Totally Rewarding Chats | Ep. 23: Best Practices for Total Rewards Teams

Aligning HR with business needs

Denise Liebetrau shares her extensive experience in compensation management and discusses best practices for organizations of all sizes. She emphasizes the importance of data governance, job architecture, and understanding business needs to create effective compensation strategies. She also highlights the value of both internal and external collaboration in developing compensation frameworks and the necessity of ongoing education to maintain data integrity.

Denise and Sean discuss the critical intersection of HR, compensation planning, and business value. They emphasize the importance of understanding business needs, building relationships, and aligning HR metrics with organizational objectives. This conversation also highlights the challenges faced by HR departments in securing budgets and resources, the necessity of technology in streamlining processes, and the significance of employee recognition and value in driving engagement and productivity.

In this episode

• Host, Sean Luitjens, General Manager of Compensation Benchmarks, Visier

• Guest, Denise Liebetrau, Founder & CEO, Prosper Consulting

Episode transcript

Sean Luitjens (00:00.74)
All right, we have another totally rewarding chat. I have Denise Liebetrau with me. Did I get it right? All right, from Denver, Denver? Are you actually in Denver?

Denise Liebetrau (00:07.724)
You got it right.

Denise Liebetrau (00:14.122)
Yeah, really close. Like, we're couple blocks, but I'm Denver Metro. I'm in Lakewood. I'm in the west side of Denver.

Sean Luitjens (00:17.146)
Well, that's not in Denver, so...

Sean Luitjens (00:22.566)
Okay, awesome, thanks so much. Known you for a couple years. I'm kind of excited because of the business you have to talk about just overall total rewards. But instead of me screwing up your background, why don't you give me your background in a couple minutes and then talk about where you are now and how you got there.

Denise Liebetrau (00:36.169)
Ha ha ha!

Denise Liebetrau (00:40.672)
Yeah, so I have been doing compensation work primarily for 30 years in a variety of different companies. spent the first part of my professional life in mostly Fortune 500 companies and big firms that had a large national footprint here in the US or were global. And then a few years ago, about seven years ago, I started my own consulting firm. I decided that I wanted a little more variety. I wanted to make more of a difference.

And so one part of the firm, my team and I focus on working with employers, anything from less than 100 employees to more than 25,000 employees. You just got to show up with the right attitude in a budget to make sure that you're paying your people correctly. then the other part of the business is I do pay negotiation coaching. So I teach individuals how to ask for more money and have careers that are more aligned to their values and what is important to them. So that's small as it relates to taking up my time. I do typically do more projects with employers, but if you're the right, you're a high performer and you've got a unique situation, I can help people negotiate. I think it gives me great empathy for both sides of the house when I'm writing training or doing education materials for employees.

Sean Luitjens (01:52.241)
Okay.

Denise Liebetrau (01:59.242)
and managers on what they care about, I understand what they care about because I'm having conversations with them and I don't just have the employer perspective. And my interest now is just continuing to help employers get their compensation houses in order. A lot of times that's the foundation build of building job architecture projects and doing the market pricing and benchmarking for their jobs and helping them meet the pay equity and pay transparency guidelines that are now so prolific around the globe.

But yeah, I love it. can see myself doing this for another, at least 10, 20 more years. Yeah.

Sean Luitjens (02:34.096)
What? Okay. I hate to tell folks. I won't be doing this for 20 years. That's not happening. All right, and this is like the CAPTCHA version. So what do do for fun outside of work? And please don't tell me great jobs. So you must do something else.

Denise Liebetrau (02:54.24)
No, that's yeah, no, don't do that outside of work. No, I love to read. And I like listening to podcasts and doing things like that. So I'm kind of a, I'm a nerd at heart. So I always absorbing information and, you know, thought leaders and what is what's going on in the world and how are people thinking about things.

Sean Luitjens (03:14.064)
OK. Well, as the now husband of a librarian, I can get around the reading. can get around the reading. Yeah, recovering. She says recovering attorney turns librarian. So yeah, so actually, I've gotten into the library thing and how it all works and whatever. It is fascinating.

Denise Liebetrau (03:19.798)
No, that's awesome!

Denise Liebetrau (03:27.33)
Very good.

Denise Liebetrau (03:33.511)
It's pretty amazing what's free in the library systems these days. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. You don't even have to walk into the library to get your reading materials anymore. It's awesome.

Sean Luitjens (03:37.374)
Yeah, and actually now I know. Like it's kind of crazy how what is and actually even electronic books like my advertising like you're like wait what like okay I know All right, so before we get to the serious stuff, I have the speed round of questions for you just to get you warmed up Right. You ready? Are you a coffee or tea person? Okay, thank God, you know, I yeah coffee every day

Denise Liebetrau (03:55.222)
Okay. Yep.

Coffee

Coffee. Black. Yeah, coffee.

Sean Luitjens (04:07.824)
best number of merit cycles to do per year in a company? Are you a camping person or like a spa weekend person? Okay. And do you use the term comp ratio or range penetration if given the choice?

Denise Liebetrau (04:12.111)
One.

Denise Liebetrau (04:19.04)
Spa weekend.

Denise Liebetrau (04:26.486)
I do both. I tend to lean more toward comp ratio, but I use both for different circumstances. And I've posted about that, so you can go both ways. Yeah.

Sean Luitjens (04:32.388)
Okay? Okay. Okay. And for those, we will link to her. You know, we'll make sure people can link out because they do get the newsletter and everything else. And the most important question, and actually I did this poll, I think when I was in Denver, are you a creamy or crunchy peanut butter person? So weirdly enough, I am too.

Denise Liebetrau (04:39.886)
Yeah.

Denise Liebetrau (04:51.426)
Creamy.

Sean Luitjens (04:56.636)
Weirdly enough, Denver was the only place out of, don't even know how many places this year where the majority was crunchy. Insert crunchy joke about Colorado, like, but literally it's been two thirds or three quarters creamy everywhere. And then I asked for that and I actually got taken aback by I'm like, wait, what? Yeah. So, which goes to show how serious my presentations are. Cause that was actually part of, part of the.

Denise Liebetrau (05:03.223)
Really?

Yeah, I was gonna say, there's, yeah, I don't know.

Denise Liebetrau (05:16.536)
What?

Denise Liebetrau (05:23.576)
Well, there's a fair number of health food stores here where you can dump in the peanuts in the machine and it'll grind your own peanut butter fresh. So, crunchy, right? So, yeah, I guess.

Sean Luitjens (05:33.362)
Well, I guess, it depends how much you grind it, guess. But okay, so you were in the minority in Denver, but the majority nationally.

Denise Liebetrau (05:41.762)
Very good.

Sean Luitjens (05:43.14)
So one of the reasons I wanted to chat with you about this is I do know that your expertise and what you've done and then you have this wide range of companies. And so I wanted to spend the day just kind of focusing on best practices because we've talked to a couple of people who are small co only or do large or they work at one program and you have this unique position where one day you're working with somebody over 25,000 employees and then you've got somebody with a couple hundred. so however it goes, top two, three, four best practices you see just across the board for comp teams.

Denise Liebetrau (06:21.582)
One, a strong data governance, so making sure the data is clean in the HR system and up to date. Sometimes that can be a big challenge in organizations, small or large. So that's one best practice. Two, putting in a job architecture. And by job architecture, I mean standardized job titling, job descriptions, career levels, pay grades, market pricing the jobs, benchmarking them and having competitive pay ranges and...target incentives, and then having things grouped by job family. That gives you a foundation where you can do pay equity audits, you can efficiently answer senior leaders and managers' questions about pay, and another component I think of in that, in terms of best practices, comp guidelines, processes, documented, written, standardly followed, not doing a whole lot of exceptions or customizing. And then...

The next thing I would say is listening to employees and to business leaders and trying to find win-win solutions for problems, right? So not just doing exactly what a senior leader says, but also mirroring that up with what are employees or members, if you're doing the benefits side as well, what are people concerned about or wanting and why, and then trying to find solutions that...use that where you can use those needs or those wants from employees and help leaders develop pay programs and rewards that actually help attract and motivate people so that you can meet your business goals. Easy to say, hard to do in practice.

Sean Luitjens (07:59.205)
Okay.

Yeah, so I guess I have questions. So like on the data governance side, mean, who leads that? Like, so for me, that's like, that truly is one of those easy to say, I won't mention the consulting brands by name, but you know, some consultancies are known for here's three things you need to do. It's that simple. And then, you know, take off.

Denise Liebetrau (08:13.784)
Hard to do.

Denise Liebetrau (08:22.358)
It's more complicated than that. Part of it is, what are those key fields? And when you get an employee change form in and somebody's entering the data, if something's not filled out or something's not correct, like going back to the person who'd filled out the form and asking, hey, why is this not correct? Or this doesn't match with what we have tied to that job, if you've got attributes tied to jobs. So part of it is the functionality and how systems like Workday and SAP and others are set up as you implement, but then others are just the day-to-day changes that happen in an employee workforce and making sure that you're consistently entering the right data. So I don't think there's any one owner of that. I think you have to explain to people why it's important to get it right so that you don't end up basing your reports and advice on data that's wrong.

Sean Luitjens (09:18.812)
But how, I guess I'll push back a little bit that, if, if there's no, if there's no owner, there's no accountability. And then, you know, you're really asking people out of the goodness of their heart for your own wellbeing to have the data, right. And I'm sure most people for the right reasons understand it, but just can't get to it if there's no owner and no accountability. how do you create or companies that create the accountability to make that happen? Cause I agree with you, you gotta have it.

Denise Liebetrau (09:21.293)
Yeah.

Denise Liebetrau (09:35.288)
Right.

Denise Liebetrau (09:39.693)
Why do you-

Denise Liebetrau (09:43.246)
You got to have it. So I do think there are owners, right? Like in terms of job information in a system, that's compensation, right? They're creating jobs and they've got to have systems and processes related to jobs and grades and incentives and things like that. So comp obviously owns that. As it relates to employee attributes and things like that, hiring manager, right? Like working in consult with the recruiters if it's a new hire and if things are changing with their HR business partner and making sure that that hiring managerongoing manager and employee that data is updated with collaboration with the right HR person. So there are owners for things. If it's supply chain data or finance data, know, obviously those functions, don't know that kind of data in a system, but you do have to have standards and you do have to have consistently educating HR people and others on why it's important to maintain and continue to meet those standards.

Sean Luitjens (10:40.71)
I think that'll be kind of before we jump to job architecture, that would be my takeaway from that is actually the educating why actually getting it right matters. Otherwise it's just another task. So I think that ongoing education among other things is, is pretty key.

Denise Liebetrau (10:45.633)
yeah.

Sean Luitjens (10:57.17)
The job architecture, which I know you and I talked about it because I've presented on it. I've seen you presented on it. Like it's the foundation of everything, even being in the software field. to start with the first passage job architecture, do you think companies should lean to having someone external or internal do that? Because I'm a little biased actually on that one. Your thoughts.

Denise Liebetrau (11:04.598)
It is.

Denise Liebetrau (11:20.022)
You know, I think it depends on the size of the company and what their needs are at that given point. So I'll give you an example. I've got one client right now, their startup, they have about 55 employees right now. We put in a basic grade structure, some titling guidelines. Now we did not implement the titling standards and guidelines fully. Here's how we're going to move forward. So as people turn over or jobs change, they're going to move things to more of the standardization.

But they have one pay grade structure. It's market price. The jobs are market price. We can repetitively do that year over year to make sure things are being, people are being paid competitively and not too much or too little. So that's basic for a small company. But I also have a client who had 38,000 employees and no comp function for more than five years. And they had to build it from the scratch, right? And we've been involved with them for four years. So I think it's a nice thing to do to have both internal and external people working together to build a job architecture.

But at the end of the day, the internal people have to maintain it going forward, right? So I think you can get a lot from external consultants like myself in order to design and develop it. And they can teach you how to maintain it and they can be available on an ongoing basis. But I don't necessarily subscribe to the philosophy that consultants have to be embedded with employers ongoing forever. Think it's important to have in-house people know how to do this.

Sean Luitjens (12:49.99)
Yeah, think my perspective is once you're ongoing, you can use them as a guideline, but I actually like, people who know me, I'm typically, having worked at two consultancies, I'm actually anti-consultants in general as a starting point, but for job architecture in particular, I think it's cool to start with somebody with an external view, a view across and give you, and then you can edit it. Hey, in our company, this is more important, this is whatever, but I think having that external piece, even if you're a seasoned HR

Denise Liebetrau (13:14.274)
Yeah.

Sean Luitjens (13:19.896)
HR person to come in and give you that first kind of starting point structure. Even if you treat your consultant, obviously you're paying them a little bit as a peer because it is at that point, you know, what you take at that point is what you run with. And so you, if you start from a really crappy place, you climb a larger mountain. So for me, it's one of the few places where I've kind of said, you know, use it, et cetera. and then I think there's some really cool, technology out there now.

Denise Liebetrau (13:29.677)
Yeah.

Denise Liebetrau (13:48.47)
Yes, to support.

Sean Luitjens (13:49.072)
that's out there to support that once it's in there, but that kind of ongoing piece. So it's interesting. So I would say internal and external. I wouldn't say it's a trick question, but I think we're saying kind of the same thing.

Denise Liebetrau (14:00.15)
Yeah, same thing. also think consultants can come and bring, they work with different industries, different size firms. So they have lots of different tools in their toolkit or variations of the same thing in their toolkit. And so I think they can provide a level of skill and a level of understanding of what's happening across the marketplace and in workplaces that internal people, like if you're internal for most of your career, you might have one or two opportunities to do a job architecture project, but consultants do many, many.

Sean Luitjens (14:20.337)
Yeah.

Denise Liebetrau (14:30.432)
and they have templates and tools and resources that they should that they can tap into to help you adapt and meet the needs of your business leaders and investors and so forth. I think it's a good project for collaboration.

Sean Luitjens (14:44.498)
Yeah. And I have collaboration, knowledge transfer. I don't want to say plagiarize or steal publicly. Well, I jokingly say like, make sure for me, when I've seen it go, it goes well. And where I've seen it kind of fall off later is you have the consultant do that job architecture project kind of in a silo because you're busy and I, Hey, I gave Denise to do, and I'm just going to take it, but actually kind of walk the walk with them with the premise of, you know, grabbing as much knowledge as you can from them, the tools that they're using. So when I say plagiarize or steal,

Denise Liebetrau (14:46.786)
Yeah. No, no, and...

Sean Luitjens (15:14.502)
I'm joking a little bit. Basically you want to take and get as much value from that consulting project as you can and take it all in as opposed to a handoff and you get a deliverable, which is really what you want.

Denise Liebetrau (15:19.308)
Yeah. Yeah.

Denise Liebetrau (15:27.586)
There's always some customization. I'm always worried when consultants just come in and rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, like the same thing over and over for different employers. There's always something unique at every employer that needs to be accommodated, whether it's industry or employees in certain situations. So, you know, it's not one and done.

Sean Luitjens (15:46.118)
But that's the questions I think you can ask in that process is what if I blend these? What if I move this up or down? What do you think the Ram and that's that kind of peer ish thing to say in our organization, you know, designers are worth more, you know, graphic designers are worth more than others. So what if I make that, you know, my old school, guess, hate points, Dave's, you know, what if I make this a 19 instead of a 16 because in our company, what's the ramifications of this? And so you're right. I think it's all tailoring, but having someone there so you don't do it enough.

Denise Liebetrau (16:06.35)
Sure.

Sean Luitjens (16:16.092)
bubble and you know before you launch because then once you launch you're kind of got everyone in it you're in it to win it.

Denise Liebetrau (16:16.941)
Yeah.

Denise Liebetrau (16:20.622)
you're committed and you've got a language and definitions of things and it's hard to back out of that and change it once you've done it.

Sean Luitjens (16:27.75)
So if you had to pick all these things that you see, if you walk in somewhere and comp in particular always has limited resources, usually they've unlimited staffing and budget, right, for what they need to get done. Yeah. Where would you start? What's the one or two, you know, or is it job architecture? What's the most important thing for an organization to start? You know, if you're new in a place or if you're tackling a company who just says, Denise, come help us, where do you start?

Denise Liebetrau (16:35.779)
Yeah.

Denise Liebetrau (16:50.572)
in an organization.

Denise Liebetrau (16:55.214)
It's understanding the business. How do they make money? What drives revenue and what drives expenses and profitability and so forth? So really getting in the minds of the business leaders on what they care about and what's critical to them, right? If you're working with a startup and they're just trying to scale and prove that what they have is something that's gonna be embraced by the marketplace and they can gain market share if they're trying to be better than a competitor, great.

If it's a more established company that has a niche where they don't have too many competitors, it's a different game. So one, understanding the business. And then two, looking for that low hanging fruit, right? Meaning finding projects or initiatives and things you can do where you prove your ability to align to business need, right? Where you can impact attraction, impact retention, or have some success metrics you can talk about.

After you've been there for a short time so that people go, we need to keep coming back to you because you get it, right? We need to keep coming back to you and help. You can help me be successful. So understanding those types of things is what I start with.

Sean Luitjens (18:06.588)
That's actually, mean, I don't think we hear it enough at comp, you know, in general, every comp thing is about comp, comp, comp, and how we're to do comp and how we're going to do it.

Denise Liebetrau (18:15.976)
It's business. What's the value creation chain in an organization is what you got to get embedded with and then the comp supports that,

Sean Luitjens (18:22.224)
Yeah.

No, and that'd probably be the number, like I don't, whatever else we talk about, that'd probably be the number one takeaway, I think. We see, I see a lot of departments aren't aligning to the business value or what the business drivers are. And at some level, all employees are equal, which is philosophically great, but that's not true in any given business. There are key roles.

Denise Liebetrau (18:45.71)
No, it's not. There's some employees and some jobs that are more critical than others and people don't like to hear that. But you know, if you're a tech company, software developers are going to be on top, right? If you're a company where you're in manufacturing, it's going to be something different. yeah, I think, you know, my philosophy when it comes to education and training is you don't necessarily have to make everybody happy in the room, but at least be honest and truthful about what you're doing and why and how you're making decisions.

Sean Luitjens (18:51.954)
I

Denise Liebetrau (19:14.394)
They don't necessarily have to like all of your answers, but at least be honest so that they trust you.

Sean Luitjens (19:20.306)
We have the ability now to take action on that. by that, mean, you know, years ago, it was just too cumbersome to potentially treat people different in the company because, you know, we're obviously closer to comp planning and see more of a day in and day out. But, you know, the whole point of where you mentioned software developers were more important than maybe accountants. And in the old days, you're like, well, you don't want to say that out loud because we can't actually pay them more, pay them less, give them more in comp planning. It was too hard. The lift was too hard technically. But now actually you can.

Denise Liebetrau (19:23.502)
Mmm.

Denise Liebetrau (19:30.391)
It was.

Denise Liebetrau (19:49.282)
Yep. You're so good.

Sean Luitjens (19:50.212)
can segment out the IT department and give them more and give them less and create different merit matrix for each department. And so it's actually these discussions while they seem awful as humans to be like, actually, sorry, accounting team, you're not as valuable to the business. And developers are. I think it's OK because A, it's aligning to the business. But B, you can actually strategically make moves on that. There's not a, there's not.

Denise Liebetrau (19:54.337)
Yeah!

Denise Liebetrau (20:05.432)
Great.

Denise Liebetrau (20:14.956)
Yeah, technology can support those decisions, whereas before you might have that as an underlying theme, but you can't really implement because the tech wasn't there, the talent wasn't there to help get the tech in order. So yeah.

Sean Luitjens (20:27.516)
So those are all great points. And I would expect that from someone in consulting with its rainbows, unicorns, blue skies, and a pot of gold at the end of the project. what have been the biggest hurdles? So those are all greats. if they don't happen, what have been the biggest hurdles you've seen where companies can't quite get to the point of having a solid program because of X or Y?

Denise Liebetrau (20:35.17)
Yeah.

Denise Liebetrau (20:53.55)
Budgeting people, right? At the end of the day, if you don't have resources, budget people, time, you can't get there, right? So I've worked with a lot of companies where internally within HR as the HR function or the comp total rewards department, they have a vision for the future that is aligned to the business.

But they haven't made themselves indispensable and remarkable to the business leaders. And so they don't have the influence to get the headcount or the budget to fund projects or even investments in technology like Vizor that could be really impactful. They just don't have the cloud internally to get stuff done. So I always go back to relationships, right?

It's about understanding who your customers are internally if you're on a Comfort Total Rewards team and what do they care about and delivering based on what their success metrics are, not necessarily what you think should be done and getting really, really hyper-focused on not your ego and what you want to do for the next year, but what they need. And then delivering in that and developing those relationships and trust so that then you can get funding and people to get the right work done that maybe you have a longer term vision for. I think that's where I see the most challenge in most HR functions these days.

Sean Luitjens (22:18.446)
Okay. And I mean, as far as getting budget, mean, honestly, think comp has been their own worst enemy sometimes because they magically get stuff done.

Denise Liebetrau (22:26.85)
They do, and Excel is overused, would argue. Excel is ridiculously overused by lot of employers for a lot of different things. because companies won't invest in technology and solutions that are more robust and more efficient, one of the things when I'm doing a business case for technology is how many hours is somebody working on something behind the scenes, level of effort, that isn't being visible to senior leaders? And then how do you show that? The technology could reduce that, right? So you can, while technology on the surface can look very expensive, if you look at it as a portion of head count or full head counts, it can come in and really make efficiency and accuracy and decision-making more streamlined and better.

Sean Luitjens (23:10.134)
How would you help pump? mean, so particularly, obviously we're faced with it a lot with some of the tools we have, because Excel is used and Excel, as I said on a panel at World of Work in May, like that shit's free.

Denise Liebetrau (23:24.396)
It is!

Sean Luitjens (23:25.01)
And so, you know, in comp people jokingly, I think they struggle with getting the ROI or getting money because management says, Denise, you chose to be in comp. So you give up, you give up three weekends in spring because that's when we do cycle. So how, how have you seen companies, some best practices of creating a business case or ROI around that? Because I don't think management, this sounds awful. I don't think the CFO cares about your time because you're on salary. So what's the outcome?

Denise Liebetrau (23:35.447)
Nothing's.

Denise Liebetrau (23:53.454)
No, they don't. No, they don't. think you have to get good at selling, right? You have to get good at influencing and you have to meet them where they are, right? So what is it about the software or the tool that you're going to do outside of Excel? One, hours, right? They may not care about that, but showing that level of work, yes.

Sean Luitjens (23:54.964)
you

Denise Liebetrau (24:17.9)
And then saying, if you could free me up so I don't have to do this, here's the others more strategic or consultative kind of work I can do. So there's an opportunity cost that if you don't say, this is what I'm spending time on, but you could deploy me or others on my team in terms of headcount and we could get these other things done that aren't getting done for you. So I think you have to meet who your audience is and what they care about and talk in their language. And sometimes it takes...

You years, can plant a seed, but it doesn't automatically germinate and grow. You have to plant a seed and plant a seed and plant a seed and it takes a couple years to get there. yeah, and you just never stop, right? You just keep taking what you know to be true and keep putting it out there. And eventually it'll take, there's, you know, one thing that's always certain in any company is turnover, right? People come and go.

So if you have one later who's just being a roadblock and you just can't get through, you're probably going to get somebody else within the next two to three years in that seat or a different seat, right? That you can maybe have some influence on. So just continuing to tell your story.

Sean Luitjens (25:26.63)
Yeah, I think the only thing I'd build on that is telling that story and having that communicating the whole vision of how it all works together so that management understands that this is kind of how we do things at a high level and the tools and where we're tackling it with, you know, just effort and muscle. And basically putting that picture together so that the only time they see it isn't, you know, don't want the only time they see it is when you're asking for money. want them to.

Denise Liebetrau (25:53.066)
Once a year, yeah, it has to be a continuing theme. One of the other things, I was just at an HR event yesterday here in Denver and the speaker was Peter Capelli from the Wharton School of Business and he's written a book and it's called The Least Important Asset. So it's a play on the phrase we say people are our most important asset. But what it really talks about is the integration of financial accounting and human capital metrics, right?

We don't look at as employees as assets per se and they're not on the balance sheet, but there are metrics you can show about human capital that aren't the financial metrics that your finance people care about that really matter and it's the management of people, right? It's turnover costs, time to fill positions, but it's also the quality of the people that you hire to fill positions. You should be talking about that.

Sean Luitjens (26:42.59)
That's my soapbox. I know we didn't talk about this, but that's my soapbox because the example I use all the time is TA is measured on time to fill a number of recs, right? And that's a successful recruiter, but no one ever goes back and says, you know, so theoretically, if you work that problem, the best way to be a successful recruiter is have people stay, you know, 12, 15 months and create this ever going churn of...for me to fill that I can fill quickly with people who won't stay for a long time, which isn't great for the business. And so, putting all those analytics together on my time to fill and maybe the times longer, but the people who take longer, we have a better process, stay longer. So my overall cost is less and the business makes more money. Tying all those analytics together. this is obviously where...

Denise Liebetrau (27:14.06)
Right!

Sean Luitjens (27:32.21)
Visier itself it does, but there's a, you there's other tools, but Vizier said those analytics to tile that are available now. But the one thing I collect is what, matters. I think, you know, I'm to loop all the way back to your comment, before on what actually matters for the business leaders. If you sat down and said, if I could fix four things or give you four numbers, what would those five things be four or five things, and then go back and start working on them and then measure it. It's the same with comp planning. I get on kind of a little soap box. People do comp planning and then they.

Denise Liebetrau (27:38.551)
Yes!

Denise Liebetrau (27:50.924)
Right.

Yep.

Denise Liebetrau (27:57.57)
Yeah. Yeah.

Sean Luitjens (28:02.405)
never go back and be like, did our plan work or did we suck?

Denise Liebetrau (28:05.57)
Yeah, were our success metrics, we, yeah, measuring things. You know, one of the best HR leaders I ever worked with, she encouraged each leader of each function within HR to go talk to consumer, the business sales folks, wholesale, all the different C-suite leaders who reported to the CEO and said, what are those three metrics that you care about this year?

And then HR and all the functions in HR lined up behind what each one of those leaders needed to accomplish in their success metrics. So what are our initiatives from an HR organization and community to make things happen that the senior leaders care about? I think that that type of kind of golden thread in terms of goal setting and support to those folks, none of us are here and getting our paychecks because in HR or doing consulting work and stuff, unless we're creating value for the organization and helping them meet the...their sales goals and meet the needs of their customers. at the end of the day, you got to get real clear on business objectives and how you support that and less about what do you want to work on for the next year. It's not about you.

Sean Luitjens (29:06.756)
No, that's really great advice. I think just, yeah, again, being able to measure, show forward progress and then aim fire, aim fire, aim fire around continuing to dialing in towards the bullseye. I'm not smart enough to get it right the first time, but I try to keep, you know, trying to keep better. I guess on the tech side, I guess, is there one kind of either cool tech you've seen or how have you tackled the tech question with?

Denise Liebetrau (29:13.475)
Yep.

Sean Luitjens (29:34.468)
with clients on how to leverage technology and figure out when to use it.

Denise Liebetrau (29:38.958)
You know, usually I push them to embrace technology and buying something before they're ready to because I know it takes time to influence those leaders to get budget for the tech investment. A lot of times I encourage clients to meet with a number of vendors who could provide the same type of solution but in different ways so that they get a sense of what's out there in the marketplace. having regular understanding and demos from tech firms so that you understand what's in the marketplace is really important, I think.

And because they have a development roadmap, they're always changing, right? Every year, every six months and so forth, they roll out changes to their tech, so you gotta stay up on things. I think it's also important to develop relationships within your community, whether it's comp or HR, and understand what are other firms investing in? What are those anecdotal comments from folks about...tech and say, I would invest in this one again 100 times or this one did not work out well and here's why. And making sure that you're getting not just the salesperson's viewpoint, but getting some of the user's viewpoints, right? So.

Sean Luitjens (30:45.394)
Wow. Well, yeah. Have you met the salesperson who says their, their stuff sucks yet? Like that's not.

Denise Liebetrau (30:51.446)
Right, exactly. They're always going to promote all the good stuff that they can do and not hide all the stuff that behind the scenes that's not more of the problem. So actually, you know, doing reference checks and saying, you know, is what they're telling me true in practice. So, yeah.

Sean Luitjens (30:54.833)
Yeah.

Sean Luitjens (31:05.188)
The only thing I'll add there and I've, know, preached it before is, you know, figure out what you want to solve first. There's a lot of tech out there. So don't back into what solution you're working on with the technology, but figure out what you want to solve and why. And then, and I would say more now than ever.

Denise Liebetrau (31:10.808)
Yeah! Yeah!

Sean Luitjens (31:22.64)
what you're trying to solve, not how, and you get on with vendors because otherwise you'll be in Excel forever because you'll be doing a checkbox on things that are in Excel versus actually check out this cool stuff. I really like your idea of just networking locally and talking to people around how they're solving those problems because sometimes the other answer might be like, evaluated 10 pieces of tech and we're doing it this way and it's fine. And I can spend them somewhere else.

Denise Liebetrau (31:25.26)
Yes. Yes.

Denise Liebetrau (31:47.382)
Right. Yeah. Yeah, I've got, I make sure that I network because I don't know all the tech that's out there, but I've got a large community of HR folks that I ask questions of and I post on LinkedIn and say, Hey, I'm looking for a tech solution that delivers X. Who would you recommend? And kind of crowdsource input too. If you've got a number of followers, you can do that. And again, the tech firms are always interested in meeting the needs of their customers. So just developing relationships with tech firms and people to understand what their roadmap is and what they're trying to solve for can help you be a more progressive thought leader in your space.

Sean Luitjens (32:27.543)
We're not as scary developers as people make us out to be. Like us developers aren't as bad as advertised, you

Denise Liebetrau (32:29.876)
No!

Denise Liebetrau (32:35.182)
And you guys hear from so many different customers, right? So I only have insight into what my, if I'm in-house, I only have insight into what my internal customers and world is to talk to somebody who's in tech and talking to multiple customers and doing demos and listening to what is the marketplace looking for. That's incredibly insightful.

Sean Luitjens (32:58.288)
Yeah, and I'd just leave it again, figure out what you're trying to solve, not how. I mean, within reason, obviously, but come to the table with the end goal in mind, not the bullets, and then you can work through that.

Denise Liebetrau (33:02.306)
Yes.

Denise Liebetrau (33:08.364)
Yes. There's lots of ways to get to the same end result. Let that be open to what they can show you. Yeah.

Sean Luitjens (33:16.09)
So as I wrap up, because that was all great. I really love tying it to the business and starting with the business. We probably don't hear that enough in all the sessions. Actually just getting outside that lane and figuring out what's really important to the business. If you could automagically solve one thing and all of HR can be anything, what would you solve with a wave of a wand?

Denise Liebetrau (33:22.926)
Not all of them.

Denise Liebetrau (33:37.676)
You know, it's something we don't talk about enough, I think. You can get so many things, the rewards, you know, talent development, talent management, acquiring talent. You can talk about culture, engagement, and all those things, but ultimately it comes down to interactions both at a group and individual level. I read a book called The Art of Alignment by a woman named Patty Beach, and she had an acronym in her book, and it's called SHUVA, S-H-U-V-A.

And I think if we all practiced shoving each other, the world would change. And that is people being seen, heard, understood, valued, and appreciated. I can make the best rewards programs in the world, the best comp programs, et cetera. But at the end of the day, it's how I feel. Did I matter? Am I doing something meaningful? Am I learning and growing? Do they care about me? That's what I would magic wand solve because I think we have too many people who are not feeling valued and heard and understood. And with that comes behaviors that aren't gonna make your business a success.

Sean Luitjens (34:48.655)
I mean, that's a great one. Now I'm going to have to go find that book. See if it's in our local library.

Denise Liebetrau (34:54.734)
It might be, I don't know, but it's a short, tiny book, but some very powerful practical steps on getting it right.

Sean Luitjens (35:02.32)
I think that's great. mean, with the whole, you know, is there a productivity drop in this productivity gap? You know, all this stuff, is that part of the problem that people are feeling, you know, less like humans?

Denise Liebetrau (35:13.954)
They do. And treating people like they're cogs in a wheel and are very dispensable is not a great way to get the best out of people. I think, you know, I think of it in terms of rewards, got to get it right, got to get the relationships right and make sure that people are cared for and feel like they matter and that they make a difference. And then saying it, recognition, right? Like making that a common practice in your day-to-day interactions with people. That's what drives results.

And I think too often we push on incentives and comp and some of those kinds of things. Nothing replaces good management of people and caring about each other. And we need some more time.

Sean Luitjens (35:57.358)
Awesome. That is a great way to end. That is a great message. I really appreciate it. So for those kind of watching, you know, subscribe and find it. We will also have Denise's information and the link will be on there. So she's easy to find. She is very easy to, you know, talk to, as you can tell. So feel free to reach out or corner her at one of the events because she's a wealth of information. I really appreciate it. Thanks so much.

Denise Liebetrau (36:00.814)
Good.

Denise Liebetrau (36:22.52)
Thanks for having me on.