Ravio

Reward and People leaders solve everyone else's problems all week. Rarely their own, and rarely together. That's the gap Ravio's Breakfast Club fills – a small group of Reward and People leaders, over good food, talking honestly about the parts of the job that are hardest to talk about anywhere else. There's no deck and no set agenda. The conversation goes wherever the room needs it to go. Next up we have three breakfasts in three cities: 🇦🇺 Melbourne: 28th July – sign up: https://luma.com/zdzanh1o 🇩🇪 Berlin: 5th August – sign up: https://luma.com/x1aiiwk3 🇳🇱 Amsterdam: 18th August – sign up: https://luma.com/zwq7jmu9 If you're leading Reward or People at your company, this is built for you, and we’d love to see you there.

🎁 The median value of benefits in European tech ranges from £0 to £2,600, depending entirely on where your employees are based. On the surface, benefits seem like a game of generosity…. Some employers make their benefits package deliberately competitive 🚀 Others do the statutory requirement and call it a day 😪 But generosity is only a small part of it in reality. Some countries like the Netherlands or Germany barely need private benefits like health insurance or pension contributions at all, because the state already covers a lot 👏 In others, like Belgium, 50% income tax kicks in at a remarkably lower income (around €48,000 – €49,000 of taxable income) so it’s standard for employers to offer very generous benefits (like company cars or cash allowances) as a more tax-efficient way to increase total comp 💡 In short, different markets can mean a completely different shaped compensation package We've broken down company cars, health insurance and pension contributions by country in the benefits insights piece we just published 💥 See you there and stay tuned for a mini 3-part series all on benefits! 👋 https://lnkd.in/eAbXMd9m

Employee benefits are worth a median of £2,600 a year to an employee at the average Belgian tech company. At the average Dutch one, it's £0. Belgium's tax system makes benefits a smarter way to add value than base salary – things like a 13th month, double holiday pay, and company cars are standard rather than exceptional there. In the Netherlands, statutory cover already does most of that job, so there's less gap for employers to fill. Most Reward teams benchmark base salary carefully. Benefits get far less attention. In some markets that's fine – the gap between a decent and a poor benefits package barely moves where you sit. In others, ignoring benefits means you think your total compensation packages are ‘competitive’ when you're nowhere close. Which brings the question: do you benchmark benefits market by market, or try to offer the same across countries? Equalising feels fairer on paper. But to the Belgian employee getting taxed hard on their salary and bonus, it might not feel quite so fair. How are you approaching this for your own team – market by market, or one global floor? Full analysis here: https://lnkd.in/e-UDZ4Wj

The pay equity problems I've seen didn't start in comp reviews. They started in hiring. You can have two people in the same role, at the same level. One was hired by a manager who held the line on band placement. One was hired by a manager who didn't. One took the first offer. One negotiated hard (and it’s normally men who do). Neither decision looked noticeably wrong at the time, in isolation. But sit those two people next to each other and you've got a pay gap that has nothing to do with business impact. And it doesn't stop there. That high-in-band hire is also sitting alongside people who've been in the team longer, performing higher, who never had the chance to negotiate their way to a higher placement. If their salaries aren’t adjusted too, the pay equity issues keep rising. By the time it surfaces in a comp review conversation (or, worse of all, a resignation discussion), the damage is already done. And it's significantly harder to fix than it would have been to prevent. Hiring calls feel justified at the time, and sometimes exceptions genuinely are needed. But compensation decisions don't exist in isolation. The solution isn't super complicated – a clear comp framework, and a close working relationship between Rewards, TA and hiring managers to actually apply it consistently in every hiring decision. Giovanni Di Felice, Director of Talent Acquisition at Statista, recently shared exactly how he does that in practice for the Ravio blog – including the objective criteria his team uses to place every candidate in band, regardless of how hard they negotiate: https://lnkd.in/eh33ecYG Have you seen this scenario play out? And how do you catch it before it compounds?

The wrong question: how many datapoints does this comp provider have? The right one: do they have reliable, relevant, up-to-date benchmarks for the roles and locations I actually need? More data feels like the right evaluation criteria – better coverage, fewer gaps, job done. But a dataset of millions of salary submissions only helps if those submissions are verified, current, and actually reflect the roles you need and the companies you compete with for talent. At Ravio, the dataset is more focused, built specifically to match the needs of European tech companies. It's also continuously sourced via HRIS itegrations from 1,800+ European tech companies, verified and converted into reliable benchmarks by an expert data science team, and already mapped to your job architecture when you onboard. More info here 👉 https://lnkd.in/e39rKX55

Community spotlight: Claire Samson from Dojo 💫 Claire is Head of People Operations & Reward at Dojo and brings a wonderfully broad perspective to her work. Her blend of analytical thinking and curiosity for people makes her a valued voice in the Reward Room. 🌱 How she got into rewards: Claire's background spans management consulting, finance, legal and HR. When she leaned further into the HR space, it opened up an opportunity to expand her remit to include reward. "I enjoy the fact it's both an art and a science. I have a Psychology degree as well as a numerical background, so I'm drawn to the blend of analytics, strategy and human nature that plays into reward." 💼 Her current role: As Head of People Operations & Reward at Dojo, Claire leads a team of nine across reward, people operations, payroll, systems, and transformation. Right now her focus is lifting herself out of the details and thinking more strategically – particularly strengthening core data for AI-readiness and building new HRIS modules to create a single source of truth for compensation information. One project she's particularly proud of is Dojo's France launch earlier this year – with the timeline brought forward by three months, it was a real sprint. Working with the Finance team, they oversaw a joint Workday build, aligned internal levels with local requirements, and navigated a last-minute CBA change. They hit the deadline and everything went smoothly. 🧩 Her biggest learning: The longer Claire spends in the detail of reward, the harder it is to remember what it feels like for employees and managers without experience in this field. "As reward professionals, we need to stay at arms length from individuals and think in terms of roles or job families. But when you add real people into the mix, the desire to fight for the individual is strong, and we need to continually re-educate leaders on how to balance this with pragmatic decisions that make sense at a wider scale." 🌟 Her advice for Rewards professionals: "Network! Reward is constantly evolving – join communities, follow reward leaders on LinkedIn, and subscribe to relevant newsletters and webinars. Throughout my career I've constantly added new areas of expertise without any formal qualifications. The reward community is super welcoming and people are generous in sharing their time and expertise." 🪢 What the Reward Room means to her: "The Reward Room is a safe and supportive space to share challenges and learnings with like-minded people. It's also very validating when someone asks a question and you realise you've got a good answer – we often know more than we think we know!" Claire, thank you for bringing such breadth of experience and openness to the Reward Room. Your perspective helps all of us see the bigger picture 💙 Connect with Claire and 400+ Reward leaders in the Reward Room 👉 ravio.com/community

Every Reward professional eventually gets asked to price a role that doesn’t exist in the market data. The business still expects an answer. I'm joining Alistair Fraser on 23rd July for Ravio's next Reward Hours to talk through how we actually approach niche and emerging roles – finding data when it's genuinely sparse, building a peer group that holds up, and knowing how much to trust what you've found. Over the past few years I’ve had to tackle exactly these questions across emerging AI roles and highly specialised technical talent, where there often isn’t a “right” market number. If this is a problem you're navigating right now, come with your questions. Sign up here: https://lnkd.in/eUJ7aba5

Employee benefits are worth a median of £2,600 a year at the average Belgian tech company. At the average Dutch one, it's £0. But it largely comes down to tax, not employer generosity. Belgium's high income tax rates make benefits a smarter way to add value than base salary – a 13th month, double holiday pay, and a company car are standard there, not perks. In the Netherlands, statutory cover already does most of that job. Which leads to big differences in benefits value by country: ➡️ Belgium: £2,600 ➡️ Denmark: £4,300 ➡️ Ireland: £2,000 ➡️ Netherlands: £0 Most Reward teams benchmark salary carefully and leave benefits as an afterthought. In markets like these, that gap is big enough to make a package look competitive on paper while landing nowhere close in reality – right up until a candidate turns down an offer over it. See the full analysis: https://lnkd.in/e3_egEgf

Ravio's first Rewards in banking roundtable! Last week, Adam Thresher and I brought together Reward Leaders from neo-banks and traditional banks to discuss hot topics. Thanks Julien for hosting us at the Monzo office! We also shared Ravio's exclusive fintech benchmarking data with the room, and the conversation didn't slow down from there. A few themes that stood out: 1️⃣ Tier 1 fintech pays a 15-30% premium for tech roles 2️⃣ AI and Digital Assets are creating new roles, and the data to benchmark them properly doesn't exist yet. 3️⃣ Comp structures differ, especially the split between equity and cash. 4️⃣ AI has a growing role in Rewards, but only once the underlying data foundations are solid. 5️⃣ Pay for performance only works if managers are equipped to explain it well. It was a real privilege to sit with this calibre of senior Reward Leaders and exchange experiences so openly. Ravio's work across Fintech, Digital Assets, Trading, and Banking is building the most comprehensive, real-time comp dataset and insights for Financial Services. #rewards #fintech #banking #compensation