Latest / Beyond the Paycheck / Respect Your Money, You Earned It: What a Grandmother's Checkbook Taught Learn Behavioral's CHRO About Pay, Dignity, and Meeting Every Employee Where They Are
Transcript
- Courtney Cardin (00:42) Okay, well, welcome Maggie. I am so excited to have you here to kick us off on the Beyond the Paycheck pod, and I would love if you would introduce yourself to our viewers. Maggie Ruvoldt (00:51) Absolutely, and I'm so honored that you asked me to come on. So my name is Maggie Ruvalds. I have spent about 30 years in and out of HR. I jokingly say I'm a business person who happens to do HR for a living. I've done it in EdTech companies, I've done it in healthcare companies, and right now I'm the CHRO of a company called Learn Behavioral, where our mandate is to work with children with autism through applied behavior analysis therapy. So one-on-one every day helping a child with autism achieve their potential and support their families. Courtney Cardin (01:26) I love that so much and I can't wait to get in a little bit deeper on what the company does. But first I would love to start with you and talk a little bit about your money story. So would you mind sharing ⁓ your earliest money memory? Maggie Ruvoldt (01:43) ⁓ Yes, so my earliest money memory, as we talk about sort of my personal memory story, you're going to hear my grandmother come up a lot. ⁓ So I lived in a two-family house. My parents and I and my sister lived on the first floor and my grandparents lived upstairs. And my grandmother, for whom I am named, ⁓ taught me everything I know about money. And I remember sitting at her dining room table while she balanced her checkbook and talked to me about how she felt about money. ⁓ and how she organized the money in her wallet, which I still do to this day, every, you know, the order of in which you have like the ones and fives, the tens, the twenties. And they all have be facing the same direction. And she did that because she said you have to have respect for your money. You earned it. It is, you know, money doesn't solve all your problems, but it certainly makes them lot easier. ⁓ Or many of them a lot easier. And that's I can I can actually picture myself sitting with her at that dining room table all these years later. Courtney Cardin (02:44) I love that. We're all so lucky those of us who were able to spend that time with our grandmothers at their dining room table. I spent a lot of time with my grandmother while she was paying her bills. Although we weren't talking about money, it wasn't until later that I realized that she actually was also a financial coach for women and also helped write the law, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act that gave women the right to have credit in their own name. she taught me a lot of life lessons, but it wasn't until later when I started doing this work that I started sort of learning about the money lessons. So it's so great that you had that experience with your grandmother. I particularly love the respect your money, you worked hard for it. think that really speaks to the relationship that we're supposed to have with our money and building a healthy relationship. I'd love to know how did sort of talking to your grandmother influence the relationship that you have with money and the respect that you have for it. Maggie Ruvoldt (03:40) Yeah, and she was one of those women before the actor you're referring to, like she couldn't open her own bank account without her father's or her husband's permission. She couldn't have credit in her own name until she was in her 50s. And I didn't realize all of that until later that that influenced how she felt about money and that she was passing that onto me in some kind of subconscious way. And so that respect shaped for me wanting to have my own Courtney Cardin (03:49) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Maggie Ruvoldt (04:10) thinking about my own money versus money that is a shared pool of money with my husband, although we have that too. ⁓ But knowing, being able to track what every dollar that came in the door and every dollar that went back out the door ⁓ and having respect for that, but without giving up when you have discretionary income, you can have fun with it. ⁓ So like. riding that balance. My grandmother was a child of the Depression, so some of what she had I didn't get because I grew up in a very different time. ⁓ But it taught me not only respect for the money, but respect for me as an earner and what that meant for my own independence, my financial dependence. Courtney Cardin (04:41) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Wow, yeah, that's amazing. It was an interesting time for our grandmothers. I'd love to go back to some of your early memories as well. So can you tell me a little bit about your first job and your first paycheck? Maggie Ruvoldt (05:03) Yes. Yeah, I worked in the snack shack of a beach club. ⁓ know, kids coming to buy candy and ice cream. Sometimes when I think about it, I can still sort of feel my shoulder being really tired from a day of scooping ice cream all day long. ⁓ And I remember getting that first paycheck and Courtney Cardin (05:16) Nice. Maggie Ruvoldt (05:33) opening a bank account and thinking of my grandmother who had said to me when you get your first paycheck, you should open both a checking account and a savings account. ⁓ And she reminded me that at that age, I was 14 at the time, that everything I had to spend money on, I was lucky, was all discretionary. She was like, you have shelter, you have food, you have all these things. So the first thing you should do is pay yourself. And by that, she meant put savings away before you go spend it all. So I don't remember spending that money. I'm sure I spent it on Courtney Cardin (05:56) Mm-hmm. Maggie Ruvoldt (06:02) going out with my friends and whatever. But I remember going to the bank and opening both a checking account and a passbook savings. I can remember the feel of that in my hand where it got stamped every time I put money in. So all from... Courtney Cardin (06:18) Yeah. But like you physically went in person, something that people just don't realize. Yeah, I know. Why would you go to the bank in person? It's a while. Well, I know you don't remember what you did specifically, but I'm wondering, do you have a specific memory of maybe one of your most embarrassing purchases that you use those discretionary funds for? Maggie Ruvoldt (06:22) Don't do anymore. Yeah. Exactly. ⁓ I have an embarrassing purchase that's actually kind of recent, believe it or not. was, I couldn't remember. was thinking about like when I was young, what were my embarrassing purchases? I'm sure it was the 80s. So I'm sure there was some like Ashley Gouache jeans jacket at some point in time. ⁓ Yeah, I should have hung on to that. ⁓ Courtney Cardin (06:44) Okay, even better. ⁓ Which is back in style now, so you should just back out. 100%. Maggie Ruvoldt (07:02) Totally, but my recent embarrassing purchase is we got a dog a couple of years ago. So I have a three year old dog. He's a Labrador named Finnegan. And I give him baths at home. And my recent embarrassing purchase is I got a robe for him that makes him look like a dinosaur. Because I can only get him so dry myself. And so he gets wrapped up in this robe and then basically runs around the house. And I look at that now and I'm like, that's a silly thing to spend your money on. And I, you know, I just love buying stuff for my dog, as many people do, given the dog industry, but him looking like a dinosaur is pretty funny. Courtney Cardin (07:44) I feel like I need one of those for my dog. ⁓ Just purely because of the joy that it would bring. So I think that's a great purchase. I'm also biased. I love dinosaurs and have a dog. So if you could send me, that would be amazing. ⁓ How does your money story influence how you show up at work and your thoughts around pay and benefits for employees today? Maggie Ruvoldt (07:56) I'll send you a link. That's a great question. ⁓ I now work in an organization where we have a large hourly population. I think about their needs versus the needs of my higher compensated or salaried kind of folks. And I think that comes from having worked at beach club for years, having had a lot of hourly jobs when I was younger, but also thinking about my grandmother ⁓ and what she went through during the depression and years later. So when I think about the way we look at all the things that we put in front of our employees, all the opportunities that have to do with their financial wellness or their compensation, that I've got to meet the needs of that group that are very, very different than the needs of the other parts of my organization. ⁓ So I try to see it has helped me to try to see through the different lenses of where people are in their financial journeys. We have a lot of people who work for us and this is their first job ⁓ ever. It's our first paycheck ever. ⁓ And so what do they need that are very different than employees? like me who've been doing this for a while and are more mature in every way but more mature certainly in our financial journeys. Courtney Cardin (09:31) So you're not handing out passbooks to these ⁓ younger employees right now. Maggie Ruvoldt (09:36) No, no. And I think they'd be like, what do mean you went to the bank and you opened? Why would you need a passbook? Why don't you just use an app or something? Yeah. Courtney Cardin (09:45) They're humans that work at the bank? This is amazing. So where do you think that comp and benefits break down most often today? Is it more around pay equity or transparency or ⁓ even just understanding their total rewards packages? Maggie Ruvoldt (10:02) I do think there is a of a financial literacy that when we talk about compensation of benefits and total rewards and all of it, that sometimes we're talking to ourselves as professionals. ⁓ In the functions in the people team that do that, ⁓ I think that's part of where it breaks down, is that we're assuming a level of knowledge and ⁓ interaction with Courtney Cardin (10:12) Mm-hmm. Maggie Ruvoldt (10:27) all of these systems that the average employee just isn't going to have. ⁓ And that's not about financial literacy, then. I do this all day long. So when I go to do the open enrollment conversation, I've been living the open enrollment conversation for months and months. They're going to attend one 60-minute session and probably remember two or three minutes. ⁓ So where it breaks down, I think, is it partially in communication? And what are we sharing with people? Courtney Cardin (10:32) Mm-hmm. Right. Yeah. Maggie Ruvoldt (10:54) I also think there's this wonderful opportunity right now where there has been sort of a standard set of things that we've done from a total compensation standpoint, know, things that are now table stakes. You have to have a 401k plan as an example. You've got to medical, dental, or vision. But that sort of one approach for everybody doesn't meet the needs of individual employees. If people are living paycheck to paycheck, the 401k doesn't matter. If they have an enormous amount of debt, savings from retirement, they're worried about how they're going to make their rent next month or make that building credit problem. ⁓ So I think we're missing sort of a wholeness around, and it's coming, ⁓ but we're missing a wholeness around where everybody is and being able to meet individual employees where they are and not a one size solution fits everybody. Courtney Cardin (11:32) Right. And so that goes sort of into my next question around the breakdown, resulting in some people feeling more empowered at work, feeling more valued at work because they have this benefits package that really suits them and helps them plan for the future versus other people who feel stuck, right? They're still living paycheck to paycheck and they have this mounting debt problem. ⁓ How do we create a system where we are actually helping people? all move towards the empowered state rather than just feeling like they're in this cycle where they're never going to get out of and then we're weaving benefits in front of them that they'll never even really be able to use. Maggie Ruvoldt (12:22) Yeah. I think financial literacy has ⁓ something to do with that. I always encourage talent acquisition people, when you're offering somebody a job, make sure that you're talking about all of it. People, when they're changing jobs, they're thinking solely about what's going to be in their paycheck, their base salary, any other potential that they have. But if you go from one job to another and your base salary or your base pay goes up a little bit, but the cost of your benefits for the medical plan, for example, goes up more. Courtney Cardin (12:52) Mm-hmm. Maggie Ruvoldt (12:52) you're actually taking a pay cut and you don't realize it's what's happening. ⁓ So giving people more of a sense of, teaching people, hey, here's all the parts that go into how you should be thinking about your compensation. ⁓ That's one piece of it. Courtney Cardin (12:55) Mm-hmm. Maggie Ruvoldt (13:09) And one of things I love recently, we ⁓ have a new 401k advisor. And one of the reasons we chose the advisor that we did was the breadth of their education for employees is not only focused on the 401k, but they're offering our employees education in budgeting and how do you reduce your debt, all those kinds of things. So I think we have the opportunity to expect from our vendors more than just keeping your narrow focus on what is it that you're offering to my employees, but how do you get them to be able to even use that benefit? I think that's some of the places we can close that gap. And I also, my last thing on this is most companies think about the student loan. crisis and it is a crisis as if that is the employees problem and really doesn't have anything to do with me. ⁓ And the fact is it has everything to do with us. It is weighing on our employees. is stopping them from getting access to lots of other things. And so I'm excited about all the opportunities there are to help people ⁓ who have taken on this debt and are now contributing to your organization and many of them who have taken on debt and didn't actually end up getting the degree. ⁓ Courtney Cardin (13:55) Mm. Mm-hmm. Maggie Ruvoldt (14:23) They've got the debt, but not the ROI that one would have from completing that. So that's another area that I think we could do, we could be doing more from a company standpoint. Courtney Cardin (14:34) I completely agree. ⁓ That sort of gets into my next question around how you as an organization think about using total benefits packages and really want to go from instead of attracting talent to transforming lives. I the work that you do and the people do is so impactful, so that's always top of mind, but how do you in your seat in the people office also really think about this is more than just making sure we have the right employees but also we're transforming lives here. Maggie Ruvoldt (15:05) Yeah, you know, it it talked about this a little bit earlier starts a little bit with understanding the different employees that we have. So we have, you know, traditional shared services folks like myself and our finance team and the marketing team. We have a group of people who are clinicians who had to go on to get a master's degree or more to be able to do the work that they're doing, which means they've taken on a certain amount of debt. ⁓ And we should be figuring that into what their needs are. But they're largely a salaried group of people so they're not worried about, know, am I going to get my hours this week? And then we have this hourly population, some of whom are on their way to getting degrees, some of whom don't, that's not going to be their path in life. ⁓ And the needs of each one of those populations and how they think about what they should expect from an organization, what do they need are very different. ⁓ And so sitting in my seat, I need to think about each one of those populations. And how do we craft a full suite of what we offer that meets some level of what each one of those groups needs? So kind of to go back to the student debt example, we work with a company called Summer and Summer gives financial aid counseling to all of our employees. So no matter where they are in the journey, and that helps anybody who's got student loan debt because they've, they're a clinician and they've gone on to get a master's degree or you know, my hourly employees who are, who maybe either they have student loan debt as well, or maybe on their way to getting a degree. That's just one example ⁓ of how we, how we have to think about how we meet those people. You've got to understand the profile of all of your employees. And by the way, the only way you do that is by talking to them, not by making assumptions. So I've got my HR people, myself, we're out in the field all the time, just meeting with people and asking them like, what do you value? What do you not value? ⁓ Like we used to invest in a childcare ⁓ benefits that had very, very low utilization, even though we had heard from employees that childcare was important to them. And we spent a bunch of time understanding why nobody was using it. It was just the wrong benefit. wasn't helping them. It wasn't what they really wanted. ⁓ So you to get deeper into the conversations. Courtney Cardin (17:25) Yeah, childcare is hard. think you can slap on, like, you know, I have six hours of backup childcare, but also you're asking somebody to leave their kid with somebody that they may never have met. it's... 8 a.m. Was there a measurable impact in engagement, retention, or equity when you started sort of getting out into the field and really starting to talk to people and understand where you needed to meet them? Maggie Ruvoldt (17:36) Yeah. That's a great question. This is one of the hardest things to measure when it comes to financial wellness, right? It is easy for me to measure the impact of a medical plan, a dental plan. That is really easy. So much of what we've gotten has either been in seeing the utilization, so how many people are actually tapping into that benefit, ⁓ and more than tapping into it once. So we, you know, measuring how many people are contributing to the 401k now that maybe weren't contributing before or the increased percentages of that. So you look at that kind of data. ⁓ The student loan benefit, definitely we were looking at utilization, but we also started getting stories from people, people stopping me in hallways and saying, you know, one person said to me, hey, I was able to go on vacation for the first time because you... Courtney Cardin (18:28) Mm-hmm. Maggie Ruvoldt (18:43) helped me reduce my student loans by X amount of dollars, which is pocket money in my pocket post-tax. And I'm going on vacation for the first time since graduate school. ⁓ So some of it's anecdotal, ⁓ but there is, I always start, ⁓ I start with utilization and then employee surveys and things like that. ⁓ But it's really hard to measure. Courtney Cardin (18:53) Yeah. I love that. It is, but the anecdotal stuff, think it like, if you are sort of a leader that cares about that, the actual stories of impact that are coming from your people, right? The whole point is investing in your people. And if you're getting those experiences and those anecdotes about how you're doing that, that can be also really valuable as well. Yeah, absolutely. Maggie Ruvoldt (19:22) Yeah, particularly if you're getting them unsolicited. ⁓ If people are just walking up to you, like, I'm not asking, hey, how do you, has anybody tapped into this? People are just walking up and saying, by the way, I want to say thank you for that piece. you know, we hear from my benefits person and headhunter from somebody after one of the webinars that our former K advisor did on budgeting, just saying, hey, that was really great. Can we have more of that? And when somebody says, can we have more of that? Okay, great. Now I know I'm hitting something that's really valuable for you. Courtney Cardin (19:52) Yeah, and by the way, it's really nice for us when we're doing the webinars. I did one last week and somebody said, ⁓ thank you so much for this. I have a feeling it's going to change my life. And I was like, that's so nice. Wow. ⁓ Looking ahead, what comp or benefits trends do you think are most likely to shape the employee experience in the next year or two, particularly as so much is changing so fast? Maggie Ruvoldt (20:17) Yeah, I this is a tough year for a lot of people because the increase in medical ⁓ that so many people experienced is eating into a lot of other places where they would have spent money. So I think this is going to be an interesting year. I think more people are ⁓ Courtney Cardin (20:25) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Maggie Ruvoldt (20:36) tapping into financial wellness, not just again, sort of broadening the definition, financial wellness used to be defined as do we have a retirement plan for people and are people participating in it? And I think over the next 12 to 18 months, ⁓ that is going to be expanded. And it's been sort of coming along along the ways, but we haven't quite gotten where I think we need to. ⁓ So I think that's where, again, thinking about student loan benefits, thinking about all the other ways in which we can support employees, particularly early in their financial wellness journey. Some of our employees are incredibly financially unwell. And so I think there are a lot of interesting companies out there who are gonna help organizations like ours be able to achieve that for our employees and put something in front of them that meets that need and the way that we've met their wellness needs in other ways. Courtney Cardin (21:30) Absolutely, I think so much of what we do as you know is behavioral based and sort of giving people a place to just even open up and have those conversations and really understand their level of financial health. Because it's so rare that people actually get an opportunity to talk and evaluate and really understand that they're in the same boat as many of their peers. So one of the biggest things that we always start with is just reducing that shame and giving people a place to have a conversation so that they can start taking the next step. ⁓ What mindset shifts do you see or what guardrails do you think that leaders need to adopt to pay and benefits fair and empowering as things evolve in the job market? Maggie Ruvoldt (22:16) I love that. want to go before I answer that, though, I want to go back to what you were talking about before about what you all present. I mean, what I love about what you what you're doing and what you're offering is it gives people a place to be vulnerable and safe at the same time when it comes to money. So many people are afraid to talk about money. I as I shared earlier, I grew up in a two in a multi generational house upstairs with my grandmother. you re-talked about money and she was very open about it. Downstairs with my parents, they never talked about money. ⁓ It was a black box. My mom never wanted to talk about it. She found it incredibly stressful. ⁓ So I was fortunate to have a place to go where I could talk about that and felt really comfortable. And I tried to replicate that with my kids. ⁓ And I feel like I've had the reflection to understand what my relationship with money is about and how that influences my behavior in lots of ways. Not everybody has that. And so what I love about the opportunity that you're creating for employees is that place where they can have those conversations because there's so much shame around it. When you're struggling with money, there is unnecessary shame. And one of the things my grandmother used to say was the idea that everybody is the same 24 hours is a total myth because total myth and people who don't have the same 24 hours that I had the opportunity to have need Courtney Cardin (23:30) Mm-hmm. Total myth. Maggie Ruvoldt (23:44) help in understanding the small ways they can make behavioral changes and to feel they've got a place to go do that. ⁓ So I just want to. Courtney Cardin (23:51) 100 % Well, you're hired Maggie. We do, we always like to say, know, if you want to have a relationship, a good relationship with money, you need to first have a relationship with money. And so we really want to create that space where you can sort of get to know you and your money personality at the outset, because as you said, these aren't normal conversations. These aren't the norm in every household. Maggie Ruvoldt (23:55) Hahaha. Courtney Cardin (24:17) And a lot of us just turn 18 and get bombarded with credit card offers and things that aren't necessarily in our interest that we get as consumers. But if we don't have a place to learn how to be savvy consumers in the first place, we can get ourselves into a lot of trouble, whether it's through credit card debt or student debt or just being consumers in a capitalist society where we don't encourage talking about money openly. So ⁓ thank you for saying that because it's definitely ⁓ something that we really We really do focus on and want to help ⁓ sort of our partners and their employees feel better about their financial situation and have the practical tools to take the next steps. ⁓ But back to our original question. So what do you think leaders should be doing over the next two years to keep pay in particular and benefits more empowering for their employee base? Maggie Ruvoldt (25:00) Yes. I think we need to be communicating more. I think we need to be much more clear about the value of where we're spending our money on their behalf and finding every single pocket that we can. I always say you can only spend a dollar once. So if I'm going to spend a dollar on a benefit, I want to make sure that all of my employees are aware of it and can access it in a very simple way. But I think the most important thing for leaders to be doing in this time is to recognize what employees are going through. This is a really challenging time. The job market is really hard. ⁓ And it's easy when you're a leader to sit back and say, well, it's an employer's market. And so I don't need to think about all of these things. I think the most important time to be thinking about this is when it's an employer's market, because the message you're sending to your employees is I value you all the time. Courtney Cardin (25:48) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Maggie Ruvoldt (26:11) And this is how I value whether it's with transparency or making sure that we are thinking about what's happening out in the larger economy and how that's impacting our employees. We were fortunate this year in our benefits renewal that we did not get as skyrocketing as some other folks got. But knowing what all of those impacts are and thinking again, as I said, about all your different employee populations and hearing from them is really critical now. Courtney Cardin (26:40) Absolutely. On that note, what tools, I know we talked a little bit about surveys and things like that, but what else are you using to measure and improve equity or wellness across your employee base? Maggie Ruvoldt (26:53) That's a really good question. I feel like there's so many things spinning in my head. mean, we definitely looked at, again, kind of utilization. I was nervous coming into the year that benefits costs were going to have people drop off our benefits plans. And we were fortunate we didn't actually see that. saw an uptick. So I felt like, we must have done something right in that renewal. Courtney Cardin (27:13) Mm-hmm. Maggie Ruvoldt (27:21) So I look at what those are. We look at, again, the feedback. We talked a little bit about surveys that we get from ⁓ employees. But we also look at what are the competitors in our market ⁓ doing. And really, not even just people who do what we do, but there are two ways to think about your competitors. One is, who are you competing for your customers for, your clients for? And then the other is, where are you competing for talent? They're not always the same places. ⁓ And in my hourly population, they're not. So I would like to keep up to date on what are other people doing and how are we measuring up against that in what we're offering our employees. Courtney Cardin (27:59) Especially if turnover is higher in that space, how do you support people both on the day-to-day function and then also have a compensation package that's pretty competitive as well? Makes perfect sense. So calling on your grandmother and her expertise, what is one 30-day experiment that you think listeners could do to try and boost their own financial wellness or engagement? Maggie Ruvoldt (28:27) So I am one of those people, believe it or not, I look at my bank account and my credit card account every single day. ⁓ That's probably more than what a person should be doing. maybe my relationship with money isn't quite as healthy as it could be, but I am over aware of when money's coming in and where it's going out the door. ⁓ So I would suggest to people do a 30 day, just check in every single morning. Where did my money go? What's coming in the door? ⁓ Just to have a sense of what does the average month look like for you? ⁓ Not doing a crazy budget, not changing any of your behavior, but just having a really good understanding of where it's all at. Courtney Cardin (29:12) Yeah, because there's probably one to two times per month that you're having a big influx and then the rest is all going out and somehow those numbers need to square up. And they don't, it doesn't happen at the same time. So that's really good advice, I really like that. Well Maggie, this has been such a pleasure, it's been so wonderful to see you again. Thank you so much for joining us. Where can listeners connect and find you? Maggie Ruvoldt (29:23) Yep. Sure, I spent a ton of time on LinkedIn, so I'm always happy to connect with people there. I love talking to early career people in particular. ⁓ So that's the best place to find me is LinkedIn. Courtney Cardin (29:52) Well, thank you so much. Thank you for joining and I can't wait to get this podcast published and get everyone to hear your amazing thoughts. Maggie Ruvoldt (30:00) Thanks for having me. really enjoyed our conversation. Courtney Cardin (30:02) Me too. Thank you so much.