Structured Comp Planning for the 100-500 Employee Stage

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Aeqium: Bringing Structure to Compensation Planning for Growing Companies

The Challenge

For companies with 100 to 500 employees, compensation planning often exists in an uncomfortable middle ground. You're too large for the spreadsheet-based approach that worked when you had 30 people, but you're not yet at the scale where enterprise-grade solutions make sense. The result is a patchwork system that creates real problems: managers making salary decisions without complete information, equity grants that vary wildly based on who's doing the negotiating, and promotion cycles that feel more like guesswork than strategy.

The stakes have also shifted considerably. Employees now expect transparency around pay, and pay equity regulations are expanding across states and countries. Companies in this growth phase need to answer difficult questions—why does one engineer make more than another with similar experience? How do we know our compensation practices are equitable across demographics? Without centralized data and proper modeling tools, these questions often go unanswered until they become urgent problems. The manual processes that once felt manageable start consuming dozens of hours each review cycle, pulling People teams away from more strategic work.

How Aeqium Approaches It

Aeqium positions itself as a compensation planning platform built specifically for this operational gap. Rather than offering a broad HR suite with compensation as one module among many, the company focuses on three core functions: salary and equity tracking, promotion planning, and pay equity analysis. The platform pulls compensation data into a centralized system that connects to existing HRIS tools, giving People teams and managers a single place to see current pay, historical changes, and how employees compare against internal and market benchmarks.

The equity management component addresses a particularly thorny challenge for growth-stage companies. Many organizations at this size still track stock options in spreadsheets or fragmented systems, making it difficult to understand total compensation or plan new grants strategically. Aeqium consolidates this information alongside cash compensation, giving teams a clearer picture of what they're actually offering employees and candidates.

What distinguishes Aeqium's approach is its emphasis on pay equity modeling. The platform includes tools that let People teams analyze compensation across demographic groups, identify potential gaps, and model different scenarios for addressing them. This isn't just about compliance—though that matters—but about giving companies the ability to proactively understand their pay practices before issues surface. The modeling capability also extends to merit cycles and promotions, allowing teams to see the downstream effects of proposed changes before committing to them.

The workflow design focuses on collaboration between People teams and managers. Rather than People Ops serving as gatekeepers who control all compensation information, Aeqium allows for manager visibility into relevant data while maintaining appropriate access controls. This distributed approach aims to make compensation conversations more informed at the point where they actually happen—between managers and their direct reports—while still keeping central oversight where it belongs.

Who It's Built For

Aeqium's sweet spot appears to be venture-backed or growth-oriented companies in the 100 to 500 employee range, particularly those with distributed workforces or multiple compensation structures to manage. Companies in this stage often have a mix of cash-heavy and equity-heavy compensation packages, geographic pay differentials, and the beginnings of career leveling systems that need to connect to pay in a coherent way. If your People team is spending significant time each cycle manually compiling data from multiple sources just to run a merit review, that's a signal the current approach isn't scaling.

The platform also seems well-suited for organizations that have recently raised funding and are under pressure to professionalize their compensation practices—whether from board expectations, recruiting challenges, or regulatory requirements around pay transparency. Companies without any existing compensation philosophy or leveling framework may find they need to do some foundational work before the platform can deliver its full value, though Aeqium does provide structure that can help codify those decisions as they're being made.

What Customers Are Saying

Customer feedback on review platforms tends to highlight the time savings during compensation cycles and the improved clarity the platform brings to what was previously an opaque process. Users frequently mention the reduction in manual data gathering and the confidence that comes from having a single source of truth for compensation information. The ability to model pay equity scenarios before making changes receives particular attention from People leaders who've previously had to rely on external consultants for this type of analysis.

Implementation experiences cited in reviews generally describe a straightforward onboarding process, with most teams reaching operational use within a few weeks rather than months. Several reviewers note that the platform's focus—compensation planning rather than a broader suite—makes it easier to adopt without requiring a full HR technology overhaul. The learning curve is described as manageable, particularly for teams already comfortable with modern SaaS tools.

Getting Started

Aeqium offers pricing that varies based on company size and feature requirements, with specifics available through their sales process. Like most B2B SaaS tools in this category, expect a subscription model rather than per-seat pricing. Implementation involves connecting to your existing HRIS and populating historical compensation data, a process the company supports through dedicated onboarding.

Key Takeaway

For mid-market companies outgrowing spreadsheets but not yet ready for enterprise platforms, Aeqium offers a focused solution that brings structure to compensation planning, equity tracking, and pay equity analysis without requiring a full HR technology transformation.

Learn more at aeqium.com