Outside the BP Exploration offices in Houston, cars streamed out of the parking lot. Engines started. Radios turned on. Families reunited. The annual tradition of releasing employees early before the holidays was in full swing—everyone heading home to start their celebrations.
Everyone except me.
I sat at my desk, the office eerily quiet, staring at rows and rows of compensation data for thousands of employees across our global operations. The spreadsheets weren’t going to configure themselves. The managers weren’t going to magically understand the new bonus formulas. And our January go-live date wasn’t moving.
This wasn’t unusual. It was just the reality of running compensation planning at a Fortune 200 energy company in the era before purpose-built comp software existed.
The Hidden Season Within the Season
Most people think of November and December as “the holiday season”—a time for family gatherings, gratitude, and winding down the year.
For compensation professionals, it’s crunch time.
While companies prepare for year-end celebrations, compensation teams are deep in the trenches of January comp season preparation. The planning process that looks so simple on the surface—managers review their people, recommend increases, submit their numbers—requires months of invisible work to make it happen.
That invisible work includes:
- Building and testing complex calculation formulas across multiple compensation components
- Validating employee data pulled from core HR systems
- Configuring planning tools that managers will actually understand
- Testing every scenario to prevent calculation errors
- Creating controls to manage budget constraints
- Building rollup reports for finance and executives
And all of it has to be perfect before managers get their hands on it.
When the Office Empties Out
I remember those afternoons before Thanksgiving and Christmas. The energy in the office would shift around noon. People packed up early. Laughter in the hallways. “Have a great holiday!” echoing through the cubicles.
And then… silence.
The fluorescent lights humming. The HVAC system cycling. Me, alone with my spreadsheets.
In some ways, it was a gift. No interruptions. No urgent requests pulling me away from focused work. I could dive deep into formula logic, trace through calculations, test edge cases without someone stopping by my desk every fifteen minutes.
But I was chained to that desk while everyone else started their holidays.
The Late Nights Nobody Sees
As go-live approached, the workload intensified. HRBPs would review the data and find issues:
- “This expatriate’s salary doesn’t look right in the system”
- “We just had a reorganization—these five people moved to a different manager”
- “Finance changed the bonus pool allocation for this division”
- “Can we add promotion planning to the tool this year?”
Each change meant reconfiguring spreadsheets, retesting formulas, redistributing files. I often worked until 9 or 10 PM, sometimes later, making sure everything was ready.
My family understood. My wife was patient. My kids learned that “Daddy has to work late during comp season” was just how things were in November and December.
But it shouldn’t have been that way.
The Personal Toll That Comes With the Territory
Many compensation professionals have similar stories. We don’t talk about them much because, frankly, it just came with the job. This is what you signed up for when you became responsible for the annual compensation process.
But those sacrifices ripple beyond just the compensation professional:
- Family events missed or rushed through
- Holiday stress that should be joy
- Burnout before the new year even starts
- The constant worry that despite all the testing, something will break when managers start using the tool
The people running the compensation process carry a burden that others in the organization rarely see or appreciate. They keep the entire machine running while everyone else focuses on their holiday plans.
What I Learned From Those Empty Offices
Those years taught me something crucial: the tools were the problem, not the process.
Compensation planning itself isn’t inherently complex. Managers need to review their people, consider performance and market position, recommend appropriate increases within budget, and communicate those decisions.
But the systems we used to enable that process were brutally inefficient:
- Disconnected spreadsheets that required manual consolidation
- Formula errors that only appeared after managers started entering data
- No real-time visibility into budget utilization
- Inflexible designs that couldn’t adapt when business needs changed mid-stream
- Security risks from files being emailed around the organization
The tools created the holiday season nightmare, not the fundamental work itself.
From Pain Point to Solution
Years after those holiday seasons at BP, I started building compensation tools differently. I focused on what I had learned from being chained to my desk:
A client took notice of what we were building. They liked the approach—compensation software built by someone who had lived the pain. They partnered with us to develop it into a full web-based compensation planning system.
CompAccelerator was born.
It’s right there in the name: COMPENSATION – ACCELERATOR.
The goal was simple: get the job done quickly, accurately, and securely. Let compensation professionals leave the office with everyone else on the day before Thanksgiving and on December 23rd. Let them enjoy Christmas Eve with their families instead of testing formulas in an empty building.
The Holiday Season You Deserve
If you’re reading this in November or December, and you recognize yourself in this story—still at your desk while everyone else has gone home on the day before Thanksgiving or December 23rd, working late nights to prepare for January comp season—I want you to know something:
The sacrifice is real. The dedication is admirable. But it’s not sustainable, and more importantly, it’s not necessary.
Modern compensation planning technology can give you back your holidays without sacrificing the quality of your compensation process. You can:
- Configure your process in days instead of months
- Make changes on the fly when business needs shift
- Give managers real-time visibility and control
- Maintain budget discipline without late-night consolidation sessions
- Run a top-notch compensation process and leave work on time
For Everyone Still at Their Desk
To every compensation professional working through lunch on the day before Thanksgiving or December 23rd while everyone else is on the road to family gatherings:
To everyone testing formulas at 9 PM when they should be wrapping presents:
To everyone who has sacrificed holidays so that managers across their organization can have a smooth compensation season:
Those years at BP taught me that compensation planning doesn’t have to be a holiday season sacrifice. It took living through that pain to understand how to build a better solution—one that respects both the complexity of the work and the humanity of the people doing it.
This year, or maybe next year, you can have a different story. One where you leave early on the day before Thanksgiving and on December 23rd with everyone else. Where Christmas Eve is spent with family, not with spreadsheets. Where January comp season runs smoothly because the tool works with you instead of against you.
That’s the promise of CompAccelerator—and it’s a promise born from sitting in that empty office on December 23rd, watching cars leave the parking lot, and thinking there has to be a better way.
There is.
Ready to Reclaim Your Holiday Season?
Learn how CompAccelerator’s fast implementation and real-time configuration can transform your compensation planning process.