Speaker 1: 0:00

Look, listen to your employees. We're going to stay on topic here. Your employees have so much information as it relates to and, generally speaking, they want improvement and growth in the organization. They're probably the biggest supporters and aligned to a company's success, and if you don't have an ability to tap into feedback coming from them, that's where a lot of companies fall down.

Speaker 2: 0:26

This is the Rebel HR Podcast, the podcast where we talk to HR innovators about all things people, leadership. If you're looking for places to find about new ways to think about the world of work, this is the podcast for you. Please subscribe from your favorite podcast listening platform today and leave us a review. Rebel on HR Rebels All right, rebel HR listeners welcome back. Thank you for joining us this week. We have a good show. We're going to figure out all things comp With us. Today we have Tang Nguyen. He is a comp expert and an HR insider who has spent his career focused on compensation, and an HR insider who has spent his career focused on compensation, a founding member of the Salesforce HR team and then later executive director at Connery Consulting as a comp consultant. Now he is CEO and co-founder of OpenComp, a company focused on bringing compensation intelligence to high-growth companies to help them get pay right. Welcome to the show. Thanks a bunch.

Speaker 1: 1:26

Looking forward to this.

Speaker 2: 1:32

Me too. You know, before I hit record, I was just. I told you I'm just really looking forward to figuring out all of these compensation issues.

Speaker 1: 1:37

So Well, I don't know if we'll figure it all out, but we'll give it a whole college try.

Speaker 2: 1:44

Absolutely so. You know, that's actually kind of where I wanted to start with this. You know we were going through a period of heavy disruption. You know there's all sorts of headlines around the great resignation, the great recalibration. You can put whatever buzzword you want on it, but a lot of the underlying feedback that we're hearing there is, with things like wage inflation, with people's attitudes towards work changing. I think there's probably some generational differences out there in the current market environment. As you look at the compensation equation, where do you start? Where should a company really kind of start? As they look at this?

Speaker 1: 2:36

Well, I think, when you take a step back and certainly kind of focus on the companies that we work with in terms of this kind of growth, early stage you know, recently financed or got a slug of money in the coffers or ready to grow Look, I think compensation is sometimes, historically, it's been put in the back burner to a certain extent, right.

Speaker 1: 3:01

And I think the, the, the planning, the data and the strategy in setting up compensation is is much more important now than ever, right. And I think we've got social impact issues, um, um, that are obviously enhanced by the pandemic, um, and everything that we're hearing on the in the news. It's just really heightened, and everything that we're hearing in the news, it's just really heightened, Right. So I don't think you can you can push this down behind other initiatives. I think it's a top five initiative for any CEO or any founder or any executive builder to get this right, because getting at least right is a strong word, but at least putting energy and resources into it and developing a strategy and being able to communicate that strategy is absolutely critical in the early stages here.

Speaker 2: 4:00

Yeah, absolutely. And coming from the other side of the equation, as somebody who's who's in an organization that's 140 plus years old, it's a lot easier to do it early than to try to unpack an absence of a strategy and focus on some of those things you're focused on. You can feel it on both sides of that coin.

Speaker 1: 4:23

I can tell you that much things you're focused on, so you can feel it on both sides of that coin. I can tell you that much. Yeah, I mean, look, I think you can see it in the candidates in the resumes, right? Most of these resumes these days coming in, you're seeing at best two years of tenure before they're departing, right?

Speaker 1: 4:37

And that's really tough for an organization, as you know, to onboard and make that investment into employees and have them potentially walk out with all that knowledge. I could call that DNA. That asset out the door in two years because they're not happy is probably the biggest and most costly challenges that we're seeing today in companies.

Speaker 2: 5:01

Absolutely, you know, and it's. I think what's been really fascinating is, you know, yes, compensation has always kind of been underlying and but I tell people, now it's like you know, just getting your like the correct pay levels and structures, that's like table stakes. Now it's like you know, if you're not doing that, just forget about it. I mean, you know you're, you can compete on all these other aspects, but the pay just has to be correct from the get-go and your structure has to be correct as well. So, as you look at the organizations you work with, as you look at some of your past experience, what does a good compensation strategy look like? What are the elements that you would consider to be good or right in a comp strategy?

Speaker 1: 5:51

that data and actually operationalizing it. So there's really three things that I try to work on with our customers it's data, comms and actual program implementation of those three and if you really focus on kind of I mean there's a lot of layers behind that, but if you really focus on being able to do that, uh, then I think you're well on your way into developing, you know, a sound compensation strategy, ie a philosophy, uh, and all the components that kind of make that up.

Speaker 2: 6:37

I love that and I and I think it's um, you know, so often we we talk about, you know, compensation and and all we talk about is data, right, where it's like which program are you using, which consultants are you paying to do a data study, and then they give it to you and you're like thanks, and that's it. And it like sits in the HR department and until a board meeting or a manager says, hey, what's this labor grade or what is this? You know how much am I going to pay this new hire? But so often the you know the actual implementation, the communication, like the actual connection to employees on what the strategy is. It's just almost left out, right. So, as you think about, well, let's maybe walk through those one by one. As you think about data, I think in my opinion, one of the bigger challenges with data is figuring out which data to actually listen to, because there's just so much and so many sources. So how do you start with kind of filtering?

Speaker 1: 7:50

the right data. Well, as basic as it is, I think you've got to understand the inputs or really the challenges around your talent, meaning, is it geo-based or is it skill-based? Is it widely distributed across the domestic US, Is it international, et cetera. But by defining those attributes and really kind of understanding the type of folks that you actually need in your organization, then obviously you can kind of really ring fence the data that you're looking for and getting data that is fully audited and really sound to your business, and not only your business from an industry perspective, but your business in terms of its stage of maturity. I think that's really important.

Speaker 1: 8:42

Not all of us can hire, as they say, from the FANG companies, and when we say that this could be even non-technology companies, right. So you've just got to really be sound with your financial planning as well and, I think, just being disciplined across the board, just as you would with your personal finances, right, disciplined across the board, just as you would with your personal finances, right. You've got to understand your headcount plan, everything that impacts all those finances, the benefits and really building a data set that supports a majority of your population, and obviously there's always going to be the outlier cases when you're making hires, et cetera. But you want to build that into your model and your strategy as well. But it starts with that kind of understanding, that data framework or IE kind of the profile that you want to establish and then using that to really kind of take the next step forwards into your analysis and and you know, those things that indicate what you need to do or not need to do in your programs.

Speaker 2: 9:51

Yeah, absolutely, and I think you know, a lot of times it's. It's so easy to fall into the trap like, oh well, I need an engineer. So I'm just going to go, I'm just going to go look for engineers. You know, I'm going to go find that, look that, look at the BLS, and just pull it, see what it is. But it's like when you start going down that rabbit hole you're like, oh well, do you need a chemical? Do you need mechanical? Do you need software? Do you need application? Do you need a travel component? Can we hire anywhere?

Speaker 2: 10:18

It is absolutely critical to know what you're looking for. It is absolutely critical to know what you're looking for. I'm curious because you know the companies you work with a lot. You know, obviously you're going to have, you're going to have founders, you're going to have people who were there in the beginning. I'm assuming that maybe the internal comparables maybe aren't apples to apples all the time. How do you, how do you kind of handle that when you're coming in and and you know we're working through a strategy when there's there's a lot of pay differences, uh, and just different profiles?

Speaker 1: 10:54

I think that's what you know. Uh, that's where the kind of data management comes into play. I mean, the reality is, as you grow, you've got different uh, and we talk about stages here of growth. You've got your compensation strategy changes dynamically, meaning the pick, certainly in the tech side you're heavily influenced on equity, generally right in the early stages, and that slowly shifts as you attain more cash, create more revenue, et cetera. But you know, these markers change aggressively over time depending on your growth rate, right, and being able to really manage that growth and understanding the dynamics of your proxy data that you can compare to influences your compensation strategy.

Speaker 1: 11:46

And going back to what we talked about earlier, I don't think people pay enough attention to this iterative assessment of their pay strategy because what tends to happen is, even within a year or two years' time, even for us, those that came in much earlier in the company's life cycle, their pay is much different.

Speaker 1: 12:07

So there's this iterative, like you know, assessment period that one needs to address and it's you know, I think there's the old legacy we can only do this once a year and you know, let's plot along and kind of manage. And let's plot along and kind of manage, but we're talking about disruption here. We're talking about generations that have changed their behavior around what they want, where they're working and where they're living. Everything is upside down on its head, certainly with the pandemic as we talked about. So to really be disruptive, you have to be super iterative and you really got to have the data, the real-time data, coming in to manage those changes, and they're so frequent these days. The companies that don't manage the frequencies of change, they're losing people. They're not going to be successful If they're not hiring diversified employees. They're just not going to be as competitive and effective. I deeply believe that's what it takes these days.

Speaker 2: 13:15

You're bursting my bubble, so you mean like I can't just say well, we do that. 3% merit increase every year and hope that's good enough.

Speaker 1: 13:23

Yeah, I mean you'll see it right. I mean we see the expectations changing left, right and center every week around this stuff. I mean our candidates and the employee population, quite frankly, is just getting a lot more educated on what they want, right, whether it's the pay divide or what they want their companies representing comp philosophy, more transparency around the salary bans, the equity bans, all those things. And that's being driven on the candidate side and if enterprises cannot address that need from candidates, they're just not going to be successful in hiring those, those folks, those critical folks.

Speaker 3: 14:08

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Speaker 2: 14:55

Yeah, I think that's such an important topic and and I, I, I mean, I kid you not, I probably have this conversation at least one or two times a week with other hr peers and it's the, it's that transparency piece and it's the you know, how do you, how do you manage that? Or you know so and so is frustrated because so and so makes x and they think they should make x. You know, so-and-so is frustrated because so-and-so makes X and they think they should make X. You know wage compression issues. You know, you know there's, there's all that so, um, and at the heart of it, I, I truly believe that the wage transparency is a noble um cause, right, I mean, it really it's about pay equity, it's about fairness, it's about consistency, it's about respect, um, but it, it, it can, it can ruffle some feathers, right? So so, as we, as we shift from the you know kind of the data into the, the comms and program implementation pieces, how do you approach the transparency puzzle at an organization?

Speaker 1: 16:02

Look, what's interesting to me is the notion of transparency. For us has always been around transparency about your pay strategy. It's not whether you know Jim or Sally next door. I know their salary and their equity and what they're taking home every day. What's more important is I know that at an organizational, at a departmental level, my company has a philosophy and a strategy to maintain consistency and that's the big word here consistency in approach. Whether I'm red, yellow, green or black, they're going to manage it in a way that is appropriate, given my performance and my contribution to the business, and I think that's so critical to frame everything that we talk about in this way.

Speaker 1: 16:56

And the reality, I think over the years is we just, you know, the HR operations, the people operations side, has embedded themselves in the data and the valuable data and the tools that support that data.

Speaker 1: 17:13

So you can't draw that information out easily, or HR professionals are fear data or building those models out or extracting that information and running the analysis so they actually have, you know, the scorecards or the information they need to actually make that business decision. And that's what our goal has been over the years to say let's take that fear or that challenge of Excel or the numbers and really elevate that or put it in an area where it's easily addressable, accessible, or you have the instrumentation you need to run your business from a people enhanced people perspective, and that's the disruption, that's the challenge of the years that it's just been buried, that information has been buried and nobody can access it well, and they can't activate it. That's why you kind of get the whole HR slag all the time right In terms of, oh, they don't do anything on this, they're just administration, et cetera. But I think there is a big change that's happening with our functional industry and that is empowerment of really easy to use instrumentation to manage people better.

Speaker 2: 18:32

I love that and I think it's such an important call out. You know, I mean, most of us in HR didn't go into it because we love Excel spreadsheets. And then we get into it and we're like and uh, you know, we're like digging through, you know a comp structure and it's like this might as well be in hieroglyphics. I don't even like what is this? Well, you know what is comp ratio, right, you know, it's stuff like that. That you know. My biggest piece of advice is you know, if you're an HR person, go make a friend in accounting. You know that it's like you can be like the dynamic duo, like you don't have to be the expert, but like find somebody that's really good at Excel. It can just be, it can be magical, trust me.

Speaker 1: 19:21

Well, look, there's, there's, there's just so much information in your let's just call it your employee census and then you attach you know rate of change or things that happen over time. It really unlocks your ability to support your, your business stakeholders, uh, by 10 X, 20, 30 X, if you're able to to really kind of uh, face that or extract that information, man, it's. It's hugely powerful um for your organization and it'll make your life a lot easier on top of that Right.

Speaker 2: 19:53

Yeah, absolutely I. Um, I think I'm probably a little bit of an outlier where, you know, one of my, my favorite classes in uh in in college, where actually I had two favorite classes One was ops management and one was statistics for business, you know, because I could see like there's actually a practical application there, versus like it was a little harder for me to do the understand the calc connection. But stats, okay, I get this. Like okay, there's an outlier, there's, you know, there's a standard deviation, like okay, I can actually use this for, you know, uh, for whatever I end up doing, um.

Speaker 2: 20:28

But I do think you know, as, as we think about um, all of the information that we have access to, a lot of times we're also very, very protective of that information, right, and for good reason. Right, there's, you know, confidentiality reasons, for you know a lot of different aspects of what we touch Um. So how do you, as you, as we, think about that transparency? How do you figure out okay, we want to share, we want to be transparent about pay strategy? You know how far do we go with the actual dollars and cents that we share in the strategy, or is it more about kind of approach, or is it different for every business? What's your take there?

Speaker 1: 21:11

Well, look, I think you know, when you think, think about financial planning, building out your pro formos, right? I mean all of that, every element of that has been booked and you have a range from which you are operating from right. And that same financial range as it relates to pay or equity for an individual, what you're going to pay for benefits and all those, that's a, that's a total cost and within that that total cost, there's breakdowns of of that. To me, sharing those breakdowns to a candidate is no different than building out your budget at a macro level, right, and I think you know it's not about, again, it's not about the detail, about that individual, but this is the information at an aggregate you can share. And what that does, is it just it builds that trust between that employee or that employer. That says, really, you know, we're thinking about this holistically, we're thinking about this philosophically.

Speaker 1: 22:24

If I were to share with you a range, right, for a chemical engineer in your organization, it's not giving anything that is telling about the you know, the very specific engineers. It's just saying here's our range structure and this is the same structure that we're using to build out, you know, budgets within that department, right? I don't. I don't think there's confidentiality issues in that. Everybody knows you're building out your merit cycle. It's 3% or 4% and you may have 5% for promotions et cetera. Let's just expose that and say this program happens twice a year or once a year and it's based on X Y, z. But we're even fearful of even sharing that information, right or not, providing that information to the appropriate party so they can articulate it to their employees. There's just this kind of hostage around data and this information that I just feel like it's kind of ridiculous, right, because everybody's using this information to manage the company programs anyways.

Speaker 2: 23:46

I think it's a great call and I think I, you know, in my opinion I would go back to a word you used earlier, and that's fear. You know. It's the fear of oh. If I tell somebody, you know, our merit budget is 3% this year and they get a two, you know, now it's oh, geez. Now I've just created some conflict. Now I've got to explain to this person well, you didn't do this and you didn't do this and this goal was missed, and this and this, and that's why right, and that's why right, and that's hard, like, that's not fun, but it, it might be necessary, right. So I think there's some of that um, but but then I also think it's it's um, how would I describe it? It's, it's almost like um, I feel like it's.

Speaker 2: 24:33

If you've got somebody who gets a promotion, it's like you want them to feel like it's. If you've got somebody who gets a promotion, it's like you want them to feel like they're, they're, they're special. So if they get a standard, let's just say, 5% promotional increase, that's what everybody else gets with a promotion. You know it's, it's, it's maybe less special. You know what I mean. Like, but a lot of. I guess I think what I'm really getting at here is we're operating off assumptions, assumptions of how a human will respond when we do it, versus the potential assumption and, I would argue, maybe the more realistic assumption that someone might think that they're being paid unfairly if you don't do this.

Speaker 1: 25:11

Yeah, and what's interesting is these decisions sometimes, while they may be bubbling up like issues, employee issues or sentiments about, you know I should have performed X, y, z I think it forces you to really address your program holistically, right? The reality is a lot of this stuff is done discretionarily and you can do it from an individual perspective and you can really kind of isolate. And that isolation, quite frankly, sometimes isn't tracked. And then what happens is you've got a lot of exemption handling of everything through your employee adjustments or actions and you're not addressing the problems holistically. And I think that's what we're trying to say.

Speaker 1: 26:03

If you can do this from a programmatic perspective and maintain that programmatic consistency, you're going to be able to really kind of effectuate change with those programs where you need to do it anyways. Right, because no program should be stagnant. It should. It should be iterating and changing over time as as you grow. And I think you know that's the only way to to kind of force that data to come out. Otherwise you just got, you know, got discretionary management up and down and that's going to cause problems on an individual basis all day long. You've seen that, we've all seen that in board positions that do that.

Speaker 2: 26:47

Yeah, if you're listening to this and you haven't seen that, you will Just give it time. But yeah, no, I mean no, I've never seen that before. Yeah, I am one of these. I don't love policies and I don't really love bureaucracy, I feel like so, and our show talks about that a lot. We're kind of trying to shake off the old paradigm of HR as the bureaucratic admin function, but when you use the word discretion as it relates to your compensation structure and strategy, it's pretty dangerous.

Speaker 1: 27:21

It gives me you know, and so many companies use that as an approach. That's what's scary about it, right? I mean, it truly is. And look, I think this notion of discretion means for me it's really about hey, we want to empower our stakeholders to do what's appropriate to run their business Right, and I think there in lies, like the disruption in HR programs, right?

Speaker 1: 27:49

Imagine a world where, uh, all of this stuff that we need to do is obfuscated in the back, meaning the data is there, all the instrumentation is there and there's not this forced process where, hey, I need to address employee pay, personnel pay, promotions, merits throughout the year.

Speaker 1: 28:11

What if you could do that throughout the year without going through an arduous, forced focal review model, whatever, so you can actually address your people as you need them, as they are performing or they're not performing, etc. Or anything else. We want to ultimately fluidly empower our operators, our leaders and our people managers to manage their people. But they need help, they need the back-end support, they need the data to do that, and I think sometimes the way we do it today it's counter, it's a conflict of interest, right, Because none of that is really built in an easy process model or there's not tools that allow that hiring manager to do that or that people manager to do that, and thus you wrangle everything into a year-end model and you force all this rigor and all this you know what can be deemed as bureaucracy because you don't have the infrastructure to support them throughout that kind of 365-day kind of management cycle. That really would be more supportive of that employee's growth and that manager's ability to run that team more fluidly.

Speaker 2: 29:40

Yeah, it's really interesting, I think a great call out and I think many of the HR professionals can relate to that. It's the well, we have this schedule and this is the schedule.

Speaker 2: 29:53

you know and and that's, and, and you know deviations from the schedule are are you know, not correct, but, um, you know, whether it's right or wrong really kind of depends on does it achieve the goal you want it to achieve right, which is retention of your key employees and, uh, you know, recruitment of new employees with a, you know, competitive pay and benefit structure. So if it's not working, then that's exactly why our show exists. Maybe we need to change, Maybe we need to think about it a little differently.

Speaker 1: 30:24

Even the largest tech companies, the billions and the billions of market cap, even they're going through the standard arduous process of oh, we've reviewed these individuals. Now we have to wait for the ability to actually address their successes, through promotions or not. But it's going to take eight months to do that, man.

Speaker 2: 30:52

Right, yeah, no, yeah, don't worry, I'm taking notes here Cause I'm like yep, we've done that, yep, doing that right now.

Speaker 2: 30:59

So I'm not planning to change that, so? So that's one thing I do want to talk about because I think I think it'd be easy to listen to this and think like, well, yeah, you know that's tech or that's, you know that's, that's a high growth company, but you know, we're not like that. Maybe we're a small business or maybe, you know, maybe we just maybe I'm I'm a corporate employee and I don't have the ability to make these types of changes. But I guess that's one question that I had is you know, as we talk about kind of these creative compensation strategies, um, how do we help match that to our organization values, you know, and organization values and really the organizational goals, how do you approach that?

Speaker 1: 31:45

Well, first and foremost, I think, whether you fall in the camp of hey, we're not going to do anything, or we, you know, we're not tech, or the belief that I think you're going to be forced into that generally over time through your talent needs, I think candidates are going to want what we're talking about here transparency. They're going to want to know, you know, if they're applying for said job, what salary band it is coming in, and they're going to want to know, possibly, the diversity within the function or the company and they're going to want to know the pay equity. I think that's coming down the line. We're seeing it come through from a public company perspective. We're seeing it come through from a public company perspective. We're seeing it come through certainly on the tech, and tech is certainly one of those pioneering things and over time, you see this even in policy, right, california, new York State, colorado, like you have to put your salary bands out there and it's coming, you know.

Speaker 1: 32:58

So companies need to address it right, um, um, some way shape or form, and I think you know um, from a data and innovation perspective, I think tools are coming to help companies do this much quicker and easier. I mean, that's why we're here. That's why I started my company here to do that. So you don't need 20 compensation consultants even though I was one back in the day and we charged handsomely for our services but at the end of the day, it's not scalable for folks, right? We need instrumentation out there. We need easy to use models, data models, easy to use analytical instrumentation that allows folks like you, kyle, to manage your company better and more easily without having to pile a bunch of money into some basic data that should already be there and you already have from an organization perspective, right? So don't know if that answers the question, but I think we're going to be forced to to address all of this, and I think there are a lot of innovators out there trying to support this through technology.

Speaker 2: 34:18

Absolutely, and I think you're right and I think that and we've seen this just in you know some of the hiring we've done just over the last few years. But you go back and you look at, like, some of the surveys you know some of the surveys of you know new college graduates and I mean the drive and the desire for their organizations to have. You know equitable practices, and I'm not talking just pay, I mean we're talking you know cognitive diversity and you know what we would highlight is, you know traditional diversity. You know metrics and you know, again, that's kind of like table stakes now it's like if you don't have a social responsibility pledge on your website, um, canada's just won't even interview with you. They won't apply.

Speaker 2: 35:05

You know, um, I was looking at a survey the other day I had to pull it up here as we were talking that um, uh, those born uh 1997 to 2010, or Gen Z, um 36% say equality is the most important cause they want their employer to support. So that's like that's not like them saying that it's important for them to support equality, they're saying like they, like one third of these people, want their employer to support this in one way, shape or form. Right, that was pretty astounding to me because that's very different than, you know, the hiring environment that we've had in the past, at least that I'm used to. So, yeah, I think it's coming.

Speaker 1: 36:17

You know. Again, I think about my kids and like what they want, how they're being educated today and, yeah, it's just much different than, certainly, how we grew up and how we were educated and what our expectations were and what our expectations for our employers meaning what we asked for our employees in terms of information and data. It's just much more rigorous now. Absolutely, we're a growth company and we have these. It's nice because we do this right and we have this data. We built our company around it, but it's just validating with the employees that we've hired. They're asking all the things that we're hearing about.

Speaker 2: 36:43

Absolutely. I think in the same context, you mentioned this job length of two years. I mean three years if you're lucky, right, that's a, that's a seasoned employee in some, in some industries, right, and it's. You know, the truth is that that's happening because people have better opportunities elsewhere.

Speaker 2: 37:04

And if you, if you look at the competitive landscape, a lot of times people can get a 10, 15, 20% pay raise by switching jobs, what you're probably not going to give them a 20% pay raise and during a merit increase cycle, it's just not, you know, economically feasible most of the time. So they're going to need to, you're going to need to have them stay for a different reason than if you want to keep that employee right, most likely. But if you have, like, a career path, right, if you have like a, like you know, documented levels and compensations associated with said levels and a career development pipeline that goes along with that that that person can invest and engage in, well, oh gee, maybe, maybe I don't need to answer that. Linkedin, you know, the seventh LinkedIn request for an interview that I got this week, right, I mean, because that's the environment.

Speaker 1: 37:58

Yeah, I mean, look it's.

Speaker 1: 38:01

It's interesting because, uh, I was having a conversation with my engine product team it's a couple of weeks ago, uh, on this and one of our lead um uh product.

Speaker 1: 38:12

She said it's really around this idea of work happiness for her and trying to figure that out, and we were talking about the virtues and the values that we're putting in our product and to me that really stood out and it's not meant to be hokey, but that's what I worry about the team happiness, team alignment, because the reality is we're not max dollar providers, right, meaning you're coming to us for very different reasons, whether it's our stage or what we do or the people that we work with, because, at the end of the day, when you're dealing with highly skilled white-collar professionals, there's always a higher player, meaning you can always, especially in this market, you're going to be able to get a job, making more money, making more equity, all those things.

Speaker 1: 39:15

So what keeps you here, right, what keeps you happy? It's the little things that that add up to to really big things, and I think that's those micro loops of of all the things that we do as an employer to ensure that you know, our employees are having fun, they're rich and they've got a great opportunity for growth, and what they're working on is stuff that they can be proud about, talk about at home at the dinner table or at holiday and Thanksgiving, right. I mean those are the kind of intrinsic things that say, well, if you're talking about that in that way to your mom and Thanksgiving right, I mean. Those are the kind of intrinsic things that say, well, if you're talking about that in that way to your mom and dad and you've got a smile on your face.

Speaker 2: 40:06

You're likely going to stay right. I love it. Although I will say it at Thanksgiving and Christmas, I do have some really good stories from the world of HR that we're all laughing and smiling for different reasons Because, like what happened, yeah, those are fun, although, you know, in the dark humor of HR, sometimes that is entertaining.

Speaker 2: 40:27

No names were used, don't worry anybody. Confidentiality was breached, but yeah, there's been some crazy days. This has been just a wonderful conversation, I think. Just so much great content to think through, and I would encourage anybody who's listened to this go back to the beginning, put it on one and a quarter speed or two X speed, take as many notes as you can if you weren't taking notes during this because, as we're all facing this, I just think that the future of compensation is exactly what we just talked about, and the organizations that don't get that figured out now are going to be left in the dust, and the organizations that do figure it out now are going to be the winners and they're going to be better off for it. So, that being said, we're going to shift over into the Rebel HR flash round. I can't wait to hear your responses here. So, okay, question number one where does HR need to rebel?

Speaker 1: 41:28

Oh man, I think it's got to rebel against its current traditional processes. I think HR can be a data sciences function. Quite frankly Empower, use the data. I think it's one of the most powerful things HR professionals have access to, but in today's, generally speaking, I don't see it um showing up as much as it should, as it should be.

Speaker 2: 42:04

I agree a hundred percent. I mean that's why I founded the podcast, so let's you know that we're definitely aligned on that front. But there is so much power there and for those of you that haven't like cultivated that relationship with your CFO or your finance person and really gone in and done a deep dive on some of the human analytics that you have access to, I guarantee you that there will be some insights that drive some program strategies and they also help you get you know that, the, the, the support that you need. You know it's then. It's not just a human appeal to do something. Now you've got data backing why you want to do something right. It's just so critical.

Speaker 1: 42:46

Yeah, it's a treasure trove of information in there. We love it, we're. We built a whole company based on it, so yeah, I love it.

Speaker 2: 42:54

Well, we could talk about that's another whole nother show I we can just nerd out on like. So what about this metric? How does it? You know what's the incentivization of this metric to that? Anyways, all right. Question number two who should we be listening to?

Speaker 1: 43:11

From an HR perspective or just like in general. Who should be listening to?

Speaker 1: 43:18

I mean, I've had people named like bands before, so you can go wherever you want with it. Look, listen to your employees. We're going to stay on topic here. Your employees have so much information as it relates to wants, needs and, generally speaking, they want improvement and growth in the organization. They're probably the biggest supporters and aligned to a company's success, and if you don't have an ability to tap into feedback coming from them, I think that's where a lot of companies fall down.

Speaker 2: 44:01

Love that, love that, and don't just because you're HR, don't assume that you're getting all of that employee feedback. Yeah Right, like you gotta, you gotta shake the source and and question your assumptions every once in a while too. So, very well said, all right. Last question how can our listeners connect with you? My direct email tang at opencompcom Love to hear from you. Perfect, and we will have that information in the show notes. I think. Just a wonderful conversation, a lot of great content, I think. For me personally, you've challenged some of my conventional thinking, um, appropriately so, and so I just really appreciate the time here today and, uh, and the the information shared with our listeners, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 44:45

Thanks, Kyle. It was a great time. Thanks Appreciate you. Thank you.

Speaker 2: 44:50

All right, that does it for the Rebel HR podcast. Big thank you to our guests. Follow us on Facebook at Rebel HR podcast, twitter at Rebel HR guy, or see our website at rebel human resourcescom. Views and opinions expressed by Rebel HR podcast are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any of the organizations that we represent. No animals were harmed during the filming of this podcast.

Speaker 3: 45:20

Baby.