Summary
Dropbox helps over 700 million registered users across 180 countries find, organize, and share their work, all in one place.
As the company grew, the compensation team needed a more data-driven and efficient way to benchmark roles, run compensation planning cycles, and communicate pay details to employees and candidates.
By implementing Compensation Planning, Visual Offer Letter, and Total Rewards from Pave, the Dropbox team transformed their compensation approach, saving time and improving pay transparency.
Key Wins
- Reimagined the compensation planning process, saving a yearly total of over 4,000 hours across two cycles
- Increased manager satisfaction from 47% to 79% in the first comp planning cycle, and to 85% by the second cycle
- Provided pay visibility to all employees and candidates, achieving a 100% visual offer utilization
Setting the Scene
Elle Xing, Senior Director of Compensation and People Technology at Dropbox, had two primary goals: improve efficiency so her team could focus on high-value projects, and ensure employees were being paid competitively. “We wanted to spend less time managing compensation processes and more time making thoughtful decisions. That meant improving efficiency, building trust with managers and employees, and giving people greater confidence in the process.” shared Elle.
Like many global companies with thousands of employees, the Dropbox team is always looking to simplify their compensation administration processes, and share pay details with a distributed workforce—so they turned to Pave.
Increasing Pay Transparency
Dropbox’s journey with Pave started in 2021. Elle needed a way to communicate total rewards details with a global, distributed workforce. At the time, the compensation team was using spreadsheets to manage and share pay details. It worked for one-off conversations, but it wasn’t scalable as the company grew.
To improve visibility, the Dropbox team implemented Total Rewards and Visual Offer Letter from Pave, giving employees and candidates access to personalized, dynamic portals with in-depth salary, benefit, and equity information. They can view all elements of their compensation package, model potential equity compensation outcomes, and understand career progression opportunities.
After launching these tools, 75% of employees logged into the portal, and 100% of candidates viewed their visual offer letter.
“Giving employees and candidates a more intuitive view of their total rewards made compensation conversations more transparent, more consistent, and easier for managers to navigate. We've received great feedback from employees, managers, and leadership on how much easier it is to understand and communicate compensation.”
—Elle Xing, Senior Director of Compensation and People Technology at Dropbox
Streamlining the Planning Process
After tackling communication challenges, Elle and the team were ready to overhaul their compensation planning processes.
The compensation and people technology teams were spending roughly 6,000 hours a year managing the compensation planning process. And that didn’t even include manager involvement in the twice-annual merit cycles. Not only was this an inefficient process, manager satisfaction was only 47%.
To improve the experience, Elle and the team spoke with managers and stakeholders, understood their pain points and preferences, and evaluated potential tools. Pave’s Compensation Planning checked all the crucial boxes to improve the manager experience.
With Pave’s intuitive UI, streamlined workflows, and the ability to make changes without technical support, the Dropbox team transformed their compensation planning process. The team set a target to shave 2,000 hours off their process. They ended up saving 1,600 hours on their mid-year promo comp planning cycle in Pave, and over 2,800 hours on their full cycle that included merit, bonus, and equity planning. That amounted to a yearly total savings of over roughly 4,000 hours based on internal estimates.
To top it off, manager satisfaction jumped to 79% in the first comp planning cycle, and increased again to 85% satisfaction by the second cycle.
“The first reaction from our team was that the process felt dramatically simpler. We can now focus on higher-value work and improving the experience for managers and employees.”
—Elle Xing, Senior Director of Compensation and People Technology at Dropbox
Looking Ahead
Elle believes the future is bright for compensation professionals. While the fundamentals of compensation won’t change, advances in technology will empower teams to automate time-consuming processes and focus on more strategic projects.
The Dropbox team has already laid an impressive foundation with Pave, and they’re excited to continue building. Elle is constantly refining their compensation strategy and can’t wait to partner on what’s to come for compensation and Pave.
