CS Operations Compensation Structure

KristieKaaa

Hi All - I'm working on a compensation structure for a CS Operations & Strategy position and I'm interested to hear about some structures others have used in the past. Was there a portion of variable compensation that was tied to Strategic OKRs or is the industry standard to be salary only? 

William Buckingham

Hi Kristie, 

I don't think there's an "industry standard" at this point for CS Ops/Enablement/Strategy roles.  I'm curious to see what others are doing.  

I'm on a CS Ops & Enablement team, and we do indeed have a variable comp aspect. This makes up a very small portion of our pay, roughly 8% of additional pay on top of our salary.  

It's a two part variable comp/bonus:

1. OKRs for the CS Ops & Enablement team. We define these at the start of the year, revisit and add to them at the halfway mark.   This makes up the bulk of our variable comp.  
2. CS and Company KPIs/OKRs.  This makes up a smaller portion of our variable comp. However, if we hit our CS Ops & Enablement goals at 100%, and the CS and Company metrics go above 100% of target, we can obtain above 100% of our variable.   

The logic is that if we deliver all that the business stated it needed from us in order to hit it's marks, and the business goes beyond those marks, we likely had something to do with it, and therefore get above 100% of our variable.  If we failed to deliver all our OKRs/what business asked of us, and the business still hits above 100% of it's marks, it did this in spite of the ops/enablement/strategy function not fully delivering and therefore we don't get paid beyond that 100% mark.

Happy to chat through this more if beneficial - just let me know.  Good luck with bringing on the new role!

Jeff Breunsbach

@William Buckingham took the words out of my mouth - was going to write a similar comp structure to what I've seen.