Youbo contributes to a fairer, more effective, and more competitive wage policy.

Operational Manager Joris Valkenborgh from SD Worx uses the compensation tool Youbo to distribute the salary increase budget among his teams. "Thanks to the transparency of Youbo, we are now having better substantive conversations about our wage policy. The internal equity has increased.

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December 16, 2024

What is your role as Unit Manager Business Process Outsourcing?

Joris Valkenborgh: "From our BPO business unit, we deliver operational and strategic outsourcing solutions to clients. I myself am responsible for a team of 250 employees that deals with the social secretariat of companies affiliated with us. This ranges from payroll to time registration. My role is operational: I ensure everything runs smoothly by taking care of the team and, from a commercial perspective, keeping an eye on profitability."

How do you use Youbo today?

JV: "As an HR service provider, compensation is our core business. We want to work with top-notch tools. Our department was chosen as a test case for the rollout of Youbo across multiple hierarchical levels. The goal is that eventually, the team managers will start working with the tool."

What is the biggest advantage for you today?

JV: "Thanks to Youbo, we have moved away from Excel. When using spreadsheets, versions of documents inevitably arise. A file is accidentally saved locally, errors creep in, it's time-consuming to merge them again, and so on. Youbo is fast, error-free, transparent. That transparency is the biggest gain for me."

Can you elaborate on that?

JV: "The tool shows you in real-time and at a glance how budgets are distributed. You immediately see where there are deviations and where more or less is allocated. Deviations are okay, as long as they are justified. The transparency forces you to discuss the logic of your wage policy and how consistently you apply it at the management level. That is the biggest eye-opener for me. Why do you make certain choices? How will you use the available budget as correctly as possible? It encourages you to embrace a helicopter view and to think at the company level. Youbo globally ensures a fairer compensation policy."

Doesn't that go through spreadsheets?

JV: "No, spreadsheets are too limited. You don't see how the budgets are distributed, so you don't learn anything from it. The transparency of Youbo, and the analyses and insights that arise from the tool, help to explain choices to the team. You see the impact of giving someone, for example, 50 euros more on a monthly basis, or in relation to the total budget. You see where you exceed the budget, or who deviates from the norm. The conversation about this is so important. Every company wants its compensation policy to be fair and competitive. With Youbo, we improve the quality of the allocations and of the total process."

What should companies consider when implementing Youbo?

JV: “Every company carries its history with it. Decisions from the past have an impact on compensation today. It might be that something has grown skewed at the team level. Sometimes, the logic of distribution no longer matches the current wage policy. Youbo brings such issues to the surface.

But what you must not forget: you can have the best tools and processes, but you have to act on them. The management must be willing to engage in conversation. For managers who prefer to play solo, that transparency at the management level is an adjustment.”

What type of companies, in your opinion, benefit the most?

JV: “For any sizable company, Youbo is an added value. The more hierarchical levels or the more decentralized the company, the greater the efficiency gain. Especially for growing companies that are hiring many new people, a tool like Youbo is an immense asset.”

What has been the biggest impact in your own team?

JV: “Youbo is a tool that simplifies your work, and at the same time, it opens the door to better insight and thus a better policy. It does more than streamline your process. It makes you more aware of the money you're working with. It globally improves the way you allocate your budget.

Internal equity is facilitated. It allows you to discover, for example, which high performer has a too low comparatio. Even at the most individual level, you can compare employees with each other and find out if two similar profiles are being compensated in the same way, or how the distribution is between age groups or genders. If you want to retain talent, you have to pay attention to this.”

Has Youbo also contributed to a more efficient compensation policy for you?

JV: “For HR, the time savings are a huge difference, and indeed, this also plays a role at our operational level. The time we no longer invest in the actual distribution of the budget is now spent on conducting quality conversations. That is a huge progress.”