🌊 Helping Planblue doubling in size, the right way 🌊
The Challenge
Earlier this year we started working with Planblue. This green-tech company (based in Bremen, Germany) is saving the oceans by creating underwater satellites and a SeaFloorAtlas. They had the challenge to double the team size, whilst building a healthy culture and enabling their current team members to grow.
We helped them improve the full employee experience and lifecycle, starting from scratch. After (re)formulating their values, implementing an ATS, creating the job ads & assembling a recruitment toolkit, it was time for the biggest project of this assignment: building a tailored Growth Framework.
Why?
A foundational aspect of creating a culture focused on growth, is ensuring everyone knows how they can grow and develop within the company.
You’re never too small to have a Growth Framework, especially when you are ambitious. Why wait to help people understand how they can develop? A fair and consistent approach to career development creates transparency & engagement and contributes to equal pay.
How?
We designed a simple, fully tailored Growth Framework for Planblue. It included the introduction of job levels. We defined levels & tracks and mapped employees against these. It gives guidance and structure to leaders when evaluating performance, and enables quality conversations about future growth.
We connected benchmarked salary ranges to job levels, making it easier to see how people were being paid based on their roles and performance.
For a lot of larger organizations, this is common practice, but at the startups where we work, we often see that salaries are determined based on the previous pay of the candidate or simply what the candidate asks for. This can result in quite significant salary differences for employees who are working in similar roles or have the same type of impact on company performance. To prevent this from becoming a problem down the line, we recommend using a salary benchmark and leveling pretty much from the start.
The salary benchmark was designed based on a few aspects: 1. What does the market pay? (benchmark) 2. How much can we pay? (financial data) 3. How much do we want to pay? (compensation philosophy).
The results
Hiring became easier because we were able to display the salary ranges in the job ads. Companies underestimate the value of this. By advertising the ranges, internal employees don’t have to wonder if new colleagues will earn more. Candidates know upfront what to expect, not wasting your (and their) time when salary requirements don’t match. The team grew from 14 to 24 people in a few months. 🚀
We use the new Planblue values during the hiring process to ensure a great cultural fit, and we use them in the Growth Framework as part of the conversation about stepping up.
The Growth Framework ensures candidates and employees understand that thought has gone into their development and that they are in control of their future at Planblue. Happy client = our assignment completed.
🐠 We look forward to seeing this amazing company grow further! 🐠 🌊
