Overview

About Notion

Notion is a leading productivity software company with a global presence, operating across multiple offices including New York, San Francisco, Dublin, Japan, Australia, South Korea, and India. With a rapidly growing workforce, the company's Total Rewards team of five manages comprehensive compensation and benefits programs across all locations.

Challenge

Before implementing Pequity, Notion's compensation team managed their bi-annual compensation cycles through a complex web of Google Sheets. While spreadsheets provided the necessary formula capabilities, the process became increasingly unwieldy as the company grew and the number of managers and stakeholders involved increased. The team had to create and maintain individualized sheets for 20-30 different compensation planners at various levels, from directors to VPs.

This manual approach presented several critical challenges:

• Managing permissions and creating individualized sheets for each compensation planner became increasingly time-consuming
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• Formula errors could occur when managers accidentally modified spreadsheet calculations
  
  
• Tracking changes and maintaining version control across multiple sheets was difficult
  
  
• The process lacked visibility into decision-making at different organizational levels
  
  
• Special cases and country-specific requirements added complexity to compensation logic
  

Solution

Notion partnered with Pequity to transform their compensation planning process with a solution that could scale with their global operations.

Streamlined Planning Interface: The solution provided a single, unified platform where compensation planners could make and review decisions, replacing the previous system of distributed spreadsheets.

Customizable Merit Cycle Configuration: The platform was configured to handle Notion's specific requirements, including:

• Different logic for sales and non-sales roles
  
  
• Country-specific compensation rules
  
  
• Distinct processes for promotion-only and merit increase cycles
  
  
• Complex eligibility criteria and approval workflows
  

Permission Management: Pequity simplified the complex task of managing access rights by creating appropriate comp planning views based on organizational hierarchy, ensuring planners only see relevant information.

Results

The implementation of Pequity delivered significant improvements to Notion's compensation management process:

• Accelerated Planning Cycle: The team reduced their compensation planning timeline from two weeks to six days, despite an increase in the number of approvers involved in the process.
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• Enhanced Visibility: Managers gained clear insight into compensation decisions at all levels, with the ability to track changes and understand adjustments made throughout the approval chain.
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• Reduced Error Risk: The platform's controlled environment eliminated the risk of formula errors and maintained data integrity throughout the planning process.
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• Improved Tracking: The team gained the ability to passively monitor changes with automatic flagging of adjustments and required justifications, reducing the need for constant manual oversight.

“What we've really appreciated and what makes us like Pequity so much is the level of care we receive from the team. It's just incredible to us. The support feels very direct, and we are in good hands the whole time. I never felt like we were more than two hours away from getting a response when we needed it.”

Sam Giacometti
Compensation Partner, Notion

Summary

Pequity's compensation management platform has enabled Notion to scale their compensation operations efficiently across their global organization. The solution's combination of powerful customization capabilities and intuitive user interface has transformed what was once a manual, time-intensive process into a streamlined, confident operation. As Notion continues to grow, Pequity provides the foundation for managing increasingly complex compensation needs while maintaining accuracy and transparency.