Priority Sort
Priority Sort helps you instantly identify which employees need the most attention during compensation planning, based on exactly what matters to your organization this cycle. You define the priorities for Pave to surface.
Instead of scrolling through hundreds of rows wondering where to start, Priority Sort analyzes the signals you choose (like equity cliffs, compression, flight risk, or any custom factor), weighted exactly how you want, to surface your highest-priority employees at the top of every worksheet.
Why use Priority Sort?
Full control over what matters: Priority Sort is fully customizable to suit your organization's priorities each cycle. You choose which factors influence priority (smart flags, custom columns, etc.) and assign each one a weight from 1-10. Employee priority scores directly reflect your organization's strategy instead of using a one-size-fits-all formula.
For planners managing large teams: Open a 500-person worksheet and immediately see the subset of employees who need your focus based on your organization's priorities, with clear explanations of why each one matters. Spend your time making thoughtful compensation decisions instead of hunting for who needs attention.
For compensation teams: Configure Priority Sort once at the cycle level to match your strategic goals, and the system automatically identifies high-priority employees across all worksheets in real time. No more manually preparing priority lists or executive briefings for every planning cycle.
For your organization: Ensure discretionary budget flows to exactly where leadership has decided it matters most. Your priorities automatically surface in every planner's workflow.
How Priority Sort Works
Priority Sort is built to be fully customizable to your organization's goals. Compensation teams have complete control over which factors influence priority and how much weight each one carries.
How it works:
- Choose your inputs (priority factors): Select which smart flags (like "Equity Cliff" or "Low in Band") and custom boolean columns (like "Key Talent" or "Flight Risk") should factor into priority. These are your building blocks, the signals that matter for this cycle.
- Assign weighting: Assign each factor a weight from 1-10 based on importance to your organization. Increasing the weight of your most important priority inputs allows Priority Sort to highlight the exact employees you want to prioritize attention to in your cycle, an assists in the execution of your compensation strategy. A factor with weight 10 has twice the influence of a factor with weight 5.
- Pave calculates and surfaces outliers: For each employee, the system calculates a priority score by combining their factors according to your weights. It then uses statistical analysis to identify genuine outliers (employees whose scores are significantly higher than others in their worksheet). These become your high-priority cases.
Employee priority scores are a direct representation of your organization's priorities, not a generic formula. If retention risk matters more than recommendation adherence in this cycle, you're able to weight it higher.
Visual focus for large-worksheet planners
When planners click "Sort by Priority" on their worksheet, employees reorder with the highest scores at the top. Statistically significant high-priority employees are marked with blue dot indicators, and planners can click into any employee to see exactly which factors you've prioritized are driving their status.
Prioritization that scales with worksheet size
Priority is worksheet-specific, meaning each planner sees priorities relative to their own population. An Engineering VP with 600 employees might see 38 high-priority cases, while a Sales VP with 400 employees sees 22. Each tailored to what's statistically significant for their team.
Setting Up Priority Sort
Who can configure: Cycle admins
Prerequisites: You'll need at least one smart flag, checkbox, or yes/no column already configured for your cycle that captures why someone should be prioritized (like flight risk, performance concerns, or equity issues). If you haven't set these up yet, you can configure smart flags in the same Smart Features menu under the "Smart Flags" tab.
Configuration Steps
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Navigate to Smart Features > Priority Sort in your cycle configuration settings
Click "Edit inputs" to select which factors should influence priority scoring
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Choose your priority factors: Select the smart flags and boolean columns that matter most for this cycle. The system will show all available options with recommended selections pre-checked.
4. Assign weights (1-10) to each factor: Weighting helps translate organizational strategy into action. Give higher weights to the factors that matter most for this cycle. The weights you choose directly determine how priority scores are calculated, as part of your underlying prioritization logic.
For example, if retention is your team's top concern this cycle:
- Flight Risk = 10 (highest priority)
- Equity Cliff = 9
- Manager compression = 7
- Below Market = 7
- High Performer = 4
Or, if your cycle focuses on pay equity:
- Compensation outlier = 10
- Flight Risk = 5
- Equity Cliff = 3
5. Preview high-priority employees: Before saving, see which employees will be flagged as high-priority based on your weights. Review names, scores, and contributing factors to validate your configuration.
Tip: Use the preview to test different weight combinations until the right employees surface. If you see too many or too few high-priority cases, adjust your weights accordingly.
6. Configure permissions (optional): Control which planner roles can access Priority Sort for this cycle. By default, all roles can view priority sorting. You can restrict access if you only want senior leaders managing large teams to use this feature.
Important: Smart flag visibility
When a planner views a high-priority employee's details, they'll see an explanation that lists which factors contributed to that employee's priority status. This means planners will see the names of any smart flags included in your Priority Sort configuration, even if those smart flags would normally be hidden from their view based on individual flag permissions.
If certain smart flags contain sensitive information that specific planners shouldn't see, you have two options:
- Exclude those smart flags from your Priority Sort factors
- Remove Priority Sort access for those planner roles using the permissions settings above
7. Save your configuration — Priority scores generate immediately for all employees across all worksheets.
Using Priority Sort in Your Worksheet
Once configured, planners will see a "Priority Sort" sorting option above their worksheet.
How to sort by priority:
- Click the "Priority Sort" button at the top of your worksheet
- Employees reorder with highest-priority individuals at the top
- Look for blue dot indicators next to high-priority employees - these mark cases that are statistically significant outliers in your worksheet
Note: Blue dot priority indicators only appear in worksheets with at least 30 employees to ensure statistical significance. Smaller worksheets can still sort all employees by priority score, but won't show high-priority markers.
Understanding why someone is high-priority as a planner:
Click on any employee's name to open their detail view. High-priority employees will show an explanation in their employee summary describing which factors contributed to their priority status (for example, "This employee is approaching an equity cliff and is below market on base salary").
Frequently Asked Questions
What factors can I use for priority scoring? Any smart flag, checkbox column, or yes/no column in your cycle can contribute to priority scoring.
How does the system decide who is high-priority? The system calculates a priority score for each employee by summing weighted factor values. It then uses statistical analysis to identify outliers (employees whose scores are significantly higher than the rest of the population). Only genuine statistical outliers are marked with blue priority indicators.
What if no employees are marked as high-priority? This means no employees have scores that are statistically significant outliers in that worksheet. The system won't artificially flag employees just to show results. It only highlights truly exceptional cases.
Can I change weights mid-cycle? Yes. You have full control to adjust factors and weights at any time. Changes take effect immediately, and priority scores recalculate across all worksheets. This flexibility lets you adapt as cycle priorities evolve or as you refine your prioritization strategy.
Do planners see priority scores? No. Planners only see blue indicators for high-priority employees and the reasons why they're prioritized. The numeric scores remain behind the scenes, since the binary high/not-high signal is what's actionable.
Does priority change as I make compensation adjustments? Yes. Priority scores recalculate when underlying data changes. If you address the factors that made someone high-priority (like bringing them to market on salary), they may drop below the statistical threshold and lose their priority indicator.
What about smart flag permissions? When planners view priority explanations, they'll see all smart flags that contributed to an employee's priority status, regardless of individual smart flag permission settings. If you need to keep certain smart flags confidential from specific planners, either exclude those flags from Priority Sort or restrict those planners' access to the feature. See the "Smart flag visibility" note in the setup section for details.
How is this different from just using smart flags? Smart flags identify specific issues (like "below market" or "equity cliff"). Priority Sort synthesizes multiple signals and weights them to answer "which employees should I focus on first?" It's the difference between knowing individual problems and knowing who needs your attention most urgently.
Can I manually override priority? Priority is dynamic, eliminating the need to manually override. As you make compensation adjustments that resolve underlying factors, the employee's priority score updates automatically. The system reflects the current state of your planning decisions in real time.
Need Help?
If you have questions about configuring Priority Sort for your organization, reach out to your Pave account team or contact us at support.pave.com.