Stacey Harris and Teri Zipper – HR Tech 2024 – Compensation and the Evolving Workplace

Connect with Stacey:

• 

Connect with Teri:

• 

Connect with David:

• • 

• david.turetsky@salary.com

Podcast Manager, Karissa Harris:

• HRDataLabs@salary.com

 

Production by Affogato Media

Resources:

• Sapient Insights
• Salary.com Consulting practice
• HR Data Labs Season 8 Episode 22
• HR Data Labs Season 8 Episode 20

• “[Compensation] shows up in places we often forget inside the whole HR model—it’s part of your time and attendance . . . that’s a really important issues for those people who depend on it.”

Announcer: 0:01

The world of business is more complex than ever. The world of human resources and compensation is also getting more complex. Welcome to the HR Data Labs podcast, your direct source for the latest trends from experts inside and outside the world of human resources. Listen as we explore the impact that compensation strategy, data and people analytics can have on your organization. This podcast is sponsored by Salary.com, your source for data technology and consulting for compensation and beyond. Now here are your hosts, David Turetsky and Dwight Brown.

 

David Turetsky: 0:38

Hello and welcome to the HR Data Labs podcast. I'm your host, David Turetsky, we're coming live from the 2024 HR Technology show in beautiful Mandalay Bay Exposition, exposition. All right, let's start that again. Exposition center in Las Vegas, Nevada. No we're going to keep this in, this is at good one.

 

Stacey Harris: 0:55

Okay okay

 

David Turetsky: 0:56

I have with me three of the most brilliant minds in the world of HR and HR technology. Yes. Stacey Harris, Teri Zipper and Susan Richards is over there. She's she's just standing there, but she's gonna pop pop in, I think. And yes, we did also talk to her separately, but we love Sapient Insights. And here they are. And I am so excited. Hello, Stacey.

 

Stacey Harris: 1:18

Hello! It's good to be back here!

 

David Turetsky: 1:20

Yes, we're very excited to have you here. Hello, Teri.

 

Teri Zipper: 1:22

Hi David. It's great to be back.

 

David Turetsky: 1:24

Hey, Susan over there! So this has been a heck of a show. It's been gigantic. There's a lot of energy here. There's a lot of people talking, a lot of buzz. And a lot of the buzz happens to be from not only Teri and Danielle Bushen did a really phenomenal job on data governance, which kind of started the show, which they kicked butt in that presentation, and then Stacey Harris brought the house down with her results of the HR Technology Survey. I mean, how do you bookend a really phenomenal conference without things like that?

 

Stacey Harris: 2:00

I don't I can say I don't know, it's a perfect marriage, right? Of things that fit together, but,

 

David Turetsky: 2:05

Exactly yeah,

 

Stacey Harris: 2:05

It's been a really good show. We enjoyed our time. I think we've had a lot of good questions, which is nice to see. And we've also had a lot of, I think, of opportunity to talk to a lot of people. Our feet are tired, though.

 

David Turetsky: 2:15

Yes, well, and for those of you have been to Mandalay Bay, you know that it is a mile to get from the hotel to the conference, and then in the conference, going places like, if you're going to breakout sessions, they're not around the corner, they're like, far away. And

 

Teri Zipper: 2:30

yeah

 

David Turetsky: 2:32

for those of you who haven't seen this show today, you could actually look down the aisles and it like looks like forever, because this is a gigantic show this year.

 

Teri Zipper: 2:42

It is. And what's with the extra mileage they added to get to the expo floor?

 

Stacey Harris: 2:47

Another doorway than last year, right?

 

David Turetsky: 2:49

I don't know. I think it may be because there's that other show that's happening at the same time

 

Teri Zipper: 2:53

Could be

 

David Turetsky: 2:54

or they're preparing for,

 

Teri Zipper: 2:55

yeah, could be

 

David Turetsky: 2:56

but good lord!

 

Stacey Harris: 2:57

yeah

 

David Turetsky: 2:57

So and next year it's gonna be here again. So we're gonna do the exact same thing next year

 

Stacey Harris: 3:02

A week earlier! They're

 

David Turetsky: 3:03

Wow!

 

Stacey Harris: 3:04

getting us out here earlier every year, I think

 

David Turetsky: 3:06

So it'll be extra hot

 

Teri Zipper: 3:08

And that means we gotta close the survey a week earlier or something!

 

Stacey Harris: 3:12

Tammy's got it calculated in! We've had this conversation. Yeah, for anybody who takes our survey, you know we have a pretty good time crunch trying to get everything done and to this event, which is why it's, it's we tie closely to when the survey ends to when we get here.

 

David Turetsky: 3:26

Good luck with that next year. I'm really sorry.

 

Teri Zipper: 3:28

Yeah.

 

David Turetsky: 3:29

So get your responses in quicker, please, please. So why don't we start the conversation? But first, I need to know what's one fun thing that no one knows about the two of you? Stacey, you're going first.

 

Teri Zipper: 3:43

oh my goodness

 

Stacey Harris: 3:44

I'm first?

 

David Turetsky: 3:44

Yeah.

 

Stacey Harris: 3:46

Don't think everybody knows this. I've said it once or twice, maybe on the show, but on on, but not particularly. My kids like to do D and D,

 

David Turetsky: 3:56

Oh, yeah!

 

Stacey Harris: 3:56

And so probably one thing a lot of people don't know about me is that I was in the growing up age of computers. Back in the day, I was a girl gamer, so I loved my video games, and I spent a lot of time on them. And so as my kids have gotten into doing D&D over the last couple of years, they're older, grown families of their own.

 

David Turetsky: 4:15

Right

 

Stacey Harris: 4:15

But they have incorporated me in from time to time, so I get to be a very awesome wizard from time to time.

 

David Turetsky: 4:22

There you go, that's awesome!

 

Stacey Harris: 4:23

High mage, those kind of things. So that's kind of cool. Nobody, you don't usually know about that unless you're part of my family.

 

David Turetsky: 4:27

That's cool. My kids love D and D too so I'm with you. That's great. Teri, you've got to come up with something as good as that!

 

Teri Zipper: 4:34

I feel like I've done this show so many times I've given away all the things that no one knows about me!

 

David Turetsky: 4:38

Come on, that's not true!

 

Teri Zipper: 4:40

I did find out there was something that Stacey and I had uniquely in common that were both Star Trek geeks.

 

David Turetsky: 4:47

That's awesome! Yeah, we'll geek out after.

 

Stacey Harris: 4:50

That's a fun one.

 

Teri Zipper: 4:51

Yeah

 

Stacey Harris: 4:52

When Terry started telling me that she was into Star Trek, I was like, no way! We started comparing.

 

David Turetsky: 4:57

Did you see the last season of Picard?

 

Teri Zipper: 4:58

I did. It was awesome.

 

Stacey Harris: 5:00

Yes, loved it.

 

David Turetsky: 5:00

The last episode, I cried.

 

Teri Zipper: 5:03

Oh, yeah, of course,

 

Stacey Harris: 5:04

How could you not!

 

David Turetsky: 5:04

Yeah. Don't give it away! Don't give it away! Spoiler alert, Stacey's giving it away. Yeah, there wasn't a dry eye in the house. And by the way, it wasn't because people died. It was because of something else, yeah, yeah. So let's get on with the podcast, because we're gonna have a lot of fun today! Because one of the things we're gonna cover is the evolution of HR and HR technology. What has been happening, that doesn't have a two letter initial, that we can shock people with that isn't, isn't artificial intelligence. Is there anything else that's been evolving, that's been happening besides just AI?

 

Stacey Harris: 5:53

Yes, let's say that.

 

David Turetsky: 5:54

Excellent!

 

Stacey Harris: 5:56

Teri, you want to go first? Or you want me to tackle it?

 

Teri Zipper: 5:57

No you go first

 

Stacey Harris: 5:58

All right. Well, so this is actually funny. When I was in my ask the expert session, one of the ladies came up to me, really good question. She's from IT, she's gotten into HR and HRIT, right, role, and her question was, why doesn't HR and HRIT do things like IT does? And I said, Well, there's a lot of reasons why we do things very differently. I said a lot of it has to do the fact that our systems touch everyone and that it has so much regulations and compliance. It's like, well, IT systems do too. I'm like, Yeah, you'll learn there's going to be a lot more than you expect. I think the biggest evolution really has been this, this, this change from the system of record, which we've had for a long time, and the conversation has been about getting one source of data and everything all in one into the idea that we just need to get a better way for our data go back and forth, right? And that, I think has been the biggest transition I've seen in the last several years, is that, and I think a lot of the conversation about having one source of data came from IT with the idea of data warehouses, like everything being in one. And I'm like, we can't keep everything in one system. The world we live in is just too complex, yeah, but we can make it easier to get data in and out of things.

 

David Turetsky: 7:08

Well, nowadays, with APIs, it has become much easier. But in the old days, it was all plain, flat files, right?

 

Stacey Harris: 7:14

Yes,

 

Teri Zipper: 7:15

oh yeah.

 

David Turetsky: 7:15

And nightmares, because the reporting system would break it would, you know?

 

Stacey Harris: 7:19

And just a hint from the research, there's still a lot of that out there.

 

Teri Zipper: 7:22

There's still a lot of flat files. I was laughing when you said that about trench, you know, how has HR tech evolved? And we were in a demo this morning, and somehow got on the topic of these old DOS systems, right? They said, Oh my God. My first system was comp master for DOS.

 

David Turetsky: 7:41

Oh my god.

 

Teri Zipper: 7:42

You know, I was actually working

 

David Turetsky: 7:44

That was Mercer, right? Oh my god.

 

Teri Zipper: 7:47

So it has evolved significantly from, like, the dot prompt and, you know, things like that in DOS, to what we have today in the cloud, but at the same time, there's still a lot of the same problems, right? The data challenges, they're hard, but we'll continue to try to keep solving them, right?

 

David Turetsky: 8:08

But one of the things that I've been talking about a little bit is compensation really hasn't evolved too much. We're still doing job evaluation. Some are actually still doing point factor,

 

Stacey Harris: 8:17

yeah, yes,

 

David Turetsky: 8:18

We're still doing salary ranges. We're still talking about spreads and midpoint progressions, and how do we slot jobs in and benchmark jobs and things like that. And we're still using for because they're really sources of truth, surveys, or somewhat source of truth, but, but that really hasn't evolved. So the systems may have innovated, but the artifacts we're creating are still the same ones we've been usingsince the 70s and 80s. So I guess the question is, while IT and HR have certainly evolved, our processes, and I'm talking beyond even comp, our processes are really rooted in the past, aren't they?

 

Stacey Harris: 8:59

They are, and I think, and this is what I know as we get into the AI conversation, right? I always tell people that HR is not changing. HR still has to do what HR has to do, which is bring people into the organization, make sure that they are hired appropriately, make sure we got all the compliance, make sure they're paid appropriately, make sure that they have a talent management process, and make sure that they have all the things they need to meet the business needs from a resource perspective, and AI is not going to change that. And I didn't have enough time in my session to kind of do the whole like, like, like, AI is not going to fix this, because there's nothing to break, right? What I think is happening with AI is, if we're able to use it appropriately, it will allow us to do a better job of making that information more available in a way that's more accessible, because I do think that, to your point, we're doing the same things the same way, which means it's really hard for someone who doesn't understand the history of it to do the job, to get it done. And we know from our data that 58% of people who are in HRIT right now or in HR roles doing IT, they have less than three years of experience.

 

David Turetsky: 10:03

Wow

 

Stacey Harris: 10:03

Right? So, so that's, that's my thing, is that, yes, they're doing the same way, and that's the problem, because we can't access the data, right?

 

David Turetsky: 10:10

Actually, that's, that's kind of cool, though. If we're getting people who come into HRIT from outside, maybe they're going to push us to do things a little differently.

 

Stacey Harris: 10:18

This is the first year we've finally seen it's only about 2% but 2% of the people respond to the survey and who are in the HR function that we're working with are Gen Zs.

 

David Turetsky: 10:28

Wow.

 

Teri Zipper: 10:29

This is an eye opener for some vendors who were like, our name is just not out there. And I was like, Well, you don't understand, like, these people don't. They don't know a lot of the vendors because they've only been in the space for one to three years, and so you know you've you've got a lot of work to do, from a marketing's perspective, to get people to know you.

 

David Turetsky: 10:47

Yeah, old brand has no bearing on them. They don't care Exactly, yeah. And actually, it may even be a bad thing, because if you are the 800 pound gorilla in this thing, and there are startups that are doing new fun things, wow. What are the new fun things? What is it going to do differently? Oh, it's cheaper. Wow, better terms, yeah. Oh, it's got AI, yeah. I mean, but, but I'm kind of serious, because when we talk about HR systems, and we let's just, just say, like, HCM and we say, Oh, well, these are the vendors. These are the vendors. These are vendors. If they have no background in it, they're starting from a blank slate. They're going to start looking at the HR tech. They're going to walk around and they're going to go, Hey, this guy does or this these people do better than those guys.

 

Stacey Harris: 11:30

Yeah

 

David Turetsky: 11:30

So I might come here first. They don't have the baggage!

 

Stacey Harris: 11:34

They don't have the baggage and, and, and, as much as I know every HR vendor likes to say, we're different, we're unique. Yeah, we do know from our data that about 80% of the sort of the baseline HR technologies, right, have about the same product, same solution, same approaches, right? And so it's that 20% that makes them unique. And everybody's got a little bit different, but it's, you know. One of the things we noticed this year at the show is there's a lot of investors here, which we've been hearing a lot of people talk about, I had a couple people talk about how many there are. I think the investors are asking, you know, questions about why, you know, is there still a 20% uptick in the innovation in the market here? And, you know, it's no longer Greenfield. I mean, a company's as small as two employees, have an HR technology system, everything's a replacement play.

 

David Turetsky: 12:19

Right, right.

 

Teri Zipper: 12:21

I know I've kind of been looking at some of these vendors from my own perspective. I'm like, ooh, we need that system! How many employees do you guys work with?

 

Announcer: 12:34

Like what you hear so far? Make sure you never miss a show by clicking subscribe. This podcast is made possible by Salary.com. Now back to the show.

 

David Turetsky: 12:44

But that's interesting, because if we start thinking about all these processes, they add there's a tax on having another system. And so in the old days, we used to talk best of breed versus one source, one neck to choke, we used to say. But now, if I'm adding, you know, like even two or three, the debt that I'm going to have to and I'm not talking about just the cost, but the amount of implementation time, the resources, and then the upkeep of those systems.

 

Teri Zipper: 13:09

yeah, yeah,

 

David Turetsky: 13:09

I've got to factor that in, don't I?

 

Teri Zipper: 13:11

Yeah.

 

Stacey Harris: 13:12

I mean, we've been talking about this idea of platform clusters, that we're no longer best of breed, and we're no longer sort of one shot does everything.

 

David Turetsky: 13:20

right

 

Stacey Harris: 13:20

But the idea that you create, you're sort of picking one or two or three areas that's really important to you as an organization.

 

David Turetsky: 13:26

right

 

Stacey Harris: 13:26

You find a pillar in there of a technology, and then you work with all their partners and their and that ecosystem, and that seems to be the most powerful thing that we're seeing actually get you better outcomes, along with doing important things like change management, along with having a strategy. So it's not the only fix, but it's one of them.

 

Teri Zipper: 13:42

Yeah

 

David Turetsky: 13:43

So what you're saying is use the marketplaces, choose a vendor, then look at the marketplaces, or actually look at the ecosystem, and choose the ecosystem, instead of just choosing the vendor first and then going finding the marketplace.

 

Teri Zipper: 13:55

Yeah.

 

David Turetsky: 13:56

So it's who has the best tentacles and and basically, what are you buying? Are you buying the vendor play? Are you buying the marketplace play, or are you going to have to put all this stuff together yourself? Yeah, that's a really brilliant thing. I didn't even think about that. That's great.

 

Teri Zipper: 14:11

The other thing that we're seeing is a lot of people right now are looking back at the services equation, right, like they're teched out.

 

David Turetsky: 14:19

Right

 

Teri Zipper: 14:20

We've got so much tech,

 

David Turetsky: 14:21

yeah

 

Teri Zipper: 14:22

and you know, we aren't using a lot of it, or a lot of capabilities of the tech, right? It does these things, but we didn't know it, or we're not using it, or we didn't deploy it. And at the same time, they, they have been spending less and less money on services, thinking that, well, the technology is going to do it for us!

 

David Turetsky: 14:43

right

 

Teri Zipper: 14:44

And so there's that balance that needs to be, you know, struck between services and tech in order to get the job done and get it done, right?

 

David Turetsky: 14:52

So are you thinking that it's because there are so many innovations within these technologies that maybe the company that's implementing doesn't even understand them all and hasn't implemented them because they just don't get it? Or is it just they said, Yeah, we'll get to it. We'll get to it, but just never do or maybe a combination of both?

 

Teri Zipper: 15:10

I mean, imagine that, you know, you've got this tech. There's all kinds of things happening in the organization and vendors now in the cloud are doing new releases every month!

 

David Turetsky: 15:18

right

 

Teri Zipper: 15:19

I mean, do you even know what's in there? Are people paying attention every single month to what's coming out in the software? No!

 

David Turetsky: 15:26

no.

 

Teri Zipper: 15:27

So you know, two years down the road, they're calling us up and saying, you know, here are the problems we have. We have these problems. And we're like, Well, what software are using? And they tell us, and we're like, you know, it does that, right?

 

David Turetsky: 15:39

right

 

Teri Zipper: 15:39

You just need to deploy it! Like, let's figure out how to deploy that to support your business model. So maybe people just don't even know what they have. There's just so much tech and as we've been doing this cohort and some other things within the organization, you know, we're finding out that people's tech stack is huge for HR. I mean, the even at the it's the small level, these companies have 13 technologies they're using to do HR!

 

David Turetsky: 16:09

With the same staff, or reduced staff!

 

Teri Zipper: 16:11

Exactly. So it's overwhelming. And so I think, you know, people are starting to step back and say, Okay, let's figure out who can, who can help me get the work done.

 

David Turetsky: 16:23

Right

 

Teri Zipper: 16:24

I mean, you might remember this early days, David, one of the big things that people were always struggling with was reporting.

 

David Turetsky: 16:31

Oh my gosh, yes!

 

Teri Zipper: 16:32

That is still a problem today. Like, you know, you get the system, and we're like, Oh yay, you got this great system, and we built all these reports for you! They don't know what to do with them.

 

David Turetsky: 16:42

no

 

Teri Zipper: 16:42

They're like, Okay, help me figure out what report I need. Like, I need help just understanding what report to build to tell the story I'm trying to tell.

 

David Turetsky: 16:50

So many times I've been working with clients, and that person that used to be that report writer left,

 

Stacey Harris: 16:56

yeah

 

David Turetsky: 16:57

and now you have this monolith of a gigantic system that you're paying millions of dollars for, that you don't have one person in your organization that knows how to extract the value out of it. And it's penny wise, pound foolish.

 

Stacey Harris: 17:10

Yeah, this, this, I think, is, it's a really crucial issue. And I blame a little bit on the consulting market and on the influencers. I mean, like, we're all part of this problem, like, we keep pushing and selling the tech. Right?

 

David Turetsky: 17:25

Absolutely. I'm a part of the solution, though!

 

Teri Zipper: 17:29

Yeah!

 

Stacey Harris: 17:30

We keep selling the tech, and what we need to do is build into that expectation of costs,

 

David Turetsky: 17:36

yes

 

Stacey Harris: 17:37

the services, because. Because that's the problem, is that we're, like, okay, so you can't afford all the services then, then it'll be this cheap. But no one ever wants to pay more. They want to know the cost they're going to have, the reality, and they have to build that into the front end of it.

 

David Turetsky: 17:50

But they're building an ROI based on the fact that they're going to have less people. Because this thing does it for us. We don't need to worry about it! Once we configure it, it's going to run itself! No, I hear this all the time though, Stacey, it's like.

 

Teri Zipper: 18:01

Yeah, I've been in this space for 25 years. I have never seen a technology get rid of people,

 

Stacey Harris: 18:07

yeah

 

Teri Zipper: 18:08

ever.

 

David Turetsky: 18:08

But that's what's going to happen! The Bots are going to take over, and we're not going to have to have as many HR people, because it's all going to do it for us.

 

Stacey Harris: 18:16

No, you're just going to have to hire people who have higher levels of compensation, because now they're going to have to understand what's inside that black box and how to read it, and that's going to really be important for your regulations and your requirements, right?

 

David Turetsky: 18:30

Exactly. Well, we're going to, we're going to basically be sending stuff to the EEOC or to the Department of Labor that a bot did, and nobody's going to check it, and then we're going to get in really big trouble for it. Now I'm being facetious, but really that's if you listen to a lot of the and you hear it all the time, this is going to save you money, it's going to save you time, it's going to save you resources. I call bullshit on all of that. Sorry, I used the word

 

Stacey Harris: 18:57

Yeah.

 

David Turetsky: 18:59

No explicit rating here.

 

Stacey Harris: 19:00

I think a good argument on this side from that conversation. I love AI! I think AI is gonna do phenomenal things for our market. It's gonna do really great stuff in skills. It's gonna do really great stuff in in auditing and in surfacing things that we can't see because there's just too much data.

 

David Turetsky: 19:14

Right

 

Stacey Harris: 19:14

But it is should not replace your total awareness of what's going on in your company.

 

David Turetsky: 19:20

So instead of being myopic and thinking you're going to save money, why don't you pour that energy into gaining skills, getting people who can do the right who can do the work, who can manage the AI, who can write the right prompts, or who can understand it all, and then actually be able to take advantage of a lot more and do more with more instead of more with less.

 

Stacey Harris: 19:43

And so I tell people, HR technology is about value creation. It's not about saving money. Because we've we've eeked all the efficiencies out of HR technologies in the early 80s and 90s, when they were first started putting it in place. 80s might be a little bit too early 90s and 2000.

 

David Turetsky: 19:58

I got you.

 

Stacey Harris: 19:59

But that was done when, when you know the first peoplesoft hit the market.

 

David Turetsky: 20:03

Right

 

Stacey Harris: 20:03

Now, the next level is value.

 

David Turetsky: 20:06

Right Hey, are you listening to this and thinking to yourself, Man, I wish I could talk to David about this. Well, you're in luck. We have a special offer for listeners of the HR Data Labs podcast, a free half hour call with me about any of the topics we cover on the podcast, or whatever is on your mind. Go to salary.com/HRDLconsulting to schedule your free 30 minute call today. Well, and that gets us into our next conversation, which is, how important is compensation in the general scheme of HR?

 

Stacey Harris: 20:41

Oh, I'm gonna let Teri answer that one first.

 

Teri Zipper: 20:44

Well, I mean, it's always been a critical component of HR, right? And obviously now we've got more legislation around it, more requirements and compliance that we have to follow in order to do it right. And we still have a lot of organizations that, I'm still amazed at the number of organizations that I walk into who aren't doing ranges, or aren't doing some sort of, you know, their idea of market analysis is very, very basic.

 

David Turetsky: 21:14

Right

 

Teri Zipper: 21:15

And so, you know, it hasn't changed that much as we were just talking before the show.

 

David Turetsky: 21:20

Right

 

Teri Zipper: 21:22

But it's critical. It's a critical component. And people are, you know, at the end of the day. I mean, your your salary is still one of the most important things to you. I mean, you might take a job that pays less because you really, really want to be in that industry, but what they are going to pay you is still going to be important to you, you know, and the components that make that up are going to be important to you. And we know that the younger generation is looking at things from a different perspective, like, maybe I want more money to do, you know, for my dog insurance than I care about for my salary, right? Because that's getting to be a pretty expensive thing to take your dog to the vet, right?

 

David Turetsky: 22:02

right

 

Teri Zipper: 22:02

But, yeah, I think it's more important than ever. And as we get into the skills conversation,

 

David Turetsky: 22:09

yeah

 

Teri Zipper: 22:09

more and more, we are going to have to do some things differently, because we don't. Today, we sort of pay for skills as it relates to a job.

 

David Turetsky: 22:17

Yeah

 

Teri Zipper: 22:18

We don't necessarily pay for skills for the sake of skills.

 

David Turetsky: 22:21

yeah

 

Teri Zipper: 22:22

And I think that might be the next, you know, frontier from a comp perspective.

 

Stacey Harris: 22:28

And, and I think the hope of that skills for the sake of skills is that that will start to get us to more pay equity, right? Because then we're not looking at what job you held or how long you held it. We're looking at whether or not you can actually do the thing you said you can do.

 

David Turetsky: 22:41

yeah

 

Stacey Harris: 22:42

It's coming, it's going to be a ways off. But it's, I think the other thing on how important that compensation conversation is is that we find in our data that compensation is often a conversation everybody's having,

 

David Turetsky: 22:57

yeah,

 

Stacey Harris: 22:57

they don't know that it's a system they need, right? So especially SMB, a mid market, is that most the time, they're doing a lot of stuff in spreadsheets and in, you know, with with some outsourced tool they've got, or with some company that they're talking to, and they don't realize that there are actually things to manage this! I'm not, you know, we know Salary.com and others have these solutions,

 

David Turetsky: 23:18

right

 

Stacey Harris: 23:18

It's, it's kind of one of those, the most important technology you didn't know you ever needed, right? In one sense, because compensation is what drives the company. It gives it gives value to that relationship you have with them, right? And I think in the market, we're going to have to have a better conversation that it's not just a side solution. It's part of the whole solution.

 

David Turetsky: 23:41

I will tell you that now to your point, with pay transparency, that now takes on a completely new lens, because now the ability to get pay right? Sorry, I'm using our tagline, but the ability, no but, but now people are going to see it everywhere. I mean, it's going to be on every posting on the web. It's going to be right in everybody's face, so it's no more, no longer a mystery! And the ability to get those things correctly done with the right data in the right geography, for the right industry, for the right job, for the right skills, that's going to lead to success or failure for the company, not just for the employee and not for just For the manager, because you can't hide this stuff anymore.

 

Stacey Harris: 24:23

Yes

 

David Turetsky: 24:24

And making bad decisions means that person is going to look across the street, they're going to see what the posting says, and they're going to go, I'm going over there.

 

Stacey Harris: 24:30

Yeah

 

David Turetsky: 24:31

They're paying more and I don't have to deal with this crap! So I think what transparency does is, not only does it get us to pay equity, because it's not the conversation anymore, of Well, you look like you can do the job. I'm going to give you this. We don't get into that anymore. It's more about, hey, this is what the pay range is, and you have really great skills, so I think you belong more at the high end. But before we get there, we're going to do an assessment to see if you can actually do the work,

 

Stacey Harris: 24:57

Yeah,

 

David Turetsky: 24:57

and that's where I'm going to place you.

 

Teri Zipper: 24:59

Yeah.

 

David Turetsky: 24:59

And without that, and without the the information to be able to have the pay range right, you know, we're back in the 80s again,

 

Stacey Harris: 25:06

Exactly. Yeah, yeah. And I don't think any of us want to go back to the 80s, the

 

David Turetsky: 25:10

Well, certain people do.

 

Teri Zipper: 25:11

The music!

 

Stacey Harris: 25:12

The music might be good, but, but hair and makeup, none of that's going to be do any benefit to any of us.

 

David Turetsky: 25:16

No. And you know, there's a lot of other political issues around that, but we're not going to go there. But seriously, though, I mean, when we talk about compensation, and what we're trying to do is we're trying to do the right thing for a lot of people. We're trying to educate people on and I'm not talking about, again, the company I'm talking about. We need to make sure that people are getting the right information, they're getting the right insight, and they're making the right decisions, and that only happens if you have the right, the right data and the right system.

 

Stacey Harris: 25:44

Yeah, the right tools to do it.

 

David Turetsky: 25:45

Yeah.

 

Stacey Harris: 25:46

I think the other thing that we've got to remember on on how important compensation is to the process, is that it, it, it shows up in places that we often forget inside the whole HR model, right? It's, it's part of your time and attendance, right?

 

David Turetsky: 26:02

Right

 

Stacey Harris: 26:02

Especially if you have shift differentials or if you have that's a really important issue for those, those people who depend on that kind of compensation, right? It shows up in our performance management process. The reason people killed performance management and brought it back. We just did a conversation in the room, and we asked how many people had killed it, there was probably a few hands that came up. Then I said, because we all need compensation numbers, and they're like, oh yeah, that's why I've got to do my performance management, right? Because how do I give a raise if I don't know what someone's performance is?

 

David Turetsky: 26:28

So I just had a conversation about this, and I was suggesting that kill merit increases and do a cost of living adjustment for everyone, and use incentive pay to drive performance, because that cuts down on pay equity issues. It cuts down on exacerbating pay equity issues. The point 01 differentials in pay because of someone got a five and someone got a four. Don't drive performance. 1% versus a 2% versus a three. No one cares. But if you're going to give them a 5% incentive or 10% incentive of their pay, and they get more because they did better, or they get less because they didn't do as well, and the company got more, so you have a multiplier effect that will drive behaviors, and it's fair, and it doesn't then compound on next year, because total comp resets!

 

Teri Zipper: 27:22

Yeah, no, I completely agree. I'm not a huge fan of merit pay myself, and think that it really needs to be tied more to results.

 

David Turetsky: 27:31

Yes!

 

Teri Zipper: 27:32

And a lot of times that merit pay is just a number that we came up with because this person rated this person higher than another person, and they all have different perspectives on how they're rating. So is it really fair? I mean, we do. We try to do some analysis to look across the board, calibrate this data. But you know, the extent that that's really successful, it's costing organizations a lot of money, and at the end of the day, you know, it's not, it's not incenting behavior or changing the way that people operate. I mean, we see this in the great example of that is in the NFL.

 

David Turetsky: 28:09

Yeah

 

Teri Zipper: 28:10

Right? We, somebody has a great year, we back the Brinks truck up, give them millions of dollars, and then it's really hard to live up to that the next year!

 

David Turetsky: 28:22

Or they get injured, right?

 

Teri Zipper: 28:24

Exactly

 

David Turetsky: 28:25

And then that's my money's gone.

 

Teri Zipper: 28:26

Yeah, and it's not incenting them. In fact, it might be a little bit of a detractor!

 

David Turetsky: 28:33

right

 

Stacey Harris: 28:33

I'm not going to dive for that ball. It's going to blow up my knee and the next year I'm not going to get my money!

 

David Turetsky: 28:39

Well, actually, I'm sure there is some truth to that too.

 

Teri Zipper: 28:42

Yeah

 

David Turetsky: 28:42

So, but, you know, but the person who's on the machining line, you know, in a manufacturer organization, and they're vying for that 1% differential in pay.

 

Stacey Harris: 28:52

They don't even know about that 1% differential.

 

David Turetsky: 28:54

No, they don't, because we're not transparent about the budget!

 

Teri Zipper: 28:57

Right

 

David Turetsky: 28:57

I don't know how many times as a compensation manager, I've told the managers, don't tell your people what the budget is. What do you mean, don't tell them the budget!? I mean, it's, it's a budget, you know, whatever. I mean, you see where I'm going with this. It's our compensation systems. We're overthinking things. We're trying to over engineer them. And at the end of the day, people look at us and go, Why are you doing this? This is nuts!

 

Teri Zipper: 29:21

Right. I think people are looking more for how do I get to the next level, right? So, you know, we should be focused more on promotion than on on merit.

 

David Turetsky: 29:34

And now with Colorado and others and the EU saying the career frameworks are necessary for people to understand what their career paths are. Now that might be the high common denominator that everybody has to follow and say, Okay, I'm going to do this for my entire company on a nationwide basis. So now I have to develop those things and be more honest about where your career path goes.

 

Teri Zipper: 29:57

Yeah

 

David Turetsky: 29:58

At least that's my hope.

 

Stacey Harris: 29:59

I think companies would be very surprised if they had, how many more employees they would keep if they had a, not just a career path and development and skills and all the tools that or all the training that you can take around it, but the idea that I have a vision of where I what I could do inside the organization.

 

David Turetsky: 30:14

Right!

 

Stacey Harris: 30:15

Not, not high performers, which we know does not work very well, because then you have low performers, and people don't want to, no one wants to be low performer. But the idea that I've got this, this map of things I could do in the organization, so it gives me a vision of what my opportunities are, right?

 

David Turetsky: 30:29

And I would argue with you that a low performer is probably a better person to be talking to about what, where your skills could be better utilized,

 

Stacey Harris: 30:36

yeah

 

David Turetsky: 30:37

than a high performer, because a high performer is doing great where they are. Take that low performer and say, Hey, what are your other passions? Where can I use you better? Because you're not doing well here, I might be able to redeploy you. Instead of spending the recruiting money and the recruiting time and the effort and the expense trying to go and find somebody else and how much more would that build into the way people feel about you as a company? By redeploying people.

 

Teri Zipper: 31:03

That's a great example of what you were talking about in that skill session, where IT people are high tech companies, right? They were the highest, is the last year in layoffs, but also one of the highest in hiring. So they're just trading. They're just swapping skills instead of sort of, well, let's figure out how we take these people that aren't doing good here and put them somewhere else in the organization, or figure out how we leverage their skills somewhere else in the business.

 

David Turetsky: 31:34

It's just disappointing. It really is.

 

Stacey Harris: 31:36

Yeah

 

David Turetsky: 31:36

And our and our knee jerk reaction to any economic news is, well, we got to lay off, you know, 10,000 people

 

Teri Zipper: 31:44

Yeah, and we have this great HR technology. Why aren't we able to figure this out?

 

David Turetsky: 31:51

Exactly, and then we probably will have to rehire them anyways later on. So,

 

Stacey Harris: 31:55

yeah. Well, I mean, what was worse about all of that is that, then they're doing that in some cases, to get the market's attention. So by laying people off, I get better, you know, ratings from from the investors, or ratings from, you know, the market. And, yeah, that's the really sad part about it, right? So sometimes it's not even driven by what's going on at the individual manager and employee level. I know, sorry, I didn't mean to leave us on a low note there.

 

David Turetsky: 32:20

I'm going to have to go eat my chocolate chip cookie and cry. Thank you so much, Sapient insights, I love you all. Stacey, you're wonderful. Susan, you're amazing. Teri, you're a star. I am so blessed to have you guys as friends and as well guests on our program. Thank you so much.

 

Teri Zipper: 32:45

Thank you for having us!

 

Stacey Harris: 32:46

Thank you for having us! We love it.

 

Teri Zipper: 32:47

We love you too.

 

Stacey Harris: 32:48

Yeah.

 

David Turetsky: 32:48

Aw it's a love fest here. If you can't tell it is a love fest here. And please get home safe. Thank you, and hopefully we'll talk to you soon.

 

Stacey Harris: 32:56

Sounds good!

 

David Turetsky: 32:56

All right. Take care, stay safe.

 

Announcer: 32:59

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