Summary
The Krazy Coupon Lady (KCL) is a media company on a mission to help shoppers find the best deals and save money on everyday purchases, connecting brands with savvy shoppers ready to buy.
With limited market data and manual spreadsheets to run compensation programs, Jessica Adams, Chief People and Culture Officer, and Alyssa Snyder, HR Business Partner, needed a better way to make and communicate critical pay decisions.
By implementing Pave's Market Data, Compensation Planning, and Total Rewards, the KCL team built a transparent, scalable, and data-backed compensation program.
Key Wins
- Created a robust compensation philosophy and competency frameworks based on real-time market data
- Executed streamlined and on-budget merit cycles—without the manual spreadsheets
- Gave employees visibility into their pay and benefits, resulting in 93% of employees surveyed saying they have a better sense of their total compensation
- Equipped managers with better tools to make confident pay decisions for their teams
Background
The KCL team was refining its compensation model and recognized the need for a more structured approach. Leaders were committed to compensating employees fairly and offering meaningful benefits—such as full-coverage life insurance—but needed better tools to make data-driven decisions, streamline manual processes, and communicate the value of total rewards to employees. Pave was the perfect fit.
Challenge
Jessica and Alyssa were hearing from employees that they wanted more visibility into their compensation, and senior leaders wanted to ensure everyone understood the value of all benefits—not just base pay.
However, the team lacked access to comprehensive market data to ensure competitive positioning, and merit cycle updates were being manually managed in spreadsheets.
Without reliable data and an effective way to communicate pay decisions, the KCL compensation team struggled to validate salary changes and provide insight into total rewards.
Solution
Having used Pave before, Jessica recognized it as the ideal solution for the KCL team.
“I had used Pave in the past, so I’ve seen the data and know how accurate and flexible it is. It’s easy to manipulate the data based on funding, company size, location, and more.”
—Jessica Adams, Chief People and Culture Officer at Krazy Coupon Lady
By implementing Market Data, Jessica and Alyssa gained access to real-time benchmarks, enabling them to create pay ranges for every role and build their job families.
They also created competency frameworks, giving employees insight into what it takes to move up or laterally and equipping managers with the information needed to help their teams grow. These competency frameworks are shared in KCL’s internal learning hub, increasing transparency across the organization.
But better data was only the beginning. Jessica and Alyssa used Pave’s Compensation Planning tool to inform and execute on-budget merit cycles. For the first time, the compensation team could view all merit cycle information in one place, making the process more cohesive, streamlined, and organized. The impact was felt beyond the comp team, too: 100% of leadership team members recognized the efficiencies gained with the automation and appreciated the clear employee communication on the merit and bonuses planned for the review cycle.
“It was one of the first times we were able to have a tool that wasn’t a manual spreadsheet that allowed us to stay closer to our budget and understand the complete picture of someone’s impact on the organization.”
—Jessica Adams, Chief People and Culture Officer at Krazy Coupon Lady
Additionally, Jessica and Alyssa leveraged Pave’s Total Rewards portal to communicate compensation information. Using Total Rewards, the KCL team educated employees on salary and benefits, including often-overlooked benefits, which has a positive impact on KCL’s employer brand. Jessica noted that even if an employee isn’t utilizing a particular benefit, “you know that you're working at an organization that values providing that benefit to you for whenever you do need it.”
And, thanks to Pave’s flexibility, as Krazy Coupon Lady grows, Jessica and Alyssa can easily add or edit benefit information.
“Total Rewards are customizable. I like that it’s not set in stone, so we can add benefits and update it on a cadence that makes sense for us.”
—Alyssa Snyder, HR Business Partner at Krazy Coupon Lady
The proof is in the data—93% of employees surveyed said they have a better sense of their total compensation since using Pave. And, “there’s been a big impact on managers, and it’s been eye-opening for executives to have that view into overall compensation and total rewards, and what the market is paying,” shared Alyssa.
Looking Ahead
Moving forward, Jessica and Alyssa are calibrating pay across departments to ensure consistency and fairness. They’re also working diligently on retention efforts, ensuring current employees feel as valued as new employees when it comes to salary. They don’t want strong performers leaving because they’re chasing higher compensation elsewhere.
With the right processes in place and Pave as a partner, KCL continues to build a compensation program that attracts, retains, and rewards top talent.
