Navigating Company Culture and Acquisitions in HR with Maggie Smith SVP HR at Traliant

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[00:00:49] a better tomorrow with I-Solved. For more information go to isolvedhcm.com Hey, what is going on everybody? Ryan Leary, William Tinkup here with Ms. Nelly Smith of Triliant. Correct? I got it. Correct. All right. I've got it. I've got it. Sorry. I've been mispronouncing the company name.

[00:01:13] Three takes. Three takes. No, one take. It was one take. Not that bad. Anyhow, welcome you are listening and watching the Practitioners Corner. Maggie, welcome into the show. Today is all about you. Does that make you nervous? No. Thanks for having me. It's wonderful to be here.

[00:01:30] Oh, it's wonderful to have you. Why don't we start off, introduce yourself properly to the audience so that they know who you are and then we'll get this thing rolling. All right. Sounds good to me. So I am Maggie coming to you today from Richmond, Virginia.

[00:01:48] Lived in Richmond past three years and prior to that was in the Boston area. So Big Relo a few years ago. And that's when I came to Treliant was when I came here kind of a weird way wound up in Central Virginia for 15 months.

[00:02:08] It was too quiet for me. Do not recommend it. It was beautiful, but I couldn't hack it out there. Too many trees. Yeah. Cows. So I could only hang 15 months and then I had to move to Richmond, Virginia. You made a weather change right there.

[00:02:25] You got a Boston winters. Yes. Yes. I left my snowblower behind and never looked at it. Yeah. That would be a good thing. Occasionally you have to worry about a hurricane, but you know what? What's the chances of that hit? Yeah, but that's like occasional.

[00:02:41] You're not pushing a snowblower for four months. Winter happens every year in Boston. And the Boston is probably like a lot of the Northeast. Even if the first snow is so gorgeous and it's like you look at it, it's just like everyone's on a high. It's beautiful.

[00:03:00] And then you get into like March and the snow's still there. People are just angry about the snow. This is how Maggie, this is how we know that William is from Texas. 100%. Because the first snow is not beautiful.

[00:03:16] It's like beautiful for a day while it's white and fluffy. And then it gets dirty and mushy and tires. That's our snow. That's our winner. That's literally, it's all in a week. We get it every year. We get a week. There's a vice.

[00:03:30] Everyone goes to the grocery store. Then there's some snow. Kids go out and play. And then it's gone. That's it. Yeah. Yeah. Kills the mosquitoes. No. We're good. Well Maggie, let's do a little bit. What's your current position?

[00:03:46] What's your, what's the breadth and breadth of what you do at? Traliant. So I joined Traliant a little over three years ago. Is that in a COVID move? Yeah. I broke out of healthcare during COVID. I'll admit. I couldn't hack that either. Fair.

[00:04:10] She's like, I can't deal with the winter. I can't deal with the trees. I can't deal with healthcare. Yeah. We're good. Fair enough. Seemed good. Jumped over to Traliant after toughening it out for a period of time working in the senior living industry during COVID. Wow.

[00:04:29] And then joined Traliant as the first human resources practitioner that they had hired and really got to set about kind of dismantling things that have been put into place by non-HRP people. That was one of the next questions.

[00:04:45] How much did you have to undo in the first three years? Was it like a year of your life? Which is undoing? Just 18 months of my life. Yeah. Well, the people they have the best intentions, right?

[00:04:58] So before they have HR, it's usually an office manager and executive assistant or maybe someone from operations. Maybe they've taken some classes. Sometimes they have a PEO. There's some structure-ish, but most of the HR pros that I know when they come in that

[00:05:18] situation, it's doing simultaneously putting in new practices while dismantling everything that was broken from before. Whatever that is. I think this is how great companies are built. I mean a lot of these tech companies, especially in our space, they've never had a lick

[00:05:35] of experience in recruiting and TA, HR or anything. They just had a bad experience. Well, you should start my business with entrepreneurs is start a company with HR. Have somebody in HR and then you don't have to go through that undoing phase. Really at all.

[00:05:56] You start somebody there that understands talent. It could be recruiting, it could be HR, it could be a blend, but you start, it should start with somebody. If you're starting with a salesperson or a product person, you should start with somebody that knows talent. Solid advice, absolutely.

[00:06:14] Usually not taken, unfortunately, but yes. Yeah. What is rhymes with compliance or reliant? What would you say, what do you do? What's the mix of services and products, et cetera? We actually sell training compliance for other companies. Typically human resources is our customer.

[00:06:37] We're selling training on preventing discrimination and harassment in specific training geared towards different industries. So maybe the restaurant industry, selling code of conduct, training, things of that nature and just also training that's great for managers to have how to hire,

[00:06:59] training about being aware of our biases that we all bring to the table and whether we want to admit it or not and how to overcome those and be aware of those. And so our team, we're about 150 employees all together and we have

[00:07:13] department sales departments, product, of course, our client services teams and marketing and all that good stuff. And then a small but mighty HR team. Well, you're on the team, so it is mighty. It's our team.

[00:07:32] All right, so I'm going to go out on a limb here and I'm going to assume what's keeping you up at night is something inside of compliance, diversity. By something in that area, I could be very wrong. But what is it?

[00:07:47] What is what is Maggie thinking about right now that keeps you up at night? Work related. Work related, yes. That's good. Good line to put in the sand right there. All right. Because this was about to go very dark. Yeah, 100 percent. Sorry, go ahead.

[00:08:06] This is a wide enough episode. Coming from a client company, I'm not all that worried about compliance because we have a great product that our employees participate in and complete the training assignments. So really what I've been thinking a lot about lately is really kind of.

[00:08:26] I want to take a break real quick just to let you know about a new show. We've just added to the network up next at work, hosted by Gene and Kate A'Keele of the Devon Group. Fantastic show.

[00:08:39] If you're looking for something that pushes the norm, pushes the boundaries, has some really spirited conversations, Google up next at work. Gene and Kate A'Keele from the Devon Group. The reexamination of our culture. And the reason I've been thinking about that is that we have had

[00:09:00] two acquisitions in the past year. So we've really gone ahead and brought together. We had Treliant and then we completed one acquisition and added about 20 employees to the mix. And then we had another acquisition at the beginning of this year and added another 40 employees to the mix.

[00:09:20] Good time to reset. Yeah, so you really are bringing together completely different cultures, people who were maybe used to operating in a much smaller organization and really trying to take a step back and understand what's important to all these people that are now together

[00:09:44] and what keeps them up at night, most importantly, and how can we fix that? So really get to the bottom of that now that we're about almost six months in with the last acquisition and we just rolled out a employee engagement survey and the results are pouring in.

[00:10:02] We're doing a great job. We're closing it out on Friday and we have a 91% participation rate so far. Fantastic. Oh, nice. I'm excited about that. I always would if those surveys when I worked. All right. Yeah. But you never talk to them either. Stop it. No, of course.

[00:10:22] But the thing is, it's seeking up the culture and also seeking up the business strategy and the goals and the vision. Absolutely. Very important. It's not done in a vacuum, but getting everyone's interest. So to give us some context, Maggie, are we a return to office?

[00:10:41] Are we hybrid or remote, fully remote? Like where are we on the spectrum? Turalyne, it's fully remote and the companies that we acquired are also fully remote, which can add to the challenge and bringing those three cultures together. Right.

[00:10:55] You know, building the psychological safety, getting people to work together. It can be a little more complex, but certainly doable in a fully remote environment. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. You just it's a different method than we used to. We would walk around and talk to people.

[00:11:10] Okay, that was a method. But now you OK, you can't walk around and talk to people. But by getting the survey results back and finding out, OK, people really care about whatever it is. It doesn't matter. Then you can actually start to figure out, OK, strategically,

[00:11:26] how do we tackle that? How do I communicate that to the other leaders and make sure that everyone sees the same thing? And again, it's sinking. I think once you have some data, it's sinking that up with business strategy. Absolutely. Yes.

[00:11:42] And making sure that everybody's clear on what the business strategy is because even if you think you've communicated it consistently, there are still people out there I could guarantee who are sure what the strategy is. Right.

[00:11:55] I always do that deal when I when I would do the business strategy. I'd say I'd say the goals here are the three goals. And then I would literally go person by person and go, what did you hear?

[00:12:06] Like when I got to Adam individually, I'd do this bit where I'm like, what did you hear? And then they tell me they tell me and almost to a T no one got the three goals. Like I got my two, but they never got all three.

[00:12:20] And it's like, oh, that's a wonderful way to be going. OK, good, good. So here's one, here's two, here's three on three. You're a little sideways. Not a problem. Here's why three is important. And again, it's hard for leaders because I think they're great communicators

[00:12:36] and I think they can just communicate once and like it's done. Employees need a constant to me at least. They need a constant drumbeat. Of what it is, why they're doing it. How why does it matter? So that they can feel like they're part of something. Absolutely.

[00:12:52] Maggie, what's the big challenge right now that you're facing with integrating these these three? And I asked that question for obvious reasons. But the audience that listens to this show follows journeys of practitioners and I'm going to assume people that are going to

[00:13:08] click here are going to be in this situation. So what are those challenges that you're facing? And let's maybe dig into that. You know, it's so interesting that the three cultures that we brought together are so very different.

[00:13:22] So the last culture that kind of joined us, they were you know, a really intimate group that knew each other really well. And we've like dropped them into the sea of 150 people when they were, you know, together with 40 and really knew everyone.

[00:13:39] And not only that, we changed the technology on them and we're like, oh, no, no, we don't use Black. We use teams and you know, just so it's just a really different culture in the pace at Trelyan or growing organization.

[00:13:57] And you know, it's a much swiffer pace than some of these people have been used to. And that's hard for people. It changes hard. No one ever is like, oh, I hope we get acquired. You know, I've never there's every now and then you stumble across

[00:14:11] a few founders. Yeah. Yeah, but not the every day employees. Right. Right. Exactly. So it's just, you know, definitely what William said, I think it's really that game of telephone to with employees when, you know, the first, you know, four to six weeks they're drinking

[00:14:33] from a fire hose trying to understand what are the policies here? What are the benefits that are available to me? When's the deadline that I have to enroll in these? Right. And then, you know, yeah, and then the dust sort of begins to settle a bit.

[00:14:49] And then they're like, wait, did we ever know this? Did you tell us this? And it's just, you know, that ongoing messaging. So you're trying to get them to learn, hey, here's how we do things. Here's our culture.

[00:15:02] And, you know, really, I think a good lesson for each of our practitioners listening is, you know, what are some things in their culture that, you know, you could introduce into your culture? 100 percent. That expert opinion on all things. And, you know, there are probably some easy things

[00:15:22] that you can implement to help people feel more at home and more connected to one another. I think that the traverses technology and process as well. Yes. Being open. So it takes both sides. And in this case, all three sides,

[00:15:38] it takes an HR leader like yourself that's open to then say, listen, let's look at culture. OK, let's look at all of our cultures and let's pick kind of and then again, align it. OK, great. But then you can do the same thing with tech, you know, like,

[00:15:56] OK, we use this ATS. Great. And then everyone else is, we use Ashby, no, we use Greenhouse. OK, all right. Tells pros and cons like, hey, I'm not tied to any of this. Yeah, I always want to use the best technology. Absolutely.

[00:16:09] And the same thing is process too. Like, OK, what's your onboarding process? Your client onboarding, employee onboarding, what's your onboarding process? And all of a sudden they tell you stories like, oh, no, that's better. That's better than we do it.

[00:16:23] We need to. I mean, that's another reason why you acquire a company. It's not just clients and revenue and all that stuff. It's it's this type of thing where, hey, they're going to bring some better technology to bear. Great. You know, that's fantastic. That is a beautiful cat.

[00:16:40] Thank you. Yeah. The people listening are like, what the hell? Oh, yeah. You know, that is a big cat, too. That is not a small cat. He's the main coon cat. He's appointed himself an unofficial member of the HR team. A lot of opinions. Yes, he's as he.

[00:17:01] He looks like some of the cats you see on the cat food bags. Yeah. Yeah. Yes, I should have locked him out of here, but he's happy to be. Oh, it's fine. He's fine. So for those that are listening, you're not seeing the cat.

[00:17:15] Go go find the video. You'll find you can go to YouTube and find a cat. You can go find some Maggie with their acquisitions. You had some talent that you brought in. Did you keep the talent?

[00:17:28] Did you keep some of the folks that were touching HR or even some of the folks? Well, they primarily carried out a finance test. They've been sitting with the finance team and really helping them right with, you know, merging of different accounts, collecting any outstanding payables, that nature.

[00:17:48] But definitely, you know, they have been great when I've reached out and asked them questions about, you know, also it's like the merging of benefits too. So really finding your broker that you use, you know, when do your policies renew?

[00:18:03] And, you know, all these kind of really nuts and bolts types of that you need to find out and ask the question, you know, hey, what was your HRS system? What do people, you know, because people inevitably forget and say, who I give my W to from 2023

[00:18:23] and, you know, want to be able to respond to them, point them in the right direction. So and then, fortunately, in this situation, we have access to the owners of both companies that we acquired. So really talking to them, learning, you know, what was their strategy?

[00:18:40] What was their approach to culture? You know, what were some things that really worked well and that their employees really enjoyed and what could we bring here to the table or replicate in some way? So, you know, they used Slack and had different channels in there.

[00:18:57] And we were like, great, that sounds fun to us. We'll add those channels and, you know, give people that opportunity to talk about, you know, whatever they want on those channels. If it's we have a pet channel, which of course is very important. Critical.

[00:19:11] As you can tell in my house. And just, you know, books, you know, talk about books, things of that nature. So right. And then it's just bringing people together regularly, making sure that, you know, hopefully your managers are having conversations one on one.

[00:19:30] And we recently introduced a tool that really helped better manage that process for employees and their managers. If you don't mind, what was the tool? It's lattice. So it has a great one on one tool that manager and the employee can say,

[00:19:47] hey, I want to put this on the agenda for our one on one. And it just is a great way. It's way better than the little post-it notes I had scattered on my desk. It's much more effective because without fail. Yeah, a little bit.

[00:20:02] I'm getting and then find another post. I think, yeah. Yeah. So Maggie, I want to ask this because I'm always interested in the actual process of everything. So what has been more difficult for you? Right. Was it the is it the technology

[00:20:22] introducing new technology into the companies you've brought in or has it been introducing the people into the process and integrating those together with your current employees? Oh, my goodness. Bad touching, harassment, sex, violence, fraud, threats, all things that could have been avoided.

[00:20:47] If you had Fama, stop hiring dangerous people. Fama.io. All right. I want to talk to you for a moment about retaining and developing your workforce. It's hard. Recruiting is hard. Retaining top employees is hard. Then you've got onboarding, payroll, benefits, time and labor management.

[00:21:09] You need to take care of your workforce and you can only do this successfully if you commit to transforming your employee experience. This is where I solve comes in. They empower you to be successful. We've seen it with a number of companies that we've worked with.

[00:21:24] And this is why we partner with them here at work to find. We trust them and you should too. Check them out at isolvedhcm.com. I know they go hand in hand, but which kind of yeah, we'll talk for a case.

[00:21:39] Definitely the latter of the two because, you know, many people you know, are surprised they didn't know that their organization was, you know, looking for a potential buyer. Right. And they were like things the way that they were like any of us,

[00:21:54] you know, we're all creatures of habit and it's hard to, you know, often introduce them and not just a new organization, but like a whole new process, a whole new pace and a whole new way of doing things. So it can be really challenging to do that.

[00:22:13] It takes a long time for sure. Let's go let's go backward a little bit and build towards your career. Fifteen year old Maggie wanted to be a. I think I want to be a veterinarian, but then I later realized what that entailed

[00:22:31] and was like, I would be terrible at that. My big dream quickly. Everyone's good with veterinarian until you get to euthanasia. Right. Exactly. Yeah, I had to tap out of that career before they even began. So what was your first job job after college or before?

[00:22:52] So I know William, we were talking before the show and much like your, your family kind of see what's going on. I enlisted in the army right out of high school. Seemed like a brilliant idea at the time. My parents were less convinced of its brilliancy.

[00:23:09] But but I was able to sell them on that because I really didn't know what I wanted. I really didn't know it all figure it out. You know, what that was out there in terms of being able to career pass.

[00:23:24] And for you, I was like, I don't really know how I'm going to pay for this. I have no idea, you know, grew up in the Midwest, Illinois, modest family and really couldn't afford to like figure it out and pay tuition at the same time.

[00:23:40] So I enlisted in the army, had my 18th birthday when I was in basic training. Do not recommend. It would have been great otherwise. So Friday, but it was not great. And really once I got out of the military, completed my enlistment,

[00:23:58] I just I just kind of randomly moved to the Boston area. I grown up in Illinois and I figured, you know what, I'm going to there's definitely plenty of options for school there. And I wound up attending Northeastern University in downtown Boston, nights weekend.

[00:24:15] So it was very glamorous while I worked by day. And one of those jobs that I ended up at, I was the office manager, a predictably as you'd mentioned before, William. All right.

[00:24:29] And I didn't even know when I was hired that HR was a part of that job. They just kind of slid that in. Oh, by the way, you got the office manager payroll. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Personnel, personnel. Yeah. Yeah. So I ended up joining them.

[00:24:51] And one day, you know, it was the good old days when we had fax machines, somebody faxed over their dental enrollment form. And I had to ask the CEO who gets this enrollment form. And she said, oh, you do. You. And I thought, oh, no.

[00:25:09] I mean, not it. Yeah, exactly. I knew nothing about benefits management, administration. Why would you? You are, you know, yeah. So luckily, I was attending Northeastern at that time, nights and weekends. So I very quickly started my minor, quickly became human resources.

[00:25:34] I was at the time majoring in health management, which is essentially like a business management. And I worked in health care in human resources for many years, spent some time in tech and then joined Tralion. So yeah, so that was how it began.

[00:25:50] And I stayed with them and learned as much as I could. Did a lot of networking. There's a woman out there named Carrie from Guardian Dental somewhere in the universe who like really taught me a lot about benefits,

[00:26:03] which was very generous of her and answered all my ridiculous questions. And I had many and definitely made friends with some health insurance brokers along the way that were also really helpful. Yeah, you know classes.

[00:26:18] So I stayed at that job and then was like, OK, this is great, but I should probably leave enjoying a team so that I can, you know, continue to learn bounce ideas off that group of people. And so that's what I did at that time.

[00:26:33] So now if you weren't introduced to HR through the fax machine and being tagged as your it, would you have chosen this career or would this not have been a thought? You know what I would like to say yes.

[00:26:46] But I think at the time I was still even though I was going to Northeastern and had a major, I was still kind of trying to figure it out. I had an interest in law. I had an interest in business. I had an interest in social work.

[00:27:00] And I kind of feel like HR brings all those strange things together. Not that HR people are lawyers, but you certainly have to be aware of the applicable laws and you'll need one if you don't do it the right way. Yeah. So yeah.

[00:27:15] So I felt like it kind of wound up being a great you know, fit to bring all those things together. Yeah. So did were you active like in Shurm or when you're in health care, Ashra or any of those types of associations? Yes, I joined Shurm early on.

[00:27:34] That's a great resource. You know, I feel like they have any template online that you could possibly imagine. So never need to reinvent the wheel there. Right. And then I was involved in because I worked in assisted living at the time I was called alpha,

[00:27:52] the assisted living Federation of America. It's now our gentem. That's another great resource as well. That's fantastic. So have you developed a mentor in HR? Are you do you are do you mentor others at this particular job? Sure. It's a great question.

[00:28:11] So I'm very involved in my local Shurm chapter, Richmond Shurm, and I'm on the board of Richmond Shurm, and I'm actually responsible for the mentor program through that through what you're saying. So we're really pairing up earlier career HR professionals and I think mentors are incredibly helpful

[00:28:35] no matter what stage in your career. I still have, you know, my own Rolodexa people. I'm trying to connect with someone that I worked for years ago. She's a chief human resources officer for company in Boston,

[00:28:49] just to like pick her brain on, you know, various things that keep me up and, you know, want to hear her experience with those. So I think that, yeah, you can't go wrong with that. We just rolled out a mentor program here at Trolain as well.

[00:29:04] But let's talk about the mentor program if we can. We've we've had a number of conversations around this and we seem to get I think there's a common theme among how people are building, but they're they're nuanced in different ways. And I think each is slightly different.

[00:29:22] So curious to understand how you're you're building this mentorship program. How are you building it? What do you would put are the what are the problems that you're putting into this? So it's really we had people all complete an application

[00:29:38] and indicate their interest in either being a mentor or being mentored. Some people were like, I do either one and just really kind of looked at, you know, what were they hoping to get out of it? Why were they applying? What was driving that?

[00:29:53] And then really looking at, OK, who are the individuals that, you know, what are the answers on both sides? And that's how we made the matches. I know that in some case, I think my team member was like, we're reading out really those two.

[00:30:07] And, you know, but it made sense because the one individual really wanted to learn about an aspect of the business that touched her department. And so we just kind of had the kickoff and are, you know,

[00:30:20] kind of letting people loose and letting them set up their first meeting for really sharing resources with them. There's a great book out there, and I'm going to look up what it's called because it's escaping me now, but it's really about mentorship

[00:30:34] and really developing goals as both the mentor and mentee. But I just feel like mentors get so much out of that experience as well. Maybe even sometimes. To a certain degree. Yeah, yeah. So on on assisted living and health care, so we'll do separately, if you don't mind.

[00:30:53] Sure. What are some of the unique things that happen in HR in those two areas? Well, I know that, you know, everybody in HR would point to COVID. For sure. But absolutely. I remember at the time, you know, COVID was happening

[00:31:12] and I had just moved to the middle of nowhere, you know, Virginia at that time. And I remember unpacking, you know, books that I'd saved from a master's degree program and thinking, well, these are useless because nobody covered a pandemic as something to worry about. Crystal or donations.

[00:31:33] Her statement. Yeah. So I'm just, you know, at that time, I mean, that was a real challenge. I feel like health care and doing HR and health care is an added challenge because, you know, often you're working with people who unfortunately are underpaid. It's a very hard job.

[00:31:54] They could go, you know, get paid the same amount of money to work at Target and, you know, probably go home with clean clothes at the end of the day. Right. So that was it was always a challenge.

[00:32:06] And then it was heightened by COVID where, you know, people lost daycare for their children and they were like, I don't know how I'm going to come to work. Or people were, you know, working for us who had compromised immune systems and really, you know, understandably were like,

[00:32:24] I don't really think I can continue to put myself in this situation. So that was really, you know, it just compounded the challenges that many health care providers, organizations face day in and day out. So this is not a loaded question.

[00:32:46] Sure. It's it's a question that I know practitioners are going to have that are either going to go through acquisitions or, you know, that I've been through them is you've got three different compensation strategies that have been played out over years or months, whatever the bit is

[00:33:04] and to sink those up into one place. You know, you might have a let's say BDR just like it's super simple. Someone in sales at company one, they might have a different common structure in company two, something completely different. Company three, completely different than those two.

[00:33:22] And at one point it's getting those things synced up. But again, it can't happen overnight. It doesn't happen overnight. But your thoughts on how do you get to because you got compression issues, you got pay equity issues.

[00:33:37] And as I say, you every acquisition in the history of acquisitions. So not you. You how do you what are your what's your philosophy on kind of getting those things synced up? Well, definitely make friends with finance quickly. You're not already there. Yes. No.

[00:33:56] And you definitely need to, you know, and work with definitely the sales leader on, you know, indefinitely, you're absolutely right. We didn't like rip that rug out from under people. You know, just can't really had to say, and even like the benefits

[00:34:12] cost, for example, you got to look at that. What are people, you know, paying towards their benefits? You know, we acquired a group and they weren't paying towards their benefits. So we're not going to be like, welcome to Tralion. Here's how much it's going to cost. Right.

[00:34:26] That 50 percent. Come on. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. How do you even manage that? Like, how do you if I'm paying nothing, Williams paying 50 percent? I mean, I think 50 percent. You really just kind of look at when does your plan renew?

[00:34:42] We were and get really creative and friendly with your broker. We a lot of the employees we inquired lived in California. So they had. Oh, yeah. So we don't have a kind of plan. So really, we made the decision.

[00:34:57] Hey, we're going to keep you with your plan, which I hope there's probably not brokers listening to this because I'm not sure that was 100 percent on the up and up, but it was the right thing to do for the employees to maintain their network of providers

[00:35:11] and really knowing that a change would come at a certain point. Exactly. We said, hey, you know what? Oh, like, we're not changing it today. And I can't tell you what it'll look like by the time our open enrollment rolls around, which will be rolling around in July.

[00:35:28] Work it on that renewal now. So really kind of looking at it, what makes sense? You know, is there a way to ease people into it? And really, and then like, you know, William, you mentioned you really want to get everybody in your HRIS system

[00:35:41] really take a look at the salaries for people. And if you know that, you know, somebody's off and maybe you don't need to correct it. You need a budget for that because you might not have that budget set aside. But really how do we make that correction?

[00:35:58] You know, that like, because maybe they came in higher than somebody else in your team with the same seniority. So how do you kind of you got a plan for all of that? Or, you know, it's so different by organization because it really depends on the organization's

[00:36:14] pay philosophy. Oh, 100%. It's total rewards, total benefits. I have any of that stuff and I love that you mentioned benefits as I talked about pay because it's all tied together. It's all from the CFO's perspective, it's all an expense. It's a good expense, but still an expense.

[00:36:33] But what a common professionals have told me in the past when they have to go through this, this kind of bringing everything together is, you know, A, you manage expectations really not wisely in communication. It's like, this isn't happening overnight. Yes. It's expected to happen overnight.

[00:36:49] And then when it does, once there's a budget and a plan, then it's incremental. So if you're if you're trying to adjust salaries, let's say 45 is the the average and you're trying to bring someone from 35, you don't just give them $10,000. Right. Yeah.

[00:37:07] It's like a thousand dollars a month that just gets added. You know, obviously you talk to the employee about it and all that type of stuff. And that's really, you know what? I joined Treliant. Things were kind of all over the map because they didn't have HR.

[00:37:23] And I remember there was one department in particular and I called the leader and said, what happened? What happened here at the park? Why are you 75 percent above the rest of the company? It was like you were in a steam department.

[00:37:38] You'd have somebody way up here, someone down here and it kind of depended on the whim of, you know, the lead. You know, the lead. 100 percent. You know, the company was growing. So maybe, you know, they're like, OK, get this person in.

[00:37:51] But, you know, at this rate, so we had to do a lot of correction gradually, as you mentioned. Well, you know, it took a while over a year to really kind of. The company has to be able to sustain as well. Yes. Absolutely. Yeah.

[00:38:08] That's a tough balancing act. You can't just pay 100 people, ten thousand dollars more. Right. Exactly. A lot of money. Yeah. So really, you know, we didn't hire. I know a lot of people hire outside, but there's a lot of great tools

[00:38:23] out there now that make this a lot easier. We started with seller.com. They have a paid subscription service and then we're using Open Comp now. But there's a lot of great ones out there that can really help you design ranges and really help you identify, OK,

[00:38:41] where do I need to get this person incrementally, as you stated? Absolutely. Are you with benefits? Are you each year you add and prune like one of those types of deals where you look at benefits, they're not using the CAP.

[00:38:59] Well, they're not using this particular service, whatever it is. OK, prune that. Now, they care more about well-being or whatever the new thing is. Add that like what's what's your philosophy around benefits? Yeah, you definitely.

[00:39:13] So when I first came to Trellion, it was kind of like the bare bones benefits, right, like the typical medical dental vision. That was it. There were no voluntary, you know, employee paid options. And we rolled out a survey right away to figure out like,

[00:39:29] what is important to this group of people? What matters to them? What would they like to see? Because you don't want to add a whole bunch of stuff at once because it's overwhelming to people. But what would matter the most?

[00:39:41] And then definitely, you know, look at the utilization. Find out what again, what's important to people, you know, read and, you know, try to act on the feedback that people give you. And I would say no is taking action.

[00:39:58] If the answer is no, tell people that like, hey, we can't do that. Here's why. I think that as long as you're closing that feedback loop, people at least feel hey, they heard me, they looked into it, they gave me an answer,

[00:40:13] wasn't the answer I wanted, but they explained why or could we get there incrementally as well? So yeah. And I think it's always good to look at the benefit options and offerings, get a broker, put the plan to bed, see what's out there. What makes sense?

[00:40:32] When so, people that are listening to this particular show are probably going to be in your situation. Right? So doing the integrations, et cetera, on the health care. And so William mentioned some of the the prong, right? The add-ons there.

[00:40:50] So the well-being or the total rewards or like you, the example you gave around paid paytime off for volunteering, things like that. How do you solicit the feedback from your from your from your employer population? You're a much larger employer population. Right, you're much larger, right?

[00:41:11] So you solicit that information, you have a whole bunch of ideas from people. How do you make that determination? How do you prioritize that to bring that in? I'm assuming it's not, well, 20 people said this and five or is it as basic as that?

[00:41:30] No, I wish. I wish it was that. But 10 people said they wanted this is not important. All those things have a cost to. So exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's really, you know, so, you know, it's also making sure you're competitive to when I got to Trelian.

[00:41:48] I was like, I remember when I got the benefits package for this job and my immediate thought was I got to change this shit. I was like, you're like, I'm going to sign this on the stipulation. This won't be here a year.

[00:42:06] I remember thinking, I don't know if I should take this job. I have a great benefits package. Then I was like, wait a minute, I'll be the one that's able to change this. How are we? Health. Right. Right.

[00:42:17] So really, you know, why I just felt like, oh my gosh, I was amazed that, you know, people even joined the company when I first joined. Right. I don't know how I think, you know, the fact that we are fully, you know, remote probably works in our favor.

[00:42:32] But I felt like there were some things missing that were just table stakes for benefits that, you know, we should implement. We did implement. And then I think it's really, you know, this year, you know, partnering with our broker closely and asking them, OK,

[00:42:47] what, how would we measure up against the benchmark of companies of similar size? So initially I was asking the employees this year, the brooch is, OK, how do we compare and, you know, where are some areas of opportunity that we should look at?

[00:43:03] And, you know, again, also partnering with your 401k to do the same. You know, what's the match? How do we compare against other companies again of our size? Well, you said the magic word with utilization. If people aren't using something, that's an easy cut.

[00:43:19] Because again, that's an expense. It's easy. That's an easy cut. Last question for me is advice you'd give your younger self. Like you're now into this career and you got all kinds of things in front of you. But what would you go back and tell yourself about it?

[00:43:37] I would say make more mistakes. Break some eggs. Probably not the answer. No, no. My answer. But I feel like where I've learned the most throughout my career was like these doozies that happened.

[00:43:53] That I was like, well, that wasn't good, but I'm not going to do that again. Right? So I'd say, you know, don't be afraid to make mistakes because it does mean you're trying something new. You know, just like you mentioned, William, if you introduce a benefit

[00:44:07] or a platform like I remember joining Trialiant, we rolled out this platform for people for like fitness challenges and things like that. And there was on demand video. No one used it. They told me they were going to use it and they were interested.

[00:44:23] But then, like, you know, and then I was like, I'm just going to like get rid of this and see if anybody notices. No one ever asked. Yeah, yeah. I'll tell them later. That's the downside of a survey going out on December 31st.

[00:44:38] Are you going to use your fitness program? Oh, yes. Yes, bro. So I would be like, don't like, you're not married to the mistake. Like everything is fixable. So just fix it. Like, you know, no big deal. Like, you could be, you know, you can recover from that.

[00:44:55] You don't know unless, you know, you try it and then, you know, I learned from that experience people didn't want to log in to yet another platform. So now when I look at things, I'm asking, OK, does this integrate with teams?

[00:45:07] How, you know, because that's where people are. And that's where they're spending their time. So we have a recognition program. It integrates with teams. It's an app called Matter. And we have, you know, kudos Fridays makes it super easy to participate.

[00:45:22] So just really like I would definitely say, you know, don't be afraid of me for stakes because that's how you're going to learn and you're going to learn a lot quicker. Yeah, you know, you're making me want to call my former HR reps

[00:45:37] and thank them because as you're talking, I'm listening and I'm thinking, you know, there's a lot of stupid things they put out there. In my opinion, they were like, why? Like, what is that?

[00:45:48] But then there were some really good, but I had options and it was constantly moving. And the one thing as I'm reflecting on it, the one thing I could always say about them, they were always doing something.

[00:46:01] Yeah. And I felt like I can trust them significantly more than my leadership right because they were always doing something for me and asking me. And I never really thought of it that way.

[00:46:13] Well, sometimes people forget that like every now and then I want to say to an employee, like, hey, I work here too, right? Like I benefit from the benefits from getting the salary structure right. So, you know, we're probably definitely looking out for employees

[00:46:31] and ourselves because we're strapped in for the ride as well. Yeah, 100 percent. This has been fantastic, right? It has. I enjoyed it. I reflected a little bit at the end. Yeah, like I need to go make amends with some of these people that I once said,

[00:46:49] what the hell are you doing in life? Said some mean things to them. So thank you for that, Maggie. OK. Maggie, you're a therapist today. Yes, yes, no, but really this has been a great conversation. I agree.

[00:47:01] We'll have to have you back on after July, after your open enrollment to see how that goes with the three different companies. You might be telling us a different story. How does it? Thank you, Maggie. Appreciate you for coming on, talking to the audience. We just appreciate you.

[00:47:17] Thank you for your time. Thank you.