How Caribou simplified their compensation cycle and provided intuitive total rewards statements to their employees
Caribou saved senior leaders’ time by using Stello AI for compensation planning, instead of a mix of spreadsheets and UKG’s compensation planning module. Caribou’s team was also pleased to have one central place to review compensation and benefits, rather than having to check multiple sources.
Caribou is a Denver-based technology company on a mission to put drivers in control of their car payments. Through partnerships with local and community lenders, Caribou helps drivers unlock competitive rates and lower their monthly car payments.
Jess Kirsch, VP of People and Culture, has been with the company for 4+ years. When she stepped into her leadership role, she wanted to explore ways to better manage compensation, facilitate leadership visibility and process development, as well as improve communication about total rewards for employees. Emily DeVore, Senior Manager of Total Rewards at Caribou, has been instrumental in using Stello AI to accelerate her team’s success.
Prior to using Stello, Jess and Emily managed compensation planning in Excel and within UKG, their HRIS. Senior leaders spent valuable time updating information, manually reviewing salary increases, and exchanging new versions of the same spreadsheet. This not only sucked leaders’ time but also led to poor visibility on decisions behind certain compensation changes. With regards to the compensation planning workflows,
Emily noted,
“Stello AI blew other potential solutions out of the water.”
On the employee side, team members navigated to different sources – including their paychecks, Carta, and UKG – to understand their compensation and benefits. With Stello, employees can navigate to one place to see all the puzzle pieces that comprise their total rewards, and how they fit together.
Figure 1: Caribou’s Total Rewards Approach
Caribou uses this graphic to demonstrate total rewards beyond compensation to employees. With the support of Stello AI’s software, Caribou can clearly and easily communicate total rewards packages via statements that include benefits, base pay, incentives, and equity.
In a few weeks, Jess and Emily were up and running on Stello AI. Stello AI’s engineering team helped Caribou integrate with UKG. Further into the partnership, Stello AI’s engineering team began integrating Carta, so equity data could flow freely from Carta to Stello AI.
Figure 2: Stello AI Integration Architecture
Seamless connectivity with enterprise systems through secure API integrations
Stello AI provided a place for Caribou’s senior leadership team to view and manage total payroll, including planned base, bonus, and equity plans. Having one place for everyone to review the same information reduced the amount of time leaders had to spend reviewing separate spreadsheets.
Emily said,
“The platform’s customizability makes it super easy to allow managers to determine visibility settings and observe different managerial views.”
Stello AI also produced informative employee statements that were shared with team members. Stello’s team worked with Caribou to include benefits alongside compensation on their employee statements, which was a selling point for everything else (benefits, incentive, and equity) beyond base salary.
Emily shared,
“The flexibility in total reward statements and different templates are highly beneficial in making sure employees are privy to accurate and complete information. It’s also amazing to be able to easily edit singular statements depending on an individual employee’s scenario.”
With Stello, Caribou’s team manages compensation more efficiently and effectively – saving senior leaders’ time and helping employees better understand their total rewards.
Emily said,
“Stello has already been a game-changer for our compensation planning. We know our process and experience will only continue to improve as Stello further develops their platform’s capabilities!”