Sean Luitjens – Why and How to Share HR Data Effectively

Connect with Sean:

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Connect with Dwight:

• 
• dwight.brown@salary.com

Connect with David:

• 
• 
• david.turetsky@salary.com

Podcast Manager, Karissa Harris:

• HRDataLabs@salary.com

 

Production by Affogato Media

Resources:

• HR Data Labs Season 7 Episode 15
• HR Data Labs Season 7 Episode 13

• “I think the philosophy from some compensation [practitioners] is, ‘everyone understands pay because they get paid.’ And managers sometimes get caught in the other trap which is, ‘I get paid so how complicated can it be?’ There has to be some type of translation between those two.”
• “[Managers] want to be nice, but . . . everyone can’t be a 5 because then you can’t create the dispersion to keep the talent you want. ”

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: 0:46

Hello, and welcome to the HR Data Labs podcast. I'm your host, David Turetsky alongside my trusted co-host, friend, colleague from Salary.com, Dwight Brown. Dwight, how are you?

 

Dwight Brown: 0:55

David I'm good. I finally remembered to put my mic right up to my mouth this time, which I almost never do.

 

David Turetsky: 1:02

It's very effective in hearing you. Yes.

 

Dwight Brown: 1:04

So it's a good day today. I'm really I'm knocking it out of the park already.

 

David Turetsky: 1:08

And we are going to have fun today because we have with us our friend. Some call him simple, but I don't. His name is Sean Luitjens. Sean, how are you?

 

Sean Luitjens: 1:18

I'm good. I'm already feeling a little concerned. I don't have one of these professional mics like you guys. Feeling out of, out of my depth!

 

David Turetsky: 1:27

When you spend enough time behind a microphone? Certainly not in front of one but behind one, you realize that it makes you sound better. So and actually the things that come out of your mouth sound better too.

 

Sean Luitjens: 1:38

I don't think I think I'm behind a microphone helping that. But But well, we'll go from there.

 

David Turetsky: 1:43

Well, my mom always said I had a face for radio. So people have heard me say that a million times. So there you go. And Sean, you're definitely, you have a face for video as they say.

 

Sean Luitjens: 1:52

Aw no. Now, I don't even know what to do with that.

 

David Turetsky: 1:57

Well, why don't you tell us, Sean, a little bit about your background, a little bit where you are today. How about that?

 

Sean Luitjens: 2:02

Sure. So currently at Visier as the general manager of the total rewards, you know, business over there that we're launching. And before that, going way back to the last millennium. I've been around talent acquisition, and comp and ben, so and for the most part of our comp and ben. And I think you know, like you, weirdly enough we dig it, and how we can help organizations kind of learn and get better in that space. So won't go through the whole company, people can find Luitjens on LinkedIn pretty easy, or it's kind of natural selection.

 

David Turetsky: 2:36

And for those of you who have never heard of him before, I don't know where you've been. But Sean, you've been? I've known about you for forever, especially from back from your Mercer days. And, and probably even before that, but it's good to have you on the show again.

 

Sean Luitjens: 2:54

No, that's great! It's always always fun talking to you.

 

David Turetsky: 2:56

Until we say, hey, Sean, what's one fun thing that no one knows about you?

 

Sean Luitjens: 3:04

I don't know that it's a fun thing. I'm a huge soccer fan, actually, which I like to call football. You know, as real folks do over in the other the other countries. So I'm a big Arsenal fan and so gone through when they were good to bad and now we're reasonably good again. And I have this weird goal of trying to make it to all 20 pitches in the Premier League one year. Which if you are a football or soccer fan, three go up and three go down every year. So it's a little bit of a moving target. So when I'm over I try to try to catch matches all over the place.

 

David Turetsky: 3:36

Does that include Wrexham? Are they not in the Premier League?

 

Sean Luitjens: 3:39

Wrexham is not the Premier League. Well, I think a couple of leagues down I have part I have clubs that I've been to several times. So I Queens Park Rangers, which I'm sure most Americans haven't heard of. I've probably been to, I don't know, 20 30 times.

 

David Turetsky: 3:54

Having lived in London, I will tell you I went to Wembley to see a game. And it was, or a match, it was just amazing.

 

Sean Luitjens: 4:02

Yeah, it's really cool. And Queen's Park like the stadium if you want to talk, you know, in the US, they talked about these old old stadiums, you know, built in 1888,

 

David Turetsky: 4:11

Right.

 

Sean Luitjens: 4:11

Still there, still concerning when you walk underneath it.

 

David Turetsky: 4:16

So don't walk out while you have to guess walk underneath it to get into the stadium. Right?

 

Sean Luitjens: 4:20

You do.

 

David Turetsky: 4:20

Yeah. So Sean, today, we're going to have a little bit of fun because what we're going to be talking about today is "Didn't they teach us to share in kindergarten?" And let's get to question one. So the question is, why can't we just get along? And we have a lot of data in HR. We don't really share analytics across HR, let alone the entire business. And when you and I were talking about this, what did you mean when you were saying just get along around analytics?

 

Sean Luitjens: 4:59

I think some of it comes from the well, I'm gonna throw out a, you know an acronym so I sound like I know what I'm doing. But they're OKRs.

 

David Turetsky: 5:06

Oh yeah, OKRs.

 

Sean Luitjens: 5:07

So if you think about talent acquisition, right, so recruiters are really measured a lot of times on two things. And they're measured on time to fill and number of reqs filled. And obviously, if you're a recruiter without jobs to recruit for, you're probably not a recruiter. And so they want to get those things done. That's their metrics. And as we know, whatever's measured is what's done. And so recruiters really jam on that. They don't necessarily start to think about then, being putting my comp nerd hat on, compensation people, theoretically, want to get people paid appropriately for whatever the goal is in the business. And so there's a linkage right there, where they're trying to drop somebody in to fill it as shortly as they can. They don't really care, they're not measured, do they stay over the long haul? right? In fact, at some level, you could argue I actually need turnover, if the company is not growing, I need to have some type of turnover. Otherwise, I'm not recruiting for positions. And that's just one example of where, you know, you kind of have that disconnect between businesses, and you could go to comp, and then you could go to things like business objectives, you know, when we look at it.

 

David Turetsky: 6:10

Well, we've always been very insular. And we've always thought that we were the only ones who understood these things. And so therefore, in the wrong hands, quote, unquote, other people, it wouldn't be used effectively or appropriately, right? Especially when we're talking about comp and market data. Or, you know, new hire statistics, when it comes from recruiting. "Well, you guys don't understand because, you know, you don't understand where we are in our business cycles, or where people are, and, you know, we get so many reqs, we have a way of doing it, where we put in a bunch of reqs are evergreen, and so the statistics aren't gonna look right to you, unless you know the context."

 

Dwight Brown: 6:48

We see that all the time. And it's not just in HR, I mean, people get territorial about their data for the exact reasons you just said. That you can't have the data because you don't know the context, you would not, you wouldn't know what you want to do with the data, which just perpetuates this lack of sharing.

 

Sean Luitjens: 7:06

There's a couple of interesting things that are there, I think, you know, David talked about a lot of times, the human in human resources or, you know, a lot of times say, you know, businesses don't hire people, people hire people, you know, type of things, you know, businesses don't sell products, people buy products, you know, it's that type of thing. And I think there's this dichotomy of what information do I give them? On one end, right, because they, you know,

 

David Turetsky: 7:29

Right. they're not going to understand this. And there's some validity to that, because hiring managers, of course, generally aren't hired, oh, sorry, not hiring managers, line managers aren't hired to be, you know, compensation professionals, they have a day job that they're theoretically really good at. So what information do I give them? That's in context. So if I give them too much information, they don't know what to do with it. But if I don't give them enough information, you're not trusting it? And so how do you roll that all up to give them really good context to make a decision. And just since mentioned, you know, comp planning is one of my favorite examples, because you do it once or twice a year. So how good is a line manager going to be at something once or twice a year? I do things every week that I suck at. So how can someone really be good at something once or twice a year? thing. There's no way to make them an expert in it. But especially around where pay transparency is taking things we have to at least open their eyes a little bit to what this could be for them. And not make it an everyday thing, but at least make it a resource for them that they can check in on or they can look at every once in a while. But it needs to be done with training and maturity.

 

Sean Luitjens: 8:47

Yeah. And the training, I think the why sometimes because I think the how gets pushed, pushed at them. You need to do this for this reason, you need to do, you know, your merit cycle, because it's the right thing to do. Theoretically, I'm kind of maybe it's a, you know, rainbows and unicorns view. But typically, the line managers are, you know, have some smarts to them. So if you can explain to them why we're trying to do this to pay equitably and do things with a little bit of education, then I think the how becomes a much simpler piece, because they're like, Oh, now I get why now, let me dig in and figure out the how. And I'm convinced that if you give them some context, and just a little bit of workflow, they'll be able to figure that out because they're inherently smart! Hopefully.

 

David Turetsky: 9:30

Well, a lot of times managers don't get that business problem. They have to really understand that business problem, though. And to the extent of maturity, I think we've both dealt with a lot of situations where managers have acted without having that level of maturity. And I'm not saying this for all managers. I know most managers do the right things for the right reasons. But in the world of HR, especially when it comes to increases and things it becomes a very unemotional topic, not just for them, but their employees. So what can we do to make them better? It's not gonna be training, it's not going to be, you know, it's not even that number of bats they get to use the data or to, to be a part of it.

 

Sean Luitjens: 10:15

Well, I think we've talked in the past, and we've got in front of this, do people what percentage of people, which after we spoke last time, I thought I'd throw this at you. What percentage of people? Because I said, I think most people want to be fair payers, at the end of the day, so now I'm gonna put you on the spot and be like, Well, what percentage of people do you think really, truly, would be fair payers? If there weren't the balance put in place? And what people would be like, No, I just want to be a bad payer.

 

David Turetsky: 10:41

I don't think it's about being a bad payer, I think it's about giving employees what they want in order to be more popular to be happier. So we put guidelines in place to constrain, we give them market data to show and to demonstrate what what happens outside our boundaries. But they run their business. And they also because they deal with employees every day, they've they've got to be, you know, good boss, bad boss on a shoulder, right? And I don't think anybody wants to be bad. And don't think anybody wants to be their best friend. I mean, I'm sure many managers would rather be best friends with their employees, but it's just not appropriate. And so they've got to be, they've got to do the right thing for the company, as well as the employee. And that takes a balance. And if you asked me what percentage can be balanced, I'll tell you, it's a, it's a normal distribution, you're gonna have tails on both sides, you're gonna have people who are really bad at it, and then you're gonna have people who are really, by the book, I'm going to do it by the book, and I'm gonna, you know, only give the right distribution the way the company tells me to.

 

Sean Luitjens: 11:46

No, I think that's fair. I think actually, it's interesting, because you say, people, you know, as I mentioned, you know, people hire people, but and then you take it one step further, people work with people. And I think there's a little bit of a disconnect, sometimes with compensation, sending down the compensation planning merit matrix, out of the ivory tower, that is compensation, not understanding that humans have to deliver that message. And you know, it's interesting, when you get down to the bottom end of that merit matrix, mathematically, you're like, I'm gonna give that person point 5%. But when you actually have to deliver a message, that point 5% of a small number is, you know, not even a Netflix fee for the month, right? That that becomes difficult and how, as a human, do you now relay that to a human? And sometimes I think, you know, that's the disparate piece of comp, but I think comp sends that down, and it's just on performance. And this is the piece where can you tie all the data together to talk about performance holistically, and for pay equity, same job for the same work? How do you start to put that in place so there's some defense to that when you actually give scores? I think that'll help managers, too. If you can pull in business data from other places, you can be like, well, this is this is, these are some of the metrics.

 

David Turetsky: 12:59

comp ratio, they don't give a crap, right? Explaining comp ratio to somebody means you have to abstract out a few layers, you have to go back to market pricing and job descriptions. And the go, the job descriptions are all crap, how'd you match the jobs? Where the sources, are they from our direct competitors, you know, blah, blah, blah. And then you know, they and then you have to, so they have to buy all that to get to comp ratio. And then you have to look at the different zones and say, Well, there's only three zones, or there are five zones. And the Okay, well, people are under min, what are you going to do about them, and you're gonna give them allow me to give an adjustment to minimum? And people who are over the max are we giving lump sums? So you're abstracting when you talk about merit matrix, you're now abstracting rules, guidelines, philosophy, paying at market, blah, blah, blah, all that other stuff. So to buy into even that merit matrix, and even to get them to understand the guidelines that they're using, why am I using, you know, three to 7%, for one group at one performance rating, and then five to 9%, for another, and then zero for another? You know, I want to give everybody something I want to peanut butter this and you're not allowing me to. Let me run my business!

 

Announcer: 14:15

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: 14:26

So there's a lot in there that we in comp, especially in HR, as a manager as well, I find it that sometimes we're trying to build dogma into our process in order to do the right things. But yet, we're not arming those people. Like I was mentioning before, we're not arming them with the right information and insight to make the best job descript, to make the best business decisions.

 

Sean Luitjens: 14:51

Yeah, that's what I was saying with Dwight earlier, there's all this potential information that you can throw at them. So how do you distill that down into something that's meaningful? And I know, you know, one of the studies recently I think a third of managers are doing this for the first or second time.

 

David Turetsky: 15:04

Right.

 

Sean Luitjens: 15:05

So not only do they not get to do it very often, but you're gonna basically take all this comp speak and try to translate it into human, something that a normal human can understand, for somebody who's never done this. And by the way, the next time I have to do it again, assuming I'm still in this role is next year, and I have to go deliver a human message. I mean, it's a really difficult process that has to happen. Although I still kind of sidebar, why do we even do merit? Or increases once a year? I'm so little boggled. by that. I mean, I think it's because we years ago had to, I'm going to show my age, you had to go collect all the data, do it. And then you had to fax the payroll company, which many listeners probably don't know what a fax machine is.

 

David Turetsky: 15:50

Well they may, but

 

Dwight Brown: 15:53

It's just an app on their phone.

 

David Turetsky: 15:55

Exactly.

 

Dwight Brown: 15:56

Well, and it feels like a black box for people. It's, it's the perpetual black box of compensation with it. Because one of the things that we find too, is that even working with the comp people, I'm amazed at how often the comp people don't even understand the components that go with that. So to your point of, you know, humans coming with the human message, how do you even translate that if you're the comp person and then you don't even understand everything?

 

Sean Luitjens: 16:25

Well, and it's interesting, the more data we get, the more complex the merit matrix can be, to your point, David to the more complicated it becomes. So now you have a, you know, a lot a manager of a couple of different units, and he's getting handed down different numbers for different groups for different things. And they're kind of like, what the hell's happening here. I used to be able to just get a spreadsheet that said, 4%, and email it and then magically, it was gone. Right?

 

David Turetsky: 16:48

Well, and then, you know, they have a global team, right? Well, now the global team, and I have a 4% for the US, I have a 9% for Singapore, I have, you know, 7% for the UK? Well, how do I figure out what's the right guideline for the right person? And can I blend the data? Or you know, is this one process? Or do I do it by country, what am I being asked to do? And we've got to be very dead simple about getting to the right result for the employee and the manager, while giving them the most expeditious as well as simple interface and use cases that to get them to the right answer.

 

Sean Luitjens: 17:26

I think to quote someone very, very famous, you know, because this is the type of stuff I read, David. So this is this will be really, really important.

 

Dwight Brown: 17:34

Don't tell me you're going to quote David Turetsky.

 

David Turetsky: 17:37

No, no.

 

Sean Luitjens: 17:38

Oh no. What is it? Cheshire Cat said, you know, if you don't know where you're going, all roads will lead you there. So I think to your point,

 

David Turetsky: 17:46

That's a good one, I like that.

 

Sean Luitjens: 17:47

David, you know, like, sitting down and having a plan and a pay philosophy first that you can then and then try to get somebody to, you know, read that in English that's not from the comp department. Right? I was on a call the other day with some comp

 

David Turetsky: 17:57

Yeah. folks. And that, I started counting acronyms. And I've, like I said, I've been around a long time. So when I start getting wowed by the total volume of acronyms that we have, you're like, Well, how would you actually translate this to someone that's a hiring manager that looks at this? And you know, I think the philosophy from some comp people is well, everyone, or everyone understands pay, because they get paid! No. Yeah.

 

Sean Luitjens: 18:23

You know, so it must be simple. Right?

 

David Turetsky: 18:24

Right.

 

Sean Luitjens: 18:25

And I think line managers sometimes get caught in the other trap, which is I get paid, so how complicated can it be? And there's gotta be some type of, you know, translation between those two.

 

David Turetsky: 18:35

Well what's really funny about what you just said, is when I worked at Work Scape, and I was the, basically the director of, of the talent management product line for Product Management. And we got a new leader of our group, and they said, can't we just put this stuff in a box and just say, everybody gets the same rules? Everybody, you know, we'll just start out, and it'll be this. And I said, I've read about, I don't know, maybe 1000 client plans for things that they do. And it goes beyond the name of the plan. It goes into what the rules are, and who's eligible for it, and what porations are used and all that stuff. And I said, at the end of the day, it's not just about the fact that there's just a bonus plan or not a bonus plan. But there's a bonus plan, they may have a merit increase, they may have different hierarchies for the different pay elements. And when you try and figure out is compensation simple, and can we abstract commonalities across companies, and the answer is no. You can try. But what you'll find is, is that everybody does things differently culturally, but even within a company, you're gonna have salespeople, they're paid differently, you're gonna have executives, they're paid differently, you're gonna have non exempt versus exempts paid differently. And so it's not even just about the company itself, but also the constituent pieces of the company. And how do you keep that simple for a manager who's making decisions across that? It's tough. So I do think to your point that people are trying to say, how do you make this easy? And the answer is, it's not easy because the business problem's not easy.

 

Sean Luitjens: 20:15

Yeah. I mean, it's, it's what makes some of us probably stay around comp and ben a really, really long time, right?

 

David Turetsky: 20:21

Yeah.

 

Sean Luitjens: 20:21

At a high level, you're like, the problem is simple. We're gonna pay the right people the right way at the right time. Done.

 

David Turetsky: 20:27

Yeah, exactly.

 

Sean Luitjens: 20:28

Now you start doing it. Now you start digging into it, right. And, and all of a sudden, it becomes highly complex, really fast. And, you know, even if you go down the benefits trap pole, and you want to start doing valuation, relative value, like, it can be insanely complex. And we, we actually take some honor in that in comp and ben, on how complex and how smart some people can be about doing it. And then you somehow have to realize, you have to deliver that message back up to 30,000 feet, for somebody who actually, I don't know if this will get edited David, but doesn't give a shit about comp and ben, they just want to actually get through the process of paying people the right way and get through and not have employees angry at them. So they can go hit their actual metrics that they're actually measured on in their business as a manager.

 

David Turetsky: 21:13

And exactly, and that's the problem. Is that getting on with what everything else, it starts with making sure your employees are happy, and they're not going to be happy, unless you give that focus and understanding to are they being paid fairly and correctly? And, you know, that's not easy. So

 

Sean Luitjens: 21:36

That's why I think I mean, back to, can they share? You know, I do think the fairly the communication aside, can you add more data in so that you can basically defend why people are getting paid what? And, you know, there's always going to be those amorphous thing, you know, client satisfaction and other weird things, or, you know, you don't want to make it so competitive. I mean, that's the interesting thing about merit matrix, it's not forced ranking, but it is, if you want to use it, right, it can create a competitive, you know, area, because obviously, if someone gives all fives to all their employees, the merit matrix doesn't really work the same way.

 

David Turetsky: 22:10

Do actually does, you know how it does? Because the fives get all the money, and nobody else gets money, right? And so what did I say to client the other day? If everybody is a five, then nobody's a five? Yeah, if everybody's a five, everybody's really a three. You know? So so you have to balance it. But even to that point, though, it is forced, because on the performance rating scale to the to what you're going with this is, that's a separate activity that's supposed to encourage performance. But unfortunately, it becomes a means to an end for pay.

 

Dwight Brown: 22:47

Right.

 

David Turetsky: 22:47

And it loses its ability to influence the right things, or the right behaviors. And so then we get back to the merit matrix, and we go, Well, you know, then we look at our fives and we go, Well, if five is only getting between a zero and a 5% increase when our merit budget is 5%. What the hell are we doing? And the answer is you're giving a lot of ones, twos, threes, nothing, because you're giving your fours and

 

Sean Luitjens: 23:10

It's interesting. I mean, every I think that's the fives, everything. human piece of it too. Everyone wants to, you know, give everyone a beat be nice. I think it's the same thing. I don't know how many clients to talk to David, who say I, you know, I want to pay above median, or above the average or above the 50, whatever they want to phrase it. And I'm not the brightest guy, definitely not the brightest guy on this call. But but not everyone can pay over the midpoint. I'm guessing about half. And so how does how do you actually, you know, most people want to do that and they can't. And that's the same thing with performance. Because you can't everyone can't be a five because you can't create the dispersion to actually keep the talent you want. And I think it's sometimes you tell people well, if you don't do that, you're going to create this, this people strategy that says, I want to get rid of like for me, when someone says they're all fives, there's no differentiation. So at that point, your people strategy boiled down, is I'd like to get rid of the good players and keep the bad players if you don't do that, right, and they're like, Well, no, that's not what I want to do. I'm like, well, inherently, you're going to do that, because they're going to fall behind market. They just don't boil it down that way.

 

Dwight Brown: 24:15

It's the intersection of the science of comp with the art of being a manager. And that,

 

Sean Luitjens: 24:20

Yeah.

 

Dwight Brown: 24:20

that intersection would be a really dangerous intersection. And it's just, it's tough. It's tough to navigate.

 

David Turetsky: 24:28

Well, I was gonna go to the extent of saying, I agree with everything Sean said, except for the fact that we're talking about in this case, just base pay. In the case of variable pay, I deal with a lot of companies that say, I'm going to pay at midpoint, or sorry, at the median, I apologize, it's the median for base pay, but I'm going to pay 75th percentile for performance on variable pay or total cash compensation because if we achieve our numbers, then we pay out on variable pay, and our numbers are targeted at the 75th percentile. And so if we perform that person gets paid more than the gap between base pay at 50th, and total cash comp at 75th. 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. Sean, what will be some of the biggest hurdles that organizations are going to have? And I think we've already talked through this a little bit. But what do you think some of the biggest hurdles that our listeners are going to face when they're trying to add in this other data and make this or break down these walls within their company?

 

Sean Luitjens: 25:56

Yeah, so I think it's like you said we've we've spoken about it, I think it's the ability to add in additional relevant data, because we have access to all that data and ways to concatenate all that data together. Put that in in some type of format, that we can be smarter about the way that we, you know, spend money in compensation and benefits. But then the complicated part, the biggest hurdle to me is and how do we translate that back to human, for people who aren't living and breathing comp and ben all the time? And so blow that back out to line managers, and then looping it all the way back to the beginning of the chat? Like, how do you loop this back to talent acquisition? Like if you actually hire them at this point, they're not going to stay because you're going to hire them so far below midpoint or so far over that you're going to have a pay transparency issue? Like there's a lot of that data, but I think the biggest hurdle is the tools are out there to kind of aggregate this data. But what do you show and how do you communicate it and how to deal with change management are really hard questions.

 

David Turetsky: 26:53

But they're hard questions that other groups have faced, I think we talked about this a little bit before. Like, if you talk about finance, or marketing, or even, you know, supply chain, they've done a really good job of being able to leverage other pieces of data across the organization, to be able to pull into their businesses, to be able to do better at what they do. So that, you know, supply chain knows they're not gonna have enough people on staff to be able to get a specific amount of product out the door, but they're waiting for shipments to come in, they just don't have the people to get it off the trucks then they know they're going to have to change their forecasts, they know they're gonna have to do something differently. In the same way, HR really needs to set the context for being able to leverage all this other data so that when they give it out, it's not just oh, by the way, here, I'm gonna throw it over the wall to you.

 

Sean Luitjens: 27:41

And I think that the core difference for me is finance, or if you're talking to supply chain for line managers, they see it day in and day out. And we talked about that on being able to something that's a once or twice a year thing. The why is real. I mean, let's be honest, most most people go to work to get paid. They may love what they do and everything else. But generally they go to work to get paid. So it's not a trivial subject, that you're asking someone to be an expert on, and understand the why and communicate that. So I think yeah, the data and pulling in all the right data and funneling it through best where I think you could share and get along, as from the beginning those expertise and how you do that. And then you call it in, you know, Salesforce dashboards, supply chain dashboards, those get boiled up from who knows how many trillion rows of data into something meaningful. But how do you then translate that to something that's as personal as pay to a human that also has the right context? I think that's the biggest hurdle like the tool, the tools are there. There's a lot to be learned from the other groups. I think that's a really good point.

 

David Turetsky: 28:39

And we have to mature as a group, right? HR, we got to stop, stop talking in different speak, talk in English, or in whatever language you speak, but talk more plainly.

 

Sean Luitjens: 28:49

Yeah, I think that that translation of comp and ben to human is, is really good. And almost giving them a playbook of how they can translate those items. I do think things like total rewards statements or some type of documentation to be able to show why you're getting paid this, you know, thing is important versus just I like you or I don't like you.

 

David Turetsky: 29:09

But isn't pay transparency going to make this simpler, because we're gonna have to translate it into their language anyways?

 

Sean Luitjens: 29:16

Dude, you said it was 30 minutes! How long are we gonna go? That's like setting it out. Like, yeah,

 

Dwight Brown: 29:23

I'm gonna grab a beer and pull up a chair here on this one.

 

Sean Luitjens: 29:26

Yeah!

 

David Turetsky: 29:28

Wait, wait. Before you answer that then let me just leave that as food for thought for everyone, and we'll say thank you, Sean. It was a wonderful conversation today. And we'll leave it at that. And then we're going to invite you back to talk about that. Sean, thank you very much.

 

Sean Luitjens: 29:51

Thanks. As always!

 

David Turetsky: 29:53

Dwight, thank you so much.

 

Sean Luitjens: 29:55

Thank you. Thanks for being with us, Sean. And we'll look forward to the extended episode given the bomb that David just dropped.

 

David Turetsky: 30:05

Thank you all for listening, take care and stay safe.

 

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