106: What's Brewing for 2025 with Sarika Lamont

[00:00:00] Join us on a journey where we unravel the latest trends, tackle your burning questions and explore innovative strategies that are shaping the future of compensation, all with a coffee in hand. Hello everybody and welcome to this episode of Comp a Coffee, our first episode of 2025. So we thought we'd take some time now to recalibrate, strategise and explore priorities for 2025.

[00:00:30] Maybe as you're listening to this, you're juggling your year-end review, compensation planning or performance reviews. We feel you, we're there too. So just take a moment to sip your coffee and get inspired by this conversation. And in this episode, we're going to be diving into what's brewing in 2025 and I've got a special guest who's going to be discussing some of the key trends and strategies that we think are going to be shaping HR and compensation this year.

[00:00:56] So welcome to Sarah Kalamot, who's Vice President of People and Culture at Bidyard. Great to see you again. We last collaborated back in September, I think, on Payscale's conference when you were one of our keynote speakers in a session that definitely went off and got a lot of very positive audience interaction. So I'm very delighted that you've decided to come back, speak to me and join me on the podcast today.

[00:01:23] So for those of you who maybe didn't attend conference, let's kick things off with a brief introduction. Do you want to tell us a bit about yourself and your role there at Bidyard? Yes. First, thank you again for having me, Ruth. Conference was a hit. It was a great time. So cheers, everyone, for comp and coffee today. As Ruth mentioned, I'm the VP of People at Bidyard. Bidyard is an AI-based, video-based tool that's used in sales and marketing, different go-to market motions.

[00:01:52] I run all things, people and culture there. So from people operations to talent acquisition, talent development, DE&IB, all those fun things, business partnership, all reside underneath my purview. So I'm excited to be here. If you follow me at all on LinkedIn or you saw me at conference alongside my HR besties, I am very passionate about compensation. I definitely tend to nerd out. You'll see a lot of hand-waving. I'm passionate about this topic.

[00:02:20] I think it is a very important and critical function within HR that often, I think, goes by the wayside. But I am really excited to see there's been a lot more energy around what I'm seeing on LinkedIn and a lot of people reaching out, asking questions. It really does look to be that compensation is an area of focus, strategic focus for a lot of HR teams and HR leaders in 2025, which I think is fantastic. So excited to be here today. Great. Thank you.

[00:02:51] Okay, so let's get into it. We're well into 2025 already. We're coming to the end of January as we record this. A lot of changes already happened since the start of the year. What do you think are the top compensation or HR priorities in 2025 if you were to pick maybe one or two priorities? Oh, that's a good question. If I think just broader HR priorities, not just compensation.

[00:03:20] Man, so obviously, yes, there's a lot going on, particularly in the U.S., a lot of interesting political and economic uncertainty that lies ahead. So I do think that that is going to have and will continue to shape what may or may not happen in 2025 and where HR leaders need to focus. Obviously, there's a big push with this new administration on everybody back to work, return to office. So we are obviously seeing a lot.

[00:03:50] I think it's hard to tell, but we're seeing more and more companies and agencies within the federal government pushing to go back to office. So I think, unfortunately, the debate between remote work, a hybrid, return to office is going to continue, at least in the first few months of this year. So that will continue to be a growing challenge and something we have to keep our eyes on. Obviously, there's a lot going on in the world of DE&I in that landscape. It will be interesting to see.

[00:04:17] I mean, obviously, if you're paying attention to U.S. politics, you know, there's a big push already to remove things all DE&I and take a different focus. So that is, of course, also going to have impact on organizations, larger organizations. Some large organizations are already coming forward saying they're divorcing themselves from this notion of DE&I. Others are not. And then smaller companies, obviously, are all probably just watching. It will be interesting to see the impacts that that continues to have as that cascades down.

[00:04:46] And I think, of course, AI is going to continue to take shape. That is, like, ever-changing, driving a ton of innovation, and particularly, you know, how AI and AI tools that continue to pop up week in and week out are going to have, like, a tremendous impact on HR as well. You know, we're constantly looking at these AI tools.

[00:05:05] And whether they're AI tools in HR or AI tools writ large, obviously, we're paying attention to, you know, what types of bias it might bring into our systems and our processes, making sure that we're really being thoughtful and intentional about the policies that we're crafting around AI and how we're leveraging AI in the organization. I've talked about this in previous podcasts. You know, what is the role of HR when it comes to AI and AI inside of organizations?

[00:05:34] I don't think it's just IT's job. I think this is a perfectly placed cross-functional sort of priority for both AI – or, sorry, for both HR and IT to really think about what is our policy? How are we going to be inclusive? How are we going to mitigate bias that might get brought into these systems? How do we assess for the tools that we're bringing in to make sure that they're not introducing a level of bias that does not exist in the organizations today? How do we integrate those policies throughout? How do we hold our employees accountable?

[00:06:03] How do we educate them on these policies? We've had to do a tremendous amount of work in the last few months on, like, oh, my gosh, you can't use free chat GPT. You should be using that and you should be using it on, like, our company's, you know, licenses. And this is why from a security perspective. So there's just a lot around those areas. And I think from a compensation perspective, we're still going to see a lot more – a lot around pay transparency and pay equity. I don't think that that is going to change.

[00:06:31] I don't think those – I don't think what we're seeing in other countries as well as in the U.S. and different states where there's a strive for greater pay transparency and those laws – those state laws that are coming out to start posting those things on job postings. I think that will continue. And so I think with that continuing, especially in other countries as well, that is still going to continue to impact this focus on pay equity and pay transparency inside of organizations.

[00:06:56] And what is our strategy as HR leaders to make sure that we are educating the people in our organization on what does pay transparency mean? How do we drive pay equity? How do we educate you on what all of this means and the impacts that it has to you such that you understand all of our pay processes? You understand where we're being inclusive, being fair, being equitable, why being equitable is important. So I do think that that will continue on in 2025. Great.

[00:07:23] So you touched on a few things there, RTO, the walk back from DE&I that we've been seeing, and AI. So we may come back to some of those. Interesting. I want to pick up on that last conversation because obviously we have been witnessing this walk back in DE&I. It's something that we saw happen partially in 2024, but now with the shift that we've seen in the U.S. with the new administration.

[00:07:49] One of the kind of interesting things that I'm looking forward to or I'm interested to observe, I wish I didn't have to observe this, to be honest. But one of the interesting things I am going to be interested in observing is where companies go, because there are obviously some companies that have made a very strong commitment to DE&I and to addressing pay equity.

[00:08:09] If I think about the organisations that signed up to the various pay equity charters that came into being kind of after the 2020, when we saw lots of issues, social issues happening that were driving a great corporate focus on this. And then organisations who now almost have an excuse to be able to not have to focus priorities on DE&I and pay equity. Let's talk about pay equity specifically.

[00:08:38] Do you think you can do pay equity without DE&I? Or do you think we'll see, you were indicating there that you think people will have to stay committed to pay equity because of the ongoing growth of legislation there? So it's such a great question, Ruth. And obviously, like, I, it's hard to answer some of these questions. Because if you had asked me this even a few months ago, my response would probably be different than even today. And right now, it's a lot of question marks.

[00:09:06] You know, I think a lot has happened in the first week of this administration. So it really is hard to tell which path that they'll go on. But you ask a really interesting question. Can pay equity still happen without DE&I? And I fundamentally believe yes, and it should. Pay equity has always been something that I think is important inside of organisations, even without this sort of push or this, you know, much, you know, larger, more public push for DE&I.

[00:09:35] And, you know, I have to talk about this inside of our own organisation. And to be fair, you know, Vidyard is a Canadian-based organisation. So, you know, I come at it from a little bit of a different perspective. And obviously, I'm in the US. But one thing that I always try to talk about with our employees is I don't believe in performative anything. And I certainly don't believe in performative DE&I.

[00:09:56] DE&I isn't always about programming and these big events that you throw or these, like, big posts that you put on your social media every time there's, like, a day, like, International Women's Day or Black History Month or, you know, what have you. DE&I should happen behind the scenes systemically all the time. And so, as HR leaders, I believe it is fundamentally our responsibility if we're here to, you know, build inclusive organisations because that, we believe, is what drives a ton of ROI. That's what really contributes to the bottom line.

[00:10:26] I think that has more than been proven. The more diverse you are inside of your organisations, that's what drives real innovation. That's what drives that real ROI into your bottom line. So, to me, pay equity should happen because it's built into the processes and built into the way that you built your programming around compensation. And so, you know, my team is very clear and our employees know, like, hey, we have these process. We built these policies.

[00:10:51] And I built process, which to you all, when you didn't have process before and then I came in two years ago and I'm building on a process, it feels like red tape. But I've had to explain it's not red tape. I have to be able to build process in order to drive the fairness and equitability that you all are desiring, you all are asking for. And sometimes a lot of those things happen behind the scenes. Like, we run, we're doing the pay equity analysis right now. We do it at the start of every calendar year. You know, we check all of our pay bans. We go in and check it into all, through all of our salary surveys.

[00:11:21] We check all of our jobs. We really make sure that we are adhering to what the market bears for that cost of labor. And if we have adjustments to be made, if people are outside of their bans, we do our part to make sure that we're right-sizing people. That is the right thing to do. That is how we should be treating our employees. That is how we should be running our businesses. And I think that does help businesses become more successful and profitable in the end.

[00:11:45] And so, you know, I also recognize I'm saying this as an HR leader who fundamentally believes in equity and believes in being inclusive and fair. That's just who I am as an individual, independent of an organization that I work for. And I also recognize the hard truth through this. Not all HR leaders are like that.

[00:12:03] But part of, like, why I speak up so much about compensation and why I like to come on and talk about my viewpoints on podcasts is because I want for more leaders to think like this. I want for more leaders to stand up and figure out that there are ways to be able to do this without making some big, like, announcement or it having to be this big strategy.

[00:12:26] There are things that you can still be doing as you build process and policy and these people programming that is inherently equitable in the way that you build them. That's my – that's the way that I look at how we build programming and whatnot in the organization. But, again, I recognize that's not everywhere. I don't know if that entirely answered your question, but it's a hard question because I don't know where this administration is going to go. No, it was great. It was very – you gave some great insights there into kind of how you think about it. And I do agree with you.

[00:12:56] I think – I mean, ultimately, pay equity is the law and we can't – you know, we can't get away from that. And we have an expanding base of laws that are requiring us to be more transparent. And the more transparent you are, you know, obviously, it's harder to be inequitable. And then I love the stuff you say about, like, building sustainable fair pay practices because that's the process. That's the rigor. That's the checks and balances to make sure that every time you're making a pay decision, it's a fair one. So I really appreciated that.

[00:13:22] But here's the thing, you know, we have other countries that are continuing down, you know, pay equity. And I think that will continue. The big question mark is what is the U.S. going to do? Are they going to walk those – you know, are those state laws back? Or are they going to continue to push forward? Here's what I would just implore any HR leader or any HR team or any leader that's watching that might be here listening to this or watching a social clip is don't stop the work that you're doing.

[00:13:52] You know, even if it gets walked back doesn't mean that there isn't work that you can do. There is a lot of value and a lot of impact that you can make inside of your organizations to drive a more equitable organization, drive a more inclusive organization, allow your people to have a voice.

[00:14:11] It's because you really have to fundamentally believe that having that type of – building that type of organization that's sustainable, that type of a culture and a community is going to impact positively to your bottom line. No matter what anybody, any of the other sort of hoopla is saying, like it has proven that to be the case in a lot of profitable organizations right now. So just keep doing the work, even if you have to do it in the back end and you have to do it quietly, you know.

[00:14:40] Thanks for advocating for that, yeah. So we mentioned it. Many of our listeners probably doing their year-end cycles at the moment. You talked about some of the work that you're doing. A big part of that is, you know, that whole pay for performance conversations that are happening right now. And in the world of compensation, it's been a long contentious issue on the link between performance and pay.

[00:15:02] With everything from potential bias in the process being discussed as a problem, manager capability, maybe not having enough budget to really meaningfully differentiate on performance. Where's your header on this and how do you manage that pay for performance link in your organization? Yeah, it is such a contentious topic. And it's always an interesting one when I hear other companies are like, oh yeah, we're not doing pay for performance. Our performance is all about coaching and development.

[00:15:32] And I'm like, well, that's great. Like, I love that model. And so then how do you determine how you pay? Oh, well, we haven't figured that part out yet. But the performance is all about coaching and feedback. I'm like, again, but how are you determining pay? So we do still adhere to a pay for performance model. And I think it is something that we are like continuing to evolve. And I recognize like, yes, there's inherent bias in performance in general and really in any decisions that you make in a business, right? Like you – there's always going to be some level of bias.

[00:16:02] And so – and obviously that comes down to like human nature and the people you're working with. And so we continue to take the approach of teaching and educating and training and empowering our managers to understand where bias might show up and what types of biases might show up and how we are trying to mitigate that bias. And how we want to make sure that, yes, performance is about coaching and feedback. And so there's an element of what we're doing with performance where it's ongoing.

[00:16:27] We're having – you know, encouraging our managers to have ongoing one-on-one discussions, you know, making sure that one discussion a month, it's, you know, very much geared towards giving feedback. But we also believe in real-time feedback and the power of real-time feedback. And so while we're also – while we're teaching and empowering and coaching our managers, we're also doing the same with our employees. Such that employees understand why feedback is so important and why your managers might be giving you feedback and how to accept that feedback and how to take that feedback and turn it into action.

[00:16:56] Because ultimately it is about your development and your growth, right? And so it's sort of a two-pronged approach to make sure that both sides understand. We also have done a lot with our calibration processes to make sure that when we are doing – when we are doing those performance reviews and those performance ratings. And we've done a lot to work on our performance ratings to make sure that they're really clear to both the employee and the manager. And they are – it's, you know, like it's clear – there's clear delineation between someone that is like doing really great work and they're achieving.

[00:17:26] But those that are like really going above and beyond, these are the types of things that we're looking at. These are the types of actions. These are the types of behaviors. These are the types of competencies that we're seeing them so that employees can understand like, oh, I can understand why I might not be here and why I'm here. Because I think a lot of times in previous organizations that I've been in, there hasn't been a lot of time spent really making sure everybody understood that. And those are critical components of the entire sort of framework that you're using. And they're critical components to really being able to tie pay and performance.

[00:17:57] So calibration is a really big piece that we've spent a lot of time and energy on, you know, tweaking that system, getting a lot of feedback from managers and employees on what's working, what's not working. We're pretty transparent about our systems. Like we have a pay for performance matrix. We talk about how we build that matrix. It's tied to comp ratios. Because we've done so much education around compensation and bans and comp ratios and what does equity look like, we can tie the merit matrix to that a lot easier.

[00:18:26] So employees really understand that a bit more. But we're also thinking a little bit beyond, you know, just your typical merit. Like I think there are a lot of ways that you can reward employees for performance. You know, you can do bonuses, like one-time bonuses for particular projects that they might be working on that are above and beyond. You know, we've been talking a lot about what if someone is at the top of their pay band or maybe even outside of their top of their pay band now. And they don't have a desire right now to like move into that next role.

[00:18:56] Like, well, you know, at some point we can't keep giving them merit increases because now they're like beyond what the market bears for that cost of labor. So what are other things that we can do both monetarily and non-monetarily? So we've talked about how do we use equity? How do we use one-time bonuses? How do we use gross opportunities? Exposure to like our leadership team for them to grow in the areas. But that would, and that takes a lot of managers understanding what does that employee desire in their growth path.

[00:19:21] And so that's where I see like really great intersection between performance and real feedback and coaching and development with, you know, with pay. But pay doesn't have to look one way. There's a lot of ways that you can monetarily and non-monetarily incentivize your employees in your organization. So I know that there is obviously still a lot of contention around this.

[00:19:42] But I still believe that if you sort of educate and bring people along that journey to help them understand how they are linked, you can still do this productively. But it's not always going to be perfect. I don't think any model is going to be perfect because in any model, you're inherently dealing with a human making these decisions. Right. Right. I've seen a lot. I don't know, Ruth, if you've seen this, but like team bonuses or team performance where, you know, we did do a lot around our version of OKR.

[00:20:12] We call it priorities and pathways. And there's been a lot of talk about, you know, how do we connect that into performance and pay? And do we go down a path of like we've got these big priorities and if they hit these priorities, then maybe that's how we reward them financially. And we haven't quite nailed that down yet. I don't think we're quite there. We probably need a couple more iterations of us going through this process. It's only been two quarters for us since we've like relaunched that process internally.

[00:20:38] But that's another area that we are also looking at, but also poses and introduces its own set of challenges when you talk about paying for performance around a team. Not everybody pulls in their same weight. Right. And so then there's a whole other element. So that's where we are right now in our inside of my organization. Great. Thanks. Yeah. Similar, I think, to where we are at Payscale.

[00:20:58] We've done a lot of work around training employees in terms of understanding, you know, how successful performance discussions should happen. And then how we assess performance. We do it on a nine box grid and we assess the what and the how. So kind of giving people the language to understand, you know, what does a high how and a high what look like and all the different gradients beneath that. And then we do the same.

[00:21:25] And we do calibration sessions to make sure that we're doing the overarching consistency as well. And, you know, to try and get to the best outcomes we can. We can. But as you say, you know, it's that you're always dealing with people making decisions about people, which, as you say, will never be 100% scientific.

[00:22:12] Yeah. And what didn't work. And I think that is what's really strengthened. When I talk about when we first launched performance and calibration like a year and some change ago, we didn't have a performance process when I joined here a little over two years ago. And then from where we are now, we just did our mid-year review back in December. It was so impressive.

[00:22:32] And just I was so proud being in that room with all of our leaders and how much they have grown and how much improvement we saw in the caliber of the conversations we were having for calibration. Like managers were really understanding it much better. Leaders were really getting well-versed in it. And it was a pretty proud moment. I think sometimes you kind of have to stick with what you've launched and give it some time and some iteration and take that feedback versus the squirrel where you're like, oh, there's this new thing here and there's this new thing here.

[00:23:02] Like just stick with what you got and run some cycles and get some feedback and see where you win. And so I'm glad that we sort of stuck to our guns on this one and not shifted too much on based off what's going on, I think, in the market around us. Now, there's a few topics that reverberate around in terms of maybe they're going to be the next big thing in terms of compensation. Skills-based pay is one of them. The other is personalization in reward. I hear a lot, you know, I've been talking about it for quite a few years.

[00:23:28] We're going to get to the point where the employee is the real consumer and they're able to, you know, pick and choose. Is that something you're even thinking about? Is it something that you're, you know, you're starting to explore in your organization or? Um, so in some ways there are elements of, like, I guess in some ways we do it. Um, but I don't know that we've done it with this sort of like notion of personalization in mind.

[00:23:56] You know, and what I mean is, you know, I work in the U S my company's based in, um, Canada. I don't need medical benefits and dental benefits. I get that through my husband here. And so, you know, when I made that decision, Hey, I actually don't need benefits. So they said, okay, great. So for you that don't need benefits, then what we'll do is we'll give you a stipend instead. And then, you know, you get a monthly stipend and then because you're not using benefits. Right.

[00:24:23] And whereas, Oh, some other person in the U S might need their, might actually need benefits. Okay, great. Then we're going to offer you this benefits package and you can choose between these two benefits packages. And here's all the things that you get. And those two things are not created equal. Like the things that they may be getting selecting to have like benefits through the organization and the things that come with that are not exactly equal to the thing that all the options that I'm getting, but it's a, but I, but I was given that the choice and I could make

[00:24:51] that choice based off of my own needs. And right. What am I, what did I need? What do my family need? And I could make that decision. So I, I think in a way we've been, the organization has already been doing that in a way without even realizing that, um, where I think it's going to be interesting is like real intentional personalization such that you're really building total rewards packages around the notion of personalization, understanding the personas that you have inside of your organization, I think is fundamental.

[00:25:18] Um, no different than, you know, what product marketing or marketing does like, who are the people in my organizations? What are those personas? What do they value? What do they care about? Right. And then how do we design packages accordingly and give them the, I think the power of choice is a, is a way that you have to frame it because on the, on the flip side, I've talked about this with employees. Like what if we did something like this? Like, how would that make you feel? And I think they're like, well, how do you make it that it's equal? How, you know, how is it going to be equal? I'm like, well, I don't, as like, I think there's a difference between like something

[00:25:48] being equal and something being equitable. Those are not the same thing. And I think people often change that. And that's always something that I keep my, that I'm trying to be mindful of is how do we make sure that if we do continue to personalize, personalize one is how do we make sure they're equitable and people understand the difference between equal and equitable and that they have this power of choice. I also think it's important. It's one thing when you have these like upfront packages, when you're becoming a new employee and you make that choice up front.

[00:26:15] It's another thing on the other end, when you're using total rewards to incentivize your employees and you're incenting performance, you got to be super clear what that, that, that clear criteria is for performance, right? What are those metrics or those achievements that might qualify employees for particular personalized rewards and incentives? And you want to make sure that you're always tying that criteria to your company goals and the values, because ultimately incenting your employees through these, through, you know,

[00:26:43] using total rewards financially or non-financially, it's about driving outcomes and business outcomes. Like, let's be clear. Like that's what this is about is like incenting people to help drive the business to be more successful. When the business is more successful, let's be clear, we make more money and we can reinvest that money back into the organization, both on our people and our product for our customers. So I think that's another element. And of course, as we continue to think about that is like, what's the change component of that, right?

[00:27:10] It is the power of why everybody wants to know the WIFO what's in it for me and why should I care? And like, how is this going to positively impact my life? And so that's the other element. And we are resource constrained on my team for sure. And we've got a lot of big priorities for the remainder of our fiscal year. And so it's just trying to balance, you know, how we build that in and how do we want to, how do we want to introduce that more intentionally in the organization, even though unintentionally

[00:27:39] we've already been kind of doing it on the upfront. So I am excited to see where this goes and how we go about doing that. I think it's going to be a challenge in this world of employee expectations, expecting, you know, everything and expecting everything to be completely fair and equal, which again is different than being equitable. So I think that's a big challenge that we as a team are going to have to continue to do. Yeah, it's a really good. It's a point well made, isn't it?

[00:28:05] Because if you think about the some of the basic models where you talk about as an employee, you might have the choice to select the ratio that you take in fixed pay versus variable pay versus stock or equity, if that's an option in your organization. So you, you know, one of the issues there is if you make a decision to take a portion of variable pay, that scheme may do very well or the same with like equity and stock.

[00:28:30] And so that being able to then compare exactly, okay, well, we've all had the same benefit out of that is very hard. But as you say, I like the notion of describing it as the power of choice because ultimately that's what it's about. You're choosing something that suits you for the outcomes that you think might happen, that you think are going to be more beneficial to how you need, you know, what you need in terms of total reward right now in your life, basically. That's right. I mean, I have conversations with employees all the time about our equity, right?

[00:28:59] And, you know, what is our equity valued at? And, well, I came here for this and, you know, not for that. And it's like, well, hey, at the end of the day, like when you're coming to us, like a startup and you are making a choice and you are, it's a risk, right? Not every startup you go to where you get equity is going to like be this unicorn that like takes off and you're making millions of dollars. Like, but that's a choice that you're making. You're making trade-off decisions every day.

[00:29:26] You know, I made a trade-off to come back to a smaller company because I wanted to build and grow versus a larger company. Like, at any given point, there's going to be puts and takes. And there's always going to be like, well, if I'd done this, I might have, this might have happened. But that again is the power of choice that you get to make every day. So let's think about wrapping up here. What's the one item that's top of your to-do list for 2025 as we start the year and that you're particularly excited about? Yeah.

[00:29:55] Oh gosh, there's so much. Well, I'm pretty proud. You know, one thing that I will say that I shared with a lot of our organization last week is I'm proud of where we stand on continuing to commit to being diverse and equitable and building inclusive experiences. You know, Vidyard is doubling down on that commitment. We are not straying from like what we believe and that's believing in our people and empowering our people and making sure that folks have a voice here.

[00:30:21] Um, but I think another area that we started to work on at the tail end of last year, um, that I'm really excited to continue to focus in on is this notion of how do we continue to integrate a customer obsession into our culture and our operating rhythms at Vidyard. Ultimately, at the end of the day, we are a SaaS organization. We are building a product to solve a problem for our customers. We were, you know, really spent a lot of time trying to figure out what are those hair on fire problems that our customers are having right now and how can our products really help solve those problems.

[00:30:50] And I think it's also a matter of like helping employees understand it's not a trade-off between, you know, uh, being obsessed about our employees over our customers or being obsessed about our customers over our employees. It's not a, it's not a, it's not an either or it's, it's a interception of the two. Like we gotta be really good about understanding our customers, being obsessed with what our customers desire and build product and build solutions that solve for them. And, and for us to really be excited about that as employees, cause we can, we solve problems.

[00:31:19] That's where we're making real impact and that's where real growth happens. And so what we've been really trying to figure out as a leadership team and as a people team is how do we, how do we continue to integrate that type of culture? How do we reinforce what those behaviors of customer obsession behaviors look like? How do we tie that to performance? How do we, how do we reward those behaviors such that they're setting the example for everybody else? Um, you know, how do we recognize that both my financially and non-financially, you know, monetarily, non-monetarily.

[00:31:48] Like I think it's important for us to link performance and compensation to customer outcomes so that employees can very clearly see how their work and what they do day in and day out contributes to the company's success. And mo, and that is how they're going to continue to be motivated to drive, you know, customer success. Cause at the end of the day, customer success is our success and that's how we're going to reinvest back into our people. So I am actually really excited. I think it's an interesting challenge.

[00:32:15] Um, and we've been doing a lot of work on, like I said, over the past quarter, quarter and a half, and we've seen some really notable positive outcomes. Um, so that's an area that we're really continuing to focus on in 2025. And of course, at the helm of all of that for, for us is compensation, right? How are we continuing to evolve our compensation practices? How do we continue to, um, drive education? One area of education, like our phase two of education is around what is variable pay?

[00:32:44] How do you tie that to performance? What is equity? What does that mean? What does that mean for like, we hadn't done, we haven't done that part of our education around compensation yet. So, um, that's going to be phase two of education for us in our, in our next fiscal year. Great. So it sounds like you're going to have a busy 2025. Who knows what type of ride it's going to be. Be great to get together maybe later on in the year and see how, how things have evolved. But thank you so much for coming to share your insights today. We covered a lot of ground.

[00:33:14] We talked about pay transparency, performance reviews, AI, personalized rewards. So thanks so much for coming on and joining me on Comf & Coffee and enlightening the audience on where your head's at as we start 2025. So thank you. And we hope you all enjoyed this discussion. And if there are any topics that you'd like us to explore in future episodes, or you'd like me potentially to, to discuss with Sarika when she comes back is do let us know at coffee at payscale.com.

[00:33:44] And we hope to see you on our next episode. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me, Rose. Bye.