Latest / Beyond the Paycheck / From Unemployment Lines to the C-Suite: Julie Bell on Building Pay Equity, Doubling Wellness Enrollment, and Why Merit Beats COLA

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From Unemployment Lines to the C-Suite: Julie Bell on Building Pay Equity, Doubling Wellness Enrollment, and Why Merit Beats COLA · Beyond the Paycheck

• 0:00
  Kelsey: Hi, everyone, and welcome to Beyond the Paycheck, where we bring you candid conversations with CHROs and people leaders who are rethinking how compensation and benefits impact far more than just employee bank accounts. From the first paycheck to financial wellness programs, we explore how money shapes identity, equity, purpose, and power at work, and how forward thinking companies are using pay and perks to transform lives. This podcast is presented by Aura Finance, a psychology based financial wellness employee benefit that combines coaching and financial management. Now let's get started and jump in with our next guest. Welcome, Julie Bell, global CHRO at Roush.
• 0:45
  We are so excited to have you today. To kick us off, I'd love for you to introduce yourself, a little bit about your career and background, your current role, where you're calling in from.
• 0:54
  Julie Bell: Well, thank you for having me. I'm excited. Well, I'm currently calling in from the Southeast Michigan area, Livonia, which is just outside of Detroit. I've been in what I'm gonna call more the organizational development transformation space for almost thirty years. I can't believe that.
• 1:11
  I actually started my career, so my background is industrial organizational psychology. So, actually started my background in organizational effectiveness. I do not have a traditional HR career path at all. I was I started my career in healthcare, and we were doing a lot of mergers and acquisitions. And some of my role was really helping to standardize processes as mergers and acquisitions were taking place, and kept getting aligned to teams that were basically integrating HR teams from the acquisitions.
• 1:46
  So I got to know HR from a very different lens. It was basically flipping it upside down and getting practices and policies and technology all standardized across multiple different companies that were trying to become one. So it was a very unique way to learn HR. And then I pivoted in the automotive for a bit, and that's when I really started leading talent management. Really the full scope that you would imagine that was in talent management, besides learning development, talent acquisition, performance, succession, career planning, workplace planning, and then did that for a few years.
• 2:24
  And then went back into the healthcare space for a while and was doing transformational work again, if you will, again, getting standardization, particularly in the HR space. I never thought I would be a CHRO, to be honest with you. I didn't think HR was my calling. But as I kept navigating the transformation space, a few people that were much smarter than I was kept saying, you should be a head of HR. You think much you think very strategically, you think beyond the day to day operations.
• 2:54
  And so I'm now in my second chief HR officer role. And so my scope here is what you would imagine under head of HR, everything from recruiting to pre boarding, onboarding, all the talent management space, payroll, payroll tax actually also reports to me. Of course, I got benefits. Immigration is under my scope. I also though have employee and environmental safety, as well as corporate security, physical security, not cyber security, but we work very closely with cyber security.
• 3:27
  And then when I do have spare time as well, another part of my scope is corporate communications internally, partnering very close with marketing. But that is also a big part of my scope is leadership and
• 3:42
  Kelsey: I already have a million questions for you,
• 3:43
  Julie Bell: and it sounds like you
• 3:44
  Kelsey: have such a breadth of knowledge given your such a unique background. But before we get there, I wanna get to know you a bit better personally. Sure. So if you'll indulge me, I'm really curious your earliest memory of money.
• 4:00
  Julie Bell: So mine probably is not a, I'm gonna say a cheerful memory. So my father was in the UAW working for Hudson's at the time. People from Michigan will know who Hudson's is before they were bought by Marshall Fields. It was an iconic, iconic department store in Michigan for many, many decades. But like any industry, there's highs and lows.
• 4:23
  And one of my first memories of money was actually as a young child, very young child. I'm not even sure I was in kindergarten yet, standing in the unemployment line with my mom, you know, especially when there's layoffs and, you know, he worked for the same company until he retired, but it was very cyclical with layoffs. And being in unit union, everything was tenure based. So it was always fingers crossed to be at enough tenure or not, at least at that time. And so that was my first realization even at a young very young age because even though my I remember my mom didn't necessarily talk about it.
• 4:58
  As a kid, you can pick up the energy. Right? And and knowing, you know, there's whispering and, you know, there's maybe you could feel the tension, you could feel the stress, you could notice things were kind of being scaled back instead of maybe some of the brand foods, you were having the, you know, off brand foods. And that was my earliest memory. And how I've carried that throughout my career is what really stuck out to me is how much a company can impact the livelihood of people.
• 5:27
  Not just, you know, obviously being able to pay the bills, but the family dynamics as well. And to have that realization at a young age, I don't know if I'm unique in that, but it's something I still remember many decades later. So not a cheerful one, but I think it was a very powerful one at an early age.
• 5:46
  Kelsey: I really appreciate you sharing that because it's so easy just to recall the positive memories. Yeah. Those are really challenging ones are the ones that shape the future of our lives.
• 5:55
  Julie Bell: Yep.
• 5:56
  Kelsey: And you'd mentioned you're unsure unsure why, you know, you you ended up in this the CHRO path. For me, one of the things that's very clear is you bring a level of empathy that's so required as, you know, an HR leader really does impact the livelihood financially of the people that work for them.
• 6:13
  Julie Bell: Right. Right. No, you're absolutely right. That definitely I really, you know, I understand we have to make difficult business decisions. I certainly have unfortunately have led, you know, significant layoffs, But there's still a way to think about it in a manner around how can we still help people through this process?
• 6:31
  How can we take a very difficult situation and provide some level of dignity, while also trying to help with some financial path forward, while still accomplishing the difficult goal of obviously having to cut cost. And that sticks with me. You know, fortunately, for several years, we haven't really had to do too many layoffs outside of maybe COVID. But in the rare occasions we do, my team and I, we immediately start with, okay, so how do we best approach this? You know, besides obviously making sure we're choosing the right people to lay off.
• 7:07
  But what's the right process to, again, you know, it's embarrassing for people, right? To be laid off, to, you know, have to leave your peers behind that are often your friends. So, that is often at the forefront beyond just mechanics of, you know, the severance packages and the logistics around COBRA and placement and all of that. We really think about how to make sure that people know that this was a difficult decision and we know the impact on them. But, it still doesn't make it easy for them, we recognize, but we try to at least, again, make it a dignified process.
• 7:42
  Kelsey: Right. Certainly not easy. In some cases, absolutely necessary. But, again, appreciate you sharing that. What was your first job?
• 7:52
  And do you remember what you spent your first paycheck on?
• 7:55
  Julie Bell: So I grew up in the country, very rural part of Michigan. And so I would say I had hybrid jobs. I remember as a young kid, I definitely was picking strawberries, things like that. So in the country, there's a lot of country jobs, if you will, on on the farms, which is great. I quickly learned that manual labor is not my calling whatsoever, but I certainly gave an appreciation for people who do that job.
• 8:22
  It's grueling. You're out in the heats and you're in your dirt and you're bent over and everything, but that was one of my first jobs. And then I quickly realized babysitting was probably more of my calling. So quickly pivoted there. I remember I saved up enough.
• 8:37
  I'm sure along the way I bought candy and things like that. But I remember my first significant purchase. Because again, I knew my parents were There was always an ebb and flow around income, if you will. I had the privilege of being on varsity sports my freshman year, and I knew my parents didn't have enough money, or I should say had enough. But I knew it would be a challenge to purchase my varsity coat.
• 9:02
  And and I had my varsity letter. So, of course, I had to have varsity coat. And so I had saved up, and that was one of my I think that was my first significant purchase was my varsity coat at the age of I guess, would have been 14. Yeah.
• 9:16
  Kelsey: Do you, by chance, still have it?
• 9:18
  Julie Bell: My mom still has it. I probably need to retrieve it, but I know she still has it.
• 9:22
  Kelsey: Yeah. I love that. You've already kinda mentioned a little bit about how, you know, your circumstances allowed you to show up with, you know, heightened empathy. But I'm curious how you think more broadly your money story has impacted how you show up for your people in terms of pay benefits and more.
• 9:42
  Julie Bell: So what's interesting is the current company I'm at actually did not really have a comp infrastructure, which Right. When I arrived in 2018, which would seem crazy probably to most and honestly, it seemed crazy to me, if I'm being honest. But this is an organization that really was operations led, and about 85% of our employees, both at the skilled trade and engineering level, are billable. And so, so much of their wages was based on how much the customer was willing to pay. And so HR really didn't have a role.
• 10:14
  There was no job descriptions. It was really just operations, identifying what the offers were, how much to increase people, and often it was driven by the customer bill rate, which logically you think would make sense because you're calculating margin on top of employee. But that's almost like a staffing firm model, which we are not. So I put in place, I partnered with Wills Towers Watson and we did a rigorous comp structure, you know, actually took a couple years, several 100 job descriptions later, but full comp structure. But I brought in, it's not a new practice, we're definitely behind the times, but we do have a cadence on an annual basis.
• 10:53
  And I didn't say ongoing, but a rigorous annual basis. We do adverse impact analysis to ensure that there's pay equity. And where there's not, we drill down as to why. Sometimes it could be a history of performance issues, but then that raises a different conversation, essentially, than why is the employee still employed or in this role. But we really drill it down.
• 11:16
  And I can tell you year over year, we've decreased the pay, what I'd see as inequities, 50% year over year. We're down to almost a minuscule number of inequities that we still have. They have a lot to do with timing of investment, things like that. So, that's at the forefront. The other part is that we actually have compensation calculate all the offers.
• 11:38
  I inherited the Wild Wild West of comps, so I wanna make sure we don't go back to the Wild Wild West as we're cleaning it up. And so, the recruiters do a great job. We have an offer calculator, so they do the initial offer calculation. But we have compensation actually review their offer calculation, but then they compare it to peer equity of people already in the roles to just ensure we're starting out of the gate with peer equity. So, I feel like that's made a huge difference.
• 12:06
  And the feedback I've received So, I report directly to the CEO, the feedback I've received from him, and I'd say my other executive counterparts that have been here, honestly, forty some years, that there's never been such transparency around comp in a positive way at their level, as well as where we were doing well, where we're lagging, where we, you know, honestly have inequities that we need to address, but also really understanding how comp works. Again, in their mind, it was all about billable. And it's like, no, there's an actual mathematical approach to how you do compensation that's pretty deep in regression analysis and all that kind of stuff. And so, I think, especially in an organization where the core is engineering, as soon as you start talking about regression analysis, you get their attention. And they're actually surprised that that much goes into compensation.
• 12:55
  But that, I keep it at the forefront. And we really make sure that the rigorous reports, not just for the adverse impact, but we bring them forward when we're thinking about bonus, when we're doing merit. We're actually in the merit planning process now. My HR business partners meet with the presidents to basically identify, here's who we really need to focus on and trying to bring them up higher. So, it's a lot of transparency, but it's at the forefront.
• 13:23
  My colleagues know that I'm always gonna be talking about pay equity, no matter if they say, well, the customer's willing to pay triple for this person. Well, then you spread that profit margin out across other employees whose compensation needs to be brought up versus just this one for one for employees. So it's been a huge cultural change, to be honest. And in the beginning, was I think they felt like HR was trying to take control. And in all honesty, we were, but we were trying to take control for the right reasons.
• 13:51
  And to ensure that we have a standard, consistent, systematic way in which we do compensation, which I'm proud to say we do today. It's just, you know, it's not unique, but it's very unique for this company.
• 14:03
  Kelsey: Sounds like also you're ahead of the curve regulation wise because when we think about pay equity, not only is it right, it's becoming necessary. Absolutely. Not having to play catch up, I imagine, is a much better foot to be on.
• 14:19
  Julie Bell: Well, and it also helps to manage the market fluctuations when you're trying to bring candidates in. I'm always struck that managers are willing to go hire for someone that looks like a rock star on paper and in an interview, but they have no idea how they'll perform. But yet, they take their time or they don't invest as fast or aggressively for people that they know are performers. They take for granted they're gonna stay here. So, it's like you're willing to pay somebody more that we don't know over, you know, but yet lag or take your time on bringing up people that we need to.
• 14:52
  That is always a disconnect for me. So, that is the other reason we inserted comp in all the offers. Because I understand you might, you know, feel like this is gonna be a great hire, but we don't know, let's be honest, we don't know they're a great hire until you start seeing them perform. And we're not gonna compensate based off of a interview, that or overcompensate off of an interview, if you will. So, that has also probably been one of the biggest challenges is they also just don't get to offer what they want to offer anymore.
• 15:22
  Kelsey: Totally makes sense. Even if a great reference call comes in, you need to Yeah. Yeah. You need proof. So you've touched on it a lot, but I'm curious.
• 15:30
  Where do you think that compensation and benefits break down most often today? Is it pay equity or is it even something else?
• 15:38
  Julie Bell: So, I'll actually start on the benefits side. So, I think where benefits breaks down is that employees often, and I will say their spouses, who often have even a bigger influence on healthcare decisions in the household, right? Employees really don't understand the full scope of benefits they have, especially in the healthcare space where there's so much that's at no cost, whether it's important screenings, the wellness programs, ways to get cheaper discounts on pharmaceutical costs. And I think part of it is people don't pay attention until they need it. They need healthcare, right?
• 16:17
  And then it's often a knee jerk because they're scared, you know, because something's happened. So, I think benefits often breaks down because it's often one perceived as you owe this to me as an employee. I have a right to have healthcare, which is true. But it breaks down because it's like you have this benefit, but you don't use it until you feel you absolutely need it versus, wow, use this benefit as part of my lifestyle, not as part of, oh, now I have this emergency. I gotta use it.
• 16:46
  So we've been doing a full court press with through our wellness programs. We have several that, I mean, we are aggressively communicating to the employees. We obviously don't know who they are, you know, through HIPAA, it's protected. But we have broad communications that go in our wellness newsletter, but our wellness organizations who know the diagnosis of our employees or the members on the plan, we're having much more aggressive targeted communication so that people are taking advantage of this wellness. And I actually just did a presentation on this last week at the National Healthcare Conference Board.
• 17:23
  Our enrollment rates are almost double the national average in wellness. And I think one of the major reasons is, is because we're not just trying communicate to the employees, we're trying to communicate to their spouses that are on the plans. And we're a very highly male dominated company, you know, between engineering and skilled trade, it's just disproportionately high males, that which also though creates a big disadvantage on our benefits, because males are at least a third less likely than a female to have a primary care, to get a screening, to follow-up on their care plan, and in the midst of healthcare costs rising, but also wanting to keep, we have a very affordable plan for our employees. So for us, this is where it gets to compensation, for us to keep it affordable, where they feel like they're getting a raise, but the raise isn't essentially just going all towards the healthcare costs that have increased. We recognize that the more we can get them into the screenings and the wellness, and we're actually seeing our results, we're able to hold our costs on healthcare even as it goes up.
• 18:23
  We're not as impacted. So that I think is where it breaks down. And then the other then if you flip it over to comp, you know, that's one of the things we'll hear is we'll give people, you know, raises with this performance based. They immediately wanna connect it to, but I need you know, where's the cost of living adjustment, right? And the whole COLA, if you will, I think has been long gone.
• 18:44
  I do think some I've heard some in just companies, I don't think industries, but have brought it back, but it's not sustainable. In my experience, once you start giving people extra money, they expect it every single year, not just as So a part of what we're really trying to do is, and it was an organization where Merit was peanut butter spread, everybody kinda got the same thing. That's where comp breaks down. What's your motivation or incentive to do better, right? So we all know logically, so poor performers getting as much as I am, why would I work harder, right?
• 19:16
  So we are doing a lot more even with employees to understand your merit is based on performance. We do not do cost of living adjustments. But you have an opportunity to earn more, whether it's through merit or promotions, if you perform better. And we are seeing a huge increase in promotions. So I think there that's a lot of transparency around that.
• 19:35
  But a comp again, I think it really starts to break down when there's inflation. And employees often look at the employer to make up the difference in cost of living, which I understand, because how else you're gonna do it? But often employees don't understand just as much as cost of living is going up for consumers, it's going up for companies. Right? And if we're not necessarily getting a flood of new income in at the time at all of this inflation, it's just like your household budget.
• 20:03
  We can't just start doing a lot of additional investments. Right? So so that's where I think it breaks down. I think there's an understandably for employees. They they just think that the cost the company should be adjusting the wages each time cost of living goes up.
• 20:18
  We certainly pay attention to it and we do market adjustments, but it's I'll be honest, it's never enough. Right? Employees always want more, and I understand. But I feel like that's that's the biggest breakdown.
• 20:29
  Kelsey: Last question for you. What trend in benefits HR overall do you think will shape the employee experience most in the next year?
• 20:38
  Julie Bell: I think it could be AI. You know, coincidentally, being at the recent conference I was at, it was really it intriguing to see how much AI is really getting into the health and wellness space. But as you think about it as an employer, whether it's the benefits experience in itself, being able to navigate understand, you know, what would makes most sense for you without, you know, you feeling like people are digging into your privacy of your health, benefits education, benefits enrollment. I think there's just so much on the AI space outside of recruiting. I feel like it's been penetrating recruiting for years, it's interesting how it's starting to penetrate benefits and wellness.
• 21:17
  And I think that could really shape not just the employee experience, but any member of their family that they have on the health plan. I I don't know exactly what it looks like yet, to be honest. You know, there there's a lot out there and it's overwhelming and it's, you know, and you're really I I believe in the human plus AI approach, so I think we have to decipher through that. But I think one of the areas where AI could maybe have a huge penetration on the wellness side might be on the mental health side, which I think we can all agree we're in a mental health crisis and it looks like it's gonna continue. So, I think that's where it's gonna head the next one.
• 21:51
  I think that will help with affordability for both employees and employers. But I just think that technology is gonna be able to have just a lot of more virtual capability that can give people like real time care compared to maybe what they have today.
• 22:08
  Kelsey: And I imagine far more personalized.
• 22:11
  Julie Bell: Far more person. Even if it's a robot, so to speak, the AI agent, if you will, seems like it can feel very, very personal.
• 22:20
  Kelsey: Absolutely. Well, Julie, thank you so much for the time and all the amazing things that you'd shared. I learned so much from you today. Couple things that I just wanna recap because I think they're really clear and actionable things our listeners can take away. Running adverse impact analysis to ensure pay equity is so important to complement whatever you might currently be doing, not just looking across the board at, you know, what other organizations are paying people, but making it right inside house to make sure that it is, you know, actually kept up to speed moving forward.
• 22:57
  You also had mentioned that you have significantly higher well-being. I think that you're certainly a person to watch in that space as many organizations struggle with well-being engagement. And so there's probably a whole other hour we could spend there, but I loved how you had mentioned that driving in the spouse as a part of the conversation can be a key driver of the boost of that engagement. And I also just love how you had mentioned you're not necessarily doing cost of living adjustments. It's cost of merit adjustments, which can be a really important driver of, you know, helping improve and motivate that merit.
• 23:31
  Julie Bell: Yeah.
• 23:31
  Kelsey: Yeah. So thank you so much, Julie, for
• 23:33
  Julie Bell: for joining us.
• 23:35
  Kelsey: Where can our listeners connect with you beyond this conversation?
• 23:38
  Julie Bell: I'm definitely on LinkedIn. So I'm happy to share my profile if there's a if a link to be able to do that, but, definitely, I'm pretty active on LinkedIn, so that's probably the easiest way to get ahold of me.
• 23:50
  Kelsey: Wonderful. Well, thank you so much. I'll make sure to tag you in the post when this goes live, and I hope you have a wonderful rest of your week.
• 23:56
  Julie Bell: Thanks. You too. Thank you.
• 23:59
  Kelsey: Thank you for joining us on Beyond the Paycheck, presented by Aura Finance. If you enjoyed this conversation, be sure to follow Beyond the Paycheck wherever you get your podcasts. Beyond the Paycheck is brought to you by Aura Finance, the personal finance platform helping employees build confidence, security and freedom with their money. See how Aura Finance is redefining financial well-being at Aura Finance. I'm Kelsey Willock.
• 24:21
  Thank you for listening and see you next time.