New tool makes offering compensation easy

For employers, developing a competitive compensation plan can be complicated — a new platform is aiming to change that.

OpenComp, a compensation planning tool, generates insights to help companies create competitive offers that fit within their budget and future cash needs. The platform combines verified market data from high-growth companies, analytics and planning tools — including diversity, equity and inclusion benchmarking and remote-first planning.

The platform has surged in popularity since its launch in January, with more than 580 companies signing on to utilize the tool. Employers including DropBox, Salesforce and Twitter are among early investors.

Read more: Men are in the dark about pay equality

“People are a company’s greatest asset which is why it’s so critical to compensate employees fairly and judiciously,” Thanh Nguyen, co-founder and CEO of OpenComp, said in a release. “And yet, compensation planning continues to be an ad-hoc exercise for many companies due to lack of priority, time and access to quality benchmark data or expertise.”

Without a clear strategy in place, companies face a myriad of issues, with pay inequality typically at the top of the list, Nguyen says.

Currently, white women make 81 cents for every dollar a man makes, regardless of experience, industry or job level, according to Payscale, a compensation data platform. It’s statistics like these that have prompted an industry-wide conversation. Recently, TriNet partnered with Salary.com, a compensation data provider, to provide employers with a salary benchmarking tool on the HR management platform. The new feature allows employers to compare compensation for the same roles at different companies, even on their cell phone.

Compensation — and the lack thereof — is a big-picture problem. In order to tackle the issue, employers must first consider the broader infrastructure, Nguyen says.

“We have seen fractured offerings in the market which only address certain pieces of the compensation puzzle, like total rewards tools” Nguyen says. “With better insights and analytics, companies can finally get compensation right.”