Incoming legislation like the EU Pay Transparency Directive has placed pay transparency and equity high on the priority list for many companies.
New, stricter rules will not only enforce equal pay for equal work, but also push companies to use transparency as a competitive advantage in hiring and retention for top talent.
HERO Software is already well on the way.
HERO is a vertical SaaS company headquartered in Germany. The company’s mission is to empower trade businesses with a cutting-edge software platform that simplifies administrative tasks such as offer creation, financial management, and project management.
The HERO team is growing rapidly, set to scale from around 100 employees at the start of 2024 to 250 employees by the end of 2025.
With such a steep growth trajectory ahead, ensuring fair and competitive compensation for new and existing employees is crucial.
We spoke with Anna-Lena Grimm, Director People & Culture at HERO, about how the company transitioned to a more structured and reliable compensation strategy by using Ravio’s compensation benchmarking and salary bands software.
💡 To see which roles HERO is hiring for, head to their careers page or LinkedIn
Prior to using Ravio, HERO managed pay decisions on a case-by-case basis, making it difficult to ensure consistency across teams and roles.
While this approach worked in the early stages, it became clear that a more structured framework was needed to support the company’s growing headcount.
“We knew that to scale effectively, we needed a more professional approach to compensation,” explains Anna-Lena. “This was the best way to ensure the appropriate attention was paid to total rewards and employee compensation.”
“We knew that to scale the team effectively, we needed a more professional approach to compensation.”
Director People & Culture at HERO
As the team expanded, HERO intentionally grew their People and Culture team to ensure there was a team dedicated to managing compensation responsibly. This involved not only scaling the team, but also dividing it into three divisions: talent acquisition, people operations, and talent development.
With the right people behind it, HERO committed to building fair salary bands, aligning pay with market data, and sharing information more transparently with employees.
But first, they needed to find a benchmarking data provider they could trust.
This was where Ravio came in.
HERO implemented Ravio in 2023, marking a turning point in their compensation journey from unstructured salaries to using accurate and reliable data to base decisions on.
With Ravio, Anna-Lena’s team could finally access benchmarking data they could trust, build structured salary bands, and provide clearer compensation insights to employees.
"Ravio has been with us on this journey from under 100 employees to where we are now," Anna-Lena explains. "Having access to structured data has completely changed how we approach compensation."
One of the biggest changes HERO has experienced through Ravio is the ability to introduce pay transparency into their compensation philosophy.
“Last year, our goal was to be more transparent with how we calculate salaries and where we get salary benchmarks from.”
As part of this initiative, HERO hosted a ‘lunch and learn’ session to educate employees and instill a culture of openness and transparency around compensation – something that went so well that the team plans on hosting further sessions this year.
"We wanted to explain the process of how we determined compensation at HERO, using it as a chance to have conversations with employees," says Anna-Lena.
For leaders, the level of insight went even deeper. Executive leaders have access to the Ravio app and are able to see benchmarking data and salary bands on a granular and organisation-wide level. All other leaders have access to salary bands for their specific department, ensuring visibility and transparency at all times.
"Our leaders have access to Ravio data and know exactly the salary band that everyone exists in," Anna-Lena explains.
This was an important stepping stone in HERO’s journey to pay transparency. Prior to joining Ravio, HERO didn’t have any salary bands set up.
“Part of our journey with Ravio was to make sure everyone was in salary bands,” explains Anna-Lena.
“When we built salary bands, we could immediately see a few outliers – it was easy to spot pay equity issues.”
Example salary bands and outliers shown in the Ravio platform
“We now transparently share salary bands for job families with employees, ensuring we are already ahead of the EU Pay Transparency Directive.”
As Anna-Lena and the team also established a performance management process at the same time, they waited for their performance cycle to make the corrections in one, clean process. Not only did that keep things simple for the People and Rewards team, but it also enabled them to see compensation as a whole at HERO.
“Our approach to salary bands was to address outliers, but also look into the context of the employee's whole compensation package.”
“Because of all other benefits we have in the whole total rewards package, we did also make slight adjustments here and there when we created salary bands in Ravio.”
Beyond internal compensation structures, Ravio also played a key role in HERO's hiring process. With ambitious growth plans, the company needed to ensure they remained competitive in the job market while aligning with evolving pay transparency regulations.
"We also use benchmarks to attract talent," Anna-Lena explains. "Our talent acquisition team now actively uses salary ranges and shares them transparently with candidates."
This transparency has streamlined hiring processes and improved trust between candidates and hiring managers.
"Our time to hire is super fast," says Anna-Lena. "We don’t waste time on salary negotiations because everything is clear from the start."
Beyond pay transparency, Ravio has also helped HERO implement a fair pay for performance model – something that is baked into their compensation philosophy.
"We take a two-pronged approach," explains Anna-Lena. "First, we ensure that everyone is within the correct salary band based on benchmarking data. Then, we incorporate performance-based pay to reward contributions."
Consistency is key in this approach.
"We wanted consistency across the organisation, so the base salary structure is the same for everyone," says Anna-Lena. "Ravio helped us create that consistency while still allowing room for performance-based increases."
“Ravio helped us create that consistency in our base salary structure, while still allowing room for performance-based increases."
Director People & Culture at HERO
HERO continues to grow, and at the same time refine their compensation strategy with Ravio as we edge further into 2025.
One particular focus is integrating Ravio into HERO’s broader ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) initiatives.
"We’re actively reporting on ESG data, and pay transparency plays a big role in that," says Anna-Lena. "We’re working closely with different stakeholders like our investors and colleagues, as ESG is a key topic for us."
“As we are building and growing a company, we are ensuring that our processes are fair, and transparent, that good performance is rewarded and that everyone has the same chances to grow with us. I’m happy to say that Ravio is helping us achieve this.”
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