Workleap: Pay Power—How Compensation Sparks Engagement

Workleap’s Pay Portrait

Simon De Baene, the chief executive of Workleap, treats compensation not as a spreadsheet calculation, but as a personal life influence.

Why Pay Matters

“Compensation shapes everyday choices—housing, family, travel,” De Baene explains. His conviction drives Workleap’s newest move: the acquisition of Barley, a platform that plans, structures, and communicates salary decisions.

Bridging Performance and Pay

• Performance and engagement resonate with one side of business culture.
• Pay decisions continue on the opposite side.
• Employees sense this split—even when companies claim it doesn’t exist.

De Baene warns that such disconnects erode perceived fairness and can become a “recipe for disaster.” The Barley deal closes that gap, adding a critical tool to Workleap’s expanding suite that already covers performance and engagement.

A Trust‑Based Workview

People experience work in a holistic way; employers should do the same. A flawed compensation process can damage trust far more than an unequal outcome. Even if salaries stay unchanged, De Baene believes staff want clarity on the decision‑making process.

From internal experiments to global products

Workleap’s 20‑Year Journey: From Montreal to the Workplace Revolution

Montreal’s Quiet Tech Scene Meets Fresh Vision

When G‑Unit’s early 2000s hip‑hop slogan inspired the name GSoft, founder Jérôme De Baene and his co‑founders were already ready to challenge Quebec’s IT ”greyness”. “We wanted to bring a breath of fresh air,” De Baene recalls.

Evolution from IT Services to Product‑First Growth

• 2006: GSoft launched as an IT services provider.
• Later: Internal tools proved too valuable to keep in-house, prompting the shift to products.
• ShareGate: First product, easing Microsoft environment management.
• Officevibe: Second product, capturing team sentiment beyond annual surveys.

Internal Innovation Drives External Success

De Baene says, “Life gave us two successful products that just kind of grew next to each other.” The company now offers a suite of user‑friendly tools helping businesses improve employee experience and workplace morale.

Why Workleap Stands Out

Workleap’s own products enable faster bug detection and rapid scaling. “It helps us surface the bug way, way faster,” De Baene notes.

Future Outlook

By solving real problems internally before scaling, Workleap has shaped a growth trajectory centered on employee experience and workplace well‑being.

Scaling the culture

Workleap’s Shift from “Family” to “Sports Team” Culture

When Workleap began, internal meetings often referenced the company as a family. That language, however, quickly proved misleading for an expanding tech firm.

Why “Family” Became Unhealthy

De Baene explained that the word family “gets out of your mouth very quickly” in a startup’s energetic environment. Over time he saw that the term fostered an unhealthy view of what the business should be.

Evolving Culture with Rapid Growth

• Workleap now serves over 20,000 businesses in 100 countries.
• The company generated more than $100 million in revenue.

To keep pace, De Baene adopted a culture model inspired by Netflix’s well‑known deck: a high‑performing sports team. According to him, that analogy better reflects the competitive realities that demand decisive action.

Bootstrapping to Strategic Capital

Early on, De Baene proudly bootstrapped the business. He later realized that acquisitions required strategic depth beyond the founder’s capacity. That insight prompted Workleap to raise external capital.

Partnering with CDPQ

Team leaders partnered with the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, Quebec’s largest pension fund. De Baene warned against neglecting other businesses that had built something great: “I think it’s almost like sabotage for your own business.”

Barley Acquisition

The Barley acquisition exemplified this new strategy. It aligned perfectly with Workleap’s vision for a unified employee experience and added a mature product that could integrate quickly.

Building at home, selling to the world

Workleap’s global momentum outshines Canada’s domestic focus

From Montreal to the world: a product‑first expansion

Workleap has sidestepped the usual “relocate for capital” narrative by stretching its reach across continents from day one.

• Tool‑centric launch: the company concentrated on building useful, internationally marketable solutions.
• Domestic brand minimalism: instead of cultivating a Canadian identity, Workleap prioritized delivering products straight to global markets.

Canada’s innovation ecosystem: a call to buy home‑grown technology

Founder De Baene critiques the public sector’s penchant for U.S. dominance, even as Canadian firms supply strong alternatives.

• Shared support, not protectionism: if the Canadian government purchases locally manufactured goods, it will encourage national innovation.
• Buy local, buy dear: this perspective frames how governments should use public procurement to amplify domestic manufacturers.

Compensation: a performance‑linked fairness engine

De Baene argues that pay structures do more than match numbers; they signal core values and shape workplace trust.

• Consistency matters: unclear or inconsistent pay undermines motivation and performance.
• Employee experience: aligning compensation with performance builds cultures where staff feel seen, valued, and treated fairly.
• Spreadsheet obsession can solve problems: watching the details of pay planning is a challenge leaders can actually tackle.

Workleap’s future: a partner in global tech, a champion in employee fairness

Final shots

bReimagined Pay Insights

bEthic and bEinstinality intersect in cℝeation of competitive compensations.

Culture is cℝeative Grid

• Trust builds from transparent logistics.
• Transparency unlocks loyalty.
• Work experience transforms under finance cℝeations.

Pay and Performance Dance

• Unlock clarity by linking performance metrics.
• Employees learn why pay choices spin.
• Alignment ties merit to decision.

Global Software Scaling

• Canadian foundation can catapult worldwide.
• Workleap shows no relocation is required.
• Building home then expanding unlocks global SaaS.

Workleap Journey

Start with internal resolution; then offload community needs.