Latest / Beyond the Paycheck / Benefits Are Table Stakes, Education Is the Differentiator
Transcript
- Beyond the Paycheck - Kelsey Browning === [00:00:00] Kelsey Willock Jones: Welcome Kelsey Browning, VP of HR. We're so excited to have you. To kick us off, I'd love for you to share a little bit about your background and career and where you're calling in from. Kelsey Browning: Thank you, Kelsey. I, for the last 12 years have been in tech in HR what I call full stack HRs, but really my specialty is coming in during a time of change into a company. So whether that's, hey, we're raising, fundraising or we want to become more operationally efficient, et cetera. Or hey, we're completely changing up our executive team and we need some help with with doing so. I tend to come in and enter into building roles and help companies build out, whether that is from zero to one or from version three to version four, whatever that looks like for that maturity of company. So I've been doing that, working my way up to the VP level a few years [00:01:00] back. And then I'm calling in from Phoenix, Arizona , but used to live out in San Francisco. Kelsey Willock Jones: Wonderful. And can you tell me a little bit about your first job and if you recall what you spent your first paycheck on? Kelsey Browning: Yeah. First job that I would say was like really meaningful for me was actually working in retail at a Best Buy. So I remember going into the hiring process and the regular person who was interviewing actually did not interview me. It was the GM of the store instead. And I thought I completely bungled the interview. I was asked a question about how would you handle, this very specific thing. And there was one right answer to it, like to be super clear. But I was thinking in the gray and thinking about all the exceptions to that right answer. And so I got there and, you know, eventually got to like the answer, that they were looking for. But I was like, "Oh no, there's no way. I was 16. There's no way I got this." "Oh man, I'm gonna have to go back out and look." And I ended up getting the [00:02:00] job. And so one of the jokes at our store was always between my manager and the general manager with, them being like, "Oh, who hired Kelsey?" But paycheck-wise gosh that would've been when gas prices were also crazy high to give you a hint of the timeframe. And I imagine that I probably put some of it away in a CD, a certificate of deposit for those who aren't familiar. I was lucky to have parents who were a little bit financially savvy, not necessarily fully, 'cause if, should've put that in the market versus, versus a CD but was saving for school costs. And but I'm sure I probably spent some of it on clothes and food and that sort of thing because it was basically full-time while I was in school. And so I was working a lot of hours. And there were-- I think my first two weeks I was at 40 hours a week each. [00:03:00] And it was not your average... that was like we were opening a brand new store, right? So that was like not your average retail experience of, "Oh, we just need you for the winter," or, "Hey, we're just hiring a backfill." It was this is a complete brand new venture which also got me more interested in startups as I got older and learned more about different types of companies. Kelsey Willock Jones: Amazing. You bring up a good point, which is talking a little bit about startups and, helping companies go from zero to one. Right now, a lot of companies are doing quite a bit to support the whole person. So I'm curious your perspective on earlier stage companies, specifically this angle that might just be more so focused on, checking the box, making sure they have their ducks in a row with healthcare dental, et cetera. When do you notice companies and find it to be most important that companies go from just making sure that the minimum is supplied to really thinking [00:04:00] more deeply about more, total rewards packages that support the whole individual? Kelsey Browning: Yeah, definitely. So I think it all has to stem back to your employee value proposition, right? And so like start at strategy and then build your way down. So if our employee value proposition is, hey, this is a low margin business, we're gonna have high turnover. Then maybe your benefits don't matter as much, right? And but then I'd also say, why are you okay with high turnover? Look into, what's going on there. Or let's say this is common, in my experience at earlier stage companies hey, we don't have the cash to necessarily pay, MAANG but FANG whatever the new acronym is now for FANG rates. But we can look at, some unique benefits that you maybe wouldn't get or maybe would get at those companies, but maybe just not to that extent, right? But then the trade-off is you have far more autonomy. You're not a cog in [00:05:00] the machine. You often have more opportunities for growth both up and laterally. And hopefully the company has invested in leadership training and has I would say better, more human-centric management structure, which of course is not always going to be the case. Because sometimes in smaller companies, an iCs will, perform really well. First time founders will make the mistake of promoting them into management without support. And then you have attrition either of that person because they cannot perform as a manager, or maybe you can put them back in the IC role if that's possible, hopefully. 'Cause that's a win-win. Or their team will start to resign. Benefits for me are something that are really table stakes and things that you really just need to have going on versus thinking of it as oh my gosh, [00:06:00] we have these great benefits, so people are definitely going to want to work here. Because on the average, one, most people are not educated about their benefits. The amount of times I've had to explain to folks how they can actually submit for out-of-network coverage for things that were not in-network and connect them with my-- with our benefits broker like over the years, like to me is a little shocking. And just hey, like- You're a tenured professional. It's not like you're just out of college. This is known, around, how this works. So if you're complaining that, "Oh our... I can't find anyone in-network da," are you even submitting back for out-of-network coverage? Yeah, and oftentimes the answer is no. I think a big differentiator too, with bigger companies having worked at, you know- 14,000-person companies and 80-person companies is the level of care that you can provide as a smaller company. For example This [00:07:00] happened many years ago, but I had an executive who was new, who had a unique situation with one of his children who was over the age of twenty-six and was disabled, and so therefore qualified being on our benefits. So we really needed to make sure that happened versus the system looking at his child's age and automatically rejecting the child, right? Whereas, And that's something that I was able to directly handle with our benefits broker and with basically our customer success manager for that benefits platform. Whereas a larger company, you're probably gonna have to put in a ticket. You're probably gonna have to wait uugh, three to five days, in my experience if you're lucky. Whereas, at a smaller company, it's just, "Hey, I have this problem. You're the person to go to fix it. How can you help me?" And I think that's one of the, advantages that smaller companies can provide in terms of service. And looking at as we're talking about strategy, one of the things [00:08:00] that I build out for companies that I work for is in addition to that employee value proposition, is take it down into an employee life cycle similar to a customer life cycle. And then what are those moments that matter, right? And those moments that matter are going to vary in each company, but there are some that are going to be really similar, right? So oftentimes, let's say that your average age at that company and median age, let's say it's thirty and thirty-two. That tells me there's going to be a baby boom, and that parental leave is going to be a moment that really matters, right? Whereas if I ran that analysis and found that the average and median age were, say, fifty-four and fifty-five, probably not gonna have a baby boom. We might be looking at some younger grandparents. and some folks who, need, for example, kin care, right? And making sure that is called out as a policy, especially in San Francisco. Digging into like what are those moments that matter benefits [00:09:00] because there's so many layers, right? To who is involved. Sometimes people go to their manager, and their manager doesn't know what to do but won't say that. They either rightfully say, "Go to HR," or they try to handle it themselves, and they end up, bungling it. Or the employee can basically have this white glove moment, which, you know, as we are continuing to automate with AI, like we're looking far more closely at what are those moments that matter versus what are those moments that we can automate that have the same outcome, whether we have a white glove experience or we automate it. Kelsey Willock Jones: We've talked about a number of, investments, strategies that you've implemented. How do you think about making the internal case for investment, whether it's a new technology or a specific benefit itself, when the spreadsheet might not obviously support it? Kelsey Browning: Yeah. When the numbers don't support it, you have to go through an emotional appeal at [00:10:00] the end of the day. For example one company many years ago I had pressure from one of the execs who was involved in approving benefits costs, and they wanted to make a change to basically increase our disability benefits. And why that was that we had started to hire a lot more senior individuals and a lot of individuals who were closer to our CEO and who were male and whose wives tended to not work. If anything happened to them, so if they were in a horrific car accident or in one case at one company many years ago, get hit by the light rail train in Silicon Valley, which happens very sadly. So basically, I got, pushback, from one of my folks who was in charge of budgeting, and I basically said, to him, I said, "Hey, if something like this happens, if they have a horrible concussion while they're skiing, if something happens while [00:11:00] they're on vacation abroad something, let's say, tragic with a boat," that happened to one of my friend's parents in college. Again, as I mentioned, car accident, just any sort of freak accident, or let's say they come down with this, with a horrific illness and they cannot work. I said, "Do you want to be the one telling that executive's wife or our CEO that you declined increasing our disability benefits? Because I'm not going to be that person because I'm in support of increasing it given the risk." And so when you frame it that way, I think that's the other thing that sometimes people in HR forget is that we're not just people-people, we're here to solve people problems. If somebody says to me, "Oh, I wanna get into HR, I'm a people person," I'm like, "That's great. How are you with conflict?" Because you're going to need to stand your ground and make, and know when to make a logical appeal and when to make an emotional appeal. And, in order to further the business, especially if you're [00:12:00] working in companies where maybe it's somebody's first time in this role, they don't really understand, but they won't say that out loud, right? You have to read between the lines. Maybe they're open to education, maybe they're not. You have to, really figure out like how to, have difficult conversations with somebody who disagrees. But ultimately, you're there for the same goal, right? We all want what's best for the company. It's just how do we get there, right? Like we all have one goal, and I would argue if you don't have the same goal, then you probably shouldn't be working at that company. Kelsey Willock Jones: Yeah, you always have to think about what's really going on behind the, the mind of the executive team. What are their what's their focus? So you can think about the angle from that lens, but also imagine, your focus, whether wherever you sit within the organization all kind of culminates to the same shared or shared many goals. Can you tell me about a, benefit strategy experiment that did not go the way that you [00:13:00] expected, and what you learned from it when trying to implement it or introduce it? Kelsey Browning: Yeah. Yeah. One of the things that I am really big on is communication during any sort of change. And a lot of either, I would say, junior executives or maybe first-time executives or conflict-averse executives don't want to provide communication. They think that, people just won't think about it. It'll open up more questions. It'll open up more work, that sort of thing. And I am much more, having lived through experiences where the call was made to not communicate as much, where we got more pushback, and it's actually more work. So that was the case at a company I worked at several years ago. At this point, I had been owning benefits for several years and my chief people officer, who I reported to really wanted to... it was her first [00:14:00] time being a chief people officer or executive, and she really wanted to, be the face of the change of the benefits. Basically, we really needed to shift our strategy away from being very individual, single, younger employee focused to being more inclusive of people with dependents and families. For example how they were getting around this, which is really bad practice, can't recommend, is that we were giving out sign-on bonuses to offset the high cost of benefits for families. So you don't wanna be doing that, right? You just wanna price your benefits properly. In my first few months there, we went through the data, went through the benchmarking, and one of the big pieces that I noticed was that we... From this goes into contribution strategy, so we're gonna go a little deep into the tactical here, but we're gonna come back up in a [00:15:00] second. Was that we had a buyup PPO as well as a PPO, as well as an HMO, as well as a high deductible healthcare plan. You know, for an, an employee only, it was all zero dollars. So if I'm, say, 24, could be on my parents' insurance, but I can get this great buyup PPO for nothing, of course I'm going to enroll in it, right? Whereas, versus maybe choosing a plan that is more appropriate, such as a high deductible healthcare plan or maybe an HMO. Like maybe I never go to the doctor, but I choose the Cadillac plan because it's free, right? Those are the types of things that we wanna prevent because that's just... you're just burning money when you do stuff like that. So I had scripted out my CPO both in a prep meeting as well as, giving her literally a script to read from. She completely deviated from the script, and we had a lot of [00:16:00] upset employees about changing that buyup PPO. And the only I'm gonna say only, and please know that this was a startup in San Francisco. It was $80 a month extra pre-tax, so really depending on your tax rate, maybe about 60 bucks a month. And if you actually have that level of health issues, you're spending way more than $60 a month on healthcare already. So the meeting actually went awry, and we had one very upset employee who, became red in the face, screamed at my boss to the point where we were like, "Hey, you're gonna have to leave, this, this meeting. Like we're gonna talk to you one-on-one." Because he was so upset and just could not contain himself and he forgot that he was in, a professional environment. Even though we were a startup, there's still a level of professionalism and respect that you need to maintain. And had [00:17:00] she followed... Because later on, when I sat down with employees and spoke about it in the way that I had scripted my boss to speak about it because she had never ran Total Rewards before people completely understood when they got the context that was not given to them that was supposed to be given to them, right? They didn't understand. But once that was, given to them, they were like, "Oh, okay, that makes sense." And and then it was no big deal, right? So I would say it wasn't a complete benefits strategy miss. I would say it was a communication around change and a change of benefit strategy miss. And I think that sometimes we get so focused on okay, what do we actually do and plan for? And then like when it comes time to execute, I think that's where sometimes companies will fall short in how do we actually roll this change out successfully so that way we don't have, upset employees, right? We, or as a smaller [00:18:00] company, we have the ability to be able to talk one-on-one, right? And so that's what ended up happening was that my old boss ended up reaching out to the employee. They talked one-on-one. She understood, why he was so upset and where he was coming from. And they ended up keeping like about standing, like just check in, touch base type of ear to the ground meetings, I think about monthly Kelsey Willock Jones: We always forget that people are people, and big emotions come into play when changes happen, and you gotta roll with those punches. But still, not an expected outcome, I can only imagine. And we're almost already up on time one of my last questions for you is: what is one of the big changes that you see coming, whether it is in HR in general, in benefits, in comp, that most HR leaders are not ready for? Kelsey Browning: Yeah, absolutely. So I think in general, like going high level in HR in general, and I think we're going to [00:19:00] see this throughout really white collar jobs, is hiring for generalists who have many specialties. So for example, hiring somebody and- at a larger number of employees. So for example, thinking about let's say a 50-person startup, maybe they have a people ops manager, right? And then let's say they grow to 300 what we call butts in seats, and they hire their first VP, right? And they start to, really build out the team, et cetera. I think that the HR teams are going to get a lot leaner with this expectation of being able to use AI to really manage in place of coordinators, in place of generalists, et cetera. And that's where companies are really going to have to decide what are those moments that matter and what are those moments that can be automated. It's very similar on the product side, right? And with customers. The way that I view it is that in HR, my customers are the [00:20:00] employees, right? And the piece that I think that a lot of people are not thinking about is that profile is very uncommon of people who want to be a generalist with many specialties. And then how do you become that, right? And then on top of that, let's say you find that person, how do you compensate them, right? And how do you compensate them fairly if they've basically taken on the job of five people and on top of knowing how to automate, using AI tools, right? And then the risk too that I want to add is that while they may have many specialties, it's impossible for everyone to know everything, right? Just across the board, I think we all agree upon that. So what happens if my AI bot is or my agent is wrong and says this particular thing, and I act on that particular thing. [00:21:00] Who's accountable, right? Because it should be right. But what if it's not? And what if that was an area that I'm not a specialist in? And so I think that's something just for companies to consider. It is ... When you move to that type of model, you're not really going to be able to build out the next generation of workers because they're not going to have the opportunity to gain the specialties because you've just removed the ability to gain that work experience. So that's just one thing that I'll leave everyone to ponder with. But I think a, a big question will be how do you compensate those individuals? Kelsey Willock Jones: I'm still hung up on who is responsible. That's such a good point. When we want to encourage the adoption of new technology, but we know that things aren't just immediately perfect overnight. And I imagine no one wants to be holding, that kind of responsibility if there is the room for error. So it adds a whole new [00:22:00] layer of complexity around... You're totally right. How much do we compensate these folks for? But do they even want to take on all that responsibility given there's a lot of gray area in terms of what the, effectiveness of certain tools are? I imagine if there are healthcare decisions being made on bad information, there can be some serious compliance implications and things like that. It's such a good point to bring up in a space I'm deeply interested in following. I've seen a lot of also articles around HR folks' compensation skyrocketing right now, especially in the C-suite for the reasons you've mentioned, owning so much more responsibility. Kelsey, thank you so much for being a part of this conversation today. I've learned so, so much from you. Where can our listeners connect with you beyond- Kelsey Browning: Yeah, absolutely. Lovely to chat with you as well. You can connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm just-- I think I'm the only Kelsey Browning. So should be pretty easy to find, but a lo-longtime LinkedIn user. So feel free if you're somebody who likes to nerd out on this type of stuff as well, always feel free to reach [00:23:00] out Kelsey Willock Jones: Wonderful. Thank you so much, Kelsey, and have a great rest of your week Kelsey Browning: You too, Kelsey. Take care. Bye