The Benefit Almost Nobody Uses, and Why It Pays Off

Ken Wechsler & Kelsey Willock | May 15 === 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 wellness employee benefit that combines coaching and financial management. Now, let's get started and jump in with our next guest

Speaker 2: Welcome, Ken Wechsler, VP of Total Rewards at Akamai Technologies. We're so excited to have you this Friday morning. Thanks so much for joining us. Uh, 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: Sure. Thanks, Kelsey. Nice, nice to join you all here. It is, uh, indeed a Friday morning, and as I shared, I, I always like to put on an aloha spirit to start off a Friday 'cause I am originally from Southern Cal, but I'm actually in the Boston area, where the weather's not so aloha. Uh, yeah, I'm the vice president of Total Rewards for Akamai Technologies. Uh, many of you probably don't know who we are, yet you use us every day. We're an internet content delivery company with about 12,000 employees across the globe, uh, in about 35 countries, uh, of all differing backgrounds. And, uh, yeah, I, I come from a background where I have been a consultant for half my career, and I've been in corporate half my career. I like being in corporate 'cause you own it. You put your arms around people, and you help people, you know, in their journeys in their career, whether they are new in their career or thinking about retirement. So really good to be here. I, I love this topic.

Speaker 2: I'm really excited to ask you loads of questions about the company, you know, what you've done at the company, maybe what you've done at prior employers. But before we get there, I wanna back up a little bit. So tell me a little bit about your earliest money memory. Speaker: That, that's a great question. My earliest money memory. So this will take you back to when I was a kid, my father was a jeweler, and so we used to see jewelry, et cetera, and it got me into coins as a kid. Uh, collecting coins, pennies, silver ingots, all that kind of stuff. And so I got really hooked on, on, on money, not related to compensation per se, but just the concept of coins and money and, and a penny and a dollar and silver and all that. And that's, that's kinda how I just started with money itself, so

Speaker 3: And how do you think it shaped how you think about security, freedom, or even responsibility? Speaker: That's a great question. I guess, uh, you know, having it, you know, you understand that having it makes a huge difference in your life and security, and, and, and I think that that probably is a great question on part of my career of understanding that when people feel secure, it gives them the emotional freedom to feel comfortable in what they do when they are struggling financially, which I know we'll talk about maybe in a minute. When they're struggling financially, um, it diverts their attention from other things. They're worried about their family or if it's just, you know, I have daughters in their 20s who are in their early career, making sure they feel comfortable financially then allows them to enjoy their life and then be more engaged in work, so

Speaker 2: I'm definitely gonna dig deeper into that, but don't want to get carried away 'cause, um, my next question is my favorite question to ask. Speaker: Uh

Speaker 2: your first job, and do you recall what you did with your first paycheck? Speaker: Uh, yeah, good question. So I'm, I'm gonna give you a couple quick answers. So father was a jeweler. I worked in the jewelry store when I was young, discovered that I wasn't that good with my hands, but that wasn't a first paycheck. My, my first paycheck, I was a pizza delivery kid. Um, and literally, you know, you get tips and a paycheck. And, uh, I worked hard in college where my first car was a hand-me-down from my parents. My first real paycheck was eventually to save to buy myself a nice car as opposed to the old green station wagon that I had, but to actually have my own identity with a car that I wanted to. So I started saving the paychecks. Of course, buying things along the way, probably buying some coins, but, uh, but definitely saving for a vehicle

Speaker 3: What was that first vehicle and what color was it? Speaker: It was brown, Honda Accord. I still remember it.

Speaker 3: Oh, Speaker: It,

Speaker 2: awesome Speaker: liftback, you know, way back when kind of the bubble car.

Speaker 2: And how do you think your money story, whether it's, you know, old childhood memories of, of being the jeweler or collecting coins or buying your first car, how do you think that that has influenced how you think about pay and benefits on behalf of your employees? Speaker: You know, I, I, I think it has given me a visibility into thinking about, I think more about our younger talent than our more senior talent because they are earlier in their career, and I still remember the days of... I, like, I was fortunate enough, uh, you, you mentioned the first paycheck. For whatever reason, I still remember my first salary and my job out of college, 1212, $1,212 a month, which now sounds like a ridiculously small amount of money, right? But back then, my rent was only $250, and I felt comfortable and secure. I know that's not the case for our young folks now as I'm watching through daughters or as I talk to our young talent. And so I really think on focusing on a couple things, both helping them understand where they are, you know, and trying to make them feel comfortable about either rent or if they wanna own a home, et cetera, making sure they understand what the value of benefits. Um, and, and interestingly, Kelsey, also think about their future. You know, 'cause I'm to the point where I've got the gray hairs and the retirement is on the horizon, which still feels like I can still picture that first apartment and that first paycheck. And now it's like, wow, 40 years have passed, and it's okay, and it's good. But now I know where, by planning where I am now. So we're trying to introduce that a lot to our younger workforce too, and interestingly enough, our mid-career workforce who sometimes isn't thinking about it enough

Speaker 2: Yeah, it's, it's really hard when you're someone in your 20s to picture yourself 40 years from today, but it matters about caring for that person. And so having this level of responsibility as someone to hold your hand at the company to say, "Hey, in your seat. It might not feel like it, but I was there," and making good decisions today can just have you, you know, live such a, a more fruitful life, a Speaker: Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2: you know, lead you to those days in sunny San Diego and, and Hawaii and, and join. So, I Speaker: Right.

Speaker 2: answer. Speaker: Right

Speaker 2: So you mentioned something that I think is really important. It's, uh, you know, kind of this environment where people are feeling pretty stressed about money, particularly young people. Um, and it kind of brings up this broader topic of, you know, there's a lot of challenges today, uh, when it comes to, you know, pay, benefits, When you think about what are, you know, the biggest breakdowns in compensation and benefits, what are those today for you? Speaker: I think there's a couple. Uh, as a practitioner and as companies, I think we don't - I don't think we emphasize enough the value of benefits to our employees. You know, we - And I tell my teams, right? I have a whole comp team and a whole benefits team, and, and, and I'll say the comp is the sexier side, right? It's the money. It's the this. You feel it every two weeks. But knowing that in an emergency, you have a healthcare program that protects you, knowing that we are investing in you for your future and putting money away for your retirement, or we happen to be a publicly traded company where we have an ESPP, an employee stock purchase program. We're giving a 15% discount, and we're encouraging employees to participate in that. We have great participation. I think the breakdown is, is not thinking about the benefits side or the wellness side, which is, you know, here we're in mental health, you know, month, and thinking about employees' wellness. We've got employees in Israel. We know that it's a tough environment now, so we think about it's hard for them to focus on work if they're worried about their families and their mental health, et cetera. So the benefits side, a-and I tell my team again this all the time, it, it's not as noticeable, but it's equally as important as the compensation side. The cost may not be as much, but it can be the difference between being looked at as an employer and a caring, really good employer with a good culture and integrating, you know, the life and thinking about the family, uh, as part of the job. So

Speaker 3: When you think about, you know, how might you address that challenge, has there been anything you've done at the company to help people better understand their pay and benefits? Speaker: Uh, there've been a couple of things. Uh, first of all, uh, being a total rewards, uh, you know, podcast here, we did just introduce, uh, this past week, literally, total rewards statements, um, where page one is comp, page two is equity, page three is benefits sort of thing. It's five pages. We talk about wellness, we talk about financial planning, and all of it is online through our HRIS system, our HCM, that then clicks back into our intranet. So people might learn, for example, if somebody's young and has student loan debt, click, click, click. Oh, if you're paying off a student loan, we can actually match you in your 401(k), and we're doing that to help you because you're putting the money here. You know, I know companies have been introducing that recently. Our employees may not know that we've introduced it, what we call a financial fitness center. Again, young people may not have taken the time to think through a budget. Why am I not able to save enough, et cetera. So we have done a lot of that, Kelsey, and we've also spent a lot of time, uh, introducing this financial wellness center, financial fitness center we call it, uh, to help employees invest time to think about their finances

Speaker 3: Why is financial fitness important to you and important to the company? Speaker: Yeah. Gosh. Great question. Uh, if you are worried about your money, which is, you know, I mean, Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right? If you're worried about just the basic core needs day-to-day, it's pretty hard to think about in an environment like ours. I, I didn't tell you, I, I didn't share, we're 100% remote all the time. So we allow people to work, you know, and integrate their lives. But if you're worried about your money, um, you're, you're gonna think about that a lot, maybe more than we'd like. So we'd like you to be able to help feel comfortable, um, with understanding how to earn your money, where your career path is here, how you can earn more, and how to leverage it best. And also while you might be 25 or 30, how to think about the future at the same time and kind of blend them all. So I, I think financial wellness is, is a key to mental health wellness.

Speaker 2: I could not agree with you more on that one. You know, there's so much research that shows if you're financially stressed, it affects your mental health, it affects your physical health. Yeah. And so I, I love to hear the companies not just thinking about how do we set people up for success once they've left the company. It's how do we help people live today and tomorrow in a world that's super complex their employers that, you know, provide the lifeblood of their financial situations by paying them. So- Yeah Speaker: I think,

Speaker 2: that thought process. Speaker: yeah, I th- I think I heard a term recently that, you know, financial stress can destroy engagement. Financial comfort will develop engagement, you know. And, you know, we are lucky because we have learned some of the things we're doing, including this staying remote, where many companies are asking people to come back to work, um, is reducing a variety of stresses for our employees, whether it's the commute stress, the... It helps on the finances. There are, uh, there are studies out there now that we're, you know, a handful of years past COVID, that is showing people will take a significant difference in pay to work remote. You know, we can all quantify all the things of gas, insurance, clothing, food, on and on that you save by not commuting. No less time, no less if you have a young family, putting a kid in childcare versus, you know, all this sort of stuff, um, that it's, it's... There's a huge value in it. And so we, uh, we are doubling down on doing that, and we feel that, again, helps integrate the life with our employees, reducing personal stress, financial stress, et cetera. So it's an important part of our rewards package, even though there's no dollars specifically to it.

Speaker 2: So I want to double-click on that. Speaker: Sure

Speaker 2: when you think about introducing new benefits or, or, you know, systems in which you communicate those benefits, is it more important to you to have this kind of measurable dollar impact that you report back to your CFO, or is it the story behind it that matters most? Speaker: I, I think that it is mostly the story. Our CFO will say it's the dollars. Um, but I think it's mostly the story. And we, we literally, you know, we have a compensation committee, we have our board. Our comp committee is actually called our Talent Leadership and Comp, and they focus as much on the talent. And we get... boil it down to a couple things: employee engagement and turnover, right? Our attrition. You know, our engagement scores are very, very high. Um, and we still worry when they drop a little bit. We know people feel engaged in the company because of the variety of things. And, you know, again, we're talking total rewards. It may be one thing for one person, another thing for another person, but I think it's the story. We - I, I, I talk about some of the things we offer, and we know certain benefits are barely used, but it means something. Like, like one that I always think about is an adoption benefit that almost nobody adopts children. They don't need to. But if we're big about families, we're really big about building families, and if somebody is in a position where they prefer to adopt a child, having a really great adoption program to support that, that family within our company is important to us. And so back to your question, Kelsey, it really is the story. You know, and the whole broad picture is, particularly our younger workforce likes knowing that we are a caring company. You know, as we have different age groups, we, we know the younger folks also like knowing we're a caring employer

Speaker 2: I love how you think about, you know, this concept of it's, it's there's no one-size-fits-all benefit. There's not this silver bullet that's gonna make the entire workforce engaged. But when you meaningfully think about what's gonna drive engagement across the board, that is seen by people. and I imagine there's a couple people at the company that saw that, you know, maybe there's fertility situations, maybe they're, they're wanting to adopt. Regardless of the circumstance, they feel seen. So Speaker: Yep

Speaker 2: cool, uh, concept that you've, you've allowed the company. Speaker: ~Yeah. Thank you. We, uh... Go ahead. Um, y- you get the next question~

Speaker 2: Yeah. Um, what compensation and benefits trends do you think are gonna shape the employee experience most over the next year? Speaker: Next year or, well, I s - you know, we've been hearing a lot about financial wellness, of course. I'll, I'll - We've already talked about that. I'd like to say flexible benefits, which existed in the past, we are introducing it. ~I can't say yet because we haven't announced ~it, but of one of our overseas countries, we wanna put like a financial wellness wallet together, allowing people, if they wanna use it towards retirement, towards healthcare, towards wellness, towards, you know, a, a gym, whatever. Here is your money, Kelsey. Here's my money. It's the same money. You may wanna use it differently than I. So we're definitely gonna look at financial wellness, and I think, of course, it's all over the news with the EU pay transparency laws coming. Pay transparency, I think it's not so much talking about the pay itself, but really for employees to understand how it comes, where it's coming from, how they can affect it, and I think that's gonna be an important part of the story. You may be in a lower part of a salary range, but here's why. Here's how you can move up, up the range and, and why. It's not always I f- I've learned it's not always the where, but the why, y-you know, and understanding that is more important or equally important to employees, hence also our total reward statement

Speaker 2: So you bring up a really important topic, and I think you knew I was gonna ask about pay transparency Speaker: Uh-oh. Yeah

Speaker 2: what guardrails do you think leaders need to have to make sure they're keeping pay, you know, fair, equitable, and empowering? Speaker: What guardrails? Um, I think we need to be the ones who are, we being the rewards leaders or the HR practitioners or our TA folks, really pushing guardrails. And I will just give an anecdotal story without giving away. We have, uh, a department within the company that's cost-effective, I'll just say. And I'm like, "This is, this is a problem." And it has nothing to do with gender pay. They're just r- re- you know, very, very cost-effective, almost so much so that they have some folks under, like, salary minimums, right? We have a range minimum. They're under it. Like, well, come next year, it's gonna be out there, and you me- you need to start understanding what's gonna happen. And if... I don't care if the people have been here a few years and they're comfortable, you're gonna, they're gonna see where they are in the range. You're gonna have to explain why. And then they're gonna start asking the question, "I've been here three years, four years, five years. Have I been under the range minimum for all these years?" So, so the guardrails needs to be us starting from the beginning. We're working with our TA partners saying, "We want to have a minimum for a reason. If, if, if somebody's c- asking to hire somebody below a minimum, we're not allowing it." You know, business, the business runs itself. They, they want to manage their budgets, but I think the guardrails are really strong comp systems and strong support all the way up to the top, you know, where our CHRO will support this.

Speaker 2: Are there any interesting tools that you've found that are helping you navigate, you know, improving pay equity a-and awareness? Or is it a lot of tools that you're building in-house? Speaker: Um, there are a couple tools. Uh, we have worked with a firm, I, I think we don't need to, you know, say we have an outside firm that helps us with gender pay issues across the globe. We, we do those studies annually to make sure we are, are within regulations. Uh, and then we are also with the whole EU Pay Initiative. Um, you know, I'm hoping most of our listeners know there's the, the Syndio and the Trusaic are the couple of big names, the big consulting houses help. Um, we have partnered with Syndio. I don't mind, you know, giving them a little plug. Um, they are getting us ready for the right information. You know, fortunately, the EU has pushed it a little bit. Uh, we got a lot of folks in Poland, Belgium, where they seem to be the forefront countries right now on getting ready for this. Uh, and I think their tools are great. Um, they also help us with gender pay differences of understanding are we within 5% or not, and the whole total rewards package part of the initiative. So they've been great partners. Um, we're, we're all, as I've been in a couple conferences the last two weeks, all of us are saying, "Still not sure if it's crystal clear." You know, we're all kinda trying to make sure we're navigating this properly. We don't wanna be the first one in the newspaper with a problem, so... Or I should say in the press. Yeah.

Speaker 2: There's so much changing right now, but I think it's a conversation that's hard to avoid at any conference. Is that an AI? Um Speaker: Don't, don't get me started on AI. By the way, notice our name, A-K-A-M-A-I, Akamai. We've

Speaker 2: what Speaker: ready for this. We've been planning for 25 years.

Speaker 2: Well, I'm curious if you, if you will indulge me, Speaker: Sure

Speaker 2: share, you know, some tidbits of what are your thoughts about AI and how you're thinking about it? Speaker: W- okay, so I was actually on a panel discussing it with Microsoft's head of the AI strategy. She was brilliant. You know, we-we're looking at it a little slower. We are - We're making sure people understand there's so many... You say AI, there's dozens of tools out there, right? Dozens of tools. So some tools can help with language and updating policies for benefits, et cetera. Some can help us navigate information on trends, but we also have to take a step back and make sure it's right. I've done some things with AI just for fun related to sports. I'm like, "That was wrong. It was actually not right."

Speaker 2: Totally Speaker: W-we're - I think probably the first thing is we're all assuming it's always right, and it's not. So we have to have the human touch. Our, our goal is to take our team where there's a lot of psychological concern right now that, "Oh my gosh, if I do this, am I gonna lose my job?" We as a company are speaking forward and saying we c- we've had some great news. We look to keep growing. We're starting a really big growth curve. Our goal is to try to do it with the people we have and add tools. So I have a team of about 20 covering the globe. I would like to see us go from our 12,000 employees to 15,000 employees with the same group, but using tools to do the... Let it do the m-math, let it do the homework. Now analyze the data, understand the trends, look at it. Are there markets where pay is moving very quickly that we need to be prepared for hiring? Do we need to think about that related to gender pay, to retaining our existing folks? Worst thing I hate to see is, you know, Kelsey, you've been with us for five years, and you hire me, and I'm getting paid above, and you're like, "Wait a minute." You know? W- uh, that's especially in a world of pay transparency coming up. So we're, we're trying to figure out how best to use the tools to let us get out of the work of doing the analysis, but interpreting the data and then figuring out what to do with it and how to then implement it in the company.

Speaker 2: What I will say the theme of our entire conversation though, the, the level of thought around how your employees feel about something is so clear. Speaker: Yeah

Speaker 2: and it even it's in the conversation of AI. You know, we, we want to help people relieve the anxiety around it. It's so common right now, the, the fear, the job loss, et cetera. You know, the, the giant billboards and posters Speaker: Right

Speaker 2: human workforce. We're - We see it, but the company deeply cares about, you know, our financial wellbeing, our emotional wellbeing, our, our wellbeing as it pertains to the news. So really cool. And then last question for you. What's Speaker: Okay

Speaker 2: 30-day experiment that our listeners could try to boost financial wellbeing or engagement at their companies? Speaker: I'm gonna give you two quick, uh, other - Well, I'm gonna give you a personal one. Uh, ~you know, I-you did let me know I might - you might ask me this, so I'm gonna do one for a personal perspective,~ just 'cause I have daughters in their 20s. I'm - We've introduced retirement. ~I'll do this real quick, Kelsey.~ We've introduced retirement, so I still think about people planning for retirement. My daughter's in her 20s. They're saving well. I would recommend if you wanna think about your own retirement, take whatever you're saving right now and double it every six years to whatever day you say you wanna retire, to age 65. So if you're 30, go to 36, double it, 42, et cetera. Will you have enough money? If that money you have today at age 30 is not enough, increase it. Keep doubling it. And, you know, it's, it's - I call it this reverse pyramid. You know, as soon as you start getting it going, it, it blossoms quickly. You know, you start getting a little bit in the bank and a 10% gain, and that's real money. So it's so important to invest early. So, so that's on a personal basis. I, I, I have looked a little bit. I thought about that. I would encourage people to do what's called the 48-hour wealth friction experiment. Go look it up.

Speaker 2: Cool Speaker: And, and it, it's - I need to do it more myself. What it is, I'm - I will admit some guilt. I am a terrible consumer of stuff on Instagram. I see something and I jump all over it, and ohhh. You know, my wife's, uh, Mother's Day gift was a bird feeder I found on Instagram. What it does is it actually tells you to take the time to take a step back and wait 48 hours before you buy something. Set a threshold, 100 bucks, 150 bucks. Instead of that impulse buy, should you put it over here to save for a rainy day? Should you r- you know. And what does it do for you, you know, by buying it? Or where can you repurpose it? It's particularly good for people who are, you know, managing finances a little bit tighter. So that, that was something, you know, there's different tools. I thought that was a really interesting experiment people ca-can look themselves in. I guess I'm focusing more on that versus a company, but, you know, employees should think this way, and maybe it's something you promote with your employees.

Speaker 2: No, it's such a great exercise because marketing has made it so easy to prey on our own psychology. Like this is the discount's gonna go away in 12 hours, because they know people impulsively spend. if you create these guardrails of saying, "Give yourself the space to make this decision with intention," you might come to the same conclusion, but you might not, and you'll recognize that it was this impulsive buy. Speaker: Right.

Speaker 2: actually wanted. Speaker: Right, right. You don't really need it. You know, figure that out. So yeah

Speaker 2: Well, thank you so, so much, Ken, for the conversation and all of your time, especially on a Friday. I've learned so, so much from you. Where can our Speaker: Yeah

Speaker 2: connect with you beyond this conversation? Speaker: Oh, please, please find me at LinkedIn. You know I assume you'll show my spelling of my last name on here, so yeah, please reach out at LinkedIn. I have - You know, Kelsey, one of the things I've done, I've been a, a faculty member for WorldatWork and their courses for 25 years, and I love that I bump into somebody who's mid-career and said, "Oh, 10 years ago, I took a class with you." You know, I've, I, I was lucky in early in my career, had people who helped me out, and I'm to the point in my career now where I love helping people out. Don't be shy about asking questions. I've got younger colleagues from my consulting days who are now in corporate roles. I say reach out. You know, I'm happy to brainstorm, happy to talk about it. Nothing gives me more joy than doing that and helping others since I've had folks who've brought me along the way too.

Speaker 2: Well, please do reach out to Ken if you are listening to this conversation. Thank you so much again, and I hope you have a wonderful weekend Speaker: Thank you, Kelsey. Appreciate the time