Imagine navigating the corporate world, from a small rural town in Utah to the strategic boardrooms of a global giant like HP. Meet Trapper Yates, the Vice President of Global Compensation at HP, who not only managed this feat, but also made a daring career pivot from finance to strategic HR. As he shares his journey, he unfolds the importance of individuals taking control of their careers, while also highlighting the role that companies play in helping employees find their place at the table.
Ready to decode the complexities of total rewards in employee compensation? Trapper, an expert in this field, breaks it down for you – from evaluating benefits packages to understanding the value of stock programs and 401K matches. He also unveils HP's efforts to promote employee wellbeing and sheds light on the increasing importance Gen Z candidates place on a company's social stance.
Trapper Yates talks about the changes made at HP in the performance evaluation process, shedding a five-tier rating system for a feedback-focused approach. He also shares his personal experiences and provides valuable advice on setting SMART goals, taking risks, and assuming charge of your career. Interestingly, he gives his take on the future of compensation and career development trends, discussing the rising importance of skills over degrees, and the potential of AI in the compensation space. Tune in to gain valuable insights, whether you're a seasoned professional or just starting your career.
Imagine navigating the corporate world, from a small rural town in Utah to the strategic boardrooms of a global giant like HP. Meet Trapper Yates, the Vice President of Global Compensation at HP, who not only managed this feat, but also made a daring career pivot from finance to strategic HR. As he shares his journey, he unfolds the importance of individuals taking control of their careers, while also highlighting the role that companies play in helping employees find their place at the table.
Ready to decode the complexities of total rewards in employee compensation? Trapper, an expert in this field, breaks it down for you – from evaluating benefits packages to understanding the value of stock programs and 401K matches. He also unveils HP's efforts to promote employee wellbeing and sheds light on the increasing importance Gen Z candidates place on a company's social stance.
Trapper Yates talks about the changes made at HP in the performance evaluation process, shedding a five-tier rating system for a feedback-focused approach. He also shares his personal experiences and provides valuable advice on setting SMART goals, taking risks, and assuming charge of your career. Interestingly, he gives his take on the future of compensation and career development trends, discussing the rising importance of skills over degrees, and the potential of AI in the compensation space. Tune in to gain valuable insights, whether you're a seasoned professional or just starting your career.
I know you're gonna find it. You've got to keep on at it. Hey everybody, this is Bob Goodwin, and welcome to another episode of Career Club Live. Thank you so much for joining me for a few minutes. If you happen to be watching this on YouTube, please subscribe, like and comment. It really helps, and if you're listening to this on your favorite podcast platform, please feel free to rate and review it. That would be awesome.
Speaker 1:Wanted to just direct you guys for a moment to careerclub. We've added some new options on the website for job seekers, so if you want to check that out, we've got some really great free resources things like the three things that might be holding you back in your job search, how to answer your greatest weakness, along with some great networking tips or things that we currently have on the website, all free, and we would really encourage you to do that. So, very excited about today's guest. He came introduced to me through a mutual friend who we have a lot of respect for, and so yesterday is Trapper Yates. Trapper is the VP of Global Compensation at HP and looks after all things compensation for a very large swath of the company, and with that, let's go ahead and get Trapper on Trapper welcome.
Speaker 2:Hey Bob, thank you, Good to be here.
Speaker 1:No, it's so nice to see you. Thank you. Where are you calling him from today?
Speaker 2:I'm dialing in from Boise, idaho, my office here, just a home office here, just outside of Boise. I've lived here for about eight years now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we'll go ahead and do our usual little drill here, which is just asking a few icebreaker questions to help folks get to know you a little bit, just as a human, before we dive into your expertise. So you're in Boise, but where were you born and raised?
Speaker 2:I was born in a small. It's born and raised in a small town in northern Utah, tremonton. People probably don't know where that is. Population when I was there around 5000. So I like to say probably more cows than people, at least at that time, and we had two stoplights. I think they're up to three. So it's a small town. Was a really nice upbringing though.
Speaker 1:That's cool. Now, utah is beautiful, but it seems like it's got like several different kinds of topographies or whatever the right mountains, desert.
Speaker 2:What was the area?
Speaker 1:like where you grew up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that mountain range right there, the Wasatch Front, is just amazing. And we're up on the far north end of that Wasatch Front so you could, to the east you had these big mountains and then to the west it was smaller mountains and you're absolutely right, you've got lakes, you've got high mountain lakes, you've got desert, you've got the salt flats, so really beautiful area. Like I said, I was very rural, a lot of farmland around us and it was great and that's funny.
Speaker 1:More callous than people. So then, where did you go to college, Trapper? Where'd you go to school?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I did my undergrad at Brigham Young University, Idaho, so Eastern Idaho, about four and a half hours from where I'm at today. Did that? Did an undergrad focus in business? Made a switch, as most people do. I went to school to go into pediatrics and medicine and switched partway through my sophomore year and decided business was a better focus. Did a kind of, I guess, an emphasis in finance and then or actually, supply chain, but then took a job in finance. So came out of school in a finance role and then a few years later went back to Brigham Young University in Utah, down in Provo, and did my MBA there.
Speaker 2:No that's very good.
Speaker 1:Now we've gotten to know each other a little bit, so I'm going to tease this for people as they get right. Here your answer Tell us a little bit about your family.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I've got five children, which some people are like what on earth were you thinking? We've got quite a spread there too. So my oldest is 15. And we've got our youngest just turned a year this last month. So we've got a full house. It gets a little hectic. Most of them are in school. Four of the five are in school, which is nice but definitely keeps me busy, engaged and lots of life, definitely in our home.
Speaker 1:That's what, and what's the mix with boys and girls.
Speaker 2:Four boys, one girl. Our girl was our fourth, which was a good place. We finally got that girl and then we decided maybe there was one more. So we got another boy at the end.
Speaker 1:That is so funny because we're not far behind you. We have four kids, three boys, one girl and the girls number three in our lineups, so kind of similar. Now I'm going to jump, I'm going to go out of order, because I think I know the answer to the next question, at least in part. When you're not at work, what do you find yourself doing? Hobbies, passions.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I try to stay very active in terms of physical activity. I did the Boston Marathon back in 2017. Didn't actually run until 2011,. Started kind of getting into running with the idea that maybe one day I'd run a marathon and then, when I ran a marathon, thought maybe I'll try to qualify for Boston. I did that in 2017. It was great. I've done a couple small ultramarathons, which are anything over a 26.2. I have done a half Ironman and as I've had more kids, it gets harder and harder to kind of carve out the large chunks of time to do the training, and so I still stay active, but haven't done as many races.
Speaker 2:The thing that keeps me busy these days is I've coached soccer for the last gosh. I started when we lived in the Dallas Frisco, texas area back in 2013. So it's been 10 years coaching youth soccer at various levels and I'm coaching my nine year olds team right now, which keeps us busy. I mean, we've got a tournament this weekend, we'll have four games over the next three days and yeah, it's just it's busy, it keeps me. We go to soccer fields, my oldest is doing cross country, got a son in band playing at the football games and things. So we've got. We we've had busy evenings, that is for sure, yeah.
Speaker 1:I was going to say that I knew with five kids that that's got to be what soaks up in a good way any time that you're not dedicating to HP Plus. You live in a beautiful part of the country and just any outdoor activity would be fun. So before we get into our real conversation here, can you? You talked about you know you got your undergrad, then you went back to grad school at BYU. Can you just paint a little bit of a picture of your career arc coming out of grad school?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so and I think I'll start when I came out of undergrad. You know, like I said, I started in finance and it was it was an incredible opportunity. I worked for the company that did engineering and construction services, went through the Great recession and actually had great opportunities through that continue to obviously say employed, which was important at that time as well. I had a lot of acquaintances that were losing jobs Bear Stearns, other big financial services companies struggling and so it was really grateful for the opportunities that I had early on. But after a couple of years with that company, I started to realize finances I don't think where I want to spend the rest of my career and I had had opportunities to recruit for this program. We had what we call the Associate Business Manager Program. I was part of it. We were essentially financial managers over large projects or associate managers over those projects and, like I said, a great opportunity, but just not something I felt passionate about.
Speaker 2:When I started recruiting for that program, you know I was able to elaborate on all the great things that the company offered and the great opportunity that it was, but I loved the recruiting side of things and so a few years in I think three and a half four years in I was like I think I need to consider doing an MBA and I kind of want to change my focus and I got various you know feedback on that. Hey, you know HR I don't know if you want to see the table finances been and I, but I, as I talked to more people and looked at, I got the sense that it wasn't so much the role as it was the company and the individual that determines whether you get that you know seat at the table and whether you're a strategic HR player or whether you're more transactional, and so got the confidence to say you know, I am going to make this switch. The MBA was a great opportunity to kind of shift my focus a little bit. So did a focus on organizational behavior and strategic HR.
Speaker 2:Took, did an internship with HP actually, and then accepted a full time offer and came out of grad school working for HP, started with them down in Frisco, texas, did a stint over in the UK in our in our office over there it's in Reading now and spent a little bit of time and then, when we finished that, moved here to Boise and I've actually been in the compensation space, which to me was a really nice mix of you know, the data and analytics and those financial roles that I did have, mixed with everything you're doing is around people and how do the programs that we have impact people not just the people that work at HP, but their partners, their spouses, their families. It's, it's. I felt that it was a great impact and it was a nice fit with my skill set. So I've stayed in the comp space, definitely have, you know, different experiences through HR, but have found a nice niche in the total reward space for sure, and I think that's what we're going to talk about.
Speaker 1:Obviously, that's going to be a lot of what we talked about, but I do want to just go back to one thing that you said, because I really appreciate what two things that you said, and I think about anybody that might be listening right now who is in job search mode or who's just trying to figure out am I really happy in my career? And what I really appreciate, trapper, about what you're talking about was through experience you said, hey, this recruiting thing, I actually really like this. You know how you can maybe start to gravitate your career into that general arena, which is cool. And then the other thing that you said and you know I spent a lot of time on these, these podcasts talking to HR people. We've got a separate podcast, the Workwire with Sherm CEO Johnny Taylor.
Speaker 1:Obviously we're talking about HR stuff there. But what you talked about was this strategic versus transactional, and that you said it's really more down to the individual as much as this company to be able to demonstrate really the business acumen and the desire to play at that level. I think any company would desire to have the HR function be more strategic. It's do people run into that void or not? Right, and you clearly did which I think is awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely I think along that point and I do think it's a combination of organization and individual. But I would lean more to the individual because and I know you know our common friend Matt Burns, he's talked about it as well Like if he goes into an organization where HR is more of the hey, just take the order from the business and they're not asking for that strategic partner. That's not the right fit for his skill set. Right, and I feel like it's the same. If you have, if you are a business person wearing an HR hat, you can go in and solve people problems or recommend solutions to people problems and you can drive that as much as you know, a lot of times the organization for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so all cool. So you started to describe your role a little bit. You know, could you? Just because when we were getting to Neutra you kind of explained to me which swath of HP comp you're responsible for. Do you mind just sharing that real quick?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so HP is around 60,000 headcount worldwide. We have sales employees that fall under our sales compensation organization and that's a subset of that kind of 8,000, 9000. And then we have, you know, our most senior executives, which are managed under more the equity programs and executive compensation for those few hundred individuals are managed a little bit through a separate organization. One of my peers, the other you know 45-ish thousand, 45 to 50,000-ish employees that fall under the mainstream organization. So non-sells and non-executives, so everything from entry level or support level employees up to, you know, our director and up to the vice president level is kind of managed within that and so that's, you know, their pay structures, their bonus programs, pay for performance, all of those types of things for that group.
Speaker 1:So the majority of the employee population falls under your domain.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, yep, that's the largest section, for sure.
Speaker 1:So obviously your compensation is important to everybody and you know you talked about total rewards and I think for maybe non-HR people, could you define total rewards for folks? What does that mean? It has that different than just comp.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we have a really nice diagram, I like, around total rewards and it's got like this icon of an employee in the middle and then around. That is what the job architecture and that's what defines how we benchmark all of our programs. And then it's got each of these programs around the outside and that's your base pay, which most people think about. It's your short-term incentives or your bonus programs. It's also your long-term incentives or equity programs, and those are really important in the tech space. But as you are senior senior roles, I think, in most organizations and startups and things have those types of long-term incentives. And then you have your benefits that also form a part of that total rewards. And in a lot of cases you have recognition programs which are sort of on the I guess, the peripheral of strict total rewards, because it's more than just monetary or some type of compensation in that sense. But in our world it does make up a portion of what we consider to be the total rewards package for employees.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, so we'll unpack that just a little bit. One of the things that's always fascinating to me because, again, we work a lot with job seekers and you know when, thankfully, they're at the stage where they're negotiating the comp. Clearly the company has parameters around what they can offer people. But one of the things and maybe you can talk a little bit about that from the company's perspective on how comp gets negotiated. But one area that I do want to touch on, because I think that it's undersold and underappreciated maybe in a lot of cases and, at a minimum, not well understood, is how do we evaluate the value of the benefits package? To your point, people understand salary it's $100,000. The bonus is up to 20%, 120,000, got it plus benefits for a medical, dental, blah, blah, blah and people go okay and just almost like it's yes, no, not that it has any dollar value to it. How would you help people understand how to value the benefits piece of a compensation package?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that is a great question and I also think it's really important for early career people. For sure, I remember getting my first you know career out of college and you know full medical and dental benefits, and I was like awesome, great. And then I found out that I had to still pay a premium. Like I was under this impression. I had a really good HR person that onboarded me, that explained it all to me, but I was in my mind, going I thought I had full medical and dental benefits and it's like that doesn't mean you don't pay a premium, right, and so obviously I was very naive at that point.
Speaker 2:But, point being that early career people sometimes don't understand the value and, to your point, they can make up a significant portion of that value, especially if you have things like debt, graduate debt or university debt, repayment assistance programs, those you have to calculate in the you know the value of that on a monthly basis. So one thing that we're, I would say we're getting better at, and we're actually working through a process right now to build a what we're calling a total rewards statement for employees as they come in, that attempts to assign a value to that. Someone with, you know, five children is going to pay a higher premium in their medical than someone that is just covering themselves. But also, based on you know how much you use that benefit and estimates that are there, it could be a more valuable benefit and so it's hard to put an exact dollar figure on it, just like you said.
Speaker 2:But but what's important is you're showing you know and think about your 401k. If you've got matches on that, especially if it's a very competitive match. A lot of companies HP has employee stock purchase program and a lot of companies have really nice discounts on those and you start to look at how do you show employees the total value? And I think that's important. It's challenging. It's challenging to put an exact dollar value and employees have the option to either take it or leave it. But I think if you're not at least putting it out there, you're not giving a fair comparison for employees. So it's an important space for sure.
Speaker 1:Do you think that there's any financial literacy Issues of like just people being able to go oh, wait a minute, and then the compound value of that over time it's going to be? Or saying like well, you know, the stock is at some discount? Like Helping them understand how to appreciate that is some potentially very significant money?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it absolutely is, and I think Financial education is one of the things that I don't think we do really well in society and it's something that's really important to me from a personal finance perspective. And so all of my kids we've got a monthly process where we sit down and we go through their allowance, their expenditures, you know what their interest they're earning. I pay them interest in the Bank of Mom and Dad type of thing, so they can get used to that concept. But yeah, all of those things, I think the challenge with it, if you think about an employee stock purchase program as one example and you can say you're going to get X percent discount and there's a buy twice a year but you have to determine what percentage of your salary you hold out for that. So it's giving up something today for something better in the future, and I think that's that's what it really comes down to.
Speaker 2:401ks are very much the same and if you can help employees, especially early career employees, understand the one magic you know principal finance, compound interest you can see that starting to save and starting to put that away Early is going to benefit you. You know, in in spades down the road and I did hear actually just this morning on a pod, just recently on Wall Street Journal podcast it was talking about Millennials are actually better set up not in terms of home ownership but in terms of their savings for retirement because with their retirement savings and social security there anticipated to cover up to 60% of their of their earnings in retirement. And part of that is what they're attributing to auto-enrollment in these, in these retirement 401k programs. So companies have moved away largely from pensions and they've filled the gap on these Programs, which are voluntary.
Speaker 2:But by doing the auto-enroll you're sort of encouraging that behavior and I think there's more out than up then Correct and a lot of companies that's the way it is is, hey, we're gonna, we're gonna put you in at this level and you know, and then you get a match for that. We also have a program where it's a auto increase. So every year, kind of at the salary increase time frame, it goes up by 1%. And I always tell people you know, for the first few years, like you may not be able to max out your Government max or whatever, but if you increase every time you get a pay adjustment. If you put half of that into your 401k, you're not gonna miss it because you never saw it. And then over time you're now maxing out. You know that that government allowable and you're a really good spot.
Speaker 1:No, that's really really cool. Broadly, are there some unconventional or maybe less common kinds of Compensation levers that that you guys are currently using or have looked at using?
Speaker 2:Yeah, there are some, and I think I would go more on some of the unique benefits that we have, one of those being I don't know this is super unique today, but I think we were on the early front of pushing through Graduate debt. It's just Repayment. I got to think about the way that we term it, but essentially, you know, every, most most, people are coming out of school with some form of debt. We know that. You know, higher education is very expensive and in the United States it's it's hard to get through that without debt. And so by adding, you know, a payment onto their, their Student debt every single month for the first five years, it's a really nice way for them to chop away at that principle or potentially clean up the entire debt Using HP's money, as long as they stay employed, you know, for that time frame. So that's a really. I really was happy about that when it came out and I didn't qualify for it at the time, but, but it was a nice, nice enhancement and something I think is really good for employees.
Speaker 2:The other one that I really think more companies are embracing our Health programs. Health benefits are really common. Wellness is something that I think a lot of companies are starting to embrace a lot more and at HP I've seen such huge strides in this in the last couple of years where we really promote wellness, both from a physical wellness and a mental well-being standpoint. Certainly through the pandemic that became a hot point for a lot of companies. Every year we have a wellness challenge, kind of a step off, and it's kind of fun to see the competitive spirit that you know you create teams of 10 people and there's the, the trash talking and it's all around the globe. So you know you're just tracking your steps on your device, it's loaded to the program and it's just like hey.
Speaker 2:We've got to get 40,000 more steps to pass up. This team like let's all work together and get 15,000 steps a day, and so I think there's some neat things there around wellness that we're doing and playing in that space there.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, we've touched on a couple things that you know are very Gen Z oriented topics too.
Speaker 1:So mental wellness is very high because they're very stressed out and you know there's the whole bring your whole self to work, be your authentic self at work, and that that includes you know I'm going through a tough period, or however it is, and I'm feeling and that's going to have an impact on productivity, absenteeism, retention, everything, and and so you're taking a being at the front of the line, like you guys are, on issues like that. The other thing they're freaked out about his money and so, again, being able to teach them about Financial literacy, you know, kind of personal finance best practices, things that they may not have learned at home or in school, that will not only impact their stress level back to point one, but also to their future. And then, yeah, being able to have benefits like that that make you know a company like HP an employer of choice. Can you speak to that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think. I think exactly what you're saying is 100% true, that and the other thing I would say is companies, or Students and candidates, care a lot more what does the company stand for? And so social issues are becoming a very big thing. And you know, diversity obviously is a very important thing across the industry, and so the, the leadership that companies take around that and the stance that they take on that is going to determine whether you're alienating a group of people or whether you're being inclusive to all and showing that there are opportunities for you know, people of all walks of life and I I do. I think HP does a great job of that.
Speaker 2:Financial literacy is huge and so offering, you know, obviously there's the, the 401k program in the US, there's the investment types of programs elsewhere, but you have to wrap that around a financial literacy, and so giving people an opportunity to talk to financial advisors that you know we use, fidelity is one of the parts of that program, that benefits program that helped them to, and hopefully people take advantage of it early on. So we did I think it was last year we did a 90 90 days to a better you and it was all around wellness and there was. So there were the pillars. It was financial wellness, and that's where we told make sure employees understood what resources they have around financial wellness. It was mental wellness and that was all the resources we have. We worked with this, these, these external vendors, around Positive intelligence and things like that headspace. We gave all employees free access to the headspace app, which was pretty neat. And then the third pillar was that physical well-being, and that included the step challenge and some of those activities.
Speaker 1:No, that's, that's super cool. So good, primer on you know kind of all things, comp for a minute. Is there anything, before we move off of that that you would just want to make sure that people think about when it comes to total comp?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think what you hit on earlier is a good point in that when you're looking at like an offer understanding, you know not just the, the things we think about salary and bonus, those are easy to serve. Target bonus. You calculate out that number. What is the holistic package look like? And perhaps I'll step away from comp a little bit and say If someone is looking at a job, I think even more important than any of that is what is the opportunity there, right? What's my opportunity in that role?
Speaker 2:You know, I think you serve yourself better at all stages in your career, but certainly for people earlier in their career serve themselves much better to say, okay, you know, comp is somewhat comparable, maybe a little bit less, but I think the opportunity is greater there and I did that coming out of grad school, actually had intern opportunities at different places and there was better pay than what I was going to get at HP. But I saw the opportunity, or the perceived opportunity at that time as Greater and and made a decision based on that. So I think you know certainly the comp and the benefits is a portion trying to figure out what is the value of that. But then also those intangible values of who am I going to work with, what types of exposure I may have and what opportunities is this going to lead to Down the road is really important.
Speaker 1:Well, we'll pick up on a point that you made.
Speaker 1:So this is really interesting and again for our listeners, yes, so the monetary compensation elements which you got a really interesting point around the mission and the purpose of the company. Can I get aligned around that? Does that bring me fulfillment versus working somewhere else? It might be paying me a little bit more but I don't really care about what they do, or I might actively not care about what they do versus not. I can get behind this. This energizes me, so I think that's really, really important.
Speaker 1:There are the work-life balance issues. So whether we're not going to go down the road, but whether we're talking about return to office, as an example, or travel, or this company is still kind of in hustle culture mode and so if somebody is slacking me on Saturday at two in the afternoon, there's the expectation that I'm going to respond. Right, and you're smiling. But I mean, we've worked at companies like that's what they expect. All that fits into, what's the opportunity, what's it going to be like working at this company? And so it really comes not all about just the dollars, and I think that that's been one of the very I feel like I'm going to make air quotes. The positive aspects of the pandemic is people did a really good job of what's really important to me. I'd rather be able to coach my nine-year-old soccer league stuff, because that's what makes me feel more alive than spending 10 more hours at work a week.
Speaker 2:And yeah, absolutely on the head. I think that's the thing is. We always look at how do I advance in my career, and that is so important because you spend so much time at work and so you want to do something you feel fulfilled by and you feel valued and you have growth opportunities and that's all great. But you have to look at what is important to me in life. How does this fit into that?
Speaker 2:And if there are times and seasons, too, where you say this is my focus right now, but you don't want to lose focus of what's core to you in your life, and, yeah, you make decisions, sometimes you call it out exactly. It's like, yeah, it's hard sometimes to say I have five kids. I've got to focus on that. I'm not going to be looking back, going. I wish I would have done it differently, and maybe I will, and I'll still be like maybe I missed that or I traveled during that time, but overall I feel that I have been able to balance that career and also the other important things in life, and career is certainly one important thing, but not losing sight of that, I think is really important and easier said than done, I think for sure.
Speaker 1:So very, very, very. I really love that segment. So thank you, trapper. I want to transition to something that you shared with me in a previous conversation that kind of took me back a little bit, which was moving away, that HP has moved away from traditional performance ratings, if I understood you correctly. Can you see a little bit to why that was, that the decision was taken to do that and then what you guys migrated into?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely so. I think, if you look at 10 years ago, there was probably the majority of companies had a process every year where they would do performance ratings. They would calibrate employees bucket employees, if you will into different performance categories, and those were very useful in terms of determining who's your top performers. Are they low performers? There's companies that had a history of pushing out the bottom 10% type of thing. I mean, we've all heard of that and then you take those and you can also, like within the compensation space, make pay or funding decisions based on top performers, get a multiplier of X, and so there was a lot of value in those ratings and those bucketings. But for an employee it doesn't feel good. In fact, as a guy that works with me, we were talking the other day and he said something like when you put high, medium, low, he's like medium isn't a rating, it's a shirt size, and I thought I love the way you said that. You know it's like you don't want to be bucketed into this world and that's now slapped on your label for the next year, and so those are some of the problems that we saw and we really took a look at it from. We want to be a company that embraces a growth mindset, which growth mindset isn't a label of your good or your bad. It's how you know what did you learn and how do you improve. So that was sort of the reasoning behind it. We had a five tier rating system and we did in one year, I mean a lot of work, but we went fully away from it. We no longer have ratings and it was a.
Speaker 2:I think there was a lot of relief by managers like great, I don't have to go through this process of like bucketing and calibrating employees and telling an employee you're here or you're there. It's going to be much easier for me. But our intent was always to say what we want is not one conversation a year with a rating. What we want is ongoing conversations about and real time feedback on performance, if there's improvements that can be made. And we still expect differentiation in terms of bonus bonuses. Back we're looking how has the individual performed over the past year? And then how do you give them either a higher or lower bonus within the funding that you have, based on their performance. So we still expected those things and we provided resources for managers.
Speaker 2:So in fact, we created it wasn't a rating, but it was a slider on not just one dimension but what they've accomplished and how they've accomplished it, and then, using that, we provided guidance. Based on this input, this employee should receive more than most peers, similar to whatever. It was very general and it wasn't put on an employee's profile as like it was not kept in managed year over year. So it wasn't a rating, but it was intended to be to put managers into a spot to still be thoughtful about the fact that we're a pay for performance company, even if we don't have those performance ratings. And we still would review and analyze bonus distribution and say are we still getting distribution on the upper end 120% of funding and above for high performers and are we still getting low on the low end? And we still saw pretty good bell curve. You'd expect that normalized distribution and we still saw that. So I think there was a lot of positive things that happened from it, while I would certainly say it wasn't perfect either.
Speaker 1:How does it change that manager-colleague conversation? So, moving from medium to short size, medium is also meh, so that's what they think of it. But how does the conversation change? Like you said, it's one, it's not one time a year, it's more kind of ongoing. But what was the impact that you had on the business and how you did it? Can you just break that down a little bit more how that conversation might go?
Speaker 2:Yeah Well and this is one of the challenges, because a big part of our compensation philosophy is manager empowerment and that moves into the performance philosophy as well is that what we wanted was regular conversations. But let's be honest, you've got 5,000 managers and you're expecting a level of being able to have those conversations and do it really well, but there's a good swanth of that employee power or that manager population that still are, I would say, probably not having those conversations to the extent that we would want them to have them. So, over the past I mean this is, I think, 2017, we went away from ratings, so we got six years under our belt. We've continued to tweak and modify that approach, which I think is good practice in anything. Look back, what's been working, what hasn't? So we continue to tweak and modify that. We work closely. So I don't own performance and talent, but we partner very closely with that team and they're pushing through quarterly conversations right. So the ideal is every week or every two weeks or frequently you're having touchpoints, but at least quarterly, let's make sure we give a framework.
Speaker 2:This quarter, the focus is on your career development.
Speaker 2:This quarter, the focus is on looking at your performance over the last period, this quarter, it's on assigning rewards to that performance. So creating structure around what those conversations should look like, I think, is a positive way to encourage it, while still we don't know that every single manager is doing it perfectly, and you certainly see and hear things where it's not going great for everybody. But that's an expectation you have of managers. Is that your job? Part of your job, a large part of your job, is this. And the other thing that we certainly do as a look back is, like I said, we look at distribution, our managers. If somebody's doing what we call the peanut butter right, they're just everybody's getting the same. You have to question. There are top performers on your team and the last thing you want to do is lose them because you're not differentiating and paying them stronger bonus awards, stronger salary increases and things like that. So we do look back on it quite frequently to say where can we tweak this and where can we adjust it?
Speaker 1:Well, so something that you're saying that I really appreciate, which is really a level of humility, and this is, like you said, we've only been doing this for six years. We've got 60 plus years of history of how we've always done it, and so and it is a bit of an experiment and we're trying something new and what's working how do we continue to make it better?
Speaker 2:And I think that that's a that's an honest answer to like we're still figuring some things out. And and it's growth mindset right. That's what the growth mindset is is saying you know this is what we're doing. How can we make it better? Or you know we're not there yet yet. Is the big word right? It's not, I can't do it, I can't do it yet, or I'm not doing it as well as I want yet. So I think it's. I think those words are definitely important in the way that we look at.
Speaker 1:I want to be respectful to what you said. Like you know, you're not in the performance and development side of this. Okay, one of the one of the things that we work with our clients on is on their resumes or when they're telling a story is to, to the great extent possible, can you quantify what your contribution was? If I'm a salesperson, it's pretty black and white right. My quota was this I was at this percent of quota. I sold this many new logos. I have sold these client, like it's pretty apparent. You know, if I'm in accounts receivable, like you know, I reduced our day sales outstanding from you know 51 to 49. That freed up this much cash. That's all good, right. There's other roles that feel potentially less connected to the growth piece of it. Can you describe if this is even within your bailiwick of how you might help people think about quantifying how they're actually contributing to the business?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you've hit on a great point because, like you said, I think about that too. Sells you've got your quotas, but I think the large, vast majority of knowledge roles. It's very ambiguous. You know what? What is the expectation? So I think a couple things that are important in that is you know setting the smart goals, you know something that can be measurable, specific, measurable, achievable results oriented.
Speaker 1:I don't remember the full acronym but yes, timely, yes.
Speaker 2:So when you do that at the beginning and I think one thing that we do and we can do better on is what are HP's overall goals? How does the people organization? What are the goals and priorities of that for the people organization this year? What about in the total rewards organization? How do I achieve that? And then trying to get by being specific, you're saying you know you have things you can measure. We have an annual listening survey. Right, we call it voice, insights, actions, pulse surveys, whatever you want to call them.
Speaker 2:As a manager, you could say look, I want my engagement to increase two points year over year and that's a.
Speaker 2:That's a goal that you can measure.
Speaker 2:As an employee, I want to reduce the processing time on this process by X amount, or I want to create a system or a tool to reduce, you know, six hours on this.
Speaker 2:So you have to be a little bit creative on how you do it, and it certainly depends on role, but linking it to percentage increases or hours saved and then showcasing that. So being able to measure it I do think is super important, and I would say the onus is on the employee for that too, because, managers, it is important to understand what the expectations of the team are, but employee individual employees are going to be much more successful when they're taking ownership for their career and for saying not just what do you need me to do you give me tasks, I do tasks but saying this is what, what I need to do, this is what I'm going to do, over and above or to improve it. And I do think that that rests on the shoulders of the employees. And I've seen employees that do that really, really well, and those are the ones that grow and develop. And I've seen some that say, well, they didn't ask me to do that, so yeah.
Speaker 1:So I think it's important. I want to pick up on that Trapper because this is something that is a little bit of a recurring theme. I think of the best companies is the sense of agency over your career. But you're the author of your career. On an upcoming episode, we've got the CHRO for Koch Industries 120,000 employees and a big, big piece of their principal base management is you are the owner of your career. We have the Chief People Officer from McKinsey, katie George, on a few months ago. That's their whole mantra is you are the author of your career.
Speaker 1:So again, for people who are listening, you know that it's not the company's fault for X or I mean maybe there's some contributing things, but at the end of the day, you own your career. And get back to the compliment. I even paid you Trapper at the beginning of this. You saw what you liked, you went back and got more education around that and you redirected your career to what you wanted to do and you took ownership of that and everybody. This is again a real key tenet of what we teach our clients is every day you get to control your attitude, every day you get to control your actions. Ultimately, these are your decisions, not somebody else's decisions.
Speaker 2:And so I appreciate what you're saying. There's a ton of empowerment in that too. It's not? You don't just own your career, you actually own your life, right? So, like we've talked about that balance and everything knowing, what do I need Then within your career? How do I achieve that? You know, I did a lot of jobs through college and high school retail and different things that were task oriented. And then you move into a career or a knowledge workspace and all of a sudden, it's like you don't have this checklist of you know, do this and set up this display and clean this bathroom. It's like okay, and I think sometimes young employees freeze in that moment of like what do I do? Well, look at the problems that exist in your space or in the business and then come up with solutions to those and bring them to your manager. Not a problem, bring them a solution. You know, I've noticed this. I think that I could try to tell you okay, if I try, this boom, like that's how you supercharge growth in your career for sure.
Speaker 1:No, I love it. You know, I remember this is going back a while ago, but working with somebody on my team who was very good at complaining about stuff and at some point it became mark. Problem identification by itself is not a compensatable skill. It's good to try identifying the problem. Please bring a solution with it and in voluntary part of executing that solution, we have everything to talk about. So it's actually I want to be mindful of the time here and I want to touch on one thing. You guys have moved to a kind of unmeasured PTO model. Is that right?
Speaker 1:Correct Within the US Can you explain the best policy for that, and then how's that going?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So we did that within the United States. Outside of the US, boy, things get complex quick, but we did just this last year move to what we call an unlimited but flexible time off so we no longer track it. We don't. You know you work with your manager. Does this work?
Speaker 2:I take this time and there was a few reasons we did it. One frankly, there is a cost savings to that. If you think about if somebody accrues time this year and then they accrue a little bit more next year that they don't use, and so every day, every year they're getting three or four days they're not using and their salary is growing. You have a higher liability down the road for that. So by making this decision it actually becomes an actual, real accrual savings. Over that, and for exempt employees, professional employees, you know people get their work done. At least that's the expectation is they get their work done. If they take a week off, great, they take a week off and then they come back and they pick things up where they left off. You know it's not as much the line employees and so support level employees, people working in factories and call centers are still you know, it's still hourly based and they don't have quite the same. But for professional employees it's a greater level of flexibility.
Speaker 2:I think we've seen positive and also I think it was a positive message to employees because the other challenge you have is younger employees don't accrue as much time off. So once you've been at HP, you know 10 years, you've got a good balance of time off because every you know, after you hit five years you keep growing that balance. But younger employees that do value that time off and do value that travel, we're going gosh. This isn't enough. There's a you know I have to take this time and I want to be gone this time and boom, before you know it. I think the three weeks that you had is gone and now it gives them the flexibility to be more like you've been here for a long time and you've got your five or six weeks a year. Once again, totally dependent on the individual, the organization. But I think we've seen some positive things.
Speaker 2:Certainly more listening that we need to do to hear how employees feel. The people that I've talked to it's like are you taking more or less? And most people like I feel like I'm taking about the same. You know, I feel like, but I don't have this stress of like.
Speaker 2:We're going to maintain this balance, because we always do a holiday shutdown at year end, which is nice because the entire company's off, you're not getting emails through, you know, between that Christmas holiday and New Year's holiday, so that that week it's pretty quiet and it's really nice, and you always had to save those four days for that. Now you know, like you know what, I can take this extra vacation or I can take this this day off. And I told my boss last year I'm like, hey, when I get a good snow day, if it's a Friday and if I can just shift a couple things, I'm probably just going to take the day off. And she's like, yeah, great, like do it. So I do appreciate the flexibility I think employees have, but I definitely they're still listening that we need to understand how well it's landed.
Speaker 1:Well, a couple things, and I want to move on to my last question, a second, but it's one treating people like adults, right, which is just from a respect perspective, and things like that. But then two is you know like let's get out of the, you know 1860s or whatever it's like. This is about getting the result done, not how many hours that you work on tracking every hour of the tour. The assignment was done to this level of quality with this budget by this time period. That's the assignment. You did it Awesome. You know everybody's happy Go ski. You know like that's all good.
Speaker 2:So measuring outcomes not ours right 100%, you know.
Speaker 1:But but that's again. It took us a long time to get to where we are. It's going to take a while to kind of reprogram, particularly folks that have been at the workforce much longer. It's like whoa, that's not how I grew up. You can't go do that because I didn't grow up in that environment.
Speaker 1:But you know things are changing and continue to evolve and you need to embrace it. I think ultimately it's it's healthier because it's less paternalistic and your kind of adult child relationship and, like I said, more adult adult, more peer to peer and having those conversations with people instead of filling out you know, may I please be off at this time your kind of requisition forms which is going to sell, just moving on real quickly. I always want to be forward looking as well. You know I can't believe we've been through this whole conversation, haven't said AI yet, so we'll check that box. But, just as you know, between societal trends which I kind of brought Gen Z, for example, into the conversation technology, the competitiveness of the workplace you know there's RTO, what are some, some things that you see will sort of be defining. You know we can't look that far up, but maybe the next five years, as it relates to maybe work in general or comp specifically.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I would say two things. One, you said the word AI, right, and that is like it's definitely having a moment, and I don't think it's a moment, I think it's the future. So what that looks like still to be determined, but we're already finding value in this. You know it's challenging. You don't want to put you know confidential data. You can't put confidential data onto a platform like chat, gpt, but for you know basic communications and things, my goodness it can. It spits out a draft based on a few keywords and then you can take that and modify it as you need. Really valuable. Going to get more valuable.
Speaker 2:We're doing things using the AI editing capabilities within certain video editing platforms where you can essentially load a script and it has an AI voice which sounds very realistic, going through that script, putting video or still shots and nice frame edits, and it's done in like seconds, essentially with AI. So that is a super exciting space. I see a future, especially in the comp space, where that plays a bigger part and where we're not manually inputting into spreadsheets data that we're sending to our survey vendors right, that we use for benchmarking. I think there's a ton of opportunities and I think in five years, for sure in 10 years we'll look back, but I can't believe we were doing it that way. So, just like the old benchmarking used to be binders, they used to ship binders, the companies you flip through, this job is paid between this and this, you know, with the, and now obviously it's all online and you pull up it, pull up the data in a second and it's quick. So that's going to be really exciting.
Speaker 2:And then I think the other big future looking trend across not just like competent benefits, but across HR and across careers, is skills. And so we're moving from a world in which, like you, your degree or your role, to find exactly what you did, and I think we're moving to a place where what skills do you have and how do those combinations of skills help you do things better? In the comp space, we got to figure out how do you compensate based on skills. So there's in the next five years there's going to be big things coming in that space and I'm excited about it.
Speaker 1:No, that's very cool. Okay, last last question, with the benefit of hindsight what advice would you give 25 year old trapper as he thinks about his career?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I had a leader that shared a little piece of advice me which has worked really well, and it's looked for opportunities to say yes, and so I did. I took that obviously within the context of what I wanted in life, not just career, but rather than first first reaction being no, it was what can I do to say yes? So that's been super important. And I think in today's day and age and I would tell myself 25 year old this, but I think it's even more important today Stop comparing yourself to others.
Speaker 2:You're always going to find somebody that you don't quite measure up to or you're going to find a group that you feel really good about yourself with, and this one leads to feeling not good about yourself. This one feels to be, leads to being overconfident or feeling complacent because hey, well, I'm better than X group. And social media today makes it so hard to avoid those comparisons. But I think it would have been. It's important for me back then. It's important, I think, even more so for today's generation to say we just got to stop comparing ourselves and run our own race, so to speak.
Speaker 1:Well, I love that, and maybe we can use that to put a final bow on this, because the topic has been around compensation. And don't compare yourself on how much you're making to somebody else or not making compared to somebody else, because, as you said and well, this is about your life, this isn't just about work, it's not just about money, it's about life, and this is a slice of it. It's an important slice of it, but it doesn't define you as a person, and so you know you've total rewards taking us to life, and you know, just be happy with who you are. You've got choices.
Speaker 1:I love what you said have a bias for saying yes, you know, and embrace opportunity. The world is never going to be slower than it is today, and so it's going to continue to change and it's going to continue to present challenges, but it's also going to continue to present opportunities to people. And you know we tend to find what we're looking for, and if you're looking for a problem, you'll find it. If you're looking for an opportunity, you'll probably find it. So I think you give good advice. 25 year old Trapper and I bet those five kids are yours are going to get it too. Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's a great summary, Bob. Thank you.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you. Well, thanks so much, trapper. This has been awesome. You know, I know that you're busy. You've got a big job at a big company, so sharing your expertise and your thoughts has been really valuable For folks who are watching this on YouTube. Again, thank you very much. Please subscribe for people that are listening to this on the podcast Rate and review. That's great, but we mostly just appreciate you investing a few minutes of your day. And again, trapper, love everything that you had to say. Thanks so much.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Bob.