Latest / Beyond the Paycheck / Al Crook, Chief Human Resource Officer at Zurich Insurance NA
Transcript
- Kelsey Willock (00:42) Welcome Al Crook, CHRO at Zurich, North America. We are so beyond excited to have you today to kick us off. would love for you to introduce yourself to our audience and particularly a little bit about your career and background, where you're calling in from and your current role today. Al Crook (00:58) Great, thank you. It's my pleasure to be here. So I'm calling from the suburbs of Chicago, where I live and work for a company called Zurich North America. We're on the chief HR officer. I've been with Zurich for 11 years. And prior to that, I worked for my entire career in financial services. So I've been really attracted to and worked in financial services and primarily human resources for the majority of my career. Prior to Zurich, I worked for an international bank. for 22 years and I started my career with a retail credit card company where I went through their credit training program. So while I'm an HR professional, I really feel like ⁓ I'm a financial services leader and someone who really loves the financial services industry, whether it be credit cards, consumer lending, and now in commercial insurance. Kelsey Willock (01:49) Thank you so much for sharing that with us and I can't wait to dive a bit deeper on to what you're doing today, particularly within the financial services realm. But before we get there, I'd love for you to share a little bit more about your earliest memory with money. Al Crook (02:06) Yeah, so it's a little it's interesting. I grew up in a small town in central Illinois, and my family and I ⁓ went to church. So my first memory of money was the fact that I was was ⁓ was taught that the money is the root of all evil. So ⁓ as a young as a young kid, trying to figure out exactly what what that meant. And I came to understand it, it really was around ⁓ how money can be a problem in your life ⁓ if it's not managed correctly. So I learned that just by kind of experiencing my father, who was a farmer in central Illinois, and we live very simply in a farm that was part of his employer. And then he got a big job change. He went to work for Caterpillar. And where I lived, that was the premier employer. And I saw the value. Kelsey Willock (02:41) Hmm. Al Crook (03:03) and what we were able to do with our life when he got that job that paid him more money. So we got to move to our own home and, you know, things that we never had before, we started to have a little bit more of. So I got the connection of the value of money. ⁓ But I think when I look back at the counter of the money as root of all evil, I think it's at that point where I learned the respect for money. The same way you might respect fire. It's very powerful and very important. It can lead to lots of really positive things. But if not cared for correctly, if not nurtured or understood or carefully managed, it can also become a problem. I learned about that early on, and I really had that really building a relationship with money throughout my entire career. Kelsey Willock (03:29) Mm. Thank you so much for sharing that. And it sounds like your parents in particular had a deep effect on how you see money and where it relates to the places they brought you, such as church and the conversations they had and the transitions career-wise they had. So beyond particularly your father's career, I'd love to learn about your first job and what you did with your first paycheck. Al Crook (04:09) Absolutely. Yeah, well, I mentioned I grew up in central Illinois. And one of the only jobs you could get ⁓ when you were young was a job called detassling. And a lot of people won't know what that is, but I'll briefly share with you. Basically, you get on a mechanism that's attached to a tractor, and you stand in between, and the tractor pushes you. You're standing on a pedestal through the rows of corn, and you're pulling the tassels off of the corn. It helps in managing ⁓ seed production and germination and how things ⁓ sort of work in the seed corn industry. I was a young, you got to put the cracker down and go detassling. it was the most interesting ⁓ time was when I got my first paycheck because you're working and you know you're getting paid. ⁓ But then at this time there was no direct deposit. So the the boss at the end of two weeks would bring you a piece of paper in an envelope and it was a typed up check. And I just remember looking at that and really connecting it to the last two weeks I worked, got up early, it was very hot in the summertime, the grounds were very wet, you're going in during the morning, just being very uncomfortable. But I connected it to, well, this is why I did that. This is the reward for that. And then the whole process of transaction money at that time. You get a hard paper check, you take it home, you sign it, and you take it to the bank, and you give it to a person who then makes sure it's correct and accurate. And then they either put the money in an account, or I think what I did was I built an account. My parents set up a little checking account or savings for me, and then I took a few dollars out. So I remember that whole transaction being very interesting around connecting work to money and the timeline, the process to get that money into my hands. Kelsey Willock (06:11) And so it sounds like there was no spending on the back of that paycheck. It was all about saving for you. Al Crook (06:16) Yeah, I think probably a function of I didn't really have much that I needed and we were brought up very simply. So there wasn't anything that I needed. I knew at that point, my parents always told me that that was money that I earned. If there was something that I wanted and there was a purchase I wanted, that was the reason I was working. So ⁓ they also said if there's something you want, this is what you put in your savings and then you can spend the money on it. on it later when you have enough money to get that. So that was a nice, you know, kind of also starting point of accumulating the money, not just working, earning, spending cycle where you end up with net zero at end of it all. Kelsey Willock (06:57) Right, right. It sounds like you had a high level of maturity at a young age because of that experience with your parents particularly. So, uh... Al Crook (07:06) Yeah, I would tell you I really appreciate their guidance and kind of grounding me in that. It's really helped me miss some pitfalls that I think normally some people might fall into. I did have my fair share, but they helped in setting that up pretty nicely. Kelsey Willock (07:20) wonderful. Not everyone is fortunate enough to have that kind of circumstance, so it sounds like such a wonderful way to grow up. And one of my favorite questions is, you tell me about a recent embarrassing purchase that you've made? Al Crook (07:34) Yeah, a recent purchase. I would tell you ⁓ it was something that I bought at my wife's recommendation. She bought some things on a TikTok shop. it was, I'm really into exterior lights and I love things that attach to applications and where I can do it via my phone. And this falls into the category of too good to be true. But I saw these lights that looked like they had a lot of features and functions and Kelsey Willock (07:58) Mmm. Al Crook (08:03) ⁓ I could maneuver them through my application on the phone. can make some neat displays. So I bought these lights and ⁓ they were anything but what was described ⁓ and they didn't last very long. They weren't weatherproof or exterior proof, but I felt like I knew when I was looking at these, I thought, sounds way too good for the price. And I skipped that lesson and I bought them and Well, it wasn't embarrassing. did look back and say, why didn't I, a few times before I hit, accept, why didn't I think twice about that purchase? So they were bought, they were shipped, and they made their way quickly to the bin. And they're no longer with me. So I learned my lesson. Wait for something a little bit ⁓ that you can trust a little bit more in the quality. the packaging looked nice. Kelsey Willock (08:59) I think we've all found ourselves susceptible to the online marketing, particularly TikTok shop that feels too good to be true, but the price justifies the lack of digging deeper. So I'd love to kind of start to transition into compensation and benefits. How do you think your money story has influenced how you think about pay and benefits for employees? Al Crook (09:04) Yes, absolutely. That's right. I think it's the most important connection I have is that you're actually making a trade with someone when you're paying them. It is a transaction. And if you think back to the earliest days before money existed, and the reason we have money was to facilitate the ease of transactions beyond the barter economy. But at the fundamental point of it, you are trading something for something else. You're trading someone's time. You're trading their skills and capabilities. to deliver a product or service to your company for something that they want. In this case, it would be paying benefit. So whenever I think about that transaction, I never lose the fact that there is someone getting and giving something up on both sides. And what I come back to is a lesson I learned is that if you can create a win-win where the person giving up of something feels good about what they're receiving, And then on the other side, the person receiving it feels good about giving. Then you have a really nice transaction. that probably gets lost in the, you know, I've worked for large companies, 60,000, 200,000 employees. It could get lost the fact that you are really running that many transactions with employees around, you know, the value of working for you. And most of that value comes from pay, base pay, but then there's also the total rewards, including the benefits. in which they derive ancillary benefits as well. So that's really how I connect those two things. It really helps individualize it and make it a very personal decision that I think happens every day. You decide, am I still going come to work? And I'm still going to use my services for the promise of payment by my company. Kelsey Willock (10:46) Yes. I love how you're thinking about it, that it's not one-sided. It really is two sides to a puzzle. So where do you see compensation and benefits breaking down most often today? Is it pay equity? Is it transparency? Is it understanding till it rewards? Is it something else? Al Crook (11:26) Yeah, I think there's a lot of potential breakdowns in pay and benefits and total rewards now. But I think the way it breaks down mostly is, I think, extending my last comment, is where you don't realize you're dealing with an individual. And you try to oversimplify the transaction, the pay and rewards transaction, to something that's universal and expected to fit everybody. Kelsey Willock (11:41) Mm. Mm. Al Crook (11:53) Maybe said differently, the way that I think it works best is if you remember you're dealing with individuals who are in different generations, who are in different points in their own life, where the value for each of those components of pay is very different. And if you keep in mind that there is a different perspective on those, the way that you interact with that ⁓ transaction could change. So where it breaks down is where I think we forget that ⁓ someone may feel differently about the of packaging of our offer. We assume that they're going to value something that we have put value on, usually as a historical or a legacy perspective that we had just extended into something that might be changing. But you mentioned a few points, the pay transparency, the protections employees have to speak about and share their own personal details. The fact that there's vehicles on the internet like Glassdoor or LinkedIn, where information can be shared. It's really an information ⁓ free zone where it's available. And I think companies are wise to not assume that they hold information in a special place that can be used as an advantage. I think it's a neutral factor. Everyone is trying to create a proposition. And the way I translate that for me is if I believe everyone has the information, I want to make sure that we just have a clear conversation, then the person can make the best choice for themselves, not try to hold something back or overemphasize something. So that's really how I view it, especially in the current environment. Kelsey Willock (13:29) And have there been any tools or strategies that you have employed to better meet the needs of individuals coming from different points of their career? Essentially what you're getting at sounds like is this personalization of understanding total rewards. Have you seen any spaces where you've achieved success there? Al Crook (13:50) Yeah, I think there's a lot of success. And another area that we used to use to our advantage and now is not available is we could ask and employees or candidates would usually share with us their current salaries or their salary expectations. And now that's a space in which we operate in a fair vacuum. this is where it works. It works where you have ⁓ open and honest communication, where you You you respect the other side. You're trying to get to that win-win. So internally, when we're dealing with our employees, or even if it's if you personalize it, it comes in just understanding them and having a conversation built on trust. What are you looking for? How can I help you? What's important to you? And how can I fit that into the structure that we have? There are very flexible tools like development opportunities or. some less financial minded tools that might be very valuable, they can offset a financial tool that might be more restrictive. You may have only access to a certain budget or a certain cycle to make someone to pay them, or roles may or may not be available for promotion or change. So think having those discussions, training managers to be really good stewards of talent, to know how to connect with their employees, to understand what motivates them. Kelsey Willock (15:04) you Al Crook (15:08) And then how to connect whatever resources and tools you have as an individual employer or a large company to meet those needs. So great managers, open communication, listening to what the person you're talking to, your employee, your colleague is saying, always bears great fruit. And that supplements information that we have that gives it some context, because the data is only as good as ⁓ what it really means for the person. Kelsey Willock (15:37) I absolutely love that and I actually have follow-up question to that which is can you share one particular change that you've seen that has moved from attracting talent to transforming lives and what I'm hearing from you is perhaps it's actually in leadership training. Is there anything else you want to talk about there? Al Crook (15:55) Yeah, I think that is really important. I the leader and the manager are super important. fact, I'm speaking to some managers later this week, and I'm going to remind them of something I truly believe in, is that the manager job, no matter where you work or where you are, manager job is the most important job in the company. So I think the transition from attracting talent to transforming lives comes where you... and the employee are both working in a system, a company, a department, and the work they're doing for something they find joy in and something that they love to do. I think of the old saying that, you know, if you love what you do, you're never really working. And I think that there's so much a leader manager can do to make, know, to curate the work to some degree to meet the employee where they are. If you simplify it and you just treat the person Kelsey Willock (16:32) Mm. Al Crook (16:50) you know, like it's a job or just filling a job, attracting talent, ⁓ you miss out on a real good opportunity to see how it makes them feel. You ask them what they love to do, and then when they do it, you you see that joy that they get to bring to the office. And I think about, you know, careers and recruiting and attracting talent the same way you might think about selling a product. So whenever I think about ⁓ people joining Zurich or coming to a company I've ever worked for, I think about we're selling a career. We're selling an opportunity to have them come work for us and to choose to spend time with our company, our culture, and our great employees. I think about selling that. I think about why would it be important for them to try to find the same way you might do a needs analysis when you're trying to sell a customer product. What are you looking for? What do you need? What's important to you? What would make you want to spend time, your precious time with us? and then see if we can meet that need happen and not force it if it doesn't happen. I always close my interviews with saying, know, we would love to have you join us, but it's only if it works for both of us, because I'm not going to try to convince you to come here, nor do I want you to come here if you don't want to be here. It has to just work. Kelsey Willock (18:00) Yeah, you know. I've actually seen different things happen at different companies in my career. And the company I currently work at, it's all about the transparency of this is what the culture of the company is like. And if it doesn't fit, that is absolutely okay. It's less about the potential employee just selling you. You are also selling them the opportunity to work at the company. And so that mutual alignment, I love the way you're positioning that. And I imagine it leads to much longer retention because both sides have satisfaction in that partnership. Al Crook (18:34) Yeah, I think that's right. I think so. Kelsey Willock (18:37) Have you seen measurable impact in what you're describing, whether it is heightened engagement of your workforce, stronger retention, higher levels of equity? Al Crook (18:49) Yeah, I think the most benefit I've seen of that is just the connection to the culture. And you mentioned the important part of culture. that's really where the, you know, at any point, any one of us could go find a different job, likely for more money or something that creates an appeal. The sticky part about why you might not want to leave is that you're going to a different culture. And culture is, in my view, Kelsey Willock (18:55) Mm. Al Crook (19:15) merely the personality of the company, the same way you might be choosing a friend or choosing to spend time with someone. If you don't connect with that person, you don't connect with the culture or what it stands for, it's very difficult to really get engaged and be all in. So I think the greatest benefit is where someone feels like they really, the work is important. That's why they're coming to work and they feel like they can be productive and be part of something that they're included in to do something really special. But when they connect to the culture, you get their extra discretionary effort. You get their creativity and ingenuity. You get the fact that they'll always help a coworker or go the extra mile. And then you also get their innovation and ideas to say, I want to help this company do better because I believe in the culture. I like it here. And when I succeed, we all succeed. And when we all succeed, I succeed. That sort of virtuous circle. I think that's the largest benefit is really connecting to why they want to be there. And I use a comment to our recruiting team. We have 10,000 employees in North America for Zurich. And I say, we don't need to hire everyone. There are millions of employees in the US. We just need to find 10,000 who really want to be part of what we're doing here at Zurich and find them and connect with them and make their work life and their career wonderful. Kelsey Willock (20:39) Thank do you measure engagement in culture? It's such an interesting way to think about impact. Al Crook (20:47) Yeah, we do fairly traditionally. ⁓ We use turnover and retention are super important. do ⁓ at Zurich, we run ⁓ once a year engagement surveys. So we have an experience at Zurich survey that we do that talks about the employee experience, the employee engagement. And those are very helpful. And we've had the same one for a few years. So the value of the year over year comparison, the Kelsey Willock (20:59) Mm. Al Crook (21:15) The fact that a measure still means the same thing year over year, we can get a good sense of how things are going. So use the very traditional ⁓ measure. But we also, I think we look at the success of our business. Are our customers happy? Do we get great reviews from our customers when they interact with our employees? That too is an indication of the employee's engagement. But certainly looking at retention of our high performers, retention of all of our employees. how quickly they get promoted, the fact that they lean into volunteerism, they participate in ERGs, they are part of community activities. Those things tell you that they're not just coming in from eight to five and doing the work and going home, which is fine for most of us most days, but the extra connection tells you something's working. Kelsey Willock (21:53) Mm. Right. What compensation and benefits trends do you think will shape the employee experience most in the next year? Al Crook (22:16) I think the fact that we're in a really digital era, beginning of a digital era right now with AI, and you probably wouldn't let me off the hook if I didn't use the AI term at some point, but the trend, I believe, is really furthering the fact that ⁓ what we ask employees to do, the work that they are able to bring, the capabilities they bring, I think are going to be decoupled from how we pay for a job. The traditional sense is you have a job, you do a market study on the job, you pay that job a certain range. And there really is very little differentiation for other things that people bring to the table. I think the future is going to blur the lines between, minimally, what a job needs to be done. Work has to get done. But employees have a lot of other capabilities and skills and experiences. Kelsey Willock (22:47) Mm. Al Crook (23:14) and interests that they bring to the office or their workday every day. The best employers will find a way to understand those, to find a way to bring them into the person's daily activity, and ultimately find a way to compensate them, reward them for those extra things. You get the whole person, you get the maximum value, you get increased engagement. I think you build in that connection of this company really understands me. I'm growing and thriving there, and I feel like I'm being rewarded. Kelsey Willock (23:45) think it's a phenomenal way to think about it because also as we head into this world of so much more AI usage, the pace in which our jobs are evolving is so rapid. And so how your organization is thinking about how do we actually employ not just what needs to be done, but the interests folks have, even in a sense of up-skilling, is so brilliant because it keeps folks interested, continued learning. And I think at the end of the day, it's all about keeping them interested and engage culturally. Al Crook (24:17) That's right. That's right. Kelsey Willock (24:18) What tools or data are you using to help measure and improve, particularly pay equity or well-being at the company? Al Crook (24:27) Yeah, we do a lot of analysis both internally and we work with some third party vendors who do statistical reviews and relevance of our pay equity. But it's most important that we do ensure and we have practices in place where we look at on an annual basis our pay practices. So we have some set pay practices that we have as a company. We have some strategies that we point to as to how we intend to, and we approach pay and total rewards for our employees. And the tools we use are the ones you might expect. So we have a lot of data and analytics tools that are part of the Microsoft Suite, mostly Power BI. But it pulls in a lot of data and the use of some back end AI tools to really understand, we paying? similar types of work, locations, many different factors in a way that feels equitable and aligned with our strategy and certainly to make sure that we're following best practices and legal practices. But we do that to just check our own philosophy. Are we actually living into the strategies that we have? And we do not want to have a system in which ⁓ indirectly or accidentally even, pay disparities show up ⁓ before we can keep our eye on them. We do work with some external parties who do help us do statistical reviews of our pay practices to just double check that we're paying correctly. it's very important to us to, amongst all the flexibility I described, amongst meeting the employee where they are and getting to know them, ⁓ there are some common standard practices that we want to make sure that we don't infringe upon and that we are paying fairly and equitably across many different dimensions. because that's really important too. People need to feel like they work for a company that's fair, that they can trust, and is treating employees as fairly and equitably as possible. Kelsey Willock (26:28) You've talked a lot about leadership. What guardrails do you think leaders need to have in place to ensure pay is fair and empowering? Al Crook (26:35) Thank Yeah, my short answer is as few as possible. But that just comes from a place where I've seen in my long career a very ⁓ command and control environment where every item of discretionary decision making when it comes to employee pay was managed from a rule book to I think a more evolved status where you give the leaders and managers as wide a berth as possible to navigate. and to let them make decisions both in the moment but also strategically to deliver their, you know, their accountable pay. Every leader has a budget. Everyone has to hit that budget and give them that flexibility to do the right thing. Having said that, know, leaders, myself included, are not infallible. We make, you know, decisions sometimes poorly. We are subjected to our own, you know, biases. We... We think about and react emotionally to certain things. So I think that those come out in different reviews. And where we do have, we have governance certainly in our company. Zurich is a Swiss company, so you might not be surprised that we're an insurance company. We're very careful about setting up internal governance that always stays within the laws. But we'd to give our managers and leaders as much latitude as possible. And then we use tools to just make sure that, you know, at the end of it, it makes sense. So when we run our annual pay changes for merit, we look for anomalies and we just try to talk about them to understand that we don't, don't summarily end them. We just talk about, let's understand that. And most of the time there's some good learning that comes from pushing the envelope and removing as many barriers as possible to let them lead in a way that makes the most sense for them. Kelsey Willock (28:26) Well, thank you so much, Al. This has been such a phenomenal conversation. It's so clear to me the empowerment of your workforce, whether it is more junior folks or senior leadership that is employed at the company. Some of the things that I particularly loved learning about is how you're thinking about the future and blurring the lines around what needs to be done and how to employ additional interests and skills beyond Tom's job description. think it's such a learning that our listeners can really take back to their own organizations, how the relationship between an employer and employee is not one-sided. And at the end of the day, empowering your people is often the right guardrail, not these restrictive tools that can hold them back from making strong decisions. Before we sign off, I'd love for you to share with our listeners where they can connect with you. Al Crook (29:15) Yeah, so you can connect with me on a few places, the best places on LinkedIn. You can find me there and I would be glad to connect with any of you who are interested. And certainly you can go check out our Zurich Career site for any roles that you might be interested in as well. But we're actively looking for great talent. I'm also looking to expand my network. So hopefully any of you who are inspired or would like to connect any further, find me there and we'll connect there. Kelsey Willock (29:43) hope you have a wonderful rest of your day. Thank you so much for joining us. Al Crook (29:47) My pleasure. Thank you.