Latest / Beyond the Paycheck / Empathy, karma, and the coming skills based workforce
Transcript
- Beyond The Paycheck - Sarah Gonzalez === [00:00:00] Kelsey Willock (Host): Welcome, Sarah Gonzalez, SVP of Total Rewards at Switch. We're so excited to have you this Friday morning. Thank you for joining us. To kick us off, I'd love for you to introduce yourself to the audience, a little bit about your career and background, where you're calling in from, and your current role today. Sarah Gonzalez (Guest): Thanks. Yeah. Thank you, Kelsey. I'm excited to be with you today. And yeah, a little bit about myself. So I have been in the total rewards space for many years. I tell people I was a bit of a late bloomer. I went back to school when I was pregnant with my third kid, and, Wanted to study human resources after working in that field for a couple of organizations. Finished up schooling and through that ended up with an internship in this area called compensation, which I didn't really know that much about but fell in love with it because I figured out the place where math nerds go in HR. And it just was a perfect match [00:01:00] for me and really focused on compensation for about the first 20 years of my career and just grew from an entry-level analyst and learning all of the things into a leader of a broad-based comp organization. I worked in public government with an university institution for many years and then switched into the high tech world in the early 2010s and got to experience what it was like for companies to have rapid growth, hiring challenges great, amazing culture that drove different kinds of behaviors that were both phenomenal and also horrid at some times, and what it meant to have to be in compensation and just be on that roller coaster. I joined a company called Rackspace Technology, and I often tell people I joined them in their frat days, where it was like everything was a party, and it was so fun to be in a [00:02:00] startup environment like that. And we grew significantly, but eventually I transitioned to a company that I absolutely loved working for called ForgeRock. And ForgeRock no longer exists today, as many of us who work in IT have worked for companies that don't exist anymore because they got bought and merged. But at ForgeRock is when I moved into total rewards completely and took benefits under me and started managing that. And have been with a couple of companies since then in that same role of total rewards, and have done everything from global mobility management and data analytics management to the core compensation and benefits management that's part of total rewards, along with compliance and kind of whatever else got thrown my way as I transitioned through different companies at different times. And currently I'm with a company called Switch. Switch is a hyperscaler a data center company, and it's an exciting time to be at a company that creates AI [00:03:00] factories, and what more do we need in this world is more support for AI and all of the things that are coming at us. So it's very exciting to be a part of that And I'm new here, and with a small team, with a small HR team even while comp and benefits is in my purview, a lot of it is what's flying at our way. So as we think about setting up and scaling a company that's in a high growth phase right now for the future while my title might be comp and benefits, I'm doing a lot with, workforce planning, how we work with finance, how we build systems and tools, how we operationalize things, what should our ticketing system look like what should our AR- HRIS system look like? So it's a fun time to be here and yeah, l- really excited about the opportunity that lies ahead of us at this company. Kelsey Willock (Host): Sarah, I have a million questions for you, especially with, such a, an amazing background [00:04:00] where it's clear you've been a part of so many different spaces within HR and even more broadly at the company. So I'm sure we have a lot to talk about. But before we get there, I want to take a little bit of a step back and ask you about your first job. So can you tell me about what your first job is, and if you recall, what you spent your first paycheck on? Sarah Gonzalez (Guest): Yeah, so my first job I did a lot of babysitting as a teenager, so I won't really count that as a first job. But kind of anything that neighborhood people wanted me to do in order to earn a few extra dollars for whatever thing had caught my eye at the moment. But my first job that I actually, got a paycheck that I had to go to a bank to cash was working in food service. Of course, as a teenager, I worked for a Sbarro's Pizza, and it was a lot of fun. Several friends worked there. I learned all about what it means to be in an unappreciated job, and it fueled that, "I definitely don't want to do this for the rest of my life" mentality. [00:05:00] And that was particularly hard, when you get that first paycheck and you think, "I've worked this hard," and you see how much taxes have been taken out of it and all the other things. And I distinctly remember I had to use that first paycheck to buy clothes that I needed to fit the uniform to wear at work because my mom had forwarded the money to me to be able to fit the uniform. But as soon as I got the paycheck, she was like, "Part of working is you have to pay for the things that you have to pay for, and you're gonna pay me back for that." And to be quite honest, I drove an old car that was a gas guzzler, so the other half of that paycheck probably went into the gas tank to get me to and from work. Kelsey Willock (Host): It reminds me very similarly to what I remember I spent my first paycheck on. I've never said this on this podcast, but my first, job out of college, not the, camp counselor or babysitting job I remember spending my money on a sparkly really comfortable, nice pair of sneakers that I'd use to walk home from work. Sarah Gonzalez (Guest): Yeah. Kelsey Willock (Host): So n- nothing as fun as, [00:06:00] new seats for your first car or anything like that. It was definitely more, more practical, and I think a lot of people end up spending money on, investing in their career. Sarah Gonzalez (Guest): Yeah, absolutely Kelsey Willock (Host): How do you think your money story has influenced how you think about paying and supporting the people you lead? Sarah Gonzalez (Guest): Wow, that is a great question. Look, I think part of the difficulty and the challenge for total rewards leaders can be is that as we get further along in our career and we get more comfortable with the continuity of income and the stability of that, we forget what it's like for those people who don't have that stability. And very early in my life I married a fabulous gentleman who was a private in the Army, and you talk about people who work hard and have very small paychecks coming out of that. And [00:07:00] I can remember us sitting down and talking about, the trade-offs that we would have to make from a money perspective to be able to buy groceries and pay the car insurance and, pay rent, and how when we looked at that and you chipped away at all that, how much little was left to have fun with. And so I try to carry that closely to me of that experience and ensure that as I'm going in to talk to leaders, that I'm reminding them of what it was like in their life when they were in that situation, and that we have employees that are in that situation today. And that employee might make a paycheck that leaders think, "Oh, they shouldn't be in that situation. They should have savings, and they should have all of these things." And you're like, "But they may not," and so we can't treat everybody as somebody who has, a six-month safety net sitting behind them. Many people [00:08:00] don't. And so as I go through and it's just constantly carrying that with me and a reminder to our leaders that not everybody is in the same position, and we have to help employees who might not be able to get to that and don't have the security that we have from an income perspective once you start to get into higher level roles. Kelsey Willock (Host): I absolutely love that answer. I think we often forget, two out of five people can't cover an unexpected $250 emergency expense because, you might be making a lot, but you might be also caring for a lot of people. Whether it's children, caregiving for a parent. People have complex lives, and we can't know everything that's going on there, but it's such an important reminder a- as you grow within organizations and your salary grows with it, it doesn't mean that you can't empathize with the person that might be in a different circumstance. So thank you for sharing that. One of the things you had mentioned in your introduction was, [00:09:00] obviously you have spanned many different roles within the human resources function, and you specifically talked about, this segway into covering benefits. What we're seeing right now is a lot of companies do a lot more to support the whole person, whether it's investing in mental, physical health, financial health, and more. Can you share with me a little bit about what you're doing at Switch or what you've done at prior places that you're really proud of, and a little bit about where you're seeing companies fall short on supporting the whole person? Sarah Gonzalez (Guest): Yeah. I'll talk a little bit about-- And it was a program I inherited when I was at Zendesk, but I absolutely loved it because it was a mental health platform that we used that met employees where they were. And we had a very large global population, so we had, local culturally aligned people for people at different stages of their life. You could find a therapist or [00:10:00] a mentor or a coach to help you through and you could establish a relationship with them, or as your life changed, you could change and find that person that was the right person to help you for that moment in time. And what I really loved about it is while you could set up time and go sit face-to-face with somebody, most of our people used their virtual connection, and we would have people that are like, "This is amazing. I can sit in my car and watch my daughter's soccer practice and have a therapy session." And we really met people where they were and delivered what they needed when they needed it by having the flexibility of this program that was, of course, above and beyond our core mental health offering. And we did it because it was so important for people to be able to get what they needed when they needed it And I'll say, one of the things about where we're at today and it's a good position to be in, but it also can [00:11:00] create, I think, some blindness in our industry of we are adding programs and adding programs, so we assume we have a program for everyone. But when I really think about the workforce of today and thinking about the future, our workforce is so much more fluid than it used to be. Jobs are not the same. They're changing every day. People are more willing to move around or, with remote work, take different types of jobs and not have to move around, and that means there's more of a challenge. We think that sometimes we can fall into that trap of thinking I'm just gonna add a concierge program for this and that, and then another concierge program." And you pile all those on top of each other and you think, "Wow, it's 14 different programs. Obviously, I have something for everyone." But then when you really look at who's utilizing it and where it's serving people, you're only hitting 15 to 20% of your population. [00:12:00] So I think our challenge for the future is being able to craft programs that are fluid like the people that are using them, right? I need this type of program this day, and I need that type of program next week, and how with the same offering, without just piling on extra things, can we create programs that help people through those journeys and support them at all the phases so that, if they're... and I don't mean to project where people are at in a lifestyle, but typically what we see in our younger populations is they're much more focused on their health, and they're spending time, going to gyms and doing that type of work. And then when they have their first child or their first two children, they back off on that because they're working on trying to balance, how do I balance family and work and health? Instead of just having a gym reimbursement and saying we're sp- we're supporting health, can we [00:13:00] create that into a gymboree reimbursement where you're going with your child to do this? How do we get to the programs to be that fluid? It's just a challenge, and I'm really looking forward to being innovative in that area at Switch because I have so much opportunity to come in and think about where our population is and what we need to do to support them. Kelsey Willock (Host): It's actually-- I've heard a lot of folks talk about this concept of, personalization of benefits this year and giving people the right to choose. But what I love the perspective that you're bringing to the plate is it's not just about each individual has their own, personalization needs. It's we all have our own personalization needs over the life cycle of us working at a company. And it changes as time goes on. I think you're entirely right. I have a lot of friends right now that maybe they haven't gone to the gym in a couple months maybe the company hasn't thought about, offering, how do we help people get access to more affordable childcare when that's more important to them than the gym membership. It's more valuable to them. So how do you really think about meeting the [00:14:00] evolution of a person's life at the company? Sarah Gonzalez (Guest): Yeah, and I think, look, the traditional ways that we listened to employees don't work the same way. We would go out and survey them once a year, and it's like your life doesn't change once a year. Your life can change multiple times in a year. So how do we really get close to people to understand what they value and what their needs are in the moment in time and craft programs that can respond to those? Kelsey Willock (Host): I'm really curious. I'd love to double-click on that. Have you found any interesting ways in which you're learning how to meet people where they are? Sarah Gonzalez (Guest): I haven't broken the code on that, no. That is one of the hardest things is people who really want things, they will tell you. But how do you get to the population that feels like I'm being a nuisance if I ask for something? Or, the company already provides something good, I shouldn't rock the boat and ask for something more. And so that's really what I'm trying to push and learn is if anybody is being successful [00:15:00] for that. I haven't seen it on LinkedIn. I haven't seen it on any of the forums. But I do think there might be something going back to getting back in touch with people. At Switch, we have a workforce that half of our workforce more than half of our workforce, is physically in a data center or on a construction site every day. Maybe it's getting back to being on the ground and listening to them and having the managers of that those organizations and those employees have some forums for them to come and share. And it's how do we get the best information from them? So we're challenging our brokers on what's happening and as they interact with their insurances, what are we hearing from them as they interact with our programs? And then I think we're gonna challenge ourselves for how do we interact with a group of employees that isn't gonna sit down in front of a computer and write an email. We have to figure out the better way to [00:16:00] communicate with them. Kelsey Willock (Host): I also find just your answer so interesting in this world of, AI high tech data collection that we're still finding ways, how do we get back to the human? Because people have, assessment fatigue, it's a real problem that people have, and you're totally right, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. The people that always raise their hand will continue to. I actually interviewed a senior manager at Amtrak who, when I asked him this question, his answer was similar to yours actually, which was, "We just gotta get back..." And he sits on the train, and he speaks to their employees about, what do they hear, what is he hearing and where are people happy and, maybe where they see some room for improvement. You can hear so much from conversation directly. And so how do we think about, collecting that information at scale? Because I imagine it, it can be really illuminating. How do you think about the connection between supporting people and the quality of their output? And what I'm really getting at here is-- and it might seem like a simple question, but, tell me a little bit [00:17:00] about why is investing in, supporting the whole person, supporting them from a mental health perspective, et cetera, why does that matter? And how do you think about measuring why it matters? Sarah Gonzalez (Guest): Yeah. I'll take it to a great example, from our population here. And you hear people from a total rewards perspective it's very common to hear a statement akin to, "I just want them not to have to worry about all of this so that they can focus on their job only." And while that is a great statement, I wanna take it one step for- one step further, where it's not just the employee and their whole self, but as you mentioned, we don't know when people are taking care of their parents, what's going on with their children. And so it's creating the n- the support structure that supports them and the people that they care about to the best of our ability so that's not the worry. We have people that are security at [00:18:00] data centers, and the last thing I want is them to be so worried about whether an insurance claim is going to get paid or whether they're going to be able to provide childcare for that sick child that's got to stay home from school, or whether they're going to be able to take the time off to go with their parent to a treatment of some sort, right? Like being able to have it to where they just know that whatever happens, there's a group of people that will help step in and support them, and having people to talk to about that. It does, like it seems simple a simple question, but it's not that simple because there are so many different things that can happen. When I was at Zendesk, we had an employee who had a critical incident with their child who was being bullied at school, and it spun into a significant critical mental health situation. [00:19:00] And just being able to have somebody call and you make arrangements immediately where they can go and get that help for their child, and then their manager, and you have the culture at your organization that their manager's "They don't need to worry about anything. We're cutting off all connection to them. We won't bother them until we hear from them." Those are the things that are core to the survival of your employees. And if they've seen that happen with somebody else and have the knowledge that if the same thing happens in their life, they'll be treated the same, you're just creating this ability where they don't have to worry about unnecessary things, and they can focus on their life. Plus, when you have that, everybody, it, it goes back to you'll hear from so many people that you have that kind of culture and that kind of environment, and it creates such a retention in your population that you [00:20:00] just continue to build that and I love the core value that we have at Switch is based on karma, of what you give is what you'll get back. And so it's beautiful to be able to build programs to support people with that whole fundamental value of we build it to give to them because they're giving themselves back to us Kelsey Willock (Host): I love that. This is actually the first time I've heard the word karma in the core values of a company. And it's such a awesome way to think about it almost as a circle, and the circle can, continue to support itself. It's not, it's the expectation that doing good brings good. I love it. One of the things you brought up a-around specifically that insurance comment ha-had me interested in the concept of, financial wellbeing. I think that it's pretty much no secret right now especially in the United States and globally that people are financially stressed, whether it has to do [00:21:00] with, cost of living, AI anxiety and job replacement, you name it. How important is financial wellbeing for employees to the company? Sarah Gonzalez (Guest): Yeah. Gosh, you've hit on a topic that is something that is very important to me. And I've been fortunate to work for a couple of CEOs who really felt like leaving people financially in a better place was core to them feeling successful in their role and really leaning into that financial education. I've had a couple of conversations with some brokers in the past too, and it's for something that people stress so much about, like money is one of the biggest stressors in our lives. Even when we have it we stress about it. When we don't have it, we stress about it even more, right? It's something that people don't wanna talk about. They don't wanna think about... Like it's so stressful that they're like, "I just don't wanna think about it. It's so [00:22:00] stressful." And so I think that there's some core things there of providing education in a way that makes sense for employees. And when I was at Ford Truck, it was great. We did these small things that were like, "Okay, let's think about one thing," and really challenged our financial wellbeing partners on this. I'm like: Look it's not realistic to tell somebody if they wanna save up for a down payment for a house to stop drinking one coffee a week, 'cause $4 a week isn't gonna get you there, right? Let's talk about some real strategies for this, and then how do we show them combined together what that looks like? One of the things I've identified here at Switch is we don't have employees who understand the value of a health savings account and what that means for them later in life. So although we have an employer contribution, we don't have employees contributing very much to it, and they aren't using any medical services, [00:23:00] and they aren't contributing to their HSA. So i- it's wow, do they understand what this means for them for if an accident happens in the future, but also if they stay relatively healthy, what this means for them in retirement, right? So I think a lot of it is around that education, but doing it in ways that make sense for the population that you're doing it for. I think also the key to that is giving them tools that, that are things that they'll use. For most people, it means making sure that anything that you have is available to them to look at on their phone, right? They're banking on their phones. They should be thinking about their 401s and their Stock plans if you have them, and any other kind of financial plans that you have them, delivering it to them on their phone. And I think most financial advising companies are getting smart on this, right? Your 401plan administrators are adding in "Somebody can call and talk to us about retirement planning." As a company, [00:24:00] don't just have them be able to call and talk about retirement planning. Have them call and be able to talk about any kind of planning, right? Those services usually are not a significant cost to the company to offer from an employee perspective, and they go so much further with the company. And what I've found is a lot of people will call if they know they can talk one-to-one to somebody that They're almost more comfortable doing it on the phone. "I don't have to look at this person. I don't have to feel like I'm being judged because I haven't done the savings that I should have done," right? But convincing them that you might feel like you're behind, but instead of ignoring it, take that one tiny step, and delivering it to them in ways that they can take one tiny step at a time and build into something that's healthy for their future. Kelsey Willock (Host): I think it even ties into what you said toward the beginning, which is, we have to remember that not everyone is in a place even to have the conversation. Some people are avoidant, some people are fearful. Maybe they've never had a conversation with a financial [00:25:00] advisor. We're not all in the place to, feel really confident financially at this point in our lives. And last question for you. I know we're a little bit over. What's a compensation and benefits shift that's coming that most HR leaders might not be ready for? Sarah Gonzalez (Guest): Look, I think as we think about the way jobs are shifting I do think we're gonna go back to this concept of people just wanting to do skills-based work and whether or not we're going to... there was a push towards it, I don't know, about 10 years ago of the gig workforce, and I think that's something that we're gonna have to be prepared to develop within our own companies, especially in the SaaS world. That people are gonna wanna bid on jobs and take them, and then they're gonna wanna be like then I don't wanna work for three or four weeks and take my time off, and then I'll go bid on that job." So how do we create a system that supports that? Because traditionally we've been like, "No, you [00:26:00] come and work 40 hours a week," or, "You take two weeks off," or, "You do this." I think that there's something there for companies to offer that kind of contractor presence or contractor environment within their own organization that allows people to have more flexibility. 'Cause I think coming at us people want to be able to have the flexibility to save and then go, spend two or three weeks somewhere and then come back and focus on the work. So it's a work to live mentality, not live to work mentality. And that's gonna be a big challenge for us of how do we harness the workforce of the future to do that? Kelsey Willock (Host): Sarah, thank you so much for the time, conversation, and all of your wisdom. I learned so much from you, and I'm deeply grateful for the conversation. Where can our listeners connect with you beyond it? Sarah Gonzalez (Guest): Yeah, you can hit me up on LinkedIn. If you know my name, you can find me. And also I will be if anybody is [00:27:00] joining some of the Aon Radford they're doing a leadership program and I'll be involved in that for the 2026 to 2027 year. So it's called Aon Ascent and I will be available there Kelsey Willock (Host): Amazing. Thank you so much again, Sarah. It was a joy speaking with you Sarah Gonzalez (Guest): Thank you. Have a great rest of your day.