Hello, social media followers, LinkedIn, Facebook, and everyone tuning into our show. Welcome to the Beyond the Offer podcast. I am your host, Bill Gates, joined by my co host and friend, Rosanna Snediker. Thank you for tuning in as we tackle the latest trends and challenges in talent acquisition and human resources.
We are very excited and welcome to have Steph Brogan as our guest today. Currently, Steph is the founder of Pivotal HR Partners, which is a consulting firm that provides HR and Total Rewards services to its, uh, to its clients. Steph, uh, Steph has led Total Rewards, um, and HR companies like Campbell Soup, Morton Salt, uh, Revantage, which is a Blackstone company.
Um,. And Steph is an extremely smart, creative, driven HR leader, and we are thrilled to have you on the podcast. Steph, welcome to Beyond the Offer. Thanks, Bill and Rosanna for having me. I’m excited to be here. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, Steph, tell us a little bit more about your background, how you got into HR and Total Rewards, you know, coming out of Penn State, um, with your undergrad, um, which was, I think you were specializing in what, marketing and insurance coming out of, uh, Penn State?
Yeah, the insurance part, everybody kind of asked why. Being in the business school, you know, like any major, you have to take electives and pragmatically I took an insurance class as an elective because I thought after college, it’s something that I would need to know personally. So, to maximize my tuition dollars, um, figured may as well learn about it and then was just very intrigued and then found out that Penn State had a minor.
And then that actually landed me into benefits because I worked after college, I worked for an employee benefits brokerage firm. So, that’s how I got into employee benefits and then I went on to in house onto the employer side of things. And then from there, got into compensation HR operations at 1 point when I was at revantage, I managed payroll.
So, that’s where I started and then when I was at Campbell soup, I went to grad school at night and got my master’s in HR. Wow. Yeah, very good. That’s not normal psychology. And, um, I mean, there’s other things usually typically see with people in undergrads getting into to HR, but, uh, you know, insurance and marketing usually isn’t traditional, uh, for what, for what we typically see.
Yeah, but it’s smart to learn the benefits space right out of college. I feel like so many people are so confused with benefits, even decades out of school. So smart move on your, you know, young 20 something part. Yeah. And it was, it was actually a great introduction too, because we worked with small and large clients, but I had to, at an early stage in my career, had to present to CEOs and CFOs.
So one of the first things I learned is you have to learn the business. And I think that was so crucial in my HR career because I think the best HR leaders really know the business and you understand the financials. And that makes you a better partner. So, and from a comp and bend perspective, one thing you have to know is the financials and have to be able to present that to your CFO.
So I was very fortunate that that was what started my career in HR. Yeah. Well, like we said, you’ve, you’ve worked at big companies, Campbell Soup, Morton Salt, but you started your own HR services company called Pivotal HR Partners. We’d love to more, uh, just learn more what led you to starting your own company.
And we’d love just to hear kind of the services that you do provide to clients currently. Yeah. So I was with a health startup called Vault Health. We did COVID testing and we had an exit. Um,. We, obviously, because COVID, um, people, you know, were able to live with it. So we had wound down that part of the business and then divested to other parts of the business.
So, um, I consulted with them after my full time employment to help them, you know, wind down the business. And then I was deciding what I wanted to do next. And my former CHRO at Volt was with a new company. And he called me up and said, Hey, could you do some sales comp work for me? And cause he knew I was trying to figure out what I was doing next and said, okay.
And then I quickly realized that I loved consulting and loved, you know, that somebody else called me and asked me, did you pick up? Could you do this? Then. I love the variety of work. And then I decided this is what I want to do next. So I took my in house experience and then that’s really my product offering.
So it’s total rewards compensation. That’s everything from broad based comp to, um, sales incentive, commission plans, uh, bonus plans, benefit strategy. Um, I also do interim work. So whether you need an interim total rewards leader and then HR operations. So being able to go in, assess the client’s operations, look at how could we do things more efficiently?
Um,. Could we implement any sort of technology to make it more efficient? And then, um, also M& A work. Um, I have a specialized background in mergers and acquisitions. So helping with due diligence and integration, I would say how I differ from maybe your typical, you know, big name consultants is I care very deeply about implementation because I know what it’s like to have someone come in and recommend something.
And from a strategic perspective makes total sense, but then can you actually implement it? And can your team? Move it forward. So for me, I look at it. If I was recommending this to myself and I was back in-house could my team and I actually do this? So that’s why I care very deeply about implementation and how that impacts the employee experience.
That’s what I try to take with any client that I’m engaged with really understand their business and then How what we’re doing is really going to make an impact for them and their team? Yeah, that’s great. That’s definitely great. What kind of transitioning in that respect, which is a good transition point.
But when you’re evaluating, whether it’s. You know, when you were in house on a benefits front, or, you know, on a consulting basis, too, when you’re evaluating just any company’s benefits offerings, like, where do you go about starting? I mean, obviously, if you’ve been there for a while, you already know what their benefits are, but how do you kind of make those changes and adjustments
um, You know, as either a consultant or, you know, bring it, you know, starting off at, at a Campbell’s or, um, Morton salt right out of the gate. And how do you kind of make tweaks and changes there?  I think the best way to start is knowing where you want to end. So what’s the desired outcome. And then ask probing questions because sometimes what.
If you’re in house or, you know, if I’m consulting, sometimes what you think the desired outcome is maybe be a symptom, you know, but it’s not the actual thing that you’re trying to get to. So really being able to understand where do we want to go? What are we trying to solve for? And from a benefits perspective, most likely it’s probably two or three things.
One, which happens often is. We’ve gotten feedback from employees and exit surveys, um, or say, candidate offers who are rejecting the offer about our benefits package. Maybe it’s, um, you know, are the benefits aren’t rich enough or they’re not robust enough or the parental leave policy is not market competitive.
So taking that feedback, um, and looking how could we enhance it, but there’s a cost to that. So then, you know, you go through the protocol of what that can cost. Do we have the budget for it? Um, so that’s that’s normally 1 of the factors. And then another factor typically that comes up often is. Our spend continues to increase year after year, right?
Like, employee premiums are going up for, you know, what’s coming out of their paycheck, um, for the employer, their cost is going up as well. What could we do to try to stabilize the cost? So, putting programs in place to try to improve employees help. Um, and I would say, regardless of the reason why you’re doing something.
The most important aspect is looking at if we implement this, what’s going to be the outcome. So, like, if we get back to what’s the desired outcome, and you create a strategy for that, could you measure it? And a lot of times, you know, I can’t tell you how many employees will say, I want a gym membership.
Why can’t you just give me a gym membership? Great idea. There’s a couple different reasons why typically employers don’t offer it. I would say probably the first one is you can’t really measure it. So, you know, you’re putting forth, say, 100, 200 per employee per month, but there’s really no way to measure what that is doing to change your benefit cost.
So I think oftentimes we talk to employees in the sense of we communicate to them. From the perspective of, well, this is a benefit and sometimes we need to communicate to them in the way how it relates to the business. Right? So, like, for example, if you’re, I don’t know, in accounting, right? And you’re rolling out a new AP system.
Well, is that going to reduce your turnaround time to, you know, for payment, maybe. And if so, what does that translate to? Like every initiative in every department probably has some metric assigned to it. And oftentimes, if you would explain that to somebody, they’re going to say, oh, okay. I get that, but we never do that from a benefit perspective.
Um,. So I think oftentimes when people ask, like, oh, I want this benefit. Why aren’t you giving it to me? Because we don’t actually explain to them the business side of benefits. We just explain this is what you’re getting. So I think there’s, there’s an opportunity there to get employees to really understand why we make certain decisions from a benefits perspective, because we just don’t do that today.
Yeah, that’s a great point. It’s a tough, hard, hard to do because you’re balancing, obviously, the financial aspects with, you know, what you’re offering, of course, employees, right? So, you know, those are the 2Â levers you’re, you’re pulling. But I guess in a hypothetical situation, I wanted to ask, like, Let’s say hypothetically your gym membership piece, right?
Let’s say you do the employment engagement survey and I don’t know, 70 percent of people come at back to you and say, or you asked the question in the employment engagement survey and said, Hey, what are you, what’s missing from the benefits? And seven or let’s, I’m just saying, hypothetically 70 percent come back, say, Hey, I want a gym membership.
Like in that case or that hypothetical, like how, what do you do? Like obviously you’re working with, you know, leadership and the, the CFO and, and things like that, but is that something you would essentially give that, or how does, what would happen in that circumstance? Yeah, definitely an analysis has to be done.
So I think having survey data is, that’s your data point to support the proposal, um, right, right. And then if you believe that that is going to increase engagement or, you know, um, retention employees view of the benefit program. The other thing that is like, how do you implement the other. And this probably sounds maybe.
Kind of silly, but if you have employees across the country in cities and, you know, maybe a bit more like remote locations. You can’t get 1 gym membership that everybody, you know, like playing fitness, right? Not everybody’s going to have a planet fitness. So you have to do something like class past, but that’s the other thing is when it comes down to actually
the mechanics of it, could you implement something? That everybody has access to and. For the gym membership, that’s actually, can you figure out, like, what, can you figure out, like, what, you know, like, a general membership, you know, is, is going to cost and you can basically give them, I don’t know, maybe not in their paycheck directly, but they can use some sort of, I’m not sure, I’m not as familiar with this hypothetical situation, but give them, say, 75 a month or whatever it is, I don’t know.
Is that, is that kind of maybe? Because you’re right. Like, not to mention, if you have planted FITMAS in L. A. versus a small town, St. Louis or something like that, it’s going to cost different. Yeah, and you can, but then how do you know? So then it gets into administration and reimbursing it. And if you just gave it to everybody, Then most likely someone probably, you know, like your CHRO, your CFO is going to say, we spent this much money on this benefit.
What impact did it make? You can’t measure it. You know, so that’s the. It gets back to being able to measure having, you know, like a KPI on your benefit programs. But again, that’s not something that we never talk to employees about that. Right? So, from their perspective, they, they still don’t understand like, hey, I’ve asked for this and you didn’t give it to me.
Um,. So I think it gets back to being able to communicate better to them and let’s put together a program that. We think is what people want, but then also from like You know, we also have a fiduciary responsibility to spend those benefit dollars wisely um, and part of that is being able to measure it.
Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. Yeah, it just shows how complicated it truly is. Well, and like we said earlier, you know, a lot of folks don’t fully understand benefits and can find them extremely just challenging to kind of navigate, you know, this time of the year with open enrollment, making changes and whatnot.
Yeah. What are some of the changes over even the past, you know, 10 to 20 years that you’ve seen in benefit offerings, um, for some of the companies that you’ve supported that maybe didn’t exist, or that are just, you know, newer to the market over the past few decades? Yeah, I would- the cost just completely going up, uh, you know Yeah.
Looking about during that 10 to 15 or 20 year mark, obviously. Yeah, you know, interestingly enough, There, we’re not recreating the wheel, right? Like there’s only, there’s only so, you can only get so creative with benefits, right? You have medical, dental, vision, life, disability, pet insurance, um, stuff like that.
What I’ve seen be, I would say, probably like a more unique offering from one employer to another. Is a recent trend, whether or not they’re going to cover weight loss drugs. So, you know, like a lot of companies, they may have covered bariatric, uh, you know, bypass surgery in prior years, but now they’re looking, um, to cover.
you know, uh, weight loss medications like that, Ozempic. And I think there’s that impacts, you know.  If you’re overweight, that impacts heart disease, diabetes, like there’s, there’s normally comorbidities that go along with that. So, I think it’s more so from a plan design perspective of mental health.
That’s another 1, right? Like, years ago, we used to cap mental health visits, you 24 or 30. Well, now people are saying, you know, we’ve heard it from employees and feedback like. One, could you do a separate, you know, like headspace or another, you know, kind of mental health, um, resource. But then also implementing that in plan design.
So instead of being, you know, having limits, removing some of those limits so that employees could get the care they need. When they need it, so I would say more so it’s been creativity in plan design, not so much new product. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Well, and the medical space does change a decent amount though, too.
I mean, is a lot of the you’d mentioned like the weight loss drugs, but is that one of the reasons like on the medical side of the equation is, is that one of the things that’s also driving up the cost of benefits for employees and employers? Yeah, and, a large part is specialty medications too. Okay. Um, or say for example, and this is, it seems kind of counterintuitive, but you have an employee who is undergoing, um, say chemotherapy treatment.
And maybe there’s a new chemo drug or any, you know, replace it with any other kind of drug that’s new on the market. That’s going to be most likely more expensive. Great for the employee. Don’t get me wrong, right? Like great for the Patient undergoing treatment if that treatment is going to help them, but yes, that drives up the cost.
Now, eventually, hopefully that person gets in remission and then, you know, they are in good health and then no longer, uh, having to undergo chemotherapy, but there’s a cost in new drugs coming to the market. So as medicine continues to make progress. Um, that’s also an increased cost. In your insurance plan.
Yeah, interesting. Yeah, certainly complicated and, you know, kind of transitioning to another benefit, um, and 1, that’s obviously important to people- compensation. Um, you know, is. Obviously a very important part to what everyone does, right? You know, you got to be paid for for what you’re doing for a living, but when you’re evaluating companies, say, like, their broad based compensation salaries.
You know,. For companies you’ve worked at or, you know, clients you’ve been working with as well. Like, what’s the most complicated aspect, um, you’ve had to deal with from an overhaul in the comp, in a compensation uh, structure?  Most recently, um, in the past couple of years, I would say pay transparency and probably not.
Sorry, what was that, Bill? I just said, what do you mean by, what do you mean by that, pay transparency? I mean, everyone obviously knows what they’re getting paid, but themselves, but are you talking about other employees also knowing what everyone else makes? Yeah, so in many states and cities, um, they have or are enacting pay transparency laws, which requires employers to post in the job posting the salary range for the role.
And that, so like, Illinois is going to become effective in 2025, Minnesota’s another one, California, uh, New York already have pay transparency in place. But what that means from a perspective, and I’ve done this, um, analysis when I was in house, the, when you’re looking at internal equity, the hardest  the analysis is easy, right?
Like, okay, this is the level, you know, of each person, this is where they are within the range. That’s the easy part. The hard part is finding the money to get them to where they should be. So when you,  you should, you have to comply with pay transparency laws, right? And I’m actually a big proponent of pay transparency for other reasons, which we could get into.
But in order to comply with it, you have to post the range in the job posting. Someone who is in the exact same job, say you’re posting, for example, um, an engineer, a software engineer, exact same job, they’re going to look at that job posting, and employees do do this, and they’re going to say, I’m below that rate.
And they will call you up and say, Steph, I don’t understand. You posted this role for this range, and I’m below that range. Why? I deserve an increase. So, complying with paid transparency, sure, yeah, it’s easy to post the range and the posting. But did you look to see what your current employees are at and where they are in comparison to anyone you’re going to bring in?
And for many companies, that’s the challenge. It’s not that they don’t want to pay people appropriately. It’s to get everybody from an equitable perspective in line. There’s a cost to that, and they most likely don’t have the funds for it. So that is the, like I said, the analysis is the easy part. It’s the cost.
There’s only, you know, say you’re doing your annual merit cycle, right? You could use those funds from the merit cycle to give adjustments. Most likely you’re going to eat up your entire merit budget in those adjustments and then have nothing left to actually give a merit increase to any employee. Yeah.
Well, now there’s the layer of like, with companies being remote and having people in different locations, the COLA adjustment based off cost of living. So there’s a lot of layers to that too. Yeah. And it gets back to what’s your comp philosophy? You know, I’ve worked for 100 percent remote company, and our philosophy was.
It doesn’t matter where you are, we’re just paying everybody. You know, we’re not doing a geo differential. Based on what your location is, we’re just going to pay everybody, you know. Um, at the same level, so if you live in. Idaho, if you live in California, if you live in Chicago, it doesn’t matter. Um,. We’re not going to change your pay based on your location.
And then I’ve worked for companies in which we offered a geo differential based on their location, but that goes into then, you know, what’s your workforce planning strategy. Where are you if you’re remote, are you targeting people in a certain area? Because then you are offering a geo differential and maybe
you know, if you’re tech and you need to hire people in Silicon Valley, you’re going to pay for that. Then maybe another department, say, like, your accounting team, maybe they could be in a location outside, you know, not Silicon Valley that may have a lower, um, cost of living. Therefore, your geo differential would be lower.
There’s strategy that goes into play with that. Interesting. Yeah. Compensation is always a sensitive topic. That’s for sure.
When we’re talking about just different areas of compensation, what is, I guess, most difficult to assess when you’re looking at executive comp, you’re looking at sales incentive, you’re looking at just broad based, like which area for you as a consultant or an in house employee is kind of the most complicated?
It’s a good question. Um, and kind of a, Non answer. It depends on the company. Right. Because what I’ve seen, some companies may be really good in one space and not so good in another. So like, as an example, from a sales incentive, that could be very, very measured, right? Like, they know what their revenue targets are.
They, um, have tracked performance. Based on quota versus results that could be, uh, for one company that could be on track and, um, you know, performing well, that same company, their bonus plan for, say, like, non commission, uh, non sales employees, their commission, non sales employees, their bonus plan could be
maybe not as metrics driven, right? Like, how are they, maybe they have bonus targets, but maybe the way in which they’re actually paying out performance isn’t standardized or calibrated across the organization. So, it really depends on the company and where that company needs the most improvement, because it does vary.
What about, how about more from kind of a transitional question? You’ve done a bunch of organizational development and done a bunch of M& A. Um,. But on the topic of compensation, you bring in two companies, you know, usually the one is that’s acquiring them is typically smaller, but maybe not always, but they have cut different comp structures, right?
How do you integrate those, um, you know, in, in the sense of, right, like they’re different size of companies, title, like titles might be different, of course, based on the size, but like, how does that whole compensation process work when you’re integrating them? Yeah. So in,  I would say there’s two approaches, one, you fully integrate, two, you let them be.
So, um, when you fully integrate, I would say the best approach is do it as quickly as possible. When I was at Campbell Soup, at that time, Campbell’s had acquired Pepperidge Farm 50 years ago and we had always had a joke of we’re still trying to Campbellize them, you know, like we’re still trying to implement them, like integrate them 50 years later.
Uh,. So if you don’t, if your goal, if your strategy is to have the company you’re acquiring be a part of the same company, then I would say Integrate quickly, that means moving them on to the acquiring companies benefits, their comp plan, um, because most likely there’s probably some gives and takes, you know, like.
Maybe the acquiring company, maybe their 401k plan has a better match, but maybe the premiums are coming out of employees paychecks are a little bit more well. You could,. You could communicate that, and you may not be getting something as good here, you know, your premiums are a little bit higher, but we’re giving you a better 401k match.
If you do, and I’ve seen this happen, where you’re trying to ease them in, and you give them the better 401k match, but you wait to increase their premiums. By the time you increase their premiums a year later, they’ve forgotten that you’ve given them a better 401k match. So that’s why it’s really important if you’re going to integrate, if that’s the strategy, to do it as quickly as possible.
And then, you know, that also has cultural implications too. The more they could feel like one company, a part of it. And a lot of that is driven from policies, right? PTO policy. If they’re on a completely separate policy, and whether that’s You know, better or worse, they’re not going to feel like they’re all a part of the same company.
On the flip side, if the strategy is leave them separate, because maybe, you know, like I have a background in private equity, if the goal, sometimes you, when you acquire the goal, is you have a three to five year exit for that company, right? Like Whether it’s you want to increase revenue or you want to increase margin, so you’re maybe you’re doing like some cost cutting initiatives, the strategy then may be to keep them on their own comp and bend plan because that may be a lower cost.
So it depends on what the strategy is, and that really then determines how you integrate. Yeah, that makes sense. So let’s, um, shift a little to HR operations. We know you’ve led that for both small and larger organizations, use technology to automate processes. What do you think one of the most common misses or problems, um, is or that happens whenever you are, um, sorry, let me restart that one because I just completely went completely off.
Okay. Let’s shift to HR operations, which you have led from smaller and larger organizations and have used technology to help automate. What are the most common HR operation mistake or problems you’ve seen within departments? I think the most common mistake I’ve seen is not consistently evaluating where you are and where you’re headed.
Oftentimes you are so bogged down with putting out fires or, you know, you have your day to day stuff, but then you also have, you know, a couple of projects and you’re so used to, I just got to get this, you know, get this off my list. When I was managing teams, I would say, let’s take a beat. Let’s think about it,
you know, take a step back. Like where are we trying to go? I think that’s super important when you’re scaling an organization, but it’s also just as important for well established mature companies, because oftentimes you’re just so busy and you keep doing what you’ve always done and you fail to take a beat and think about how could we do this better, more efficiently.  With, um,. Oftentimes I think there’s probably, you know, things are changing so quickly.
There’s most likely a better way to do it. And I think when I was in house, I know the challenge of really being able to take a step back and do that. And think, cause you got to think about, okay, how are we going to do this more efficiently? How are we going to do this better? That’s one of the things I love working with clients and being able to showcase that to them and provide recommendations that.
Is going to take some manual work away from their team. Let’s automate some of it and then let them focus on more strategic objectives. And a lot of that could be done through automation today. And it doesn’t even have to be technology that you have to go by. Like as an example, if you’re a Microsoft shop, Microsoft, their 365 suite has.
So many great products that the company is already paying for that your HR ops team could utilize. So part of, you know, when I am engaged with a client, part of what I do is, is there something you have in-house that you’re just not maximizing today? Is there a way that we could use what you have, but like you all don’t have time to think about it.
Let me think about it and let me bring that recommendation to you. And then let me show you how we’re going to implement that. And then as your team goes through it, we’ll adjust along the way to optimize it for maximum capability. And then I think it’s being able to look at companies that have technology, right?
Such as you have Workday. Well, Workday is very robust, but workday is also, you got to fit it into a box, right? So is there something that we can do that, you know, has to fit the bill from a workday perspective, but is there a way that we could make it easier for your team? So just really being able to think, and I think, you know, circling back to Rosanna, the question, what are teams, what’s the most common mistake?
The most common mistake? Is not continuing to optimize and thinking, you know, how could we do things better? . A lot of burnout is because employees feel overworked and overburdened. So, how do you remove that burden? Oftentimes it’s in process. And with technology that you might already have in place, you’re just not fully utilizing.
So, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Kind of going back to the mergers and acquisition piece too, if we can, um, you know, tell me a little bit more about during an acquisition, right what is HR’s role mostly like during that acquisition and what’s the most important role? Before and after it’s actually completed, because obviously there’s 2 different, uh, challenges, right?
There’s the due diligence clearly on the front end that obviously you’re handling to, to make sure that you understand where they sit on the not only a benefit side and how they match up, but like, what are some of the kind of, you know, just the, the bigger challenges, you know, HR is kind of dealing with in particular and what is their role during that completion process?
Yeah, um, I would say being a one the first challenge is being able to find out what is not in the documents that you have requested and oftentimes that’s probably cultural stuff, you know, that isn’t going to be shown right. So being able to find out culturally, what is that company like? And then how do we integrate them into our culture?
So being able to figure that out. And then I would say from an integration perspective, you got to get it right the first time. There is nothing worse than missing the first pay, not getting that, you know, first pay right, or Um, not onboarding them correctly. Like you want them to have a great first impression of you and an employee experience that may mean that you and your team are going to their location and you’re conducting, you know, benefit enrollment meetings to educate them about the benefits.
I think oftentimes, and I was typically on the acquirer side of things. Um, you know, sometimes it’s there’s hesitancy. Not everybody is excited to be acquired. Um, so there’s some resistance to that some, uh, questioning of what is it going to be like. And no matter what acquisition that I have done underlying, everyone is afraid of what that means for their job.
So you realize that people make kind of come some questions that are somewhat a bit jarring um, and it’s probably because they’re really worried about something else. They’re asking you, like, they’re going to ask you something about, say, benefits because that’s the opportunity and they may be really hard and, um, but it’s really because they’re fearing, you know, the unknown of what’s going to happen next.
So, anything that could be done to really. You know, communicate as transparently as possible. I think goes a long way, but getting it right and making sure you onboard them. Um, smoothly. Is I think that first impression sets the tone for everything that comes after. Yeah. And if you get it wrong, you know, employees talk that is going to spread quickly.
And uh, yeah, I can only imagine. Um,. So for our listeners that are, you know, curious about maybe doing their own consulting, they’re in a corporate role, they’re in, in house, what advice would you give someone who’s looking to maybe move into more of a consulting business or to go out on their own? Um,. Where, you know,. Where would you tell them to start?
What advice would you give them just from your experience? Yeah. Yeah. Um, Tap into your network, find somebody who has done it, learn about it. And, you know, I kind of started my consulting journey not really planned, um, I had years of experience in, you know, I think I always tell people you take a job a certain times for different reasons.
You stay in that job for certain times for certain reasons. And you leave a job a certain time for certain reasons. Knowing why you want to do things and why you’re making certain moves. I think you need that in order to realize what you want to do next. And if consulting is that route, get information, talk to people who have done it, ask them, you know, what are the challenges because it’s not all rainbows and sunshine, right?
Like you’re, you’re also running your own business. Are you prepared for that and everything that comes along with it? Um,. So really being able to understand if you haven’t had any exposure to kind of what’s, what’s it like from running a business from a financials perspective, probably one of the first things that you want to talk to somebody about.
Um, Um,. Because it is very different than being in house. So, I would say, tap into your network, um, find out what went well, what didn’t. I had someone when I first started, um, who had reached out to me and said, hey, I, you know, see, you started your own. I’m happy to share with you any of my experience. And I can’t tell you how beneficial that was.
And then another person and then another person and, you know, really being able to and honestly to there’s some I wish I would have been bolder and had asked certain questions earlier. Because I waited months to find that out, and it would have helped me, like, you know, earlier in my journey. Um,. But I would say, learn all you can and decide.
And is that the right move for me right now? Um,. So yeah, that’s it’s it’s a fun journey, but you also you got to be prepared and know what you’re getting into. Good points. Um, One of the last questions before we um, wrap up was geared towards succession planning and leadership, you know, thinking of, like, when you have a CFO or CEO, or, you know, chief human resources officer that
unexpectedly resigns from their role. What’s the best way to, you know, to help with that transition and make sure you just have a proper plan in place when something unexpected like that, uh, that happens. I think probably one thing that is maybe the most understated is the next level leaders of that team.
So, 1, do they know what the plan is? If they don’t know, they then are going to have anxiety about that. And that is then going to show within their team. So I think, and changes happen all the time, right? Like execs come and go just like any employee, you know, they come and go. It’s how you prepare for that and how you react to that.
So, you know, the  the people that are doing the day to day job is really who you have to worry about the most, because you need them to do the day to day job. So, you can’t,. You know, most of the time you can’t share the details, nor should you, but people just want to know, what is the plan? Is the plan to find, you know, promote someone internal is the plan to find a replacement, not knowing who your manager is going to be is probably the most anxiety driven thing one employee can go through.
So, really being able to support that team, sometimes that means another executive overseeing that team for a period of time. Right. If you’re going to do that, because you haven’t found the successor yet, if you’re going to do that. Then make sure that that executive actually has the time to spend with that team, because if you continue to alienate that team, then, you know, it just, it like everything boils, boils, boils, and you need that team to continue doing the day to day.
So I think the most important is be as transparent as you can, you know, within reason, right? Don’t divulge details that you shouldn’t be divulging, but be as transparent as you can about the plan going forward. And then make sure you’re giving people the time and space, um, to be there for them. And leaders got to step up, right?
And every day you choose how you’re going to show up and you hope that people are going to show up and they’re going to lead and that the people who are managing that day to day, you hope that you’ve prepared them, right? Like, that is probably the best thing you could do is prepare everybody, because if someone doesn’t show up the next day, could the team still survive?
No one person should have that huge of an impact on a team, that if they don’t show up, that business doesn’t continue, right? Like, it has to go on. So hopefully you’ve prepared your team. To be able to continue should you as the leader leave and if you didn’t then you didn’t do your job as leader. Yeah Good points now.
Absolutely Well, we’d like to you know wrap up with a little more of a fun uh segment on on our end here We have a few kind of questions that are not as HR related um more of our unfiltered, um, random related questions, but Um, and not nearly as formal.  But if you could work, let’s just say at any company in the world, what company would it be?
And why would you find that company so interesting?   I would work, I would work for NVIDIA and not because of their stock price, which pretty phenomenal. Um,. But I would say for them to be so successful and, you know, cutting edge, I would love to know how their HR operations are. Like, is it as efficient as you would think?
Is it as innovative as you would think? So it’s really, that’s the reason I’d want to work there because I would love to see, um, kind of just the insights of does that carry through all aspects of the business and each department. Um, I imagine they probably also have, you know, like I talked about earlier, being able to, as you’re scaling, being able to take a beat and think, do we need to redesign something, reengineer something?
Are we optimizing it to maximum efficiency? I would love to see if they are within their HR team. Yeah, no, definitely. It’s, uh, it’s been wild to see that ride from a stock price perspective and, you know, how they’ve been crushing, I mean, the competition from Intel and I mean, you know, obviously just the chips and the AI infrastructure technology they’ve got.
It’s, uh, it’s. It’s been crazy to see the ride they’ve been on. So what’s their secret? Get underneath the hood and understand it. Yeah. Yeah. What’s the day to day operations look like? Um,. Another fun one for you. If you were handed a private jet and you could go to any country in the world, where would you go and why?
So many on the list. Um, but I’d probably pick Italy. Uh,. My partner is from Italy. So I think, um, just being able, you know, when you go to a country, but you’re with a local. It’s such a different experience. Um,. And, yeah, just being able to eat amazing food and drink amazing wine. Um, that’s where, yeah, I think Italy would be.
What about city wise? Country, what about city? City, I would say, Which, this is probably where I should use the private jet, actually, to maximize.  Probably Sydney. I’ve never been to Australia, and if you’re going to use a private jet, then why not take it to, you know, probably like the longest flight possible.
Yeah, probably the most comfortable long flight. Yeah. Exactly. So, yeah, probably Sydney. I would love to experience Australia. Yeah, that’s on my list too. Well, we’re gonna wrap up with a would you rather, but this is one of, uh, kind of my favorites. Would you rather have a personal driver or a personal chef?
I already have a personal chef. Um,. My partner. Yeah, he owns restaurants and he’s, uh, an amazing, well, that’s an easy answer then. Yeah, for sure. So I already have that. Um,. So I would say personal driver, I actually don’t really enjoy driving, so I would much rather be driven than drive myself. Yeah. Like it. Yeah.
Well, that is all we have time for today. Steph, thank you so much for joining us. We had a great conversation. Um. And thanks to everyone who was tuning into this week’s episode. Today we met with Stephanie Brogan and we discussed her career path and her company, Pivotal HR Partners, best practices in the benefits space, mergers and acquisitions within companies and succession planning for executives.
We will be back again next month with a new special guest. Quick reminder that you can support our podcast Beyond the Offer by going to the Hirewell social media platforms, which you can find through hirewell.com. Take care, everyone. And thank you for tuning in. Thanks again, Seth. Thanks for having me.
