Latest / Beyond the Paycheck / Building Rewards Programs That Serve the Business, Not Just HR
Transcript
- Beyond the Paycheck - Cristabel Lim === [00:00:00] Kelsey Willock Jones: Welcome, Cristabel Lim, Senior Director of Total Rewards and Strategic Programs at Epicor. So excited to have you today. Cristabel Lim: Thank you for having me Kelsey Willock Jones: Yes. To kick us off, I'd love for you to share a little bit about your background, your current role, and where you're calling in from Cristabel Lim: Of course. I lead Total Rewards here at Epicor. I'm based in the San Francisco Bay Area. For those that don't know, Epicor is a software company. We sell ERP. We are really proud to be the backbone of businesses in the manufacturing retail and distribution businesses. We help businesses do their day-to-day operations, and I feel like that parallel is very interesting to me to what my team does for our employees, right? We are also behind the scenes helping attract and retain talent so giving them the benefits to support and grow their career here at Epicor. Very exciting to, to talk to you about a little bit about what [00:01:00] goes on here at Epicor, and been with Epicor for nine years. I started in Monterrey, Mexico, moved through Austin, and now to the Bay Area. It's been a, a long and fun journey here to, here at Epicor. Kelsey Willock Jones: Well, really excited to learn more about your deep experience at the company and the initiatives that you've worked on. I'm really curious though, how many folks work at Epicor? And can you tell me a little bit about the breakdown of the employees? Cristabel Lim: Yeah, of course. So Epicor is around 5,000 employees across the world. We are in 30 different countries, and our main hubs are the US, Mexico, and India. Kelsey Willock Jones: Wonderful. Certainly a large population and a whole lot of work to serve, but e-excited to learn about how you support them. Cristabel Lim: Of course Kelsey Willock Jones: So before we get there, I'm really curious, what was your first job, and do you recall what you spent your first paycheck on? Cristabel Lim: Ooh, yes. So my first job was actually a college internship on my third year of college. It was also a software internship. A [00:02:00] software company but it was an internship about marketing. Back then social media was in boom, and we hired interns to handle social media accounts. So my job was posting Twitter and posting Facebook at the time handling events, handing T-shirts and stickers around. And I thought that was unpaid, so I was, doing it for the fun and just learning opportunity, building my curriculum. But at the end of the internship, HR calls me into the office and said, "Thank you for great work. Here's your $400 dollar paycheck for this internship." And I was like, "Oh my God." I felt like I hit the jackpot. So I was all this, long time about how I would spend this money, and I don't know why you would think I would do something smart with it investing it or something. But I spent it on a digital camera, which, they were phasing out, back then, so I didn't use it as much. It was just funny to think now, cameras, digital cameras are coming back for younger generations. You see them [00:03:00] all, around taking pictures instead of their phones. Kelsey Willock Jones: It's the next Gen Z thing. So I imagine you might actually be able to sell that camera Cristabel Lim: Yeah. Kelsey Willock Jones: what you bought it for. Cristabel Lim: Yeah, you're right. Kelsey Willock Jones: How do you think your early career, as well as your money story, has influenced how you think about supporting, paying overall just, being a part of the people you lead? Cristabel Lim: Yeah, I think, money has always been a topic of conversation in my family. I know many families, Sometimes money's a taboo or, people don't like to talk about it. But in my household, like even when we were young, my parents were like, "you have your allowance and you have your chores." And I think that financial, knowledge growing up helped me build, choose my career and then eventually say, "I would really like to start my career in compensation." I think compensation to me came, as an internship as well and I had to Google what comp was. But it is now, part of who I am and it's funny how it changes you and how you have conversations [00:04:00] around money with your friends, right? I'm not shy of asking you, "How much do you make?" 'Cause that's normal for me, right? For people it's like, "Oh, why are you asking that?" So it's interesting how that shapes and how, you look now and look at employees. This is employees' lives, right? We talk about money and how compensation we said defines how they live their lives, and also how benefits support them and their families. Kelsey Willock Jones: Tell me a little bit about how Epicor supports, folks, their families, even through the lens of specifically wellness and supporting the whole person. For example, tell me about some initiatives you're really excited about. Cristabel Lim: Yeah. So we take a look, a two-side lens when we look at supporting employees here. I think definitely compensation is a big part of bringing you to the door. I think once you're here, benefits is what you support you through that journey, right? I think, we structure our benefits in four key pillars. I wanna say health, financial well-being and time off. I think [00:05:00] it's, some of the main benefits, we have them here, right? All about healthcare, dental, vision. I think having supplemental benefits support employees' choice and help them, manage through that. I think some of the big initiatives that we have been working on is making employees know more about their benefits. I think, we have a big offering, and we have all this menu, especially when I, think about the US specifically versus other countries. We have a big menu of things that you can choose, and sometimes it's just too complex. So having the opportunity for employees to know more about benefits through events like benefit fairs or focus groups or, and we can talk a little bit more about those, is what makes a difference in helping them choose the right benefits. Kelsey Willock Jones: And I imagine coming from a marketing background has certainly, helped make that experience in communicating the value of all of the, the many total rewards probably a lot easier Cristabel Lim: Yeah. I don't have a huge marketing background, but I [00:06:00] do like the aesthetic of things, right? So I really worry about always about how things look and how employees will take them and really put myself into the employee's perspective and say: How would I like employees to be communicated to me, right? Kelsey Willock Jones: Right Cristabel Lim: we need to find different channels, right? We have in-person activities, but we also have email and then our social, internal social network. So many different ways for us to get to employees is the way to do it. People need to hear it from different sides. Kelsey Willock Jones: You're obviously having, and doing a lot of different initiatives from the angle of, communicating, paying, a-appropriately, providing both, standard and supplemental benefits. Where do you think companies are falling short right now in supporting the whole person? Cristabel Lim: Yeah, I think, in being in the Bay Area, you see this with the big Silicon Valley companies, right? I think, tech companies are famous to providing this big, perks of lunches and snacks and all these fancy things. [00:07:00] And then the AI boom came and they're like: Oh, we need some funding to, pursue our AI initiatives. And they took some out of benefits, right? I think now they're starting to see the consequence of, employee dissatisfaction and some turnover and saying: Oh, I think, those dollars were important investments for us. I think at Epicor we do this really well, where we don't overreact in the volatilities of the market. We don't overspend when it's hot. We don't, take away when it's a downturn. I think keeping side of that, people are what makes our products and services, it's important and I think, the tech industry is trying to find their way back to it. Kelsey Willock Jones: I think that's such an important point 'cause I think it's hard to ignore headlines such as, company lays off 30% of their workforce with AI and then rehires them all back because they want, There, there's a lot of that going on, so it's cool to see the core not overreacting and understanding what's working [00:08:00] might always continue to work whatever the market dynamic that we're in. Cristabel Lim: Exactly. And then and all these m-movements around the industry make you lose trust, right? So now people are worried about, will I keep my job next month, right? When the money and the benefits are great, but if I don't have the financial or the psychological safety of my job, then that takes definitely a turn on performance. Kelsey Willock Jones: I wanna double click on a, a comment that you had made. You're seeing, some companies might be, taking certain benefits away and having a negative effect. Can you tell me about a benefit or a policy that you have seen work really well in removing a barrier? Or you can answer the question oppositely, seeing a benefit be taken away that negatively, impacted whether it was a barrier that it previously had removed and now came back because that benefit was no longer. Cristabel Lim: Yeah. I think, I've seen this through, I think food. Yeah, people are, n-not specifically in [00:09:00] Epicor in other companies I've seen then benefit offerings related to lunches and food and how those taken away can really have an impact on people. And then I think it's because it's your day-to-day, right? You go to work and you expect these things to be there. And them taken away creates a sense of, what's going on? And then you see investments and layoffs and you're like what's really going on here if they're taking away, some of those monies?" I think, for us is maintaining our benefit offerings in a way that, creates that long-term stability for our employees, right? We continue to offer health benefits, vision benefits, dental benefits to our employees, and having that consistency for them that we're not gonna take it away next year, I think creates that, that psychological safety that things are gonna be stable for a while. Kelsey Willock Jones: So digging a little bit deeper into food, which might be one of those benefits that is kinda hard to measure in terms of ROI. You don't necessarily think about, okay, we're gonna give lunch to folks and therefore sales output is gonna double. How do you [00:10:00] think about making the internal case for investment in certain initiatives when the spreadsheet might not obviously support them? Cristabel Lim: Yeah. Sometimes you need to go with your gut, and I think that's, the important, one of the important skills of leadership around here. Food is one, right? We started offering snacks and, they are now becoming a part of, people's everyday lives, and I see people, one, it's no longer a plus, right? It's now the baseline and people are expecting those. And two, I think people are, really is part of what we do. So yeah, I think, thinking about ROI, we, I had another example where, initiatives like benefit fairs, right? I think pre-COVID people took for granted human connection, and now after that, we were, like, really craving for it. So we brought benefit fairs back, which involves traveling, planning, buying stuff, and it's difficult to measure an ROI when you're doing these kind of events. But [00:11:00] really, when we started doing them, and we started small in the US, people really were excited about being in person again and knowing more about benefits and asking questions directly. We made it fun, right? We brought presentations, and we brought trivias and, all kinds of things to do and like prizes to win. And then we started seeing more and more offices trying to ask for them. So we, a few years back, we started expanding to the UK and Malaysia and Mexico, and now we have offices like, "What about me?" "We want that opportunity to have that human connection." And that's not something that you can see on a spreadsheet that will return your investment right away, but something that employees really crave and make their, engagement spike up. Kelsey Willock Jones: And just trusting your intuition that, we know inherently that human connection is good. We know being fed is good. Cristabel Lim: Yes. Kelsey Willock Jones: And so allowing ourselves to listen to our gut and also potentially just the obvious. I love that take and then not being afraid to, okay, maybe [00:12:00] if the snacks don't lead to XYZ is overtly, we can still know with reasonability people are gonna be happier with them. Cristabel Lim: Exactly. And, it sometimes doesn't work, right? That's the thing about trusting your gut, right? You know what risk you're willing to take and say "maybe we start with this and it will take a good impact." And then the important thing is to reevaluate decisions back and say maybe this didn't work. We're gonna try something else," right? But I think evaluating frequently is key, but trusting your gut is a first step that it's important. Kelsey Willock Jones: So I'm really curious about that one then. Can you tell me about an experiment that didn't go the way you expected? Cristabel Lim: Yeah. We're trying One thing, and I don't wanna say it hasn't worked yet, but I think it's important to talk about it. So we are trying focus groups. It is one thing that we're trying within the team. It's, the opportunity to go and get insight from people. We started doing this in small groups and got their feedback. [00:13:00] And I really like these because it's an opportunity for us to hear directly from the employee, make some changes, in the benefit strategy. And then I think what they feel is we feel heard, and then they become ambassadors. So it's not just about giving feedback, but that now they become ambassadors of benefits, offerings, and talk about people like, ""I know I gave this feedback and now this has happened." Now, this is difficult to make because you need a lot of people to lead these, right? And we have a lot of countries, so it's difficult to be everywhere. I think where we're trying to figure out is how do we make time for ourselves to really prioritize these human connection points. I think right now our team is fully focused on answering questions through email, right? There's a lot of things that employees need that are routine in place, so that's where I think AI will come in and us we want to find the opportunity to leverage AI to really automate.[00:14:00] Some of those questions and, self-service employees so my team can free their time to really focus on these experiments now, but eventually part of our benefit strategy where we find opportunities to hear directly from employees. Kelsey Willock Jones: So you bring up a point that's hard to ignore, which is AI. We're seeing, rapid innovation in the space and, investment in new technologies across the board. How do you stay current on these new innovations, technologies, what to adopt, what not to adopt? Are there specific conferences, peer networks newsletters that you found particularly helpful? Cristabel Lim: Yeah. I have a few newsletters in place. We use Tylenol Access, I think from Mercer it's called which has current articles on AI. I think for for me and my team is really trying the tools and understanding them. We have an enterprise license for AI, so we use that a lot. We encourage our HR teams to do as [00:15:00] well. I think there's a lot of concerns about, in the benefits space specifically, about, your data and how it's used. I think, there's now new vendors in this space that specialize on this, right? So I think our question when we started evaluating tools in AI was, are we ready to build something internally, or were we ready to buy something that will help us, right? I think a lot of companies are starting with this question "Should we build internally because now we have AI to help us out?" But there's other questions like, who is gonna support that product that you're building in AI? Who's gonna take care of security of data of those tools that you're building in AI? And that's why, sometimes the question of buying is the right one because you're finding expertise in security and in all the nuances that now AI is bringing to the table. Kelsey Willock Jones: Super, super interesting and helpful. And I am sure lots of folks are subscribing also to that, that Mercer newsletter where we're continuing to think and invest. [00:16:00] But it's such an important point of, you've gotta figure out build, buy or not use. Cristabel Lim: Or not use. Kelsey Willock Jones: But I love your point on, you just gotta try. You've gotta see what works and working at a company that, gives permission for experimentation I think is so important at a time like now. Cristabel Lim: Yeah and, we have different vendors that we use in the benefits space and the HR technology side, and those vendors also offer conferences. I think every conference that you go now talks about AI 90% of it. So I think there's a lot of opportunities. I think the big win on those conferences really taking the opportunity to speak to peers, right? What are you doing? What have you tried? 'Cause I think it's the AI noise is easy to get lost in. Like you can get into, AI can do all these things for you, but really what has worked? So I think, having peers to discuss that and see wins that are actually there is, is very important. Kelsey Willock Jones: Turns out the human connection prevails. Cristabel Lim: Yeah, exactly. Absolutely Kelsey Willock Jones: So one of the topics we haven't spoken about, but you'd mentioned a little bit in the beginning of our [00:17:00] conversation around certain pillars that Epicor has is, financial health. So I'd love for you to talk a little bit more about how important financial wellbeing is to the company, and if it is, why? Cristabel Lim: Yeah. Financial-- definitely financial health is one of our key pillars. We wanna make sure employees feel supported in this space. I think Epicor employees are really good at financial retirement planning. We're really proud of this, and I think, they're really good at saving. And that's, something that keeps me, you know, gives me some peace of mind that people are getting ready for that. I think the one that I see can become a financial stress for employees here is healthcare costs, right? I think, even like in the US, it's very expensive even with insurance. So I think there's a few programs that we like to put in place to help employees navigate these situations. I think when you're having a situation about health, it's difficult to focus at work and the healthcare system can be very complicated. So we have this [00:18:00] program that, is nurse practitioners that are available for employees navigating these complex health situations that can help guide on medications, can help guide on what hospitals do I need, this type of service, do I need this outside or inside a hospital? Am I having the right course of treatment? Like those, all of those questions that can cause a lot of stress financially or, mental health that, we like to have this program to support them. I think another program that I really like and I wanted to talk to you about is the employee assistance fund. So a few years ago, we created this fund where Epicor employees donate money to help other employees. People can set up payroll deductions so they can give, one big lump sum. And we've seen employees do that because they care about each other and they wanna help. So it's really it's great to see the benefit of employees facing financial hardship and really benefiting from this type of program. Kelsey Willock Jones: I actually never heard of a program like that [00:19:00] introduced. Was it born directly from Epicor as an idea, or was it inspired by another initiative? Cristabel Lim: Yeah we've seen this in other companies. It's a vendor actually that provides this type of service. So it's a full like metric evaluations of what types of things are covered. You need to submit a grant. It's evaluated by a committee, and then a grant is approved based on the financial hardship provided. But I think it's a great story. It really... if the project started with employees asking us like, "What can I do to help my peers?" It could be financial hardship from medical, but it could be financial hardship from an earthquake that just happened or another, type of disaster, and people really wanted to help. So we wanted to bring an avenue where employees could do that and provide that help for other employees. Kelsey Willock Jones: Really cool. I think it's such a phenomenal and caring initiative. It has the philanthropic but also, direct impact ability. Cristabel Lim: Yeah Kelsey Willock Jones: What's a compensation and benefits change and [00:20:00] shift that you see happening in the industry that most HR leaders aren't ready for? Cristabel Lim: Ooh. I think the shift is already here, but it's the rising cost of benefits. I've, I started to see this a couple years ago with rising costs across the world, right? Double-digit growth in benefit cost. And I thought, "I hope next year it goes down," right? But it's not. It's not coming down, and I think the experts now say it is gonna continue to rise. And it's, post-COVID healthcare resources are scarce, and then, we have rising cost of medications like cancer, utilization of GLP-1 drugs. So everything is piling up and making this, putting this financial pressure to companies. I think if you're a company that has pulled all the levers and your benefits are optimized, you really need to get creative, and I think leaders are ready for this. I think, there's a lot of opportunities if you are, a company to make sure that you are [00:21:00] providing the benefits to stay competitive, but they also make sense for a business long term. Kelsey Willock Jones: And this is a hard question because I think that everyone is trying to figure this out right now. But when you think about the rising cost of benefits and particularly healthcare, what do you think is the catalyst change that needs to happen or shift that, we need to see as industry leaders It's not combat, but how to face these rising costs that are quickly becoming some of the largest line items at companies? Cristabel Lim: Yeah, I think there's a couple of things, right? I think one is making sure that you're evaluating what is the driver of your costs, right? Typically, for self-insured benefits is, there's certain conditions that are driving that cost up. So there's, looking for certain solutions that are very targeted to those cases. For example, if you have cancer as one of your number one claim driver, do you have programs that support managing cancer for your employees and [00:22:00] helping them navigate through costs there? I think there's another shift that it's, coming, and it's, it started with the high deductible plans and having employees be consumers of healthcare. I think that's taking the next step, right? In really choosing quality care over, any care, right? I think when you think about insurance as an employee, you think I'm paying for it. I'm gonna use it," right? But you don't know the impact that it's driving to the overall claims and premiums, and that's gonna have an impact next year. So I think getting a step further into educating employees on how to best be consumers of healthcare, I think is gonna be the next step. Kelsey Willock Jones: And Cristabel, for your final message, what would you like to leave with the audience? Cristabel Lim: Oh, I think there's a lot of opportunities in the compensation and benefits space. I think, it's a great area to focus our attention to. I like the opportunity for us leaders to talk about it. I think there's opportunities like this one to [00:23:00] speak about challenges and what's coming. So I think it's important for everyone to understand and for employees to understand the value of their benefits and compensation, right? It's easy to, fight for them when you're starting a job and then forget about them. It's important to continue to learn the value of it. And I think for leaders managing this, it's important to keep connected and find opportunities to bring this to, continue to be on a great trajectory. Kelsey Willock Jones: Thank you so much, Cristabel, for being a part of this conversation. I've learned so much from you, and I could certainly keep talking to you for far longer. But I'll make sure to be cognizant of your time. Thank you so much again, and I hope you have a wonderful rest of your week Cristabel Lim: Awesome. Kelsey, I appreciate it so much. Have a good rest of your week. [00:24:00]