Arya: The Dynamic Compensation Platform that Pays
Our investment in Arya underscores a glaring need for tomorrow’s workforce
At Ridge, we’re all for making work less work. Hence our recent seed investment in Arya, a dynamic compensation platform that helps companies pay, incentivize, and reward their workforces (far) more efficiently.
If you’re not up to speed, dynamic compensation allows companies to deliver variable compensation/incentive/reward structures to workers based on a number of factors (geography, volume of work, length of employment, etc.). With many businesses managing different types of workers these days, especially a burgeoning cohort of “flexible” or 1099 contractors and hourly workers, streamlining this process is equally rewarding for ops teams and the full-time and flex workforces they support.
Here is a closer look at how Arya is delivering smarter and more equitable compensation to the dynamic workforce of the future.
A compensation catastrophe
By 2025, work-based compensation, incentives, and rewards for full-time and flex workforces will total more than $500 billion. With so much money at stake, companies must design and implement a solid compensation model. If not, they’ll jeopardize growth, profitability, and the morale of their workers.
Dynamism is the future of compensation, ditto for the future of work. Thanks to smartphone apps, video conferencing software, and other innovations, where you work, for whom you work, and for how long, is increasingly up to the person “clocking in.” The flexible worker contingent is growing fast: one-in-three workers is a part of the gig economy, exclusively or on top of their full-time job. By 2027, this number expects to jump to 60%.
In addition to the surge in flexible workers, there’s a noticeable issue regarding turnover, particularly with younger people. Gig workers under 40 only stay with their employers 25% of the time compared to their Baby Boomer counterparts. All in all, turnover in flexible work is about 500 times higher than full-time work, largely due to high economic anxiety, and lack of benefits and ownership that are built into the economic model of gig work.
Given these trends, companies can’t expect to retain full-time talent and flex workers unless they provide a sense of financial security and fulfillment. The status quo payroll systems, rewards platforms, and other tools implemented by today’s ops teams won’t cut it. What’s the answer, Jeeves?
A level paying field
Tomorrow’s workers want a compensation structure that delivers flexibility and value, as well as the ability to work on the go. Companies, on the other hand, need a way of accurately measuring the value of these workers — real-time data! — so they compensate 1099 workers as seamlessly (and fairly) as full-time workers.
Led by a data-first approach, Arya delivers accurate and effective compensation, rewards, and incentives that are efficient and worker-friendly every step of the way:
There’s no time like real-time: Arya’s real-time data gives companies an up-to-the-minute look at the value generated by workers.
More flexibility, less effort: Design and deploy a compensation plan in minutes with Arya’s no-code editor. Good riddance to hundreds of Google Sheets and months of product roadmaps. And no need to ditch your existing payroll system; just layer Arya right on top.
Payment options galore: Workers get paid how they want to — check, cash, gift cards, benefits, equity, and much more.
Find what works for your workforce: Use Arya’s out-of-the-box analytics to monitor compensation from achievement to redemption. A/B test to see what compensation structure is working and what needs to be tweaked.
With Arya, ops teams can determine the best compensation plan for their workforce and fully automate its deployment. And, for those who want to plug and play, Arya provides pre-configured dynamic compensation playbooks.
The Arya origins
Spearheading Arya’s compensation revolution is founder/CEO Kunal Sarda. Kunal packs the ideal combination of domain expertise and experience that we love to see in our founders.
Before starting Arya, Kunal co-founded VerbalizeIt, a translation platform featured on Shark Tank that serviced customers like Udemy and Visa. Smartling, another Ridge portfolio company, acquired Verbalizeit in 2016 — a sliding doors moment that ultimately led us to Kunal and our investment in Arya’s seed round.
Speaking of seeds, Smartling is where the kernel of Kunal’s dynamically compensated dreams began to sprout and grow ears. As Vice President of Customer Engagement, one of Kunal’s tasks was managing thousands of Smartling translators around the world, including how they were compensated and incentivized. This chapter of Kunal’s career was foundational in building Arya’s platform.
Just barely out of stealth, Arya has already strung together a collection of solid logos. AptDeco (home decor), Bellhop (moving services), and SteadyMD (healthcare), among other customers, demonstrate the variety of industries in need of a compensation makeover, and we anticipate many others will join the Arya armada.
Paying it forward
Tomorrow’s faction of full-timers and 1099ers is a workforce to be reckoned with. It’s a dynamic and diverse assortment of hard-working individuals who deserve equally dynamic compensation. If companies want to be ahead of the curve, Arya is the most intuitive and efficient tool at their disposal.
Congrats to Kunal and the Arya team on their fresh batch of funding. You can try Arya for free here, and check out open positions on their careers page.
