Total Rewards
Beyond comp and equity — benefits design, leave policy, wellness ROI, geographic pay, and sales compensation plans built by experienced reward teams.
For: HR leaders, comp & benefits, founders building their first reward stack
Benefits Design: The Total Rewards Lever Most HR Teams Underuse
How HR leaders design a benefits package that signals values, controls cost, and survives a 3x headcount jump — using the WorldatWork Total Rewards model and…
Leave Policy Design: Why Unlimited PTO Backfires and What Actually Works
A theory-grounded look at leave design — statutory floors, accrual vs. open, parental and caregiver leave, sabbaticals — and why 'unlimited' policies often…
Wellness Program ROI: Past the Step-Counting Phase
An honest framework for measuring whether a corporate wellness program actually earns its budget — what the academic literature really says, what to measure…
Geographic Pay Strategy: The Hardest Comp Decision of the Decade
Single-market, tiered-by-cost-of-labor, location-agnostic — the three doctrines on geographic pay, with the trade-offs HR leaders are wrestling with as remote…
Sales Compensation Plans: The Most Behaviorally-Charged Pay System in the Company
Why sales comp is its own discipline — quota setting, OTE design, accelerators, clawbacks, and the behavioral traps that turn comp plans into anti-incentives.
Total rewards 101: pay is part of it; here's the rest
Total rewards is what employees get for working at your company — beyond just base salary. Here's the beginner's tour: the five buckets, what each costs, and…
Benefits basics 101: what to offer, what to skip, and why employees actually care
Benefits are where small companies can punch above their weight. Here's a beginner's tour — the must-haves, the should-haves, and the perks that look good in…
Agency theory & tournament theory — the economics under your comp design
Jensen & Meckling's agency theory (1976) and Lazear & Rosen's tournament theory (1981) are the two economic frameworks that explain why we pay executives the…