Bobby Dysart 00:34
Hey,everyone, we should get started here in a couple of minutes. We're going to letfolks trickle in. We have about, think just over at registration. So gonna letpeople fill into the room and then Charlie and Susan will get rolling. My nameis Bobby de ser, I'm the Head of Sales for COPPA. Two words of encouragement,based off of our last webinar. One, ask your poll questions early, your q&aquestions early, I should say. We got really rich questions towards the end ofthe last webinar. So please, if you have questions, ask them, we will addressthem in the webinar as well as after if we can. And then secondly, we got a lotof engagement on our last poll. So we're going to institute two polls one sortof in the middle and then one at the end. Love your engagement. They're prettyeasy. yes or no questions. So those are my two words of wisdom again, getstarted here in a few minutes as people continue to trickle in. Thanks a lotfor joining.
Charlie Franklin 02:26
Allright, let's go ahead and get started. Welcome, everyone. My name is CharlieFranklin. I'm co founder and CEO of COPPA. COPPA empowers talent acquisitionand total rewards teams to lead the change with offers. As the market shiftstowards patrons parents see, I founded this company to make compensation fairand competitive for everyone. After a decade as an HR practitioner working onthis problem, I am joined by my friend and Adviser Susan Lundgren, and who I'llintroduce in just a moment. Today, you're going to hear about the role of paytransparency in winning the war for talent. And our objective is to explore howwe can leverage more open conversations about pay with candidates and employeesto attract and retain talent, so that our organizations can compete moreeffectively while building greater trust overall. Before we begin just a couplenotes, again, thank you for joining us. And as Bobby said, we encourage you tosubmit questions throughout the webinar. Make sure you upvote your questionsthat you want answered and feel free to feel free to share your thoughts andinsights in the chat. If we cannot answer all the questions within the allottedtime, we'll do our best to follow up with response. And these slides and therecording of this webinar will be available to in 24 hours. All right. I wouldlike to introduce Susan Lofgren. Susan is the former chief people officer atMedallia and AppDynamics acquired by Cisco, Juniper Networks and Plantronics.She has a 25 year track record of creating remarkable employee experiences, andreceived the 2016 Advocacy Award from watermark. She currently sits on theadvisory board at a number of Future of Work companies, including COPPA. And Ican say I am lucky to have worked with Susan at Juniper Networks many yearsago. And I rely on her extraordinary perspective and advice today. So withthat, let's go ahead and get started. Susan, welcome. And please tell us howyou became interested in pay transparency and the war for talent.
Susan Lovegren 04:40
So firstof all, welcome everyone. And I would just like to say thank you all forjoining and we're going to keep this as conversational as possible. And, youknow, clearly, while we're going to do our best to answer questions, we do nothave all the answers. This is a big topic. Clearly there's a ton of interest init. You know, we have at people on the call wanting to dig into a transparency.And it's a, in some respects, it can be a very complex topic. There's lots ofpros, there's lots of cons and and that's what we're going to be digging intoin just a little bit. But in terms of how I became interested in this topic, itreally is one of those future work topics in general. And if you look at whatI've been doing over the last three, four years, it's primarily been in theworld of HR technology, which in my opinion, is really transforming employeeexperience. So when you think about pay transparency, it's really just anothercomponent of the employee journey, and helping people to really be wellinformed about what their pay is how it works. And that's everything frombonuses, benefits, sales, compensation structures, you know, how, howperformance is measured, or is it measured, and really giving people a verygood understanding of what they can expect when they join your company. So thisnotion of transparency is becoming more and more important. And if you thinkabout all of the things that have happened, pre pandemic during the pandemicrelated to be more equitable, making sure that we're paying peopleappropriately, that we're being fair that we're putting people appropriately,all of these things have put much more pressure into the system, if you will.And I think folks like you attending this call, you know, clearly you have thisopportunity, as HR practitioners, ob specialists are leaders to examine thisissue a little bit more, and kind of figure out where on the continuum, you mayneed to make some adjustments to really improve your chances of securing theright talent in your company, but also building trust, as Charlie said, andmaking sure that people are having a great. So I think just in general, Iagain, I just look at this as a future of work component. It's a, it's a stopon the employee journey on the roadmap. And, you know, it's basically makingsure that people understand your compensation, because nobody cares more aboutcompensation. And that individual, and they should really understand.
Charlie Franklin 07:15
Susan,when we were chatting about, you know, this topic of the war for talent, weboth agreed, it's just obviously the phrase is thrown around a lot in someways. The overall topic is just something we've all talked about a lot. Butclearly, some things have changed, like you just raised and particularly thisissue of pay transparency, is fascinating to me how having done comm for 10years and how much this seems to be front of mind. For companies of all sizes,I think, because well, I want to hear what why you think it is. But certainlyfrom my seat, it just feels like this social contract is really shiftingbetween the worker and the employer on what's expected to be shared, whetherthat's how people are compensated, what their flexibility is, and going intothe office. So from where you sit, what is changed, and why is transparenciesplaying this bigger role now, in the war for talent,
Susan Lovegren 08:11
some ofit, if you look at some of the studies, you look at the Gen Z millennialpopulation, they're definitely on the at the point of view that they will blinda starting salary is probably the is the most important thing, a lot of thestudies show for Gen Z, they're really concerned about what their startingsalary is because they have an understanding that that's going to kind of setthe trajectory going forward. So that's one, people are looking at increasedflexibility as a quote unquote, benefit. And that's, that's certainly changed,and people who want to understand what that's really going to look like. So I'dsay those two things are pretty important. I think transparency is coming intoplay as well, a lot this year, because of inflation, people have a lot more toaccomplish, you know, prices are going up. They're concerned about pay and benefits.And you know, the road ahead, and it's becoming much more of a thing for peopleto have that clarity and that confidence. They're, they're being paidappropriately. The other thing is that people do share their salary informationmuch more openly, both online, as well as you know, within, you know, theoffice place or on Zoom or wherever it might be. And they have a pretty goodunderstanding before they even come into a company, what other people aremaking. So there's this sense of, I think, wanting to this, this handle on it,if you Well, this sense of fairness, of course, but also a sense of howimportant these factors are going to be as we look at all of these dynamicsthat are that are playing, you know, again, I'm going to have to spend money tocommute into work or am I going to, you know, have you know, an increasedgrocery bill or am I going to have these other other worries to come bandwidth.So people really do want much more care around understanding and will paycomponent. So there's many things. Certainly production, I'll just state it asit is, there's a HUGE CORRECTION going on in the market for women andunderrepresented groups, in the past, you know, people, the employer, if youwill have the upper hand and held all the cards had sort of the, you know, theformula to the black box, and the employees, depending on how savvy or notsavvy, they were, you know, that was really what resulted in what they gotoffered. So I think that employees are looking for something that's much more,or candidates something that's much more democratic, much more fair, moreequitable. And in really values people, all people, you know, from the samebaseline. So I think those are some of the factors that have occurred over thelast several years.
Charlie Franklin 10:56
Yeah, Ithink about the contracts between the proverbial contract between worker andemployer has shifted so much, because companies have stepped up in the pastcouple of years, with everything that's happened to play that bigger role inkind of shepherding workers through change. And I think what comes with that,just that presence and responsibility from especially larger companies, is justa growing expectation, if anything, a growing expectation that employers domore, and I love what you said about folks showing up with data to theseconversations, I was just talking earlier today, with a large public techcompany with their talent acquisition and compensation folks about bringingdata into the conversation of an offer. And it's fascinating, becausefrequently, the recruiter will actually be the person that shows up in everyconversation with the least amount of data. The candidate has done theirresearch online, and whether you agree or not, with the sources of data there,they're referencing, to anchor their expectations. And hiring managers aredoing the same thing. And for all my career and compass, it felt like paytransparency, certainly in the United States, was just something that was faroff in the future and almost to be avoided. And therefore you'd restrict accessto data from the decision makers. It seems like it's turning on its face. Andinstead, it's inevitable, that people are showing up to conversations withdata. And the question is, how is that? What is the quality of that data? Whatsource? And what's the context surrounding it so that you can have meaningfulconversation? And for some employers, they're, they're a little bit caught ontheir, on their heels on this one. So it's, there's a lot that's changed.
Susan Lovegren 12:55
Yeah, Iwas just listening to something I thought was pretty interesting. Thisjournalist posted as she was executing her job, she posted on on Twitter, hersalary, as she was leaving, and she said, No, I'm leaving, I was, you know, hada great time at such and such company, and or anybody coming in and taking myjob, this is what I was was making. And she got it like, it went completelyviral. She just couldn't believe the amount of comments she got, and most ofthem were favorable. And people were really very appreciative of, of takingthat step of transparency. And the reason she did it, she said, she did itbecause she wanted somebody coming into the role to understand what that jobwas boring. And she, you know, felt like as a person in an underrepresentedgroup, female, she felt like she wanted to make sure that whoever came in therewas going to be at least an understanding of what the job was, was being paidin the past. So it was kind of interesting, some people said, you know, sheshould never get another job again, because she, you know, told this, you know,information about our company, but again, 90% of it was was very, veryfavorable. And it is a shift. So that taboo, if you will, of discussingfinances, discussing money, or pay is slowly, not really solid, that slow. Ithink for some general generational folks, it might be tougher, but I thinkwe're we're, you know, folks coming into the workplace, that shift isoccurring, and you're gonna see stuff like that all the time. And so for her, thiswoman who put the tweet out there, she said, it was worth it to her two weeks,to kind of listen to some of the, you know, some of the comments that were it'snice, but she said it was worth it to her, almost making the statement thatthis is what this job is worth, and I want people to be paid fairly. And youknow, I think it's it's a strong sentiment that a lot of people people have. Sowhen you're saying about the data, people are getting the data, they'regetting, you know, data in you know, and surveys are getting data, you know, Ithink there's a couple of websites where people specifically go in and loadtheir data. And we'll go into all the, you know, insidious, you know, socialplatforms that are out there. But there's so much transparency already. And soyou know, what's happening for companies. And so we're not even reallycontrolling the narrative. It's really the, you know, the social platforms thatare, you know, essentially messaging for you what we're doing. So, so from myperspective, I think data can help you with your own narrative, inside acompany, really understanding if you are paying competitively to be able to saythat often, you know, to figure out like how much how much you want to sharephilosophically, where you want to shift things. For your company, I think somecompanies would pay transparency, there are finding that they're doing lessdifferentiation, actually, there, they're seeing some of their jobs become morecategories more closely paid. In other categories, where they really arestruggling with with hiring certain skill sets, they're finding that that datais helping them differentiate certain select jobs, that they're being moretransparent with candidates as well as other employees as to why they're payingmore for certain jobs versus, you know, certain types of engineering jobs. Soit's very, it's very, very interesting. And I think the ram, the company'sgonna hold all this data close to their vest is kind of ridiculous, becauseit's already out there. It's out there for everybody to look at. And, you know,again, you're not really controlling your message around employee experience,or what you're trying to market to candidates. So I think the best thing youcan do is get a handle on the data and figure out what the position is, andcommunicate that to people. And I agree with you the term war for talent, it'snot so much that there isn't a war for talent, there's always a war for talent,meaning, there's always people are always looking for great, great candidates,you should always be out, you know, recruiting folks, but we should also reallybe re recruiting folks, the minute somebody starts is meant you should be rerecruiting them. So I think if you do those things, you know, you're going tobe in such a better position. And you won't find yourself in this constant,constant tug of war, you'll be you'll be working with your employee population,you know, to keep them in seat, if you will, through I think through moretransparency in general.
Charlie Franklin 17:36
I got totell the story. And I think so, talent acquisition folks on the call, you'regonna appreciate this, because you probably see this sort of every day, compfolks on the call. This is what it feels like to be on the front line, becauseit's so I used to be in combin wasn't really a part of the most offer process.But of course, we're having these conversations with complex customers and allkinds of progressive companies. But I want to tell a story of something thatwe're doing as a company right now at Khampa. We have an offer out for asoftware engineer. Today, he might get back to us today. Next up. And he hastwo competing offers that came in way higher than what we put out there, like3040, grand higher. And we told them, the challenge we have is an internal payparity issue, that if we match that pay, he's going to be an outlier. And fromthe candidates perspective, this candidate said, I don't want to be an outlier,I will literally turn down your offer if you do that. Because I don't want to bethat that person and actually introduce a problem in patrons parents in yourcompany. And so our position and look, I acknowledge this is easier for us todo as a startup. But of course, the wheels are turning for larger companies.Our position here in our compensation philosophy is the best information wehave about the market literally is coming from this candidate and others thatwe've talked to through this process. So my response to this candidate is weare going to match the competing offer that you got because we really want youto be here. And we have some conviction that the market has already moved therebased on some other conversations. And you have our commitment that not onlyare we going to match that competing offer for you, we're actually going toraise the pay for the comparable employees internally to that level. Because ifyou're getting offers at that level, they are too and it doesn't make adifference that those folks already work. That comp, it's a hot market. And so,again, fully acknowledge as, as somebody at a startup, this is easier to bethat nimble. But to me it's this microcosm of like where the markets going. Youhave candidates who are basing offer decisions on on putting your values behindpay, and are expecting companies to be accountable, not just to them, but tothe rest of their employees. And I just don't think those conversations werehappening five years ago, it's it's quite fascinating. And I'm curious if anyfolks on the call, have you experienced anything similar, and whetherrecruiters or comp folks who've who fielded that. But that's a remarkableongoing experience is happening to us right now. And it puts us in a positionof accountability that we believe every company should be in. So, you know,here we are, maybe I'll send a follow up, and what happens with this candidate?
Susan Lovegren 20:37
Well,that's a great example of re recruiting your existing people by adjusting thepay and certainly upholding your values around around trust and transparency.So people do look, look at those things, for sure. I do think the, the piecearound, you know, offers, you're making an offer, and folks are trying tonegotiate and when you're, you haven't always been transparent. Just ingeneral, as a company, that's where you start to see this real divide, andpeople eventually find out about it, and then you know, you have to go back andadjust your salaries, you know, for I don't know, some some percentage of yourpopulation part of your audit every year. And, you know, basically, you know,for 12 months, 15 months, there are some folks in your company who have beenunderpaid. And, you know, you really kind of, you know, you've gone through allthis trouble recruiting somebody and trying to get it right. And, you know, andjust blink of an eye basically, you, you know, through through a practice, ifyou will, of not being consistent and transparent. You basically, you know,pray to this divine, and, like I said, created a problem in your company. So,again, I think the more information you can share candidates, the moreinformation they can share with you, the more smarter obviously, you're allgoing to get on what you need to do going forward to secure those candidates.
Charlie Franklin 22:06
Agree.And, by the way, Arthur, thanks for asking your question. I see that we'llWe'll answer that. As we start to answer that though, our team is going to putup a poll, while invite you to answer the poll and share your perspective onwhat you're seeing. There it is, looks like it just popped up the question ofwhat are some of the best platforms and software to research pay? Susan, I'llinvite your perspective, I'll just share briefly for awhile, where I say, youknow, clearly comp does play a role in this to some degree, but I'll representthe philosophy behind some of the software that we've built. We believe that ifdone properly, compensation practitioners can learn more from their their owntalent acquisition team than any survey or outside source or certainlycomplimentary information or different kinds of information that can serve aunique purpose. And so I know when I was in comp, my relationship with with tacould have been better, it frequently felt like folks are coming to me, withexceptions that were an interruption to my day. And I didn't feel like I hadthe data I needed from them to meaningfully adjudicate to the degree that I wasin that position. But nonetheless, you know, had I as a Completer, betterunderstood, especially like at scale with some aggregation, what ta folks wereseeing every day, I think we could operate in a much more responsive way to themarket. That's my take. Susan, your thoughts? Were some of the best platformsand software,
Susan Lovegren 23:41
I'llanswer were kind of a two parts. You know, kind of the classic approach hasbeen, you know, using salary survey data, not so much a platform per se, butyou know, want to share data, a lot of analysis that's been done. And frankly,I don't think those are as timely or as accurate, as you know, the market. Imean, the markets changing too quickly, in some respects, to be waiting forthese annual surveys and kind of this old information and trying to compareapples and oranges. And just as a really, really works well, it's not so much aplatform. It's kind of what we've relied on over the years. And, you know, likeCharlie saying, with COPPA, you know, you're getting the information time fromcandidates, you can build out your own, basically your own set of information,so you can make smarter decisions. But one platform I really do like, is calledsendio. And it is a platform that I have used to look at, basically, it's youlook at it 24/7 And it essentially is telling you how you're doing in terms ofpay by department, by gender, by group, by job level. And again here aren'twaiting for, you know, analysis to be done or, you know, waiting to hear to getthat information if you do need to make a Kinect, correction sendio is the nameof it. Yes, I think it's synd I O. And it's very good on the what I would callsort of be the audit side of it, where you're really trying to make some ofthose those corrections and adjustments. Yes, and I think for some of the, someof the practitioners out there, you may recall having to go through a law firmto do that sort of analysis. And again, it being very, very costly. Andthey're, you know, send you I'm finding that that's one of the best platformsto help with that level of detailed work that you're going to need to do, justto make sure you're paying people in an equitable fashion.
Charlie Franklin 25:49
I thinkthat's a good example. And, you know, turning to the idea of how you take careof current employees, and not just folks that you're engaging with in themarket. When I think about this topic of, of pay transparency in the war fortalent, something that comes to mind is a concept that the greenhouse teamshared at their conference in New York last month, I believe they coined itemployee lifetime value. And what they're doing for any folks out there who haveexposure to SAS SaaS software as a service businesses, they're borrowing fromthis sales concept, where if you're a company that selling a subscriptionsoftware, you'll sign a customer and maybe for a year or something like that,and then they need to renew, and renew and renew, right. And hopefully, theybecome a long term partner and your customer forever. And eventually, theymight leave. And so there's a concept and in a SaaS sales world called customerlifetime value. And so the folks at Greenhouse were kind of positioning ananalogy, what if was employee lifetime value, because in some sense, it's verysimilar, right? When a candidate accepts a job offer, and they become anemployee, Susan, you were kind of saying this, that the selling doesn't stop.In many ways the relationship just begins. And the lifetime value of thatemployee is dependent on of course, all the usual things that we pay attentionto, in HR, their, their career path, or employee experience, the kinds of workthat and the manager they work for, and the flexibility and all those things,but it's also paying them. And I think a classic position that we're allfamiliar with is if you sort of stopped selling to your employees after they'vejoined and you don't keep up with the market on their pay, they're eventuallygoing to turn out in the same way that a customer would churn out. And so Ireally liked that concept, to me this idea that when an employee joins yourcompany, they're subscribing. And they can choose to cancel. And it's incumbenton the company to understand, you know, what the prevailing rate is and whatneeds to be true in order for them to stay as employees. Here's for any otherquestions, you're you're welcome to enter them into the chat. We can turn now,I think to something you mentioned earlier, Susan, that is of interest to methat you're you're focused on generationally, how Gen Z is showing up with adifferent set of expectations. What have you seen, both in your roles as pastchief people officer, and now with the companies that you work with? How arethe expectations in Gen Z different as they enter the workforce?
Susan Lovegren 28:40
Well, Ithink they're, they're different in a lot of ways. One, people are absolutelytransparent. They talk about it, they talk about it with their friends, theytalk about it with their co workers. They're not concerned about that, even ifthere is a policy in your company that says don't talk about people still talk.And so it isn't, it's, it's just so completely different in terms of how theythink about how they think about compensation. They also are looking for moreeducation, around things like equity and benefits. Because they're starting torealize I think, earlier in their careers that oh, these things have value to howdo these things work. And I think there's a shift, please this year aroundlooking more at base salary as the market has been down. And so that's anotheranother thing I keep putting pressure on, you know, what are people reallygetting? And, you know, how do I think about the value of this job when whenessentially the equity is going to make take much longer to to have any valueeven after I test. So there's you know, there's some interesting dynamics atforce if you will, forcing a lot of these. I guess, you know, perspectives whenpeople come in and look at job, I think the other thing is people are lookingat time. And we talked a little bit about flexibility that, you know, certainlypeople coming into the workforce, if you're going to, you know, tell them theyhave to work in the office five days a week, depending on the type of companyit is, or the type of work they're doing, they're probably not going to acceptthe offer. So, you know, there's, that has, again, real real value toindividuals. So the flexibility, the benefits, really understanding base pay,much more, much more important where as somebody who's been in the workforcelonger, if they have to come into the office, you know, they might be morewilling to comply with that. But I think newer people coming in, to your point,Charlie, the social contract is different. People want one time, they wantdifferent types of benefits. And you really need to be relevant as an employer.So, you know, we talked, I think, the other day, it's really about shiftingcontext. And so as a practitioner, you know, ask yourself every day what,what's happening in the world? And how might that be affecting our people'spsyche? How are they feeling about these things? Where are they feelinganxious? Where are they feeling really positive? Do our programs support thosethings anymore? Or do we need to look at you know, different, different ways ofare changing out or benefits plan. So you know, it's not making these theseassumptions or being tone deaf, to what's going on in the world, and reallylooking at why these things are important to people. If you think about paytransparency, as well, in the people coming into the workforce, now, it's aform of trust you trust me, you trust that, you know, trust me with thisinformation, you trust me, I trust you to be fair, I trust you to make good onwhat you have on your website, value state, you know, people coming in, youknow, they'll call BS so much faster than in a whole lot less light around, youknow, calling it what it is. So I think there's, it's just so important to beupfront and open with people. And again, that doesn't mean you're going to postevery single employee's salary on a bulletin board, you know, or put it down onSlack. You know, it's, it's really around, you know, maybe it's putting yourranges out, maybe it's, you know, talking about how you get a promotion, maybeit's talking about, you know, how sales commission works, how, what the bonusstructure, you know, and not keeping these, these things so secretive from fromemployees, which sometimes can make employees feel very manipulative. And, youknow, I've been in situations where it feels like a magic trick, almost likeyou're coming up with bonus calculations, and you'd have a lot of, you know, financeinput, you know, people are trying to kind of, you know, manipulate the dollarsor engineer the finances, quarter to quarter. And you know, with that, becauseof that, maybe they're not being as clear with people about what they canexpect with the bonus, because maybe the company is still deciding, maybe wedon't want to pay a bonus. But it's this, it's the sense of being manipulated,that I think is that really turns people off. And it's, it's just something tobe really, really careful about. So, I mean, there's lots of different ways tothink about transparency. I've also been in companies where, you know, it wasvery, and this is not a, you know, generational thing, but you know, certainjobs were considered very elite jobs. And those jobs had a completely differenttype of compensation structure and bonuses, and no equity awards. And it wasvery, very, very, very, very secretive. As a matter of fact, people, their own,the boss of employees, receiving those types of packages, wasn't even privy tothat information. And eventually, everybody found out what the, what thosepackages were, and the amount of resentment it created. And the difficulty forthose employees, as well as their managers and others in the company morale,and the cost of the company, actually, and having to go back and figure out howto make other kinds of adjustments to kind of keep people, you know, happyagain, was really, really challenging. So I think if you want to run a programlike that, just tell tell your employees, we have these, you know, these arethe kinds of structures we have, you don't need to go into all the detail,let's say, hey, we have these things. And, you know, hopefully they'll bemotivated enough to say, hey, if I want to earn that, maybe I'll go do that job,or I'll be incentive to go back to school and, you know, increase my skilllevel, whatever it might be. You know, that's, I think it's Whole Foods, theirCEO, I think back from 1986. He, I believe introduced pay transparency, and hedid it as a way of incenting employees. And he said said, Hey, you want to knowwhat the corporate folks make? Here it is aspire to the if you want to aspireto it, here you go, here's how you get there. And so, again, you know, theyhave a fairly fairly good brand. Awesome, you know, you should come out on atop top employer list. So obviously, you know, it's working in thatenvironment, not saying it would work everywhere. But that's an example ofwhere it's working.
Charlie Franklin 35:25
Yeah,like that. And so kind of turning the conversation towards solutions. It'slike, okay, pay transparency, how would we actually do that? What steps couldwe take? How could it serve us in winning the war for talent? The example youjust touched on there with with whole foods, actually, I think, fits nicelywith a question someone raised here about, you know, the level of transparencylike, Are you sharing everyone's individual pay across the organization,whether it's a software engineer or a service desk? employee? I think there's additionalquestions along the lines of Do you share individuals pay? Or do you share theranges? Do you share just base salary? Do you reveal the existence of secretbonus programs like what you were talking about? One thing that comes to mindfor me, and Susan, we've discussed some of this in the past is the role ofexecutive clarity. And you gave an example with whole foods, but reallystudying that vision from the top. Are there other examples? You know, whetherit's the the Elon Musk's of the world, where you've seen communication play arole, and just helping companies understand like, this is how we're paid thisis, and this is what we can expect?
Susan Lovegren 36:41
Yeah, Ithink some companies do, I think, a fairly good job with their their pay philosophy,and, you know, they're consistent with their communication. But I, I agree, Ithink, even if they've done a good job in the past, I think this is a moment intime to go back and sit down with the executive team for the folks on thiscall, and talk about your pay practices and your your pay philosophy and see ifit's still relevant. So, you know, you know, I can't on this call, say, yes,everybody posts, their, their their pay ranges, everybody should, you know, putout certain information. I think it really depends. You know, I've been incompanies, you know, I'll go back to HP for a moment, HP did a very good job ofbeing pretty transparent with salary ranges. And, you know, the, the philosophyis all around sustained performance. And, you know, when you could expect moreaggressive raises in when you know, when you're a new joiner, how long thattypically would take Amazon pretty clear about how they're how they're going todo you know, how that's going to go and what the trajectory is over the firstthree years at least. So I think there are some companies that have done apretty good job with those baseline kinds of things. But again, I think there'san opportunity and and again, you know, depending on what software you'reusing, the more data you have, frankly, I mean, you can't just go willy nillyup to your C suite and say, Hey, let's talk about a philosophy. But like, Ithink if you have a point of view, and you have some data to go with that as towhy you want to make some changes, or why you think something would be better,or how it fits into other aspects of your employee journey, or employeeexperience, roadmap, putting together, I think, depending on all of thosethings, you know, you can craft and design something that is much more impactfulto your, to your employees. So, again, I think what's so cool for compensationfolks, is that this is such a creative time, it's such a creative time to be anHR, where it's kind of a, it's a bit of a green field. And, you know, you couldeven start by maybe even, you know, pulsing some of your, you know, leaders oryour general managers of certain groups about, you know, things that they'veseen, or, you know, again, try to really put, put the components together totell the story, to your, to your executive team and, and see what you caninform, it's a little bit different. So again, there's going to be a range,broad range for all of you think about your narrative, what story it is you'retrying to communicate to your employees, what problem you're trying to solve,you know, frankly, and, you know, if you're losing talent through offers, youdon't have the data or you're losing people six months in, you know, why isthat? You know, is there a comp issue? And most likely, you don't have all thedata you need to make those good decisions. Far as long answer. No, I,
Charlie Franklin 39:53
Icertainly agree. And I'm going to go ahead and put the question slide up on thescreen and invite you to ask questions. If you haven't asked already. From myperspective, what can you do about pay transparency to win the war for talent,Susan touched on it, I'll just amplify one more time for the comp folks. It isdefinitely about getting the right data. I think we all gravitate towards that.You want to understand what's happened in the market, how's that compare?Getting a handle is the foundation that you need in order to start standing upthe kinds of processes and communication you want to have with your workforce,or executives or candidates on being more transparent and pen. On therecruiting side. In my past experience, working with recruiters, the sort ofoffer stage is frequently doesn't get a lot of attention in terms of just liketraditional recruiter skill sets, who are very good at finding incredible peopletelling the company story, building the case for why they should join. But whenit comes to hard numbers and understanding their needs, and how yourcompensation programs work, that's my challenge to to the talent acquisitionteams out there really start to dig in and understand comp understand the rolethat can play in helping you achieve your talent goals. Because candidates areshowing up with with more data and more questions about pay than I think theyever had before. Those are the thoughts that, that I would leave the group withthem, you know, what's one thing that you could do today? But with that, anyother questions from the group? Feel free to post them in the chat here? Whatwould you like, Susan to touch on?
Susan Lovegren 42:04
you theanswer.
Charlie Franklin 42:07
Bobby,you're on mute, I think as are you trying to say something there.
Bobby Dysart 42:15
No, allgood. All good.
Susan Lovegren 42:18
analogy,I think a lot about pay transparency, it's a little bit like going to purchasea car. And you remember, you know, you go to buy a car back in the day. And youwould, you know, listen to what the salesperson had to say, let the recruiterand you know, they tried to sell you a car job. And, you know, you're you'retrying to get some information about is it a good deal is not a good deal. Andyou know, you would would kind of just have to trust, if you will. And nowthere's this thing called Edmonds. And so now you can look up and you can findout exactly what that car is worth. And that completely has changed thatnegotiation, if you will, or, you know, very different industry, selling carsversus, you know, hiring people for semi most of your repair people. But Ithink it's kind of an interesting way to think about it, that all of a suddenpeople are, you know, very well informed consumers there. They want to knowthat they can trust you. And, and I think that has, you know, flipped flippedthings. And it's going to continue to so whether or not you know, you're you'velanded on what you want to do a transparency or not coming your way. And youprobably need to do something and have to make some modifications at some pointfor a whole host of reasons legal compliance, fairness, culture, etc. So it'sgreat that you're on this call and having the discussion. So thanks so much,everybody for for joining us today.
Charlie Franklin 43:54
Yeah,now, and another question just came in a moment ago, and we'll see if we cananswer this briefly before we're out of time. How do you deal with recruiterswhen they offer new hires above max, to be competitive with other offers, butyou want to roll out pay transparency, and worry about existing employees?That's a That's a great question. Is there a way to reward company loyalty? Youknow, my answer to that is, and this requires great partnership with yourfinance teams when you're setting budgets for pay increases and how your compplanning processes work. Is there a way to reward company loyalty? I'd reframethat to make sure that you're not penalizing company loyalty by setting payincreases that don't keep up with the market. The number one form of pay bias Iwas exposed to as a comp practitioner was pulling offers down because youdidn't want to pay market because it'd be higher than current employees. And soI think really completing that feedback loop is all about. If the market hasmoved you shouldn't not only address candidates with new offers, but alsocurrent and employees, and that's gonna take time to drive that change. It'sabout great relationships between compensation and HR and finance and talentacquisition. It's about having the right data. It's about having processesbuilt. But ultimately what we're talking about is sinking pay to the market asif you're keeping up with a subscription. Susan, any brief comments to add tothat?
Susan Lovegren 45:22
You saidit said it beautifully. Thank you.
Charlie Franklin 45:25
Yeah,you bet. And and one other thing I'll say, too, is, you know, pay attention tothe laws that are changing across the United States and the world. Lots ofchanges in, of course, everyone's news about New York, California, but manyother states, municipalities as well. Yep. And that's going to affect not onlywhat recruiters are, are not allowed to ask and what you collect during theapplication process, but frankly, also what candidates are showing up thenexpecting because they're reading the news to Terrific. Well, with that, we'reright at time, thanks again for joining into this conversation with myself and thena four time CFO, I'm an advisor to many amazing future of work companies. Putthe QR code up here on the screen. If you'd like to learn more, and get intouch with us, you're welcome to do that there is a poll as well, if you wantto check out more about COPPA that can play a role in helping you understandthe market. And with that, thank you again to everyone who's joined and thankyou, Susan, for joining us and sharing your perspective today. Thanks. Bye byenow.
