Trevor Janeck

▶0:01HostWelcome to the Built by People podcast, where we share the stories and insights of the world's top HR leaders. Join us as we dive deep into the minds of HR executives, uncovering their strategies, challenges, and triumphs in shaping today's workforce. I'm excited to welcome Trevor to the Built by People podcast. Trevor, thank you so much for joining us. And as a starting question, I always love to ask if you can share a little bit more about your career journey.

▶0:54GuestYeah, happy to. So I've been in HR for probably the better part of 20 years. The majority of that is actually in talent management, the recruiting front. I think the longer I've worked, the smaller companies have become that I've worked for. And I haven't worked for a lot over the past 20 years. Like I said, talent management, and now I'm leading the function with a company called Verado, the HR function in its totality. I've been with, I think, 4 companies. And I actually have found enjoyment working for smaller companies because I can roll up my sleeves a little bit more. We'll talk about that as it pertains to my topic.

▶1:29HostTrevor, you mentioned transitioning from large organizations like Wells Fargo to smaller tech companies. How has your approach to compensation management evolved across different company sizes and industries?

▶1:42GuestYeah, you bet. Zero knowledge and expertise working for a large company like Wells Fargo. At the time I was working for them, there was about 280,000 employees and compensation was this distant thing built by people, or it could have been built by elves. I don't know. Never even talked to those people, but didn't have any involvement in it. And as I left Wells Fargo and went to a medium-sized health system, and even now at the company I'm at, we had the opportunity, I had the opportunity to really dig in and work with compensation partners, know who those compensation partners were. And get heavily involved in the construction of a compensation program, which I'll go into a little bit more detail here in a minute.

▶2:30HostTrevor, can you walk us through the 5 to 7 key principles of compensation management that you believe are essential for creating an effective and equitable pay structure?

▶2:40GuestAbsolutely. Absolutely. First bullet point I would say is build structure. Have something, have a program. Start with pay bands, tie them to benchmarking data., find a technology that can help you manage those things. So again, have some structure behind it. Another key point here that I would point out is you need to subscribe to a compensation philosophy as a company and then live by it. For example, you might have a company philosophy of overpay for overperformance. So you may reward your highest performers, whether it be bonuses, a higher level merit, that sort of thing. You may want to tie your KPIs to compensation or to, it could be tied to your merit increase. How do you approach your merit increases as a company really can help define your pay philosophy too as well. Again, meaning, are you going to pay a 3% merit increase to every single person in your company? Or are you going to have 4% for higher performers, 2.5% for lower performers? Are you going to let your leaders manage amongst their team, how they spread that out, or are you going to take a more broad paintbrush across? Again, that's what is your philosophy? And there's no, I have my opinions, but there's not necessarily a wrong answer, but really you need to define that as an organization. And then I would say the last key point on the compensation philosophy is around lead or lag. So are you going to lead the market and pay? You're going to lag the market? And that's a choice for you to make. And then a couple of key points too, I want to add here, Dave, is pay equity is important, especially nowadays. People are posting things on— pay is just much more visible than it used to be. And I think with the environment that we're in with social media and the level of transparency with Glassdoor, people posting what they make on there and stuff, it's just quite a bit different. So I think it's all the more reason pay equity is something you need to focus on. So regularly auditing your compensation, regularly auditing your employees to ensure you're paying similar for similar type jobs. You're staying within the parameters of your pay bands. You're not seeing patterns of folks in this demographic making more or less than another demographic. There's tools out there, compensation tools that can help you do that. And then I would say another key point is Don't let comp go stale. It's not to say you have to change your pay bands. You don't want to change your comp philosophy all the time. First off, find something that works for you and stick with that and live by it. But there might be some times you need to adjust pay bands. Some positions will go hot. Some positions will go cold within the industry. Everyone probably listening knows what those positions are within their company. If you don't, then you're not doing enough research. So know which positions are hot and which positions are cold. Dave, I would say those are probably some really key points that I live by. I could go on quite a bit more, but those were key things that came to mind.

▶5:41HostTrevor, many companies struggle with compensation management due to bias or, and lack of proper tools. What are some of the common pitfalls HR leaders should watch out for and how can they build a more data-driven approach?

▶5:54GuestYeah, love that question, Dave. Excel is a great tool. I may offend finance folks if anyone's listening. But really Excel can help— Microsoft Excel, what I'm talking about. It can help you manage some numbers and some things. And I've been in an environment where a whole— at a prior company where a whole comp philosophy was managed within an Excel platform, but we didn't have a technology. So really look to get beyond just managing things in Excel. The next thing is rely on benchmarking data and not your gut. So there are compensation data tools or subscriptions or companies that do this work. Find one that really focuses on your industry and is able to filter down to specific roles that you have within your company. The pitfall is they're relying on your gut. Don't do it. Rely on benchmarking data. There are times you might need to use your gut in compensation because it's not an exact science. That's okay. But in general, rely on benchmarking data. I think compensation can be a little bit intimidating for some folks. I've noticed in my career, I've been in leadership the last 12 years in HR. I've noticed this is one blind spot for a lot of HR professionals is really the compensation side of it and not necessarily understanding the nuts and bolts on how compensation works. So really not It, this is not rocket science. You don't even have to have a finance degree. You need to be willing to roll your sleeves up and maybe partner with your compensation analyst if you have one, or go out if you're a small enough company and you guys need a program, a compensation program. There's AI out there, there's Google, there's plenty of resources out there that can help you. There's this podcast. You can always reach out to me for sure. I can give you some great advice. I love helping and mentoring folks. So just don't have that fear. I think one of the common pitfalls is that it's this big thing that is scary, but it's not rocket science. I'd say another pitfall is Glassdoor. Glassdoor serves a purpose. The free version of Glassdoor specifically is not a comp tool. So don't rely on that. Be careful when employees come to you when they're arguing for a raise and they've done research on Glassdoor. I never roll my eyes because that's very condescending, but in my head I roll my eyes, but I help them understand, hey, that's not the most credible tool. I'm sure you can have a paid version of it, but again, a pitfall is don't rely on things like Glassdoor and testimonials out there where people are putting their salary out there. I would say probably my biggest point here, Dave, is don't let perfection get in the way of progress. Like you can make mistakes in building a compensation program for your company. You can always correct them too as well. And it's important to understand as you're building this and you feel like, oh man, this pay band, I think we're a little bit low on it, or I think we're a little bit high on it, or did we set these right positions at the right comp ratio? Are we paying these people right? Maybe, maybe not, but you can always change that. So you could always adjust. And so self-audits are are incredibly important. We do those at our organization a couple times a year, and so we will not be afraid to make any off-cycle adjustments. Just does not have to be perfect. So don't let perfection get in the way of progress. And that would probably be one of my biggest bits of advice on that question.

▶9:26HostTrevor, in fast-paced industries like healthcare tech, how do you ensure your compensation strategy remains competitive while maintaining internal equity?

▶9:35GuestYeah, good question. I think it goes back to a couple of points I made earlier. Leverage a tool. Don't rely on Excel. Leverage a technology that specializes in compensation management. What I mean by compensation management, I know it's a broad term, but really it's how you view, how you build your compensation for your organization. That's getting down to, this may mean something to some folks, but building job families, building pay bands within there. What is your tolerance? What is your spread within that pay band? Where do you want to pay people within that pay band? So really, we are a very fast-paced industry, and to stay competitive, we have to look at that constantly. And without a tool, without benchmarking data, we can't stay up to date on those things. Again, that's probably the most important thing is leveraging that tool, which means benchmarking data., and ideally real-time stuff. And then I've mentioned it before, stay flexible. If you need to adjust a pay band, a job family, a group of employees, take an objective look at it and don't be afraid to advocate for those employees to adjust their salary. And I'm mostly talking about bumping people up, right? We rarely take money away, but mostly those people who've been left behind. Stay flexible and look at bumping them up because internal equity is incredibly important. And especially, like I said, in this day and age, people can go out and advertise what they're making to their peers or the entire internet out there. But it's not just that, it's the right thing to do. And again, we have those self-audit processes to ensure, okay, what patterns do I see? Is this group being paid fairly? Is there a demographic that sticks out? Is there a person that sticks out? And again, in this fast-paced world that we're in, we're constantly looking at those things. And I can tell you in year 3, right now in our current compensation program, we have very little corrections to make off-cycle. You know, what I mean by on-cycle is the merit process. We take a look at that and we make adjustments there, but we've done a really good job ensuring that no folks are being left behind on the compensation front.

▶11:53HostTrevor, from your experience, what role does technology play in effective compensation management and what should HR leaders look for in a compensation management platform?

▶12:02GuestYeah, and I'll give, I'll give a little bit of a plug to the tool that I use. I would say the one-word answer for you, Dave, is critical. Using technology is very important because on our own, we cannot go out and get relevant, good benchmarking data without really paying for it. We work with a company called PAVE. They're a compensation management tool for companies and industries and similar industries that we work in. They do multiple industries, but you'd be surprised, it's pretty affordable. We're talking maybe depending on what you pay your folks, a third or half of an FTE cost on an annual basis, but that technology allows us to look at patterns. It allows us to look at those outliers that I talked about. It allows us to adjust the pay bands when we see things that are off. So it, it, there, there's a dashboard that comes with it. It's not to say this is a plug and play system. You still have to build it. It took 7 months for us to implement and work with PAVE, and that's not abnormal, but you have to build and provide the compensation philosophy and they help build that into the system. But once it's built in, you rely heavily on that technology. Should HR leaders look at this? 100%. Absolutely. I'll go back to the pitfall. Ditch Excel. Ditch Excel, graduate from that. Look at a program that's going to help you really do a good job managing compensation.

▶13:28HostTrevor, what parting advice would you like

▶13:30Guestto share with our community? Yeah, similar to a point I made earlier, don't let perfection or the fear of failure keep you from building a compensation program. There's no such thing as a perfect comp strategy. There's a great comp strategy for you and your company. You just need to invest the time to build one, to fine tune it, to research those technologies that can help support and that may help align and support your compensation philosophy. So it just seems like it's an intimidating topic. And again, I'll go back and this is my experience. I just don't see a lot of HR professionals. That have in-depth compensation experience, especially like generalists, things of that. They've worked on benefits, employee relations, some talent, that sort of thing. But don't be afraid to go out there, really roll your sleeves up. It sounds kind of cliché, but if you're still just fully relying on Excel, there's so much better tools out there. They're more affordable, I think, than you think.. But I would say that would be my parting advice there.

▶14:40HostTrevor, thanks so much for joining us on the Built by People podcast. It was a pleasure to have you involved.

▶14:44GuestYou got it. Thanks, Dave, for having me. Appreciate it.