Latest / Beyond the Paycheck / His Sister Negotiated $4 of Candy on a 60-Cent Allowance: What Starkey's VP of Health and Wellbeing Learned About Every Dollar Mattering
Transcript
- Kelsey Willock (00:02) Welcome Ryan Seman VP of Total Rewards at Starkey Hearing. We are so beyond excited to have you, especially as our first new guest of the year. To kick us off, I'd love for you to introduce yourself to our audience, particularly a little bit about your career and background, where you're calling in from today, and your current role. Ryan J. Seman (00:23) Sure, good morning Kelsey. you having me today. So Ryan Seman, VP of Total Rewards at Starkey Labs. We're based in Eden Prairie, Minnesota and I've been in this role about 18 months but previously worked across multiple industries about 10 years in healthcare, 10 years in aluminum recycling and prior to coming to Starkey I spent 10 years at Goodyear in Akron, ⁓ as the head of total rewards for North America. So fourth industry in the hearing aids now so excited to have a conversation with you today. Kelsey Willock (01:09) And as I mentioned in our pre-call, I always love speaking to fellow ⁓ Minnesotans as it holds a very dear place in my heart as that's where my husband's from. So before we dive into all the amazing work that you're doing and have done, I want to get to know you personally a little bit better. So if you'll indulge me, I'd love for you to kick off by sharing your earliest money memory. Ryan J. Seman (01:34) Boy, earliest money memory would probably be my younger sister and I earned a 60 cent allowance each week when we were kids. We grew up in a very small town and there was a little store that we would walk up to every Wednesday after school. and I'm a pretty avid card collector, baseball cards, football cards. So I would always buy two packs of cards and a box of lemon heads. And that would be my 60 cents. And my sister would somehow ⁓ negotiate about $4 worth of candy from the store owner. She was a few years younger than I, but her sweet approach and negotiation skills. usually got her a lot more than her 60 cents allowance. Kelsey Willock (02:22) Is your sister now in sales? Ryan J. Seman (02:25) ⁓ She is not she's actually a social worker But she's she was very very effective at negotiating Kelsey Willock (02:36) Sounds like she learned the power of emotional intelligence quite early on in that experience with money. Ryan J. Seman (02:40) Yes, indeed. Kelsey Willock (02:44) Can you also share a little bit more about your first job and if you remember what you did with your first paycheck? Ryan J. Seman (02:50) Sure, yeah, so I worked at Hex Department Store. They're no longer in business. It was the summer of 1987 and I was a warehouse attendant. So back then people would purchase items and put them on layaway. So one of my jobs was frequently picking up items that individuals had put on layaway. They were coming in to pay off their balance and pick up their item. So a lot of the work I did was picking up layaway orders that people had made. So not a practice that you see today in retail any longer, but was very prevalent. back in the 80s when people didn't want to put it on a credit card, right? They would just make periodic payments to the department store. And then I do other miscellaneous things, assembly of furniture and equipment and what have you. And earned all of $3.35 per hour is a 16-year-old at the department store. Kelsey Willock (03:55) And do you remember what you did with that first paycheck of yours after the department store roll? Ryan J. Seman (03:59) I did. put it towards, I was a pretty avid biker through high school and college and I put it towards a new bicycle. So it took me a few paychecks but I did have a goal that I was saving for for sure. Kelsey Willock (04:18) It's just wonderful. I imagine the bike after riding it the first time felt way better than if it was a gift because it was something you had worked so hard for. Ryan J. Seman (04:28) Yeah, absolutely. Now there's much more, there's much greater appreciation, right, when you set a goal and work hard to achieve it. Kelsey Willock (04:33) Right. Exactly. How do you think your experiences, whether it is your first allowance or first job, helped shape how you think about security, freedom, or even responsibility? Ryan J. Seman (04:49) Yeah, you know, every dollar matters. And it doesn't matter what you do. It's something that I don't take for granted from, you know, a front desk receptionist to the CEO. Every dollar matters. And it's important that, you know, through my lens, leading the total rewards function is that Affordability means different things to different people and you need flexibility and a lot of coaching and counseling with employees, right? So they can best understand what they have available to them, you know, so that they're making the right choices for them and their families. Kelsey Willock (05:31) I think that's a great segue into a follow up conversation, which is how do you think that story has helped shape how you show up for your employees in terms of pay and benefits? It sounds like for you, it's making sure they have the right support system around them. Ryan J. Seman (05:43) Sure. Yeah, absolutely. We, you know, we're very, very transparent and very thoughtful as we think of, you know, healthcare premiums every year, right? And, you know, what's the impact of increases, medical and pharmacy costs, you know, continue to eat away at much. if not more than employees merit increases each year, right? So how do employees balance, you know, increasing costs just for daily living, but yet, you know, to have a comprehensive benefit package, right? And then, geez, on top of that, how do I save for the future, right? So there are a lot of competing priorities for people's dollars and the life cycle, you know, the stage in employees life cycle, it matters, right? Whether you're new career, mid career and saving for your children's college or, you know, 31 years goes by pretty fast, right? In, in retirements around the corner. So it's all about education, meeting employees where they're at. ⁓ in helping them understand so they can take advantage of, you know, the benefits we provide. Kelsey Willock (07:00) You mentioned a really interesting topic, healthcare. And I think that topic has been on everyone's mind for quite some time. We're seeing, you know, really astronomical rise in premiums higher than we've seen in about the past 15 years. How are you educating employees, particularly on those changes and supporting them through it? Ryan J. Seman (07:23) Now, we've done, we've had a concentrated effort with, I call it cross promotion. So we have a number of monitors throughout campus. We have an on site wellness center, where employees can go for acute and, you know, primary care, and advertising and ensuring employees are aware of care. when they need it, right? I've always had a saying that, you know, employees typically don't understand their benefits. They don't worry about them until they need them. And when they need them, they typically don't make the best choices. For example, go into the emergency room versus perhaps urgent care or calling the nurse line, leveraging our on-site health center here in Eden Prairie, are great cost effective and time efficient you know, ways that people can not only save money for themselves, but the plan, because they're going to a you know, cost of care location, right? And it's really about making, folks the information they need to make as informed decisions as they can, when they're in a moment of care consumption, and not being reactionary, and taking what I think many folks do as a default respond, we have to go to the emergency room, right? You know, that's a default response for many folks. Kelsey Willock (08:49) especially in those emotional moments, right? Ryan J. Seman (08:52) Yeah, absolutely. Well, and you see, we do a lot of work on avoidable ER care, right? Where there could have been better site of care options and then using that data to have focused communication to our employees and have. materials available at our Wellness Center, right? To say, hey, we're here for more than just a cough and a cold or a flu shot, right? That we can do more. We see spouses and dependent children at the Wellness Center, right? Just to expand our reach to our Minnesota-based employees, right? So they have access to great care, you know, at a very low cost, if no cost. Kelsey Willock (09:39) Not to mention if you have on-site care facilities, it takes away the barrier of needing to commute to a care facility elsewhere. ⁓ I'll give you a perfect example. I recently caught the flu. I hadn't had my flu shot this year, whereas my husband had flu shots being distributed in their lobby at work. Ryan J. Seman (09:49) Yeah. Kelsey Willock (10:02) and he got the flu shot. And so just kind of removing barriers as well as making things really clear and explainable sounds like it's a nominal value add to the company and the employees. Ryan J. Seman (10:09) Yeah. Yeah, we do something very similar, right, with flu shots, blood mobile, right, vaccines, all sort of things that are not only, you know, with with individuals well being, but also, you know, how do you give back to the community, right? So we have the blood mobile, you know, is just one example of sort of a give back, you know, for the community. Kelsey Willock (10:18) and Where do you think compensation and benefits are breaking down most often today? I'm hearing a little bit about understanding total rewards. Are there other things or would you say that's the number one breakdown today? Ryan J. Seman (10:49) Yeah, I, you know, for me, it's it's, you know, transparency and ease of understanding from a communications standpoint. You know, we will have a lot of newer in career employees that will, you know, they'll sit through their orientation, we'll have a benefit session and they'll be like, I only have X dollars to, you know, discretionary. Should I put it in the HSA? Should I put it in the 401k? So a lot of important early in career decisions that are not only habit forming, but that will pay dividends down the road. The triple tax benefit features of an HSA, explaining to employees what that means. maximizing an employer match on the 401k and then helping them evaluate, hey, we've got a PPO or we've got an HDHP. One plan might make sense for one individual in their family circumstances and another plan, right? So it's not one size fits all. So it's being there for our employees and we've got a very... ⁓ Family Focus at Starkey. We're family owned, private owned. Bill Austin, our owner and chairman, 83 years old, comes in and fits hearing aids five days a week. I could go down and see him in our Center for Excellence today. And in that culture just permeates the organization. We take care of each other. We do the right thing and we take care of one another. in our area and the total rewards function, that means we set our employees up for success. Right. We give them access to resources. We point them in the right direction and we break down barriers. Right. A lot of a lot of the work we do is is pointing people in the right direction. because typically when self-guided, they don't always end up in the right spot. Kelsey Willock (12:53) I love that you had mentioned when self-guided, they don't always end up in the right spot. It requires so much hand holding because people have got so much going on in life. And even though we know it's important to save for our future, to put money away into our 401k or HSA, et cetera, it's also particularly challenging when you're younger because that feels so far away. And so it seems as though the company has created incredibly supportive culture regardless of how old someone is, giving them access to folks that have, you know, been there before them, made the right decisions in the beginning parts of their career, which I imagine pays quite a few dividends into their. Ryan J. Seman (13:35) Yeah, yeah, we have, you know, there are five generations in the workforce, and each generation has their own circumstances, right, whether it's early in career to buying their first house or paying down college loans or saving for their children's education or getting married or retirement, right. And in that Kelsey Willock (13:41) Wow. Right. Ryan J. Seman (14:04) that those milestone events have different needs and they look different, right? And so we've done a lot of work in sort of, you know, my title is actually ⁓ Vice President of Health and Wellbeing, but out in the wild, nobody really knows what that means, right? So it's total rewards for, you know, all intents and purposes, but the wellbeing we purposely did. And we focus on the social, the mental, the financial and the medical, you know, the health, well-being of our employees. So a lot of the work we do is grounded in well-being and, you know, partnering with our vendors from a ⁓ financial well-being perspective and doing retirement preparedness. seminars, right, and inviting spouses to attend, right. Many times it's the spouse that's the primary decision maker or more influential in the decision making. So making sure that folks are, you know, feel invited and included and that it's not just a singular one-time choice individuals are making, that it's a very thoughtful process that they have to go through. Kelsey Willock (15:28) You've mentioned so many just phenomenal examples of wellbeing come to life at the company. One of those examples was the blood donation bank. Can you talk about a change that you're particularly proud of where you've seen go from moving from attracting talent to really transforming individuals' lives? Not that you haven't already mentioned so many great ones, but I'd love for you to be able to highlight one that you're particularly excited about. Ryan J. Seman (15:55) Sure, yeah. Well, we're only, what's today the 6th? We're only six days in, ⁓ but we did launch a global mental wellbeing solution. So, I was a very strong advocate for this change. had what I'll call the old school model of a of a bull-tongue EAP. It was only available in the U.S. and our utilization was, you know, as most folks will know in this space, it's very low. And everybody is going through something. Your something is different than my something, but everybody is going through something. And oftentimes they don't have access to or know who to turn to to help with their something. So we've spent all of 2025 evaluating opportunities in the marketplace and implemented a global vendor, which was very important to me was having a global solution. We have 5300 employees around the world. have more international employees than I do US based employees and we're spread across multiple countries. It was important to have a vendor partner that spoke the local language, was available with local providers and wasn't calling into a central line with only US based hours, right? So So we are extremely excited. We spent a lot of time and energy on the promotion and launch and are excited to see, you know, sort of what our engagement is. We have received, you know, in the early stages, a lot of excitement from our Asia Pacific region where it was, you know, that was a big ask from that region. There was a big void in that space. So that to me, think is going to be a, from our mental wellbeing pillar, is going to be a win for us in 2026 and beyond. Kelsey Willock (18:11) Sounds like a phenomenal program and it's challenging to find global benefits that have the same quality across the globe. And it sounds like you found the right partner to enact that. What kind of measurable impact are you looking for when introducing programs like that? Is it specifically engagement? Is it retention? Is it improvement of equity? Ryan J. Seman (18:31) Yeah, so a lot of... I always want engagement, right? That's important. But to me, what's important is defining what does engagement mean, right? Many vendors in the marketplace will call engaged if you create an account. They may never talk to you, but some vendors call that engaged. I'm like, that's not engaged, right? So for us, we're looking to go from, you know, between one and 3 % engagement to well above 15 % ⁓ for engagement in the global mental well-being solution. Now we expect that to vary by region, right? There's some cultural and local challenges, right? People don't necessarily want to open up. They're worried and their employer may learn, you know, about why they're calling. And it's important to break down that stigma. So the success of a program like this will be driven by me telling you, Kelsey, what a great program this was. And then you're not you're not afraid or you're not hesitant to call when you're like, Hey, I've got X or Y that's going on in my life. That peer success story is one of the best motivators for other employees to take action. It's oftentimes the success of others that will compel individuals to take action. Kelsey Willock (19:59) Yeah, I think the social proof is so valuable. I can think of so many different products and services that I've purchased from because a friend told me. And this is so true from an employer marketplace. So thank you for sharing that with me. I also love how you're really blending. It's not just looking at the quantitative data. It's also the qualitative. Ryan J. Seman (20:09) Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Kelsey Willock (20:27) So looking ahead, what compensation and benefits trends do you think will shape the employee experience most in the next year? Ryan J. Seman (20:34) Yeah, I there there are there there are a lot right. I think it's it really is being as transparent as we can and as equitable as we can be as you mentioned earlier with medical and pharmacy costs right coming off off one of the higher renewal rates for 25 into 2026. You know, a lot of employees are concerned ⁓ out of pocket maximums and deductibles are high. Everyone's premiums went up. You know, you've got macro concerns about the economy and everyone just sort of in generally in general, you know, cautious. right, I would say is probably the best way to couch it. And it really is reassuring employees that, know, industries, the economy in general goes through cycles, right? And doing your best with the resources that we make available are what's gonna help you get through it. And doubling down on the investments that we've made to say, you need to talk to somebody, call our new solution. You and I go to the wellness center. We have lots of resources available and it's giving employees permission to pause and take action that they need to be the best version of themselves. Kelsey Willock (22:15) and providing them that support system in order for them to achieve it with that autonomy. So I'm not sure if you're able to disclose, but I always like to leave our listeners with some tangible takeaways, such as tools, innovations that you've seen work really well. And you have mentioned some phenomenal tools in terms of wellness. Ryan J. Seman (22:19) Absolutely critical. Kelsey Willock (22:38) Would you be willing to share what that company was or if there's any other tool or data sets that you've particularly seen ⁓ improve the well-being of your employees? Ryan J. Seman (22:42) Sure. Absolutely. we in the mental well-being space, we partnered with Spring Health is who we selected and we had a couple of great options. We couldn't have gone wrong with either, but ultimately Spring Health was the best global fit for us. The other thing that we've done is We partnered with a local group called Beyond Medicare in the RAINN group, and they presented, we had a three-part financial wellbeing session that we did in 2025 that had one session focused on social security. We had one session focused on Medicare. And then we had a third session on ⁓ aging financially well. Right? So it was open to all employees. We kind of figured out maybe folks middle, late career might, you know, be more likely to attend. And that was very well received. ⁓ Just from a hey, retirement is more than just Medicare, right? There are other pieces, parts that you need to to be mindful of. And, you know, retirement is more than just ⁓ you know, just a 25-year plaque when you leave in a handshake, right? Employees need more support and if individuals think it's confusing selecting their benefits each year, diving into retirement is twice as complex, right? Depending on the age they go, the impact and timing of Medicare, when they start Social Security. ⁓ There are a lot of challenges, When do I start drawing on my 401k? What do I do with it? So it's really creating, we're not financial advisors, right? But our job is to connect them to the resources so that they do feel more empowered and they feel more informed. when they do make those decisions because many individuals will find out, oh, geez, I am in a pretty good spot. I guess I can retire or others that will be like, oh, man, I started a little late. Maybe 62 won't happen, but 64 seems like that could work, you know, in in, you know, there's always I always tell, you know, tell new and career employees set it. and forget it, right? Contribute early in as much as you can and as you get a promotion or a merit increase, right? See how much of that you can add into the 401k or the HSA, right? Defer those taxes and start enjoying the effects of compound interest. Kelsey Willock (25:46) Well, thank you so much, Ryan. I've learned so much from this conversation today. And as a quick recap, we started from your Lemonheads experience and where you spent your first paycheck on that bike. I wonder if you still have it somewhere. And then we talked a lot about how the importance of wellbeing programs, everyone's going through something. And so thinking critically through global solutions to meet the needs of all of your diverse employees has made Ryan J. Seman (25:48) Okay. Kelsey Willock (26:15) phenomenal impact of the company. I also loved how you had mentioned that it's important to remember that engagement is not just signing up, it's doing something. And so the success of a program is not just also in the numbers, it's in people sharing it with others. It's that qualitative and quantitative data. And lastly, I particularly appreciated how you shared a bit about financial wellbeing. And it's not just about the 401k, it's about getting into the details such as Medicare, Social Security, aging financially well and beyond, getting really specific about the support of diverse individuals' needs. So thank you so much, Ryan, for the conversation today. If our listeners wanna connect with you, where is the best place to do so? Ryan J. Seman (27:02) Yeah, so Ryan underscore semen at Starkey.com again based here in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. If you or your loved ones are in the market for hearing aids, you will find no better hearing aids than our Center for Excellence here in Eden Prairie. It's a wonderful patient experience. You walk in, you get your hearing tested and your ears checked. And if you are deemed that you have hearing deficiency, in about a four hour window you can walk out with custom fitted hearing aids in the app configured on your phone and walk away being able to hear better and live better. Kelsey Willock (27:48) and they treat their employees phenomenally well. So you can rest assured knowing that the people that built them are happy and secure. So thank you again, Ryan. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your week. Ryan J. Seman (27:59) Thank you, Kelsey. I appreciate it. You as well.