How klarx is using Figures to retain and attract top players

Industry: Construction 

Number of employees: 51–200

Country: Germany 

Company overview: Klarx is a construction machinery rental company set up in 2015 to make renting construction equipment as easy as ordering a cab on your phone. We caught up with Senior People Experience Manager Filippo Laita to find out how klarx has been using Figures to revolutionise its compensation processes.

The Challenge

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Filippo’s role as Senior People Experience Manager means he’s involved with various facets of the business. 

“It boils down to partnering with certain parts of the business to ensure that the experience is there, but also that things are running smoothly in this specific department,” he told us. 

And naturally, a large part of Filippo’s role involves benchmarking salaries for new and existing roles — something that the company struggled with prior to implementing Figures. 

In fact, before Filippo joined klarx, the company was using manual spreadsheets and Glassdoor to benchmark salaries — something that Filippo has also experienced with previous employees. 

“If I had to put an emoji to it, it would be the one with the vomit and the eyes rolling,” he joked. 

Klarx needed a better way — enter: Figures. 

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The Process With Figures

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Today, klarx uses Figures’ benchmarking tool to run smooth, simple compensation reviews — without wrangling with complex Excel sheets. This helps them not only to ensure that the salaries they’re paying are competitive, but to plan for the future as well. 

“Figures helped us in the overall project, because once you’ve identified where an employee stands and whether they’re coming up to a promotion or not, you can do a lot of budget forecasting,” Filippo told us. 

“Not only could we anticipate how many people needed a salary raise now, and how much that salary raise would be, we could also start forecasting for 2024 in terms of how many people might be reaching certain levels, and what that means in terms of money.” 

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Benefits 

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Since implementing Figures’ salary benchmarking tool, Filippo and his team at klarx have seen a number of benefits. Here are some of the things that came up during our conversation. 

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1. Empowering managers to communicate with employees about pay

First, Figures’ salary benchmarking tool arms managers and leaders with the data they need to confidently talk to employees about pay decisions. 

“I can empower my leaders to have conversations about whether employees need or deserve a salary raise,” Filippo told us. “This is fantastic because of the transparency that you can create — there’s no lying about it.”

According to Filippo, this is something that leaders at klarx particularly appreciate:

“I can see the relief in their faces when I tell them that yes, they can use the data points to make an argument with an employee about how much money they will get.’

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2. Attracting top talent with competitive compensation

Using Figures has also helped klarx to find the right salary to land talent during the recruitment process. Filippo told us: 

“If I need to hire an employee, my first action is to immediately go to Figures, to see whether the values have changed, and then update Finance with that.”

And the company has also found Figures to be instrumental in setting salaries for new positions: 

“I can gauge the expectations of my candidates, and cross-check whether they’re expectations are realistic,” Filippo said. 

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3. Keeping the best players for longer 

Plus, ensuring salaries are competitive using Figures helps klarx with another key area: retention. 

“My KPI around retention is to retain at least 95% of the A-players,” Filippo said. “A-players are defined as the people that are rated 8–10 in performance and productivity, and 9–10 in fitting the company’s core values.”

Using Figures allows klarx to ensure the salaries it pays are competitive relative to the market — ensuring that these A-players stick around for the long haul. 

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Next Steps

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Like many of us, klarx is already thinking about the EU’s upcoming Pay Transparency Directive and how it will impact them. And Filippo plans to use Figures’ Salary Bands tool to create more transparency around klarx’s pay practices.