Your Work Friends

New Week, New Headlines: The Company with a 5:1 CEO Salary Cap, What the Comments Section Tells us About Nike’s CEO & Send Your Recruiter a Pizza

• Francesca Ranieri • Season 1 • Episode 40

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The work news is HITTING in September, here are the four what we're watching...





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Speaker 1:

I can tell you the brands are on alignment or off alignment, absolutely yeah, you can tell. Here's a great example of this I'm going to ask you to walk into Nordstrom's, and then I'm going to ask you to walk into Macy's.

Speaker 2:

Oh God, I used to love Macy's when I was in my 20s. I hate going to Macy's now. I hate it because it looks like a bomb went off in every store. What's?

Speaker 1:

going on, mel, not much. It is Friday, it's Friday and it's fall, it's fall.

Speaker 2:

I know Fall is my favorite, mainly because I could live in 65 degree weather year round. Like 65 to 70 is like peak temperature in my mind.

Speaker 1:

I'm a spring person. Fall always makes me weirdly nostalgic. I get a bunch of deja vu. I'm like just what am I doing with my life? That kind of stuff Get depresso, it's your emo season. It's the emo season, but it's beautiful. It's beautiful. What are you up to this weekend? What's the good word?

Speaker 2:

It was our eighth wedding anniversary, so Robbie and I love Block Island, which is a little island off the coast of Rhode Island for those of you who don't know. It's one of the last remaining true natural habitats in the US. They have wind farms off the coast and they have cliffs and the ocean. It's just a beautiful place. If you and Jeff ever come up this way, we have to take you there.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I'm a fan. How about you? What are you up to? So we have friends that live here that are also from Chicago, and we have decided that we're going to try to watch the Bears games this NFL season together. Have you heard of chili cootery?

Speaker 2:

No, what is that?

Speaker 1:

I love a good nosh tray. I'm a big fan of chili cootery, you know this. I like cheese nosh.

Speaker 2:

Girl dinner. Yeah, all day, every day. I could eat like that constantly. Truly Chili cootery. Why does this sound like? Why?

Speaker 1:

do I sound like? Are you saying, yeah, chili cootery is a, it's like a charcuterie with chili, so you have the pot of chili. Oh, that's fun, right? And I texted my friends. I'm like are we doing this this weekend Because I need to try a thing? Yeah, you can't go wrong.

Speaker 2:

You can't go wrong with that, all right, all right.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, we're back with new week, new headlines. Mel, what are you talking about this week?

Speaker 2:

I am talking about Dr Bronner's and their five to one salary cap for their CEO Oof. Yeah, it's a good news story. Good news story. How about you? What are you talking about?

Speaker 1:

I'm talking about what Nike's new CEO may mean for the brand. Pretty excited about that, and I also have some, instead of WTF news, some FIA news that I wanted to share, yeah.

Speaker 2:

Let's celebrate some good news, yeah, news that I wanted to share.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, let's celebrate some good news. Yeah, this week we don't have WTF news, but we have F.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, let's do it.

Speaker 1:

For story up pizza hut will deliver a pizza with your resume on the box to a potential employer.

Speaker 2:

Mel, did you see this story? I did see this story and, as a former talent acquisition person, I'm like I love it. It's funny. It's definitely something that would make you a memorable candidate.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

Speaker 2:

I think it's fun, I don't know. I like to hear some of these good news stories.

Speaker 1:

Reported in ad age. Here's the deal Pizza Hut recognized that there's a thing called September surge and this is typically more jobs are posted, more people are applying to jobs in September. So what Pizza Hut decided to do is only in New York and only through September 22nd. They created this thing called resumes. Focus on the Z for pizza. You can go to resumes and they will print your resume on a pizza box as a way for you to stand up. We're all trying to figure out hiring managers and recruiters and that sort of stuff.

Speaker 2:

I beat that ATS deliver cheese pizza.

Speaker 1:

I would be like if, yeah, I want a medium cheese pizza, right.

Speaker 2:

Yes, like you get to eat lunch and you're looking at the resume, I'm like, all right, this is great.

Speaker 1:

This kind of collaboration just beyond awesome. Yeah, it's so smart. Love to see it, or more, I loved it very fun, fantastic kudos to the pizza hut here.

Speaker 2:

If anyone did it oh, I'm sure or if you know somebody that did this, if you're a listener right now and you know someone who did it, please let us know how it worked out.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, pixar didn't happen. Okay, the other F yeah News. Yeah, frontline worker pay two massive employers this week that I really want to promote. Bank of America raised us minimum hour wage to $24 an hour. That's for part-time and for full-time.

Speaker 2:

Ooh awesome.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, Bank of America has been on this track. I'm absolutely loving it. I also love the fact that they want to make their people as financially whole as possible with a livable wage. Also, it's so in line with their core capability of being a financial institution. Why wouldn't you want to make sure you have your people whole right? Amazing Kudos to bank of America and the biggest employer ever, Walmart ie Sam's club. Walmart's been on this journey. In July, Walmart's new benefit $20,000 in stock grants for their top managers, which was very new. Fantastic. This week, Sam's Club hourly average rate for a Sam's Club associate above 19 bucks an hour oh good, yeah, Not as much as Costco just yet.

Speaker 2:

I was just going to say catching up with Costco, Not yet.

Speaker 1:

But we're getting there and you and I both know to try to get these kinds of things passed in these massive organizations, Frontline workers, is not easy. Massive kudos to Bank of America. Massive kudos to Walmart F yeah.

Speaker 2:

And the teams behind that push, because we know that was probably a big one.

Speaker 1:

Oh, a thousand percent. I know the CHROs are all getting the gawklods for this. There's massive teams behind that Yep yeah.

Speaker 2:

F, yeah, f yeah that Yep, yeah, f, yeah, f, yeah. This article came out in July and I didn't cover it because I was like it's really good, I want to talk about it. And now it's budget season. If you are a people leader or a business who is thinking about how you want to spend more money, things to think about here, how you spend your money. So the article came out in entrepreneurcom back in July called this company caps their CEO pay, depending on how much it's lowest paid employee makes, which caught my eye. I was like interesting, interesting, okay, dr Bronner's, you know what Dr Bronner's is right, like the soap Castile soap, right, yeah, castile soap.

Speaker 1:

I like their almond flavor.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I like the lavender one and you could use it on everything Face, body soap cleaning.

Speaker 1:

It's super natural.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's awesome. Dr Bronner's, for those of you who don't know, is a 150-year-old family-owned business. I didn't either. Until this article, I was like, oh, that's pretty impressive. All right, they do soap and household goods. It was revealed that they have a five to one salary cap for their CEO, so the CEO never makes more than five times the salary of their lowest paid vested employee, vested being somebody who's full-time and has been with them for more than five years, which I thought was interesting.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I don't hear that you don't At Dr Bronner's.

Speaker 2:

That is still a very good salary. They estimate that their current CEO makes around $238,560 a year, which is not chump change folks. I could live on that. Could you live on that, francesca?

Speaker 1:

I think I could, I think I could.

Speaker 2:

Seems pretty reasonable, right? Yeah? Their CEO, david Bronner, noted an ethical company should pay a fair salary and good benefits and enable people to make ends meet on the wages they receive, and ultimately, they want to set the example for this. They truly are a case study in how to get this stuff right. So they have 311 employees with a revenue of $170 million annually. 73% of their managers have been promoted from within.

Speaker 2:

Their starting pay for regular, non-temp employees is $24.84 an hour and for TEMP it's $21.30 an hour. This is important because this is considered not just minimum wage folks, but a livable wage, according to MIT. Additionally, they cover childcare up to $7,500 per family, they offer a healthcare plan with no out-of-pocket costs and they provide employees with an organic vegan meal every single day, which I was like okay, that's cool. Anything left over goes to charitable orgs and other causes. In the CEO's Instagram video where he talked about all of this back in July, he noted that he lives an awesome life and he feels enriched by the joyful atmosphere they've created in their office. I'm going to pause. I'm going to get into CEO pay, because we've talked about the problem with CEO pay previously and our personal feelings on it. But what do you think about this?

Speaker 1:

A couple of things. You never see the five to one cap ever Like. It just doesn't happen. That's not true Variations of this periodically, like the guy that isn't only going to pay himself $70,000 a year, et cetera, but the five to one cap, I think is really doable, right. Interesting, the thing I'm really taken with is the no out of pocket cost healthcare, because last year alone I did the math on how much we spent on healthcare last year just in insurance, even though our companies paid for insurance $40,000 a year. That's astronomical. It's astronomical. I encourage everyone to go back and look at, even though your company gives you benefits, how much did you pay before even copay? How much did you pay in insurance? And my gut is it's probably somewhere around $20,000 a year. Yeah, 20 to 50.

Speaker 2:

Sounds about right? Yeah, depending on your plan, absolutely.

Speaker 1:

So very generous in a lot of different aspects of it. Here for it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I just think this is such a leading example. I want to highlight it. Yeah, why does this matter, folks? Because it does. And look, I'm going to talk about my personal feelings, and I'm sure Francesca will too.

Speaker 2:

We talk about it quite often, but CEO pay it's not just in your mind, it is out of control. It has gotten out of control and according to an article in MarketWatch that was posted back in August According to an article in MarketWatch that was posted back in August, s&p 500 CEOs made 268 times what the typical worker made last year alone. In the article, they noted that you would need to pull together 267 of your closest friend's wages to have as much as the average CEO earnings in 2023. And the AFL-CIO, which is the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organization. They put out an excellent annual report called Executive Pay Watch and they coined this as the season of CEO payflation. In this report, they analyzed comp data for executives at 3,000 companies, including 500 in the S&P 500 index, and the study found that it would take the average worker at a middle of the company's pay scale almost 200 years to make what their CEOs did, and the average CEO wages, salary, bonus stock awards is $16.3 million annually.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I'm really taken with the word average, because that means there are CEOs out there paid $144 million a year. They're not doing 268 times, they're doing a thousand times.

Speaker 2:

The report also stated that it would take more than five career lifetimes for workers to earn what CEOs receive in just one year. And we're going to talk about politics, folks, because it absolutely does come down to politics, and we are in a political year, we have an election that is coming up. In this report, it pointed out that former President Donald Trump's corporate tax breaks helped to boost CEO pay. With these tax breaks, the average employee did not see gains to their wages at all. Economists estimate that 51% of income gains from this corporate tax policies went to firm owners, 10% went to the top five highest paid senior executives, 38% went to the top 10% and 0% of the wage gains went to the bottom 90% of workers. So the lesson here your vote matters and it counts, because policies do, in fact, hit your bottom line too.

Speaker 1:

So basically if you are a C-suite or a VP level.

Speaker 2:

Oh, you're winning.

Speaker 1:

You're winning, but if you're not Right, got it Okay.

Speaker 2:

In addition to things like pay disparity, pay and equity you and I talk about this all the time lack of livable wages employees are also facing the job market. That's been full of layoffs. We've talked about a million layoffs. We Employees are also facing the job market. That's been full of layoffs. We've talked about a million layoffs. We talk about them daily. Did you see this? Did you see this? And so I think one of the things that we talked about with a former CEO on this podcast was the ability for a CEO to make choice points about their salary and potentially reshuffling some of that money for other things within the organization to make people whole, and it is possible. This is not something that's impossible. It is possible. They have to have the courage to have the conversation, and we talked about that with the CEO. What would you add to that?

Speaker 1:

I think it does come down to courage. It comes down to courage from board of directors to not give that much salary or stock grants to CEOs. Board of directors set CEO compensation. If you look at the makeup of most board of directors, especially for a fortune 500, fortune 1000, there's a lot of cross-pollination going on and so there's a lot of reason why the CEO inflation has happened, but a lot of it is on board of directors who are trying to just keep up with the Joneses.

Speaker 2:

Right. Imagine if a larger organization took this approach. How much would be accomplished. And, quite honestly, you and I have led people's strategy. If you showed your people that you would invest this way into their growth and their financial health and their mental health and programs that support them to be successful, you're going to see those results in your bottom line.

Speaker 1:

Even if you said I'm only going to take a hundred times. I mean, I think what's fascinating here is the amount of goodwill you would have. That's significant. It's just a significant not to sound like a total college freshman philosophy class comment here, but at some point it's got to be more than money. At some point you've got to be able to say, especially once you've made it to those ranks, what's this about? Is this about you and keeping up, or is it really about leaving some place better than you found it, treating your people well, having that good juju that the Bronner guy is having, isn't that what it should be about? Yes, I think it should be. I hope so. But beats the shit out of me, man.

Speaker 2:

You and I just interviewed Mike Ohada, who's the author of the Talent-Fueled Enterprise, and a big theme that he focused on and we talked about was this idea of getting back to humanity in the workplace, and I feel like this is such an excellent use case around showcasing how humanity goes a long way and really impacts your bottom line in a positive way. Just care for one another right and in the book, something that Mike pointed out was Gartner's human deal framework, which noted that employees seek personal value and purpose at work. So be prepared to deliver on it and their human deal has this excellent framework that I'd love to share. There's five elements that every organization should really think about, every people leader, when you're thinking about systems and processes that you're setting up for your people. One is deeper connections so the concept of I feel understood. Two is radical flexibility I feel autonomous. We're speaking to all you RTOers out there. Number three is personal growth I feel valued. Four is holistic well-being I feel cared for. And five is shared purpose I feel invested, and when I think of what Dr Bronner has done here, they have committed to all five elements of the human deal right In their report.

Speaker 2:

Gartner notes that people are continuing to ask themselves what makes me happy and whole, what truly satisfies me? Where have I given away too much of myself for little return? And one should assume if you are leading an organization, leading a team, your people are asking themselves those questions as well, and you should be asking those questions how am I showing, how are we showing up for people in these ways? Are we cutting them short in any of these areas? Do we need to think about it? So listen, if you want an irresistible employee value proposition as a business, as a people leader, keep this framework in your back pocket. Keep Dr Bronner's approach in your back pocket. Something to consider, because when employees see their CEO making 268 times their salary while 20 friends just got laid off, it's going to have a real impact on your business bottom line. So kudos to Dr Bronner's and your approach, because it's a masterclass in abiding by this human deal at work and we appreciate it. Yeah, yeah, so good, it's good. So some goodness, yeah, good soap and good people.

Speaker 1:

What's your story? So I want to talk about Nike. Yeah, in full disclosure, I used to work at Nike. I live in Portland, oregon, you're in Nike land.

Speaker 1:

Last week, nike announced that John Donahoe, the CEO, will retire and Elliot Hill who retired from Nike in 2020, will come in as the new CEO, and I found this really interesting for a couple of reasons. One is because I worked under John Donahoe's administration. The other thing for me is I've seen something like this before and then, as I thought about it, I'm seeing it a little bit more and more in the marketplace, and the headline here is when an organization, especially in retail or consumer goods, or when you're a really big brand right Nike is like Coca-Cola is, for example right. When you're a brand, when you stick to your core, when you know who you are, when that's manifested through your management and your strategy, your consumers feel that. Your employees feel that. When you aren't, your consumers feel that and your employees feel that, and we see vestiges of this kind of shit all the time.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think about a brand like Lululemon. They absolutely understand who their core consumer is, why they're in business. If you talk to people that work at Lulu, too, inside, outside, alignment it's working really well. You look at other brands that feel off alignment. Yeah, walk through a mall right now. I can tell you the brands are on alignment or off alignment? Absolutely.

Speaker 2:

You feel it yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you can tell. Here's a great example of this I'm going to ask you to walk into Nordstrom's and then I'm going to ask you to walk into Macy's.

Speaker 2:

Oh God, I used to love Macy's when I was in my twenties. I hate going to Macy's now. I hate it because it looks like a bomb went off in every store. And then I'm like what is this?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's the feel. Yeah, nordstrom's never lost their focus on consumer, never lost their focus on service, never lost their focus on that aspirationally attainable Right Macy's. I don't know what the fuck's going on.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's interesting. You can tell when brands like something's going on with a brand.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I've loved retail. Retail is the main industry I've served. I'm obsessed with looking at brands honestly and how they operate, and especially through the manifestation of their management teams. Obviously, you and I do that, but also with strategy, and what's interesting is when you look at why Elliot Hill might be coming back and why John Donahoe might be going out.

Speaker 1:

John Donahoe was brought in 2020 to really put Nike into the future from a digital perspective. While he sat on the board had no support background or consumer good background. He grew up as a Bain consultant and then went into eBay or ServiceNow, but outside of being on the board of directors for Nike did not come from Nike. We also know that from a people perspective again widely reported Nike went from being hybrid to now demanding that people return to office. Also widely reported during his watch, there were three major layoffs that happened. He looked to transform the brand, to transform Nike into this high-tech powerhouse, but, as Bloomberg reported, he pissed off partners and disappointed fans and, quite honestly, with employees. If you look at LinkedIn, if you look at thelayoffcom, employees aren't exactly his number one fan.

Speaker 1:

I find it interesting, though, that they brought in Elliot Hill, who retired from Nike. Elliot is someone that absolutely exudes things like sport, innovation, partnership. Go on LinkedIn and look at all of the stories that are coming out about this guy. I have yet to find anybody that has a bad thing to say about him. He is someone that will sit down, look you in the eye and talk to you about the business sports, your opinion, to your very good point. He grew up in Nike as an intern and left in 2020. So he has a huge legacy with the brand and there's a lot of people quite honestly that the minute he came back, people were ecstatic and then the market rallied. Yeah, of course, I'm wondering why that is, because it's hope.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, to save the brand. Nike is such an institution in America, I would think in the U S, right Like it is, and there's an entire generation who grew up on Nike. That was the brand, and so I think it's probably inspiring to see someone who was a homegrown, who grew up in the business, who understands it, coming back to one. I feel bad he's coming back with such high expectations because it doesn't leave an ounce to mess up, which that kind of stinks. But there's this element of he gets it. So there's almost this immediate trust because, as I saw and yeah, he did he grew up as an intern, so, being there and he's seen the evolution of the brand and it sounds like he really understands, at its core, what it stood for. So there's this element, I think, of hope hope from investors, hope from the people who work there, and that's exciting. We are living in a time where we need some freaking hope, right. So, of course, like that's going to go off like gangbusters.

Speaker 1:

I'm excited to see it. Listen, is any leader going to be a panacea for our businesses issues? No, there's management issues that will remain at Nike there are strategy issues that remain. But I'm really, I was really taken with the two things to your very good point. I think it was hope, and you saw that in LinkedIn. I have never seen a CEO announcement with so many people flooded and I didn't even work in.

Speaker 2:

I understand why your page was flooded, but I was like God. Every article I'm reading today is about this, so yeah, and it's.

Speaker 1:

I think it goes to show how much of a leader this guy is and the trust people have, that he's going to redirect Nike from a very strong focus on where our product is to what our product is right and getting back to sport, getting back to innovation. I'm excited about it. I also feel like you are seeing some vestiges of people that understand core competence in other areas Starbucks, for example, putting in the old CEO for Chipotle, Victoria's Secret putting in someone that was with Fenty, right. So there's people that recognize the beauty of someone that understands your core and really your what. They get it, yeah. Yeah, I think it's awesome when they understand your what from an external perspective and your what from an internal perspective, and it feels like Elliot Hill does.

Speaker 2:

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