How industrial group Lacroix relies on Figures to prepare for pay transparency

A strategic approach

The first step is deciding which roles count as equivalent.

That was the main piece of work we had to do. We mapped our jobs using the Korn Ferry Hay methodology. The approach covers thecompany's professional and managerial staff and will not be applied to every role."

"All the compensation dynamics for our manufacturing population, which is the majority here, are handled locally, because industry-wide agreements regulate a great deal, because there is national legislation, and because pay is managed locally. And there is no mobility issue at stake," explains Jean-Jacques Lefevre, whose company operates in 13 countries.

France is the exception. When the national collective bargaining agreement for the metalworking industry came into force in early 2024, Lacroix had to run acompany-wide job classification exercise. "We made sure the two structures stayed consistent by building an equivalence mapping between them," says the compensation director.

"Once we had built that for the jobs themselves, we then did a rebalancing exercise with the job family leads, because we realised, for example, that R&D sat very high compared with other job families in pay terms," he explains. "So we had to go back to the director to find a relative level that matched our reality."

There is also market pressure, particularly on software roles, which are heavily headhunted, so we keep a balance between that and internal fairness.

A step-by-step rollout

Once that work was done, the Figures solution Lacroix selected was there to "makeit easier to communicate about the existing salary bands."

Figures supports compensation management with salary benchmarks, automated salary reviews and salary bands built and accessible online, helping companies that have already defined a compensation policy build internal understanding of it.

To do that, Figures gives access to salary levels by role or by individual, with differentiated access rights across HR, managers and employees. It also shows the budget needed to bring employees paid below their band back up to level. Structuring the data also makes it more reliable, by cutting down on scattered Excel files and making collaboration easier.

It improves efficiency and lets us track pay gaps in real time at group level. This is only one stage in rolling out pay transparency at Lacroix. We built the foundations with Figures, but there is now a culture-building effort we need to run with management.

The work is being led by our local HR communities, through training and workshops designed to create the buy-in you need for transparency to actually move fairness forward."

A lever for attraction and retention

"Beyond compliance with the pay transparency directive, employees are now asking for transparency so they can see where they stand against their colleagues on base salary and variable pay. Figures gives a direct answer, and the evidence behind it," says Jean-Jacques Lefevre. "As more and more information about companies becomes available, through sites like Glassdoor, giving that access matters more and more for attraction and retention."

Reporting the gender pay gap is also a CSRD requirement. Since the Omnibus Directive (EU) 2026/470 came into force on 18 March 2026, that requirement applies to companies with more than 1,000 employees and net turnover above 450 million euros.