Hugo is a Future-of-Work company. We build and manage remote teams in black communities for some of the world’s largest technology and media companies. We specialize in end-to-end machine learning data annotation and omnichannel support solutions that ultimately yield more inclusive outcomes for both black communities globally and our clients.
What You Will Be Doing
- This role is critical to stabilizing and scaling Hugo’s Corporate compensation and people decision-making.
- You will own Total Rewards governance and People Analytics for the Corporate organization, ensuring we have clear rules, strong data, and consistent processes for offers, pay decisions, and progression.
- You will reduce compensation exceptions, improve internal equity, and create simple, defensible frameworks that help leaders make fast, fair decisions.
- This is a hands-on role with high visibility and strong cross-functional partnerships with Talent Acquisition, Finance, and the People Operations team.
Responsibilties
Total rewards governance (offers, pay, equity):
- Own and maintain compensation governance for Corporate roles, including pay bands usage, offer guardrails, and exception handling.
- Partner with Talent Acquisition to implement a structured offer process, including compensation checks prior to sending offers and clear approval paths for exceptions.
- Build and manage an “exceptions log” with root-cause analysis, trends, and remediation actions to reduce repeat exceptions.
- Conduct internal equity and compression reviews, flagging risks and proposing adjustment approaches with clear rationale and prioritization.
- Support leadership decisions on salary adjustments, promotions, progression changes, and COLA processes with consistent rules and documentation.
- Create and maintain compensation documentation, templates, and decision records that are audit-ready and easy to understand.
Job leveling and progression support:
- Maintain alignment between job levels, bands, and progression decisions in partnership with the People Lead and People Partners.
- Support the evolution of job architecture and role leveling by ensuring it is operationally usable, measurable, and consistently applied.
- Define and manage the mechanics of promotions and pay changes (inputs, review process, approvals, communication templates).
People analytics and reporting:
- Build and maintain core People dashboards for Corporate, including headcount, attrition, comp distribution, range penetration, equity flags, and exceptions.
- Ensure clean, reliable People data across systems (Zoho and shared trackers), partnering with People Ops on data hygiene and process adherence.
- Provide monthly insights to leadership on compensation health, budget impact, and key workforce trends.
Cross-functional partnerships (finance, TA, people ops):
- Partner with Finance to strengthen payroll inputs governance, ensuring People decisions are accurate, documented, and executed correctly.
- Partner with TA to standardize offer letters inputs, approval workflows, and turnaround times.
- Collaborate with People Operations to embed compensation workflows into Zoho Helpdesk and operating routines.
What qualifications you’ll need
- Bachelor’s Degree in Human Resources, Finance, Economics, Business Administration, Statistics, or a related field.
- 5 - 8 years of experience in Total Rewards, Compensation, People Analytics, HR Operations, or a closely related role, with clear ownership of compensation processes.
- Strong Excel/Google Sheets capability, including building structured trackers, audit trails, and dashboards.
- Demonstrated experience implementing compensation governance such as bands usage, approvals, and exception management.
- Strong analytical skills with the ability to translate data into clear decisions and recommendations.
- Confidence working with senior stakeholders and influencing decisions with clarity and structure.
- High discretion and strong judgment when handling confidential compensation information.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to simplify complex topics for non-HR audiences.
Preferred Background:
- Experience supporting compensation decisions in a fast-paced, high-growth environment with frequent hiring.
- Familiarity with Nigerian payroll inputs, statutory deductions, and how HR decisions translate into payroll execution (partnership with Finance).
- Experience with HRIS and ticketing/helpdesk workflows (Zoho People is a plus).
- Exposure to job leveling frameworks and progression systems.
- Comfortable operating in ambiguity and creating structure where processes are not yet mature.