Data Transparency and Incredible Comp Reviews: Q&A with Nanea Fujiyama, Director of People at Altruist

Does it feel like you spend half your day answering questions from employees? Are you dreading yet another comp review meeting – where you know data will be scattered everywhere?

Those feelings are all too common among People leaders, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

Just ask Nanea Fujiyama, Director of People at Altruist. Nanea and Altruist started using ChartHop in 2022 to consolidate people data, but have since rolled out the platform to their entire team for self-serve access to data, compensation reviews, and so much more.

We recently sat down with Nanea to hear why she describes herself as “ChartHop’s #1 fan.” Here’s what we learned.

What problem were you looking to solve when you sought out a solution like ChartHop? And why did you choose ChartHop?

It all started with one of our HRBPs who partners with our Product and Engineering teams and needed a better way of tracking who was working on what projects. We had multiple Trello boards that different people were trying to use to track that information, but that wasn’t a scalable or efficient solution.

Around the same time, I was living in spreadsheets for compensation data and that was challenging, especially when it came to managing comp band data, so we also started exploring solutions to solve that problem.

We quickly realized that ChartHop was the only platform out there that helped us solve both of those problems really effectively. So that was how we ended up with ChartHop.

During your first year with ChartHop, what aspects of the platform have you found the most impactful?

I could talk about this all day! It’s hard to narrow down the list, but I’ll share my top two:

1. The number one thing across the entire company is data transparency. The fact that employees have access to the same information that I do has been a game changer. It’s no longer the back-and-forth of “are you added to this Trello board?” or “let me give you access here,” and that’s just such a huge mental load off of me.Now, I love when employees ask me something about who works on a certain project or when managers ask about their team members’ compensation, because I can just send them to ChartHop so they can get that information themselves quickly and easily. And as employees have developed this muscle, they’re starting to explore more in ChartHop on their own and they’re finding new information they never even thought about before. People will say to me, “I had no idea so-and-so was interested in this, but I was reading their ‘About Me’ profile in ChartHop and I saw it on there,” and then that sparks new conversations among team members. All of that data transparency has just been fantastic.
2. And then for me, there are so many little things that ChartHop does so well. For example, I love being able to hover over a column in the data sheet view and see a snapshot of who’s in each department. It’s such a little thing, but it’s so impactful because then I can take a quick screenshot and send it to our new CFO. It's all those little things that ChartHop does so well that I discover every day that make my life easier.

What’s your biggest success story since implementing ChartHop?

Building on the data transparency piece, we just had our first comp review cycle using ChartHop and it was an overwhelming success. It was kind of incredible. I kept holding my breath through the whole cycle waiting for something to go awry because it was going too well; people were sticking to their budgets and doing things on time.

We had 100% of managers submit their proposals on time, less than 10% of them went over budget, and overall as a company we’re under budget. I had managers proactively coming up to me saying that ChartHop was so amazing and so easy to use. They said they felt super empowered to make fair and equitable compensation proposals for their team members since they had all the information in one place.

And from an HR and executive perspective, we saved so much time administering this cycle. Previously, we had to do multiple 2-3 hour long meetings and walk through every person, looking at performance reviews and various other data points, and it took so much time. But because ChartHop helped us consolidate all the information into one place, we didn't have to spend nearly as much time but were still able to make fair and equitable compensation decisions.

I could not believe how well the whole cycle went. I'm still raving about it.

Have you come across any unexpected use cases for ChartHop?

Yes! Something surprises me every week. For example, empowering employees to seek out information themselves is very unexpected because I truly didn't think I’d be able to direct employees to ChartHop as much as I actually do.

It’s now reached the point where I don’t even answer their questions anymore, I just tell them they can find what they’re looking for in ChartHop (nicely, of course!). Teaching them to use that muscle to seek out information has been really fun and I think they've appreciated it too. Last week someone on our Finance team asked about recent departures and I said it's all in the activity feed in ChartHop, and now they have a calendar reminder to check departures every Monday.

Another area that I’m excited to start exploring is Reports, which I now realize does so much more than reporting. I can't wait to dive in there and build more dashboards for our executive team, managers, and even myself to better visualize the data that we have in ChartHop. When we started with ChartHop I didn’t realize that it was such a powerful module, so now that I know more about it I'm excited to use it more.

How do you encourage your employees to use ChartHop?

We hosted a couple of training sessions in the beginning and it's just been word of mouth since then. ChartHop has taken off a lot on its own because it’s so useful for people. I recently overheard a group of employees talking about how they could find certain information in ChartHop and there wasn’t a single HR person among them!

The other thing that helped people get comfortable in ChartHop was training sessions for our comp review, which especially invigorated managers to use ChartHop more. I’ve also started pulling up ChartHop in my 1:1s with managers to help them see how to look at data for their entire team in one place.

And now ChartHop is part of our onboarding process. We market it to new hires as a way to get to know people across the company quickly. For example, I tell them that if they’re in a meeting and they don't know half the people, they can pull up ChartHop and check who everyone is. We also give them pro tips about how to best use ChartHop, since we’ve found those specific examples lead to more adoption than just telling people “here’s a bunch of information to explore.”

How would you rate your overall experience working with the ChartHop team?

I would use the words pleasant and knowledgeable. It is so refreshing to interact with people who are clearly experts on the platform they support. Every person that I've worked with at ChartHop has either been able to answer our questions or very effectively direct us to the person that can answer our questions. That gives us so much confidence in the platform that we’re using. From our customer success manager to every customer support engineer, I truly haven't had a poor experience.

On top of that, the ChartHop team does a really amazing job of listening to customers and anticipating our needs. I recently learned about some upcoming new features that I wouldn't have even thought to ask for but that I know will help us view our organization in a different, better way. It’s just another example of how ChartHop creates things I didn't even realize we needed.

Long term, how do you think ChartHop will continue to support Altruist as you grow?

This was unexpected too. When we first adopted ChartHop, I don't think I fully understood how well it would scale with us. We’re going to continue to grow steadily over the next few years and I have zero concerns about ChartHop scaling with us, which I can’t say for all of our technology partners.

I see ChartHop as being our consolidated HR platform in the future. One big piece of feedback we get from employees all the time, particularly in onboarding surveys, is how many tools we use as a company across the board and that it’s a lot to remember. I've made it my personal mission that I don't want people to feel that way about HR in a few years. We have so many different HR tools right now and when I think about ways to consolidate, I can see ChartHop being that main hub for everything… 1:1s, performance reviews, people data and analytics, the list goes on. I think that’s where ChartHop will have a really big impact as that one solution that people remember in association with our HR team because everything lives in there. I’m excited about that and I know it will make our employees' lives a lot easier.

What would you tell other HR leaders who are considering ChartHop?

Democratization of data is a big pain point for a lot of HR leaders, and ChartHop has helped us with that tremendously. At Altruist, we call it closing the knowing vs. doing gap: Our managers know what's available to them and what they need to do to be strong managers, but knowing what’s right and actually acting on that are two different things. ChartHop helps our managers close that gap by giving them great data to work with.

What Does an “Incredible” Compensation Cycle Look Like?

Ready to follow in Altruist’s footsteps and launch an informed, equitable, and totally rewarding compensation review cycle? Here’s a look at what it takes.

HOW TO STREAMLINE COMPENSATION REVIEWS