Totally Rewarding Chats | Ep. 35: Live from San Antonio; Market Based Pay or Traditional Salary Structures

[00:00:00] Alright, we are totally rewarding chats coming to you from San Antonio World of Work. Another session live here. I am sans Paul Reimann, sans bow tie Paul Reimann, and I am replaced. I'm not replaced. That's probably what they had hoped for. Paul had to take off and Paul has a stand in Katie Stokowski from Salary who found out she was podcasting all of maybe five minutes ago. Is that about right? It's about right. Yeah.

[00:00:30] So, I'm excited to have Katie. She looks not as excited to be here. But she loves the topic we're going to talk about. So I'm stoked to have her here. And we are also with Amanda Williamson. How are you? I'm doing well. Thanks for having me. It's the first time with the headphones, isn't it? It is. It is. Very weird to hear yourself. Yeah. I don't know. Well, you don't talk to yourself a lot. Maybe this is me. I didn't have a hard time. In my head, but in my head, my voice sounds much better. Oh, okay. Do I even want to ask what your voice sounds like in your head?

[00:01:00] Katie said it earlier. I think less like a 12-year-old girl and more like a grown-up. Okay. Actually, that's true between the two of you. Yeah. It's kind of interesting with the voices this time. So that I don't mess it up. Give us your background and what you're doing today, and then we'll jump into the show after the speed round. Sure. So my name is Amanda Williamson. I am the director of talent management and compensation at a company called Premise Health. We are based out of the Nashville area.

[00:01:28] Sean, on the big screen, you said, I don't think anybody grows up knowing that they want to go into comp. And I think I'm the anomaly here because in grad school, I very much knew that compensation was the direction that I wanted to go. So I have a background in industrial and organizational psychology. We specifically had a grad-level class in compensation, and I just fell in love. I was lucky enough to land a compensation analyst job at Premise Health directly out of grad school, and then I've had a multitude of different roles there since then.

[00:01:57] So I've been in a business partner-type role. I've been a people leader of compensation, and then more recently taken on talent management under my umbrella. So Premise Health is a direct health care provider. We partner with large self-insured companies and provide clinics and virtual health care services where their employees sit. So what I said on the big stage, though, was that happens in college some, but now the question is, when you were a freshman in high school, went to a guidance counselor, and they're like,

[00:02:26] so, Amanda, what do you think you want to do? Did you go, I want to go into organizational development and design and get my master's? Probably not in those words. I knew I wanted to work with people, and I wanted to work with data in Excel, and I think just along the way, I've found the words to say that, and it was industrial and organizational psychology, and it was compensation specifically. I mean, you wanted to work with data in Excel when you were 19 years old. I did. Did your backpack say, I love pivot tables?

[00:02:53] I don't think I knew what a pivot table was at that time, but close. Okay. You are a comp nerd at heart. I love it. That is true. So I would put you on the spectrum. I'm still waiting for the person who was a freshman, because I still think if their parents were in TR, they're probably like, I don't want to do that shit. But I'm waiting for the freshman who was like, that is what I want to do. But that is as close down the queue as we have seen, especially when you're in high school and I want to work with people. That's pretty solid.

[00:03:23] I love it. I actually just had a coworker ask if schools had specific courses in compensation and if that was an actual track that they could take. And I said, well, you apparently did not go to a school that offered compensation within one of the degrees. But it's great to hear that it is something you were able to go into as well. I haven't heard of a track anywhere. I'd be interested if there's any schools out there. But we did have one class. One class. That was more than anybody else had. Amazing.

[00:03:47] I know. Not that I have no financial interest in Rutgers, but they have a compensation track in their master's program. There's a few others. There's a couple others that are out there that have comp, which is kind of cool now. And I know two people now, which makes my universe very weird, that have their doctorate in compensation. Fascinating. Yeah. You gave Amanda another idea. That is my next goal. Oh, look at Amanda.

[00:04:12] For those that aren't watching on YouTube, Amanda is very excited right now about the opportunity. I don't know if any of them are in Nashville. Okay. I am a nerd. I do love school. I would love the opportunity to go back. So the speed round of questions. Are you ready? I'm ready. Coffee or tea? Coffee. Okay. The follow-up question when you're coffee, are you a coffee snob? Yeah, I am. I would like to not be, but I am. So do you have your own maker? Like, what's the process at home for making coffee? I do.

[00:04:42] We got an espresso maker. I've taken the class on how to use it. It's a whole thing. Okay. We buy the freshly roasted beans, not the store beans. I'm all in. Oh, that is super solid. Did you know that was a follow-up question? This is an embarrassing moment. How many episodes have you listened to any, Katie? I have. Okay. That was going to be really embarrassing. I was ready to ask about, like, Mr. Coffee Maker, which is what we still have at our house. Oh, that is probably not at Amanda's house. No judgment. Stay there.

[00:05:12] Don't start moving up because there's no going back. Vacation place you haven't been to that's top of your list. So after this conference, I have a girl's trip to Puerto Rico. I think that counts. I haven't been there. It's coming up. I'm looking forward to it. That's true. No customs. Easy flights. Great weather. Can't beat it. As great as they told us that would be in San Antonio when we got here. 90s, sit down by the river, enjoy some warmth. Yeah. So I'm very geographically challenged.

[00:05:41] My first shock was that we're not in the desert. I just assumed San Antonio was a desert. It is not. And then, yes, all of the rain. What is this? It's been crazy. I think we mentioned it on one of the prior recordings we did here, but it's been like 50s and rain and driving wind, lightning. All of the sessions, not today, but yesterday in the sessions I was in, you could tell everyone to pull out their phone because they were getting the flood warnings all at the same time. It was kind of cool, but weird at the same time.

[00:06:11] Yeah. You have a weekend alone. Could be the girl's trip, I guess, depending who you're going with. Would you go on a posh resort or do you want to go rough it in the woods camping? Resort. Or what? You don't want to think about it? You just fell off, Sean. It's like. Yeah. You don't want to think about it for a while? I already said I was into bougie coffee. I feel like you probably knew where that was going. That's not true. You can go out and camp and bring the, you know, you can actually roast your beans while you're out there.

[00:06:39] You can grind them and you can also do the pour over. Oh, give me the. Do you accept glamping? Yeah. Glamping's good. No. All-inclusive resort. Okay. Okay. So, Paul, Paul, suck you weren't here because literally that's Paul's jam for sure. Place in Nashville the restaurant that someone needs to go to that maybe they haven't heard of. If you live in Nashville, you've probably heard of it. But if you're traveling in, not likely.

[00:07:08] My favorite is called Butcher and Bee. And you have to do the chef special if you go. It's so good. Their whipped feta is to die for. Okay. You know I have one. I will share. Although it's going to make it harder. I think Fox & Lock is one of my favorite places on the planet, which for the, you know, two or three people listening. It's like 45 minutes south of the city and they have open mic night on Thursdays. And the talent in Nashville just bubbles up and it's just, but it's old school country dining too.

[00:07:37] So I will add Butcher and Bee. Yes, you have to. And I'm going to check out that one. I have not been there. Oh, yeah. Leaper's Fork. Okay. Yeah, down there. It's super cool. Thursday nights. And you have to book five weeks out or so. Take some planning. You know, a little bit. You have to check. I don't know what date it actually drops. Okay. Are you a crunchy or creamy peanut butter person? Creamy. Hands down. These are very polarizing questions. It's divisive. It's very polarizing. They are actually.

[00:08:07] We've had a few people, ironically consultants, who will be like, well, it depends. But like, I'm not sure that's how it works with peanut butter. No, absolutely not. And we, in my household, we all have our own jar of peanut butter. Oh. For kiddos. And so we all have our own jar of peanut butter that the spoon can go in. Oh, so you can go direct. Correct. But not share. Yeah. So. They're not swapping germs. They're not swapping germs. I'm like, okay. I saw your brains break. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:08:36] Yeah, no, because my kids would just stick their finger in there, each of them, you know, at the time. So much more classy at your house. Yes. So. Welcome to Don't Tell Me About Yourself, the podcast where old school hiring meets a modern reality check. I'm Lorna Erickson. And I'm Victoria Gates. And we're the co-founders of Expert Interviewers. Between the two of us, we've got 40 years of hiring experience. We've studied interviewing techniques. We've trained thousands of people globally to stop making the same mistakes over and over again.

[00:09:05] And we've got 340,000 people following us online because apparently everyone has a story about a bad interview. You know, the ones. The illegal questions, the 45-minute monologues showing up late with no apology. So every week we're tackling the biggest subjects in hiring. We bring real stories, real data, and real talk about how to make interviews actually work for everyone. Because great hiring isn't luck. It's a practice skill. So whether you hire, apply, or just love a good interview train wreck, the show is for you.

[00:09:34] So you had your session. So give us the overview of what the session was. Okay. So my session was on market-based pay or the traditional salary structures. And it wasn't necessarily which one is better, but which one is better for your organization. And it was in a roundtable environment. And we were able to kind of talk through the ins and outs of each one, which types of companies they work better in. And then we had a fictitious company. We walked through the pros and cons.

[00:10:01] And, you know, each table didn't come up with the same answer. And so even though we were given the same scenario, everybody came back with additional questions, additional pieces of information they would have liked to know. And then they walked away with some practical questions to take back to their organization on how they can apply this. And you told me, I think, before, like overcrowded. Oh, yeah. People were sitting on the floor. We had to start turning people away. As a compensation professional, it's humbling.

[00:10:30] You're like, oh, all of these people want to talk about compensation? Because I think in our day-to-day world, you know, when we're on a small comp team, you don't see that. But there is community out there. So very humbling. And so what were the big takeaway? Like, give us the highlights. For those of us that, what time was your thing? I can't remember. I was at, oh, gosh, 1045 on Monday. Okay. So we did a similar one today. World of Work and I did a similar one. And it's super cool to watch.

[00:10:58] It is horrible when you run out of table space, actually, because now you're like, my whole master plan is thrown up. I had a moment of that, yes. Yeah. So give us the highlights of, you know, what people should be learning or what came out of it. Yeah. So actually, let me take a step back because we opened the session with saying that setting a strong foundation was critical. So regardless of if you choose market-based pay or salary structure, you've got to have that job leveling. You need to know that an analyst in HR is the same as an analyst in IT.

[00:11:28] And as long as you have that strong structure and it's from the top down and you've got the buy-in, you'll have success regardless of which form you take. From there, there was a lot of discussion. The room was actually split about 50-50. 50% of the folks there were on pure market-based pay and about 50% were on the true traditional salary structures. So I guess for those of you listening who may not be as much of a comp nerd, pure market-based pay means that you take each job description to market.

[00:11:56] So you are pricing every single role in your organization and they stand alone. They have their own unique ranges. The true salary structures are you're pricing your benchmark job. So your accountants, your registered nurse, the roles that exist across all of the companies. And you're using those as anchors and kind of slotting like jobs around them to come up with a nice pretty line and a true salary structure. So do you have an opinion on which one to go? I think it depends on a lot of variables.

[00:12:24] So again, it's not one right or wrong answer. Amanda Williamson applying for consulting roles right now. It's true, though. You need to know where your organization is at. The size matters. The size of your compensation team matters. What your organization values matters. Whether it's attracting top talent and responding with speed or is it creating clear career paths and mitigating risk. And depending on those answers, your outcome may be different.

[00:12:51] Did you have anyone in the session who put together a plan to have a combination of both? Yes. Great question. So I was actually, you know, as I was preparing for the session, I was talking to my peers in the Nashville area and the answer of hybrid already started coming up. And I think it's a lot more common than what we realized. There was a good chunk of people in the room where they had the true salary structure. But then for these hot jobs coming up, think AI, they're putting them on their own kind

[00:13:18] of structure off to the side or doing the peer market-based approach. That's interesting because I would have been all in on one or all in on other. And honestly, I wouldn't have thought about the hybrid. Yeah, it's definitely a trend that we're seeing. Are you seeing any other trends like around that? Because you have. So for those who don't know, because I just did a really shitty job introducing Katie. Katie heads up our solutions consulting group, which means she has the pleasure, I assume mostly, of talking to a lot of clients and prospects. We love our customers.

[00:13:48] And gets to learn a lot about their program. So as a unique perspective, seeing a lot of people as they're starting their journey on fixing things. Yes, that is what I do. And today I'm standing in for Paul Reimann. So, but I think the big trend we are seeing, or Amanda, as you had mentioned, is companies actually going back to job architecture, getting the leveling correctly. Sean and I joke a lot, all roads lead back to job architecture in most cases. And as they're doing that, it's trying to figure out, is the traditional grade approach

[00:14:17] still the right for our organization? And then we are seeing a lot of companies, especially in tech, or have roles where the market's more volatile. Think about, do we just go to market with these particular roles? And then you have kind of a combination I've seen. And it's hard to articulate where it's almost individual market ranges within what you would have before called a broad band. So it's almost forcing the market ranges into the conformity of a broad band.

[00:14:43] But the reality is you're still taking those jobs to market, but you still want to see someone of the pretty line. So we've seen that come up because I think part of it is just comfort. Knowing that you understand how to articulate the data to people who have a comfort with one person or the other. Absolutely. I think pay transparency plays into it as well. And I'm sure you get a lot of that as you're talking to customers. Absolutely. Pay transparency, I think, is having a moment. I don't think it's ever gone away, but we're definitely in an era where that's driving

[00:15:11] quite a bit of what people are going back to the drawing board to complete. Yeah, I'll pile on. And I think it's transparency. But I think the AI piece or the data availability out there means people are market pricing themselves. So you have to have a structure to be able to go back and say, this is what I'm doing, because otherwise they'll make it up on their own. And, you know, the more they prompt the AI tool about why they're paid there are and where their range is, the more you have to defend that range. And so I think having a really good structure in place is critical to communicate back out.

[00:15:42] Absolutely. Is that similar to what you heard in your session? So we, our session was more a fictitious 1,200 person company. And you're the first comp person hired. And what would you do and what would the budget be? And it is interesting over, you know, what are the top three things you're going to do, et cetera. Job architecture and then having to pay philosophy lines up, which is, I don't know if pay philosophy came up, but like where do we want to pay and what do we want to do?

[00:16:09] Because I'm not as educated as you guys, nor do I want to go back to school. I quote Cheshire Cat a lot, which is if you don't know where you're going, all roads will lead you there. And so I think being able to get where you want to go, you've got to have, you guys all call it your job architecture and the foundations. I simply say getting your shit together on that stuff because then you can build what you want to do on top. And that seemed to bubble up a lot, always in one way or another going back, which is good to see because I think there's a lot of new cool stuff out there and people get wound up on that.

[00:16:39] And then they don't have the structures in place or they don't know what they're doing. And then it falls apart. Absolutely. Yeah. So it was good. It was good. I mean, I don't know. It's probably moderated better in your session than mine would be my guess, or at least more professionally. I'm 100 percent certain. So where would you ask people? Where would you tell people if they're like trying to figure out where to start and figuring out which method to use and what's appropriate?

[00:17:05] Do you have kind of a cheat sheet or a couple of things where if people were like, OK, maybe I should go evaluate this? Where do I start? We do. So we partnered with salary.com to create some cheat sheets and some some takeaways. The first one I'm going to point back to job architecture. I would start there. We created a cheat sheet of kind of a five step of of how you get there. So first, identify your stakeholders. Where do they want to go? Is this an HR driven initiative or do you have the C-suite bought in? And the answer to that is going to drive a lot of your other decisions.

[00:17:34] I think it's also important to know up front how transparent you're going to be with this. Are you going to release this information to everyone in your organization? Is it just budget owners so they can use it as they are building out their teams? Is it VP level and above? Is it a tool for HR behind the scenes? You've got to get all of that squared away first. From there, you've got to assess where you're at. So did you just go through M&A activity and you're left with kind of the alphabet soup of job titles and you've got to do cleanup?

[00:18:03] You know, are you a 50 year legacy company? And you've got folks who have been in job titles for years and years and years and you've got all of these grandfather legacy exceptions. All of that's important to know up front. From there, you can start digging in and collecting the data. So sit down with your stakeholders. Start interviewing people across the company. What does it mean to be an analyst in one area? How do you know when an individual contributor is ready to move to a senior individual contributor?

[00:18:30] How do you know when they're ready to take on people leadership roles? What types of responsibilities are they okay delegating to a manager? Are you comfortable with your directors making these kinds of decisions? If not, at what level are you comfortable? And so getting all of that information. I think now we have AI. When I did this project, we didn't. And so you can feed all of that through and say, show me the commonalities. Where do I have discrepancies? And then point back to bullet point one. How much consensus do we need to really roll this out?

[00:19:00] Do I need to go back to all stakeholders and say, we need consensus across the board? Is this an HR activity? And I'm going to make the best decision I can with the information I have. And then realizing that it's a living, breathing document and that this can't sit stale forever. So identify how quickly your company is growing and on what frequency you want to review it. So that's the job leveling piece. From there, I think you can practically take that and look at your organization and ask the question, what do folks value? Are you guys in growth mode?

[00:19:30] And do you need to move really quickly? Is attracting top talent kind of a key priority of your executives? And if that's the case, market-based pay may be best for you. Again, depending on the size of your company and comp team and if you've got the bandwidth to manage that. If you are very risk adverse and you value a lot of transparency, salary structures may be better for you.

[00:19:55] And so it's really just gathering the information and then taking a step back and doing what's right for your specific organization. Where do you feel the change management falls in? Was that any topic that got brought up on the session?

[00:20:07] Knowing that if you do pivot or change or implement from scratch, there's certainly the component of how do we now help people understand why these jobs fall within a particular range or have a market range and use that data to, again, communicate appropriately to their direct reports or throughout the organization. Yeah. We ran out of time. We didn't even come close to getting there, but I think you've got a great session. For 2027. That's a good one. I mean, change management should be throughout, right? Right.

[00:20:38] If you're looping them in when you're ready to start communicating, it's too late. So I would advocate for bringing them in up front. So I just listened to all that and I was like, that shit sounds hard. So when a company's thinking of undertaking the journey, like how much time are you thinking? And then have you seen the results at the end? I know you're going to say probably yes, but is the juice worth the squeeze out the other end?

[00:21:03] But more importantly, like how much effort is that up front to kind of go through that? Because when you start talking about talking to every stakeholder, doing all this stuff, and I know it's been a theme some of the sessions I emceed yesterday. There's always these great thoughts. But the one thing I know is relatively consistent is the TR or comp team is not over budgeted and overstaffed. And so how do you get going on that front and what's the expectation?

[00:21:30] So in my head, it's two different discrete projects. They work together, but it's two different discrete projects. I would say the job leveling and setting up the architecture, anywhere from one quarter to a full year, honestly, depending on how much alignment you have from your stakeholders. Job titles tend to be an emotionally charged topic. People always want what's best for their teams, right? And so sometimes when budgets are small, job titles are given. I'm not advocating for that.

[00:22:00] It's just the reality. And then you're left with kind of these legacy or grandfathered exceptions. So depending on how much change you have, I would say anywhere from a quarter to a full year. Okay. It's interesting you say that. It is remarkably personal because if the theory is you're going to share that job description with the human doing the job, like there's almost should be a session. Maybe there was a session on dealing with job descriptions and how you actually sell that to the person doing the job. Yeah.

[00:22:29] You know, in my session, we did joke multiple times that it was a therapy session. I think you talk to anybody in comp and you say, you know, who struggles with job title inflation? And the whole room, their hand goes up. And so it's not unique to one company. It's not unique to one industry. It's something we're all dealing with. Is there anything else from the session you missed other than, you know, more chairs are needed, et cetera? Just what a good community we have in compensation.

[00:22:56] I think coming to these conferences, it's really eye-opening about, again, you're not on your island. We're all dealing with similar things and just the community that's there. You know, I believe in it. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Your organization, what approach do you all take? Good question. We are pure market-based pay still. Interesting in hand care. Yes. That's wonderful. Yep. A little unique. It is. Yeah.

[00:23:24] I like it for a number of reasons for our organization. I do realize that we are in growth mode. We'll continue to be in growth mode. It is not sustainable forever. Sure. But right now, it's working well and I like the approach. Well, it's great. Are you, I mean, you're managing it partially? How big is your team? So we are a mighty team of three people. Okay. Strong and mighty. Small but mighty. I think that's cool, though, because it means it's tenable to tackle. Yeah. So you've got three. You went through the process. You have it. You're in growth mode.

[00:23:54] So there's not a lot of get it done and move to the next project for a while. So I think it's cool that you're able to still deal with it that way with a team of three. Thank you. So the last thing we wrap up with that I did not prep you for. I know. Well, you know, if you could automagically, which is a highly technical term, solve any one thing in HR, what would it be? And you know what? I don't know how many episodes we'll get to do with Katie.

[00:24:23] I'm going to buy you time. I'm going to ask Katie if you could automagically fix any one thing in HR. So keep thinking. Don't listen to her. What would it be? Saving the tough questions to the ends. You know, I want more coffee questions. I do. Those were easy. I have many Paul. Maybe he can answer it. Oh, you did. For those that can't see. So I wanted to make sure there was a smaller person in the room. Oh, yeah.

[00:24:49] So for those, since there's some on YouTube, those that are listening, Salary had Legos at our station, which actually those who know me as a child can appreciate. Katie is, be political, not a tall individual. And someone on this current podcast may or may not give her grief about it certain times. And so she brought a small Lego figure so that she wouldn't be the smallest person at the table.

[00:25:17] But going back to your question, honestly, my first thought popped into job descriptions. We were just talking about job descriptions, but I think job descriptions are the bane of most HR and organizations' existence. And they're so essential. As we just talked about, it's an emotional discussion. It is definitely a charged piece of how people identify with what they are bringing to the table in a company.

[00:25:41] And it's the thing that most HR and compensation professionals, I wouldn't say don't want to manage, but it's a never-ending, very cumbersome process to date, even with amazing tools out there to help with it. I definitely think if there was a way to just make that process easier, I think more organizations would end up getting through an architecture, a transparency, a pay process much more swiftly.

[00:26:08] And honestly, they have a better approach to communicating and having greater transparency in what the actual role in the work and expectation is. And employees would understand as well and how that aligns to the pay that they're receiving in their organization. That's a good one. Yes and amen. Nobody loves doing job descriptions, but they are the start of every single thing. Yeah. All right. We bought you, Katie, bought you time and had to go first. I need the question again.

[00:26:38] So if you could automagically fix any one thing in all of HR, doesn't have to be comp, what would it be? I think it would be removing the legacy perception that HR is transactional and having them be seen as a strategic partner at the table. We talk about companies growing quickly and making sure that your talent is in place and ready to meet those future goals is critical. And that falls to HR.

[00:27:04] And so taking away that kind of legacy perception that we are paper pushers, I think would do companies wonders. I love that. Yeah. I think it's great. And please give them more budget. Yeah. More budget. Well, it's funny. Of all the times we've asked, never have I heard more budget. There's stuff and magically make it go away. But we've never heard more budget. I do think the stigma I talk about a lot. There's a lot to overcome.

[00:27:32] And I think doing cool things and being out there and sharing and being positive because, you know, the joke is, you know, what's the first thing you think of when you have to go to HR? I'm in trouble. Yeah. Nothing good is happening when you go to HR. So I think there is a stigma that you start from behind. And so there's a cool opportunity now with all the cool stuff to do it. Yeah. This has been great. Thanks so much for coming on, especially with your schedule. Really appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me. Yeah, thanks. Hopefully I did apologize.

[00:28:01] You can ask him. I will.