Latest / Beyond the Paycheck / Danric Vargas Company, Sr. Benefits Program Manager at Lyft
Transcript
- Kelsey Willock (00:00) Welcome Danric Vargas, Senior Benefits Program Manager at Lyft. We are so beyond excited to have you. To kick us off, I'd love for you to introduce yourself to our audience and particularly share a bit more about your career and background, where you're calling in from and your current role today. Danric (00:16) Yeah, awesome. Well, first of all, thanks for having me. ⁓ Current kind of career path trajectory, Lyft is only the second employer that I've worked at on the benefit side. actually have more of my experiences on the consulting side. ⁓ Having to work with clients, obviously help them with their benefits. So definitely related, but it's different sides now being on the employer side, which I love. And then other than that, just... Personally, I have a wife, I have a four year old and then soon to have another baby like next month. So our family is gonna be growing and going through that tough kind of newborn phase, but hopefully we'll get through it. Thank you so much. Kelsey Willock (00:54) Congratulations, it's such an exciting time for you. So before we dive into all the amazing work that you're doing, I'd love to share with our audience a little bit more about you and your background. To can you tell us about your earliest money memory? Danric (01:07) Mm-hmm. Well, first, my memory is pretty terrible. can kind of think of getting allowance is probably the first thing I remember. Like, I must have been, I don't know, eight or nine. And my, I think it was my step that actually was like set up allowance for me by having to water the plants three times a week, I remember. like three times a week I watered the plants and he gave me like 20 bucks a week. And I'm sure I used that on. Kelsey Willock (01:15) you Danric (01:38) games or like some kind of candy or something. But that's probably my earliest memory of money other than that. I mean, I was pretty luckily that my ⁓ mom, my stepdad, or whoever we had resources to be able to get me like not everything I wanted, but it wasn't like a struggle. I do remember having like the Nintendo and all the video game systems. So wasn't a huge thing, but at least having the allowance and the work to get that allowance allowed me to realize kind of like, okay, this is like how you get money or how much it's worth, those kinds of things. Kelsey Willock (02:07) How do you think that experience helped you think and shape your understanding of security or even responsibility? Danric (02:14) I mean, it made it, had a huge impact because I wanted to do the same thing for my son. I don't want to, I don't want to just give him free money. And when he's like old enough to be able to do things like I want to have allowance so that they understand like it takes work to, you know, to earn money and to do these things. Like you're not just going to get everything free. So I've kind of looked at that in my whole life as well and try to, I haven't always been the best at. saving and doing things like that with my money, but I've worked nonstop since I was 16, so I always had some type of part-time job with school. So it's always shown me how important and how valuable it is to save money and not really take it for granted. Kelsey Willock (02:55) And also to understand that hard work equals money. Money doesn't come from nowhere. It's such a valuable lesson to learn as a child. Danric (03:03) Exactly. I think, that's kind of continuing there. That has definitely stayed with me. I'm probably a person that can burn myself out just because I'm like, not just money, but I don't want to let clients down, for example, or my team members down. So I will work countless hours to not let them down. And that kind of obviously goes along with money because then if I didn't do a job well enough, then I wouldn't have my job. to have resources otherwise. it stayed with me forever, really, just trying to make sure I work hard in whatever I do to keep earning that money and providing for my family. Kelsey Willock (03:42) Well, as a happy lift customer that recently scheduled a ride for a very important flight, I can say that it did not let me down. So thank you for your service. Danric (03:51) Okay, good. That's good. Our team would love that because they've been pushing schedule rides a little bit more recently. So that's good. Kelsey Willock (03:59) Just with the demand increasing, to me, I've been hugely reliant on scheduling. So can you tell me a little bit about your first job and what you did with your first paycheck? Danric (04:05) Good. Yes, first job. So I had an informal job passing out flyers for my mom. Like she used to have ⁓ a kind of a weight loss clinic, I should say, like way, back. So she gave me money. My first real job was actually at Legoland in Carlsbad. I worked there in the summer just at a place called Burger Stop. So basically fast food burgers, but at Legoland. So that was my first job. So as for what I did my first paycheck, no idea, but it must have been on probably essentials, gas, because I was already driving gas or maybe throwing some kind of video game that must have been it or some kind of like food with friends. It's got to be what I spent my most of my money on. Kelsey Willock (04:55) Can you tell me about a recent embarrassing purchase that you've made? I'm curious if it has anything to do with video games. Danric (05:00) Uh, actually funny enough. it's not, it's not recent and I didn't make the purchase, but this one comes in mind very clearly because I'm like, look at it every day. So a years ago I had my wife buy me, um, I think it was probably for like a birthday present or for Christmas or something. Um, a video game like arcade set, um, through, uh, what is this company called? Arcade went up and it's, it's great, but it's only Kelsey Willock (05:10) Thank ⁓ Danric (05:26) literally like the same game with Street Fighter, which one, you kind of get tired of, and two, I'm like, there's no one for me to play with. So it's kind of just sat there and accumulated dust. And I'm like, what a waste of asking you to buy me this. So that's one that we're probably going to sell since we just went through a move anyways, and we're going through all of this stuff that we don't need a new house. So I think that'll free up a lot of space and hopefully get some money back on that return. Because it's still in great shape. I just never really used it. Kelsey Willock (05:54) That's reminding me of an embarrassing purchase I made for my husband a few years back when Nintendo had its resurgence and special edition version at Target. I was so excited to buy it and we never took it out of the box. So I re-cooked it. Danric (06:02) yeah. Wait, was he like the Switch or the Nintendo, like the mini Nintendo? Kelsey Willock (06:14) Um, it was a old vert. was like the Nintendo 64, but recreated. Yep. Yep. I think that we would have had a very different experience if we were doing the Nintendo 60, uh, the, switch, but, um, yeah, just never ended up using it and regifted it to someone that I think uses it very often. So exactly. Exactly. How do you think your money story has influenced how you think about Danric (06:20) ⁓ I know exactly what you're You'll see, that's a great way to do it. Give me gift to that. Cool. Kelsey Willock (06:43) showing up for the people that you support, and particularly around how you think about paying benefits. Danric (06:50) Yes, so one of the programs I manage at Lyft is Leave Administration. It's kind of a, I want to say thankless, but it's a job where you're dealing with people's money and if someone is on leave and they haven't gotten paid for a few weeks, you're gonna feel it as I would. So for those, I try to drop everything I'm doing and kind of go to those. So that's influenced me just because again, I know how important money is to certain people and folks. Some folks are not as... are not as fortunate, I would say, you don't like, and they're living paycheck to paycheck. So for those ones, since I understand like how difficult it can be, then I will do whatever I can to help that team member. So it's like, and then also building those relationships. So it's like you, you, you want to show that you understand what's going on with the team member for their situation and then really just kind of help them as fast you can. Get the, get the, get the parties involved, whether it's contacting the lead administrator, contacting payroll, like saying, Hey, can we do something for this team? member, they weren't paid for such and such, let's get it done because you know they're struggling or whatever it is. So those are the moments I think that I try to really step up to the plate for because since again leave and pay those are some those are huge things for our team members. Kelsey Willock (08:05) No, thank you for sharing that with me. think that how we're impacted impacts how we show up for others. So that lived experience, I imagine brings a whole nother level of empathy for your employees. Danric (08:18) 100%. Kelsey Willock (08:20) So, kind of wanting to shift gears and talk a little bit about today's challenges. Where do you see compensation and benefits breaking down most often today? Some examples that lots of us speak about are pay equity, transparency, total rewards. Where are you seeing that breakdown happen most? Danric (08:40) ⁓ I can definitely spend on the benefits side, but I'll start with comp, which I'm not as familiar with, but just from being on the team and seeing what our team members are asking our kind of overall total rewards team about, it's really just understanding the compensation philosophy. So more of a communication education standpoint. And I think our team has done a really good job with these quarterly left and learns where we're trying to explain to folks, this is why your compensation is what it is. Basically looking at costs of labor versus costs of living. ⁓ one question that we would get. we're seeing inflation go over here. are our wages not keeping up? It's like, well, we don't go by the cost of living, we go by the cost of labor. looking at what are our competitors that are in our benchmarking space paying their team members and, or paying their employees and how does that align to what this philosophy is? So those have been eye-opening for folks and really just kind of drilling down the point and making them understand how it all works from a compensation standpoint. So those have been super helpful. And then on the benefit side, it's really Similarly, not understanding how much we actually pay for benefits. Like, so for example, like, you you try to make it as easy as possible in the enrollment system, which is work that we use, where it shows like the employer costs and what we pay. But I mean, you're talking like $15,000 per employee, US employee that you're spending on benefits and really trying to understand like, this is really how much it costs. So when you see these increases that we're doing every year during open enrollment, this is why, like health care is inflations and you know, the high single digits. So we're already off to a bad start. Combine that with our claims or whatever it is and trying to again educate folks as to understanding why it is and also not necessarily make them feel like they're ⁓ lucky, but then try to show how our benefits compared to others in the space. Like we have very generous like employee contributions, like we have a free HSA plan, those kinds of things. And just making sure they understand that and really making us available for them to kind of talk through their benefits decisions. Cause that one on one time that we allow for our team members during open enrollment, we have these one on one kind of office hour sessions and really just understanding their story and where they are and why and what questions they have in order to make these decisions has been huge. So it's really the education piece and really just kind of like being there individually and understanding each person's unique scenario and, trying to help them make the best decisions that they can for, for them and their families. Kelsey Willock (11:05) So I love that, which is really providing that more personalized support. I'm already hearing you're providing these educational workshops and sessions, but also saying, we understand, you've got to go beyond that and provide this safe space. Money is also a deeply taboo topic. People don't always love to bring the conversation up. How are you finding ways to really make those conversations approachable in which folks are willing to share how they're really feeling? And then the Danric (11:18) Mm-hmm. Kelsey Willock (11:34) the teams on the flip side are able to actually be really transparent about data such as cost of labor versus cost of living. Danric (11:41) Yeah, I would say we're left, and maybe like other tech companies is unique in that, that, like the these the kind of the fear of sharing compensation or anything money related is not there. Our folks actually go the other way and overshare too much like we have a Slack channel called wealth management where people will ask questions or kind of share financial stories and people, you sometimes like not something I would share something, know, to certain topics, but so it's not really an issue I would say for us. It's more about just ⁓ making sure that people are educated when they do make a statement that everyone can see and kind of understand like. This is why we're doing it. And our team, whether it's that or anything benefits related, we try to actually answer directly and then point them to the resource that we're getting this information from. So you don't already know. it's like every information, all the information that they are asking for is already somewhere on the benefit side or whatever it is. we're introducing like AI, like people bots too, just that people that can just answer or ask questions directly too. Cause you know, it's rather than having to search for something, just ask like the AI bot to help you find whatever information is. So we're trying to make it easier. And again, It's really just like making sure people understand like this is this is why things are the way they're at and yeah again, we don't have any team members that are Shy about sharing their information luckily. I mean good and bad, right? But I think for us overall it's good like people are just willing to talk to talk about whatever it is and it's not just even money to us that could be Anything we have we generally have a younger workforce So as we've seen kind of the data with different generations people that are younger tend to be a lot more open and transparent about whatever there's going whether it's money, mental health, mental health related, anything. So thankful for that piece because we do get a lot of good data from our surveys that we do that throughout the whole organization, not just like benefits related. People will share, will definitely share. So not an issue there. Kelsey Willock (13:37) The theme I'm hearing also from you is almost this level of a consumer experience for your employees, which is we understand people like instant gratification. Let's give them that instant gratification in terms of understanding their pay. And so it seems it's obvious in a way, but it's also so not obvious to treat our employees like a customer. it's really cool to see how Lyft is doing that. Danric (13:42) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Good point. Kelsey Willock (14:04) Can you share one change that you've made that you're really proud of that has moved from this idea of we're simply doing this to attract talent more to transforming the lives of your employees? Danric (14:17) ⁓ I would say, I hate to go back to that example, but that's probably the biggest transformation is really connecting with people individually because you can do all these kind of grants. we've honestly, we've been lucky that we've been able to announce like new benefit programs to help people with. MSK related issues or gastrointestinal issues like through all these different programs and it's great people love it like we get Honestly, we have high utilization for all of our benefits from a benchmarking standpoint But it's really like and I didn't implement these like one-on-one sessions, but that's kind of like our team as a whole But to me that's had the greatest impact is really just hearing. yeah Thank you so much for setting aside 15 minutes and understanding like what I'm going through and helping me choose the right benefits like so simple It's not and we don't just do that for open enrollment And we do that throughout the whole year. We have benefits office hours for like new hires or whatever it may be. But yeah, that's really where I would say we delivered the most impact is just connecting with folks and finding out their stories and helping them as much as we can. Kelsey Willock (15:18) Yeah, in such a tech forward facing world, people are often so attracted to actually just the human element and the experience. So I completely get it. And I even understand it as even when talking to companies as I'm a customer of, talking to a human just feels so good when you can get to do it. And now it's becoming a bit of an anomaly. Danric (15:20) Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you're right. It's kind of like, it's tough to balance because obviously we're in this AI world. And you also see the numbers where the younger folks in particular don't want to pick up the phone and talk to someone. They'd rather text or just handle it all through AR, through the digital interface. But there are also some folks that do want to talk to someone. So we have like, we introduce a care navigation program through our vendor right way who also handles our pharmacy benefit management. it's funny because one of the things they don't have enough of when we're evaluating them was like they don't really have much AI like a lot of these other care navigation platforms, which they must add I would say later to kind of keep up with the trend. But what they do offer is that really high touch one-on-one support whether you're chatting with someone like a real person or actually getting on the phone like talking to them and our people have loved that. So it's been a good addition. Kelsey Willock (16:35) Can you tell me a little bit about how you measure impact? And you can touch on a specific example I know you had mentioned, introducing these one-on-one sessions, K service providers, but how do you measure impact and what are the ones that you're looking for most? Are they engagement, are they retention, equity, is something else? Danric (16:43) Mm-hmm. Yeah, one of the things I don't think we honestly do a good job of measuring impact in terms of like kind of an overall how does everything connect way. Like I want to get more more data on how do our benefits impact. recruiting ⁓ people leaving. We do have some data that says like, why are you leaving left? it'll be like either whether it's benefits or something else. And we typically find through our quarterly surveys that benefits and kind of compensation toll reward is one of the top five reasons that people stay at Lyft. So that's obviously a good sign, but we haven't really done a deep dive into benefits data, which we're actually launching our own benefits survey early next year, which is the first time we haven't done it in my time at Lyft. And it'll be four years early next year. So that'll That'll give us lot of insight, but kind of going back to the original question, we know that for every single benefit that we do have, whether it's modern health for mental health or like kind body for fertility, our utilization again is like just through the roof in terms of benchmarks. So either, you know, one, people need it, love it. And then we also get great high, like kind of ⁓ customer like. service scores as well too, which is good. But, it just tells me that our people need it and or our, our like a team is doing an efficient job of communicating these benefits to our team members, whether it's through the new hire onboarding phase or just kind of constant communication throughout the year. And I have a team member on my team and on the benefits team that is in charge of benefits communication. I think it does an amazing job throughout the year, whether it's partnering with our employee resource groups for certain benefits. Like for example, that there's like a mental health awareness month really working with our ERG that supports that and then providing all the resources and like webinar sessions with modern health for example. that really keeps the dialogue going every year and kind of the exposure to all of the different types of benefits throughout the year. ⁓ And I think that, you know, that helps a lot because again, the impact in terms of utilization has been huge. We do get once in a while some positive comments that we have people help tickets for and we'll just be like, we want to provide some feedback that our my experience with such and such vendor has been great. Thanks for all that you do, which is awesome. You don't really get a lot of those, so happy to see those sometimes. Kelsey Willock (19:10) And it's not just the quantitative. sounds like that it's also that qualitative. Danric (19:12) Yeah. Kelsey Willock (19:18) What compensation and benefits trends do you think will shape the employee experience most over the next year? Danric (19:25) Next year, feel like it's always AI. Everything I go to is AI something. So I think there'll be, I can't see where the comps at, because I don't know what's going on in that area. But at least on the benefit side, more AI and benefits, which can be good if you're able to make things more efficient and save time, because we're doing a lot more with less, like every company. Our team too, we're trying to use AI more too. I'd say be that and I mean, just hopeful, like really, really hopeful that AI will have an impact like they've been promising in some of these healthcare trends, because they're already projecting, you know, 26, 27 to be the same thing, like almost a 10 digit healthcare inflation. But if all these vendors that are promising, you know, these like two to one ROI's and there's like a vendor for every space, like, why are we not seeing the results kind of overall? So, you know, they promise things like with AI, doctors be able to really spend the time with their patients because going to be recording and doing all the administrative tasks, which would hopefully help. So things like that should be, you just hope that's going to have an effect in terms of the actual financial dollars, but it's tough because you're always talking about. these hospital organizations and networks kind of just bargaining and trying to agree on fees and just keeps bringing the prices up. and also the travel pharmacy, I think too, with GLP-1s is going to be good because you're seeing a lot more in the GLP-1 space ⁓ with customers like being able to get retail GLP-1s for a lot cheaper. So I think that's going to drive the prices down because that's been a huge part of our spend. It's kind of more just hope that AI will continue to, or I don't know if continue, but deliver on some of these promises of lower healthcare cost spend. Kelsey Willock (21:09) Yeah, and I think we're going to learn so much about whether that ROI happens or not, but I think if that's deniable, the adoption is happening. Right. Danric (21:14) Mm-hmm. Oh, 100%. We just have, we hosted an AI. benefits conference at Lyft where we had employers from some of the large ones like Apple, Google were there doing presentations. The whole thing was by AI, but it's like one of the key points that someone that really stuck in my head was like, people are using AI no matter what, whether it's like in the chat, TPT, and people are putting in their own personal health data into these things to try to figure out what's going on and really trying to diagnose themselves. So if they're to do that anyway, we really need to embrace it and make sure that we have our and our team members going to the tools that we want them to go to, which is our benefits vendor ecosystem. So it's really driving that down and really ⁓ making sure our vendors are equipped to handle that. obviously, know, just like obviously the legal and compliance stuff aside too with other stuff, but it's really just that, just trying to make sure people are comfortable using the tools that the team members have available to them that are kind of already approved, I would say, by the employer and making sure they go that route because know, is great but we don't want everyone just kind of going there from a consumer level with their own health related issues where you know maybe it may not give you the right answer that you know we're hoping to get you. Kelsey Willock (22:31) It's also really interesting to hear the level of responsibility that company has over that. know, cause when a company puts their stamp of approval on something, employees really do listen. Cause your employer is the one that really is often the lifeblood of your life, right? Like they help give you your livelihood through your paycheck. And so saying like, Hey, we trust this vendor or not impacts them hugely. Danric (22:34) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Exactly. Mm-hmm. Kelsey Willock (22:58) What tools and data are you using to specifically improve pay equity that has become a major source of conversation over the past year? Danric (23:10) I'm not seeing too much in terms, well actually sorry, I shouldn't say that. You can see your, like a total reward statement through Workday. I was thinking of like, what is a comp team using? I'm sure they have their own tools, for me, yeah, so we have like a total reward statement kind of open to everyone. We publish statistics on independent reviews of our pay equity like every year, and they'll show whether there's like, well, which we've kind of passed where there's no like gender pay discrimination. discrimination, example. So they do share that and every year they do that as well. that's really cool to see because that's I mean, that's kind of part of our lift DNA really is really just kind of like, you know, we all belong, everyone's kind of equal and no matter where you come from. So that's good to see. So they do do publish that. But I think they probably have to do a better job of advertising the statements in workday. Like we might sometimes get questions on stuff that's like it's already there. Like you just got to go to your total work statement and see like. But we're not sharing Kind of both sensitive or like individual data like for example, like you kind of have to look up your own stuff We're not gonna like share like between departments and what people are making but it's kind of just that overall annual Review we pass here's like kind of like the summary that kind of thing and then kind of go from there Kelsey Willock (24:31) And one kind of last word of wisdom, you have clearly done a phenomenal job at the company with engagement specifically around existing benefits. Can you share with our listeners a 30 day experiment they can try to try to boost engagement at the company? Danric (24:46) Wow. man, I think, well, it really depends on. what medium is already the most effective. Like for us, it's like, I would say you want to experiment. Well, hopefully you get some data, right? Like we can look at data on how many people are going to our benefits website. We have like our Slack channels, we have all these types of things. So if you're not getting the engagement that you want, would, well, first, can you get the data on the different types of like communication channels that are available and then experiment to see which one would work the best for us at Slack or huge in Slack. So, and we don't try to email our folks that much because they just get emails from everywhere so it's like that's what works is really slack and then directing folks from slack to our benefit site or people help tickets and it's also constant it's not like just a one-time open enrollment thing this has got to be you got to keep being in front of folks, whether it's new hires through the onboarding process and all that stuff. So I would say it's like experiment those 30 days, the type of channels that you can, that you have available at your disposal and really try to focus on the ones that do work and seeing if there's anything else that you can. maybe offer, maybe partner with in terms of getting the word out, whether it's like the employee resource groups like I mentioned, there's so many ways to get to folks ⁓ and get your benefits information out there. To give you an example, we're meeting with our recruiting team next week to go through a lot of the 2026 benefit changes that we've made. it's really connecting with your other organizations that have an external facing focus on some of these candidates and potential team members, really just getting everyone involved and looped in. Kelsey Willock (26:28) Thank you so much, Janek. I really appreciate you sharing that. And I think it's something that our listeners can very tangibly take away. I've certainly learned a whole lot from you in this conversation, starting kind of with how you're thinking about communication and education of compensation in such an interesting and human forward way. I also particularly loved the level of transparency you all have. when really educating your community around things like the cost of labor versus the cost of living, something I actually never really heard of an organization sharing. So I think it's certainly a whole other level of sharing, not just individuals of this certain job are making X, Y, Z in X region. It can go beyond that, explaining the why behind the numbers. I also loved how you shared a lot about not forgetting the power of human while balancing new Danric (26:58) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Kelsey Willock (27:22) and improved specifically AI tools to help communicate certain benefits. And then lastly, just to kind of to recap, love that 30 day experience, experiment that you had shared around thinking through multiple channels and better understanding what works best for your organization. Cause while something like Slack might work particularly well for Lyft, it's a great way for other organizations that Slack might not work best in to take away because they can better understand which ones will. So thank you so, much for Danric (27:49) Please. Kelsey Willock (27:51) for sharing those tidbits with us. ⁓ As a last sign off message, can you share with our listeners where they can connect with you? Danric (27:59) Yes, definitely open to LinkedIn. on there, I wouldn't say all the time, but that's probably an easy way to get to me. Just Danric, or I guess Danric Vargas, there shouldn't be any more Danric Vargas's out there on LinkedIn. So I would say that's probably the easiest way to find me. I check the messages every now and then I'll respond and hopefully make some good connections and help when I can. Kelsey Willock (28:21) Well, thank you so much. I know it's a busy holiday season for everyone, so we appreciate you making the time. Have a great week. Danric (28:26) And he's done. This is great. Thank you so much.