At Pave, our world-class team of data-driven leaders working to build the future of compensation is growing! Today, we’re excited to share a conversation with Alex Cwirko-Godycki, our new VP of Marketing & Strategy, about his arrival at Pave.
Going forward, Alex will lead our marketing function and advise senior leaders on business and product strategy. He brings more than 20 years of experience in the compensation and total rewards space to Pave, and most recently served as CMO for Aon’s global Human Capital capabilities. At Aon, Alex also led marketing and sales for the Radford Survey product line for several years.
We asked Alex about the opportunity he saw at Pave, what excites him about the future of compensation, and his thoughts on strategy at Pave.
Bringing Compensation Expertise to Pave
Why is compensation important to you?
First off, it’s really great to be here! I’ve had the privilege of growing some of the best brands in compensation throughout my career, including Equilar, Radford and McLagan, and Pave is definitely a brand and platform on the rise. I’m incredibly excited to get to work with the entire Pave team and our customers.
Now, to answer the question, like most people working in compensation, I didn’t know this field existed when I was a kid, and I certainly didn’t go to university planning to work in this space. However, as fate would have it, my first job out of college was at Equilar, where I analyzed executive compensation and corporate governance disclosures. I’ve now spent most of my career—20-plus years at this point—in compensation and the broader human capital sector. Overall, I find the art and science of total rewards incredibly interesting, and obviously pay is a massive component of why people go to work in the first place!
What’s not appreciated by the average person (and even some companies) is how important compensation can be when it comes to driving business strategy and employee performance. Far too many companies go through the motions on compensation. However, businesses that think critically about pay and try to find interesting ways to connect with and motivate their people can turn rewards into a massive competitive advantage. Cracking this code is a super compelling challenge and there is no one way to do it.
How can compensation be improved?
If you look back over the last 20 years, I believe the most important change in compensation is the advancement of the pay equity and pay transparency movements. While, in general, things are much better than five, ten, or 15 years ago, the job is clearly not done. There is still plenty of room for improvement and innovation. This creates a massive opportunity for compensation professionals to set themselves apart and grow in their careers by helping companies find new ways to make pay equity and pay transparency more sustainable.
Of course, if you’re spending less time in spreadsheets doing routine compensation tasks, which is where Pave comes to the rescue, it creates the mental headspace to tackle pay equity and pay transparency more effectively. I’m optimistic about the future, especially as the EU Pay Transparency Directive begins to drive behavior change in the region and at multinational firms, but we’re still a long way from making pay equity and pay transparency easy.
The field of compensation is at an inflection point. Traditional approaches to benchmarking and executing pay decisions are in the process of being disrupted by an entirely new model of working.
What was the opportunity you saw in Pave?
It’s rare to come across an organization that is trying to radically transform the status quo of how an industry or job function works, and I think Pave fits squarely into this special category. In my view, the field of compensation is at an inflection point. Traditional approaches to benchmarking and executing pay decisions are in the process of being disrupted by an entirely new model of working. This model is powered by real-time data and heavier use of artificial intelligence, data science and machine learning. Admittedly, we still have a lot of work to do to perfect this new model of working, but Pave, in my view, is far and away leading the transition.
Additionally, as a marketing leader, and as someone who cares deeply about building great products for customers, it’s very energizing to come to a place that is playing offense by actively blending compensation, data science and engineering expertise to forge a new path forward. Overall, the team here is also working so aggressively to meet customer needs and I love it.
What excites you about the future of compensation?
Building on my previous responses, I’m very bullish about the potential for Pave’s data and tools to make daily life better for compensation and total rewards professionals. Today, the typical compensation professional is spending too much of their time piecing together disparate data sources, brute-forcing market pricing and merit cycle projects in Excel, and trying to defend their work to stakeholders who often don’t understand how compensation works and the limitations total rewards teams face. With Pave, I see a future where compensation professionals are spending their time making smart, data-driven, strategic decisions that are both more defensible and better appreciated.
From a marketing & strategy perspective, what are you excited to bring to conversations with Total Rewards leaders and their teams?
On the whole, the HR consulting and technology sector has become more consolidated in recent years, which means many of the largest product and service providers are spending less time focused on the unique needs of compensation and total rewards professionals.
At Pave, we’re laser-focused on the compensation and total rewards community and we want to bring great insights and content to our customers. Additionally, given our focus on data and software, we have access to a rapidly growing partner community in the compensation consulting space, which allows us to bring diverse expert voices to the conversation.
For example, some of the topics our team is very excited to work on next are trends in AI/ML compensation and hiring, evolving equity practices and strategy, pulling unique insights out of Pave’s real-time dataset—someting we call Pave Data Lab—and bringing thought leaders together around the topics of executive compensation, pay equity, and pay transparency.
What is something Total Rewards leaders should be aware of when scaling compensation programs?
As I’ve noted already, a significant transformation in how compensation teams work is upon us. Coming to Pave, it’s been incredible to see the power of what a complete compensation platform can accomplish for customers when it’s fully connected to real-time data from their HRIS, ATS, and stock administration systems.
My advice for total rewards leaders—who are often operating in a world of siloed data by design—is to be bold and advocate for the creation of a well-connected compensation ecosystem at their companies. If you design systems and compensation programs with this vision in mind, your ability to scale, manage costs, respond to real-time market changes, and drive positive pay equity and pay transparency outcomes will be significantly enhanced.
We’re laser-focused on the compensation and total rewards community and we want to bring great insights and content to our customers.
Pave is the leading compensation management platform, powered by real-time data, that helps companies benchmark, plan, and communicate compensation. To join our team, see our open roles.
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