NYCA Spring Panel – Tackling the New Complexities of Compensation Planning

Connect with Sean:

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Connect with Jackie:

• 

Connect with KC's:

• 

Connect with Dwight:

• 
• dwight.brown@salary.com

Connect with David:

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• david.turetsky@salary.com

Podcast Manager, Karissa Harris:

• HRDataLabs@salary.com

 

Production by Affogato Media

Resources:

• Real-time Job Postings Salary Data
• HR Data Labs Season 7 Episode 20
• HR Data Labs Season 7 Episode 18

• “We have to train our managers and our leaders on how to talk about [compensation plans] to the populations within our organizations.”
• “I think compensation planning will become more cyclical—three or four times a year. . . . I think that will help with the employee experience and with the manager experience.”

Announcer: 0:02

Here's an experiment for you. Take passionate experts in human resource technology, invite cross industry experts from inside and outside HR, mix in what's happening in people analytics today. Give them the technology to connect, hit record for their discussions into a beaker, mix thoroughly. And voila, you get the HR Data Labs podcast, where we explore the impact of data and analytics to your business. We may get passionate, and even irreverent, that count on each episode challenging and enhancing your understanding of the way people data can be used to solve real world problems. Now, here's your host, David Turetsky.

 

David Turetsky: 0:47

to talk about the complexities of compensation planning, but you can't talk about compensation planning without talking about the world of pay and transparency and inflation, other things that not only have we been dealing with, but we're struggling with. If you have any questions, you can interrupt us. So it's okay, we can flex like that. We do have some time at the end for other questions. If you want to hold your questions. It's totally cool. But why don't we start with introducing the people on the panel. So my name is David Turetsky. I am the CHRO and Vice President of Consulting at Salary.com. If anybody ever asked me if I ever wanted to be a CHRO, I told them, they are crazy, I would never want that. I'm a compensation person and have been for more than 35 years. In the latest couple jobs. I was with ADP and I built the ADP Data Cloud. So I did a lot of people analytics. And I've been talking a lot about people analytics. And you know that that goes a long way until you lose your job. And then you start consulting around people analytics. And I'm sure a lot of you can relate. But then I got, my company, Turetsky Consulting got acquired by Salary.com. And I've been there for a year and actually two and a half years. But the next person, Sean, why don't you give an introduction?

 

Sean Luitjens: 2:05

So I'm the General Manager of Total Rewards at Visier. So known for people analytics and we've expanded into the total reward space. Been in comp and ben more in the software development side for not quite 35 years, since last millennium, basically from product Dev, basically the nerd side of the house, to building tools, etc. I've never been a practitioner, frankly, that job just looks like it sucks. You guys have to deal with all the people and everything around those pieces. So I build tools based on what you guys need. So and we're excited to be here. So as we expand out getting feedback from you all around our space.

 

David Turetsky: 2:44

And thank you for sponsoring.

 

Sean Luitjens: 2:45

Oh, you're welcome!

 

David Turetsky: 2:46

Jackie. You're next.

 

Jackie Rubin: 2:47

Hi, everyone, Jackie Rubin. I'm a consultant with the Willis Towers Watson, which is a large global human resources consulting firm. I focus on compensation. So helping companies and organizations design job frameworks, salary structures, incentive plan designs, basically all those frameworks and governance and administration tools that you all use to help manage compensation in your organizations. And I'm really excited to be here today!

 

David Turetsky: 3:14

Thank you, Jackie. KC, how about you?

 

KC Weinraub: 3:16

I'm the practitioner. So I work at a company called eHealth. Head of total rewards, we have about 2000 employees. They're nationally remote based. So they're all over the country, which obviously includes a whole lot of complexities. I had a nice little tenure at Morgan Stanley. And then my favorite place to work was at Ralph Lauren with Jeff over there. And that's pretty much my history. I do want to pause for a moment. And you know, not talk comp but bring it right back with David and everybody else Happy Purim. Purim was this last weekend. Why do you care that it's Purim?

 

David Turetsky: 3:56

That is a brilliant representation. By the Well, I find Purim to be a funny Jewish holiday that aligns to performance manage. Alright, so the story goes, there's this king, let's call him Mr. CEO. And the king had an advisor, let's call him Mr. CFO. And the advisor was given some bad information, had a real bias against this one department. And we know we don't like bias. So he basically said I want to get rid of this department. I'm going to tell the CEO some stuff he'll buy into it. Along comes Miss Queen, HR. And her uncle, Mr. Legal, and they come and they talk to the CEO. Explain what a calibration session is, get some alternative opinions. And ultimately, the CEO says man, I just got the worst advice from the CFO. He was going to make the fire this whole group of people and instead I'm just going to fire him and keep the culture I wanted in my org. way, the story is a lot darker than that. But every year we celebrate the fact that that group, that department didn't get fired, quote unquote. Good one, KC, I'd actually never heard it put that way. But that's actually now I'll use that. That's really good. I'll of course, quote you on that.

 

KC Weinraub: 5:21

I mean, the whole point of this, obviously, is fair and equitable practices, right? Eliminating bias from the equation. So enjoy the cute story.

 

David Turetsky: 5:30

That's awesome. That's awesome. But it actually sets us up well for talking about context, because a lot of those things do happen. And I'll start with then performance management, talking about some of the more interesting things that are going on in the world of performance management. Because performance obviously feeds into compensation planning, to a great extent, because a lot of us believe in pay for performance, or a lot of the companies we work for do or at least they see they do. Because performance management, as we know is everybody's favorite activity. Its employees favorite activity. It's manager's favorite activity. And so if you've ever been a part of it, the best thing you've ever gotten is that invitation from your boss that says, Hey, do you have time next Monday? I want to talk or worse on Friday afternoon, and we're gonna sit down and talk about your performance for last year. Oh, this is the first time we've talked about that in 12 months. That's great. Let's sit down. What happens at that conversation? Our expectations normally aligned? No, they're never aligned. Because that conversation should be happening often. And so a lot of the context that I'll set when it comes to performance management, especially when it comes to compensation planning is when you go in to make your merit decisions. A lot of those decisions are seen as subjective because they're not based on the facts of how you actually perform throughout the year. Usually, there's that thing called recency effect. Does anybody know what that is? Yeah, a lot of us do. Because it's whatever you did lately, or at least within the last quarter, or if you're doing this in January, or February, could even be after the new year, maybe you had too much to drink on December 31st and you came in late on January 2, and that was what your boss or you're doing merit or you're doing bonuses, that's probably what will affect it. And so let's move on from performance management, which by the way, hasn't really seen a major change in many, many years. Some companies are actually going to check ins on a weekly basis. And they're saying that there's enormous amounts of conversation that happen, and it creates that air of non recency effect. But I will tell you that managers and employees tend to get sick of talking to each other that much, and then it goes to every two weeks. And every three weeks every month, that becomes every quarter. Now, I'll tell you every quarter is not bad. It's better than once a year. But still you lose that recency effect. And it's okay. Some other contexts. What was inflation doing last year? It was high, but actually, it was coming down, right? It wasn't as high as earlier in the year, when did we set our merit budgets? Mid Year, right? So mid year was the inflation higher or lower, it was still a little higher. And so expectations that people had coming into the new year, were higher, but we were setting higher budgets. And then came the end of the year, the Fed started easing, things started coming down. So context being set, the people's expectations may be misaligned. We're gonna talk a little bit about that. And so the last thing I want to talk about is regulations and laws. I'm not a lawyer, although there is a lawyer at ADP, whose name is literally David Turetsky. And I got some of the most fun emails you can possibly get, of course, I would delete, I would send it to him and then delete both copies. But the chuckle you get from actually opening up one of those emails, never goes away. And now that I'm a CHRO, actually get those emails so. So that context was wonderful. But you've lived or been swimming in a world of regulation that has completely upset the, the whole market, as you know it in the world, especially in New York City. But in the world of New York, as well as Connecticut, and other places, where now we have to be more open and honest about what we pay for a starting role. And so we'll talk about how that affects the world of compensation planning as well. Because it's not going away. Ever. It's codified. And so this is backdrop, we're going to talk about what's been going on last year this year and where we see things going in the future around competition planning, okay. And so now let's talk to our experts on the panel. And it's not just about me, and the first thing we're going to talk about is the three things that surprised us in the world of pay. And specifically we're talking about pay and how it impacts compensation planning? And I'm gonna start with Jackie, because you've seen a lot of things from a lot of your clients, what things surprised you in the world of compensation planning and pay in 2023? One or two?

 

Jackie Rubin: 10:14

Yeah. So I think here in New York, the pay transparency law was the first one after Colorado, I think a lot of us were nervous at first, but for some of us, it ended up being, I would say, reactions varied. So some orgs, some of you might be Oh, the pay transparency law, you know, we got this, we got this, maybe we make some tweaks to the ranges we're posting, but we have a good handle on this. Some of the rest of you might be still sort of figuring this out. But I would say a big impact on the comp planning process. This year, we're all of us was how each of us dealt with that in terms of the comp planning process. Employees asking more questions about where their salary fits in when they're seeing these ranges posted. Some of you may have been getting a lot of questions. But I've also heard from some clients that say, oh, there's been no change. So I think that was a little bit of a surprise, the number of organizations that are saying, Oh, they're, they're not necessarily seeing a lot of want more questions from their their employees on on comp planning and why their salary might be different, or in the lower end of the range of what's posted. Also on comp planning, I would say something that I've been seeing evolving, I think this also might be feeding into the future is how all of our roles as compensation professionals is changing. So our job sort of used to be we have to develop a great comp program, we need to develop a salary structures, incentive plans, and we need to make this a really great plan. But now we also have to communicate it and not not all of us are natural communicators, right? So we need to develop a plan that's good for communication, we have to communicate it. And we also have to train our managers and our leaders on how to talk about this plan to the population in our organization. So I think that's something that organizations are still figuring out and how that relates to the annual comp planning cycle.

 

David Turetsky: 12:03

Interesting question to ask the group, how many of you communicate to managers about how to use the ranges? And how do you use what we're communicating publicly? Okay, great. It's quarter a quarter of the room. The rest of you, there are consultants here to help you amongst the room, as well as on the panel, just to let you know. So Sean, I'll throw it over to you. What are the top three things that you had as surprises for 2023?

 

Sean Luitjens: 12:30

I'll probably go with two because I'm not that bright. But I'll spend time on there.

 

David Turetsky: 12:33

Two, one, it's okay, we got plenty.

 

Sean Luitjens: 12:35

One. So the first one, actually, we're 15 minutes in, and I'm going to talk about AI, which is a really long time.

 

David Turetsky: 12:42

Wow. Anybody have AI on your bingo card? Within 15 minutes? Yeah, no

 

Sean Luitjens: 12:47

Had to have the under. But actually, the reason I like to talk about AI is everyone has an AI strategy. And they've started there, but very few companies have a data strategy. So the under arching data that sits underneath it, the most remedial example I would give you is, if you're using AI on your current data, what's one plus one might help a brother out? It depends. That's probably good. Are there any salespeople in here? Thanks there. So one plus one is two, if you use AI over a bunch of sales decks what do salespeople say all the time? One and one is three, because that's just the way they roll. Right? So actually, if you run it a large language model over that the answer is two point something something, right? And so having a data structure becomes really, really important. So I know David talked about pay for performance. It's a great example. Right? So if you look at comp planning, bringing it all back, everyone wants to create a great merit matrix, you spend oodles of time figuring out how to create a merit matrix, where how we're going to pay zeros, how we're going to communicate to a zero, how much a five is going to get, all that. And then the pay for performance comes in. And everyone has a five? Because there's no data rigor, or Well, they almost always get there by default,

 

David Turetsky: 13:53

Are you seeing people use peanut butter strategy? right? So we can talk to that by default, right? And how much Well, from a legislative perspective. manager discretion you get, and are you going back and figuring out how much manager discretion you're giving and how they're using it all as part of the data strategy along with the ancillary data around survey data, etc. But all the new cool tools that everyone's talking about in the space, that is all not relevant, albeit super cool as a nerd the stuff that I can do without a really good data structure. And actually, the second piece, just real quick, is the pay transparency piece. I kind of felt at least it slowed a little bit last year, as a whole.

 

Sean Luitjens: 14:33

The legislative and then of course, without the legislation, legislative news, I guess it slowed a little bit.

 

David Turetsky: 14:39

But then Colorado, wanting to speed up

 

Announcer: 14:39

Like what you hear so far? Make sure you never miss a again, then put career frameworks and as a requirement. Everybody knew that, right? So if you have Colorado employees now you need to provide them with a Career Framework. Frameworks are awesome for employees, they've been screaming for them their entire lives. Tell me where I could go, tell me what I have to do to be successful here. It's not a bad thing. It's just when it's required, it kind of sucks because you have to do it now. Well, so a little bit of my surprise for 2023 was it was that there weren't more states than enacted pay transparency legislation. In fact, my Massachusetts, well, my adoptive Massachusetts, I'm still in New Yorker. But Massachusetts has had their house had passed the bill a while ago, and it's still sitting in the Senate for ratification. And, you know, obviously, people think Massachusetts Oh, sure. They have pay transparency! No, we don't. But we have the rule that says you can't ask for pay history, which is at least a step forward. And we've had that for many years. They were one of the first yes, that actually said, you can ask for pay history, which is wonderful. But it's still there's still managers and hiring managers and recruiters get around that by saying, What's your pay expectation? Without pay transparency that's still a crap question to ask somebody who only knows context of their pay from their past, unless they go on the web and look, do a Google search, or actually ask ChatGPT and it gives them something from Salary.com. Which, believe me, it's not coming from our really good paid sources. But the thing that also surprised me about it is there wasn't the pushback that we thought we might get from managers on pay transparency, or employees, we heard a little bit from some circles, that meant that employees were quitting because they weren't paid what was in the ads. But this is a compression issue that's been happening anyways for many years. And so it's something that we have to get around. It's something we have to develop policies for. And frankly, it's probably well worth time to actually look at those groups and see if there are any other issues going on, especially with regards to pay equity. And so when it comes to pay transparency, it may have forced us to do things like a pay equity audit, or at least an audit of what pay is in those groups to try and alleviate the compression. None of those things are bad things, right? And even if you lost one or two employees, from a transparency perspective, you're going to have structural loss anyway. So okay, what else? And by the way, our if you ever looked at your termination reasons table, there's nothing in there that says, left for pay transparency. They may have had resignation or something like that. So you can't do any reporting on it. show by clicking subscribe. This podcast is made possible by Salary.com. Now, back to the show.

 

David Turetsky: 17:31

So the next question is, what are we anticipating when it comes to issues regarding managers making pay decisions in 2024?

 

Jackie Rubin: 17:41

Yeah, so thinking ahead. So I agree with you, David, it is surprising when you look at the map of where patrons currency is you don't see Massachusetts, you don't see New Jersey. But that being said, I do think it's only a matter of time for those states. They just need to, you know, get past those hurdles. And I think what we're seeing some employers do is they don't want to have to manage a hodgepodge of policies in each state, right? That could get really complex, you might have the haves in New York State the have nots in Massachusetts, and you know, how are you going to manage that as an HR team, as a compensation team, and you know, what's actually fair? So I think, regardless of what happens nationally, or on a state by state basis, I think some employers are moving towards a national moving or laying the roadmap to take a more national approach on pay transparency. And I think, in order to do that, you'll have to have you'll have to be looking at your pay gaps, you'll have to be looking at your pay equity analyses. And I think having the results of those types of analyses to help feed into your annual comp cycles will only help employers close any gaps and you know, help sort of make it part of your annual processes going forward.

 

David Turetsky: 18:47

What's fascinating, they're also going to need to renew a lot of their grade structures or geographic differentials around the US as well.

 

Jackie Rubin: 18:55

Right. So I think some companies are sort of taking a look at their geographic differentials and thinking about what makes sense, given this pay transparency, do we want to be more granular nationally? And depending on your footprint? Do you want 10 sets of geographic ranges? Or do you want to have three sets of geographic ranges? And what makes sense financially? What makes sense from a communications perspective? And what's easier to manage for you going forward?

 

Sean Luitjens: 19:21

I think at the forefront is gonna be manager experience. So that's the soapbox I've been getting on. They do it once a year. Right? So it's annual, maybe twice a year. And generally they the managers aren't hired for that. I don't know. I've never been interviewed and asked how do you handle the compensation management process as part of my job as a developer? And I think that's coming around because I think things have shifted from the standpoint of where tech used to be the limiting factor around what you could show an employee, what you could show a manager, what data you could bring in how you could aggregate that. And now I think it's going to, I said it before, it's going to be sought to be a compensation professional. You're gonna have to come up with what's the strategy? What's all the data? How am I going to show that? And how am I going to make that make sense to somebody that once a year looks at this, I usually ask people, does anyone know what IRS tax form 6571 is?

 

David Turetsky: 20:14

I think the collective is no.

 

Sean Luitjens: 20:15

Yeah, the collective is no, you do your taxes once a year, well, do you do your taxes, and once a year?

 

David Turetsky: 20:22

Again, most of us pay someone to do that.

 

Sean Luitjens: 20:24

So you know, you do it once a year, but you don't know everything about it. And the expectation has always been that a manager pops into this process, and works through it. And if you think about it, most comp professionals that I know, usually, at the end of the compensation planning process, they're like, Thank God that was over. That was awful. So if you can imagine the manager themselves getting that, and then have to communicate that. And then the last thing on my soapbox usually on this is we come up with these really cool merit matrices, we push them down. And then there literally is a human who has to sit across from another human that they work with and explain to them either, you were kind of marginal, you're getting $0, or you're getting barely enough to pay for your Netflix account here, how much that went up. Or you're getting less, because you're already higher in the range of something again, they don't completely understand that. And that conversation is really, really hard. And so I know, we were talking about the communication piece, and that piece, technology isn't the problem anymore. And as a nerd for years, we thought that we were always asked to do things we just couldn't make magically happen. Now, we're kind of to the point where you give us stuff, we'll make it happen. But actually, the human piece of Human Resources is now I think, the overly complex piece, and I think that manager experience this next year, year and a half, will be at the forefront because in pay transparency, they can't hide behind, it's none of your business anymore. It's a thing.

 

David Turetsky: 21:44

Yeah. Let me push back on that a little bit, though, because managers have now been in a situation over the last decade where they've been allocating 3% and 3%. Everybody loves allocating 3% merit budget, right? They say, Oh, yeah, I'm gonna give my outstanding performers five. And they're gonna give my average, average performers they're gonna get two, and a lot of people are going to get zeros in that case, and they've had to develop that muscle. Right? So yes, it's a once a year thing. But I think that managers, managers who have been managers have had to do that in the past.

 

Sean Luitjens: 22:20

But I think two things one, over a third of managers are doing it their first or second time. So, you have to throw out a pile of them have no

 

David Turetsky: 22:22

Absolutely. idea what the hell they're doing. And they're younger and inexperienced. The rest of them too, how much latitude were they given, right? And that's that piece where you go back and look at the data. So you send the metric matrix down, and it says, High gets, you know, eight, zero, and you know, two, whatever you want to do. And then you let them squeeze it all back to the middle. And so we philosophically push down a merit matrix. So as great pay for performance differentiation, when you look at the numbers, and they come back, it's just a matter of whether it's smooth peanut butter or creamy peanut butter. And I'm going through a bonus cycle right now as CHRO. I've literally had senior executives say to me, I'm just gonna give everybody the same because I don't have low performers on my team.

 

Nancy: 23:09

I mean, I've been that question of discretion is something that I find a lot of folks are talking about. So to your point, Sean, like, it's, I think, in the past, we had an assumption of we set the thing up, and it's beautiful and perfect. And now go forth and do and it should work out just fine. And we know it has not. And now, right? And now it's all out in the open. So Oh God now everybody sees that things aren't working the way they should. So one of the things I'm hearing about and I'd be curious from the panel, how much of this you've heard. Like, I've heard, a lot of professionals are questioning the level of discretion, how much discretion and whether it's and they're slicing it up in different ways. So it might be at certain levels, we're not going to, you know, allows a certain level of discretion, we're gonna make it more formulaic. Or it might be maybe certain pay elements are going to be less discretionary, like baseline, you know, than others. But I mean, I'd be curious to hear what folks are saying. I've even heard people sort of break it apart, where I will give you the discretion to do the rating, but then I, the comp professional, will determine what that rating equates to. I'm not going to, forget the merit matrix, we don't need it. We're going to do it based, like we'll do the rest of the calculating, but you manager you definitely are the authority when it comes to performance. So that I will allow you. I mean, I've just been curious what folks are.

 

Sean Luitjens: 24:38

But I think, Nancy, when I see that, like, I don't want to say wrong away. But I think sometimes HR assumes they don't, they don't understand what's going on. They work the system really fast. So if you don't force rank, right, and so if you believer in force ranking system, you know, not everybody loves the force ranking system. So how do you move that through the system, right? And if you can't force rank them, then you can't create a merit matrix or they can't move money around. Like it gets highly complex. How much does tenure play a role? When you do promotion raises the move them up a certain percentage? Or do you move them to a place in the range, like all that stuff gets put in there, and it's really complicated. And again, then you have to somehow communicate that back to a human on the other end, who's like, I really don't care other than I just got, you know, my Netflix paid for, like, that was cool. But that's not what I was hoping for.

 

David Turetsky: 25:27

And at the end of the day, it's a zero sum game.

 

Sean Luitjens: 25:30

Correct.

 

David Turetsky: 25:31

So if someone gets more, someone has to get less. And these are these managers are adults. And they signed up to be a leader, and a leader who has to have discretion and then has to translate that back to employee pay, and then has to translate that back into employee communications. So. Listen, we're talking about this in 2024, somebody would have figured out the magic formula between when pay started and now. It doesn't exist. But now we have regulations and other things and data and the internet that people are using as backdrop. So yeah, we have three questions.

 

Audience Member: 26:11

Yeah, I just wanted to raise something else as we're talking about about comp, we're talking about pay, but what about the trends on total rewards, and other benefits that are, to some people more important than pay are just as important, like flexibility, and all those things. And I don't know how, I guess data analytics can capture some of that.

 

KC Weinraub: 26:37

Listen, compensation, pay that's foundational. Like if you're doing the work and you're not getting paid for that work, chances are, you're leaving, unless you have a good manager, you have a purposeful job, you have something that is above all, be all. And that's not something that you can just input from a benefit program, I can't, can't just reach over from Visier or another vendor and say, hey, I want to buy this. You know, I was just talking to a friend in the crowd, and she works for a nonprofit, and her husband pushes her, Hey, you can do the same job get X amount more money in a different place. But she loves her manager, she loves her purpose. And you know, comp can can take a little bit of a backseat. And that's admirable. But again, you can't buy that. To your question, Nancy, I thought foundationally there are places where you want to differentiate more than others, and I'll give an example we use. We have a pretty big sales force and I want zero differentiation in their fixed pay. I want all the differentiation in the variable pay. Fixed pay, here's your dollar an hour, I don't care if you've been here, three, four years. Because if you've been here, three, four years, and you haven't moved to something else, well guess what you're getting paid the same amount as the new hire for this role, unless you have additional credentials that move you to the next step. But base, same. Variable, kick some butt on what you can control, or don't kick some butt and ask for help. Then you go up to the top tier, and I think dynamic differentiation is needed. Right. So you know, let's call the VPs of the world. If you're a VP, not picking up the slack, and you got spread peanut butter, all the other VPS are going to see that person still getting their promotion or treated well, and that's going to culture diminish everything

 

Audience Member: 28:36

I just had one comment on the discretionary else. issue. I was working with a client, engineering services, and they wanted to give their managers some discretion. The reviews came back 3.9256, four decimal places. So the caution is if you're going to give some discretion, you need to have some tighter guidelines to make sure. And the CHRO just said a 3.9526 is a three. You can write whatever numbers you want after the three. But until it has a four point something then it becomes a four. So he let the engineers do their thing. And the only other thing, a comment I want to make is something you said about managers. We have a lot of professional managers, but a lot of managers are knighted. They're not created and developed. So I think that's the other challenge too, are a lot of people are going on. My manager used to do like this, and he or she was average. And now I'm a manager and I'm going to do it like this. And now I'm going to be average. So I think that's just a cultural challenge for a business to work on their employee development and create leaders and managers and not just knight them. So Yeah, one of the things that was to me kind of an unexpected challenge when communicating to managers is the difference between price inflation, something like CPI versus wage inflation, which a lot of the survey providers collect from their clients. And up until COVID, it wasn't an issue because you know, the Fed sets a target at 2% for price inflation. And we have that 3% for wage inflation. So people always felt like they were coming out on top. And our managers, and this is true, actually, for a lot of clients that I spoke to, as well always communicated the the year on year increase as a inflationary increase. And so these past couple of years when people weren't getting inflation, especially in other markets, where inflation was just absolutely through the roof, and I think about like the UK, for instance, they were pissed off because they were told this their entire career that you're getting this increased because of inflation. And we as the comp professionals had to go in and say, well, actually, it's not price inflation we're talking about, we're talking about wage inflation. And the inputs for those two numbers are quite different, you know, they generally track in the same direction. But not always, especially now. I do want to come back to something Dan said about are we seeing the total comp package around benefits, you know, be more important to comp or come into play. And this is not based on data. It's anecdotal. But I think about one of the fallouts from COVID. And that experience, right, we talked a lot during that time about what's important for us, what do we want in our lives, like what does work life balance, personal professional, and what I'm seeing I coach, a lot of former employees, people in my network, I'm seeing multiple people in my network take lower paying jobs that offer more flexibility that offer better benefits that don't want that stress, right, in their life. They want to be successful, but they need to take care of themselves mentally, physically, emotionally. So I do think it's important for us to acknowledge that. I don't know if you're, I see heads shaking. And I don't know if you're having those conversations in your own personal circles. But I do think it really is part of the decision making process. And especially, you know, finding a job is hard right now for people that are looking so comp can't be the only thing driving the decision.

 

David Turetsky: 31:55

One of the things to mention on that is a lot of nurses left nursing, a skilled role, where they got credentialed, they spent a lot of time getting educated and keeping their education and their credentials. And they actually got totally burnt out during COVID. And said, I'm going to a lesser paying job, so that I don't have to watch people die. I don't have to be totally stressed out and on call all the time. And I'm going to live a better life. And so a lot of times we use that work life balance. Why? Why isn't it life work balance? I know it sounds weird to say. But when I'm doing a lot of thought leadership lately, I've been trying to change the narrative the other way. So people think about the fact that I want to live first, forget work, I can lose my job and still live. So no criticism of you. We do it all the time. But it's an excellent point. Thank you

 

Audience Member: 32:44

To piggyback on just what this lady said that, I think one of the challenges too that companies have, because of that is RTO, you know, return to office where, you know, regardless of what they say like, Hey, three days a week or two days a week or four days week, people just aren't complying. You know, in my company, everybody comes in on Wednesday. 40% come in on Thursday, 60% on Tuesday, on you're lucky to see one or two people on Monday or Friday.

 

David Turetsky: 33:09

I lived in the world at Morgan Stanley in 1992, where not only did I have to be at my desk a certain time, I had to wear a tie. And you had to greet people in a certain way, you had to act a certain way. We had those really secure manila envelopes that we used to send interoffice with compensation information. And we remember it had the red. Remember? The red tie that we used to put? God forbid it wasn't secure! Absolutely. mailroom was wonderful with that, and, and God forbid when they received it and they go, Hey, did you tie it in a knot? No, you know I never do that. Oh, we have a problem then. So we live in a different world now. You know, in that, I actually use this a lot. In that world, I used to sit down with people and say if you talk about pay, you're fired. Obviously, we can't do that anymore. But it's a totally different world. And that was only 20 something years ago. Yeah. Okay, follow me there. It was only 20 something years ago. But But that's really critical is we've gone through a lot of change. And trying to take into consideration things like we just went through a global pandemic and people want to work differently. They want to live, they actually want some more days off. And in lieu of actually taking a pay increase. Some people are asking, for other things. I literally got a bonus one time and it was like a couple of dollars. Because the way the calculation worked out from an prorations perspective, I was like, Can you save that? Can I actually have that in the form of an hour off? Like, yeah, that's not an hour, bud, sorry. But anyways, people are asking for that, they're asking for things in lieu of to actually live a little bit more. So it's a great point. Thank you, Kara.

 

Audience Member: 34:47

Yeah, just one comment on people are asking for other things. I think the thing we're seeing besides a reasonably competitive wage, a huge amount of interest in career paths. And so if you can't, you know, pay me a competitive wage, I understand if the budgets only three or 4%. But can you tell me where I can go in the future in this organization or what skills I need to get so that I can can continue progressing.

 

David Turetsky: 35:16

And I love going back to Colorado, put that in. Of course, people in Colorado hate it. But career frameworks are very expensive to implement. But they're phenomenal. And people are loving it. And they're dying for it. And you were talking about the lowest common denominator before. Jackie said, you said, people are doing one thing across the US, build a career framework! 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. So let's talk about the third question which is putting on your hat. Anybody remember Carnac from from the Carson, the Tonight Show? For those of you who don't there was this old show before Jimmy Kimmel called the Carson Show or the Tonight Show. And he used to look into the future in a hermetically sealed envelope. Basically nothing more than just an envelope that someone spit on. And yeah, but but it would have really fun things about what's happening in the future. So now I'm going to ask you and Sean, I'm gonna start with you this time to kind of shake things up. What do you see happening in 2025, around compensation planning?

 

Sean Luitjens: 36:39

I think it's going to become a little more cyclical. You and I have talked about this. If you think about a comp planning, typically once a year, maybe twice a year, I know we've talked about how hard it is, I think it's gonna become more cyclical, three, four times a year. You mentioned the interoffice mail, I've used the example back when comp planning was first starting, yout had to gather all your data, you had to fax! Anyone remember the fax machine? You had to fax over to payroll company the information to get it back. And so it was ridiculously hard, so we did it once a year. I think with everything changing, new hires, legislation, etc. comp planning is going to become more of a all through the year piece. I think that will help actually the employee manager, the employee experience and the manager experience, because it's going to be something that's there all the time. Now, when you do comp planning, you do it for a year, you hope that the manager said it right? You don't know because the employee just stews for a year or leaves. That's how you know. If we can do it on a on a faster basis, more cyclical pulling data who left if we're over whatever percentage, they don't leave, if they're under, like all that stuff, I think because this technology can keep up now, which means we can kind of deal with things on the fly. Because right now you go through comp planning, you get everyone squared away, and then you hire five people, right, and your pay equity is just screwed because somebody didn't do something somewhere. And now you have to wait 11 months. And so I think that's going to be to me the biggest change because the tech is there. But all the policies and all the communication, again, not to make you guys do all the work. But basically that stuff has to get taken care of so that you can do it more frequently.

 

David Turetsky: 38:08

But pay isn't just a once a year thing. Base pay changes might be. But there may also be, well I mean, except for promotions and other changes that happened like market adjustments. But then there's commissions that get paid every month or on a more regular basis.

 

Sean Luitjens: 38:21

Why can't we change base pay as you go through the year? So if you're getting if you're getting make the math easy for me here, let's assume I did an okay job, which is a big assumption, that I'm getting 4%. Why don't you target me to do 1% a year and take take advantage of my performance through the year if I did a poor job, if if the business changes, that change now can happen. And I think and you're letting me get a year and a half out. So the carrot now is 12 months away. So you give me 2% And say if you do a really good job for the next 12 months, you can do it like, how long does it take me to find a new job when I'm like, What's your point? If you're a marginal manager?

 

David Turetsky: 39:01

But if you're leaving because of a 2% or 1% differential, then we have to have a conversation. Like as Kara said, this is a total compensation. And a few of you mentioned, this is total compensation play. And so while I don't disagree that having compensation conversations more often is good. Having spread 1% into four quarters, or sorry, 1% per quarter is not going to change someone's perspective on their performance.

 

Sean Luitjens: 39:32

No, but the carrot moves all the time. So I mean, this is a fundamental for me, I think the the opportunity to have it there and people change, do pay equity changes. If I do an increase. I mean, what's in everyone's 4%? I mean, that's always an interesting number too, what's in your 4% annual increase? Is it pay equity catch up? Is it promotion catch up? What's in it and if I asked in here, there's probably going to be three big buckets of what's in that 4 percent. And so it's not even 4%

 

David Turetsky: 40:00

Which is another reason why I would say, why would we spread 1% per quarter? So I don't disagree with you. All I'm saying is there are other levers like quarterly bonuses or quarterly commission or monthly commissions or other things that are better levers for moving performance than a base.

 

Sean Luitjens: 40:19

Yeah. And I guess I would just leave, those don't necessarily leave, per se.

 

Francesca: 40:23

Hi, I'm Francesca with Ford Foundation, I'll come a little bit to your defense on on this not not all the way there. I, I think that if you have a solid comp philosophy, and you have a structure, then what really should be changing is if you see the market changing, and you're hiring people at a higher rate, you have to go back and do market adjustments to the people who are in that similar position or have the similar competencies. So that's where I see people who have not done that more than once a year have to get on board with how do we do that more frequently. And so maybe pay transparency is helping us all to, you know, do it more frequently. But I think that that's the way that we should look at it more than, Are you rewarding people? Because you do have you have a budget, you have other things that go into that. But if you're if you're doing that, then you know that you're keeping people equitable and and you can, you can have defensible conversations with your, with your staff, and you can help the managers know how to talk better.

 

Sean Luitjens: 41:34

I think David, I agree. I think what I'm saying is that the ability to make changes more than once a year, because, people are reticent to do that now.

 

David Turetsky: 41:43

Yeah, I thought you were talking about a merit process.

 

Sean Luitjens: 41:45

It can be merit. To me, to me, it's all it's an option to have it in there and do it however you want. Basically, you can do it any way you want to do it now, but that's a really good example. Cola changes, inflation changes right now that's a once a year, you'll have to wait till the process happens thing. And then comp gets stuck in the middle having to do that or run up the flagpole and say it's a fire drill, we have a pay equity problem, go give me money. And they're always every time they go to the CFO, it's urgent as opposed to proactive and strategic.

 

David Turetsky: 42:14

Would you say that the finance organization would be more apt to give more money to HR and compensation to do those things on a more regular basis? Or do you think they'd like to hold the cash flow to be more routine?

 

Nancy: 42:27

But I think things fundamentally have to change. Because we know like Gartner I think has a statistic out where 45% of employees are referencing third party sources for their their data. So employees are comp analysts now. We need to I think lean into that. I don't think it's just about managers. I think it's about everybody. And I think having ongoing conversations around pay and rewards and career is the answer. I think it's being crisp about what each pay element means for your organization. So to your point, like what is what how do we define base? When do we make changes to base? Should we even be rewarding performance in base? No. But I mean, you know, so those are, those are the types of things but I do think too, it's having the conversation, partnering with finance to say, rather than bring surprises to you, because finance does not like surprises, right? Nobody know. So rather than bring a surprise, what we're gonna do is we're gonna have a partnership, we're going to continue to monitor the market, we're going to see what's going on. Every quarter, we're going to get together, we'll have a budget, and we'll we'll have a more dynamic budget, maybe around that management and be proactive.

 

Sean Luitjens: 43:40

Yeah, I think at the end of the day, like the tech can do any of that stuff. And so what it's now saying is all of these things are on the table for companies to deal with. But you have to answer the questions. I think it was interesting. You said, you can no longer say, I'm going to give you this much money. That's what HR is doing. And you can't talk about it to anybody else. You fundamentally have to have a plan for where you're going. And that plan can be delivered on now on tech, but you have to have all those answers figured out what you're going to do now and used to not have to have them all.

 

David Turetsky: 44:11

But we also need to arm managers with the answer. Managers can't say no. And they can't say everything or they can't blame HR like, no, no, I'm sorry, that never happened, right?

 

Sean Luitjens: 44:23

Well, that's still a solid answer. If they can't move, if they can't move performance matrix, that's still

 

David Turetsky: 44:28

But transparency is now forcing managers to learn a good answer. more, and this becomes or makes it really important thing. And if an employee comes to you, it's like, it's like when your kid says, Dad, I don't really want to go to school today, I don't feel well, you don't go okay, you're going to school anyways, you then investigate and you start looking into it. So if an employee goes, I don't know about my performance here. I don't know where my career is going. You don't just leave it at that, especially if they're a great performer. You diagnose, you look at what their pay is, we look at the market, so we have to arm them with the information necessary and the guidance. So I agree with you, I think it's something that we need to keep open. Okay, now I'm gonna ask Jackie to look into your glass, your glass thing, your seeing whatever it's called and look at 2025.

 

Jackie Rubin: 45:10

Yeah, I like this discussion, I think it's about building shared ownership of compensation and pay equity. So it's not just on the manager, it's not just on comp, it's company wide, it's society, it's like the right thing to do. So I think as comp professionals, we just start getting those messages out to our senior leadership, even the CEO. Maybe there's a statement, or eventually a statement that the company could put out on pay equity. So everyone knows that this is important to our company, this is who we are. So when employees potentially hearing a tough message, maybe they're not getting a pay rate of large pay increase, but it's because others, like in their same role are paid less than them. I mean, what are they really going to say to that, if that's if the importance of pay equity is really all over the company and all over, like, our whole culture, a part of our culture, etc, and things like that. So I think just getting shared ownership, getting leadership on board, so there are no surprises for these types of conversations. I think that will be something that some companies, or maybe maybe the leading companies are able to get there and 2025.

 

David Turetsky: 46:18

That's brilliant. It's definitely not gonna happen overnight.

 

Jackie Rubin: 46:20

No, there's a roadmap of a plan, that whole thing.

 

David Turetsky: 46:24

That's great. That's awesome. KC, what's in your crystal ball?

 

KC Weinraub: 46:27

I mean, I love I love the shared ownership, I was going to more of the like storytelling side. But I come from a story. No, Ralph Lauren on. So but I come from a storytelling company, and there's power in the why. There's power in, hey, the company's performance is x, and tell him that story, year in and year out, quarter in quarter out, month in, month out, and then aligning your pay decisions, or your benefit decisions, or just any practical decisions with the state of the company, the culture of the company. And that's probably where transparency starts, right? Could start in legislation where we're told to put a number on a piece of paper, or it could start with the CEO, and his leadership team, and partnership with HR in partnership with employee communications, and educating the managers to tell a compelling story of why we are paying, why we are spreading peanut butter, or why we're differentiating, whether it's the right move or not.

 

David Turetsky: 47:28

I love that. And what I'd like to say to that is is that where I'd like to actually ask the crowd, compensation philosophy, do your employees understand your compensation philosophy? I didn't get one hand up. Oh, my God, I don't even get, I got one, I missed. And that's that's important, KC, because when they don't understand your comp philosophy, then they kind of don't understand the basis for the decisions. Yeah. Actually, having no comp philosophy means you do have a comp philosophy. And you know what it is? Nothing. It's the Wild West! Anything goes. And so that's what managers are going to use as their North Star, right? Well, if you're not telling me how to pay, I'm going to do it myself. And so while I'm not saying it's a good thing, you're right. A lot of companies don't have one or especially don't have one stated, some companies actually put their comp philosophy in their, their SEC required proxy statements and other things. Some actually put it on your website so that when someone's going and looking at your careers page, they go, Oh, well, the comp philosophy is they pay low for base salary that you know, between the 25th in the medium, but they pay for results. And so they're at the 75th percentile for total cash comp, that's awesome. And they have an ownership mentality, which means they may give us some kind of buy in to stock or some kind of stock equivalency. So those kinds of things are really important because they actually drive not only the conversations that you're having from pay transparency perspective, but also from the manager perspective when they're talking to their people about the decisions that have been made. Because by the way, if they don't have a philosophy and decisions are being made, you can bet your bottom dollar that definitely not going to be pay equity, right? There's not gonna be pay equity taken into consideration. And so that's not a great thing.

 

KC Weinraub: 49:17

And there's two pay philosophies, right. There's the one that you're willing to share externally or internally on a pretty piece of paper. And there is still the one behind the scenes where there are mechanics that that should remain open.

 

David Turetsky: 49:31

Okay So we have a bonus question. If we didn't discuss it had enough, what's the one thing that scares the crap out of you the world of pay? I didn't take the I put the word crap out of this.

 

Audience Member: 49:52

Yeah, a lot of organizations I even when I was in the consulting world, I saw this as well, are dropping what I always found to be like kind of arcane degree requirements for certain roles, like having a four year degree for an administrative role, or, you know, something requiring, you know, we prefer a candidate with a with a master's or something. And it was always so limiting. So I think, you know, beyond just DEI, beyond just protected classes, I think we'll see a greater diversity in profiles in terms of like, people's education, you know, I do still think we'll probably have an over representation of the top business schools and things like that, and the Ivy League, but I think now the gap between the organizations, the educational institutions, has really closed, I think, maybe people aren't aware of that, if you've been in the workforce for a long time where, you know, a lot of the profiles that we see, you know, they don't have the fancy credentials, but they're hungry, and they want to come in and make a difference. And like, the vast majority, you know, let's be real, like 85%, unless you're in some kind of technical role 80 to 90% of your role, you're going to learn on the job anyway. And you know, what you learn in business school is going to be sort of on the periphery. So I think that is exciting. But it's also a little bit scary, I think, for HR professionals, because you're used to putting people into these boxes. And if someone doesn't fit in a box, it's hard to decide, like, where do we put them in the range? You know, how do we compare them to their peers, when you know, this person has a lot more tenure, but it's clear that this lower tenured person really is, you know, knocking it out of the park. And so I think maybe a more differentiated approach to pay, you know, is, is in the future, more personalized approach.

 

David Turetsky: 51:39

So I'm gonna throw this to Sean first, because I didn't, I'm sorry, I'll get to you I promise, I'm gonna throw it to our panelist first. What scares the crap out of you, that we haven't talked about yet?

 

Unknown: 51:46

Jackie, how about you?

 

Sean Luitjens: 51:47

I feel like it's the communication, I have never felt more excited to not be a comp practitioner. Over then over the next couple of years, the tech is there. But this whole having to build out a policy and then have these communication that's out there, and it's out, you can't hide behind the it's none of your business thing, their strategic decisions around pay transparency, I saw Airbnb posted all of you know, their entire package out. So do you want to be defensive on it? Do you want to take the offensive with your pay transparency? How do you actually handle equity? How do you fund that? Because I haven't heard anybody tackle pay equity by reducing anyone's pay. It's only by increasing someone's pay. So I think the whole transparency equity thing is what scares me, the tech, the tech side, just because I'm a nerd, data's portable, we can swing code really fast. Now we can build really cool stuff. What scares me is we can build anything you want? And is that the right? The right thing? So that you can deliver it and how do you communicate it? The last thing is just the sheer volume of data. We can slurp in so much data now billions of rows and serve it back up in less than a second. How cool is that? If you're a manager and you see billions of rows of data, to try to fill out a performance matrix, or figure something out the comp planning process. That's, that's scary. And so how do you guys really figure that out? And that's probably more of a challenge to you all, to figure it out from the strategic and methodological and philosophical side, your pay strategy, because the implementation piece now is not is not the hard part anymore. It's the what do I want to do? And where do I want to position myself? Which is why you need to talk to a consultant.

 

Jackie Rubin: 53:29

Yeah, I think some of the EU directive stuff I know, it's the EU. And you know, we're in the US here, but some of us have global workforces we're dealing with and also some of the regulations that have been in the EU are like, regulators on both sides of the pond are looking at what we're doing. So I wouldn't be surprised if something like that came here one day, I don't know when but, but just the EU directive is huge. It's a game changer in pay transparency. I think it's a good thing for pay equity. But it's also a little scary as a comp person. So one thing in that directive is that employees will be able to ask, what is the average pay for men versus women in this job?

 

David Turetsky: 54:05

Wow.

 

Jackie Rubin: 54:06

So just think about that! That is huge. You have to have these job frameworks in place to be able to define jobs that also, you know, there's probably a gap in a lot of your jobs, right? So it's scary, and how are we going to think about how are we going to correct that if there is a gap? And how do we even explain that and communicate that either in the EU in a few years, or if that ever comes here too.

 

Audience Member: 54:29

For me, I think the biggest issue is we have great data. We have a lot of regulations. We have other issues. It's going to be in a country where it needs massive tort reform is how many lawsuits are coming our way around pay transparency, pay equity, etc. It's only a matter of time before our corporations are going to be paying out massive, you know, settlements around this. So I think that's a giant Fear Factor. That's real. That's real. So you know, that's when I keep looking at this I think of we have the data so you can't say we don't have the data, and now it's becoming it's because our people are not doing their job correctly. And how do we balance that?

 

David Turetsky: 55:06

How many people know about the potential raise in exemption salary from 35,000, to about 60, something 68,000? Anybody worried about it? I saw some hands, anybody worried? Well, if you're not worried, I promise you should be crapping your pants right now. Because what this will do is it will say for most of those people who were exempt, they're going to be non exempt, potentially collecting overtime. My advice, make your entire exempt staff non exempt and collect their hours, and then have managers actually force a 40 hour workweek. I know that's not going to happen. But that's the law! That is the law, you will never get a dol action if you make your employees non exempt. But that that thing where you're talking to people off hours, and you're forcing them to do things

 

Sean Luitjens: 55:53

But David, just I know why you're handing that that can't happen anymore. Or you pay them but that's not going to happen, because remember, we were talking about with finance before, that's going to change our economics so much that we will not be able to afford a lot more people. But this is happening. And there are some municipalities, states that actually already have this kind of level. But it's gonna happen federally, and we were talking about the lowest common denominator before, you may have to change your entire exempt non exempt strategy. And that is not a small feat. over, I think the the, you know, the legislative precedents that comes out in the first year or two, I think that's going to be the scary or two because then I think it'll be easier to go to the CFO, whomever and say we have to here's what we have to do to be paid equitably, you know, or, or else the or else is big enough to be scary, or it's or else to be like, I'm not

 

Audience Member: 56:54

So David, you took a little bit away of what I going to worry about it. was going to say in response to what, but that's okay. I have anecdotal not necessarily databased evidence, I think more of the recent college graduates are going to come into non exempt roles. And for two reasons, first of all, exactly what you were saying. It protects the company, right? But also, in my personal experience as a comp practitioner, there are times where we really would not have been able to defend an FLSA audit, for somebody coming straight out of college who's being managed very closely, who has policies and procedures, and why not just hire them as non exempt? Pay them what you're gonna pay them, but hire them as non exempt. And PS, exactly what you said that overtime, some of them are going to work is going to open some eyes wide. What are your suggestions on addressing the whole perception of an employee who was a professional? I've gone to school, I've got my degree. I, you know, this is my first job. But I'm, I'm not exempt. Right?

 

David Turetsky: 58:03

So how many of you think the word non exempt is a bad thing? Why is it a bad thing? Why do we equate? Why do we equate non exempt with being a dreg with being a worker? We're all workers! We all do shit! Pardon me, stuff. Sorry, sorry. But I get really passionate about this because we have put this label on non exempt work that doesn't exist. What do we think that every non exempt is a ubiquitous person that you can just trade one person, one worker for another? No, I agree with you. I think the label needs to change. I think we need to stop talking about FLSA as being this really big flag and badge of honor that I'm exempt. Who gives a crap you're exempt from overtime? I promise you you wish you got paid overtime for the hours you work right? How many people wish they got paid for all the hours they frickin work? And I'm not just talking about work work. I'm talking about getting that damn call on Friday night or Saturday night and saying, I'm not supposed to be working right now. I'm supposed to be living, right? We were talking about this before Kara. I'm supposed to be living. Why am I getting a call? Well, we never thought about this before the pandemic. We always did it. We think that it's gonna take me two minutes to do that. Oh, shoot. It's not the it's not just that email, I have to do another email too. Oh, my God, that presentation is due on Monday, I forgot about that. You're gonna get paid for that if you're not exempt, or you should be paid for that if you're not exempt.

 

Sean Luitjens: 59:23

But we added isn't that. I mean, I think that's department ish. So I think that can happen. I did go that way. Because in the dev side, we have a ton of people come in as non exempt out of school doesn't bother them in the least in my dev world. Now, I don't know other places. And then over time, it's interesting because the discussions get very interesting because they're like, you know, do I want to move to exempt in the next role because I want to be a manager and you can see you know, they don't want to say it out loud, but you can see the wheels go on in the smoke like now I got to start doing this stuff.

 

David Turetsky: 59:54

But exempt doesn't mean you're a manager. Exempt you could be a professional and accountant or whatever.

 

Sean Luitjens: 59:59

So that, but I think I think culturally in the dev world, so I think your point, I think it can be made that way. Like, I don't think people should be as scared of it if you communicate it and all the pluses and the whys, because it's been done in segments already.

 

David Turetsky: 1:00:13

Okay. Everybody, has everbody been a consultant here? Raise your hand, how many of you who have had to log your hours anyways, even if you're exempt, I mean, we do this, we have to. And if you're in development, you have to do it for capitalist, capitalization of your costs.

 

Sean Luitjens: 1:00:26

Correct. Correct. Good point.

 

David Turetsky: 1:00:27

So the fact that you're actually if it's non exempt, exempt, I'm collecting my hours or not, that's okay. Do your homework before the technology is there just putting your damn hours. But it's going to require intestinal fortitude of managers to have discipline about how many hours a person works. And they'll have to have that thought in the back of their head, if I make that call, or if I send that email at five o'clock on a Friday afternoon, evening, whatever you call it, then you're going to be responsible for more money. Somebody mentioned the return to work. Okay. So when we talk about return to work, we're talking to what? Command and control we're talking about, I'm going to work 40 hours in the office, get your butt in here. We actually had one of the largest cut, Well, wasn't that large anymore. One of the major companies said the CEO said, Get your ass back in the office literally said that. And of course, some people are like, I don't want to work for you anymore, go to Hell, right? And some said, Oh, my God, I have to take a flight and I have to get back to work. So you're right. And the answer is do we live? Or do we work? What which is it? Do we work to live or live to work? And so I agree with the KC, I really wish it was where we could live in a world that's flexible. Unfortunately, a lot of the winds of change are going the other way. Yeah.

 

Audience Member: 1:01:47

I wanted to add fuel to the fire here. Before we leave, two things that came to mind on this fears and things that scare you. Outside the US, if you have contingent workers, they have to be mapped into your job Architecture Framework. We're working with a large tech company that didn't do that and is going to be paying a huge amount of back pay. Because their their jobs weren't mapped in and paid the same as full time employees. Which relates to the other FLSA rule, which just passed and is already in place now, going back to a long test for the contractor versus employee.

 

David Turetsky: 1:02:38

Listen, thank you so much. These have been awesome questions that you've given us, you've given us some great thoughts too. Thank you for participating. It's so much better when not only does the panel get to speak, but you guys get to as well, it becomes so much more of a conversation. You're awesome. We really appreciate it. We'll be here for a little block a little while. And I'm going to have my books over there for if anybody wants to grab one. Thank you so much. Take care.

 

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