Charlie Franklin:
All right, let's go ahead and get started. Welcome everyone. My name is Charlie Franklin. I'm co founder and CEO of Compa. Compa, for those who don't know, is an offer management platform for Compensation and Talent Acquisition teams in the era of pay transparency and I founded the company after a decade in HR as compensation leader, and build the source market data that I wish I had. I am joined today by my friend Cassandra Lammers, who I'll introduce in just a moment. Today, we're going to discuss lessons from pay transparency 1.0, and how these lessons will impact our journey towards pay transparency 2.0. So before we begin, a couple of short housekeeping notes, thank you for joining, we encourage you to submit questions throughout the webinar. And when we see your questions come in, and we'll try to answer them live. And if we don't get to all of them, we'll leave time at the end to follow up with unanswered questions. And if we can't answer all your questions within the allotted time, we'll do our best to follow up with you on a response. These slides and recording this webinar will be shared with you in 24 hours. So I would like to introduce Cassandra, she is SVP of total reward for the New York Times. Cassandra is a workplace equity focused total rewards leader who's designed, implemented and administered a wide range of global compensation and benefits programs. She maintains a hands on approach to market competitive programs, and has developed an implemented global best in class job markets, architecture and career path frameworks to drive business goals. She focuses her work on standing up strategies and standards to ensure consistency, transparency, and especially equity and total rewards. Cassandra has 18 years of experience and TR leadership roles at the New York Times Audible, Samsung, GE and Lucent Technologies. So with that, let's get started. Cassandra welcome. Let's start by telling us how you define pay transparency 1.0?
Cassandra Lammers:
Well, thank you, Charlie. First of all, I'm really excited to be here. Pay transparency. 1.0, I think is in my mind, the three legislation version of pay transparency, which is all over the place, but some companies and some employers are very transparent about what their compensation is, and ranges are, and would post that, although I think the farther back in time you go, the less and less you would have seen of it. And over the past few years, we're really heading into a space of much greater transparency, by force, legislated globally, and we're seeing a lot more of the requirement to be transparent and therefore compliance with that, and then Additional Voluntary transparency. So it's, it's that sort of continuum. You know, the lower end of the continuum of what we share about pay, and what we don't, and everyone's in a different place.
Charlie Franklin:
That's what we're seeing to what I think about pay transparency 1.0. It's, the earliest days of figuring this out. Some of this legislation obviously is impacting many of the folks on this call just, recently passed. Underlying that you think there's a sort of social contracts which I want to chat more about and get your thoughts on. But I also wanted to share a metaphor that my co founder and CTO talks about, which is the shift from radio to television. Whenthey first started rolling the cameras, the radio hosts just stood in front of a microphone reading the news like they did on the radio. And it took a while to appreciate that the art form was transforming with the advent of film. And for pay transparency, I think we're in a similar place. It's really just getting started, we're just beginning to understand what it means whether that's legislative and regulatory compliance to defining competitive advantages and contracting with the workforce. So it's early days, I guess, maybe. Let's dig into this concept that I think a lot about. I'm curious for your thoughts on I talked about this sorta of social contract between the worker employer and I think it's this wave that's driving change that's just much bigger, much more powerful than legislation? How do you think about that, in terms of kind of worker to employer, where does pay transparency fit into that overall relationship?
Cassandra Lammers:
You know, that is so true. And like such a piece of sort of the broader social construct right now, in this semi post COVID world, right, where things are just changing so rapidly, that contract or relationship, I think, is driving, and you'll see there's a lot of data on it, its driving people's decisions around whether they want to work somewhere. So it's a key attraction piece of the puzzle, particularly for younger generations, people newer to the workforce, that they don't see some transparency and a job posting about what the pay is for the job and the context around that and how that fits into other jobs for that same employer. They're going to question then what their experience is like at that employer. So it's, it's a piece of a much bigger puzzle, and a piece of the employer commitment to their employees and prospective employees. But it's also something that people are seeking out. So it's not like the employers are going, hey, here, no problem, we'll just, you know, give you whatever. And you can ignore it, which, you know, a lot of things are in a job posting. There's been grassroots demand for for this information. And now, it's even more than that grassroots demand. And, it is a true need and desire and gating factor, in some cases for whether someone's going to even take the call from a recruiter.
Charlie Franklin:
I agree. But so something folks have raised to me a couple times is, you know, with that grassroots demand, does that change if the market softens up a bit, and it's more employer friendly? I mean, how resilient is the social change, when times are tougher?
Cassandra Lammers:
You know, that I think, will remain to be seen as as times are getting tougher. But that's also where then the non grassroots part of this is happening. Right. So we've got the flip side, which is that it's mandated. More than half of the people in the US are now covered by pay transparency legislation that requires that these jobs have job postings have pay ranges associated with them. And more things beyond that. So. So from that perspective, I think it's still really going to be there even if the market itself, the employment market becomes softer, and perhaps favors an employer over the employee that accountability is still there for the employer. And that expectation is still there for the candidates and the employees.
Charlie Franklin:
Yeah, I really liked the word accountability in this. Defining pay transparency, just generally, is somewhat amorphous, but what I think about it, it's not necessarily that everybody knows everyone else's pay. It's more the shift from secretive and discretionary to open and accountable, where differences and pay are communicated. They're measured their objective at scale. And we have a very US centric perspective on this, by the way, because this is sort of coming online for the US but it's the spin around the rest of the world for a long time, both legislatively and culturally.
Cassandra Lammers:
Yep. Agreed.
Charlie Franklin:
Tell me about your thoughts on, I guess, sort of moving from this 1.0 era communicating, pay transparency. And maybe let's start with internal employees. I saw a comment. Hey, Elizabeth, about going live with transparency in the next couple of weeks. What are the big talking points that you would focus on, for your internal workforce on pay transparency?
Cassandra Lammers:
You know, I think it really depends on where the employer is in that sort of continuum of their own. Growth and infrastructure. You know, if you have pay ranges, if you have a well developed job architecture, being transparent, it comes much more naturally, and is a layer that you can add on and build trust, and build respect and really create engagement in the workplace. But not every employer has that. So I'm, particularly mindful of the fact that a lot of employers are doing a lot of catch up work in this space to get to where they have something to be transparent with. And that requires as well, the sort of in depth work about, you know, What's your philosophy? Do you have a philosophy a pay philosophy and, how do you play that out? And how are you as an employer about other topics, what is your overall company or organizational vision and philosophy around communication and transparency in general, and that can have a dramatic impact on this very, specific pay transparenty. Because if if an employer is is, you know, not will willing to or open to disclosing other things, they're less likely to disclose things like pay ranges as well. So, that's sort of the flip side, whereas if they are, and even if they're sort of on the fence, this gives that opening. And to me, it's a tremendous opening to create trust, build that stronger relationship with the employees to really appreciate how they fit into the picture. And why it takes so much noise out of the channel, in terms of I think I'm paid unfairly or Am I? Am I not? Well, if it's out there, you can tell. And, really just helps people understand how they fit into the bigger picture with within their own workspace. So I'm a big fan.
Charlie Franklin:
Yeah, I really like what you said about defining pay transparency within the culture of your organization. And for those of us who get excited about pay transparency, there's almost like I have the sort of agenda driven like, Well, hey, you should be in the border and talking about being a more transparent culture overall. And maybe you should, but, you know, like you said that the context for these organizations who are shifting the compliance is set by the culture. And so with that being said, there's an opportunity, I think, as you noted, to define the messaging, to not just leave the basics out there. When I think about job postings, you know, if you just put kind of the boilerplate like, yeah, here's our pay range, as required by, you know, the state of so and so it's a big missed opportunity. Now that's on the job posting side. I do see a question here. This is sort of related of, so when we're communicating pay ranges. So there's a nuts and bolts question on, you know, what's the most common approach to sharing this? Do you do the full internal range for the role or something more narrow or broader? But I guess I'll just add to that, besides that, nuts and bolts questions, like how exactly are you defining the range that's shared? What ideas do you have for context to set on like, Okay, here's the range, and let's talk about what
Cassandra Lammers:
oh, man, that is the many $1,000 question. I guess. I think, first of all, yeah, what is that range? Right. Are you disclosing that to the to the comments in the chat right now? Are you disclosing the full range for that role? Whatever that is. Are you disclosing sort of a narrower more good faith range as most of these different legislation require? Which is what you're more likely to hire someone at? You get wide variations of what that looks like, because good faith is not defined. And then on top of that, that's about base pay. But what about total rewards? And to your to your broader question, right? What about other elements of pay? What happens with bonus, what happens with equity or long term incentives of some sort? What happens with other kinds of rewards, benefits, recognition, other things that the company brings to bare or the employer brings to bare? And how is that valued, if at all, when you're speaking outwardly about the roles versus sort of, you know, flipping it on the inside was something more akin to like a total statement or something like that?
Charlie Franklin:
Yeah, I think so. That raises the question of sort of internal versus external, here's my belief on disclosing these pay ranges, you should strive to disclose the same internally as you do externally. And then additionally, you should strive to market and manage the communication of your total rewards philosophy, both internally and externally. Going beyond the base salary disclosure, look, some organizations are experimenting with this putting, here's what our bonus program is, here's just what our stock is for using stock. Whether or not those are actually disclosed, you're getting eyeballs on ranges. And this is really important. And I believe that the reason you should focus on doing the same both internally and externally, is in the era of pay transparency see in this broader context of social change. The boundaries are more porous than ever before, between your organization and the market. And you should think of your employees as more like subscribers, then something you've purchased,when somebody accepts a job offer. It's not like haha, we got them forever. That's not how they see it, they see it as they're constantly deciding whether to re opt in to your company or go somewhere else. And so you should be marketing or renewing your employee. Just like, you might be seeking to attract an external candidate.
Cassandra Lammers:
I love that analogy of employees and subscribers. I mean, I think that's exactly right, people are making a concerted choice. And if you're giving two different messages, and two different images of what your employer brand is, internally versus externally, they're going to call you on it. And it's not going to be pretty, people will, you know, vote with their job. And, especially, you know, as things when the employment market is sort of up and down, you know, that can that can be a little interesting, but, I completely agree. I mean, we, as an employer, we shouldn't be ever saying something outside that we wouldn't say inside. And we wouldn't stand by inside.
Charlie Franklin:
Yeah, I agree. And, by the way, shout out Daniel Chang at Greenhouse first person ever heard talk about that concept of employees subscribing, I think it's spot on. So in this 2.0 era, we should expect, I believe, that today that if you have gaps in what you disclose internally and externally, there's kind of a lot of chaos, and the market is figuring this out, even employees are figuring it out. But more content is gonna come online, more tools are gonna come online, where the light is being shown on your pay ranges. And so it's incumbent on the total rewards team, to, be able to talk about it but more important to educate your leadership team, your managers on what is our comp philosophy? What's our total rewards philosophy? Why do people believe that they're paid fairly or not? It's no longer sort of, I don't know, I think there's a culture and a lot of TR teams have like, we're the sort of quiet organised small leveraged organization, the background that set strategy spotlights been shown in a new way. It's becoming more of an external facing organization like peers and talent acquisition or something like that.
Cassandra Lammers:
Yeah, I think that's right. And I think the more other related topics come into play, like pay equity, diversity, equity and inclusion, this is all part of the same story. Part of the same messaging and philosophy, they have to go together they have to be linked. And the more of these things become important in different places, you know, the DEI is a hot topic in the boardroom, right? Is it a hot is paid transparency? Not yet, maybe. But it will be because it is part and parcel of the same messaging and the same issues. So you have to have a concerted view and understand the relationship between these things to be able to really move the needle as an employer and achieve those objectives. Because in at least one of those areas, pretty much every employer is going to have some objectives that they're looking to hit.
Charlie Franklin:
Let's talk about pay equity. Because a lot of these pay transparency laws were born out of pay equity laws, or the even the underlying social movement or intention, motivations of the legislation is to improve pay equity outcomes. And that's, especially true in Europe, and to a large degree true in the US. Let's pick a specific example that I know, becomes a pain. You've got a unicorn, you know, special talent, somebody coming in, you need to find a way to make an exception Anthony, I see your comment, like, are we going to get paid the same salary? Well, what do you do when it's like this person is, let's say, Anthony is a unicorn. And like he can demand a lot more in the market than 100k In this example, and we really want him. How do you deal with exceptions in the era of pay transparency?
Cassandra Lammers:
You know, that is, I think, one of the stickiest issues out there, and particularly in the US, if it did, there are different legal constructs around this in different places. I'll speak to the USPS. Most specifically, but it's the concept of legitimate factors, what factors can legally and legitimately be used to differentiate compensation for two or more individuals who are performing substantially similar work. And the laws generally allow for some very specific kinds of legitimate factors to be included, to enable them that differentiation, which can also be taken into consideration for the purposes of pay equity audits. And those tend to be things like education, experience, special skills. The key there, though, is using them consistently, and being able to document them and capture that so you're continuing to compare, you know, this year, Anthony may be the unicorn next year, we might have two or three unicorns with the same skill set, are they still unicorns. And so it becomes, you know, there's there's an administrative and sort of audit burden on the employer than to really make sure that's incorporated into how they look at their pay equity studies, and that they're really ensuring differentiating based on truly legitimate factors, because it's not just a once and done.
Charlie Franklin:
Nobody wants, you know, to have skeletons in the closet of these exceptions. But, you know, I've had teams like, I know what the pressures, like when there's a really important hire. I like what you said about the audit burden. I believe, you know, for those thinking about future proofing, against where pay transparency 2.0 goes, devising ways to very carefully document what were those factors, make sure they're legitimate, not just for purposes of compliance, but setting into context to to your point. So if Anthony is a unicorn this year, two years from now, that's kind of forgotten, even if he's a terrific performer, but the business has shifted and we have more a lot more people like that, who are not paid the same. Is it easy to go back and reference and understand and communicate why? Because, you know, his peer down the road, she'll know how much he makes, whether that's driven by disclosure or cultural people are just going to share the More and more. And so how do you communicate the underlying context? Especially if it's just market driven? And at a certain point in time for the business?
Cassandra Lammers:
Yeah. And, you know, if it is market driven, then the imperative becomes consistency. Right? So those Anthony unicorns, Anthony, we're using you as a great example here today. But those folks are going to be maybe the first, but they're not going to be the last. Right. And so that then becomes that burden on the employer. And to our earlier discussion around sort of that moral obligation between the employee and the employer, we have to make sure that we're doing right by both to ensuring that we're treating people consistently, So there is an obligation there not to unintentionally discriminate, which could happen very, very easily in those situations.
Charlie Franklin:
Agree and, you know, related to that return to this question of like, Hey, is everybody gonna be paid the same? Is that kind of where this lands? I don't think so. I think some organizations are going to try it, but like the market is going to clear and the market is constantly changing. I do think to your point, inspect your other pay elements that are not required for disclosure, I think one of the most notorious ones is signing bonuses. Now, look, I paid attention to these a lot because I was at a company that was trying to cut costs, and they were just like this spectacular source of cost leakage. Like oh, my God, why are we doing these signup bonuses. But that raises the question of, are we unfairly awarding signing bonuses based on gender or something like that unwittingly, right, whether it's the amount or the prevalence, if there's pressure from legislation, or cultural change, or otherwise, to be more accountable, where the light is shining, the risk is wittingly or not, you do things in the dark, that are just exacerbating the problem, just moving it from a salary to signing bonus, moving it from base salary to equity. And so it just returns back to the holistic view, the more we talk about total rewards holistically, I think the better position we are to future proof against shenanigans.
Cassandra Lammers:
I could not agree more. it is so important. And at the end of the day, right? The proportions of how you reward someone might be different. And that's where, you know, there could be some shenanigans to your point. But if you're really looking at it holistically, at least you can with a clear conscience, look at that and say, Yes, their total rewards aren comparable. But peeling that back? Right. I think it's also incumbent upon employers in doing their their pay equity studies to look at those different elements independently and collectively, to ensure that you're really are you know, that you don't have outliers, and that you're addressing any discrepancies in there. To, your point about the, you know, is there going to be convergence to a single rate of pay per job? I agree with you. I don't think that there will be. But I think in most cases, the primary lever for that differentiation on an ongoing basis will be performance. And then how do you measure performance? And how do you consistently differentiate comp based on performance in a way that, again, is transparent and people understand I know this is going to be different? Because I was a high performer or I wasn't a high performer.
Charlie Franklin:
Yeah, it's so funny how things come full circle, because for so many years, we're talking about how do we get rid of performance rating? And I think there's a ton of merit to that work, by the way. It'd be better to replace it with something that's more holistic, but as we all know, when you introduce discretion, that's where it becomes really hard.
Cassandra Lammers:
Yeah, I have a saying and a lot of people who work with me have heard me say many times, which is discretion is the Enemy of equity. And it's true, right? The more discretion and particularly when it's coming from all different points so that it's there's not even a consistent method of discretion, you're going to end up with inequitable results. And that's not what this is about.
Charlie Franklin:
It's a challenge. It's a real challenge. Because if I'm sitting here listening to you, and I'm, you know, a comp leader at a global enterprise organization, I'm kind of like, Hey, you should talk to my comp committee, or you should talk to my CEO, and CFO, because we have a way of doing things around here that we're very particular about, and ask him to take away discretion. How do we run the business? You know, I don't know what the answer to that is, except to say, you know, my perspective is, when we're going through a transformation like this, we talked about a shift in communication, there's also a shift in data, and there's a shift in process. And like my example, before, of the radio host, standing there reading the news in front of the camera, when there's new data and new rules in place, it's going to take time for you to figure out what is a scalable process where discretion is limited, or somehow put into a context where we're not violating our goals on pay equity. Gonna take time,
Cassandra Lammers:
as with anything, right, it takes there's this evolution around, getting used to it, and you see that, you know, and usually there's a lot of noise on the front end, when these things first come out, and then it kind of quiets down, but it's also a matter of kind of getting your bearings after that, right? Like, okay, that first year, everybody's looks a little, you know, you compare employer A to employer B to employer C and they all look a little off, when they probably shouldn't. And over time, everyone's looking at everybody else to saying, what did they disclose? And what were the caveats around that? And what's in their proxy? Or wherever they're disclosing it? And how do you know? How do we think about that? Yeah. What are we trying to to achieve here? Is it driven by something regulatory? Or is it driven more by a, you know, an internal objective to disclose certain things or to meet certain goals? And those will drive the results and gets reported significantly as well
Charlie Franklin:
I agree. Paul, I see your question. I'll come back to that in a moment. Because I think it's a really interesting topic. But let me ask maybe selfishly, Cassandra your thoughts on, like, let's take a job posting, we're disclosing the pay range. This is pay transparency 1.0. Shifting to 2.0 is more context. The reason I say selfishly, I have an eight week old daughter, my wife just went through parental leave, and she was considering changing jobs at a certain point, while expecting and it's really hard to figure out what companies parental leave policies are. And if you're forced to ask a recruiter, it's kind of like your private information, not, you know, something that they should hear about. And so, I guess, you know, my shameless plug is pay all we should be disclosing some of these important benefits that help people make a decision, by the way, I think it's a competitive advantage to that. But I guess, with that being said, how would you think about pay transparency? 2.0? What are the kinds of things you tell candidates about your comp programs, social rewards programs to track them?
Cassandra Lammers:
You know, to me, you want to be as complete and transparent as possible. You know, an ideal state is having a website setup when a candidate and their partner their significant other their family members can look at what the offerings are, and how it all fits together, and what it means to them, disclose the rates of what your, you know, your health care benefit. Contributions are on a monthly, weekly, whatever bases, all those sorts of things, which really matter. And I see a question from Paul, about different country cultures. And I think this plays into that very deeply as well. Because, you know, in the US versus pretty much every other country. The benefits to that situation is such that, you know, there's a huge employer burden and employee burden in terms of costs where benefits are concerned. Which in almost every other country is statutory. And so those statutory benefits are part of someone's total rewards. But it doesn't show up in the same way. And so I think when people aren't necessarily aware of that it feels very discrepant. You cannot, that also gets into other things about like local market values for different roles and things. But it's something that when you're consistent, globally about what's offered, and how, what your philosophy is, right, where do you set yourself versus market that's going to give those candidates and their loved ones a much better sense, and, feeling of sort of comfort and confidence that they're going to work somewhere, that they understand what they're getting into. They understand the financial implications, positive and negative, potentially, of what they're doing, and how it is going to affect them in the long term. So you know, really important. Yeah, like, I get it, I switched jobs while pregnant once too, and it was not. And this is back before long, long, long parental leaves became the norm. And it's hard, right? You don't want to show your hand as a candidate that puts you in a very vulnerable position. And it shouldn't.
Charlie Franklin:
Yeah, I completely agree. And, you know, on the global peace, it's tough, we have to take a pay transparency framework from let's say, we're a US based company, and how do we apply that all around the world. And what you're trying to manage is, hey, if I'm a software engineer in India, or Czech Republic, or whatever, and I can just google and find what people are making the US and a level of disclosure that I can't get here. That's really unfair. And I know, everybody who's at a US based global organization, it's a thorn in their side to come across as US centric in their programs. So my take on this is, you know, acknowledging our major statutory differences with respect to transparency, but also just how benefits work and even pay all around the world. This goes back to like the the umbrella philosophy, the culture of transparency, the philosophy around total rewards, like aligning on at, and then providing flexibility for your management in different parts of the world to communicate. What does this mean for us? I think that's the right approach. I will say, within the US, though, most countries, most companies are saying, you know, what, it's like too complicated to comply with New York, your and Washington, they're so just gone, you know, one policy everywhere that's compliant.
Cassandra Lammers:
Yeah, I like to think of that as the highest common denominator approach. Which is good, in my view, so you know, it's sort of forcing hands. But instead of saying, oh, for a while there, people were carving things out saying, Oh, this is good, except if you are planning to work remotely in Colorado, like come on, folks. Like that's not that's not a that's not a viable approach to be, to be posting a job and to and to be attracting talent.
Charlie Franklin:
So let's shift gears to something that is causing a lot of pain from the complainers that I'm chatting with these days, which is, yeah, I'll risk sort of coining a phrase here, comp misinformation. And what I mean by this is with pay transparency, there's a lot more stuff out there that you can Google. And whether you're a candidate or a worker, and you can lead to some pretty high conviction around what you should be paid or if you're paid unfairly. You could be right, but you can definitely be wrong, because there's a lot of noise. How does a prize total rewards team combat comp misinformation?
Cassandra Lammers:
Really, that's a very real thing. And the reality right with the crowd sourced information that's available out there, it's everywhere, you can find information and you can contort it. So I think it does get back to having a clear philosophy. Communicating that philosophy, educating around that philosophy and being transparent about how that philosophy plays out. So that you're kind of taking the potential noise out of the channel. It's really important to be able to have a principled approach to what you're doing, and how you're doing it and why you're doing it, to then explain to people, again with a clear conscience and with, an empathetic heart to say, you know, we know that we are paying you appropriately relative to what our philosophy is, what our market is, and how we pay other employees who are performing substantially similar work. Yeah. And helping people understand that context, though, because to say, to say that to someone without telling them, like, what does substantially similar work mean? Right, and what does the market mean, is you're not giving them the information to be able to process that.
Charlie Franklin:
It's critical to do it. And, I think process wise, this is where it affects the world of talent acquisition. If folks if you join, you know, some like conversation in the past, you know, something really passionate about that, payments parents see is also a TA challenge. Recruiters should be chatting with candidates about comp early and often. For one, it's going to help them do their jobs to disqualify, you know, folks that really are out of range, or just kind of applying for the wrong role. Because you get that piece of information. But for two, it just sets up the opportunity to build trust very early on to communicate, you know, here's what you're expecting, or if you know, if there's a competing offer something like that, and here's how our programs work. Or organizations that establish that trust very early on in a candidate journey, by the time you get to the offer. There's less surprise, right and the offer, you know, it's that moment where you've been saying, I love you, but now you have to show it right. It's like, let's see the numbers. And if that's a nasty surprise, what a terrible way to start an employee experience, even if they end up accepting the offer. So you know, it gets to like, whether it's comp misinformation, or just just really controlling the narrative and kind of knowing, like, where do we fit in the market? What is our what is our philosophy? How do we design comp here? Communicating it's an advantage, pay transparency has an advantage, and that's in that context.
Cassandra Lammers:
I completely agree. And you know, people go, people take jobs for lots of reasons. Right, so comp is a key component of that, but it's not the only component. And that trust is a huge piece of it. Other factors about the employer and the environment and work life balance, and all kinds of, you know, the list can go on forever, are going to influence someone's decision whether or not to take a job. But minus that trust. I think all those other things can go away. And you're not going to have a it's just a it's, it's a non starter for most people.
Charlie Franklin:
Yeah, and, you know, hierarchy of needs, like getting, you know, your your compensation and benefits, right. Like, hopefully, this is not the kind of on the margin thing, why somebody's deciding to stay in a job or to take a job is really frustrating when it is by the way, like, that's what's taping you one way or another. It's so frustrating. And none of us are expert negotiators and calm. I think the more especially in the context of pay equity, the more that we can think about these programs as meeting basic needs, and then elevating to, you know, I'm here because of the career I can build or the team manager that I love the product I get to work on whatever it is. I realized I'm taking sort of a knowledge worker view on this. You know, for some folks in some industries, that's a more aspirational take. But underlying everybody regardless, like you've got to meet basic needs first. Let me pause here and say it and we've been chatting for about 45 minutes. I do want to go ahead and get two more questions that we've answered a number of them on the chat, so don't hesitate. If you'd like to now, share your questions, we can shift to q&a soon. Additionally, before we do that, our team is going to circulate a quick poll on market data. So let me explain my thinking on this, which is we're kind of talking about competence information. One of the attributes here that can be a real challenge for total rewards teams is if your market data however you're defining it, is for whatever reason detached from reality, you know that the market has moved up Dealing with lag data or you can't find something for the part of the business or region, you're in that message of like, well, we're market competitive to an employer candidate can really fall flat. How do you think about this Cassandra era of paid transparency? Are you thinking about any ways that you should change? I guess, if finding the market for competitive pay?
Cassandra Lammers:
Oh, yeah. oh, Joyce. Hi, Joyce. I know, Joyce. Discretion is the enemy of equity. But to your question, Charlie, I think that's, a really, really challenging position to be in. And you have to really be as transparent across the board as possible. So again, it's not just about pay. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. Okay.
Charlie Franklin:
Yeah. And I think too. There, there are a lot of interesting new things popping up around looking at the disclosures, on job postings. And so suffice to say, right, like, whether it's your candidates or employees, your organization's top competitors, they're going to be peeking at their job posting, say, Is this a similar job to me? And, oh, okay, that's what they're paying. So, now, look, I think it's sort of an academic research project to do like big sort of macro analyses of these things. I'm not sure how to use those yet. But something I do think that everyone can and should be doing today, on comp teams who want to take a sort of a step forward, and Vantage and pay transparency 2.0 is knowing your competitors are disclosing. And there's all kinds of nuggets, you can pull out of that. Like, if they say we pay X in these three cities, and why and these five cities will now you know, what their geo tears are like you could be you could determine whether you know, compared to, you know, this other highly competitive organization for talent, we maybe were an employer of choice in the city, and that could be a place for us to target talent.
Cassandra Lammers:
Yeah, and even you know, it depending on what type of job it is, and what type of organization you're in, you might be an employer of choice for a certain set of jobs and not for others. And, you know, for in the tech space, for example, if you're not a tech company, and you're competing for tech talent, right, it's very hard to compete with those tech companies that are paying top dollar for the tech talent. When you're really, you know, Tech is a means to the end for you. It's not the end. So, you know, I think, doubling down to in those other areas, in that case, right? What are the other parts of your employer value proposition that are going to attract and retain those individuals in a way that makes sense for them? Because if it's someone who's you know, a mercenary tech person, and you're not a tech forward company, then you're going to end up with you're going to disappoint yourselves and the candidates over and over again, in that process?
Charlie Franklin:
Yeah, I think that's smart. You really need to set the context, your pay transparency strategy in the context of your talent strategy, and different parts of the businesses really focused and obviously different geos. But, different competitive positions, whether it's, you know, mercenary tech talent versus kind of Silicon Valley. tech talent, depends what you need, what the organization needs. That does raise for me. So let's get into some more questions here. Stephanie, I saw your question coming from a media company. Any others have talent position? That's really interesting. I don't know if Cassandra you have any experience with this from the organizations you've worked at? But yeah, what does pay transparency mean, for like, an actor? I assume that's what we mean by a talent position. Is it possible to compare apples to apples for these kinds of roles if you're on strike for pay equity?
Cassandra Lammers:
Yeah, in my view, right. Those are likely pretty much genuinely unique roles, right? Unless you've got, you know, two talent roles that are effectively identical, right? And then it becomes a matter of what is the value of that position to the business, whatever that business is, and how you differentiate like that, but you need to be able to articulate what that difference is and why that's driving a higher or lower value for whatever the position is. Right? And what immediately comes to mind are like news anchors, right? If you have two news anchors, and says, kind of following your radio television analogy, right? If then you have two news anchors, what's the difference between what they're doing? And you know, say it's a man and a woman? Well, then, you know, to pay them the same, you pay them differently, what's different about their jobs, and understanding that, you know, if one has more responsibilities on error or something, then that would lead to the, you know, the potential but they would be paid more, or if one has a following that they're bringing with them and greater experience. So those are the types of things that get back to that legitimate factors discussion, and documenting it, but I think in that space, it's a lot more of a gray area than in, let's say, more volume roles.
Charlie Franklin:
I think some people Yeah. And, you know, stepping my thinking here is, people in those talent positions. It's true, that it's harder to define kind of the underlying data and process to ensure pay equity. But I'll tell you, one thing that I think is for sure is, there's just a lot more public attention on those people. And so I actually think it's more of a brand and PR focus, and what comes to mind for me things in the news a few months ago, like the difference in pay between the men's US Soccer Team, and the women's US Soccer Team, and it's like, you can talk all day long about how much revenue which World Cup brings in and so forth. But at the end of the day, if it feels unfair, you're gonna get thrashed in the court of public opinion. And that, you know, underlying problems notwithstanding, like that impacts your business. And so this is holistic, you know, World of pay transparency, I think we're all moving towards, which is, like I said earlier, you can't kind of just be in the background and say, you know, we checked our market data, we, you know, this is our process, you have to be prepared, whether it's your statements for talent, or just anybody generally, to manage the narrative like, Well, what do we care about? Do we actually know? What is the answer? Why are these folks paid differently? And does that feel good?
Cassandra Lammers:
Yeah, that's exactly right. You have to be able to ultimately stand behind whatever it is that you are offering someone, and relative to your other employees.
Charlie Franklin:
That's right. Well, let me ask you one other question, before we begin to wrap up. And if you have more questions, folks drop them in, if we have time, we'll get to them. One thing has just come up a lot recently, excuse me, is the issue of volatile markets and the impact on pay transparency and pay equity? I think, especially for organizations that are granting stock, they're feeling this because stock prices are going up and down a lot. So maybe let's stay there, you know, how do you manage both pay transparency and pay equity for someone who joins your company in 2021, the stock was 100 bucks, and maybe join your company now and the stock is 23 bucks?
Cassandra Lammers:
Well, you know, I where equity compensation is concerned, I have kind of a strong opinion that is a long term. situation. So you know, you have to be in it for the long term to see what's going on with equity. Past performance does not guarantee future results. And the reality is there is risk and there's reward. So, you know, I don't think it takes away from the challenge, right? But if you're being consistent and equitable about how you're making those grants, at the time you're making those grants, then that's all you can really do. I think there is a strong component of you get rewarded based on the company's performance, and presumably the stock price represents the company's performance. So it's all sort of directly related to what you're getting what you're putting in, and how that reflects in the company performance. It's, you know, in some roles, it's obviously much more direct than in others. But, that's just part of the risk and reward to me of stock based compensation.
Charlie Franklin:
I agree with that. And yeah, you know, my message to is like, look, it can feel frustrating if you're, you know, the kind of motivation of the individual town as to time the market, everybody feels that it's a hindsight 2020 thing. But I agree with you that the scalable approach to communicating transparently is talk about the process used to arrive at those grants, you know, and talk about risk versus reward like this is designed to reflect company performance, and it's gonna go up and down. Also, by the way, it's a long term incentive vehicle in the case of stock. So it's like, hey, if things are popping around for a quarter or two, you know, if you have a four year vest, like, you got to take the long view, perhaps and, you know, maybe a difficult message to deliver when times are hard, it'd be a little easier when when times are good. But I think that is the answer. And just getting out in front and doing that more not waiting to react when people are upset. That's part of the culture of pay transparency, too.
Cassandra Lammers:
I completely agree that education and communication goes such a long way. So people need to, it's important for everyone to understand how and why they're being rewarded the way they're being rewarded, and what that means to them now, and over the long term, you know, building wealth like that, how do they do that? And things like that. That's got to be part of, of how individuals really appreciate it and how employers help those individuals to appreciate it.
Charlie Franklin:
One final quick question for you before we wrap up, what's one thing folks can do today right now, to take a step forward towards pay transparency 2.0
Cassandra Lammers:
I would say have a well defined total rewards philosophy and cascade from their
Charlie Franklin:
That's a great place to leave it. Folks. I'll share a couple things just to wrap up here. We have a compass some free resources for you. There's a pay transparency map. This is geared towards recruiters to navigate making sure they're staying compliant. If they're recruiting all around the world. I write a newsletter each week for completers many times touching on the topic of pay transparency come check it out. We welcome to subscribe, and then we have another conversation next month we'll be chatting with Tom Langley is the principal over compensatory I'm sure many of you are customers through an exec comp, consulting firm, and we'll be chatting about how to stay competitive with equity comp, particularly in a volatile market. So with that, thank you, Cassandra for joining. I really enjoyed the conversation. Thanks everyone who joined today. Happy Wednesday.
Cassandra Lammers:
Thank you, Charlie
