Latest / The Business of Alignment - Powered by The E1B2 Collective / Pay Equity & Transparency (Part 1) w/ Sean Luitjens - VP of Product Management @ Korn Ferry

Transcript

Pay Equity & Transparency (Part 1) w/ Sean Luitjens - VP of Product Management @ Korn Ferry · The Business of Alignment - Powered by The E1B2 Collective

• 0:02
  Sean, how are you today, brother?
• 0:04
  I genuinely appreciate you joining today's podcast.
• 0:07
  I know it's been a long time. We've probably be scheduled,
• 0:11
  maybe nine different times in the longest recording or the
• 0:16
  attempt to record in a podcast history, but I definitely
• 0:19
  appreciate it and I know we don't have too much time.
• 0:22
  So I just want to Dive Right In. Give everyone your full name.
• 0:25
  If you can maybe not your full government.
• 0:27
  Just let's just go with Sean. If you're comfortable with that,
• 0:30
  you know what company you're working at, right?
• 0:32
  Now little bit of a background on yourself and then we'll dive
• 0:35
  into some of these questions. Yeah, so Sean Li Chen's vice
• 0:38
  president of product at Korn Ferry just a long history.
• 0:42
  We, they can't see the video. So they can't see how old I am,
• 0:46
  which is good, but a long history.
• 0:48
  Basically in product and business management Around
• 0:50
  Talent acquisition and comp and bad.
• 0:53
  You know, Human Resources type space on a percent and then for
• 0:57
  those that will eventually can look them up on LinkedIn.
• 1:00
  He looks 25. Just just for a tip there, if
• 1:04
  you have you ever have you ever considered, you know, I'm a I'm
• 1:07
  getting up in age you just going to go with the full gravy.
• 1:10
  Or have you ever done like the the Blended the Blended color?
• 1:14
  I haven't done the Blended thing yet.
• 1:16
  I am waiting for the mrs. To tell me.
• 1:18
  She doesn't want to be married to an old guy cuz she's not
• 1:21
  aging. So at some point, people going
• 1:23
  to start wondering why she's hanging out with her dad.
• 1:25
  I love it. I love it.
• 1:26
  I my, I told my wife the other day, I'm just going to go with
• 1:29
  the full salt and salt and pepper, once it comes in.
• 1:32
  I'm gonna rock it. I don't care what I have to
• 1:34
  worry about the headgear. Clearly, I know so far, I'm
• 1:37
  doing all right there, it's starting to creep in but we're
• 1:40
  doing okay, I can't complain 100%.
• 1:43
  Well, let's just start this way, you know, give me.
• 1:46
  Give me your state of the union from your just personal macro
• 1:49
  perspective and then anything that you're seeing and that you
• 1:52
  feel comfortable sharing with the work that you're doing with
• 1:54
  your, with your day-to-day. But what's your sustainable, you
• 1:57
  know, in the world of the workforce today, you know,
• 2:00
  actually you know, Rob and I would almost A lot of work on a
• 2:03
  research project right now, kind of analyzing companies in a post
• 2:06
  covid world. I think the workforce has
• 2:08
  changed dramatically from pre cope with to post covid.
• 2:11
  So just what's your point of view on that whether it's post
• 2:13
  covid just to the state of the union for Workforce perspective,
• 2:17
  now, and you're in your scope of Genius where you seeing things.
• 2:21
  Yeah, I mean for me I think it's really interesting, just looking
• 2:26
  at, you've got remote work, you've got pay Equity, you've
• 2:29
  got the markets and kind of a weird space right now.
• 2:32
  Where people talked about the potential, our word for a while,
• 2:35
  but at the same time, it's hard to find labor skills are
• 2:38
  changing fast, roles are changing fast and now, of
• 2:40
  course, you've got, you know, we're going to make it all of
• 2:43
  like three or four minutes and before we say, open a ichat GPT
• 2:47
  or barred, so we've got a I coming in.
• 2:50
  So I think there's a, you know, these are times that I don't
• 2:53
  think we've seen before. And so, I think from Talent
• 2:57
  acquisition to companies that are managing their talent, In
• 3:02
  place right now is really, really challenging while, you're
• 3:06
  dealing with things, like pay equity and remote work.
• 3:09
  I totally respect that. Let me, let me ask you this
• 3:13
  direct question, because because I'm seeing a lot of the same
• 3:15
  things. I think companies number one
• 3:19
  from my perspective coming out of covid.
• 3:22
  I think the behaviors the skill sets the be, you know, the
• 3:27
  perspectives that I think allowed the workforce has on the
• 3:30
  word of work themselves. They fit inside of
• 3:32
  organizations. I think they've changed a lot.
• 3:35
  Is that is that something that you're seeing?
• 3:37
  Do you think the way professionals are interacting
• 3:40
  with companies interacting with their roles and interacting with
• 3:44
  just how they identify themselves as professionals?
• 3:46
  Is there anything different on your personal radar with that?
• 3:50
  I mean, I come back to the remote work and people going
• 3:52
  back to office and things like that.
• 3:54
  So I'm kind of interesting from the standpoint of remote work.
• 3:57
  So, I've been a remote worker almost 20 years now.
• 4:00
  Oh wow. There's a point at which I There
• 4:02
  was one of the first remote workers and where you know
• 4:04
  people said it wasn't going to work and you couldn't possibly
• 4:06
  work remote. There were some technical
• 4:08
  challenges obviously 20 years ago, then you get to covid, you
• 4:12
  know, and it's starting to become prevalent and the tools
• 4:14
  are there. And then, of course, you know,
• 4:16
  people went all the way to the other side for a while and said,
• 4:19
  oh my gosh, everyone's going to work remote.
• 4:21
  That can, you know, so you know, no one's ever going to go into
• 4:24
  the office and now you've got people going back into the
• 4:26
  office and I guess, for me, what's challenging is?
• 4:30
  I am even though I'm on here speaking, With you.
• 4:32
  I'm fairly introverted. And so I like my private space
• 4:36
  and laughs not going into an office too much.
• 4:38
  But there's a lot of the world that wants to go into an office
• 4:41
  and bi-communal wants to talk to people and so I don't think all
• 4:44
  remote was ever going to work. I don't think all in the office
• 4:47
  is going to work anymore. I live in the middle of nowhere
• 4:50
  Western Massachusetts. So for me to do what I do, it's
• 4:52
  not going to be local and all these things.
• 4:54
  Now come into play, as a company, tries to figure out how
• 4:57
  do I hire the best talent, but put them in an environment where
• 5:01
  they can thrive. Thrive at the same time and how
• 5:04
  do I make that work? You know, getting personalities
• 5:08
  to work together, you know, because even if you put all the
• 5:10
  people in the office who, you know, want to be in the office
• 5:13
  and all the remote people remote, somebody's going to
• 5:15
  complain that, you know. So, and so's remotes or why is
• 5:18
  it different or the work harder and to do or whatever the case
• 5:21
  is, and all Complicated by the fact that it's a global
• 5:25
  business? You know, I've got co-workers
• 5:27
  in, I don't even want to know how many countries are time
• 5:29
  zones. And so, how do you make all that
• 5:31
  work? Exactly.
• 5:32
  No. I think I think life is about
• 5:35
  living in the middle and not living on any part of the
• 5:37
  extreme. You know.
• 5:38
  And I think maybe pre covid. There are a lot of companies
• 5:41
  that thought they literally could only exist inside of a
• 5:43
  inside of a workplace inside of an office setting.
• 5:46
  And I think now, and this is probably my final point before I
• 5:50
  jump to some pay transparency conversations.
• 5:52
  I think a lot of organizations need to lean more into, I
• 5:58
  believe how employees are looking at how they want to
• 6:00
  spend their time. They want to actually work from
• 6:03
  a workflow perspective from a, do they want to have kind of a
• 6:07
  hybrid methodology as a pertain to the workflows as it pertains
• 6:11
  to going in the office working from home, getting things done.
• 6:14
  What time of day they are getting things done?
• 6:16
  I think companies finally realize, like, realize that now
• 6:19
  I will say there are a large portion of companies that have
• 6:23
  had done like the force mandated back into office and that whole
• 6:26
  conversation. But I will say generally that I
• 6:29
  think companies are now realizing that you kind of had
• 6:31
  to Live in that gray area and kind of lean a little bit more
• 6:34
  into your employees personal points of views of how they want
• 6:38
  to work, and how they want to get things done.
• 6:39
  And you don't lose any productivity from a remote
• 6:42
  working perspective. And I think you, in fact,
• 6:44
  there's a lot of data that shows you may increase in productivity
• 6:46
  based off of output based off of again, then being able to work
• 6:51
  based off of what what works for them from a time period
• 6:54
  perspective where they get their most output.
• 6:56
  So, if you have any final thoughts on that, before we
• 6:59
  happened, pay transparency, but he's got a bat, you know, it's
• 7:01
  going to depend And I think there's going to be companies
• 7:03
  who leaned into. We got the coolest place to come
• 7:05
  work, or we're going to hire people who want to come into
• 7:07
  work. We're going to have companies or
• 7:08
  departments that are remote. You know, I think you're gonna
• 7:12
  have to figure out, you know, kind of what restaurant you are
• 7:14
  for. Employees, are you dying in?
• 7:16
  Are you carry out? Are you a hybrid or you?
• 7:19
  You know, pick up, are you, you know, what are you is?
• 7:22
  You figure it out? And how do you get the best
• 7:24
  talent based on your role? And so no one wants to say, it
• 7:27
  depends, but I think it depends. You know, if you've got a hard
• 7:30
  skill to fill in Our business, that's what score, to driving
• 7:34
  your business. It's going to be hard to find
• 7:36
  that in a one particular place especially with skill shortage,
• 7:39
  how do I find that one skill? And of course, once you open
• 7:42
  that Pandora's Box to, I'm going to let one person work remote,
• 7:45
  you know, that's where things get tough because I needed that
• 7:48
  skill. How do you tell someone their
• 7:49
  skills? Not valuable because this other
• 7:51
  person's, you know, skills are, you know, more in demand.
• 7:55
  Like that's just, you know, it's a tough road to walk and I again
• 7:58
  think it's going to be tough for human resources to kind of
• 8:00
  figure that out that mix of How do I find the best talent for
• 8:04
  every role while having a cool culture?
• 8:06
  And I think they'll be companies who leaned into all remote,
• 8:09
  because that's the way they want to be for whatever reason and
• 8:11
  they want people remote, I think there's going to be companies,
• 8:13
  are going to be like, check out our digs, like, you know, we got
• 8:17
  a cool place to work and we want people who want to come in to be
• 8:19
  social work in a team atmosphere and then how do you build those
• 8:23
  cultures? You know, I think that's, you
• 8:25
  know, that that's going to be the tough part and that's a
• 8:28
  super soft skill, right culture that?
• 8:31
  Yeah. Nope.
• 8:31
  He says, As they want a crappy culture like you go look at it
• 8:34
  on LinkedIn. Nobody says you know what we
• 8:36
  have? We have crap culture.
• 8:38
  Everyone says we've got a good culture but what does that
• 8:40
  really mean? And I think it depends on who
• 8:42
  you hire for what roles. Yeah, 1000% pay transparency.
• 8:46
  This is something that came with my personal radar.
• 8:51
  Eight years ago, nine years ago. I was I was really early from a
• 8:54
  research perspective reading, some just some data around that
• 8:57
  the impact it can have on your culture, the impact it can have
• 8:59
  them before mance and impact they can have on inclusivity
• 9:02
  feeling comfortable, what are your thoughts?
• 9:05
  And at a macro level? You know, how companies starting
• 9:08
  to deal with pay transparency? Why is it important?
• 9:11
  Just what are your what are your macro thoughts on that?
• 9:13
  So I mean you know the Eurozone has their kind of pay
• 9:17
  transparency rules coming to the u.s. is going to be really
• 9:20
  interesting. I think because it's not by
• 9:22
  state, you're starting to see companies deal with it on a
• 9:25
  couple of different ways, right? So we've all seen and made fun
• 9:27
  of the ads or seeing the memes, right?
• 9:30
  You know, this job pays between 50 and 500 thousand dollars or
• 9:34
  something. And so I think over time
• 9:36
  companies will start to dial that in and figure out how how
• 9:40
  they want that to work. There's a couple of things that
• 9:42
  go with that. I think there's a what range do
• 9:45
  eyeshadow. So I think there's going to be
• 9:46
  people who go with the ostrich method or you know knee-jerk
• 9:49
  reaction is I'm going to fight this the whole way and they put
• 9:51
  in fifty to five hundred thousand dollars.
• 9:54
  There's going to be other people who say, you know what, this
• 9:55
  going to save me time money and effort.
• 9:57
  If I put the proper range in. Yeah.
• 9:59
  And what is the proper range? You know?
• 10:01
  So do I include benefits and, and bonus and everything else?
• 10:05
  Because let's be honest, I'm looking at job a, and it pays
• 10:08
  120 to 150 and job B. Pays 180 to 210, where Apply if
• 10:14
  you're talented and so I think companies are going to have to
• 10:17
  kind of work through that process and so there's that
• 10:20
  piece of just posting the jobs and then there's the really
• 10:23
  difficult part of do. You do internal transparency?
• 10:26
  How do you deal with that because you already have
• 10:28
  external transparency. So if I'm making, you know, 16
• 10:32
  bucks an hour and I see that all the jobs posted or 19 bucks an
• 10:35
  hour. I'm not super stoked about the
• 10:37
  first person that shows up making 19 bucks an hour.
• 10:40
  I've got experience here, right? And so, I think it's gonna to be
• 10:43
  really interesting as you move that up to larger levels because
• 10:46
  compe is so complex on how do you measure person a verse
• 10:50
  person? B, and let's be honest, the
• 10:53
  labor markets tight for really skilled good employees so you
• 10:57
  can have to pay what you're going to have to pay and so you
• 11:00
  basically have two ends of the spectrum going on right now, you
• 11:04
  have pay transparency and pay equity.
• 11:06
  Which basically says at some level, I need to pay everyone
• 11:09
  the same. And at the other end you have
• 11:12
  everyone incompetent man, who's done the strategy side says, you
• 11:16
  need to differentiate pay for performers and non-performers.
• 11:19
  So I want to pay in the same but differentiate pay are the two
• 11:23
  extremes. And so I think tools and
• 11:24
  Technology to talk about Performance Management and who
• 11:27
  is performing so that you can differentiate pay and be
• 11:30
  realistic about that capture all your pay, so you can do an
• 11:33
  apples-to-apples comparison. Think it's, you know, it's a lot
• 11:36
  of work for companies to pay and then the last thing for I'll
• 11:40
  show you how Those questions is, how do you fix the problem?
• 11:43
  And so, obviously, you need to keep paying the people you're
• 11:45
  paying well, and move Merit increases.
• 11:48
  And there's really only one way to fix a pay Equity problem
• 11:51
  right now. If you get to a pay Equity
• 11:52
  problem, that's by paying more and so, you know, companies
• 11:56
  don't want to do that right now. I have one simple question.
• 12:00
  Actually, exists, many questions?
• 12:02
  I could ask and I'm already feeling like we're probably
• 12:04
  gonna have to get a part to go and just based off of the time,
• 12:06
  but I have one standard question with this.
• 12:10
  Why do you think it number one took so long for companies to
• 12:13
  realize that that pay equity and pay transparency was a, was a
• 12:17
  factor? Why did the government need to
• 12:20
  step in, you know, from your perspective just at a psychology
• 12:24
  level of human beings that are leading some of the biggest some
• 12:28
  of the smallest companies in the America.
• 12:29
  And frankly the world. Why is it?
• 12:32
  Why is his something that companies have always been very
• 12:35
  hesitant to, to, to share, you know, this is what I struggle
• 12:39
  with. So I think as a technologist,
• 12:41
  I'm going to punch a little bit on this and I say that because
• 12:44
  I've always been of the Mind Set, you just hire the best
• 12:46
  available player. I I struggled to get my head
• 12:49
  around the the whole why you wouldn't have been Equitable in
• 12:52
  the first place. Yeah.
• 12:54
  When I hire the best people and pay him.
• 12:55
  So they don't leave, right? Because isn't your job?
• 12:59
  Make revenue for the company. So I think it's I struggle to
• 13:03
  get my head around it as a whole because even if you're a selfish
• 13:06
  person who wants your bonus, is a manager to do the best and
• 13:09
  drive your business forward, when you just hire the best
• 13:11
  people, and pay them properly. So, I struggle with this one.
• 13:15
  When I've been asked this. I think I, you know, I tend to
• 13:17
  lean into the wall, how do you fix it?
• 13:19
  You know, how do you manage the technology around at how do you
• 13:21
  track it? How do you start to remediate,
• 13:23
  you know, those tools because I fundamentally maybe I'm just not
• 13:27
  that bright. Don't understand why you would
• 13:30
  have got yourself in this this place to begin with.
• 13:33
  I do think the only thing I'd add to that is I think there is
• 13:36
  some there is some historical part that goes to that.
• 13:40
  So you know, people that are older than me and predecessor,
• 13:42
  you know, kind of works itself. Do the workforce for a long
• 13:44
  time, right? So if you think everyone gets,
• 13:46
  you know, some companies have the philosophy that a merit
• 13:48
  increases the same for everybody and so it just perpetuates over
• 13:52
  time and at some point somebody has to step in and fix that
• 13:54
  problem. It doesn't answer the why you
• 13:56
  hired that way question. At all.
• 14:00
  So yeah, I struggle with that one.
• 14:03
  One of the last questions here, something I've been very
• 14:06
  transparent about or excited about rather in the transparency
• 14:10
  space has been, you know, I I put a pause on it, but I had a
• 14:14
  company called Beyond brand for about four and a half years.
• 14:17
  And the basis of that is I felt throughout the recruiting
• 14:19
  process. Companies could be even more
• 14:22
  transparent about things like how we actually make decisions
• 14:26
  contextual to a team things like here.
• 14:29
  The workflow is that we all had here too?
• 14:30
  And here. How we I actually work here
• 14:32
  things like as it pertains to Career mapping me being your
• 14:36
  leader me, being your your supervisor, here's where how I
• 14:39
  tangibly and realistically will jump in as it pertains to skill
• 14:43
  development and recommendations and things of that nature from
• 14:47
  your general point of view in the recruiting atmosphere, as it
• 14:50
  pertains to pay transparency as well.
• 14:53
  What do you think about that? As far as companies just leaning
• 14:57
  fully into just being fully transparent and fully honest
• 14:59
  with Talent from the get-go? Whether it's pay, whether it's
• 15:03
  workflows, whether it's, whether it's, you know, this is how we
• 15:06
  make decisions. This is realistically the time
• 15:08
  frame in which you can have a potential promotion.
• 15:10
  Do you think that is something that inevitably every single
• 15:14
  company? Has some point will start to
• 15:16
  take seriously? And what are the benefits you
• 15:18
  see from some being from being really honest about some of
• 15:21
  those subtle nuances? I don't know that, that's a
• 15:24
  great question because I think you get to pay after you get the
• 15:27
  fit from a talented physician standpoint.
• 15:29
  Yeah I would agree with you, I think Think, you know, on the
• 15:32
  talent acquisition side, a lot of the metrics are around, how
• 15:35
  many candidates that I have worked through time to hire as a
• 15:38
  big one, right? So time to fill is something
• 15:40
  that's measured all the time and so if your recruiter what you
• 15:43
  get paid on, is how you're going to act, right?
• 15:45
  So if my job is to just time to fill this position and a manager
• 15:50
  has some pain point, I'm going to go with the ones that go
• 15:52
  through the fastest and I'm going to probably try to feed
• 15:54
  them the answers that they want to hear, right?
• 15:56
  As opposed to what you're talking about is let me find the
• 15:59
  best candidate and the total Also ownership over time is
• 16:03
  obviously lower for the company at that point because now I'm
• 16:06
  going to have, I'm going to reduce turn off, got somebody
• 16:07
  who actually fits the role, fits the decision-making, fits kind
• 16:10
  of that business culture that I'm in, this is how it's going
• 16:12
  to work. These are the career streams
• 16:14
  that I could look at. So kind of a you know, corn for
• 16:17
  a career GPS without these are the places you could go.
• 16:21
  We can map you forward. This is where you might be able
• 16:23
  to go because if you get there obviously the recruiters happy.
• 16:27
  They just filled this job really quick.
• 16:29
  Time to hire was a good hire everything.
• 16:31
  Is great fit. The salary band.
• 16:33
  Did everything possible hired check and now you get there and
• 16:38
  this role isn't good for me. It's not a match.
• 16:39
  It's not as advertised. I can't.
• 16:41
  I see now that I'm here. I can't go where I'm going to
• 16:43
  go. Exactly.
• 16:44
  And in today's again, in today's labor market for skilled, you
• 16:47
  know, talented individuals. What are you gonna do?
• 16:50
  It's gonna start. So you know, I'm not a believer
• 16:52
  in quiet quitting. I think a fundamental like maybe
• 16:54
  I'm just too competitive. Yeah, you were a hundred percent
• 16:57
  but, you know, you're going to start to pick up the phone,
• 16:59
  right? Recruiters call, they do that.
• 17:01
  Now, you lose that person. And now you just go back and
• 17:04
  then the cycle kind of self perpetuates, because now he's
• 17:06
  got another open rack, the recruiter has to fill that rack,
• 17:10
  what as fast as possible because I have to tell him to fill and
• 17:13
  that's the racks. And this is how many wrecks I
• 17:15
  feel old. I don't know that there's a lot
• 17:17
  of metrics that talk about the long-standing for recruiters
• 17:20
  like, well how long did the average employee that this
• 17:22
  recruiter had stay on board? That would be a cool Metro.
• 17:26
  That's an incredibly important metric and will actually end
• 17:28
  there. Can I get a promise out of you?
• 17:31
  At some point you may get a part to can we can we get a full full
• 17:34
  30 to 40 minutes cycle out of you for my man?
• 17:36
  Let's do it. Sometimes it may be will
• 17:39
  bringing Robb one as well. Well while get a nice Snap Chat
• 17:41
  going Sean, I really appreciate this.
• 17:44
  I'ma let you get to your next meeting here but it's been it's
• 17:46
  been a it's been a fun quick conversation.
• 17:48
  We'll, we'll get another part 2 coming soon.
• 17:50
  Yeah man. Anytime