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The challenge: annual pay review by spreadsheet
Mando Group is a 40-person digital consultancy based in Liverpool, working with enterprise clients as a platinum Optimizely partner. Their people are their product - and getting compensation right is both a commercial and cultural priority.
For Deanne Walsh, HRBP, the annual pay review process before Compensation IQ was an exercise she describes with hard-earned clarity. It involved extracting salary data into a finance-produced spreadsheet, modelling percentage pay increases, and then beginning the real slog: ringing recruitment agencies, trawling through salary reports from job boards, manually scanning job adverts, and trying to spot outliers and inconsistencies.
Our process was always extraction of salary data into a spreadsheet. That spreadsheet had been produced by finance and gave us columns with things like whether they were part-time, total package including salaries, then it modelled what percentage pay increases would look like.
What the old process actually involved
The external research stage alone consumed two to three solid days of intensive work. And even then, the data felt like a liability rather than an asset when presenting to the finance team.
"It was all generic information," Deanne explains. "Obviously the job adverts were a little bit more tailored, but it was just broad and very time-consuming." When presenting findings to finance, there was always a nagging doubt: is this data actually defensible?
Mando Group has a stable workforce and does not need to recruit frequently. But when they do recruit - or when supporting promotions - finding suitable benchmark data to ensure they are paying at the right rate had become genuinely difficult.
A sector under pressure
The UK digital sector has faced significant headwinds. With pitch win rates falling and client budget pressure mounting across agencies, getting compensation right has never been more critical. Losing a valued team member to a competitor because of an indefensible pay decision is a risk Mando Group could not afford. The old process simply was not up to that standard.
We are very lucky to have a stable workforce and therefore don’t need to recruit much. When we do, or to support with promotions, it was difficult to find suitable benchmark data to ensure we were paying at the right rate.
Finding Compensation IQ: right place, right time
Mando Group first heard about Compensation IQ through their membership with the British Interactive Media Association (BIMA) - and the timing could not have been better. The conversation happened just as they were gearing up for their annual pay review process.
To be honest, it came at the right time for us. I first spoke to the Compensation IQ team just as we were starting the pay review process. If it had come two or three months later, we’d have already been through this exercise and it wouldn’t have been appropriate.
What started as a solution for their immediate pay review needs quickly revealed itself to be considerably more than that.
The transformation: from days to hours
The difference was immediate. Where the old process had taken the better part of a week, Compensation IQ streamlined everything into a matter of hours.
Using the API to import the data was really useful because you don’t need to cross-check and match everything. It’s all there as it should be. It probably took a couple of hours just to double-check the alignment and make sure our quite niche job titles had parity.
Percentile data changed everything
The real game-changer was not just the time saving - it was the quality of insights. For the first time, Mando Group had access to percentile data, not just basic salary bands.
We were able to see for a couple of roles where we were out of sync because we had the median and the percentiles. We could understand where we want to pay and then target and align where anybody was out of sync with that. We just didn’t have that before.
That shift from reactive to proactive had direct consequences in pay review conversations with the board. When the HR team presented their findings alongside performance reviews, the data gave them something they had never had before: confidence.
One individual at Mando Group was identified as underpaid compared to the percentile profile. The data gave the team confidence to recommend a larger increase than they might otherwise have proposed - and to do so with clear evidence. "There was probably a slightly larger increase than they might have received without that data. We might have been more cautious and reserved," Deanne reflects.
Beyond the annual review: year-round value
What Mando Group initially saw as a pay review tool quickly revealed itself as something more strategic. They are now using Compensation IQ across four areas they had not originally anticipated:
Live recruitment benchmarking
When putting job adverts out, they now know they are in the right ballpark. No more guessing whether a salary range is competitive for the Liverpool digital market.
Quarterly business reporting
Salary insights are now incorporated into regular stakeholder updates - giving different perspectives into anything that might benefit the business.
Absence cost analysis
Previously, cost of absence was very intangible. Now, with day-rate data available, the People team can put a real number on it when reporting to leadership.
Strategic workforce planning
Understanding market trends before they hit - rather than discovering a salary gap during a resignation conversation - has become part of how Mando Group thinks about their workforce.
We went into it as a pay review system, but there’s more to it than that. We’re now able to maximise the other information that’s in there.
The verdict: a strategic advantage
The transformation extends beyond efficiency gains. Mando Group has moved from reactive, time-consuming salary reviews to proactive, strategic compensation management. The ability to extract data, cut it in different ways, and get it out into the business is giving the People team a seat at a more strategic table.
So how likely are they to recommend Compensation IQ to a colleague?
The only thing preventing a perfect score? They would love to see benefits benchmarking added to the platform. “I think the onboarding, the ease of use, the data sets that are in there - the insights are just great.”
For UK digital agencies and consultancies grappling with post-pandemic culture shifts, hybrid working complexities, and fierce competition for talent, Mando Group’s story shows there is a better way forward. Smart compensation management is not a luxury - it is the foundation that lets everything else hold.