Compensation and Benefits

Purpose

Document policies for compensation at Countable.

Scope

Covers the principles behind our compensation strategy, specific policies, as well as benefits and medical provided to our team.

Compensation Schedule

All staff must complete their timesheets in Eightmeters.
Staff must submit hours for a given month within 24 hours of the end date (PST) of that month in order to be paid on time.
Everyone is paid within 8 days of the start of the month, for the prior period to allow for processing.
If you are not paid within this period, please contact our current bookkeeper.
Countable’s Compensation Schedule are saved here and in Countable Calendar.

Compensation Strategy Principles

Covers our basic principles and approach to compensating our team.

Not everyone will agree with this approach, so it’s important we state it here so we don’t have someone with different expectations join the team.

Our goal is to pay people enough to live in reasonable comfort and to generally be competitive with other opportunities, but we would rather start with lower rates and give generous raises compared to other companies. We believe this has a positive impact on our culture because if we pay too high initially it will result in many staff joining because of the high pay, and not because they are a good fit with our values and methods.
Once an employee has completed some OKRs and demonstrated they can push the team towards our mission, they will get a substantial raise.
- At this point, we trust they’ve been vetted to be a cultural fit.
- The raise may be weighted towards stock so that those who contribute are co-owners of Countable Web Productions Inc.
This will absolutely lead to unequal pay - Someone who has demonstrated a lot of value will be paid more than someone who’s still learning to be productive.
- On the positive side, this allows us to afford to hire students who still have some basic knowledge to develop in order to be productive.
- I think this is great because it will attract people who propel us forward over time, and avoid accumulating people who coast, by encouraging them to either improve or leave. It’s much more motivating working with the former people.
If you’re assigned a change in compensation, that will take effect starting in your next pay period, not immediately (current pay period), nor backdated to past hours.

Overtime

If you need to work overtime, it has to be approved first by your supervisor. Overtime should only be sought when there is a genuine necessity, such as urgent projects requiring immediate completion or critical bug fixes that must be resolved within the day. Please exercise your best judgment in evaluating the need for overtime. If the tasks can be accomplished during regular working hours, kindly do so. We place great emphasis on work-life balance, which includes proactive task planning and prioritization.
To make our Hourly Employees’ OT calculation more fair, and with better incentives (avoid rewarding folks with extra pay for taking half a day off, then 4 hours OT the next day). Overall this will result in some people being paid a bit more current and others a bit less, but I believe it’s more fair given it’s nearly always the employee who plans their own schedule.
If someone is asked specifically by their manager to do overtime on a given day, then it would incur immediate overtime. If you decide to do that on your own, you only get OT if you’re over hours for the 4-week pay period.
The averaging agreement will use a 1-month period (4 weeks typically), as the basis for overtime. The OT will now be calculated as the total time above the full-time work hours that month. ie, if based on 8h/day there are 168 work hours in June and an employee works 10h/day on 3 days but 6h on 2 days, reaching 170 hours, the OT is just 2 hours

Benefits

Payment for benefits and expenses directly reimbursable will be included like other expenses, alongside payroll.
If necessary, the company will provide up to $500 toward a Linux computer (or computer with Linux Dual Boot).
Expenses for items you need to do your job are covered in general. If it’s above $100, prior approval is required from your manager.

Subcontractors in the Philippines

Recognizing that we have a significant number of team members based in the Philippines, we have enhanced our benefits package to provide better support to them. Discover the benefits awaiting our team members in the Philippines.

Other subcontractors

We don’t currently have an extended medical group insurance plan for Canadians (partly as we don’t yet have USA employees who tend to be more reliant on this), but we’d like to help out a little when our team has dental or other uninsured medical costs. Instead:

Full-time contractors (100h/mo or more) and employees receive 50% reimbursement for medical expenses, up to $1000 CAD per calendar year.
Part-time contractors (50h/mo or more) receive 30% reimbursement for medical expenses, up to $1000 CAD per calendar year.