HRchat Podcast
Listen to the HRchat podcast by HR Gazette to get insights and tips from HR leaders, influencers and tech experts. Topics include HR Tech, AI, Leadership, Talent, Recruitment, Employee Engagement, Recognition, Wellness, DEI, and Company Culture.
Hosted by Bill Banham and other HR enthusiasts, the HRchat show publishes interviews with influencers, leaders, analysts, and those in the HR trenches 2-4 times each week. Shows are typically 15 to 30 minutes.
Past guests are from organizations including ADP, SAP, Ceridian, IBM, UPS, Deloitte Consulting LLP, Simon Sinek Inc, NASA, SHRM, Government of Canada, Hacking HR, Ultimate Software, McLean & Company, Microsoft, Shopify, DisruptHR, Talent Board, Virgin Pulse, Salesforce, Make-A-Wish Foundation, and Coca-Cola Beverages Company.
Podcast Music Credit"Funky One"Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Want to be featured on the show? Learn more here and contact publisher@hr-gazette.com
HRchat Podcast
Transforming Pay Transparency and Skills-Based Hiring with Trapper Yates, HP
Today we unlock some of the secrets of modern compensation strategies and the transformative power of pay transparency with our special guest, Trapper Yates, VP of Global Compensation for HP.
Trapper brings his expert insights on managing equitable pay structures for HP's vast workforce and how his team navigates the complexities of global compensation across 60 countries. Discover how HP is tackling new legislation mandating salary range postings and the positive ripple effects this transparency has on closing the gender pay gap and promoting fairness within the company.
Bob Goodwin and Trapper also spotlight a fascinating study examining the impact of pay transparency on California state government employees. Learn how transparent pay ranges can influence employee satisfaction, turnover intentions, and the crucial role of managers in discussing compensation openly. More importantly, we explore the growing trend of skills-based hiring, advocating for the recognition of potential over traditional qualifications and the alignment of job roles with the actual skills of employees.
Our conversation takes a deeper dive into HP’s innovative tools like the Career Hub, designed to enhance internal mobility by matching employees’ skills and aspirations with suitable roles. Trapper shares the importance of measuring proficiency, especially for essential soft skills, and how documented experience distinguishes candidates. As we explore the hiring landscape, you'll gain valuable perspectives on the advantages of internal versus external candidates, the role of AI, and the necessity of reducing bias in hiring decisions. Finally, we underline the significance of balancing competency with visibility for continuous professional development and career growth.
---
Message from our sponsor:
Looking for a solution to manage your global workforce?
With Deel, you can easily onboard global employees, streamline payroll, and ensure local compliance. All in one flexible, scalable platform! Join thousands of companies who trust Deel with their global HR needs. Visit deel.com to learn how to manage your global team with unmatched speed, flexibility, and compliance.
---
Feature Your Brand on the HRchat Podcast
The HRchat show has had 100,000s of downloads and is frequently listed as one of the most popular global podcasts for HR pros, Talent execs and leaders. It is ranked in the top ten in the world based on traffic, social media followers, domain authority & freshness. The podcast is also ranked as the Best Canadian HR Podcast by FeedSpot and one of the top 10% most popular shows by Listen Score.
Want to share the story of how your business is helping to shape the world of work? We offer sponsored episodes, audio adverts, email campaigns, and a host of other options. Check out packages here.
Welcome to the HR Chat Show, one of the world's most downloaded and shared podcasts designed for HR pros, talent execs, tech enthusiasts and business leaders. For hundreds more episodes and what's new in the world of work, subscribe to the show, follow us on social media and visit HRGazettecom and visit.
Speaker 2:HRGazettecom. Hey everybody, this is Bob Goodwin, president of Career Club, and welcome to another episode of HR Chat. Thanks so much to my good friend, bill Bannon for allowing me to guest host here for a few episodes. It has been quite the privilege and it's such a pleasure to be with everybody who is part of Bill's listening audience. So thank you for that very much. So I'm really excited to introduce our guest today. Today we have God Trapper Yates. Trapper is the VP of Global Compensation for HP, a company you might have heard of, and with that Trapper, well done.
Speaker 3:Thanks, bob, it's good to be here, Good to be with you again on a different podcast this time. That's right, that's right.
Speaker 2:So where are you calling in from today, Trevor? Where are you based?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I'm based in just outside of Boise, Idaho. Yeah, been here for about nine years now.
Speaker 2:Awesome, very good, and so I introduced you as VP of Global Compensation. Do you mind just kind of briefly explaining?
Speaker 3:what all is entailed in that role for listeners? Yeah, absolutely so, my role as VP of Global Compensation. We've got about 60,000 employees across the globe at HP in 60 different countries, so really important to make sure that we've got the right pay structures that we're benchmarking to market. So my team makes sure that we're doing that, that we're doing our budgeting and the accruals that we need for both our base pay and our incentive programs. Also deal with our HR and compensation committee. The board, our proxy work Basically anything that touches compensation space, a job architecture outside of just our sales population is actually managed by a different group. So anything with comp with the majority of HP's employees is kind of within within my team and within my team it is Well, that is a lot.
Speaker 2:60,000, you said in 60 countries.
Speaker 3:Yep, yep. So it's a big company.
Speaker 2:No wonder they hide you in Boise. So, like you know you're, that's a lot to keep up with.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, fun fact actually with with Boise, we actually have a fairly good-sized office here. It was one of our LaserJet headquarters, oh really. Yeah, very, very legacy I would call it office and still one of our largest US sites. So our headquarters is in California. We have a very big site in Houston, texas, which is one of our big hubs Portland, vancouver area and then Boise is one of our big ones as well. So, yeah, sort of hiding me away in this really nice place, but then it's also a big site for HP.
Speaker 2:Well, you're in a beautiful part of the country, no doubt about that, so we had looked at some different topics that we might discuss. And since your compensation pay would be somewhere near the top of the list, I suppose, and one of the big issues that in the past 12, 18 months has been around pay transparency and different states have enacted different laws and things like that, can you describe kind of what you're seeing and how you guys are starting to incorporate that at HP?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So pay transparency, as you said, kind of 12 to 18 months, it feels like it's gotten even more traction, but I think things have definitely been underway for a while and for a lot of the right reasons. You know, by increasing pay transparency you can close the gender pay gap. You can make things more fair and equitable for all employees. Younger employees absolutely love it. Like, why shouldn't I understand how I'm being paid and how I'm paid relative to others? So there's some really good things about it. Like why shouldn't I understand what how I'm being, you know, paid and how I'm paid relative to others? So there's some really good things about it recently. But there's also some challenges. Let me, I guess, preface it with that.
Speaker 3:But recently a lot of states have started to implement legislation around posting ranges for the roles in certain states, and so that's one of those things where it's like, as an applicant, it's nice to know what might I expect to make here, and you don't have to go into it going. Well, they're going to ask me what I make now, which that isn't allowed anymore either. But they're going to ask me now and then they're going to try and lowball me and barely bring me in above that Now it's what's that range and is it a range is a role I think I can do. That range looks nice. I'm going to go ahead and apply. So that's, I think, a sweeping change. That's coming. It's in. It was in four states. It's starting to get traction in other states and I think, as we move forward, it's probably going to be like HP. At this point we are making the move with all of our US based requisitions to close the range.
Speaker 2:Well, that was my next question. You guys just say well, let's not worry about what state we're in now, this is just our policy nationally.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it is, and there's a couple of things with that. I mean I think it's the right thing to do, but also, it's like you can see the wave coming. It's going to be more and more prevalent. So rather than trying to say, well, if it's in Washington or California or Colorado, do it Now. It's like we also have a lot of rules that are hey, our primary location is going to be Houston, texas, but we also might hire in Vancouver, washington or Boise, idaho or et cetera. So it's safest and I think it's easiest to just say look, let's just post the range out there and put it out there for candidates to understand what they might expect in this role.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's interesting too to me because you know now that it's become more prevalent. When I see job postings that don't have that, I'm like, really Like, can I get with the program here?
Speaker 3:Right. Yeah, it's surprising surprising, actually, when you do see those, because I think most companies have kind of moved in that direction too. Like we're going to do it in four states, we're just going to do it in all states, but you'll run into smaller companies where it's like we're just posting in Texas, that's not law right now, we're not going to do it. I think it puts them at a little bit of a disadvantage, frankly, because people want to see that and understand what the possibilities are. One of the things I think that's also a bit of a challenge is what companies are including as that expected pay.
Speaker 2:Well, that's the next thing I wanted to ask you about. Go ahead, absolutely.
Speaker 3:So you look at it and a lot of the legislation reads along the lines of expected pay range and companies like HP and most large companies have a structure.
Speaker 3:But when you look at, do you go from the lowest possible pay range for that job in the lowest geographic differential up to the top pay in the highest geographic differential, you're going to have this really big range and I don't think it's very conducive to giving a candidate a realistic expectation.
Speaker 3:I would say at HP, where we started on this, was saying well, we asked the manager what do you expect to pay for this role? And then we go 10% above and below and I would say that was too narrow. So we've kind of shifted our approach a little bit, just so because the other thing you get is internal candidates saying, well, that's my role and the minimum for that that's posted because we did the plus or minus 10% is higher than where I'm at today. That's a problem for them internally, even though the range may have been wider than that. So I think companies are balancing that right now and I've seen both from the really wide to pretty narrow and I think we've tried to thread the needle on saying this is the realistic range without being too narrow. That's kind of where we've tried?
Speaker 2:Yeah, because sometimes you do feel like there's some gamesmanship. Okay, fine, you're making me do this. I pace between 50 and 200. Right, that's not a range. Well, generally you want both links.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that doesn't feel like you're really helping a whole lot. Are there other aspects, as you guys think about the future of pay transparency? This may be a related question or it might be a second question, but the point that you made of unintended consequences or maybe expected consequences, of wait a minute I'm not at that level. So where kind of is?
Speaker 3:the future of paying transparency headed? Yeah, so I think in terms of unintended consequences or those negative things. The thing that comes to my mind is this study that was done years ago with California state government employees and they reached out and said did you know? There's this link, you can see the salaries of individuals that work for the California government. And they sent it to a control group of people and nearly everybody got that, got that link, went out to that site and visited it and started reviewing. You know what do my peers make, what does this person make? And you've got very specific with it.
Speaker 3:And when they, when they did a survey before, unlike John's satisfaction, they did a survey after and what they found is, for those that actually went out and looked at pay of their peers and their colleagues, those that were paid below the median for what their colleagues were making were obviously very unhappy. They expressed more dissatisfaction with their job, more likely to leave. There was really nothing positive. More likely to leave, there was really nothing positive. And then for those that went out and looked and found themselves above the pay or above that median level of pay relative to their peers, there really wasn't. It was kind of like that makes sense because everybody sort of sees themselves as a good employee. Of course I'm a good employee, of course I deserve more than the others. So there wasn't a really positive benefit and so that's the challenge. It's really a balance of saying people that see that they're paid lower are going to feel very negative. Obviously People that are paid higher aren't going to feel more positive.
Speaker 3:So what's the benefit or value and I think there's other studies too of direct transparency to seeing what everybody makes and some of the dangers and challenges with that.
Speaker 3:I'm more of the opinion that you know you don't have to understand what everybody around you makes in terms of their total pay, but understanding the sort of grading scale, if you will, understanding what your range is for your role and perhaps understanding what the range is for that next role so that you know what that progression could look like.
Speaker 3:So where I see that going in the future and I believe probably we're going to see legislation moving this direction as well but I think a lot of companies are also looking to say how do we be more transparent in in terms of sharing the range that an employee sits within? And that's certainly front of mind for myself to say we want to be transparent, we want to do it the right way and we want to educate managers on how to have the right conversations. Because sometimes, obviously at a big company and I think at a small company, the manager might think, yeah, I'd like to pay this employee more, but there's a process, there's priorities in the business and it's not an unlimited bucket of money to pay your employees more all the time. So those tradeoffs have to happen and empowering and enabling managers to have better conversations about pay is the first step, I think.
Speaker 2:I think. And then you get into giving higher levels of transparency. Might be, you know, base salary plus bonus. What are in those numbers? Is that strictly a salary or is it included with some, you know, upside or incentive comp?
Speaker 3:Yeah, for sales. So when we post on the requisitions for sales, it is OTE, because we you know most sales employees that's the way they look at it is they're on target earnings and it's the way that we, when we have our structures internally, that's the way that we do our analysis and put it out there. So we do OTE for sales.
Speaker 3:For the non-sales employees, what we put out there is the salary, but then we also know that there's opportunities for bonus or incentive comp on top of that um, and then internally, we've got, you know, the bonus targets that employees are aware of, which I think is another nice thing in terms of transparency that it's been years now. It was 2017 where we finally were able to say, like down through before it was only a senior leadership that had bonus targets and then the rest were kind of on a bonus plan. But, uh, we were super upfront about what your target might be, because it depended on company performance. Now we say your target is your target and company performance and individual performance can impact the actual buyout. So I I'm happy with that at least shift to transparency and spent seven years now, but it feels like it was yesterday and what a win that was when we were able to um, move that forward for everybody. Well, that's cool.
Speaker 2:Well, let's keep the conversation flowing because, um, there there's another topic that we had kind of looked at that I think is very top of mind for a lot of people, um, whether you're talent acquisition, hr, general, generalist, business partner, whatever which is around skills, and you know it's a very big trend now, right, skills-based hiring. We're seeing, you know, at least from a policy perspective, companies for some rules dropping like a four-year college degree. You know I like the expression potential over pedigree, and so can you talk just a little bit about skills identification and how you guys think about aligning the work and the skills?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think skills based hiring and promotion and all that it is. There's such a such positive momentum around that right now, and so there's two important things I think when you think about skills based hiring or anything based on skills, and the first is identification of those skills and the second is the demonstrated proficiency of those skills. And so the first one, I would say we're we're on a journey here at HP on skills and I think we're making really good headway. We've got a process to identify skills. We have a system of employees can basically self assess what skills they have. There's a process and a program that basically pulls in and gives them hey, these are the skills we think you have based on your resume, based on your role. Now go through and select or deselect which skills. So I think that's positive.
Speaker 3:There's still perhaps some gaps there, because an employee might choose let's think about LinkedIn. I mean, you can go out and put any number of skills you want and I like the endorsement feature, but you can have any number of friends or family members if you will to say, yep, they're great at this, this and this, without actually having any real understanding about how competent you are in that. Skill identification is good. I'm seeing it really positive in when you're hiring for a role. It's parsing through resumes and saying this is a match on, you know, 80% of these skills that you have. Once again, it's using keywords.
Speaker 3:The second and I think the harder part that I mentioned is that proficiency measurement right and that is that is still a big challenge. I think there's a lot of quantitative types of skills where there are challenge. I think there's a lot of quantitative types of skills where there are, like hacker rank and there's some others that aren't coding platforms that can assess skills in that domain. A lot of the softer skills, a lot of the skills that are used and are really important in business, aren't as easy to classify or give a proficiency level. So yeah, I think there's challenges but also opportunities in that space.
Speaker 2:So, to make sure I'm following you, are you saying that you guys have tools that do some skills assessment, whether it's existing talent or potential talent coming in.
Speaker 3:So right now, I would say we're light on the skills assessment part. What we've got right now I would say we're light on the skills assessment part. What we've got right now is a skills identification platform. We partnered with a vendor and have a system now that sits within our obviously our systems and we call it Career Hub. That's where all internal employees go and basically upload a resume or something that can then parse out their skills. They can say, yep, I have these skills or I'm good at this. They can do self-assessments, managers can assess their competencies within that. But I think the next step on that journey is saying great, now I've got an identification of skills, at least skills that they think they have and maybe their manager thinks they have. Now how do we validate that against, you know, industry benchmarks or and things like that. So the assessment side is one thing that I think a lot of companies are still looking toward and the next big challenge, I think, in this space. But I think there's also a lot of companies that are still looking to say we want to be on the skills journey, we want to be able to hire and promote and find talent for skills. We just we're not on that journey yet.
Speaker 3:One of the. I guess one thing I would say that I think is a really good future opportunity with this. One of the things that excites me the most is you know I work in in compensation. It's a function of HR. I used to work in finance and finance there's a fair number of overlapping skills in terms of data analytics and things that go really well together. But if I'm hiring a comp analyst, a lot of times those people in finance or financial analysts are not looking at the world of HR. They don't see those as opportunities. So the idea with this is, if you're on Career Hub and you've got your skills, it says, hey, did you know there's a role that is a 75% match to your skills. You've indicated you're interested or you'd be open to an internal job change. Maybe it's something we're looking into. So for me in the future that's what gets more exciting is the ability to see outside your area of your current function or your area of expertise into things that you might actually be a really good fit for. Well.
Speaker 2:I think it's very smart too from, you know, retention perspective. Right, you know, because I, like I've been in finance and kind of the road up in finance. I'm not sure I want to go any further down that road, but there's some other parts of the business that could potentially be very interesting, you know, kind of re-energize me intellectually and I can learn some new stuff. And you know, it's like, well, yeah, gosh, if we know that Trevor's amazing, but just he's looking for a new challenge, why does he have to leave our company to go do that? You know, if we can do things that show, hey, this guy should be very mobile within our company. How do we help one? And, yeah, if we're going to help ourselves by keeping a great performer and just, you know, helping him progress in his career, it's funny, whether it's in our outplacement business or whatever, at Career Club, we see people that believe that they have quote transferable skills and yet it's very interesting from the hiring company's perspective.
Speaker 2:It's very much about demonstrated experience, right, right, do you have 10 years doing this exact thing? And if not, we probably don't want to talk to you. And if you do, it's like, why do you want that job? You've already done it for 10 years. How do you think about that? Hi everybody, this is Bob Goodwin, president at Career Club. Imagine with me for a minute a workplace where leaders and employees are energized, engaged and operating at their very best. At Career Club, we work with both individuals and organizations to help combat stress and burnout that lead to attrition, disengagement and higher health care costs. We can help your organization and your workforce thrive, boosting both productivity and morale across the board. To learn more about how we might help you and your company, visit us at careerclub.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think it's interesting because there is a role within my team open at this point and we're going through the same sort of thing. You're looking, we've got some internal interests, you know, and these are people that know our systems and our processes and we think, well, they bring a lot to the table, but then there's a part of you going well, it's also nice to bring in new talent and understand, like, what they're seeing in the market, what they've experienced. Maybe it's different, that new ways of thinking is good. But I see, or I'm feeling the same thing where I'm like, well, if they're external man, they got to have everything we're looking for and they have to, like, knock it out of the park. And part of that is because of the risk, the inherent risk you take when you're like, well, I don't know this person, are they going to fit with the culture? Are they going to fit with the culture? Are they going to fit with the team? How long is the intake going to come up to speed? So I think there's challenges there and I think with a company the size of HP or you know, other large companies, there are so many opportunities internally and that's.
Speaker 3:That's once again going back to my comment, like the idea that this is going to enable greater career mobility within these companies and cross-pollination of talent and new experiences and growth.
Speaker 3:I've been the benefactor of that type of growth and experience myself and grateful, having been 11 years at HP.
Speaker 3:That doesn't happen without growing and experiencing different things, and so being the benefactor of that, that's what I'm excited about is you give those to internal candidates, external.
Speaker 3:I think there's also a lot of value in skills because, like I said, right now, it's a keyword identification and if they have those keywords, it's saying this is a pretty good match, but it really it's sped up. This is the first time we've had that system available when I've had an open rec within kind of my organization and I've seen the way it is helping to identify candidates. I'm hopeful, I'm optimistic, that it's doing a good job of that, because I think one of the challenges or one of the things that I hear people not happy about is, you know, a real person didn't even look at my resume and so we're not, we're not there, we're not at a point where we want to be there, but AI and this skills platform and identification is doing the upfront lay work. Say, here's top 10% that you probably want to look at. Here's the rest, and so so it does become important to make sure your skills are a match to the role.
Speaker 2:Well, I want to pick up on your point, too, that some of this stuff is easy to claim, a little harder to demonstrate.
Speaker 2:Marry that with the other well-made point, which is what we talk to clients about all the time, which is for companies, hiring is an inherently risky business and they're trying to mitigate their risk to the greatest extent possible. The reason this role is open is real work needs to be getting done, and if I'm the hiring manager, like I need somebody that the quicker they can be productive, like that's what I'm looking for and notionally, I understand you know an outside perspective and blah, blah, blah. All I know is I need this stuff that's not getting done very well, or I'm overburdening an existing resource because they're doing one and a half or two jobs right now, so I need to make that stop. Yeah, so what we end up seeing is, particularly in a very tight job market like we're in right now, where you've got some really talented people trying to find their next thing is these elongated interview processes, you know, and multiple, multiple, multiple interview series, case studies, other demonstrations of proficiency, and I'm curious how you see all that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, I think there's value. Everybody wants to feel like we've done a really thorough job of vetting this candidate because, like you said, there is that inherent risk, and so I could see from a company perspective that, hey, the more interviews, the more people that have visibility into this individual, the better. Um, but I also, from a candidate's perspective, it gets exhausting. Um, one of the things that I that I actually like a lot and it goes back to what I mentioned on skills and demonstrating and assessing that proficiency level is a lot of companies, especially for technical roles, are implementing those things like HackerRank or CodeSignal. I think is one of the others where there's an assessment done and I think it's a way to quickly see, like, how proficient are you? There are also, you know, critical reasoning and logical reasoning types of tests that a lot of companies employ as well, that I think are good.
Speaker 3:I think there's questions by some is it really the right? Is it the testing the right thinking, or is it actually providing value? And perhaps there's some things to push on there. We do, at the executive level, an assessment process and we're looking into doing it in the technical space non-technical space for those below executives, we don't really have anything at this point, but I think that's an interesting space in the future to say, rather than elongating the process through all these different interviews, how do we actually say these are the important skills? It shows that they have it on their resume. Can we do a test or validate that? I think that's what we're trying to do in interviews anyway. If there's a better way to do that, that expedites the process a bit, even better. But it's definitely a challenge.
Speaker 2:And you know, one of the things, just like on these Hacker things is, like you know, it also dials out confirmation bias, right, you know. But I like Trapper, he's a super nice guy, we get on well and you know that's really why I hired him, because I like him. Yeah, yeah, it's just like, why don't we just run a little water through that? Yeah, yeah, make sure he can actually code the way we think that he can code. And it's the same in sales, it's the same in a lot of functions. Like you know, if, if you can find a way that is objective, fair, right and predictive, yeah then, like I mean, that is a holy grail thing that is, you'd have a, you'd have the holy grail, you'd be able to sell that for anything you want.
Speaker 2:We're working on it, trapper, but that's a different topic. So last thing, talking about career growth and career development and I think you were sharing that you had met with a next-gen group at the company Do you mind sharing a little bit about that experience?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so actually fairly recently, our next-gen group is our business impact network. They're a business resource group, for we just call it a young employees network or early career employees. We call it NextGen now and it's really, for it's a very broad group but interns and new grads and things. So I recently took over as an executive sponsor for our group here in the Boise site and had a session walking through compensation, kind of how to think about it. But I also shared a little bit about career growth in that and share the two by two matrix. You know business school graduates love the two by two matrix and for me it's something I think about a lot in career success.
Speaker 3:There's your exposure and then your competency or your skills and those are sort of the two axes that I look at as being important. And if you've got low competencies or skills and low exposure, I think a lot of times you look at new grads coming in this way. They're still growing and learning. That's an okay place to be. You need to learn, you need to grow, but there's not a ton of risk because your exposure is also low. The danger area is when you get into that. If you grow into high exposure and you still haven't developed the required competency or skills. That's a dangerous place to be, you know you don't want to be in a situation.
Speaker 2:Quick definition on exposure Exposure is visibility within the company. Yes, yes, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so visibility exposure within the company, to being able to you know, influence and do different things like that. So if you have that high exposure visibility without the skill that's obviously a good place to be, where they feel like they've developed their skills, they're at a high level of competency in that and they just don't have the exposure or the visibility within the company that they want. And a lot of times that's what these mentoring programs are for. Or you need to find a sponsor within the company. You need to find a way to get that exposure and showcase your skills. If you don't, that's where we see attrition within those employees that are growing and learning, but they just don't feel like they can get anywhere.
Speaker 3:And so we talked about how to find mentors and really sponsors. You know and there's a difference between a mentor and a sponsor but somebody who's in your corner and saying, look, I've seen the work this individual does, they're ready for that next challenge and giving that visibility. And then the top corner is that's really the sweet spot. That's where you want to sharpen the saw. You've got the right levels of visibility and exposure. You've got high levels of skill and competency. It's a fun place to be and it's where you can kind of do your best work.
Speaker 2:So go ahead, I'm sorry. Well, as you say at that point, it's really about sharpening the saw, building relationships and mentoring others and things like that. So one of the things that we see so you're also doing career coaching, executive coaching, kind of work is that on your competency and visibility is helping people document their accomplishments in real time. Yeah, so, so I did great work. Now one I need to document that I did great work. But then to your point, you know if you've got a mentor and, more ideally, a sponsor, a champion, who's helping, kind of broadcast. You know Trevor's great and I'm going to tell people that Trevor's great. But first base is being able to actually document and catalog because you know when we find, you know, in the outplacement side of it, now they've left the company, they've lost access to systems, some reviews, maybe you know just other work products.
Speaker 3:Yep.
Speaker 2:Right and now they're kind of a little bit out of luck or or handicapped in their way to for the next employer to show but even again to your point within internally whether you're the compensation guy like I'm negotiating my raise. Yeah, I need to be able to defend why I'm going for the max raise or the max bonus, because I can prove to you not that I want it and I feel like I deserve it. I think I can demonstrate and provide a body of evidence that supports at least you're having an evidence-based conversation. Yeah, I'm super emotional.
Speaker 3:Yeah, for sure. I think that's important and I think a lot of companies do an annual review process and employees hopefully take that chance to say, well, let me look back over my own year and do that and document it even better. And something HP's moved more toward is a quarterly conversation where it's like let's actually do this on a regular basis, and actually a career conversation. So I think it's been a positive move. But the other thing that strikes me as you say that is a lot of people get in a company. You know I've been at HP 11 years.
Speaker 3:A lot of people are long time in a company and you become a little complacent in terms of what your resume looks like. You know, and unless you're having conversations or kind of freshening up that resume at some point you might decide I need to find something different or you might be, you know, sort of forced to choose something different and you're gonna have to look back and say what have I done over the last 10 years? So you, your point is a good one in that if you've been at a company for a while, keep that sharp, make sure that LinkedIn is up to date, that your resume is up to date and that you're keeping track internally of the things that are happening. Otherwise, you're going to get stuck in the recency bias and all you're going to be able to talk about is what I did the last year and what happened the last nine years before that. Surely there were some big things there.
Speaker 2:That's excellent advice, and the corollary to that is building your network. That's the other thing that happens when you start to just get so a wall built around you, right, and you stop looking up to see well, what else is out there and who else is out there in the whole world, and you know, building a professional network, the worst time to do that is when you have to. It's the absolute worst time to do that is when you have to, right, it's the absolute worst time to do it. And so, between being current on your accomplishments, your competencies, making sure to your point your collateral reflects that, and then the most powerful thing is your network of where a mentor or sponsor are part of that network. But you need something that's going on outside the company.
Speaker 2:I think it's another terrific way of quote. Sharpening the saw is like talking to people who don't work at your company and like, hey, here's what we're doing with ai, or here's what we're doing with the compensation scheme or here's anything. It's like I hadn't even thought about that. We're not even talking about that. That's a great idea. Yes, absolutely. Well, I'm glad to hear that you're helping lead that for your next-gen cohort, because too often it's advice that they're not getting right, and then you just sort of find out on the worst day possible. These are all the things I should have been doing. So the fact that you guys are investing in people and kind of providing them with some it sounds like very strong direction is really great.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we talked about. We had a panel, a leadership panel, so I was part of it just a few weeks ago. And then the question came up about mentoring and this is a great because I think at HP and a lot of companies you have these formal mentoring connections. You know there's these programs and they place you with a mentor and I think there's value in those. But what I my perspective on it is, the most valuable mentor relationships are the ones that happen more organically. You can certainly choose it, but I think some of the people I look at as my greatest mentors aren't people that I ever said will you be my mentor? It's been hey, let's stay in touch. Or do you mind if I connect to you when I've got issues or things to talk through and then make those regular connections, and it's tough to do. But, like you said, the worst time to do it is when you're in a situation where you need that network. You need to kind of maintain that along the way and that's certainly invaluable advice.
Speaker 2:So I want to be mindful of the time listeners and yours. Is there anything that we didn't cover? We've covered a lot of stuff in a short amount of time. Is there anything that we didn't touch on that you were hoping that we might have talked about? I think we covered it pretty well.
Speaker 3:I feel like we've covered a little bit of the gamut. I'm glad we got to talk about mentoring as well and sponsorship, because I do feel like that's such an important topic. It's something that you know as I look back, like I said, on my career, it's those types of interactions and the network and the people have been the help kind of for me on the stepping stones and also to your point today. It's it's invaluable for me to be able to connect with others in the industry.
Speaker 3:Um, I sit on this strategic steering committee with aeon, which is like 53 of our biggest tech companies, and we have an annual gathering in person and then we have quarterly and monthly conversations just talking about the things happening in the world of comp and what are you doing about it, how are you looking at it? And those became really interesting in the COVID times when all of a sudden, everybody was forced to work from home and you had companies coming out like Airbnb hey, work from anywhere and do anything any country for up to 90 days a year. So there was a lot of things there and you were able to ask the questions how are you looking at taxation? How are you looking at this. So those relationships are so valuable in anything, and certainly in careers.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. Well, Trevor Yates, VP Global Compensation at HP, thank you so much for investing a few minutes today with HR Chat and, again, listeners. Thank you so much, Bill Vannon. Thank you for letting me do this and we'll look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thank you.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to the HR Chat Show. If you enjoyed this episode, why not subscribe and listen to some of the hundreds of episodes published by HR Gazette and remember for what's new in the world of work? Subscribe to the show, follow us on social media and visit hrgazettecom.
