Danielle Bushen – HR Tech 2024 – Navigating Pay Transparency with People Analytics

Connect with Danielle:

• 

Connect with David:

• • 

• david.turetsky@salary.com

Connect with Dwight:

• • 

• dwight.brown@salary.com

Podcast Manager, Karissa Harris:

• HRDataLabs@salary.com

 

Production by Affogato Media

Resources:

• Salary.com Consulting practice
• Get Pay Right book
• HR Data Labs Season 8 Episode 15
• HR Data Labs Season 8 Episode 13

• “I think the world of pay transparency is moving in exactly the same direction that data privacy went.”

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 and we are recording live from the HR technology show in beautiful Mandalay Bay exposition center in Las Vegas, Nevada. Today, I have with me Danielle Buchen, and Danielle, why don't you tell people a little bit about you? Because you have a really cool background.

 

Danielle Bushen: 0:56

So I am currently the Global Head of HR data governance and stewardship at Sanofi.

 

David Turetsky: 1:01

Oh, my goodness! I love your job, by the way.

 

Danielle Bushen: 1:04

My job is very interesting. I get to figure out how to help people use their data better.

 

David Turetsky: 1:08

Oh, my God, I love you.

 

Danielle Bushen: 1:11

We had a fantastic session on Tuesday morning here at HR Tech talking about governance, and we had a packed house. It was amazing!

 

David Turetsky: 1:18

And it was my with my friend Teri Zipper, and I heard so many phenomenal things about that presentation.

 

Danielle Bushen: 1:24

Oh, thank you!

 

David Turetsky: 1:25

It was really good.

 

Danielle Bushen: 1:26

So before that, I ran people analytics for Royal Bank of Canada.

 

David Turetsky: 1:30

Wow!

 

Danielle Bushen: 1:31

So both of those organizations, Sanofi and RBC, are more than 90,000 employees, complex organizations, big matrices. Before that, I was in the consulting side for too long, more than more than two decades, and always working in HR products and HR data and definitions, figuring out how to help people with metrics. So I've seen the HR data world from lots of different angles over the years.

 

David Turetsky: 1:56

And that's a great perspective, because you're going to understand why it's a great perspective as we talk today, but before we get there, Danielle, what's one fun thing that no one knows about you? One fun thing that no one knows about you?

 

Danielle Bushen: 2:09

Oh, well, if you've looked at my LinkedIn profile, you know that I like to make jam in my spare time, and I actually have a jam company, so you might actually already know that. But another thing I do is I like to practice archery. So there's a little piece of me that's sort of, you know, a little bit Mocking Jay ish in the background.

 

David Turetsky: 2:30

Wow! There you go.

 

Danielle Bushen: 2:30

Yeah!

 

David Turetsky: 2:31

So you gonna be in next Hunger Games?

 

Danielle Bushen: 2:33

I highly doubt it. I am not that good.

 

David Turetsky: 2:36

Maybe a Marvel Avenger type?

 

Danielle Bushen: 2:38

Ha that would be awesome!

 

David Turetsky: 2:39

Yeah, it would be. Well, they're doing a lot of that, so you could!

 

Danielle Bushen: 2:44

You never know!

 

David Turetsky: 2:45

Yes, well, and that's the fun part of doing this podcast, is we get to hear these really cool things about people, and it humanizes everybody, and now we can talk about the fun stuff that we were talking about before.

 

Danielle Bushen: 2:56

Our day jobs?

 

David Turetsky: 2:57

Well, our passions, too.

 

Danielle Bushen: 2:59

Sure!

 

David Turetsky: 3:08

And so one of the concepts we were going to talk about was the intersection of people analytics and compensation, and how they can really help each other, how they can learn from each other, how they can grow together. I think that was really kind of the crux of that first question.

 

Danielle Bushen: 3:24

Yeah. I mean, look, the reality is, if you roll back the tape on people analytics, most of the people who started in the early days of people analytics came from Comp! That was the most quantitative part of HR.

 

David Turetsky: 3:35

Sure.

 

Danielle Bushen: 3:36

And the two disciplines have kind of diverged over the years a little bit. People Analytics has really moved a lot more towards the data science predictive world. Trying to understand, how do I leverage data to understand something new about the organization? Comp has really stayed close to its roots of how do I get the current pay rate right? How do I make sure that people are paid equitably, fairly? I think the time has come for those two friends to come back together. We have to be helping each other to say, what does pay look like in the modern world of work, in the world of gigs, in the world of continuing changing skills, people don't change pay only on a fixed schedule, right? The businesses like to plan budgets on a fixed schedule, and that makes imminent good sense, but we now have the capability with technology to start to think about that pay spend in aggregate, while managing the work experience and the way people get paid in real time, because that's the way work changes, in real time.

 

David Turetsky: 4:39

It's a continuum. It's never point in time this or point in time that, unless you're talking about the things that we force on it, like performance evaluations!

 

Danielle Bushen: 4:48

Yep. Or the one I really love is cost of living increases. I don't know about you, if you've been living in our current economic environment, cost of living increases are happening every day, but we have this notion that, oh, we're going to give you a cost of living adjustment in October or in January or at some fixed period of time. That's just not the reality of the way people experience the workplace anymore. And so I really think that there is an inflection point right now where comp has the opportunity to modernize, and I think people analytics can help them get there, it's no longer this sort of episodic once a year, I do market benchmarking. Once a year, I do salary range adjustments. The reality is, our job catalogs are changing all the time. The relationship between jobs and skills is hopefully growing and evolving all the time, and the way we think about pay should respond to that!

 

David Turetsky: 5:39

And to that point, you know, we always start with the process of, what's the job description, market price the job, and then do the analysis to see if people are doing well. Jobs are really, as you say, are evolving all the time. So how do you keep those artifacts, which are really compliance artifacts, and then help the process that you're talking about? Because that takes a lot of time

 

Danielle Bushen: 5:59

Well, and I think there's the potential. I was talking to one of the vendors here about their agent, their AI agent, that is helping the people manager think about their job and the skills they need when they're trying to go out and hire. And how do I not only think about that, that control mechanism, that compliance activity, of what grade is this job at what level of it? How is it described? How does it fit into my job catalog? But also, how do I go out and hire for a set of skills that's actually going to live with that person for the next 18 months as the job changes and develops and pay needs to respond to that model too. Of what do we think is going to happen with the value proposition of that skill set? Can I prepare for a skill based model where it's going to take a premium for now, but that premium may not be there forever, and we want that person to continue to learn and adapt

 

David Turetsky: 6:47

And if compensation is on top of every in ways that help them be the most flexible and deployable, employable person in our workforce that they can be. single one of those, we would never scale. So we would need, or need to have agents in the field, whether they're AI agents, or whether they're the HR generalist, the manager. Someone needs to help us think through what's going on with that job, what's going on with that manager, what's going on with that situation, with that employee. So if their skills do change, or if there's a value growth or shrinking, what do we do about that? Because we can't do that all ourselves.

 

Danielle Bushen: 7:31

We can't do it all ourselves. And as people managers, you know whether you're you know on the line in a bank or in a pharmaceutical company. It doesn't matter what industry you're in, you know the reality of what's going on day to day and the work you're trying to get done. That's where HR has this advisory role to play, whether we can bring the right data and insight around the marketplace to the table to help that person make informed choices quickly, and we're doing a really good job of that when it comes to things like identifying the talent pools, understanding the marketplace, understanding labor changes, but I don't know that we're always doing a great job of tying that back to market value yet in terms of the compensation piece, because it's disconnected in this annual cycle right now.

 

David Turetsky: 8:13

Well, I mean, there are a lot of companies that have not shared a lot of that information, right? They've held it very close to the vest.

 

Danielle Bushen: 8:19

Oh gosh, pay transparency.

 

David Turetsky: 8:21

Well, pay transparency is going to solve that only if they educate all of the stakeholders to a level which they can use it and which they can become more expert at it. But if you just send them their ranges and you say, these are the ranges for your jobs, you're not doing them any service. You're not helping them. You're just basically throwing it over the wall.

 

Danielle Bushen: 8:41

I completely agree. The importance of education, when you get to the idea of pay and pay ranges, is so critical. I'm sure many, many organizations have the same challenges that we see all the time. There's a range attached to a job. Well, that job was last updated 18 months ago. The salary range is at least nine months out of date. Maybe our grades aren't calibrated around the world consistently, and so a third of our people, or a quarter of our people, might be paid outside of range. Do we know if that's because we are responding to market or just because our control mechanisms aren't really meeting our needs anymore? This is the stuff of good data management and getting the foundations right.

 

David Turetsky: 9:19

I even go back a few steps before that to basically say to people, look in compensation in HR, we've been really guilty for a long time of throwing words at you you have no idea about. Like, what's a range spread? Who cares?

 

Danielle Bushen: 9:35

What's a comparatio?

 

David Turetsky: 9:38

Jinx, you owe me a beer! But, but like, that's like, we do this stuff to ourselves, and then we ask the manager, and the manager's like I have no idea what you just sent me. I don't understand this spreadsheet that you said. I don't know what range penetration means, what's a what's a midpoint progression. They don't care! I think in the context of pay transparency, we need to simplify our messages, we need to simplify our terminology, and we need to just be more honest and open and transparent and forthright with them as to, this is how we do what we do. This is why we do. This is why this person's graded there.

 

Danielle Bushen: 10:15

And I think agents, AI agents, or, you know, even the experts in the field can help a lot with that, because they you have the ability to speak in plain English. You can say to the employee directly or to the people manager. We have checked the market value of this job. Our data is current within whatever six weeks, 12 weeks, whatever your time frame is, and we know that the value of this job is currently X. You are paying Y? We would like to recommend that you adjust your pay scale. This person is falling behind market. You want to reward your best talent as competitively as you can afford to do.

 

David Turetsky: 10:52

Right.

 

Danielle Bushen: 10:52

That's the conversation that a manager is going to understand and that an employee is going to appreciate. If they feel like you are actively looking at, how are we paying you fairly and equitably. No employee is ever going to tell you they're overpaid.

 

David Turetsky: 11:04

No, no. The operative term is more, yeah. But I will go back to one of the things you say, which I think is really important. I've had managers who have challenged me on, you know, what's your market data? Where are you getting it from? Our competitors in there? If I hire this person, I'm hiring them from these three companies. I want to see that data. I want to know it. I want to believe it. I just spoke to my friend who works over at XYZ company, and they said they're hiring this for double! So comp, obviously, we use surveys, right? And we use the surveys, and sometimes they're old and sometimes they're updated, but now, because of transparency, we're also going to see what the posting data is so we know what the steady state employee can get paid from the surveys, and now we're seeing what the market is for those jobs on the on the on the market from looking at what these ranges are from job postings. So the two of those together should give us a better understanding, and then we can communicate that to managers. Or do you think that just complicates the entire scenario.

 

Danielle Bushen: 12:01

I think it complicates the math behind this scenario. I think it means that you really need to be looking at your internal market, your external market, your compression, all those great buzz words that live in the comp world, but we don't need to share all of that detail. What we need to do is tell the story of we've checked the market, we've looked at our internal comparisons, we see who's really excelling in role and bringing new skills to the table. And our best recommendation is this price point. That's the story they need. They need you to be a good advisor and to be able to confidently say you've checked those sources and it is current.

 

David Turetsky: 12:36

Right

 

Danielle Bushen: 12:37

And I think that's where modern technology can help HR bring many more data sources to the table, more in real time, than what we've been able to. We just couldn't keep pace with all of that before this is where technology can

 

David Turetsky: 12:48

Well, we need to get that trusted advisor help us. moniker. They need to believe us, so that they don't force us to do the math in front of them, show them our sources and whatnot, because then we're constantly chasing it.

 

Danielle Bushen: 13:03

But if you think back like it used to be really, really common for companies to have a peer group, 12 15 companies, some small number that were this comparable size, comparable industry, comparable geography, and that was your pay market. The reality of today's very flexible workforce is so much broader that we have to be thinking differently about benchmarking against different types of target markets. And if we can do that well, then we will get that trust and confidence, because people will feel like we're actually saying, Look, we know that people come from these types of places.

 

David Turetsky: 13:36

Right. But go back though to the people analytics comparison. I worked in a world where we did have benchmarks for turnover. We had benchmarks for a lot of things. No one ever asked me. You know, is our competitive group, you know, in that turnover.

 

Danielle Bushen: 13:50

Right.

 

David Turetsky: 13:50

But they do it for comp because they feel more personal about comp, even though all those other metrics really matter. And you mentioned industry, you mentioned geography, all those things. Yes, we can hire an accountant from anywhere, unless it's a derivative products accountant, and we can only hire those from the investment banks, things like that. So I mean, I agree with you, but I worry a little bit that we're using different sources and we're telling different stories and that might confuse them as well.

 

Danielle Bushen: 14:23

I think that's a reasonable concern. I think we need to make sure that we are explaining the value proposition and the reality of where the company is going in a way that says these are the jobs and skills that are most critical to us as an organization. And for those jobs, we've looked at a targeted

 

David Turetsky: 14:38

Right marketplace that is very relevant, and for these other jobs that we know we need to have done well. But that are also being done well in many different types of companies, we can look at a broader marketplace, and we should look at a broader marketplace, because that's where we're going to find the best people to join our organization. Absolutely and actually getting cross-pollination from other industries as well as maybe from other geographies, might be better for us, because then it's not the same old thinking that we've had for years.

 

Danielle Bushen: 15:08

And you look at the way it gets done. I mean, I happen to sit in Canada. Most of the team that I work with sits in Europe. I have people that I collaborate with in Latin America, in Asia every day!

 

David Turetsky: 15:20

Right

 

Danielle Bushen: 15:21

The way I get paid is based on the market where I am living.

 

David Turetsky: 15:25

Right

 

Danielle Bushen: 15:26

But that doesn't change the fact that I collaborate with people all over the world, and we need to be able to communicate pay in a way that makes sense for that global workforce.

 

David Turetsky: 15:32

That's true

 

Announcer: 15:34

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: 15:45

Now, let's take pay transparency a step further, because obviously there are differences in pay transparency around the US. Now there's the pay transparency directive from the EU which is a little more rigorous than some of the others, and especially some of the others in the US, like Rhode Island. Oh, if they ask for it, you can give it to them.

 

Danielle Bushen: 16:02

Right

 

David Turetsky: 16:03

So our advice has always been, use the most rigorous regulation and make that be your standard, so that when the regulators come knocking, you're using even a higher standard than they're requiring. What's your opinion on pay transparency and being compliant?

 

Danielle Bushen: 16:25

I think the world of pay transparency is moving in exactly the same direction that data privacy went.

 

David Turetsky: 16:30

Yes!

 

Danielle Bushen: 16:31

Data privacy started with certain countries having more rigorous standards around the rights of the individual,

 

David Turetsky: 16:37

That's right.

 

Danielle Bushen: 16:38

And it grew, and now you've got people who are concerned about GDPR and the California legislation and different pieces that are kind of those most rigorous standards. And global multinationals tend to do exactly that they adhere to that highest level standard. And that puts them in a good place from a compliance perspective. It also lets you tell a great story around transparency!

 

David Turetsky: 16:58

Right

 

Danielle Bushen: 16:59

And I think pay is going in the same place. It's, you know, there is a level of rigor that needs to be disclosed around, how do we manage pay? That does not mean you're sharing everybody's individual salaries.

 

David Turetsky: 17:09

And I've actually had questions on that

 

Danielle Bushen: 17:12

Of course! Because people hear what they too, by the way. want to hear. It means that you are being rigorous and transparent about how you're managing that budget, around how you've benchmarked the competitiveness of the role, around how you've checked to make sure there's not bias in the way you're delivering pay to emerging talent versus experienced hires from the outside that you're understanding how you're managing the spend.

 

David Turetsky: 17:35

Don't you think that all comes from being transparent in the policies and procedures and plan documentation again, got to dumb it down, and I don't mean that in a nasty way. We really have to take out the those terminologies that trip us up, but make it so that everybody understands the level playing field. They understand the basis why by which their managers and their leaders are making decisions.

 

Danielle Bushen: 17:57

For sure, the documentation is critical. You've got to have a good, robust set of data behind the scenes that informs how you publish ranges, or whatever level of disclosure you're going to offer. Maybe it's going to be at a broad, branded range level. Maybe it's going to be more, you know, a job, family level of detail. But that's about changing culture.

 

David Turetsky: 18:16

Yeah.

 

Danielle Bushen: 18:17

And the culture part, I think, is, is the piece, I mean, everybody knows the the adage, culture strategy for breakfast. If we want to change the way people think about pay, it starts with that culture of of talking about pay. And that's partly geographic. You know, people are much more transparent about the way they're paid in North America than they are in certain other parts of the world. But it's also generational. And yeah, there are certainly leaders in our organizations who have grown up in the world. If you don't talk about pay, it's the secret that you guard closely. And I mean, my kids, who are now in the workforce, talk to their friends all the time!

 

David Turetsky: 18:55

I know

 

Danielle Bushen: 18:56

And it's just different worlds. So that culture of how much do we publicly disclose? How much do we actually want our employees to understand how they're paid and why they're paid the way they are, how that relates to our business strategy? That's huge! And if you can set the tone for that conversation and that cultural standard for your organization, then you can align your transparency policy and documentation to that in a way that actually resonates across the organization, regardless of where you work and what generation you belong to.

 

David Turetsky: 19:27

What's fascinating is, if you look at some municipalities around the US, and it's probably true in other countries as well, they publish all the city, all the municipal, all the town pay. And it's somewhat shocking, because you said you get to see wow, that that city manager is making$180,000 plus, you know, blah, blah, blah, yeah, but, but that's, that's the rules that they have to follow. That's not cultural. They would love it if they didn't have to disclose that stuff! But they've been living in it for a long time, and it is just the way it is. And so, I'm hoping, and this is, this is kind of not really a prayer, but I hope that we can get over the fact that there's so much emotion, there's so much self worth built into that number, or those set of numbers, that we can move on from it and really start focusing on the real thing that matters, which is making sure that everybody's paid fairly. Which is the kind of, I think, is the basis of what paid transparency has always been.

 

Danielle Bushen: 20:26

It should be, and it partners really, really well with pay for performance, right? Because if you've got the transparency around basic pay and delivery and what does fairness look like, and then you can incent people to think about, how do I excel in the role I'm in today with the skills I'm building for the future. Now you're creating that culture of, if I'm looking for more money, that also comes with I need new skills. I need new ways of delivering value.

 

David Turetsky: 20:52

Well, and that's where I'm gonna go next, because, and by the way, I know that we had a bunch of questions that you wanted me to ask you, but I really need to ask you these questions because you're really brilliant and it's really fun to do this! Think about the world of merit and the world of pay for performance and how pitiful the results are usually. First of all, managers and employees hate the process of performance management. It's just not working. It doesn't it doesn't do what it needs to do, because people can't be honest with each other about performance and how that impacts pay. And then the second part is, how do you differentiate on 3%?

 

Danielle Bushen: 21:27

And that's exactly where I was going to go first is in a world of 3% 2% 0% budget,

 

David Turetsky: 21:33

Exactly!

 

Danielle Bushen: 21:34

I mean, that's like the impossible task, especially if you have an organization that doesn't have very much pay at risk, right? If you if you have a very differentiated incentive model where there's somewhere between 10 and 35% of salary at risk all the time, then you can still create that differentiation around performance. But if you're living in a world of 1% 2% budgets, and you've got maybe a 10% bonus pool, what are you going to do? You're going to change somebody's bonus from 800 to $1,000 do you think they're going to notice that much?

 

David Turetsky: 22:04

Well, and think about the demographics of the US. Most of the demographics are hourly workers. They're not professionals. They're not exempts, and so if you are then incentivizing them because they're usually not bonus eligible, if you're incentivizing them on merit, really?

 

Danielle Bushen: 22:21

It's not going to do much for you. However, I think if you are thinking about your total workforce and your total rewards program, more broadly now, you can start to pull on

 

David Turetsky: 22:30

Exactly some other levers of control, things like, what new opportunities do I get for learning? How do I get to experience new types of work based on my past performance, and you can really demonstrate as part of your culture that you are investing in your workforce beyond just the paycheck. Right.

 

Danielle Bushen: 22:49

And I think that's the other piece of the story for that, coming back to our conversation about what does the comp team have to do with the people analytics team. People Analytics has got a great read on recognition and, you know, engagement and satisfaction. And if you can tie those pieces together around a total reward view now, you can start to pull new levers of control beyond just the paycheck.

 

David Turetsky: 23:11

And let's put in that, because you had mentioned this, it's not just about the total reward. It's also about, as you mentioned, skills and education, but it's also about career, right? And like Colorado, put in their career framework requirement, which I love, and I applaud Colorado for it, but that should be table stakes. Why aren't we doing more to publish? And I'm going to go back to merit on this, but why don't we do more to publish what career frameworks look like? Because the best thing you can do for someone, not only, as you say, is show them their career, show them you care about them, show them you want them to grow and and to be able to move in your organization and give them the path to do it.

 

Danielle Bushen: 23:50

So I mean, we all talk about the skills based organization and career pathing and nudges and all these great things, we're back into the HR jargon story. But I do you think that we need to get thoughtful about building sort of obvious career paths like here are the five steps you can take if you want to develop in the world of finance, or if you want to develop as a data scientist or an oil and gas engineer, I don't know, pick your topic. The reality is, most of us don't follow those obvious paths.

 

David Turetsky: 24:22

Sure

 

Danielle Bushen: 24:22

We move laterally and we experience lots of different things over the course of our career. And being able to tell those stories from within HR, around the ways that people learn, the lateral opportunities that people get, I think that's a huge value proposition for HR, and being able to track those paths in new ways. And again, I think technology can help us draw those out across the organization, and help people think in a more curious and creative way around what career path can really look like. And for me, it's always lifelong learning, right?

 

David Turetsky: 24:54

Oh, that's great. But the problem is that managers usually get tribal about this. They usually get a very, maybe the word is jealous?

 

Danielle Bushen: 25:03

They protect their best assets!

 

David Turetsky: 25:05

Exactly

 

Danielle Bushen: 25:05

They want that successor to stay with them.

 

David Turetsky: 25:07

Yes, and that means that they're basically choking the career the people they need and want the most to succeed.

 

Danielle Bushen: 25:15

I think that comes back to good leadership. I mean, sure, yes, it's always easier to hold people close that are helping you be as effective as possible.

 

David Turetsky: 25:23

And make you look good too!

 

Danielle Bushen: 25:25

Sure, but you will look better if you are seeding the organization as a whole with great talent and as leaders, we all need to be thinking that way every day. It's not just how do I teach the people who are reporting to me, it's how do I teach the people who are adjacent to me, how do I give people exposures and understanding of what's driving our business strategy right now that will help them be more successful, whether they report to me or not!

 

David Turetsky: 25:50

Going back to though the merit problem, to me, it comes down to being able to give them an increase that's useful to their lives, like if the budget 3% Just give them the freaking 3% don't worry about the differentiation. But then actually have a conversation with them in that process about what do they need to do in order to move on, in order to leave me as a boss, in order to get to that next level so they can get paid more. To me, that's the better part of the conversation, because if somebody wants more, they're not going to get it in this job, because we're only going to give them 3% a year if that's warranted. But the next job is going to increase their value. It's going to increase their pay. Maybe they get other promotional opportunities beyond that, but also maybe there's incentive targets on that.

 

Danielle Bushen: 26:35

Well and as jobs change and evolve, those pads are going to become less obvious. I used to be I was an intermediate accountant. I became a senior accountant. I became an accounting manager. Sad that we always pick on accountants for these examples, I should choose something else. But in the new ways of working as we think about understanding and learning how to leverage AI to help me in my role, bringing those things to the table may actually shift me away from my core competencies as an accountant and bring new things to the table that say, Hey, I can add value to this company, in our Forecasting team, in our sales organization, yes, I trained as an accountant, but there are things I know about how to look at the numbers that could help other parts of the organization.

 

David Turetsky: 27:18

But, I'm sorry, I have to go back to this, but one of the problems with that is, is that that only works if the data that we have about you is accurate.

 

Danielle Bushen: 27:26

Absolutely.

 

David Turetsky: 27:27

We have your skills, that we also have your passions and we also have your wants. Like, I'm an economist, I'm an econometrician I love taking numbers and running regressions on them and things like that. And you know, if you know me, you know that my passion is people analytics and things like that. Well, did anybody ever ask me that? Did anybody ever say, Well, David, what are the three things you'd love to do if you had the opportunity? And I think we miss a major opportunity in the ESS portion of our HRMS is not only asking them to keep their address up to date, but keep your passions up to date! Your skills up to date. I could have read a book and said, Oh my god, I'd love to go into, you know, being a generalist, by the way, that would never happen. I love you generalists, but I'm a comp guy and HRIT guy. But you know what I mean? I mean we could, our passions could change on a dime, or our priorities have to change, and our data is just not there collecting it.

 

Danielle Bushen: 28:19

So I think that the world of the HRIS vendors is changing to respond to that, in the sense that all of these products now have the ability to track what projects have you worked on, what job are you in, what are my interests and skills? You can start to bring those things to the table. The tricky part is getting people to actually use it. And if you look around, particularly in the professional workforce, we all have great LinkedIn profiles. We look beautiful on paper, on LinkedIn. Why? Because LinkedIn is actually delivering us back feedback and value from that updating. And so we're incented to make those updates. That's what the companies need to be doing, is saying, Okay, what gigs can I expose you to? What training can I expose you to? The more you tell me about yourself, the more I can help you in your career, right? And if that feedback loop is there, I really believe that people will start to keep their own profiles up to date.

 

David Turetsky: 29:12

But Danielle, I updated it last year! And, yeah, I just got divorced, but I haven't had time to update that in the system. Or, yeah, I moved because we had to sell the house. But I know I'm in a different state now, but okay, I'll get to it eventually! By the way, those things happened to me. So I mean, that's one of the problems that that we have that, yes, all those things you talked about are really super important, and it's really great that the HRMS are doing that. Are we taking advantage of it?

 

Danielle Bushen: 29:40

I mean, I don't think we're taking enough advantage of it yet, but we are also not taking advantage of what we already know. Like when you did that move, because you had to sell your house and move to a new state, I guarantee you that we had to do a filing for that and that your taxes had to be updated. So why didn't HR just make that update on your profile for you? Because we actually already knew the answer. Right, right? Those are the, those are the interoperable connectivity opportunities in the foundations of our data that we just need to get better at.

 

David Turetsky: 30:06

Yeah, but, but there was a whole tax structure change in the Trump administration when they updated withholding taxes, and how many people changed their W4, and it impacted their taxes?

 

Danielle Bushen: 30:19

Right

 

David Turetsky: 30:19

And that could have been where we sent out a note to everybody, saying, hey, the tax law just changed. You're not going to see the same refund that you would have thought last year, because your tax situation is, may have changed. Okay, we can't say would have changed, but may have changed.

 

Danielle Bushen: 30:35

May have changed.

 

David Turetsky: 30:35

You've got to go in an update. Who did that? Nobody!

 

Danielle Bushen: 30:39

Yeah, that's a shame.

 

David Turetsky: 30:40

But it impacted every, I imagine there are still people who haven't changed their w4 now, and that was years ago! That may have been six years ago? And so what I'm saying is, is that we really stink at doing the most basic things that are necessary and impactful to our paychecks!

 

Danielle Bushen: 30:59

Yep

 

David Turetsky: 31:00

And that's why I worry about the world of compensation and people analytics trying to make too much out of the data that's in our databases, because it's still dirty.

 

Danielle Bushen: 31:14

So look, data is never going to be completely clean. That's a that's a futile goal, but garbage in, garbage out, is also true.

 

David Turetsky: 31:22

Sure.

 

Danielle Bushen: 31:22

And so to the extent that we want to take advantage of modern technology, we really do have to challenge ourselves to get it as clean as we can. To be as on top of the current information as we can, because that's what buys us the leverage to build that trust we were talking about earlier, to have that good conversation with the employee.

 

David Turetsky: 31:40

Right

 

Danielle Bushen: 31:41

That means we got to make it easy enough for the manager to do it. And I think that takes us right back to where we started the conversation, and those agents can help us, because that means I don't have to know the 27 different versions of the jargon and the compa ratio and all that other detail. I've got an agent saying, Hey, your data looks to be out of date. Can you get this up to date today, please, and prompt them with the right screen. They don't go searching through 30 clicks to get to the thing they need to do.

 

David Turetsky: 32:06

Or they could text, or the agent could text them and say, Hey, I see that you're how I see that you you go every day to a different location. Or you go, you're going to a new location is, you know, the place you sleep. The AI overlords, did you update your home address? Did you move? Because if you did, hey, by the way, that'll impact your payroll. Maybe that's a little too invasive.

 

Danielle Bushen: 32:29

That's gonna feel very invasive to a lot of people. And I think there's an interesting question there of, what right does the employer have to know where you're going every day? Did we get permission to go and look at that? Now we're into my other day job of looking at data governance. What are we allowed to know about you, and what are we not allowed to know?

 

David Turetsky: 32:46

Right

 

Danielle Bushen: 32:46

Within the boundaries of what we're allowed to know and what we can support in the workplace, we absolutely should be asking those questions. We just need to be thoughtful about what data do we have rights to, what don't we have rights to.

 

David Turetsky: 32:56

And what, what? What questions can we legally ask? And what should we I mean, but that that also

 

Danielle Bushen: 33:00

Yes goes back to the training of the AI and making sure that it knows how to do what it does. And maybe that's another bot that makes sure that the other bots, you know, keeping compliant. We had such a funny conversation here at HR Tech with the agents were talking to the other agents between all the different vendors!

 

David Turetsky: 33:18

Right. Exactly. Yeah. 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 Isn't that fascinating? call today. Well, I had a conversation before with somebody, and they're like, yeah, there's, there's agents that actually make sure the other agents are doing the right thing, and they're kind of policing, making sure that, you know, the agent is saying the right things or doing the right things. And one of the fascinating things I was talking about with one of the other guests was they said that there was an agent that called bull, pardon my French, another agent and said, No, that's not the right answer. It's an invalid answer, giving, you know, make sure that you have the right data. And I think they use the term hallucination, AI, suffering from hallucination. And you can challenge the AI, and it will say, Yeah, I made that up. It's scary.

 

Danielle Bushen: 34:25

There's a piece of me that just wants to learn more about that world. To say, are we feeding the right fundamental data set into it? Are we training these things the right way? Have we got clean enough data that we can train it to reflect our policy, our practices, our controls? Have we documented differences in policy between business lines or between countries with a level of granularity that will allow that agent to be effective?

 

David Turetsky: 34:50

That's right. And do we store it in a place where, okay, where everybody has access to it, where everybody knows the rules and the AI can go to that as being the source of truth, because that's not, that's a lot of stuff isn't in the HRMS. We don't keep our policies in the HRMS, and they change so fast, not just because regulation, but, you know, we make a different decision.

 

Danielle Bushen: 35:14

Or common practice, right? There's always this issue of, what does the policy say and what happens every day on the floor.

 

David Turetsky: 35:19

Right

 

Danielle Bushen: 35:20

And for me this, some of this goes back to just good process design.

 

David Turetsky: 35:24

Yes.

 

Danielle Bushen: 35:25

And the Canadianness of me is showing up as I talk about processes.

 

David Turetsky: 35:28

Yes, I wasn't gonna bring it up.

 

Danielle Bushen: 35:30

Oh, it's okay. At some point I'll talk about something, and then people will really hear it.

 

David Turetsky: 35:35

Organization

 

Danielle Bushen: 35:37

exactly with a Zed.

 

David Turetsky: 35:38

Yes.

 

Danielle Bushen: 35:41

What was I trying to say? Process design. You we you roll back the tape. People were trying to figure out basic RPA automation, 10 15, 20 years ago. It was all about understanding the happy path for the process. What does it look like if everything goes smoothly?

 

David Turetsky: 35:55

Right

 

Danielle Bushen: 35:56

And then what does it look like when you end up on that side branch of oh, there's this exception, there's that exception, there's the next little thing. Oh, wait, in Vietnam, we need to do this thing differently. There's a 13th month of pay in Brazil! All those nuances, all of that granular detail still applies. And it is getting good at understanding those exception paths and documenting them that will allow those agents to be phenomenally capable on our behalf. So I think about skills that are needed in HR. We need better process design engineers. We need black belt Six Sigma people who are really able to say disambiguate and to say, what do you actually mean here? Is that the same as this other thing, or is that something different? Why is that exception there? Is that a habit? Does that exception need to be there? Is it regulatory? Those are the questions that we have to get really thoughtful on. And we are our own worst enemy sometimes, oh, you're not allowed to do that. Oh, that's a regulatory requirement. But when you push and you peel the onion and you say, actually, there's no limitation there, this could be standardized. Should it be standardized? Those are the high value questions we all need to be asking to really deploy technology to its best effect.

 

David Turetsky: 37:05

Totally agree. And it seems like there could be an industry, a cottage industry, that gets created that enables that to happen from a consulting perspective, because once it's designed, it should be able to keep itself up to date because you built the right process in place.

 

Danielle Bushen: 37:24

I actually disagree with you.

 

David Turetsky: 37:25

Oh, please.

 

Danielle Bushen: 37:26

So I'm going to challenge you on that one. So when we started to deploy shared services at scale, we created an environment in HR where we have people who are really phenomenal at following the process and executing the process the way it was designed. But those people lost the ability to see the process design piece, because they don't live in that world anymore. They're in the execution side of the organization, in the ops organization. What we thought we could do is design it once and hand it to ops and leave it and in fact, you can't. You need those experts who are continually redesigning, working with the technology, and I think that's where our investment is, is that skill set needs to become a core competency within HR to facilitate the operations being as effective as they can be. So there's this ongoing new capability in HR that is much more digitally literate, much more about business analytics, process analytics, that has not been a part of the way. You know, people go into HR because they want to help people that's that's not the same skill set at all.

 

David Turetsky: 38:27

Absolutely, okay. So I agree with you there. But is that a shared service, or is that something that is owned within the corporate world, and that kind of gets parsed out to the different countries to make sure that they are keeping the regulations and all the processes up to speed. Because, to your point, it's a dynamic world. It's a dynamic or organizations are dynamic. We're merging, we're acquiring, we're divesting all the time. So are they a shared service and a shared cost? Or they really have to be deployed all throughout the organization?

 

Danielle Bushen: 39:00

I think it's an organizational wide thing. And if you think about like the small company that maybe operates in a couple of states or has, you know, a workforce of 1000 people, this is going to be less critical path for them, because they don't have as much of that granular difference in how things play out.

 

David Turetsky: 39:16

Sure

 

Danielle Bushen: 39:17

But you get into a large multinational, you have to understand the reality of the vendor products that you're working with, of the differences in those products, how they talk to each other. You also have to have line of sight to the regulatory environment. And so now you're into a collaborative conversation with your local Employee Relations team, with your subject matter experts in comp, with all of these different groups, and that that ability to bring together the whole story, I think, is a core competency that has to stay in HR and be domain driven.

 

David Turetsky: 39:47

But, but, I guess this is a question about your situation. Big companies like Sanofi can afford that, or should be able to afford that.

 

Danielle Bushen: 39:55

Should be able to

 

David Turetsky: 39:56

Because that's that's going to have to be table stakes from what you described, in being able to make sure these things are successful. And if they don't, it's going to be more lawsuits, more compliance issues, more process problems.

 

Danielle Bushen: 40:16

Regulatory fines, all of all of those risks are very real.

 

David Turetsky: 40:20

That's a balance!

 

Danielle Bushen: 40:21

Well, and I think some of that is about good good technology management and good data management. You know, we, we are here at HR tech, looking at all these great, shiny tools that our vendors are trying to sell us. When we buy those tools, it is incumbent upon us as the buyer to be thinking about, what's my total cost of ownership?

 

David Turetsky: 40:40

Right

 

Danielle Bushen: 40:40

How do I plan for maintaining the process, the configuration, the data quality, and those things are hard to plan for upfront, because you don't really know how big they are, and the vendor will always tell you it's super easy. So add an extra factor, add add some capability in there to own it and make sure that you're maintaining it on an ongoing basis for whatever size of business you are.

 

David Turetsky: 41:04

Totally agree, and it either takes head count internally or it takes hiring good consultants to help you, but it's going to be a long term relationship. It's not a one and done. I see this all the time, and you, I'm sure you have as well, where as you say, we hire a technology they say it's going to save you half a head, or two heads, or whatever, and then you realize, oh no, no, no. When they said save they mean we have to add those people, because now we have this other whole thing that we have to maintain outside of our HRMS. And yes, it takes feeds of data, but we have to make sure everything works in that and it's just not that easy, because I still have to do my day job. It's not taking a job away. It's now adding more to me.

 

Danielle Bushen: 41:42

Well, and some of that is about thoughtful planning, right? If you've got good interoperability of your data across your tech stack, if you've selected your technology products so that they are designed to talk to each other, that helps!

 

David Turetsky: 41:54

Sure

 

Danielle Bushen: 41:54

But it doesn't take away the administration. And hopefully, if you're using the technology

 

David Turetsky: 41:56

No. well, you have actually taken work out of the broader ecosystem for people managers, for line managers, we've made the activities of running our people and our workforce easier collectively. But that doesn't necessarily mean we've got a smaller headcount in HR. It's not about HR efficiency. It's about workforce efficiency, and that isn't necessarily a savings you're going to see in the admin of HR itself. You're going to drive a better work experience for the organization as a whole. Absolutely. So there's better outcomes there, but it may not cost less.

 

Danielle Bushen: 42:30

May not cost less.

 

David Turetsky: 42:40

I think we can leave it there, because we that that that actually is a good point to make, and kind of just drop the mic and walk away. Because everybody believes that they can save a bundle of money, and every vendor says that it's just not true.

 

Danielle Bushen: 42:55

Hey, if you can get a better work experience, to me, that's worth more than everything else.

 

David Turetsky: 42:59

So you mean, we can have a life after that, right?

 

Danielle Bushen: 43:01

Wouldn't that be nice?

 

David Turetsky: 43:02

Yes, so we can make jam, or we can follow other passions that we have.

 

Danielle Bushen: 43:07

Exactly true.

 

David Turetsky: 43:08

Danielle, thank you so much.

 

Danielle Bushen: 43:09

Great talking to you.

 

David Turetsky: 43:09

It's been a pleasure. I've learned a lot, and I appreciate you challenging me, because I love that. I love being wrong. I learn a lot from being wrong.

 

Danielle Bushen: 43:18

We all learn every day.

 

David Turetsky: 43:20

And it's a wonderful thing!

 

Danielle Bushen: 43:21

Great to be here.

 

David Turetsky: 43:22

Thank you very much. Take care and stay safe.

 

Announcer: 43:25

That was the HR Data Labs podcast. If you liked the episode, please subscribe. And if you know anyone that might like to hear it, please send it their way. Thank you for joining us this week, and stay tuned for our next episode. Stay safe.