Mindful Monday’s

Transcript

Michelle

Good morning and welcome to mindful Mondays. My name is Michelle Precourt, and it's a pleasure to be here with you today. Before we get started, I'd like to take a moment to recognize where I'm calling in from. This is on the lands of the traditional lands, of this Sḵwx̱wú7mesh  people. Otherwise known as Squamish, British Columbia. I invite our viewers to share in the chat in the comments, where you're calling in from, I'm always curious, a wide range of folks and across Canada, and in fact, around the world where you are calling in from, so please do share that in the chat.

Before again, we get started with this really, I think important conversation with Jen and Ahmed. Today, I want to tell you a little bit about Mindful Mondays for those folks who may be joining us for the first time. It's really about having conversation around what I consider hot HR topics. That's my background in human resources. And it's around conversations like career related stress, like compensation today, like workplace wellness, like HR strategy that's going to create healthier teams and sustainable workplace culture. So today is, although we're here on the fourth Monday of the month, we typically meet on the third Monday, and really happy to have this conversation today to accommodate your schedule, Jen. Thank you so much for being here. And with that, I'm going to pass it over to our host and moderator today. That's you, Ahmed.

Ahmed

Thank you so much, Michelle. Happy to be here. As always, it's an exciting another Mindful Monday here for us. First, I'm going to introduce Jennifer Ferron. Prior to starting her own consulting practice Comp Savvy, Jen's career included various roles in human resources, compensation and total rewards management. Today, Jen provides customized total rewards consulting to small and medium sized organizations in a variety of business sectors, both private and not for profit with a focus on balancing internal equity with market competitiveness, and an ever-changing talent landscape, including compliance with pay equity legislation. So that's Jennifer for us today. So obviously, she's very well qualified to be speaking to this topic today. And of course, we have Michelle, who is the master, if you will, behind Mindful Monday’s, she is with mindful, Mindful HR Services and is an HR consultant. And as I said, the founder. And then we have myself. So, for those of you who are just tuning in, I'm a marketing and brand strategist. However, today, I'm here as your host, and moderator, and I'm excited for the upcoming conversation. So, let's jump into it. This leads us nicely into today's Mindful Monday conversation and our guest today. As I said, Jen Ferron, welcome. Our topic today will be all around total compensation. So that means we'll be discussing how and why compensation programs not only benefit the employer, but create transparency, support, employee engagement, retention, and just simply are good for business. So, Jen, I'm going to throw first question your way. Earlier today, when we were speaking, you shared that you are quite busy. So, are you seeing an uptick in organizations creating more structure around compensation? And if yes, why do you think that might be the case? And I’m guessing that’s kind of why you’re extremely busy these days?

Jen

Yes, I mean, it’s a blessing and a curse to be so busy. But I will say that the last couple of years have definitely been my busiest. I’ve been in consulting now for nine years, and I’ve noticed a definite up tick just lately in the last couple years. I think part of it is that there's just a greater awareness on the part of employers, generally speaking, about the importance of how they compensate and reward their employees. To some extent that's always been around. But I think that their world has gotten complicated. It was always complicated to try and figure out how to pay people between trying to balance things like market and legislative requirements and internal equity, and all those sorts of factors. But when you take into account the world we've been living in the last couple of years, you know, things like COVID, which have increased remote working, it's not like remote working is new, it's been around for a while, but it's definitely given it a shot in the arm. So, for a lot of employers where that might have been, let's say the exception rather than the rule, suddenly those things are reversing, and it might be more the rule than the exception. And there's implications at least in their mind, as to this. Should this have implications on how I pay my people, if they're suddenly working from all corners of the universe, virtually, rather than here in my brick-and-mortar office.

Then there's ever changing legislation. If you're an Ontario employer, for example, we have Bill 124 the last few years that has really been restricting, specifically public or government funded agencies, not for profits, with a salary cap, for example, for certain kinds of workers. You have pay equity legislation in Ontario and Quebec, if you're a provincially regulated employer, which most employers are, we have very specific legislation around gender pay equity. If you're a federally regulated employer, if you're on the line today, and you are in transportation, banking, any federally regulated employer group complies, for example, with the Canada Labour Code, then you are probably also subject to the brand-new gender pay equity act that the feds put out last year. And so, you have a three-year transition period to get that in order. So, there's all these different things going on.

And then you add inflation, record inflation rate that employers are grappling with, you have more open and public conversations about some sensitive or difficult topics that used to always be taboo, such as how much is my colleague earning, such as diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, social justice issues, there's just a lot on employer’s radars, and almost all of it at some point has compensation implications.

So, I think that's why I'm busy, employers are just grappling with what do I do with all of this. And the other thing is, I think we have some of the most astute, most informed employees and candidates that we've ever seen in our lifetimes, right? The internet was part of that, social media has blown it up. Employees know more, and when they know more, they expect more. So that's landing on employer’s doorsteps as well, in terms of employers still largely have all the power, the decision-making power, if you will, when it comes to how they're going to reward employees. Even if it is a candidate’s market, you still make the final decision. But employees know more than they used to. And so, I think that's holding employer’s feet to the fire a little more.

And finally, I think the fact that employers have always wanted to make sure that their pay structures or pay programs or benefits and perks, if you will, are competitive and that they're sound, and they're built on best practice and those kinds of things from a design perspective. But they get something designed and built and then they have no idea how to communicate it. So, we're spending more and more time at Comp Savvy just helping employers understand once you've built it, how do you actually communicate it and convey it to people in a way that's actually going to engage them, because you can have the best program on the planet. And if you don't know how to talk about it with your employees and have really healthy conversations about pay and rewards, you're dead in the water, your program won't be worth much.

Ahmed

I love what you said there too, about, you know, when we talk about these next generations, especially speaking to them being the most informed and how that's impacting businesses and business drivers going forward. Like there's a lot packed into that, you know, we can probably pull out, but in the interest of time, I'm going to move on to the next question, but I just wanted to know what I thought, you know, that insight is so interesting. Michelle, I'm going to throw this question over to you. How does Comp strategy support engagement?

Michelle

#humanup and I think that that's pretty sound, right? Sound advice there, let's human up our awareness around compensation. And what I mean by that is, we're all in this together, we all have bills to pay, we all have, you know, things that we want to do outside of just the bills, of course, we want to live a healthy life with some fun in it. And, you know, Jen, you brought up the pandemic. And it's been really hard for a lot of people. And what I also like about what you said, is that even from behind our computer screens, which most of us had to do is, there are still these conversations happening around. You mentioned, you know, what is my colleague making? And so, I think everybody wants to know the answer to those questions. But there's this idea around respectful conversation. And you know, we don't talk about money, just like we're not supposed to talk about politics or religion or these types of things. But from those conversations, we can learn and grow and if everything is happening underground, I think this is where there's some dissension and some mistrust. And so, having open and honest conversations, which is a lot of what I'm trying to do with Mindful HR Services, not from a specific comp perspective, but in other ways around building trust, then from there, it's like, okay, I get it, right? But if you don't share, it's always the why, right? Why is this? Why is that? All the little kids ask why, why, why all the time? And, and so if we can share the why then, you know, there's going to be more trust. It's as simple as that.

It's also, I'll close with this comment. It's this idea of a human-centered approach. Yes, businesses are in business to make money, right? Of course, we serve our clients so that we can make money, but at the same time, we need, I think, we really need comp strategies like yours, Jen, help employers. I was sitting back listening to all of the different things that employers need to think about, I'm like, wow, there is so much, there's so much that employers need to know and so how do you do that? It's a little bit like the elephant analogy, how do you eat an elephant, one bite at a time. Someone like yourself, who can help with strategizing and then that other really key component is messaging. So, you put in this new plan, and then how do you message it out, because there's always going to be those side conversations and those whispers. But the more that you can get ahead of those conversations, the more that you're going to have, again, healthier teams, retention is such a huge issue here. And if I know that all three of us are at this, are doing the same job and getting paid the same, that's going to make me feel equal. I think at the end of the day, that's in part where it supports engagement, is that equality, fairness, and trust, that I can trust. I'm trusting my employer that they're going to, you know, pay me fairly, and the others at the table the same way.

Ahmed

That transparency comment is so important, and especially in terms of building trust, and getting people on board and understanding what how they fare out relative to their team members. And if employees want to double down or employers want to double down on this, that's a huge component. Jen, how about yourself? What have you been seeing in this area in terms of comp strategy?

Jen:  Well, for me, I always kind of compare that there's classic aspects of how compensation strategy can really support employee engagement. And then there's some less obvious, if you will, they should be classic, but maybe aren't for a lot of employers, I would say the classic one that usually comes to mind for pretty much any employer because it's maybe the most practical, tangible, easy to understand is the market. What are my neighbours paying for similar jobs? And what kinds of rewards are they offering or perks? And what do I have to do to compete with them? That's a concept that most employers grasp. Because they grapple with it almost day to day, depending on how often they're recruiting for talent. But the less obvious ones that I think are maybe getting more airtime today than they ever have, which is probably a good thing are things like internal equity. So, if you're going in, and we're feeling it right now, with employers being very reactive to things like the great resignation, inflation, etc. They're throwing money at new hires, for example, and not necessarily looking at how they're compensating their current staff, many of which may have been there for many years. And so, they're actively creating internal pay disparities. And sometimes they grasp it and sometimes they don't, until somebody gets vocal about it, or until somebody doesn't get vocal and just leaves because they're fed up.

So internal equity, market strategy keeps you competitive, it allows you to get people in the door. I mean, I think that's a concept most folks can understand. internal equity, in my experience, in working with employers is often the part that will keep people. So, before somebody comes in your door, they often have no idea what your internal equity approaches, your philosophies, your practices, all they know is what they learned in the interview process about how what you're going to pay them. But once they get in the door, there's a point where your level of income stops being as important as your perception of fairness of how that income is being earned. So, to Michelle's point, I could be paid really, really generously relative to the outside market, but I get in the door and realize that, well, I thought I was being well paid. But my three other colleagues are being paid substantially more than me and we seem to perform the same level, we seem to have similar qualifications, we seem to have been in our role relatively the same amount of time or we're in two different roles, same level, and yet our compensations wildly out of whack. Why is it?

If you don't have an internal equity strategy, if you don't put as much focus as an employer on your internal equity strategy as you do on your market strategy, again, you're asking for trouble at some point, it's not really an if, it's a when. And I would say that's just from a basic talent attraction engagement retention standpoint. But you also need to be equally conscious that apart from employee engagement, there's legislation that says you have to pay attention to internal equity. And I think a lot of employers forget it, largely because the legislation can be pretty technically complex to implement. And so, a lot of employer’s kind of throw up their hands and don't know what to do. And then there's total reward strategy. So, the three, I look at our market strategy, internal equity strategy, and total reward strategy, and what do we mean when we say total rewards? Well, compensation is about more than just your salary, right. Even on the cash compensation side, there could be salary, there could be bonus, there could be commissions, if it's a sales kind of role. But more than money, there's also all the perks, the benefits and the workplace culture, the employee experience in your organization is as much a part of how you compensate or reward employees as the money is.

If you don't pay attention to those three moving parts, within your overall compensation strategy, one or more of them, it's like the three-prong stool, right? If you don't pay attention, all three, the stool is going to fall over, at some point, it's just a matter of when. So overall, writing all of that, I always remind employers, those are all very complicated factors, and it can be really noisy. To Michelle's point, there's so many things they have to worry about, how do they make sense of it all? I always say go back to who you are, as an organization, look internally, look at your vision, mission, values, look at your strategic plan, your objectives that you're trying to achieve, even if they're not on paper, what are the short term and long-term objectives because every way in which you reward an employee should be driving those results. And if it's not, if you're not seeing the business results that you need to see, it usually indicates that somewhere in your total rewards strategy, something's broken, whether it's in the design of those programs, whether it's in how you administer and dole them out, whether it's in how you maintain them or don't maintain them. There's usually something broken there that needs attention.

Michelle

I'll just jump in there. Because I want to share a comment from one of our viewers here that you touched on. So, Sajithkumar talked about the different components to salary. And, and so it's not just, it's not always about money. But it's important factor to it, it's things like time off. It's things like you know, your dental and health care plan. And I think you hit a really pivotal point there around mission, vision and values. Why are we here? And drawing in people and making sure that everything else around the organization connects to those mission, vision and values? So, I'll pass it back to you, Ahmed.

Ahmed

Yeah, I mean, this is really great, great conversation. I'm going to jump to the next point here. So, I'll just say, you know, is there still a lot of talk, or there is still a lot of talk rather about the great resignation and organizations are struggling to find talent. Yet, when it comes to recruiting talent, there's a hesitation to share salary details, job postings, commonly stated salary is based on experience. It's awkward for job seekers. Do you see this changing anytime soon? What are your thoughts on having fully transparent comp strategy where organizations are open about who makes what kind of money and I think, Michelle, I will ask you to start on this one?

Michelle

Yes, please, please! Can we be more open about this, can we just open up this dialogue. I want to share a personal story that when I was back working in corporate HR, and I was spending a lot of time on internal recruitment, so I remember having this conversation with a candidate who sat in my office, and he was very frank and open. And he said, you know, Michelle, I just don't know that I can accept this job. While you know, it would be great from a work life balance. He was in operations where it was 24/7 job, and this was more of an administrative role where it was going to be a Monday to Friday position. He's like, in operations my last T-4, I made $40,000 in overtime. And so, I'm sitting there listening to this, and I'm like, wow, internally, I'm like sitting there, very stoic. Yeah, okay, I understand that. But in my mind, I'm like, that's almost my entire annual salary! So, this is where the lack of transparency, I highly doubt this individual would have shared that if he knew how much money I was making, because, you know, he probably would have felt bad by doing that. And I'm not sharing it from that perspective. But it's just that there was this lack of transparency.

And so, he was being really open and sharing and so it's this lack of transparency, where it's the small things or the big things, right? I could have looked at that and went, geez, if he's making that kind of money doing that job, maybe I should do that job? Or why are they making so much money? Why am I not as valuable, right? But if you have a transparent comp program, and you understand the why, there's going to be less of this, I guess, I'm just not as worthy. And I didn't take it that personally, but there could be people who do and then this is when you lose people. So, this is where, you know, transparency in your comp strategies could have a really big impact on individuals and you don't even know it, because I never actually shared that with my manager. I never shared that with anybody it was, you know, it was a personal conversation that someone shared with me. And as an HR professional, it's important to hold that trust. But I knew it. And so, this is where, yes, please, let's blow open the doors. And let's be really transparent about salaries.

Jen

I was going to say it's funny, you mentioned that because I am an HR professional, I spent my corporate career as an HR generalist, and bounced back and forth between general HR work and compensation before I actually went into consulting. And I remember being that person in HR who was responsible for running the annual merit pay review cycle, right, I had the big worksheet for the whole organization, and I had to help managers get through it. And I remember I could see the irony that I could see literally what every person in the organization made right up to the president, because it was my role to be privy to that information, and guide managers through decisions that made sense. And that meant I was also privy to all the exceptions that were made. And largely, those exceptions were made for people that didn't look like me. Let's just put it at that. So fast forward to being a consultant at this point in my career, and the things I see working with various different kinds of employers, the small, the medium, the large, private sector, the not for profit, everything in between. And I see a lot of the same issues, which always come with two things, inconsistency. So, whenever you make exceptions, that usually you're making fertile ground for some kind of pay disparity for someone, whether you realize you're doing it or not, whether it's intentional or not, that's often the impact, is when you make a generous exception for one party, somebody else is suffering an adverse impact as a result of it.

And the other thing is just the lack of transparency, which breeds these kinds. That's why these exceptions are allowed to live, because nobody knows about them, except the managers doing them, their manager and maybe HR, right? So, I think we are seeing a shift in the level of transparency in the workforce, generally, it's a slow burn, it's certainly not an overnight shift. But I will say that since my career began, in the early 2000s, so, I don't date myself too much. But when I was a corporate and HR employee, it was still very taboo, for anybody to talk about their salaries, we had lines in employment agreements that actively discouraged employees from talking about pay in any way with their colleagues. It was like talk to your lawyer, talk to your family, but don't talk to your colleagues. And so, I would say I'm by and large, seeing a shift away from that for most cases and I'm seeing a shift towards more salary ranges, or at least hiring right portions of the salary range being posted in job postings. There's a lot more of them than there were before, which is encouraging, I think so, I think the transparency is moving in the right direction. But I do think it'll be a long time before we see what I would call radical transparency, which is where in a given employer, given company and I know what all my colleagues make. I think what we're seeing most commonly now is we at least, the employers who are doing things transparent, well are publishing at least the ranges, the grading, the leveling, if you will, of all the jobs. Where do you fall in the overall structure in the organization and often, they will also publish the salary ranges for each grade. You won't necessarily know the individual salary your colleague beside you is making, but you know that your colleague is in grade four, just like you. And at least you know that, and you know, where you sit in your range. I would say that's a basic level of transparency that for the most part, organizations should be practicing, people should at least know their own range and where they fall within it.

The next level up is knowing the ranges for all the grades and jobs. The radical part would be we know what all our colleagues make. And the one comment I would say on that is yes, increased transparency is very good for eliminating pay disparities, because it makes, it forces leaders to be honest, right? It's hard to hide behind pay decisions, if everybody knows what everybody's making. But the other thing is that with great transparency comes great need for education. So, it's not enough to simply open the doors wide open and tell everybody who's making what, if you don't also give them the context in which those decisions are made. To your point, Michelle, the why? Why is my job in grade two and not grade three? How do you determine that? Why am I at the lower end of my pay range and not the middle or the max? How do you determine what the pay range is for my job? What market segments do you look at? What like how does it all work? How often am I eligible for pay increase? And what are the considerations for my increase? Is it performance? Is it cola? What is it? Why am I getting an increase or not getting one? And when do we, you know, look at our pay structure? How often do we bump the grid? Do we keep up with inflation? Is inflation even a thing for us? Do we care? If you don't educate employees and managers and leaders about those things, then it's not really useful to have wide open doors, policies about how much information you share about the actual pay rates, because it'll probably cause you more grief than good.

Ahmed

So, I think in the interest of time, let's jump ahead. You know, thank you so much for that perspective, Jen, you know, really hearing that idea around what's happening, and you know, how this might be affecting this great resignation, and how employers can curb it is so informative, and very, you know, so insightful. Well, I think, especially for those that are listening today, or those that are listening in the future to kind of give them some ideas. I think from here, just in the interest of time, Michelle, I'm going to pass it over to you for closing comments. To wrap up today's Mindful Monday.

Michelle

That's great. So, thanks, Jen, even as you said, you know, earlier, before we went live, you're like, oh, this, you know, getting into the weeds can be really boring. I'm like, nope, I could listen to this, I could listen to you for hours. But we do have to come to a close here. Thank you both for sharing your knowledge and for your time, Ahmed. And starting in June, we're changing things up a little bit with Mindful Mondays, we've got a slightly different look and feel to things. So, stay tuned for that. With that change. Ahmed is leaving us, like I said, we're changing things up a little bit. It'll be myself and the guest. So, a one-on-one conversation. And so, I want to say thank you Ahmed for your professionalism and ease of hosting over this last year or so, I really appreciate the time and energy that you brought to Mindful Mondays thus far. So, thank you so much.

Ahmed

It's been my absolute pleasure, Michelle, absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me. And thank you for bringing me along on this journey with you. And to all the listeners, thank you for hearing me and you know, coming along with us. And for the future listeners, you're set up for a wicked show, a wicked episode, a wicked content coming your way with Michelle and her guests. So excited to see this moving forward and wishing you all the best. Thanks, Michelle.

Michelle

Thank you. Our next guest is a diversity, equity and inclusion specialist Gabbi Zuniga from Inclusive Kind. I know that we're going to talk about some sensitive, maybe difficult, taboo, more taboo conversations, right. So, it's going to be really great. And that is on, let me just double check the date, June 20. So, we're back to the third Monday of every month. So please join us on June 20, for that conversation. So, with that, we'll say our goodbyes. Thank you so much, Jen, again for your time and energy today. I really appreciate that.

Jen

Thank you for having me. It's been a real pleasure.

Michelle

Of course, and thank you Ahmed, thank you to all of our viewers, the comments were amazing. Keep sharing, and I’d love to continue this conversation. Jen is available here on LinkedIn, you can reach her through Comp Savvy. And of course, you know where to find me. And until next time, be well, everyone.