight how starting salaries or salary increases impact pay equity. Or it could be external market data, to highlight the importance of aligning with the market for fair and competitive pay. Vicky Peakman ➡️ Keep checking manager understanding of your compensation approach – it’s easy to blame managers for poor communication, but it might be an indication that the approach isn’t clear enough or that managers haven’t received enough guidance.

What is the biggest cause of the gender pay gap? In terms of the raw, unadjusted gender pay gap, a major contributor is the lack of female representation in senior roles. The unadjusted pay gap compares the salaries of all men with all women – and sits at 25% across European tech. But this figure is heavily influenced by a lack of women in senior roles. As we can see from our data, men outnumber women in the tech industry, with only 41% of employees in Europe’s tech companies being women. This gap widens as seniority increases, with men dominating the executive level at 79% compared to only 21% of women. The adjusted gender pay gap accounts for this – a weighted average calculation of the gender pay gap between men and women who perform work of equal value (including level of seniority) – which sits at 2.5% across European tech. So this tells us two things. Firstly, women performing exactly the same job, in the same function, and in the same country, still earn 2.5% less than men, highlighting deep systematic pay disparities in the tech industry. Secondly, the majority of the pay equity discrepancy is less about men and women being paid differently for the same roles, and more about the critical lack of women in senior, higher-paying positions. Identifying this helps us understand the critical areas where efforts are needed, including improving representation and distribution of women across all levels, especially in leadership and senior roles.

The cost of replacing just one employee that leaves because they got a more competitive salary offer elsewhere? Tens of thousands of pounds. Even more if the advertised salary still isn’t market-aligned, because hiring a replacement is going to be slow going. And that’s not to mention the impact on the rest of the team who need to manage without that role, and then train up the replacement. That’s a lot of ££££ down the drain. It’s surprisingly common for teams to rely on sources like Glassdoor for salary data – and it’s usually because they’re struggling to get buy-in and budget from C-level decision makers. Highlighting the financial risk to the business is the key to demonstrating to senior leaders that reliable compensation benchmarking data is a critical investment. With Alistair Fraser’s help, we’ve put together the ROI case for you 🪄 ➡️ https://lnkd.in/eDcHGJRD