How Lifen Used Figures to Improve Compensation Planning

The Challenge

Lifen, having secured an investment of €50 million, wanted to expand and take their business to the next level. In order to achieve their expansion goal, they were looking to add 200 new employees to the team within a short period.

However, convincing the right talent to choose Lifen in the highly competitive French market was no easy task. They had to make sure that the salaries they offered were attractive and in line with industry standards. The major challenge they faced in strategic hiring was: compensation benchmarking.

The mammoth task of finding the right and reliable compensation benchmarking data was not allowing them to streamline their hiring processes. Even after searching on multiple websites and resources, they couldn’t find relevant France-specific data. The information they could find was either irrelevant, inaccurate or outdated.

To sum it up, benchmarking and creating a salary structure were time-consuming and stressful. The HR team realized that trying to achieve their goals without having the right insights was not feasible.

And that is when they approached Figures.

The Objectives

Lifen put Figures in place to get reliable, easy-to-use compensation benchmarking data. They needed a solution to help them achieve the following objectives:

• Create a hiring system that is scalable
• Access reliable benchmarking data
• Gain the ability to benchmark salaries on multiple criteria to improve the relevancy of the data
• Integrate with their HR software to easily access information

The Strategy

Lifen used Figures to put the following strategies in place:

Up-to-date benchmarking data When it comes to offering relevant data, Figures is second to none. By partnering with Figures, Lifen got access to a pool of quality data from around 16,000+ start-ups and scale-ups employee salaries. The data pool is updated every year, enabling users to access up-to-date information.

Lifen’s team could easily compare anywhere between 5 and 500+ wages in a particular city or area for any given position.

Easy to use filters Filters make comparing easier and help save time. That’s why Figures provides suitable filtering options to Lifen.

The team could easily benchmark companies in their industry by using the following filters:

• Position
• Seniority
• Location
• Industry
• Company Size
• and many more

Let us consider when Lifen was looking to hire a data analyst with an intermediate level of experience for their Paris office. To create the right compensation package, they had to use a couple of relevant filters and benchmark the compensation for the role from the same industry.

Using these filters, the team could access accurate information that helped them create a fair compensation package for the recruit.

Easy to use data in compensation conversations Once the salaries were benchmarked, the Lifen team could download the information PDF and share it with existing employees and recruits. This data enabled the HR team to have an effective, fair compensation conversation. The HR team could easily show the employees and the potential candidates how they are compensated fairly and above the market standards.

Integration with their HR software Lifen’s HR team could easily integrate the salary compensation data acquired from Figures with their existing HRIS Lucca. This helped the HR team ensure that all the employees had access to the data increasing transparency and trust. The improved information flow also ensured smooth salary negotiations and improved compensation communications.

The Results

Thanks to Figures, Lifen achieved the following results:

Increased interest from new talent

Having access to updated and quality benchmarking data, Lifen could create a better salary structure and make attractive offers to new talent, improving their hiring rate.

More time to focus on people and process

Since the Lifen team had reliable benchmarking data from Figures, the team didn’t have to waste their time searching for data from various websites. Thus, they could use this time to focus on matters that mattered, their people.

Improved trust and transparency

Using the Figures’ Platform, Lifen could easily share benchmarking data with their employees, creating transparency and cultivating trust.

Before Figures, it could easily take us a week to benchmark a salary, but now we instantly have reliable, accurate benchmarking data.

Maria Camila Santamaria, Chief Human Resources Officer @Lifen