Totally Rewarding Chats | Ep. 42: Compensation best practices for small orgs

[00:00:00] Alright, another Totally Rewarding Chats. We're in the middle of summer and Paul, I hope you have some AC working out in Chicago. It looks like it's slightly balmy out there. It's only gonna feel like it's 104 today. It is a true melt the human experience if you spend any time outside, for sure.

[00:00:20] I will say for, I've been, I think we 40 years since I met my wife or something this summer and I don't get many kudos, but I put in a split AC unit last year. And you know, I don't get many, but that's evidently one way to go get one is when it gets to be super warm. Yeah. And we are have the Massachusetts version today rolling. So Cassie is with us today. How are you, Ms. Cassie?

[00:00:48] I'm great. I'm sitting in Connecticut representing Massachusetts. Yeah, well the office is in Massachusetts, but we can see you're not in the office. Yep, yep. I'm at home in Connecticut, where it will also be hot and I will be turning on the air conditioning. We built, when we built, when I say put in a split, we built, we don't have air conditioning in the house other than one location. Um, now, um, is in the, in the great room. So we just don't have AC. So what?

[00:01:19] What? So when you build, like you, you can, AC means you have to have the air ducts in forced hot air. And so we just, and we actually, I would say it's probably six to eight days a year that you kind of wish you had AC. See, we're up a little high. The breeze comes in. It's actually during the day in the one room to which I solve that problem. And actually it heats in the winter off electric instead of the boiler. And we have solar.

[00:01:43] And since I have two daughters who are saving the planet, uh, at a go, I need to use the solar. So actually we don't, we don't really miss it. Except this will be the week where you're like, you know, we miss it. The other thing, uh, weird personal information. We live in the middle of nowhere, as Paul has pointed out. Um, we don't have shades in any of the rooms. Like there's no, cause you know, if someone's looking in, that's my second biggest problem. Um, is if they're looking in the house.

[00:02:12] And so we don't have shades. And so there are a couple of rooms that the sun beats in and you're kind of like, actually, you know, next year, it's always next year. We're going to get some shades for these couple of rooms. I also don't have air conditioning. I have it in one room, but I have a sycamore trees around the house. So it shades the whole house. And I do you let the kids come in that, do you let the kids go in that room with the AC or only if they behave? It depends. Yeah, it depends.

[00:02:39] Jeez, this is so foreign to a Chicagoan. Like the concept is not translating and not having shades. I feel like would teach some behaviors that are regrettable than when you like travel, right? Like you got to remember to pull the shades closed on the hotel. Otherwise, we built when we were older. So that's true. That is true. When we lived in Vermont, we had shades and I have two daughters.

[00:03:04] Actually, I should probably care about my son, too. But but you're right. You are you are absolutely right that it could for younger people growing up in a place with no shades. It could behaviors to be like, I'll just change. It's fine. Yeah. Anyway, I had not thought we had not thought that we should have called you, Paul. When we were building to be like, what what are the pros and cons?

[00:03:26] I have an 11 year old and a seven year old that have no problem sort of walking around in fashion that probably, you know, I'm glad we have shades. Let's put it that way. So we do get what we have guests. So we have two rooms on kind of the guests, but we do get people ask how the shades work. And we're like, there aren't any. And then you can you can see the gears processing like I face kind of where the road is 150 feet away, even though there's trees in the way. And I'm always like, you know, they're like people can see and I'm like, won't be people.

[00:03:56] But I don't think the animals care. So give us your bio, Cassie, before we jump to the speed round of questions for you. Give us your background and where you're at now. Sure. Yeah, I have been in the human resources area for about 20 years, started in a corporate setting in hospitality, which was the best thing that happened to me in my career because it was the Wild West.

[00:04:26] But I also because of that corporate experience, I was able to gain a lot of best practices and then moved into consulting in small business about 15 years ago. And that has been such a rewarding experience and focusing on all areas of human resources, consulting in small business.

[00:04:54] Specifically now, I'm really focused in the total reward space and I'm supporting the Employers Association of the Northeast with their total reward solutions. And that's a member organization based out of Springfield, Mass. So focused on supporting small businesses in all areas of HR, specifically total rewards.

[00:05:19] Every time you tell me, so I don't want to get in trouble, Cassie, but every time you tell me you've been in total rewards for 20 years, you do not look that if people are on YouTube. Like you get me every time. It's the skin cream. I can't believe it. I don't know what kind of high school internship program they had rolling, but like that gets me every time. Well, I'll give away my age, but I started before I was 21, so I couldn't go out after work with my coworkers that I just met.

[00:05:49] So how did you get into HR? Because this is always a thing. HR chooses you. How did you get into HR? I grew up wanting to be a nurse, taking care of people. My first, then I kind of realized that needles and blood was a problem for me. I had been touring nursing schools and realized that I was not going to be cut out for that type of work.

[00:06:14] And started in hospitality, specifically in hotels, and found that there were a lot of things about it that were similar to what I wanted to do with nursing. And in hospitality, really loved the operational side of things, but was tapped on the shoulder at some point.

[00:06:33] And that mentor at the time said, why don't you come work in and try this out and see if you like having internal customers as much as you do external. So kind of had an opportunity where I was mentored by several really smart people who were very patient with me, and I never left. Okay.

[00:07:01] I will also add to her bio. So Cassie had the unlucky for her, lucky for me moment that we founded the Total Rewards Association in Northeast, a new World at Work affiliate this year. And when I say we, and Paul will jump on this right away, Cassie's done like 95% of the work. So like she's been making it roll. So, which is new and super cool.

[00:07:29] And I will say actually doubles down on every time I say how much work there is, because I do think between. I don't think I understood how much work there is actually, you know, getting this going until you get one going. And we've been lucky enough to have Employers Association Northeast kind of helping with some of the structure. So, and Cassie, just so you know, Paul was the president of the Chicago Comp Association for a while. So it's not like we have to sell Paul on it. But I just like to reiterate for when people go.

[00:07:58] So the speed round, are you ready? Sure. Are you coffee or tea? Coffee for sure. Coffee knows I have deadlines and tea's kind of an afternoon thing. So I coffee for sure. Tea's the afternoon thing. And then the follow-up is always, are you a coffee snob or just coffee? I love all coffee. It's actually when I'm traveling, it's the number one thing I want to do. Find the best coffee shop.

[00:08:27] I definitely like a strong coffee though. So not a snob, but it's got to be bold. Got to be bold. Number one place you've been on vacation that you think others should go to. I, these days, am loving staycations. But if I had to pick a place that I've been, it would be probably Edinburgh, Scotland. I thought that that was, there was so much history and the people were friendly.

[00:08:56] So that would be my number one. All right. A very important one here as this is the first session I'm recording coming off the trailer tour. So I think it's supposed to say total comp tour. I guess trailer has bad connotations. Although probably aligned well to me. So if you have a weekend away, no kids, no spouse. So this is 100% your choice. Are we going to a posh resort? Are we camping and roughing it in the woods?

[00:09:26] A resort. Exploring during the day. Lots of activities and sweater dirt during the day. But then I want to sleep in some clean sheets with a shower. That is definitely the most common sort of, well, I shouldn't be the most common. The most common is not the Sean answer at all. I think it's, but there's a lot of folks that it's all about the sleeping arrangement. Like no problem getting out in the woods, touching dirt, touching trees during the day. But it's got to be a comfortable night's rest. That is my youngest.

[00:09:57] My youngest, Paul. That's where she settled too, I know. So knowing you, Cassie, your favorite item of swag you have ever seen. Cassie, we have already some kick-ass swag at Total Association Northeast. And I had nothing to do with it, as you can imagine, Paul. But we have some great stuff. But what is your favorite swag either we're offering now or that you've seen over the years? Hey, it's Libby DeLucian.

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[00:10:53] Simple, tactical, and one layer deep every time. Let's go visit LibbyD.com and check out our podcast today. Well, I must say, the Total Rewards Association of the Northeast has a pretty awesome zip-up. It is my new favorite thing. It is. I won't lie. I'm not wearing it today. I was tempted. I was tempted.

[00:11:18] I think the rocking folding chairs, the portable rocking folding chairs. Those are pretty cool. We need to get that on the list then. Yeah, that's a high ticket item. Yeah, that's not one you just give away for fun. No. So, Paul, I'll let you know how mine is because you're not getting the high ticket items. I don't live in the Northeast, Diane.

[00:11:46] And then the important one, are you a crunchy or creamy peanut butter person? Creamy for sure. More versatile. Goes in recipes. I don't think we've had a winner based on versatility before. That's the most practical answer I've gotten. Right. I only want one jar and it needs to be able to serve multiple purposes. That's the most practical and versatile tool that I have. All right. That's great. I mean, it works, right? It works. I'm not going to lie.

[00:12:16] That's correct. That is the correct answer. It's correct. Yeah. So, the reason I wanted to have you on and talk through it is we have a lot of people who talk about comp programs and larger comp programs. But you have the unique perspective of kind of helping companies get their comp program together or doing fractional comp work for them. At companies that have, you know, HR department of HR plus eight, maybe one and a half shared roles, but they don't have a comp department.

[00:12:44] And so, talk to us a little bit about some of the best practices you see for companies that can't, you know, expend 40, 80, 120 hours a week on comp programs. Where do you see them getting started? And what's the most important things for them to have in place? Yeah, I think the work that we do with small businesses is definitely the most rewarding work, in my opinion, because it just has, specifically in the total reward space, an instant impact to their group.

[00:13:14] I think that most of these small organizations, business nonprofits, they most often can lack structure and architecture and scaffolding. And helping to really solve that piece of their business, right? Like, as drilled down to helping them build out job descriptions, organizational design,

[00:13:41] is the piece we always seem to start with. I think a lot of small businesses are flying by the seat of their pants and making comp decisions as they go, right? It's throwing a dart at the wall. And so really helping them to round out what are the jobs that we actually have? There may be three that are dissolved into one title and one person. But what are the jobs that we actually have?

[00:14:07] And how can we put some structure around the description so that we can really understand how we should be paying people? And I think that back to basics piece is what we always start with or recommend. And then I think also the second piece is always you can get a lot of bang for your buck in a small organization that isn't focused on the salary or compensation.

[00:14:36] There's so much more to how you can enrich that employee experience. And I think small organizations have the opportunity much more than larger to have the best employee experience now. Yeah. Just as a framing question, what does small mean, right? So like I'm a company owner of less than 10 people. Certainly we're small.

[00:15:00] You know, I work with clients with 30, 100, 300, 600. At what point do you think you outgrow being small? Like, so just contextualize it for us a little bit. And you're talking about small business. So what's a typical makeup? When do you become a not small company kind of in your mind? Yeah, I think in our world, 250 employees, 300 or less as a small organization. However, we work with so many organizations.

[00:15:28] They don't have an HR individual focused on this. They don't have someone who has experience in this place. And often the owners or a director of ops in that 75 employees or less or 100 or less. That's, you know, those are a lot of organizations that we're working with.

[00:15:48] I think for me, in my experience, once I get to 75 employees, I need at least a part-time HR person or someone focused on payroll employees and that function. But 100 or less, it's like often there's no, it's operators and business owners. Well, and that helps because where I was thinking is you're talking about structure, right? That I don't work a ton with really small organizations.

[00:16:16] But those where I have where there's 30 employees or so, like structure is really hard because people do like four different things, right? There's no such thing as like a pure play person. It's everybody is just a worker. Well, and they have, you know, yeah, and they have, you know, as I tell people, they'll have payroll, which you have to run, right? Or people find you, you know, potentially comp, they have benefits, they have time off, and they're probably running shipping on Friday afternoons.

[00:16:43] Like I'm getting band up to these weird hats, right, that go into their jobs. And that just describes them. But also to your point, Paul, like someone's doing multiple hats. And so, yeah, my thing was kind of like how do they even benchmark roles like that? How do you create a job architecture? Because you can do that individually because you got this small, unique company that has a unique pile of humans and a unique locations, which creates these unique roles.

[00:17:10] But how do you translate that to an external job matching process because, which gets into the whole do you do hybrid jobs discussion. But like how do you do that? I find that most small organizations don't, right? They don't benchmark. And they're using public sources, which is difficult.

[00:17:33] In all of my conversations in the past six months, job descriptions is the number one piece that I think human resources professionals, operators, or business owners should be using some type of AI to create job descriptions, right? If you're not already doing that, you should be exploring it. Because it's a very time consuming task that it's like if we can drill down and get some type of structure around that one piece, it's probably going to be blended.

[00:18:01] It's probably going to be a few jobs in one, but at least we can get some structure around it. And then I think, you know, also just modernizing systems in general. So a lot of small organizations may be using some pretty antiquated payroll or HRIS systems and just kind of finding the one that might innovate a little bit more for you from a reporting and data standpoint.

[00:18:30] There's a lot of big box payroll solutions that offer more than they ever have before. So I think using AI for those job descriptions, mapping out that org structure, because it's going to really you'll be able to visualize where your blind spots are and gaps and modernizing that. The payroll HRIS, it's going to help the employee experience inevitably.

[00:19:00] How do you see companies tackling that, though? Because one of the interesting when, you know, when you talk to companies like that, like payroll, I always keep always come back to payroll. Right. The email that you rarely see is the email sent to HR payroll that says, hey, thanks, Paul. I've gotten my pay right for 52 weeks in a row. Right. They only get emails when it goes wrong. And so that has to happen. Benefits has to happen.

[00:19:23] Like you have this stuff. So how do you either are you helping or how do you find companies able to go figure out what to do next? Because it's gotten more complicated.

[00:19:33] It has. And I think that all HRIS and payroll companies or vendors or services are a little bit different, but they're all kind of offering similar things, which in 2026 and beyond, it's like if we have an automated payroll and timekeeping, we are way behind. Right. So automating. We're no longer in a time where people can't punch in and punch out on their phones.

[00:20:00] But automating, streamlining and getting digital is good for the employee experience. It's providing a safe place for data for the organization. So I think we do offer implementation work, but there's a lot of support now, I think, for companies, small businesses that don't have that HR person to get support within the implementations.

[00:20:30] Do you see it with the evaluation, too? Is that kind of where you see it from the help us with the evaluation? Absolutely. They don't have the time. Yeah. What's your workforce? What support do your managers or supervisors need? And what's going to be the most streamlined for your employee base? And then talk a little bit about benchmarking, because I think that in that size, it's really interesting. So, you know, as you know, we didn't mention we should have.

[00:20:56] Cassie is now an approved teacher for World at Work class. Which class? Courses for the CCP. Yeah. And a couple of the in-person day classes, the essentials classes, which is exciting. Okay. So talk about marketplaces, because obviously you know then that, you know, World at Work suggests three sources, etc. But what is kind of standard operating procedure and kind of suggested best practice for how you would benchmark,

[00:21:25] or if you benchmark, in companies that have 50 to 150, you know, lives? Yeah. I think for small companies where we keep talking about job blending, and it's like we're talking about it because it's happening for these small companies. And so if we look at some of the public sources like O-Net, which that's what companies are using, public sources, right? Department of Labor. Those are great for some jobs, right? They're actually really great for some jobs, but they're broad.

[00:21:55] And when we have jobs where you're wearing a lot of different hats, we're not going to find accurate data on those public sources. And so I think inevitably we're going to have to purchase data somewhere, right?

[00:22:10] And whether that's with a platform or through a local association survey, you have to kind of make an assessment of what data is going to be most relevant to your organization. But I think the most important piece, because this is a conversation that I have daily, most small organizations benchmark to title rather than the actual description, right?

[00:22:38] And a marketing manager for a small company of 40 employees or less is going to be paid wildly different than a marketing manager with higher responsibilities in a bigger organization. So really just digging into what are the functions rather than the title. So two things come from me all the time. Actually, I had one question already, but I'm going to hold that for a second. How do you communicate that?

[00:23:05] Because, you know, I usually joke about the VP of tech at a 30-person company that has 25 vice presidents, two admin assistants, and three C-suites. And then when you tell them, well, you're not the VP of tech, you're more a marketing manager, they're like, well, no, I'm a VP of tech. And not only that, I do more with less. Like that's the follow-up to that. So how do you have those discussions with companies to help them level set?

[00:23:29] Because it becomes personal really fast when you have to go say, Sean, you actually, I know your title says VP, dude, but like you got six developers. You're a software manager. And, you know, so how do you broach that or how do you find companies dealing with that issue before you go, we talk about market pricing? I think that's where I spend most of my time.

[00:23:52] So many companies used to use point factor systems or evaluation systems that kind of helped guide them. And if we're using market analysis, which most companies are, it's a little bit more difficult for these employers to separate the incumbent from the analysis and what we're actually benchmarking. And that's the conversation that we consistently have.

[00:24:21] Are we talking now about the incumbent, the person in the job, the specific individual that you're working hand in hand with? Or are we talking about if that person was gone tomorrow, what's the profile of the person you'd hired the next day? Right? Like what is it? We know that this person that you work with has all of these qualities and potentially those are not even a part of the description. But if that person left, who would you be hiring tomorrow?

[00:24:48] And I think it's a really difficult thing for employers, especially in small organizations, to wrap their head around. I also think having some type of a visual of that range with some parameters for whoever your decision makers are to really say, you know, the percentiles of the range are X.

[00:25:13] And an individual in our organization who's developing early career is going to be paid this. Someone who's meeting the job description, they are an exact representation of what the job is, is going to be paid at potentially the midpoint or whatever that strategy is. But really having some type of a visual and parameters to help guide so that every decision is consistent.

[00:25:38] Yeah. Now, my sample of small employers that I work with is admittedly biased and that it tends to be well-funded, like quickly scaling organizations. Right. So they're not expected to be at 30 or 60 employees for long. You know, they've got a roadmap. They've got a plan and ambition to be bigger. And I offer that as context for, but I'll get the pushback, which is, yeah, they might only have six direct reports today. They're a software manager-ish, but they won't be.

[00:26:08] Right. The CEO will say, I still need them to have that vision. As we are scaling, it will grow. Right. So I often find, and I'm just curious your perspective, like, you know, how temporary versus permanent is that situation? Because I think that complicates things in smaller organizations more because it often is about the person more than the job because the job's not going to be the same job in six months, a year, two years in those sort of scaling environments. So, again, coming from a place of bias.

[00:26:37] But I'm curious, like, does that do you see that as a different perspective? You know, do you have to approach that situation differently given that they won't be they don't think they'll be small for long? We, you know, I work with organizations who have growth strategies and objectives and those that are maybe in decline or mature stage. But what you just kind of talked about focusing on the individual, that's really where small businesses are going to make their progress.

[00:27:04] Right. Because matching small businesses, matching a larger organization dollar for dollar with base pay isn't going to happen. It's not realistic, nor should they strategize that way. But if we think about the attributes often of employees in a small business, they have an entrepreneurial mindset. They have ownership mentality. They're typically self-starters, mission driven, innovative thinkers.

[00:27:31] And so if we strategize to be maybe lagging the market with our compensation, let's give someone a true career development plan that may not have a total cost, but focused on that individual. Enriching projects, the ability to stretch and grow and give them job security through that career development plan.

[00:28:00] Sure. I do think it's important, though, like some of the things I see in small businesses and the market pricing piece in particular are kind of two issues. One is the hybrid piece. And I think they over index on hybrid roles. And I think this happens not just in small companies, but large companies. Right. So like you've got two different roles or two different hats or three different hats and they market price and they blend jobs. And inherently that lowers the rate and go going, you know, which is great for the company because they're like, actually, you're only doing these jobs.

[00:28:29] But when they go market price themselves publicly, they're like they'll go to the job that pays the most. And so are you seeing companies do that? Basically, say you've got a hybrid role. We're going to pay you at the higher of the two skill sets because you have to or they'll leave. The other one that gets me coming on either one of them is when they index the size. To your point, I think, you know, you want to index the size, but that's not where people go.

[00:28:53] Right. The employee is not going to be like, I'm only going to look for a job between 50 and 99 lives in the manufacturing industry in this place. And the example I use a lot is, you know, you'll see them go index and be like, I don't know how much is an accountant. Accountant. And they're like, oh, well, we pay, you know, 65th percentile. And so then they go work the wrong problem. To your point, Cassie, it's like, well, why are people leaving? We pay more than market. It must be culture. It must be something else.

[00:29:20] And you realize, actually, you pay at 40th percentile for the market in your industry. People are just leaving you to bigger companies. So are you seeing some of those issues also bubble up as people? Because when I've worked with small companies, admittedly like Paul, very few in general. They tend to put themselves on kind of an island and, you know, we're a unicorn thing, which is not untrue. But the talent pool is not that unicorn only.

[00:29:44] I have found over the past two years that small organizations used to kind of target being at the 80th percentile. No longer are. They're absolutely meeting 100 percent of the market with pay, but combating with flexibility, ability to schedule around family, ability to be in a hybrid setting.

[00:30:10] Or I work with several organizations where there is no start time and end time of the day. Whether you're salaried or hourly, the work needs to be done. And they're implementing variable pay plans. So I think, you know, and if we look at nonprofits, it's like they or other organizations that are in at maturity or decline, it's like they may not have the budget to stretch that base pay.

[00:30:39] But they absolutely are offering flexibility as the number one focus area. And then number two is the career development opportunities, enriching projects. I think that for someone working for a small business, they feel the immediate impacts of that business doing well or financial issues. Right. And they feel it in the day to day.

[00:31:07] I'm not able to go to Home Depot to purchase these supplies that I need to because we're struggling financially. Right. Like there's an immediate impact in a small business. On the flip side, if organizations, leaders can focus on communicating and having like that career development and the ability for someone to have job security.

[00:31:30] I would rather work in an organization where I have the ability to make decisions, autonomy and job security than make 50,000 more dollars any day. And I think that generations now joining the workforce identify with what I said compared to the latter. Yeah, it speaks to a broad challenge of benchmarking in general, which is the data is not going to give you an answer like that.

[00:31:58] The data is going to give you a story. Right. But that may not be the story that you need to care about. Right. Like most published surveys are missing small employers. They don't they don't participate in big company comp surveys because why would they? Right. They can't afford the they can't afford the fees. They you know, the jobs don't work anyway. You know, small companies, the benchmark like does it the size matter in terms of the market?

[00:32:23] Yes and no. Right. To Sean's point and to your point, I think, you know, it's going to give you an answer of what some companies put into a database of what they pay at a salary. But that doesn't necessarily give you the answer of why somebody will work there. And are there other elements of pay? Are there other elements of the value proposition that matter more anyway?

[00:32:42] So it's just it's always a broad caution about like, don't look up the data point and say that's going to be my salary because that's not necessarily going to help you compete for talent better or for worse than any size organization, but particularly in smaller companies. Because you just got there's more to the story kind of uniquely in a small organization. How do you I mean, kind of the last point on this, I don't know, we cognizant of time to Cassie. But for me, how are you seeing companies properly communicate this when they're hiring?

[00:33:10] I mean, I don't think there's any adverts or anything that says, you know, we have a horrible culture. You're not allowed to make decisions in this place. It's going to suck to work at like there hasn't been that job description, but we pay OK. Like that's not the job description. So how are you seeing companies either through through what they're posting, you know, and also how are they going through the talent acquisition process? But then how are they kind of doubling down to their current employees? I mean, great places are great places.

[00:33:38] Like I always say, they don't have to do any marketing, but good places like not average, but good. I still think they need to do some work to talk about why they're good and great places. That's easy, right? Like it's not easy to make it great. It's easy to you don't have to communicate why it's great. I think that the two things both of you just talked about, like benchmarking in the data is a tool for us, right? It's not directions that we must follow.

[00:34:05] It's simply a tool and data to support us in our decisions. And then we have to make our decisions, right? So we have to look at the data, the tools, and then we have to say as an organization, this is what we want our comp philosophy to be. And the best organizations I work with have a one-page comp philosophy that just specifically says, this is where we stand with base pay.

[00:34:33] This is what we value in terms of what we promise you as an employee. And that one-page philosophy partnered with the data and the ability to make informed decisions allows business leaders and managers and decision makers to feel pretty confident singing the same tune in a lot of different ways.

[00:34:58] In an employee handbook, in an offer letter, in the interview process that specifically outlines what that comp and career trajectory looks like.

[00:35:13] So, again, I feel like if we have job descriptions that are solid and accurate and they're truly about the job and not the employee in the job, we can create our structure and our scaffolding. We can get the data and the tools so that then we're able to make some decisions and say, this is how we're approaching comp and the employee experience.

[00:35:39] And it's simple and not a complex communication piece. Are you seeing the last question? Because I always have the same last question, Cassie. But are you seeing companies that size open to change to up their game on the comp side? Because, you know, the traditional knock, right or wrong, is like we've been doing it this way for 30 years, you know, 20 years, and it's not broke.

[00:36:06] So, you know, are you seeing them open to the change in the tools? Because, you know, I know you mentioned there's some old HRIS, but I would assume almost all the comp is done through the world's number one software. Like is that, you know, are you seeing them open to change on tools and methodology? I think that transparency laws are forcing that a little bit or at least forcing people to ask questions to say, what am I doing here? What range am I posting? What am I required to do?

[00:36:35] But I do think that recruitment and attraction and retention is the number one pain point for at least the organizations we work with. And so they're having to ask themselves why. And it always kind of comes back to the employee experience or the pay, right? It's either one of those two things. So, yes, I think employers are pushing forward to innovate.

[00:37:06] But we definitely still work with some that are not ready and they're either going to get ready on their own or they're going to be forced. And then that's catastrophe. So, and just came to mind because I keep saying the last question, but as you speak up, like these small companies where you have small departments, do you see a lot more than you would expect or less than you expect on the compression side? Because you've got someone in that role for a long time.

[00:37:34] And, you know, they literally in some of these cases might have two accountants, for example. And then, you know, they've both been there 25 years and one leaves. So they haven't been in the market for 20 some years. And then what happens and then how are you see them tackle the, you know, they obviously can bring someone new in. But how do you deal with the accountant who's been there 20 some years is now below market? I definitely I we see equity issues like what you're talking about a little bit less.

[00:38:02] But compression is definitely one of the number one pieces because we have so many organizations when they're throwing the dart. It's based on what a demand is in the recruitment process rather than actual data. So we absolutely are combating that. And, you know, that's that's the other piece. If we aren't proactive with the data and making decisions, then we get ourselves into an issue where we're required to rectify something.

[00:38:31] Which is a bigger bill. Right. And it sometimes comes along with the attorney bills. So that proactive piece, I think, has been adopted over the past year a little bit more. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Transparency in particular is the thing that's changing sort of what works. And the threat of litigation has always been a thing. But I think there's new threats.

[00:39:00] And, you know, hopefully that opens up. I mean, I say it is hopefully hopefully that changes the willingness to embrace a more transparent and equitable approach. You know, even if it feels hard for a small business owner where that can feel heavy. It can feel like a loss of control. But it's there. You know, it's a it's a good answer for workers and it can be good for them if they kind of see that. I mean, it's their money. Right. I mean, that's always the thing. Right.

[00:39:26] I mean, a lot of these are private companies and it's totally somebody's, you know, you're paying somebody. They're not making, you know, they're not getting as much themselves. So it becomes super personal, which I think is a, you know, well, while it's personal when you're working with the HR head of total awards at a large company, it's not their money. And so I think that's where working with these small orgs gets even trickier. Totally. Totally.

[00:39:46] So the question we end with all the time, Cassie, is if with all the HR issues out there, if you could solve any one HR issue automagically or highly technical term, what would you solve? I'm not prepared for this question. Which is on me. I will buy you 20 or 30 seconds saying I normally, I won't lie. I don't usually spring this on everybody. So feel either special or that I screwed up, Cassie. Either one of those in this particular case. Yeah.

[00:40:16] But that's as much time as I can buy you. Yeah. I think it would be to just to for managers, business owners and those decision makers to just be a little bit more curious and ask more questions so that our relationships can get a little bit better in the world of work. Right.

[00:40:39] And the workplace, because if we ask questions and we're curious and we're digging into the individual and we're really asked, we're really wanting to get to the root cause of whatever the issue is. Often we can make a lot of progress and have some epiphany. So I think asking more questions, being able to say that we don't know the answer in the moment and humanizing that relationship a little bit more. Oh, that's awesome.

[00:41:09] Yeah. Heaven forbid HR have more human in it. Right. Yeah. So we spent a lot of time talking about the resources. That's right. You know, which is great. I really appreciate you coming on. Hopefully everyone gets to see how lucky I am to have worked with you on the Rewards Association Northeast. Paul will remind me later of how I, you know, perpetually find people significantly smarter than me as my standard operating procedure. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.

[00:41:38] Yeah, I really appreciate it. Cassie is easy to find. Total Rewards Association Northeast or Cassandra Vaughn. And we will let you go. I guess you're picking up kids versus leaving them in the 100 degree heats. Those are the choices. Exactly. I'm out of here. All right. Thank you, Cassie. Thank you. Thanks for your time. Okay. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.