Latest / Beyond the Paycheck / Salary won't be enough: DataArt's case for total rewards
Transcript
- Kelsey (00:42) Welcome, Julia Zavileyskaya, CPO of DataArt. We're so excited to have you here today. To kick us off, I'd love for you to introduce yourself to our audience, sharing a bit more about your career and background, where you're calling in from and your current role today. Julia Zavileyskaya (00:59) Yeah, thank you. First of all, thank you for having me today here. it, it's a great pleasure. as you mentioned, I am Chief People Officer and partner at DataArt, and we are an international technology company with more than six thousand professionals across different countries. I think that's Julia Zavileyskaya (01:19) Interesting fact about myself that I've spent more than twenty years at the same company. But I have several quite different careers within the same company. that's the fact that I really love about our company: that we are flexible and provide people and our people opportunity to find different ways how to Julia Zavileyskaya (01:44) develop their professional careers within being at the same company. I'm originally from St. Petersburg, Russia, but I've lived in Argentina and Malta. I spent significant time in Ukraine and recently moved to Cyprus after seven years in London. Kelsey (02:03) Well, we're so excited to have you here today. And Julia Zavileyskaya (02:05) Yeah. Kelsey (02:05) I have so many questions that I want to ask you about. my first is: can you tell me a little bit about your first job and if you remember what you spent your first paycheck? Julia Zavileyskaya (02:15) Yeah, originally, I have background of project management and cultural projects, but I remember the time before the internet and my first job in IT was as support manager at internet provider. It was in the late nineties. Julia Zavileyskaya (02:34) because I remember when I firstly knew internet and being the person from the Soviet Union, I was so excited to get access to the whole world. that's why I believe that IT should be my future profession and I want to be the super cool world. so I joined Julia Zavileyskaya (02:58) internet provider. that time, it, we called them this way, just to get free internet, to be part of this world. and about my first paycheck, I don't remember exactly how I spent that, but I do remember that we went with my mom to celebrate this event Julia Zavileyskaya (03:22) And that I remember very clearly. Kelsey (03:25) I love that so much. it sounds like the, the path that you've been on has been, you know, really intentional and and and led you to what you're doing today. So can you tell me a little bit about what being an HR leader means to you? Julia Zavileyskaya (03:38) it's being a role model for my team to be relevant to the market, to the situation, to expectations. And I think it's very important because nowadays so many things changing all the time that for us it's really important to keep the pace. Julia Zavileyskaya (04:00) And to keep the balance, just not to be scared to do something new and not to be scared go forward or not to be scared to keep some legacy which we believe is very important. Kelsey (04:13) I love that. So I want to talk a little bit about supporting employees right now. we're Julia Zavileyskaya (04:18) Mm. Kelsey (04:20) seeing a lot of companies support the whole person, whether it is their mental health, their physical health, their financial health. Can you tell me a little bit about some things you and the company is doing today to support the whole person that you're particularly proud of? Julia Zavileyskaya (04:36) thank you for the question. For us, it's very important question because we, as a company, we lived through several crises. Julia Zavileyskaya (04:46) and the last one was not even AI, but it's what it was the war in Ukraine. As far as we have significant number of our colleagues in Ukraine, it was a real challenge for, for us as a company. Julia Zavileyskaya (05:01) To support our people, to establish new processes, how we work, how we help, at what extent we can help our people. So for us, supporting the whole employee is a crucial part of our identity. at the same time, I think that it's very important to establish the right level of expectations for our colleagues, because I Julia Zavileyskaya (05:25) Do not think that any company can solve any problem in a person's life. but we can be a true partner for our people. And to find this right balance, I think, is key in our discussion about rewards, total rewards. and at DataArt we think about Julia Zavileyskaya (05:47) all this as the full picture about learning, internal mobility, reskilling. Definitely in our case, relocation is key benefit for many people because a lot of people moved from one country to another because of war, because of other circumstances, and we call this total rewards because it's more than compensation and benefits anymore. Julia Zavileyskaya (06:13) It, it is the whole conversation between company and our colleagues. Kelsey (06:19) it's, it's such an important perspective to bring that even physical health is more than a gym membership. It's helping make sure that people's physical safety is intact and and supporting them in a a major move that might be life-changing. quite frankly, this is one of the more powerful answers I've heard. So thank you so much for for sharing that. Where do you think companies are falling short today in supporting the whole employee? Julia Zavileyskaya (06:45) I think sometimes, Julia Zavileyskaya (06:47) We have to make this shift from thinking about compensation and benefits to another level of thinking about what a company provides to colleagues. And often we think about compensation and benefits like about a kind of just catalogue, or lists of different stuff, like you mentioned, gym or coffee or medical insurance. But Julia Zavileyskaya (07:15) Definitely it's much more wider contract between company and employees. And this shift for companies, as for people, I think it's really important mind shifts. even people should spend some effort trying to gain this skill and knowledge to understand that it's not only about salary, it's not only about benefits, but it's Julia Zavileyskaya (07:39) much wider: what each particular company can provide in each particular case. Kelsey (07:45) I think that's a really good segue into my follow-up question, which is about how you get buy-in for these types of programs and supporting people beyond just pay. So, how do you think about the connection between supporting people and, you know, the quality of their output? And how do you measure it? So for example, you know, if you invest in a program that supports the whole person that's not just salary related, it's more total rewards related, how do you measure Julia Zavileyskaya (08:13) Mm-hmm. Kelsey (08:13) it's working? Julia Zavileyskaya (08:14) as far as I work for a service company, for us, it's really crucial way of thinking because for us it's very important: actually, our professionals, our people provide services, they create this value. So their experience really influence what kind of services they provide. So that's why for us it's really important Julia Zavileyskaya (08:38) to find a proper combination of things like leadership, workload, skills, client work, how we support them in difficult situations, even with being in part of client project, because sometimes different cultures and, you know, it's always really important to find a proper way of communications because we work with different cultures Julia Zavileyskaya (09:04) different business cultures. and we as a company try to support them in their challenges, providing them knowledge, skills, tools to be successful in their efforts. And regarding ROI, honestly, I don't think that it's very easy to find always easy ways how to connect particular benefit or particular reward Julia Zavileyskaya (09:28) with a particular ROI. But overall, it is definitely a long term strategy which should be closely connected with our employee value proposition, with our client value proposition, with our values like a company. This way we have the same principles and we have different perspectives for different audiences. But Julia Zavileyskaya (09:54) As a whole, it's logical system and the whole complexity what we provide to audiences and our people. So they have to believe and see logic why we asked them to do something and why we propose them something. Kelsey (10:10) And when you think about making the case for investment in whether it's leadership programs or beyond, how do you think about making that case and managing the conversation up when a spreadsheet might not so obviously support? for example, investing in a sales tool. It's easy to say, you know, this sales tool will two times our sales output. But when investing in people, it can be often more complicated than that. Kelsey (10:36) So, how do you make the internal case for investment in your people? Julia Zavileyskaya (10:40) sometimes it's easier; sometimes it's difficult. being professional services company, for us it's much more easier to connect our learning initiatives, for example, or certifications with direct success how we communicate with clients. for example, right now Julia Zavileyskaya (10:59) everywhere we discuss AI. And for our clients it's very important to get proof that it's not just buzzwords, but we know our stuff. So for us, certification, Claude certification, OpenAI certification, different cloud certifications. it's a clear proof that we know our stuff. And people actually understand that and they see it as great Julia Zavileyskaya (11:25) benefit for their professional careers because it's not something they need only within DataArt, but it's something which they can use in their future careers. so I think that it depends on the current situation. Sometimes when we are thinking about for example, internal mobility for us it's pretty a natural way how we help people to Julia Zavileyskaya (11:50) navigate their new roles, their new opportunities. many people change projects, roles, departments, they gain new skills. And for us it's a great asset because these people are well integrated, they know the company, they know what to expect from the company and we respect them and we trust them. So keeping them Julia Zavileyskaya (12:16) within the company, just providing new opportunities, let us actually save on recruitment, talent acquisition, on boarding and significantly minimise possible risk to hire wrong candidate. Kelsey (12:32) Can you tell me about a benefit strategy that you tested that didn't go the way you expected and what you learned from it? Julia Zavileyskaya (12:41) right now we are in the process of upgrading our total reward system. regarding particular benefits, it's really hard to name just, just one because maybe it's my problem. Julia Zavileyskaya (12:54) I'm the person who treat any mistakes as lesson learned. So, and Kelsey (12:59) Yeah. Julia Zavileyskaya (13:00) I just try to upgrade what doesn't work and I don't treat it like fail. So I just, okay, it doesn't work this way; let's tune and use it in, in another way. So I definitely know that some things became less popular than w, we expected. Julia Zavileyskaya (13:18) Sometimes even mentor programs, for example, we have really successful example: She for Her. It's we launched this program explicitly for our women colleagues, and it was great success. but for example some short term mentoring programs they weren't so successful because Julia Zavileyskaya (13:40) I don't know why, but people actually stick to something more specific. so we upgrade these programs and find another solution to provide people support in their professional careers. Kelsey (13:54) And how are you staying current on what's working? Are there particular peer networks that you found helpful, startup ecosystems, conferences around the world that you'd recommend? Or are there other ways that you're, you're keeping pulse with the rapid pace that this industry is moving at? Julia Zavileyskaya (14:12) great question. Thank you for that. Right now, exactly, I'm going to UNLEASH in Paris just for the purpose. Julia Zavileyskaya (14:21) Yeah. Just for the purpose because I love two ways how I keep relevant to what's going on. first one is learning. I love different kinds of learning, so I use Coursera. Julia Zavileyskaya (14:36) whatever different ways from large programs to small programs just to to know the overall buzzwords, what new or modern trends we we can use for for ourselves. And another tool is conferences. I love huge conferences. I love to be there just to be sure that I don't miss something really important, first of all. Julia Zavileyskaya (15:02) And secondly, to find new insights from other industries, because I pretty well aware of what's going on in IT on technology, but some practices in other industries they might be great insights when we bring them to our soul into our area. So it really helps and I'm sure UNLEASH will Julia Zavileyskaya (15:29) give me a lot of insights to implement. Kelsey (15:32) So let's take a a shift in gears and talk about financial health. It's a category I'm really interested in. How important is financial well-being to employees, to the company, and why? Julia Zavileyskaya (15:44) I think it's crucial, especially considering current context. Kelsey (15:49) Mm-hmm. Julia Zavileyskaya (15:50) financial stress looks different in different countries and for different people. Julia Zavileyskaya (15:56) as part of global company, I can see always something going on in different countries. Exchange rate can influence people's salaries and Julia Zavileyskaya (16:08) financial status differently. Julia Zavileyskaya (16:12) I think that, as a global company, should not assume that one size fits everyone, for sure. Kelsey (16:20) Mm-hmm. Julia Zavileyskaya (16:21) we need to understand the local market and what people actually need, because it's very hard to imagine how different countries actually operate at different moments. for example, we have an office in Argentina. Julia Zavileyskaya (16:36) I'm not sure if you're aware or not, but it's always something new each year. They have some changes in the in currency, how they can buy it. it's nightmare. I, I hardly can imagine how actually they can live with that. Julia Zavileyskaya (16:53) From another point of view, definitely we have people in New York, for example, in London, it's completely different story. People in Ukraine they have significantly different financial stress and it's always compared to overall situation. So there is no easy answer for this question. But I think that to look at different countries and tune Julia Zavileyskaya (17:20) what we do for each particular location Julia Zavileyskaya (17:23) is, is a key. Kelsey (17:25) Yeah, especially as a global organization, it's so nuanced because Julia Zavileyskaya (17:28) Absolutely. Kelsey (17:28) financial health can mean different things to different countries and different people Julia Zavileyskaya (17:32) Absolutely. Kelsey (17:33) across, you know, careers and even ages. Julia Zavileyskaya (17:36) Absolutely. Kelsey (17:38) has there been anything in particular that you've introduced or done that you have found to be helpful, especially given the nuance of the company? Julia Zavileyskaya (17:47) definitely we try to introduce different support of our people to educate them as especially when people relocate from one country to another, and they completely Kelsey (17:56) Right. Julia Zavileyskaya (17:56) new with the taxation, legal salaries, how actually the whole structure works. So we provide a lot of support. Julia Zavileyskaya (18:06) explaining and educate people how actually the new system works, and I believe it really helps them to onboard in new countries much better. And I think it's very important to help them with that. We have even onboarding for relocs who actually move to another country. We have special process and we onboard them just introduce a new Julia Zavileyskaya (18:32) tips and tricks in, in each particular country. Kelsey (18:35) That's fantastic. And my last question for you, Julia, is what's one shift in compensation and benefits that you see coming that most HR leaders aren't ready for? Julia Zavileyskaya (18:47) I think salary will remain very important. No question about that. but I believe that it will not be enough. I believe that as industries are getting more mature, we have to understand much more clearly what we propose to our people. because people value different things. Julia Zavileyskaya (19:10) a different moment of their life. and flexibility, learning, mobility, stability can, can mean different things for each of them and this shift that not only money but much more complex variety is pretty challenged for many companies. Kelsey (19:32) Well, well, thank you for for sharing that with us and for being a part of this conversation today, Julia. It was a pleasure speaking with you and thank you so much for for sharing your wisdom, your background, and the incredible learnings that you have spanning across, such a wide network of employees across the world. Julia Zavileyskaya (19:49) Thank you, Kelsey. Kelsey (19:49) So, Kelsey (19:50) have a wonderful rest of your day, and and thank you again for joining us.