The Challenge: Turbulent Excel-Based Compensation

For a major enterprise like Alaska Airlines, managing the compensation and merit cycle for their employees is a monumental task. Without a cloud-based system to support the process, the compensation team relied on manual Excel files.

As the airline scaled, this manual workflow became increasingly unsustainable. Routing sensitive spreadsheets through multiple levels of management was heavily time-consuming and reduced control & visibility. Stakeholders sometimes found themselves locked out of files or working from outdated versions.

Furthermore, communicating these updates to employees relied on physical mail merges and printed letters. This process became nearly impossible to manage as the airline grew.

“Managing the merit process manually in Excel for a population of our size increased the risk of errors and miscommunication, particularly when leaders were working from different versions of the file. Managers often struggled to identify the correct file, and in some cases, incorrect merit amounts were loaded into the system, resulting in a negative employee & leader experience. This required manual audits to ensure employees received the correct merit amounts.” 

— Stacy Suda, Senior Compensation Analyst, Alaska Airlines

The Solution: A Centralized, Dynamic Platform

Alaska Airlines needed a secure, intuitive solution to replace their fragmented spreadsheets. They evaluated several options but selected HRSoft for its easy-to-use navigation, advanced customer service, and robust future-proofing capabilities (like Total Rewards statements).

Working closely with the HRSoft team through weekly implementation meetings, Alaska Airlines configured a highly tailored, centralized merit hierarchy. The new system introduced several critical capabilities:

  • Dynamic Logic & Conditional Statements: The platform was configured to handle a wide range of unique employee situations automatically, triggering specific statement wording and fields based on variable employee data.
  • Co-Planner Functionality: Multiple HR Business Partners (HRBPs) could now simultaneously support leaders, maintaining real-time visibility into planning and budget alignment without getting locked out of shared files.
  • Performance-Driven Guidance: By importing performance ratings directly into HRSoft, the system utilized calculated fields to display recommended merit amounts and percentages based on budget parameters and the employee’s salary range.
  • Digital Statement Management: The manual mail merge was replaced with a digital “share and unshare” functionality. Leaders could conduct their merit discussions and instantly share digital statements for employees to view or download securely.

The Results: Unlocking Unplanned Efficiencies and Scaling Trust

By moving away from a manual, spreadsheet-driven merit process, Alaska Airlines achieved a more efficient, controlled, and scalable approach to compensation. The HR team eliminated the tedious tasks of chasing files, validating data, and performing post-merit corrections in PeopleSoft, resulting in a significantly shortened merit cycle timeline.

Key Outcomes:

  • Expanded User Adoption: The intuitive nature of the platform allowed Alaska Airlines to confidently shift planning access from the Managing Director level down to the Director level. Despite the larger user base, the rollout was seamless, and leader feedback was overwhelmingly positive.
  • Real-Time Auditing: Built-in reporting and statement manager views allowed HR to quickly audit data and instantly see which employees had or hadn’t been notified of their compensation updates.
  • Data-Driven Decisions: Automated guidance based on performance ratings successfully encouraged higher merit increases for employees demonstrating exceptional performance.
  • Enhanced Transparency: The platform fundamentally strengthened organizational trust in the merit program, providing a frictionless experience for HR, leaders, and employees alike.

“HRSoft replaces manual, error-prone Excel processes with a secure, configurable, and collaborative platform that enables accurate merit planning, real-time visibility, and a significantly better experience for HR, leaders, and employees.”

— Stacy Suda, Senior Compensation Analyst, Alaska Airlines