Lestvica - Compensation Planning Platform with Pay Equity Built In
Annual Pay Review for a Three-Country Pharmaceutical Distributor
Designed and built a clickable compensation planning platform for a Ljubljana-based pharmaceutical distributor with entities in Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia: manager worksheets with merit guidelines and guardrails, approvals up the management chain, and a pay equity analysis with an adjusted gender gap ready for the EU Pay Transparency Directive.
Most of our work is under NDA. Per agreement, we can share the work but not the company details - all names and identifying information shown here have been changed.
Impact
Dashboard, manager worksheet, approvals inbox, approval review and pay equity analysis. The worksheet switches between 5 manager teams, and each of the 6 demo approvals opens its own review.
Below the statutory minimum wage, outside the merit guideline, over band maximum, under band minimum, recent off-cycle raise and equity watch. The minimum wage flag is a hard stop, and Submit stays blocked until every flag is fixed or justified.
Senior leader, country HR review, group reward review and the executive board delegate. Approvers can approve, return with a required comment, or adjust rows, with their edits shown in a different colour next to the old value.
Across 3 legal entities, 5 locations and 2 currencies (EUR and RSD), with 7 manager worksheets, 6 approvals, 6 categories of workers, 5 pay equity runs and 9 flagged outliers.
The Problem
Mirovec ran its pay review from one Excel workbook per country, split by hand into 64 manager tabs, emailed out and stitched back together. Bands had not been refreshed since 2023, so nobody trusted compa-ratios. Serbian managers overspent their pool while Slovenian ones left money unused, finance saw the total only after letters went out, a formula error gave 14 warehouse staff in Split a raise on the wrong base, and the board could not show whether women and men in the same kind of job were paid the same.
Our Solution
Lestvica runs the yearly compensation cycle in one place. Managers plan merit, promotions and lump sums on a worksheet that shows each person's band position, the merit matrix guideline and the pool left to spend, guardrails flag anything outside policy before submit, plans roll up a 4-step approval chain, and the reward lead runs a pay equity analysis whose results feed back into the cycle.
The Challenge: One Pay Review, Three Rulebooks
Mirovec employs about 780 people in Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia, from warehouse operatives and drivers to qualified persons for good distribution practice and key account managers. Each country has its own labour law, currency and minimum wage, and only two of them are in the EU.
Pay Transparency Is Coming
Directive (EU) 2023/970 had to be transposed by 7 June 2026. It requires pay ranges before interview, gender-neutral pay criteria, answers to employee pay information requests within two months, and a joint pay assessment when an unjustified gap of 5% or more in a category of workers is not remedied within six months.
Different Obligations per Entity
The Slovenian entity, with about 420 workers, reports its gender pay gap every year from 2027 and the Croatian one, with about 230, every three years. Serbia is not in the EU, so the directive does not apply there, but Mirovec chooses to run the same pay equity analysis on its Serbian staff.
Budgets in Two Currencies
Slovenian and Croatian pay is in EUR and Serbian pay in RSD, with merit pools of 3.5%, 4.0% and 6.0% of eligible base pay under the client's policy. Group totals have to be converted at a rate fixed for the cycle, or no one can compare spend across countries.
Sensitive Data, Small Groups
Pay equity analysis processes sex and pay under the GDPR, and Serbian data falls under Serbia's own data protection law. Managers may only see their own organisation, and any split by gender in a group small enough to identify a person has to be suppressed.
Our Approach: From Pay Rules to a Clickable Pay Review
Spec and Rules Research
Mapped 11 user roles, 40 screens across the staff app and a mobile-first employee portal, and the data model for entities, bands, merit matrices, budget pools, worksheets, proposals, approval steps, equity runs, worker categories, pay gap reports and letters. Wrote down the rules the design follows: the Pay Transparency Directive and its reporting thresholds, Slovenia's ZDR-1, Croatia's Labour Act, Serbia's Labour Law, the GDPR and Serbia's Law on Personal Data Protection.
Clickable Demo on a Production UI Kit
Built 5 key screens on a production dashboard kit: the dashboard with progress by organisation, spend by country and a needs-attention list, the manager worksheet with pool bars, the merit matrix and an employee comp panel, the approvals inbox with bulk approve for items with no flags, the approval review with adjust, return and approval trail, and the pay equity analysis with gaps by category, outliers and a remediation plan. All actions run on local state.
What a Production Build Adds
Integration with the HRIS (such as Personio, SAP SuccessFactors or Workday), performance ratings, payroll change files, benefits values, Mercer, WTW or Korn Ferry survey imports, ECB and National Bank of Serbia rates, the ATS, DocuSign or Adobe Acrobat Sign and Microsoft Entra ID SSO. A tamper-evident audit log, the remaining screens (bands, budget pools, bonus, LTI, pay gap reporting, information requests, job posting ranges, letters in four languages and the employee portal) and legal review of each country's transposing act.
Why It Works: Policy on the Worksheet, Not in a Memo
Guidance Where Managers Decide
Each row shows the employee's rating, compa-ratio, range penetration bar and the guideline from the merit matrix for their country. Managers can enter a merit percent or an amount and the other updates, or apply the guideline to the whole team in one click.
Pools That Change Colour
Pool bars per component turn amber over 95% and red over 100% of the pool, and Serbian worksheets switch between RSD and EUR at the cycle rate. The dashboard compares planned spend against each country's pool, so overspend shows up before approval, not after letters.
Exceptions Carry Their Reason
A flagged row needs a justification category and text before submit. The approver sees every exception with the manager's reason next to it, and a return needs a comment, so the conversation about a 7.5% increase happens in the tool, not in email.
Pay Equity With Its Method Shown
The analysis states its regression and controls in plain words, marks performance rating as a control that may carry bias and can compare the result without it. Gaps of 5% or more need an objective, gender-neutral reason, groups under 5 people are suppressed, and outlier names are visible to the reward lead only.
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Enterprise Software Engineering - Human + AI
Contact Us
Locations
Global Headquarters
21 Merchant Road, 3rd Floor, Singapore 058267
Main corporate office and leadership operations
North America Office
548 Market Street, PMB 12345, San Francisco, CA 94104
Client operations and business development
India Office
402 Shivalik Shilp II, SG Highway, Ahmedabad 380015
Engineering and delivery center
© 2026 - Copyright. All Rights reserved Oceanlab