Aeqium Blog

From billion-dollar banking losses to public health missteps, spreadsheet errors have proven costly. In compensation planning, the stakes are just as high. Learn why relying on Excel or Google Sheets for comp cycles introduces risk—and how dedicated software can help you avoid costly mistakes, ensure fairness, and stay compliant.

In 2025, compensation isn’t just about pay — it’s a reflection of your company’s culture, values, and strategy. Explore how leading organizations are redefining compensation management to build trust, retain top talent, and drive performance. From direct vs. indirect compensation to communication best practices and smarter tools, here’s what sets the new standard — and how Aeqium helps you get there.

Discover the top 11 compensation planning software solutions for 2025. Learn how tools like Aeqium, SAP, and Workday help HR teams optimize pay structures, bonuses, and equity planning. Download our RFP template to find the right fit for your company!

Compensation planning is evolving, yet many companies still use spreadsheets. Learn why upgrading to modern compensation software is critical for success.

Learn how to improve compensation planning efficiency, reduce errors, and enhance decision-making—all without increasing your HR budget.

Compensation management is key to retention and employee satisfaction. Learn how structured compensation strategies enhance engagement and reduce turnover.

Despite its benefits, only 10% of companies use compensation planning software. Discover the barriers to adoption and why switching is a competitive advantage.

Relying on spreadsheets for compensation planning? Discover the hidden costs, risks, and inefficiencies—and why it’s time to switch to compensation planning software.

Discover why compensation planning software is replacing spreadsheets & HRIS modules. Learn how it enhances accuracy, transparency, and budget control.

Discover the top compensation planning trends for 2025 and how companies are adopting compensation management software to improve efficiency, pay equity, and retention.

Are ‘refresh grants’ misleading employees? Learn why this common stock compensation term creates false expectations and how HR teams should communicate equity awards more clearly.

HR teams: Want to improve compensation planning? See the top feedback from 500+ managers on pay ranges, budgets, and data overload—plus how to fix it.

Managing compensation for a global workforce is complex. From currency conversions to merit formulas and regional access, learn why spreadsheets fall short and how compensation management software can help.

Struggling to choose between a white-glove implementation and a DIY setup for your compensation management software? Learn the pros, cons, and key questions to ask before making the right choice for your HR team.

Welcome back to Aeqium's Compensation Playbook Series! 🎙️ In today's episode, we delve into the dynamic world of stock compensation with Ilene Milne, Senior Director of Compensation at Palo Alto Networks and a seasoned compensation expert. Ilene shares her insights on the latest trends and best practices in managing stock-based compensation, including: the impact of market volatility stock-based compensation plans, emerging vesting schedule strategies, such as one-year vesting and front-loading, common mistakes to avoid, and how to measure the success of your stock-based compensation programs

Welcome to Aeqium's Compensation Playbook Series! 🎙️ Today’s episode features a dynamic conversation with Eleanor Quin, Senior Director of Global Compensation at Novavax. With a wealth of experience in total rewards, Eleanor shares invaluable insights into how pay transparency is reshaping compensation strategies and why executive alignment is crucial for success. She also delves into the power of empowering managers to confidently communicate rewards and how a thoughtful approach to stakeholder engagement can drive better outcomes across the organization.

Welcome to Aeqium's Compensation Playbook Series! 🎙️ Today’s episode features a dynamic conversation with Jess Yuen, an advisor, executive coach, and long-time Aeqium collaborator. With a wealth of experience in people operations, Jess shares invaluable insights into navigating strategic thinking and executive alignment for total rewards leaders. This episode covers: - Defining what it means to be strategic in total rewards leadership - Insights into how rewards leaders can better align with company goals - Evolving the role of TR leaders to include financial strategy and cross-functional collaboration - Building trust with executives and key stakeholders - Managing change effectively in legacy processes - Practical approaches to planning, alignment, and stakeholder communication

At many tech companies, equity is a significant part of employee compensation. One challenging situation that can happen when a company heavily weights equity compensation in their comp philosophy is the rebaselining of compensation expectations as equity values increase or decrease. Essentially, when share prices increase or decrease by a large amount, the actual value that employees receive in a given year can experience a high degree of volatility, causing mismatched expectations, confusion, or dissatisfaction with comp. 

Welcome to Aeqium’s Compensation Playbook Series! 🎙️ In today’s episode, Peter McKee interviews Michael Downey, Director of Total Rewards at DataRobot, to discuss the ever-evolving world of compensation benchmarking. With over 15 years in Total Rewards leadership, Michael shares hard-earned insights on navigating the challenges of a shifting market and building reliable benchmarks from scratch. Tune in to learn about: - Tackling the complexities of benchmarking in a rapidly changing market - Balancing employee-submitted data with trusted sources - Strategies for building job architectures without getting bogged down - How to prioritize emerging roles like AI engineers - Creating frameworks that can evolve with your organization This is a must-watch for Total Rewards leaders planning for 2025 and beyond!

Welcome to Aeqium’s Compensation Playbook Series! 🎙️ In today’s episode, Peter McKee interviews Joe Bast, VP of People at Crisp, as he shares insights from over a decade of HR leadership across startups of all sizes. Joe dives into actionable strategies to help rewards leaders and talent acquisition teams collaborate seamlessly. Tune in to learn about: - Preventing misalignment between rewards and recruiting teams - Prioritizing roles effectively across departments - Utilizing regular feedback sessions to stay in sync - Extracting valuable insights from offer declines and acceptances - Building strong relationships for clear and transparent communication

Aeqium is excited to announce that we've partnered with Carta! Our direct integration with Carta’s API platform delivers a real-time, holistic view of your employees’ total rewards package—including detailed insights into equity value, vesting schedules, and changes over time. Check out our article here to learn how this integration gives you a complete view of total compensation, real-time equity insights, and streamlined workflows for greater compensation planning efficiency.

Explore how Aeqium’s new reporting toolset can streamline your compensation review process, saving time and effort while delivering real-time, customized reports. Forget about manual data compilations and rigid spreadsheets—Aeqium allows you to quickly create dynamic, detailed reports on salary increases, compensation ratios, and more. With easy integration to data sources like Rippling and Lattice, plus intuitive report-building features, you can effortlessly track performance, equity, and geographic trends. Discover how Aeqium empowers you to make informed decisions and build confidence with leadership through comprehensive, actionable insights.

Discover the true costs of compensation reviews and the extensive time investments involved, from HR teams to managerial staff. Learn about the risks and expenses associated with manual processes and explore solutions to streamline compensation planning and reduce costs effectively.

80% of compensation leaders find coaching managers a major challenge in review cycles. The blog discusses manager struggles with data access and process efficiency, offering solutions like improved data access, guided workflows, and training for effective compensation reviews.

Our latest blog delves into the complexities of pay transparency in HR, featuring insights from Justin Sun, Senior Manager, Global Rewards at Expedia Group. He illuminates current trends, employee expectations, and strategic implementation of pay transparency. This crucial topic addresses its impact on morale and its role as a strategic tool for attracting and retaining talent, exploring its nuances and significance in today's workplace.

There are several parameters to weigh when designing an equity program. In this post, we document a few equity refresh programs in the industry for inspiration.

The world’s three most famous consulting firms, Bain & Company, the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), and McKinsey, have recently made a number of compensation market adjustments – their largest in years. What’s going on here?

Your business is growing fast, and you’ve hired a few dozen people over the last few years. These are now some of your most tenured and valuable team members – how do you ensure that they stay motivated?

Discover strategies for making smart compensation exceptions to retain top talent without disrupting internal equity. Learn when to say 'yes' and manage exceptions systematically for a competitive edge.

Total compensation or “TC” as it’s colloquially (and somewhat sarcastically) referred to across the tech industry, is a term referring to the sum total of all of the monetary compensation that an employee receives in a given year. In tech company circles, it has become a common term that allows employees at different companies to compare their compensation and determine whether they’re being paid a market rate.

Managing effective merit cycles in a competitive job market is challenging for HR teams and managers. This blog offers 5 tips and 3 tools to enhance merit cycles, ensuring fair rewards and boosting company performance. Key aspects include clear criteria, manager training, data analysis tools, and software for streamlined processes.

Let's explore the significance of job architecture in the compensation benchmarking process, its contribution to career development, and the process of establishing compensation bands and job leveling, highlighting the essential steps involved.

A compensation philosophy is one of the key elements of a thorough compensation management plan. A well designed compensation philosophy describes a company's approach to determining and providing pay and benefits to its employees. It also serves as a framework for how the company rewards its employees for the contributions that they make to the organization.

Welcome to Aeqium! We're excited to kick off our blog with best practices, guides, and playbooks on how to compensate your team.

Compensation cycles are scheduled time periods where managers at a company evaluate and update compensation for their teams. These cycles are one of the most important fundamental elements of a well-oiled compensation management system. Read on to learn more about what compensation cycles are and how to run them effectively and efficiently.

To hire effectively as a startup, you need to devise a plan for pitching your equity to candidates that is accurate, informative, and compelling. Dive into this guide to learn more.

Beyond strictly financial considerations, there are many other important factors that impact the competitiveness of your total offering to current and potential team members. These components of your company’s “package” can be just as important as moderate amounts of cash compensation on the margins.

Are you effectively communicating your compensation strategy? A solid compensation philosophy is critical, but communicating compensation effectively is 13x more likely to help you retain employees. We're joined by Rameez Kaleem, CEO and Founder at 3R Strategy, to explore the best practices in pay communication.

Stripe just announced a new round of funding priced at $50B – an eye-popping valuation to be sure, but just half of what they had last raised at during their peak. Many private companies’ true valuations are lower than their last rounds – in many cases, much lower. This has significant implications for companies across the tech ecosystem.

“How much does it pay?”‍ It’s the number one question job candidates want answered. It’s also become a challenge for HR leaders due to the growing demand for Pay Transparency.‍ To help HR leaders with this challenge, Aeqium CEO Peter McKee sat down with a panel of experts to provide actionable tips and advice for preparing for a pay-transparent world.

Today we’re announcing the first release of our free product to create branded, interactive offer letters and help you capture data from offer performance. Sign up and try it out!

In uncertain macroeconomic environments, there are many important decisions that you and your team need to make regarding comp. Here are a few tips for how to navigate compensation and team building in the event that we’re in for an extended downturn.

Falling behind in compensation in today’s market can mean disaster: missed hiring targets and regrettable attrition. To avoid these issues, many companies are considering proactive raises for some or all of their teams in order to match or exceed market compensation. Here are a few points to keep in mind on emergency market adjustment raises and how to run them:

Compensation leaders and the managers responsible for reviewing employees know just how time-consuming and frustrating a compensation cycle can be. Once you've completed the hard work of the last cycle, it’s time to take some of the crucial steps that allow you to continuously improve how you run better, more efficient compensation planning in the future.

With more and more pay transparency laws coming into effect, compensation and people operations teams need to be prepared for what they need to publish and what the impacts will be for candidates and employees alike. To maximize the opportunity that this creates (and minimize the downside), take the steps below to make sure that you’re prepared.

We're excited to announce the release of our new feature, Pay Transparency, which empowers brands to be more transparent about their employees' pay ranges.

Compensation bands are an integral part of a great compensation program. Compensation bands simplify decision-making, prevent salary compression, and ensure pay equity. They’re an important tool as you level up and ensure that your comp plan is effective. If you don't have bands in place yet, here are some tips on how to get started.

I’ve released a free tool to help understand tech company compensation. Try it out, share it, let me know what you think.

It's easy to establish pay ranges directly from compensation survey data, but that is not a good approach. It's important to make decisions based on all your data, including current employee and offer numbers.

Learn how forward-thinking people leaders from Airbnb, Meta, and Impossible Foods measure the efficiency of their compensation strategies.

It’s hard to make people happy with their compensation, but it’s very easy to make them unhappy. Avoid these common compensation mistakes to retain a happy team.

Employee Retention Strategies: Alpine Rewards' Rob Surdel and Octavio Cardenas share insights on creative compensation approaches. Emphasizing alignment of retention goals with company objectives and proactive planning, they advocate for a blend of monetary and non-monetary rewards to motivate employees. Effective communication and measuring strategy effectiveness through various metrics are also highlighted as key to retaining top talent.

As a company matures, it’s important to structure your compensation into bands. Learn how to get started with this post.

Aeqium earned four leader badges in G2.com's recent 2023 Winter Reports! Our customers gave us high marks in support, ease of use, and setup. Read on to hear what our customers think of simplified compensation cycles, data reliability, and integration with other systems.

A compensation philosophy allows you to be transparent with all of your employees about your approach to total rewards. To help you get started, we’ve put together a sample compensation philosophy below. It’s designed for technology startups that pay employees with a mix of base salary, bonuses, and equity. You can use this compensation philosophy as a template for your own, or just use it as a source of inspiration.