A key tool for organizing employee stock ownership
As the number of stock award programs has grown and its employee stock ownership structure has become more complex, PayFit has turned to Equify to structure its plans, automate its processes, and improve day-to-day efficiency.
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“Equify allows us to track our pools and manage our attribution campaigns while making the process clearer for employees.”
About Payfit
Launched in 2016, PayFit is a French company that offers a payroll and human resources management solution. By providing automated, real-time payroll management, PayFit reduces errors, frees up time, and empowers entrepreneurs, employers, and their employees. Operating in three countries (France, Spain, and the United Kingdom), PayFit currently employs 700 people in Europe who support more than 20,000 entrepreneurs, microbusinesses, and small and medium-sized enterprises in managing their payroll and human resources. The company was founded by Firmin Zocchetto (CEO), Ghislain de Fontenay, and Florian Fournier.
About Céleste
Céleste has developed unique expertise at the intersection of corporate law, operations, and compliance. After starting her career at the law firm Alain Bensoussan, specializing in M&A and digital law, she joined Criteo, where she played an active role in the company’s initial public offering on the Nasdaq (CRTO). She then established and led the group legal department at Fabernovel before transforming the legal department at the Barrière Group.
Since 2023, Céleste has been Vice President of Legal at PayFit, where she oversees corporate matters and structures the employee stock ownership plan, balancing governance, transparency, and operational efficiency.
Optimized control
PayFit adopted Equify in 2021, amid strong growth and the accelerated expansion of its employee stock ownership plan. The company had just completed a funding round intended, in particular, to finance the hiring of 250 new employees. Faced with recurring grant campaigns and an increasing number of securities transactions, the legal team sought a tool capable of both consolidating the tracking of pools and ongoing acquisitions and standardizing the execution of grant campaigns.
The goal: to have a single tool to centralize the monitoring of ad pools and ad buys, ensure reliable data traceability, and streamline the execution of attribution campaigns on an international scale
Since its implementation, Equify has established itself as a true strategic management tool, bringing transparency, reliability, and peace of mind to the management of PayFit’s securities and employee stock ownership program.
More Reliable Monitoring
Equify has enabled PayFit to centralize and streamline the management of its employee stock ownership program, providing real-time visibility into the entire program. The platform consolidates tracking of available pools and automatically models vesting and exercise schedules.
In practical terms, the legal team can now see at a glance the status of the pools and their availability, and access the automatically generated vesting and exercise schedules for each employee, thereby ensuring complete and secure traceability of the equity plan.
Automation of Assignments
Beyond tracking, Equify has enabled PayFit to streamline and automate the entire grant process, from sending documents to final signature. Thanks to the built-in mail merge tool, the legal team can now manage each grant campaign simply and efficiently.
In practice, the platform allows you to send personalized documents in bulk to each beneficiary, with variables tailored to their specific situation (number of shares, vesting schedule, etc.). It also provides real-time visibility into the status of signatures, with the ability to automatically follow up with beneficiaries who are still pending.
The Future with Equify
In addition to internal management, Equify provides each beneficiary with a personal space on the platform where they can view their portfolio, access all their documents, and track the progress of their acquisitions.
In the future, PayFit hopes to step up its communication efforts regarding employee stock ownership by leveraging the communication tool built into Equify. The goal: to send informational emails explaining the benefits of employee stock ownership, clarifying the terms of participation, and addressing any remaining questions or uncertainties.
