Totally Rewarding Chats | Ep. 01: How Data and Technology Will Help Brands Thrive While Embracing Pay Transparency

Pay transparency will take on a new life in 2024

In this episode, Sean and David explore the evolving corporate culture, the impact of remote work, internal and external pay transparency, and predictions for the next 12 to 24 months in the HR tech landscape.

In this episode:

• Host, Sean Luitjens is Visier's General Manager of Compensation Benchmarks

• Guest, David Turetsky, CHRO at Salary.com and host of the HR Data Labs Podcast

More on pay transparency, compensation, and pay equity

• Pay Transparency: Should Salary Be a Secret?

• New Facts About Pay & Compensation
  

• State of Pay Equity 2023

Episode transcript:

Sean Luitjens:

All right. Welcome everyone. This is the first of a series of interviews where we take some time and interview a couple of the most knowledgeable and experienced industry experts. I, I know, just take roll with me on this, David, um, and get your opinions on the past year and, and what 2024 might hold, and really put the shoe on the other foot, uh, um, and, and can ask them some questions. My name's Sean Luitjens. I'm the GM of Total Rewards at Visier. And, um, I'm new to this if you can't tell, but I'm really excited to talk to some of these industry experts. And to kick this off, we have one of the best, uh, we're lucky enough to have David Turetsky from HR Data Labs podcast. Welcome. Do you like that intro?

David Turetsky:

Uh, it's actually really good. You did a great job, Sean. Thank you. Thanks.

Sean Luitjens:

I appreciate it. Um, so can you give us, um, can you give us a little history of your background, you know, kind of run through your background, because I think it's one of the most interesting backgrounds, and I say that being serious because it covers kind of as people will see a, a wide range.

David Turetsky:

Thank you. So I went to college to be an architect, and then seven weeks into the program failed. And so I carried six credits of F throughout my entire college career. And what happened was I stumbled into economics and, uh, my first economics course, uh, the teacher came up to me afterwards and he said, oh, so you're an economics major? And I said, no, I have no major. And he said, well, you're an economics major. And because I just loved that, trying to understand how people act and react to stimuli, whether it's economic stimuli from getting a paycheck or whether it was just listening to the environment around them. And so I used that background and my first job was at, uh, towers Par and Foster and Crosby, the old TPF and C.

And my first job was modeling compensation programs, um, using, uh, well, we were using mainframe focus yes. To regress how people got paid based on their skills, knowledge, and abilities. And so that kind of led into this love affair of compensation and human resources and being able to help managers see HR as a business decision, not as an HR decision. Right. And making compensation decisions that were best for the company and the employee.

And so I wound my way through being a practitioner, being a consultant. And, um, my last job, um, was having KY Consulting before I came to Salary.com, where now I'm the CHRO and VP of Consulting. That's new news, Sean. That happened yesterday. Huh? So, um, so now I'm doing fractional CHRO, plus I'm doing my day job of helping companies solve their big problems by, um, consulting with them.

Sean Luitjens:

It's kind of cool you get to talk the talk and then, and then kind of have to go walk the walk, right? Yeah. So,

David Turetsky:

Um, exactly. I have to take my own medicine.

Sean Luitjens: 

Yeah. Yeah. You don't wanna tell everyone, you guys should all do this, but, uh, but I'm not going to in my day job.

David Turetsky:

Yes, exactly. And along the way, I get to podcast with brilliant people like Sean, um, and be able to help uncover how some of the most brilliant minds inside and outside the world of HR are actually dealing with this crazy complex world that we live in today. And I've been doing that since 2020, and that's just so much fun.

Sean Luitjens:

It is interesting. Before we get to some other questions, I joke and tell people all the time, I've been around a while, but I've never been a practitioner. And that's because that looks hard. I love helping them solve problems, but that, that looks ridiculously hard being a practitioner and, and taking all this theory and putting it into practice.

And I think I've heard you say it on your podcast before too, and I'm, I try to use the same thing. It's hard to predict everything. 'cause HR is, it, it's got humans involved. Exactly. Yeah. Which are unpredictable and everything's personal. Even you can't unpersonal something that personal

David Turetsky:

No, it, it, it's actually, you're actually very true. I mean, it's so hard. You can say all you want about best practices. We hate that word, right? Best practices. But when you actually put them into practice and you see what it actually does to people's lives, you then kind of step back and you go, whoa, wow. I've been con I've been saying this, or I've been consulting that.

Yep. And so having been a practitioner Yeah, it's, it actually gives you a really good, it's not, it's like a cold glass of water in the face sometimes of that. Yeah. You may not want to consult about that next time because you saw how it happened. So yeah. It, it's, it's definitely a wake-up call.

Sean Luitjens:

So before we get going, um, a little bit of what you do usually ask something different about folks, but I'm, I actually ask this of everybody during interviews and even when I have intro calls at where I work or whatever, but what, what do you do for fun outside of work as a, as a normal human? What

David Turetsky:

Is it outside of work? Oh, no. Um, so, um, I've been writing books, um, the HR Data Doodles book. Um, I've, in series two right now, series three is in production. And series four, it got written. So writing books, um, basically very thought leadership based about all the things we talk about and all these issues, these complex issues. And just making them fun and making 'em laugh, making people laugh, reading a page, flipping them the next page and going, you know, which character is gonna make me laugh this time. Um, and then also I coach my son's hockey team. It's a peewee hockey team under 12, uh, 12 and under. And, um, that's four times on the ice. Um, a week. Plus I skate guard on weekends. So I help people learn how to skate and I keep, try and keep 'em safe.

Sean Luitjens:

Okay. That's awesome. Um, it's funny, I like to do a lot of stuff. I might possibly be the world's worst ice skater. I am. That's

David Turetsky:

Not true.

Sean Luitjens:

My brain, like, uh, I told people I had to stop figure skating when we moved figure skating, ice skating. Yeah. When we moved to Vermont. Um, when the kids got good enough to get off the crate, because that meant I had to get off the crate. Yeah. Um, so that was the end of my career. So the fact that you're out and spending that much time,

David Turetsky:

Hey, you know what the people say all the time that they don't know how to skate, and then someone kind of triggers something in their brain. They tell them something like, bend your knees, you know, learn how to balance, you know, don't do this. And then all of a sudden it just comes to them.

And it's kind of like, you know, it's kinda like riding a bike. There's someone who can connect the dots for you and be able to, to help you see, Ooh, if I did this one thing differently, I'll feel more comfortable. And the problem with skating is when you have doubt, when discomfort in on those skates, you're gonna fall. When you balance and you feel like you're in balance and you don't think about it anymore, that's when you don't fall unless somebody, it's kind

Sean Luitjens:

Of like an analogy for life, I think. You know?

David Turetsky:

Yes, it is true. Very deep.

Sean Luitjens:

So how'd you get into the podcasting piece with all the career that was there and everything else? Uh, how'd you, how'd you get started into that space?

David Turetsky:

Uh, that's a great question. So, when I was, um, in Tosky Consulting, and we were blogging, we were doing a lot of LinkedIn, you know, publishing, we found that nobody was listening, nobody was watching, nobody cared. And so what we tried to do is we tried to meet people where they wanted to be, which is some, like the medium of, of reading some, like the medium of listening and podcasting was growing tremendously during the, the pandemic.

And so we, you know, said, Hmm, let's try this. And one of the fascinating things about podcasting is that if you're successful, that means you've gotten past like 10 episodes or 10 20 episodes. Well, no one told us that. And so he just kept going and going and going. So we started October 1st, 2020, and then along the way we gathered an audience and things started to happen and people started listening, people started reacting. And now we've achieved 150 episodes and we, there's a, there's a, uh, website called I think listen notes. And if you look at listen notes, it tells you what you rank is amongst 3 million podcasts. Um, and we're in the top 10th percentile.

I mean, we're not talking Joe Rogan numbers here, we're, you know, we were like shocked. Holy crap. We're 10th percentile. That's pretty amazing. And one other things is longevity. You know, being able to be, you know, podcasting for three years is kind of amazing. Yep. But along the way, we've had lots of really wonderful conversations and what keeps us going is the listeners as well as people now saying, Hey, I wanna be on your podcast. Which is kind of cool.

Sean Luitjens:

That makes it easier. Exactly. So as we spin that around, um, you know, kind of, if you aggregate all of them, you, you know, your thoughts obviously, and then those of the guests that you've had over the past year, kind of thinking over the past year, what's the most important thing?

And I'm gonna, uh, take AI off the table a little bit 'cause I, I had to say AI 'cause it wouldn't be anything in 2023 without the words AI. Yeah. Right. What's the most important thing that you've seen in the space the past year, you know, change or tech or, you know, really open-ended?

David Turetsky:

Uh, I gotta be honest with you, the thing that kind of shocked me the most is our use of language, um, in interactions. I know that might come outta that field, but being more inclusive in our language and being more thoughtful in how we talk. Um, a lot of times we use phrases and words that we don't think about that they're just part of our vernacular. And one of the guests I had on, um, show you her book, um, Jackie Ferguson kind of reminded us, reminded me in her book, the Inclusive Language Handbook, that the things that we say hurt people and the things, you know, meaningless, you know, in our minds, but they're meaningful to other people. And I think that was the thing that kind of woke me up during our latest season.

And, um, it was really useful. It was really important to hear. 'cause I, I'm a lifelong learner. I love learning that. I've been making mistakes this whole time. So that, to me, that was, that was the biggest one. The second one is, um, learning from people who've been on journeys, um, for a very, very long time around who they are and how they present themselves to the world. And so, being your authentic self. And I had a couple people on, um, who really opened my eyes to the fact that when you are lgbtq plus and you're in the workforce, a lot of times you have to not be able to communicate who you are and what you are.

And that's really, it's really hurtful. It's really disappointing. I have two kids who are L-G-B-T-Q, and I don't want them growing up in a world where they have to hide who they are and you know, what they are from, from, from the world. And so I think it's really good that we're starting to have conversations around people being their authentic selves at work, and feeling supported by that and not having to hide. Obviously, we're in a political landscape right now where that's a little challenging, and that's where awareness and compassion come into it. And so, as a white male, I am trying to be better through every interaction that I have, trying to be meaningful and trying to be an ally as much as I possibly can.

Sean Luitjens:

It's really interesting. It, my, um, uh, I have a, a brother who is gay and lives in London. Um, the reason he lives in London is he, at the time, uh, he met his partner, um, was in the U.S. working for, uh, one, a large accounting firm, um, who actually was pretty helpful. But, um, he had to be careful who he was. Right. Particularly in the U.S.. And then of course, they moved to the UK because they couldn't get married here at the time. Yeah. And so, you know, when, when people always say, well, does it really affect you? I'm like, you'd be surprised actually who it affects and the realm and the, and the world that it affects. You'd be surprised, um, how many people it affects.

And you know, for me it was like, okay, now my brother has to move to London. Um, I'm a lifelong Arsenal fan. So actually, you know, it worked out okay for me. Um, and, but you know, then they set up roots and they lived there and Yeah. And you know, he, you know, I think at some level he stays there because they were the country that accepted him Yeah. And the community that accepted him, um, over, over this particular place. But it was interesting for me to watch him have to navigate that. Yeah. Um, because he, you know, had to be professional at the accounting firm, and that was not okay. I won't say how old I am, but he is not that much younger than me.

So it was, yeah. So, yeah, so, you know, it was not okay. And so we had to navigate that. And, you know, you figure like, work's hard enough to be successful Exactly. To do the right things, to make your clients happy, to get everyone going, to get the team going. Like, the last thing you wanna do is have to think about that. Like, I, I, I wouldn't have been able to do it.

David Turetsky:

And the world of work continues to change and continues to grow. And hopefully we won't see retrenchment and we won't go backwards when it comes to acceptance in the workplace. Heck, I, we just released a podcast on workplace violence yesterday that I, I hated to have to release. But a lot of that comes from misunderstandings, miscommunications, um, and people being treated unfairly or poorly or have that perception. So, um, I hope we grow as a society and grow as a country and as a world so that people don't have to worry about being an authentic self.

Sean Luitjens:

So I think the, the youngest generation that's out there right now, the ones coming outta school, and I, uh, you know, it's actually again, my age, they, the, my kids generation, you know, coming outta school, they seem to have less tolerance and more open on them hoping and hoping that that drives corporate culture a little bit. Because if you want the best performers, and that's where their mindset's at, I'm, you know, I'm very hopeful that that's the case because, you know, as we spin this back to, you know, the HR tech side and the hr, it's like, what are your high performers doing?

And what's important to them and their values, because that's the piece that's gonna keep them there and performing high. And if you're flying in the face of that, they will go somewhere else that values that. Um, and how do you, you know, how do you measure that? That's different, right? Because that's not like, how many widgets can I make in an hour? The culture is hard. Um, and a lot of companies talk about culture, but then don't deliver on it. So Absolutely. It's gonna be hard for them to navigate too. That's really interesting. One, because I think that softer stuff, as we mentioned, joked a little bit early about human resources, um, you know, it involves humans, uh, by default. And it, it, it does make it trickier. It's not a hundred percent statistical.

David Turetsky:

Yep.

Sean Luitjens:

So with that in mind, if you looked at that in the last year, what do you see, you know, over the next, you know, kind of putting in the, uh, crystal ball, looking ahead for the next 12, 24 months, what do you think is coming? Or is it more of the same?

David Turetsky:

I think there's gonna be a tremendous push to try and rationalize the work-at-home hybrid work. Um, thing, um, return to work has been handled very poorly by some organizations and been handled very well by others. In many instances, remote work has kind of become the default from an employee perspective or at least an expectation for many. And so I think there's going to start to be more regulation, more, um, thought process around it. And that's gonna creep into a lot of how we run our HR organizations. I also see us, um, I know that technology works like this, asking people to be on camera much more than, you know, people say, oh, well I don't wanna be on camera today.

Okay, that's a choice. But more often than not, you're gonna start seeing organizations that do accept remote work to have people be on camera. I think that also is gonna change how people meet. Maybe there's gonna be less meetings, maybe there's gonna be more get stuff done time than meet time because people are multitasking too much. And during meetings today anyways, so hopefully the rationalization comes to, um, well, we need to be smarter about the time we put into what is a meeting? What are we trying to achieve by it?

The second thing I think that's gonna come is around pay transparency and pay equity. Where we're gonna start to see more states in the United States take on more legislation that requires at least the posting of starting pay ranges for jobs, because that's actually turned out to be a really good thing. And companies are now realizing it's a good thing and they're being more proactive about it instead of waiting for legislation to push them to do it. And if you're in a state that doesn't have it, but you're surrounded by states that do, that company has to probably do it anyways because most of the people they're recruiting for or paying or, or working for or looking for are in those states. So I, I think transparency is not, it's not, it's not certainly not set dead, but it's also going to take on a new life in 2024.

Sean Luitjens:

It's interesting on the work from home. So I don't know how public, you know, public. I, uh, I don't, I wasn't the first, but I've been working remote for 19 years. Yeah. Um, so, so it's

David Turetsky:

Right out of right outta high school then.

Sean Luitjens:

High. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I, I wish, so it's interesting to have watched kind of the cycle of life from, you know, you're the, you know, you're the weird one and how do you make it work and how difficult it was to work from home And actually at, at one role, you know, we're gonna give you a go, but we don't think this is gonna work. Right. Um, to everyone's working at home and people are like, how do you do this? Um, right. Um, to now this kind of, where I think it's actually harder, this hybrid thing. It's interesting you mentioned the camera. I'm a big advocate of camera. I'm always on camera. Um, I, I think it's, I think it's a little disrespectful to not be on camera without a good reason. Um, yeah. You know, you wouldn't, you wouldn't put a bag over your head or turn a face the other direction in a face-to-face meeting. Uh, in general. I've done

David Turetsky:

That before. Well, I've been told to do that before. So.

Sean Luitjens:

Well, that's for different reasons. Probably.

David Turetsky:

Well, my mom always said I had a face for a radio, so there you go.

Sean Luitjens:

No, we should, shouldn't have you on the video podcast then. She's gonna be really upset with me. Yeah, that's true. Um, so I think that is really interesting is companies struggle. The, the one comment on my personal opinion on that is I think companies have to realize, again, it's human resources, right? And, um, I'm notoriously, believe it or not, introverted, I like my space. I work very well with that, being able to carve the time out. Um, I like inter, you know, I'm not what they, people think an introvert sometimes is, but there are people who like the office so that, you know, and they wanna go talk to everybody and go hang out. And so how do you build a culture where you can get the best people possible on board and kind of work with 'em all?

David Turetsky:

And I think the flexibility that some companies offer where there's a place to go there, there's times when you need to be there. And that, you know, that that ability to be flexible or to at least have some flexibility will provide people with, I think at least enough of both. Yeah. The ability to go in and to be with people and to, you know, share things together. And then the ability to be home and take care of yourself, your family, the needs that you have, and also the expense of, of commuting and the wear and tear on your body of commuting. I think those two things are not, they're not opposed, I think they're, they're, they're possible. And so as we grow into what does hybrid look like, what does remote become?

I think a lot of times you're gonna see companies like Onic. Um, we had their CHRO on our podcast. We talked about how they've gone to, they've, they've eliminated their corporate headquarters, they've gone completely remote. Well, that's one way of doing it. What did they also do? They also hired and rented and leased space to be able to have people come and be together. Right. Doesn't need to have the blue con name on the, on the mantle, but they can be together and they can, they can do things that they wanna do in common at a place if they need to. And I think that's gonna become more popular because, you know, the world has changed. I mean, infectious disease hasn't stopped, you know, the pandemic is not really over. I, I could tell because four out of the, uh, three out of the four coaches on my son's hockey team have some kind of respiratory illness. And I'm the one who doesn't. And I'm feeling like crap right now. So, um, that small sample size kind of leads me to believe we're not out of the woods yet. Um, and you know, remote does help that a lot. Yeah.

Sean Luitjens:

I think that flexibility is, is gonna be key. And, and yeah, I think that's awesome. I think that's a great, great thing that people are dealing with. And how do you do the real estate footprint's a real thing, right? Being an office manager is kind of, that's gotten more complicated because your office is now not one or two locations. It's 50 people somewhere that have to meet and maybe do events, et cetera.

David Turetsky:

Exactly.

Sean Luitjens:

Exactly. So to me, um, on the, on the, um, pay transparency side, I mean, how do you see companies getting in front of that best? And I guess the follow-up question to that is, you mentioned the, the posting of jobs from a pay transparency, that's the external pay transparency. Do you see the internal pay transparency? You know, how, how far behind do you see that?

David Turetsky:

Well, so I think the, let me take the, the latter first before I deal with the former. So I think that companies need to come up with a pay transparency strategy of communication internally that enables people, not just managers, but employees to understand we're gonna be posting jobs and we're gonna be posting them with ranges. And so if your pay range looks like it's more than you're getting, here's why. And here's how we talk about it. And here's what it means to you and here's what we're gonna do about it. Um, that's an important part of being able to have a transparent organization, is being able to deal with areas and scenarios where hay's not secret anymore. I need to now deal with issues of compression. I need to deal with the market movements and how that affects my current staff. That's all part of transparency. You can't hide stuff anymore. That's what transparency means.

So I think there's a communication strategy and there's a, there's now gonna be a new push to actually have development of a consistent set of processes. And this gets to the, the former point you made. Um, we're gonna have to actually do a lot more market analysis. We're gonna have to take data and get more modern sources of data. And surveys will evolve and other technologies will be there to enable us to get what's going on in the marketplace today so that companies can create better ranges, more modern ranges, and not wait three or four years to update their ranges. Because the market will move. People will see it, it'll be very public. And, and when I say people, I mean your candidates will see it, your employees will see it, and your managers will see it.

And so I think there's gonna be almost a kind of a coming out party for compensation plans and compensation policies and compensation programs. So much so that compensation will not be secret anymore. We're going to be sharing things that we never did. We're gonna be talking not just about structures, we're gonna be talking about plans and policies. And that means that companies need to modernize their compensation systems in order for them to see the light of day. 'Cause you and I both know, we've been in this a long time. We use a lot of compensation speak in our plans and policies.

We talk about midpoint progressions, we talk about, uh, range penetration. We talk about things that people go, what the hell does that mean? What's comp ratio? I don't, I don't know what a comp ratio is. Some people say compa ratio, some people say comp a ratio. They have no idea. Because what we've developed inside of compensation has been this language of our own and this vernacular. And it doesn't mean anything to the external world. So it's not like building a handbook around comp, that's not gonna work because we're dealing with external parties and we're dealing with internal parties.

And we really have to, and I don't mean this in a pejorative way, we're dealing with lowest common denominator here, which is there are managers and employees who don't know compensation speak. We have to be very simple about, you know, what do these things mean? And so if we have, uh, zones or if we, you know, comp ratio zones, we now need to call them something else, right? And we need to be very honest and open with how and why we've built these things in the past. So I, I know that's a longwinded answer to say, you know, we need to be more open about the world of pay and that's gonna cause 'em a lot of work.

Sean Luitjens:

I, I think it's really interesting you say that. 'cause the other piece that I always tie to that is if, if you're gonna force certain, require, need managers and et cetera to be more up to speed on everything, and how are they gonna handle this in a programmatic way, a defensible way. Um, you've got pay equity, you've got all that in there. Um, a third of them, statistically, you know, jokingly, not 75% of statistics are made up on the fly, but from some recent studies, this point, about a third of managers are doing it for the first or second time. Yep. Yep. And by the way, even if they've done it several times, they're doing it once, twice at best a year. Exactly. And so the expectation that compensation, people assume I can send 'em a PowerPoint with a lot of jargon and methodology and stuff, and they're gonna retain that one first. Are they gonna care? Two, are they gonna retain it? So I think the tech space from the standpoint of how can we help them? And actually it's a great point, David, in, in normal English speak, uh, translating from comp to normal human, how can we help them provide them tools?

And then I think the secondary effect, and I'd be curious on your opinion, will be not secondary systems, but like pay for performance, you know, the performance systems. Because how, if you've got a transparent system, you know, you have to somehow show and document and prove that, you know, David's making more in the range because he's a better performer and Sean's making lower in the range 'cause we're still not sure why we hired him. Yeah. Um, that has to be documented in a performance way, otherwise you're leaving latitude for people to say, well, I'm not paid the same. And why? Right. I think there's some philosophical really cool upsides like that can come outta this from manager discussions. 'cause obviously if you're getting paid less, it opens the door to some cool discussions. Half of the managers will say good, half of 'em will be like, oh crap, I don't want any discussion.

David Turetsky:

But, but I think there's another downfall or, or maybe it's a downside, maybe it's an upside, which is that our data, which has typically been crap in hr, has gotta get cleaner. We've gotta know more about the people that we're paying. We've gotta know more about their background. We have to really understand their experience levels. Because if we are, to your point, generating a gap in pay, we need to justify that how and why. Um, and it's not just things that are documented, it's observable. You know, what are the skills this person has? Why are we giving them extra and this other person doesn't have the skill? Okay. So that's what the, the gap came from.

So we've been trying to get to skill-based pay for years to try and generate, you know, if I take a person in there, a set of these skills, does that equate to what we're paying them? Well, we may not be able to get to that, but at least, you know, when we have skill acquisition and then be able to give that person an increase based on the skill acquisition, document it very clearly and put it in the database, then we may be in a more defensible position about pay and how we pay and how we differentiate. But right now, the data, I think is our biggest downfall when it comes to all that.

Sean Luitjens:

Yeah. And I think the, the reality of being able to aggregate and put that data into some type of analytical format right, from multiple systems Yep. Is, is gonna be hard. 'cause you start thinking about, I've kind of said it all the time, you know, HR has the most disparate systems typically. Yeah. And you have to, to really do it right. I think pull in business items, right? So you can figure out, you know, how much impact this person has to the business versus the other, et cetera. It's a lot to do, like you said. And so I think, and then, and then turn it into human language. Exactly. Those are great points. Um, so with that in mind, with all that stuff going on, the question I thought would be kind of interesting is if you could solve one HR issue, um, you know, with a magic wand or what have, and, you know, what would that be?

David Turetsky:

If I had to solve one HR issue, it would be the pay gap. It's just not, not fair, it's not necessary. There's no reason, there's no valid reason why we should pay people differently based on who and what they are. It, it's just, it's just horse shit. Pardon my French. Now you have an e for, for me, saying that , or you can bleep me out, but No, but seriously, I'm very, it frustrates me. It gets me very upset that we pay people differently. We get, we think we get bargains because we pay people less for who they are and people celebrate that. And it's awful. Um, the pay gap should not exist. There should not be a reason why people doing the exact same job are paid differently because of who they are. And so if I were able to wave my magic wand, it would be to get rid of that right

Sean Luitjens:

Now. Yeah. That, that's awesome. I, I've, I I'm with you. I'm, I'm always baffled by it. And I hold out this little bit of silver lining of hope that as the world becomes more inclusive and more people, um, get over that, that basically, um, one person's bias becomes another person's victory. Because someone will be like, here's what we pay for this work. I don't know what they were doing. I value you at this amount. And then, and then it kind of starts to self normalize in that companies, whether they want to be good payers or not, um, kind of get forced into being good payers. I, I do believe back to your point of systems and, and other stuff and how you push that down and how you do English, I do think well over 90%, I hope it's 99% of companies want to be good payers, um, in general.

Like I know you, we, you'd hope we can debate a little bit. Yeah. I think how do they get there and how do you do that? And I think the one fundamental problem is for companies, there's only one way to fix it. Everyone's talked about how do you fix it? Well, you, you pay the people that are underpaid more. You don't take someone and move them back. We know that's human nature, right? They'll go what have you. Right? So it's a money issue that's fundamentally out there. That's a, a truth. And so I hope it, I I'm with you. I I'm baffled by it when we talk about it, why is this an issue? And I'm still sometimes wake up and, and look at pay equity and talk about pay equity and be like, I, I fundamentally struggle that we have this problem. But it's, it's a thing to worry about.

David Turetsky:

You know, a long time ago, um, as a compensation practitioner, I once talked to my head of HR and CFO to talk about gaps. And we talked about making a market adjustment budget that was rich enough to be able to solve some of that. And what I got back was, it's a zero-sum game. If we take money out of, if we put money into market adjustments, we have to take it outta somewhere else. And I said, Hmm, we're very profitable. I don't understand why that's necessarily the truth. Well, well, you know, if we weren't profitable, you know, this would just make our numbers even worse and blah, blah. And I said, you just made an excuse why you want richer bonuses so that people couldn't get paid more fairly. And I don't like that. Now, as a leader, I'm gonna do whatever I can to make sure that doesn't happen. And it, it's, you know, maybe it's one of those things where you learn a lesson and now you're, now you're in a place where you can do something about it. And hopefully I can,

Sean Luitjens:

I think the tools are better. That, and, and the process has generally been, you know, David, you're now with the CHRO. You need to roll out a 4% increase. We, that's what we've decided, right? Can we start the other way and have the tools and infrastructure and start the process that says, for me to get everyone to the midpoint or to get everyone here and cover pay equity, here's the money and here's the layers. In the past, I, I do firmly believe there was a such a large lift for human resources to go back comp people really, um, to go back and model out 7, 8, 9 different models of, if I do an even spread of pay, if I create by differentiation and do my, like, that was a lot of work. Right? And by the way, they have other stuff to do. Sure. Will tools allow them to go back and, and present that. I might be crushed later when people come back with those analytics and say, well, I, I presented them the way you thought we should present 'em, and people would do things and they didn't do it anyway. But I do think that's part of it.

David Turetsky:

An an entire podcast can be, um, talked. We, we talked through that on an entire podcast of how do you model pay, where you look at the market and you see where people are and you try and get them there, you know, basically an equal footing, you know, when a job is getting paid this, you know, people who are all over the board, you know, how do you get people to that number? And so, I, I think you're right. I think technology could help that today. But, you know, even when we were doing this back in the late nineties where in nineties or the early thousands, I, I think we had technology.

I think Excel helped us get there. Of course there were compensation tools, but, um, I, I think it was more the will at that point, not the way Mm-Hmm. And so I, I think now because of the emphasis on pay equity, the emphasis on transparency, I think we're gonna kind of be forced to get more closely to that. And as starting rates, because they're being published as starting rates are published, I think we're starting in the right place. So I think it's more achievable today than it ever was. You're right. Some of it might be systems, but I think more of it's cultural than, than systems.

Sean Luitjens:

And so the last thing is, is, uh, to wrap up, do you have any kind of final thoughts for HR or compensation people as we head into '24?

David Turetsky:

AI

Sean Luitjens:

And new your? You're gonna get me at some point. I knew, I knew since I took it off the table. You come, you'd come back. That's great.

David Turetsky:

Let me, let me, let me qualify that AI is in every discussion because it's a transformative technology just in the same way that the internet was in the nineties and early two thousands. And so I think that we're gonna get much smarter about the world of artificial intelligence and how it impacts how people work. Not replacing people, but enhancing how we work. I, I think the, in replacing people is just, I think that's just banter and bull crap. I I think that's, you know, one of those things where they're trying to scare you. And so, you know, let's not use a car because it's gonna replace the horse. What are we gonna do with all those horses?

Um, I think it's gonna be something where we're gonna see some productivity gains. We're gonna see some failures, but we're gonna see some productivity gains from it. And I think it's gonna reach into the HR world in a very good way and enable us to get to more strategic stuff, just in the same way we thought analytics was when people analytics first came out. But I think there's more to see there. And the second thing I'll, I'll say for 2024 is, is that because it's gonna be a political cycle, I think we're gonna see a lot more, um, questions about what does the world of HR look like? Whether it becomes a Republican administration or a Democrat, you know, says democratic administration, I think that's gonna be huge in the U.S. Um, and so the political cycle's gonna really heat up in the summertime especially, and that's going to change a lot of things.

Sean Luitjens:

Do you think that's gonna s you know, cause kind of a, a slow down and people evaluating and making changes to their transparency, you know, policy and tech changes? Well,

David Turetsky:

I don't know about transparency. I think transparency's here to stay anyways because that's a state issue. That's not really a federal issue. I think that the world of work is gonna slow down significantly because some of the things that might happen on a federal level that could change that. Sure. You know, things like FLSA and, and you know, over time and, and, and things that were minimum wage and other things that are kind of more global in nature that have federal, um, uh, touch, I think that's what's gonna be bigger. So yeah, I do see a slowdown happening, but you know, it's also gonna be that everybody holding their breath to see what happens in November.

Sean Luitjens:

Well, I really appreciate it, David. I really appreciate the time. It's great to get your insight. Always great to chat with you. So always good chat with you. I appreciate it. Um, you know, thanks again and um, we'll chat with everyone else later.

David Turetsky:

Take care. Thank you.