Benefit Personas: Making Rewards Human Across 15,000 Employees

Speaker A: Hi everyone and welcome to beyond the Paycheck where we bring you candid conversations with chros and people leaders who are rethinking how compensation and benefits impact far more than just employee bank accounts. From the first paycheck to financial wellness programs, we explore how money shapes identity, equity, purpose and power at work. And how forward thinking companies are using pay and perks to transform lives. This podcast is presented by Aura Finance, a psychology based financial financial wellness employee benefit that combines coaching and financial management. Now let's get started and jump in with our next guest. Welcome Joshua Lemon, Senior director of Global Total Rewards at Residio. Thank you so much for joining us. To kick us off, I'd love for you to share a little bit about your current role, your background and where you're calling in from today.

Speaker B: Thanks, Kelsey. Yeah, so I'm calling in from Minneapolis. I am, um, the, as you said, the senior director of Global Total Rewards at Resideo. And what that means is basically I help run all the comp and benefits programs for Resideo. If you don't know much about our company, you might have some products that we make in your home. We basically make products that make your homes comfortable and safe. So think first Alert smoke detectors or Honeywell thermostats. Those are products that you would find that we make and we distribute. And I also am working on a couple of other projects that we'll probably get a chance to talk about over the course of the conversation. So we'll just kind of leave it at that for now.

Speaker A: And tell me a little bit about the company. What's the workforce breakdown look like?

Speaker B: Yeah, that's uh, a good question. So 15,000 employees, about 4,000 of those employees are in the U.S. another large presence in Mexico with a little over 6,000 employees and then pockets of employee, uh, populations in another 30 plus countries. So we've got employees in Canada, in the UK and Germany, really across Europe and Czech Republic and Hungary and all these different locations, some locations in apac, so New Zealand and Australia. But, uh, really good presence globally with that balance of probably another, let's see here, another 5000 ish employees spread across those countries.

Speaker A: Really excited to dig a bit deeper into both the company as well as your initiatives beyond it. But before we get there, can you tell me a little bit about your first job and if you recall what you spent your first paycheck on?

Speaker B: Yeah, so my first job was McDonald's. I ended up deciding against my better judgment probably at the time that I really wanted to make some money because I thought that was the thing to do. So I ended up taking one of the only jobs that I could get to on my bike. And I couldn't tell you what my first paycheck was spent on. Although at the time I was a nerd and I was really into computers. So I might have bought an Amiga computer with some of my first paychecks coming from that job.

Speaker A: Love it. It's always hard to recall exactly what you spent it on, but, uh, I do agree that it's easier to figure out what was the maybe potential thing, whether it's clothes or electronics. How do you think your experience, especially your early career and your relationship with money in more general, has impacted how you think about showing up for the workforce in terms of paying benefits?

Speaker B: My early experience, I'd say the biggest thing that probably shaped my opinions about pay and benefits actually was my undergrad studies. So I studied economics. And a lot of the kind of thought process behind economics is about what motivates people to do things. And money is a big factor in that. But it's not the only factor in that. A lot of the course of my career has been looking at things like recognition or looking at these ancillary programs that help support the employee experience through benefits and those sorts of things. And those really help kind of, kind of shape the way people feel about the work that they do. And a lot of times what kind of plays through my head is stuff that I learned probably in those early days in studying my economics program.

Speaker A: Right now, one of the big major topics that's going on at ah, companies is supporting the whole person. I'm really interested in your perspective, especially as you work with such an international, uh, workforce. What does that actually mean? Means supporting the mental health, the physical health, the financial health and more. What do you think companies are doing today and what are you particularly doing today that you're proud of, that you really see as integral in supporting that whole person and eventually actually making an impact to the business itself?

Speaker B: Yeah, this looks very different in different countries because of the social programs that are available. In the US we might be very focused on the mental health, the physical health, the retirement health, those sorts of things. In other countries they might have a lot better programs to take care of. Let's say the physical health, because you've got statutory healthcare benefits or something like that. Where you focus in those countries and in the US sometimes differs. And frankly, even in the US what is of interest to people varies over the course of their career. Somebody who's early in their Career might have different interests than somebody who's later in the career. But one of the things that I find is most valuable in supporting everybody is the experience of communicating those benefits to employees. Because this is where you can get really tailored into what that experience is like in a way that really helps somebody internalize and appreciate what you have to offer at any time when they're in the journey.

Speaker A: I'm, um, hearing this topic come up quite a bit in terms of communication. I think so much of the time, folks might get these incredible packages, but might not understand the value of them, might not use them effectively, et cetera. And in the past, what was used to solve for that problem was often total reward statements. What do you think total reward statements aren't doing enough of? And what do you think is necessary to ensure the communications is improved for folks?

Speaker B: Yeah, so total reward statements, I think, can really help people understand what it is that they're getting at a high level, but it still is a, uh, level of abstraction between what they actually are receiving. People don't think of things in terms of I receive X dollars of value for the healthcare benefits that I get or something like that. What they really see is I pay $25 when I go to the doctor to pay to have a sick visit or something like that, or something along those lines. When I end up having this sort of experience, this is my result. Where I think companies need to go beyond the total reward statements into different things to be able to engage their employees is they need to start breaking down the messaging into a way that is digestible for people in their life stage. And a lot of the different things that we have suddenly had brought into the reality of the workforce now with AI and those sorts of things are helping make that a lot more possible. And that's in a number of different ways. And getting the message out just in general, being able to explore channels where you didn't have the ability before, you could always send the email, but now you can create videos, you can create podcasts, you can make sure to put together engaging visuals, whether that's an infographic or a postcard that you'll send out, even in a traditional sense, to how you end up shaping the message. Maybe it's how a chatbot will communicate with you when you're engaging with it. All of that is something that the newer advances in technology can help you improve, how you end up getting that message out.

Speaker A: It's so fraught for innovation. Like you mentioned, it's not just about what you have. It's what are you leaving on the table? Such a, uh, even behavioral psychology technique. We don't just pay into healthcare benefits. Our employers spend so much money giving us the ability to access them. Um, interesting to see how that space ends up transitioning. Where do you think companies are falling short in terms of supporting the whole person?

Speaker B: I think it's if we're talking about communications specifically, and we can talk about the benefits themselves if you'd like to as well. But if we're talking about communications, it's trying to talk about things in terms of the total reward statement like you had just mentioned. If I am trying to say there was an interesting article that I read recently from a, uh, person in my network that basically had talked about total. Total reward statements are like showing, uh, your kids the receipt for what you ended up spending on groceries or different things as you're raising. You don't send them the receipt and say, hey, look, see, this is how much I love you. This is how much you're worth to me, or something like that. That's the same thing with the total rewards thing. We need to end up embracing and appreciating people for the fact that they're people. And one of the ways that we can do that is we can end up engaging them in a lot more human way, even if we're using these different AI tools. One of the things that I like to promote internally within my team is the use of Personas. And when I say Personas, I'm talking about something that is designed to end up representing a group of people specifically within our organization and talk about the experience with our benefits in a way that they would experience them. One of the ones that we did not too long ago is we put together a Persona for a family focused, young professional that could end up talking about their experience with our benefits in a way that was approachable, that seemed relatable for those employees that were in a similar sort of category. And that's something that we're trying to do more broadly across our organization is establish Personas that are helping embody our employees at their different life stages to really be relatable for them, someone that

Speaker A: works at, uh, a startup. Personas are so imperative to actually understand the functionality and usefulness of new innovation. So it's a really interesting way to think about how do you prioritize thinking about the usefulness of a new tool you even mentioned or a new benefit in general? When you think about introducing a new service, whether it is AI or something else, how do you think about making the internal case for investment in something when the spreadsheet doesn't obviously support it.

Speaker B: So when I think of total rewards, I think of basically four things. And this is going to sound, for anybody who's gotten their CCP from the world of work, this is going to sound like you're going back to school here. But we. I think of total rewards as attracting, retaining, motivating and engaging our employees. And not all of that shows up on a business case in a very clear way. But if we can bring our leadership on board with those four pillars of attracting, retaining, motivating and engaging our employees, oftentimes we can make the case. It's interesting because we talk about some of the benefits that we can talk about some of the benefits that maybe don't touch a lot of people, but are incredibly valuable to a small group of individuals, like adoption benefits, for example. Not many of your employees are going to end up going through using that benefit, but for the ones that do, it can end up being the thing that drives incredible loyalty for your company because you literally helped build their family. So those are the types of things that take a little bit more vision to be able to communicate and to bring to the table when you're putting together your benefits design.

Speaker A: I love that you bring that up because it's such a great framework to think about how to navigate the conversation upwards, whether it's figuring out how to get executive leadership buy in. So oftentimes, when we think about making investments in anything, it's Always for every $2 you spend, there's a $3 cost savings associated. But when dealing with people, it can be so much more nuanced than that. I love that you given that exact framework because I imagine you can talk about it in almost this rubric form. Here's all the ways in which this can impact these key categories that we know lead to more effective people, happier people, people that stay for longer, et cetera.

Speaker B: Absolutely. The other thing is too, not every single benefit that you bring into your organization has to be sold via a, uh, business case. Right. Sometimes, um, things are just going to feel like the right thing to do. But one of the things that I think can help, that is doing your best to of course have the financials understood so that you can understand the risks of the company, the potential exposure, the potential costs, or the potential benefits that you can bring to the table, but also the storytelling that goes along with that benefit. If I can talk about the loyalty that I'll drive with my young, just out of college, graduates by Suddenly doing a 401k match based on them repaying their student loans. That's going to end up having a certain level of impact that maybe I can quantify or maybe I can quantify in that case I probably could. But being able to tell the story I think also enhances the ability to get the benefits programs across the finish line.

Speaker A: That actually leads me to one of my follow up questions I wanted to ask you about, which is financial health. How important is financial health to you and to the organization on behalf of employees?

Speaker B: For us at Resideo, I'd say it's very important. One of the areas that we focus on, focus on. And I'm going to toot our horn a little bit on this. We do a uh, 7%, dollar for dollar match up to 7%, I should say 401k match. That's huge. That's above benchmarks for retirement benefits in general. And it's something that we really pride ourselves on. But uh, further than that, we also strive from a fiduciary standpoint to really help our employees build that retirement benefits. So there are some things that might seem like a pain point really if you're taking it from the employee perspective that we're actually basically doing a certain way because it is so important to us. For example, we don't allow 401k loans, a lot of companies do. But one of the things that we basically have designed our program intentionally to support is the financial well being which we find is more beneficial by allowing that money to continue to grow to support that goal of retirement.

Speaker A: And how do you see the financial confidence or well being within the company show up in the bottom line?

Speaker B: That's a great question. Specifically, I feel like it helps people have better financial sort of stability that then helps them take their mind off of those financial worries in their personal life so that they can do a better job on the day to day work that they're doing in their work life. When I don't have to. If I have to spend a whole bunch of time thinking about how I'm not ready for retirement or something like that, that's productive time that I could be spending thinking about something that's going to generate positive outcomes for the company. So I do think it ends up, uh, having a positive return. That might not be as quantifiable because it's hard to quantify what's going through people's heads and how that affects productivity. But I do think that there's a benefit for that.

Speaker A: No, entirely. And it goes Back to what you were saying before is it doesn't always need to be this kind of obvious case for it to be the right thing and the right thing for the business itself. It can be this broader conversation around retention, uh, satisfaction, engagement. One of the ones that you've mentioned. When you think about what's going to come next in the world of benefits compensation, HR in general, what do you think? One major change is coming that most HR leaders aren't ready for.

Speaker B: So I think, and I don't know how this is going to show up exactly, so this is me speculating a little bit, but I think that there is going to come a time that output ends up getting a higher reward than it does today. A lot of times what we end up paying for with people coming to work and everything like that is presence. Right. I end up paying you for showing up to work. Technically speaking, we may have goals that we go through over the course of the year and everything like that. There's expectations of productivity and that sort of thing. So you might say, I don't pay you just to show up. It kind of is right. The, the thing that I think is going to change, especially because tools like AI have a multiplying effect. And that multiplying effect shows up differently for different people. You might give one person the tool and they might get 50, uh, percent more productive by using AI. You give another person the tool and they might be 10 times more productive by using AI. And what I think will happen is that will eventually generate something where a future state will end up rewarding people for productivity, for output in a way that we don't see today except for in roles like sales roles. But I think that will change in the future and that will go into other areas as well.

Speaker A: And if you could leave our listeners with one final thing, I know you had mentioned you're working on some pretty darn cool initiatives. What would that be?

Speaker B: I appreciate you giving me an opportunity to talk about some of the things that I'm working on. Uh, I talked a lot about AI and some of the things that you can do with AI and how people can up using it and their total rewards work. I'm actually writing a book right now on it called the speed of your dependencies. And so if you go to joshlemonai.com uh, you can actually sign up right now to join the waitlist for my book and I'll make sure that anybody who does gets the first chapter of the book right away. So you can get that first chapter just for signing up. But then I'll also make sure that anybody who does join the wait list is made aware of the book when it becomes available so that you can get that. And as a part of that book, just to give people a little bit of what that book is, I'm um, basically showing people 20 different applications that they can build to support their total rewards work and some broader HR work with AI builds that they can do on their own.

Speaker A: Definitely looking forward to reading that, Josh. And we'll make sure to ping in the post about this conversation a, uh, link to joshlemonai.com so folks can sign up to get chapter one and learn when the book is published. Thank you so much for the conversation today. I learned so, so much from you. I wish we had even more time. Thank you for joining us and I hope you have a wonderful rest of your week.

Speaker B: Thanks, you too, Kelsey.

Speaker A: Thank you for joining us on beyond the Paycheck presented by Aura Finance. If you enjoyed this conversation, be sure to follow beyond the Paycheck wherever you get your podcasts. Beyond the Paycheck is brought to you by Aura Finance, the personal finance platform helping employees build confidence, security and freedom with their money. See how Aura Finance is redefining financial well being at Aura Finance. I'm Kelsey Willock. Thank you for listening and see you next time.