The Opportunity
As Keen prepared for the future of pay transparency, Kristina Gutierrez, Director of People & Culture, saw an opportunity that extended well beyond complying with emerging pay transparency regulations.
While the regulations influenced the timing, Kristina and the executive team viewed the initiative as an opportunity to strengthen the culture they were intentionally building. Rather than treating transparency as a legal requirement, they wanted employees to better understand how compensation decisions were made, how those decisions reflected Keen's values, and how compensation supported both employee growth and the company's long-term strategy.
For an organization built on helping customers make confident, data-driven decisions, it was equally important that employees felt informed and confident about decisions that affected them.
They believed employees should understand not only what they were paid, but why.
There was one challenge.
For many leaders, this would be the first time they were expected to explain salary ranges, compensation philosophy, and pay decisions. Like many start-up organizations, managers hadn't had to learn the mechanics of compensation, nor had they ever been asked to confidently discuss salary ranges or total rewards with employees.
Kristina wasn't looking for a standard compensation training session. She wanted a learning experience that met Keen's leaders where they were, reflected the organization's culture, and prepared managers for the real conversations they would soon be having.
After evaluating how to best support leaders through this change, she partnered with MorganHR's CompAware program because of its collaborative design approach. Rather than delivering off-the-shelf content, CompAware incorporates pre-session feedback, real manager questions, peer discussion
The Approach
Kristina partnered with MorganHR to design a learning experience tailored specifically to Keen's culture, leadership team, and organizational goals.
The process began well before anyone entered the first session. Together, we reviewed pre-session survey feedback to better understand leaders' concerns, questions, and confidence levels. Their voices shaped the design of the sessions, ensuring the learning reflected the real conversations managers anticipated having—not generic compensation topics.
Before the learning sessions, leaders had an opportunity to ask questions in a pre-session survey. The most common questions:
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"I want to pay my employee above the top of the range. How can I do that?"
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"My employee has been here a long time. Why aren't they higher in the range?"
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"What if we lose people because we can't pay them more?"
The first session focused on building a shared understanding of compensation and total rewards. Leaders explored how salary ranges are developed, how market data influences pay, how employees move through salary ranges, the role of internal equity, and how Keen's compensation philosophy supports the organization's broader business strategy.
The second session shifted from understanding to application. Leaders participated in peer discussions, role-play exercises, and real-world scenarios built directly from the questions they submitted before the sessions. Together, they practiced responding to challenging employee questions, learned from one another's experiences, and developed a common language for discussing compensation with confidence and consistency.
Instead of asking leaders to adapt to the learning experience, the learning experience was built around the leaders.
One of the most important elements of the rollout wasn't simply the design of the sessions—it was the visible commitment from Keen's executive leadership.
Keen's COO, Mike, openly shared with leaders that, at first, he wasn't convinced this level of transparency was necessary. But after working through the organization's strategy with Kristina and reflecting on the role leaders play in building trust, he quickly realized transparency wasn't simply about explaining pay—it was about strengthening engagement.
He challenged leaders to think beyond base pay and help employees understand the complete picture: salary ranges, incentive opportunities, bonuses, and the broader total rewards package. As Keen continued to grow, he believed these conversations would become increasingly important for engagement, retention, and reinforcing the culture that makes Keen unique.
The message was clear: pay transparency wasn't the destination—it was a way to build trust, strengthen engagement, and help employees better understand how compensation supports both their success and the company's future.
The Impact
Preparing leaders before compensation conversations changed the experience for everyone.
Leaders entered conversations with a shared understanding of Keen's compensation philosophy, practical experience answering difficult questions, and confidence in explaining compensation consistently across the organization. By practicing together, hearing different perspectives, and working through real scenarios, they developed both the skills and confidence to lead meaningful pay conversations.
Employees had clearer, more engaging compensation conversations and gained a stronger understanding of how pay decisions were made. Because leaders approached those conversations with a shared understanding, employees experienced transparency not just as access to information, but as a better understanding of the organization’s philosophy and the link between performance and pay.
The impact was reflected in the employee survey results.
"Our result: 100% of our employees surveyed said they understand their pay." - Kristina
Why It Worked
Keen recognized that successful pay transparency isn’t achieved by publishing salary ranges. It is achieved when leaders understand the philosophy, believe in the message, and have the confidence to communicate it consistently.
By listening to leaders before the sessions, designing the learning around their real questions, creating opportunities to practice through peer discussions and role-play, and reinforcing the message through executive sponsorship, Keen transformed pay transparency from a regulatory requirement into a cultural advantage.
The result wasn’t simply better compensation conversations. It was a stronger trust, greater employee understanding, and a leadership team equipped to support the organization’s continued growth.
Perhaps the greatest lesson from Keen’s journey is that meaningful change doesn’t happen because an organization has to do something—it happens because leaders choose to use moments of change to reinforce the culture they want to build. By investing in leader capability before asking managers to have some of their most important conversations, Keen created an employee experience that reflected its values of trust, transparency, and teamwork while preparing the organization for continued success.
