Latest / Beyond the Paycheck / Do You Actually Understand Your Paycheck? NFP's SVP of Total Rewards on Pay Transparency, Breaking Silos, and the Autopilot Problem
Transcript
- Kelsey Willock (00:02) Welcome Megan Nail, SVP of Total Rewards Practice at NFP. We are so beyond excited to have you today, especially as we enter and kick off 2026. Before we get started, I'd love for you to introduce yourself to the audience, share a bit about your career and background, where you're calling in from, and your current role today. Megan Nail (00:21) Yeah, so I'm Megan Nail. As you mentioned, SVP, the total rewards practice. What does that mean? I lead NFPs compensation consulting practice. So really helping clients understand what to pay people. So I work with employers who are really looking to see what is the pay amount that I should be paying my people? How can I optimize their pay and really communicate and help it work all together? And then how does that fit into the big picture with benefits and everything else that they offer? So my career background, I'm a long time HR professional for coming up on 25 years now. So I've always been in the HR space. I started out more in HR generalist business partner type roles, and then kind of over those years really ⁓ became drawn to compensation as a specialty within human resources. Just found that kind of the numbers aspect of it combined with the communication piece really spoke to me and seemed like an area that had a lot of opportunity to improve. So that's a little bit about me. Kelsey Willock (01:28) Fantastic. Well, I'm really excited to dig a bit deeper into today's current environment. I know things are absolutely crazy and we have a lot to learn from you. But before I start peppering you with those questions, I want to get to know you personally a bit better. So if you'll indulge me, I'd love for you to share with our audience, what is your earliest memory of money? Megan Nail (01:48) Yeah, that's a great question. think my earliest memory of money being like a young child. When I was a young child, my dad was just talking about this when we were together over the holidays. My parents definitely had some tough times with money, you know, making ends meet. You know, I share that I've been in HR for 25 years. So you can probably guess I was kind of born in the late 70s, you know, and that that time was not the best economic time. So think my earliest memory was my parents really working and saving to go out to dinner, to order that pizza once a month. ⁓ I'm going to date myself a little bit here, taking what a special treat it was to be able to go to the Ponderosa Buffet kind of once a month and really have that special treat and just the impact of money on those ways and what it could do to kind of lift your spirits if you could kind of get out of that paying the daily bills. Kelsey Willock (02:43) And how do you think that experience from such a young age helped shape how you experience and see security, freedom, or even responsibility? Megan Nail (02:52) Yeah, it definitely gave me a different perspective on money and always, I think, a little bit more cautious when it comes to, know, especially as you're kind of building and you're building up, you know, saving for retirement the first time, trying to save up for a house and kind of some of those big purchases really caused me to be a little bit more cautious, skeptical, trying to be a little more conservative in spending just based on what I saw my parents go through at that young age. Kelsey Willock (03:22) Thanks for sharing that with me. know that sharing circumstances like that can feel very vulnerable, but I know that a lot of our listeners can probably deeply resonate with the experience that you're coming from. Can you tell me about your first job and what you did with your first paycheck? Megan Nail (03:39) I remember that so clearly. So when I was in high school and I went out to get my first job in my little suburb where I grew up in Ohio in the Midwest, we had the fortune of at the same time, we had a Walmart opening and a Target. So we had two big retail options. So I went and applied to both. ⁓ And that was a real decision. It was really my first time kind of thinking through all of that. And I remember that Walmart was offering $5.50 an hour. And that's what it was. It was little further drive from my house. And I wasn't as excited about the employee discount and what I could use it on there. Because I felt like as a high school girl at that age, I'm like, the clothes were so much cuter at Target. And it was more of what I was looking for. So it was my first, guess, truly thinking around total rewards. Now, Target was offering $5.25. And then if you save for 90 days, you got an extra you know, 25 cents. So I would have been at that five fifties. So spoiler alert, I went with Target. So I took that offer. had my first 90 days without that 25 cents. but really loved my experience there. My first purchase after I earned that paycheck was a CD set. So they used to have CDs before you could download music and they would come sometimes in like a box set. and it was a Garth Brooks box set of CDs. And I was so excited to get that collection. And the funny thing about Target, so I think most of us think about like our high school job that first, I was a cashier, was nothing all that special. It ended up coming back when I graduated from grad school in HR, not a great job market right after 9-11, kind of rough times around that. Target was the one that gave me my first chance in the HR field. So that was actually my first job out of college was back at Target in human resources at a couple of their stores. So it's kind of a fun full circle moment that you never know where that first job may end up leading you. And I'm really grateful for that experience. Kelsey Willock (05:48) also love how you think about it in the sense of total reward. It's not just the dollar amount that the company's paying you. It's the culture. It's the employee discounts that you can get from them. The pride that you get to tell your schoolmates where you're working. So thank you so much for sharing that with me. How do you think your money story influenced how you think about paying benefits for your employees? Megan Nail (06:12) Yeah, I think how I think about it is really just that clarity and communication is really what I'm passionate about. So it's uncomfortable. I don't think any of us really look forward to in a work setting talking about money. And probably a lot of us at home, I think it's one of the key friction points in a lot of relationships, right, is money and how that all comes together. So how can we kind of build some understanding about it? How can we really think about each person in their own unique experience and what they're looking for, but also keep it fair and consistent across the group? So I feel like we're constantly going between those two tensions because you want it to be fair and consistent, but you also, each person, especially when it comes to benefits and total rewards, has their own unique needs and that changes over time. So what my... My employee discount on those clothes in high school at Target doesn't really mean too much to me right now. So as my needs have changed. So I think just keeping those things in mind. Kelsey Willock (07:16) I love how you mentioned, you know, we each have this different money story. And so it's important to acknowledge we're each at different parts of our life. That story can evolve and how you had, you know, this life experience growing up, even watching your parents have some tough times with money, as I imagine allowed you to show up with a stronger level of empathy for your employees, better understand how to show up for them. So, want to transition a little bit into what's going on today, specifically today's challenges. Where do you think compensation and benefits break down most often? Megan Nail (07:56) I would say, I think first, probably two different areas I would say where they break down. First, I would say is a lack of strategy and when things are either on autopilot and we don't look, especially with benefits, if we're not looking to make changes, to modernize, I think there's a big breakdown. Because when we look at kind of what people are asking for and what they're looking for, when you think more broadly around benefits and total rewards, It's even different than five years ago as we look at that and how things have changed over the pandemic and just over time and with technology. So I think one place that breaks down is being on autopilot. And I see that with compensation some too. So maybe we were in our cadence and our routine. And I was definitely ⁓ there too when I was internal doing this work within organizations of Maybe we have our salary surveys that we use, we have our ranges, we update them, we have our bonus programs, but we don't really step back and look at the big picture and see what has changed, what we can afford, and what does that mix look like. So I think that's one place that can break down is in strategy. And then the second place would definitely be communication and how we think about these things together. The organization that I worked at, Previously in compensation, we were constantly dealing with this, I don't want to say tension, but kind of how we were going to bring benefits and compensation together because they're two very different areas. They're related, but they're different areas of expertise. And when you're dealing with rising benefits costs at a really high level right now, but compensation budgets are generally stabilizing or even falling. It's hard to kind of match that up and think about the big picture of how you're gonna budget it all together and what that message is to employees. I think on a practical level, sometimes we see employees, and I've heard it too, say, know what, if my increase, my compensation increase is 3 % this year, but my benefits costs have risen by... 5%, 7%, it's like I gotta pay decrease. So how do we think about and reimagine that all together to make it work for the person? Kelsey Willock (10:12) put you on the spot, have you found anything that's working? Megan Nail (10:16) I think that ⁓ definitely kind of more joint decision making. So sometimes, especially at larger organizations, we see compensation and benefits in a little bit of silos just because the work streams and the amount of work that needs to get done and the expertise of the teams. So I think bringing that together. And then on the benefit side, for sure, looking at how we can maybe reallocate. Are there some programs that aren't being used as much anymore? Are there some creative things that we can do, some different offerings? Can we restructure some things like pharmacy or some of those different areas? On the compensation side, I think it can also be a little bit of restructuring and really thinking about instead of kind of that peanut butter approach of we're gonna give everyone 3 % or we're gonna give most people this amount, really looking at who's overmarket, who's under market, where do we need to allocate that differently? Are there some different things we can do with incentives and bonuses? to motivate people in different ways and keep it within budget and then just bringing that all together. Kelsey Willock (11:23) I think it's a super helpful and tangible takeaway that our listeners can think about. I know that I've interviewed many, many people. This is one of the most common topics that's coming up, particularly when we think about the rising costs, particularly around health care. It plays having a lack of understanding in terms of how that affects their total rewards, and then it becomes a surprise and then a massive frustration. So ⁓ I think it's a great reminder that we often have these specialized silos within our companies to do the work best, but we need to bring people together to collaborate so we can more effectively communicate to the employees at the end of the day. want to shift a little bit toward leadership and action. Can you share an example of a change that you've recently enacted, even in the past year, that you're particularly proud of that has helped to move from attracting talent to really transforming the lives of your employees? Megan Nail (12:20) Yeah, I think the biggest change that I've seen with our clients that has been really impactful and sometimes it's taking existing things, but it's just the timing and the way you wrap it together is more of a partnership between the financial wellness programs that a lot of our clients offer and compensation increases and thinking about how we bring that timing together. So I know a lot of it, a lot of companies, employers offer great financial wellness programs, whether that's through their retirement plan advisor or an outside group or whatever form it is, thinking about let's get that closer to when people are receiving compensation increases, bonuses, that additional money. So we're not only, we're more enhancing the value of that using another voice to help those employees really put that money to the best use for their own personal situation. Because as a manager, as an employer, we're not gonna We don't want to know everyone's individual personal financial details, but if we have a good financial wellness program and some trained individuals who can help with that, if we can time that better, it can really make a difference. Kelsey Willock (13:30) In a way, it's also a marketing strategy, We talk to them when it is most top of mind for them. Thank Megan Nail (13:33) Absolutely. I think the other piece, if I could just add one other thing, ⁓ I think we can look at benefits in a lot of ways as one of the more thoroughly communicated items within HR. We typically have open enrollment meetings. We maybe have monthly newsletters or monthly wellness topics or different ways that we communicate that. Bring compensation into that as well. Make it more of a total rewards. Sometimes compensation is something that because it's uncomfortable, we don't like to talk about money, kind of get shoved to the side a little bit and de-emphasize. Think about building some acumen from a communication standpoint. And when we're doing some of those benefits pieces, how can we bring some compensation topics into it? So it's not just a one and done when we have increases or bonuses that happen at one point throughout the year. Kelsey Willock (14:33) I think it's a brilliant idea because like you had also mentioned before, it's one of those topics that's so easy to avoid. But also if we leave it just for that one moment in time, it's almost like a bubble over moment. Why don't we have more frequent conversations about compensation and total rewards throughout the year, not just that one time that you're hoping for an increase in salary. I imagine that can lead to much more fruitful conversations. What's the impact you're looking for when you enact these types of changes? Megan Nail (15:03) Yeah, I think the impact is for people to trust the process, to trust that there was a process around compensation. There is a process around determining it and really thinking that their pay or having an understanding that their pay is fair. No one's ever going to be the highest payer. So we can't have that as a goal because likely your organization is never going to be the highest paying organization. And people generally, which I understand, they always want more money. So trying to meet necessarily what they have in their mind as their goal may not be possible from a budget, it may not be feasible. So taking that out of the way, but for people to understand the process, to have some transparency around it and to feel that it's fair and to know how their pay is determined is kind of the goal and benefit I see of this. Kelsey Willock (15:56) So it sounds like it's a lot more qualitative than quantitative, in your opinion. I think we so often find leads to quantitative. Great. So looking ahead, we're at the beginning of the year. What do you think is going to be the comp and benefits trend that shapes the employee experience most over the next year? Megan Nail (15:58) Yes. that hopefully, exactly. I would definitely say it's pay transparency for sure. So even what's happened ⁓ over the past three to five years, it's continuing. So what is pay transparency? What do I mean by that? It's just the requirement or the option to share what the pay ranges are for jobs when you're posting them for recruitment or posting promotional opportunities. that has become a requirement in many, many states. I think the last statistic I saw that is by the end of 2026, they're anticipating that over 60 % of US employees will be covered under pay transparency laws that require those ranges to be there. So that's definitely the number one trend. And with that, I think just becomes the requirement if we're going to do it well to go beyond just putting numbers out there, but to again, explain the why behind it. Why and how, why am I paid when I am and how does this process work? And when we see that, it's not just going to end with putting a range out there. As these regulations have continued to be in place, as we look at Colorado, which was the first state to put pay transparency in place, they're becoming more and more specific and prescriptive about what they want to see around things about reporting and promotions and bonuses and benefits. beyond if you're required to or not is something that we all need to be prepared for because candidates and all of us are looking for that data. From a pay equity standpoint is where really a lot of this is coming from that, you know, back in the days, 25 years ago, we used to say, what was your salary history on an application? And you'd fill out for each job exactly what you made. Of course, we don't do that anymore, but now we're even upping the game by saying, You tell us what the range is for this job and then we'll tell you what we're looking for and if it's a match. So just continuing to prepare. Kelsey Willock (18:18) Are there any specific tools or data sets that you're using that allow you to measure and ensure that pay equity? Megan Nail (18:27) Yeah, there is a wide ⁓ spectrum, I would say, of ways that you can approach that. Some of our clients who are smaller, I mean, you can do a statistical analysis using Excel. You can do a multiple regression and kind of look at that using even simple Excel tools to give you an idea ⁓ of if you've got some areas of concern. Two, there are specific software solutions that are out there that will do pay equity. you know, studies for you and help to identify what any of those areas are. I think the key with all of that is you can't think of it as a one and done. It's not a one time analysis, fix what we found and then we move on. We've got to get down to the root cause of what caused that issue. I generally see, I really don't think it's bad intentions. You know, we work with great organizations. I don't think it's bad intentions, but. Often it's having different decision makers with different perspectives on money and compensation. And if you don't have a good way to look at that across different groups, you get varied opinions and varied outcomes. So really getting down to the root of what caused it in the first place and trying to fix that and then continuing to do that analysis so you know, so you can catch it because we can't always see it just with plain eyes. Kelsey Willock (19:48) It sounds like the theme emerging of this cross pollination is certainly common at MFP. And it's not just when discussing pay and benefits, it's the communications of pay equity, et cetera. So it's been very evident in our conversation. A lot of the time when we're communicating pay, it comes from leaders. So. What kind of mindset shifts do you think leaders need to adopt to also make sure that they are keeping pay fair and empowering? Thank ⁓ Megan Nail (20:19) Mm-hmm. Yeah, great question. I think on us in HR, finance or kind of whoever holds that seat around compensation, it's first creating FAQ, frequently asked questions and guidelines and really putting guideposts around how much decision-making, how much flexibility are we going to give individual leaders, which it is important to give some flexibility, right? Because they know their teams, they know the dynamics more than anyone else's are working with these individuals day to day. So I would say it's first kind of setting those goal posts or what those parameters are, and then really enabling them with some of common talking points, but helping them realize how to personalize it for the person. So thinking about things, compensation is so tied to career path and career growth. And so when we're thinking about, especially pay transparency and looking at what ranges are for other positions, How can we help managers have a better conversation and say, from a career growth standpoint, here's where I think your path can be within our organization. Here's what that financial path looks like along that to really help that person understand what the future may hold. I saw a statistic recently that fewer and fewer people are really looking for management positions. There's less interest in people becoming managers and people managers. So I think if we're looking at, which clearly that's a need, but we've got to give more more tools and show them what some of the benefits are and the impact that a positive manager and a great conversation about pay can have on someone's life. Kelsey Willock (21:57) It's a great reminder that paid transparency isn't about am I paid fairly in this moment? It's am I on the right path that I want to be on? And it can be used with such a phenomenal motivating. And I also imagine recruitment tool, know, IE looking for more managers, communicate the upward mobility in which you can experience if you pursue that path. One of my favorite and last questions for you is, and I'm particularly excited you're Megan Nail (22:05) Yes. Absolutely. Kelsey Willock (22:24) perspective as a financial software company. What's a 30-day experiment listeners could try to boost their financial wellness? ⁓ Megan Nail (22:35) Yeah, great question. ⁓ I think when you look at it, when you're looking at financial wellness and kind of how to bring it all together, I would say your first experiment that you could do is to really dive in. Do you understand your paycheck? Do you really understand your paycheck? What it's comprised of, what your benefits, what your pay is, what your employer is paying for those? and do a good analysis of are you getting value? Are you allocating all of that in the right way? And has it changed over time? Or have you been on autopilot with things like your retirement plan contribution and some of, or maybe it's your benefit plan selection, or maybe there's some voluntary benefits out there that are offered to you that you just haven't taken advantage of. So what I would say for your 30 day experiment is, Dive in, make sure you 100 % understand everything about your current situation and your current paycheck, and then look at what's offered to you and how you can match those up. Kelsey Willock (23:38) that and thank you so so much Megan for sharing that with me. I certainly learned so much from our conversation today. As a bit of a recap, I loved hearing a bit more about how you had shared Total Rewards as such a rapidly changing environment and it can really break down if we find ourselves on autopilot. It's a theme in our conversations today and so we often need to remind ourselves to take a step back. come in community together and have really productive conversations so we can bring ideas like benefits and compensation conversations together to really better understand what's going on. You had also mentioned that pay transparency is going to shape the future of 2026 driven by both employee expectations as well as law. You need to explain the why and how, which I absolutely loved that you had mentioned. You can't think of it as one and done. And then lastly, I loved your comment on you need to understand your paycheck, how you save, spend and invest it, as well as don't be on autopilot. You have to take your paycheck by the reins and get reacquainted with it. So thank you so much for the conversation today. If our listeners would like to get in touch with you, where's the best place to do so? Megan Nail (24:48) Yes, please get in touch with me on LinkedIn. So I'd love to connect with you on LinkedIn. Kelsey Willock (24:54) Fabulous. Well, I hope you have a wonderful rest of your year. Thank you for sharing this time with us and I will hopefully speak with you again soon. Have a good one.