Steve Kolnick and Ken Clemens – 2023 ADP Pro Summit Conversations

Connect with Steve:

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Connect with Ken:

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Connect with Dwight:

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• dwight.brown@salary.com

Connect with David:

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• david.turetsky@salary.com

Podcast Manager, Karissa Harris:

• HRDataLabs@salary.com

 

Production by Affogato Media

Resources:

• Globalization Partners
• Salary.com Consulting Services
• HR Data Labs Season 5 Episode 22
• HR Data Labs Season 5 Episode 20

• “[Working remotely] is just such a different way of working, when you have this ability to be there and present with your family. . . . We have so many people on our team that they wouldn’t work any other way.”
• “I think people don't understand how much of a retention killer not having career pathing really is.”

Announcer: 0:02

Here's an experiment for you. Take passionate experts in human resource technology.Invite cross industry experts from inside and outside HR. Mix in what's happening in people analytics today. Give them the technology to connect, hit record, pour their discussions into a beaker, mix thoroughly.And voila, you get the HR Data Labs podcast, where we explore the impact of data and analytics to your business. We may get passionate and even irreverent,that count on each episode challenging and enhancing your understanding of the way people data can be used to solve real world problems. Now, here's your host, David Turetsky.

 

David Turetsky: 0:46

Hello, and welcome to the HR Data Labs podcast. I'm your host, David Turetsky. Today we have a very special episode comprised of two interviews from the ADP Pro Summit in Las Vegas, Nevada. The first interview is with Steve Kolnick, the Vice President of Strategic Partnerships at GP,the formerly known Globalization Partners. We discuss remote work and how it's impacting how we work and where we work in 2023.The second interview is with Ken Clemens, a Solutions Consultant with Salary.com. We talk about skills and why job descriptions affect all things that have to do with HR. So sit back, relax and enjoy these interviews from the ADP Pro Summit in Las Vegas.Hello, and welcome to the HR Data Labs podcast. I'm your host, David Turetsky. We're again recording at the ADP Pro Summit in Las Vegas, Nevada at the beautiful Mandalay Bay Convention Center. And today,I'm talking with Steve Kolnick.He's the VP of Global Partnerships for Globalization Partners. Steve, how are you?

 

Steve Kolnick: 1:52

I'm very good.Thanks. I'm so sorry. We're GP now. Can we be GP?

 

David Turetsky: 1:56

Can you be GP?Yes, you can be GP. You're not Globalization Partners?

 

Steve Kolnick: 2:00

No, we changed our whole brand, our logo, we're just GP. Global made possible.

 

David Turetsky: 2:05

I'm sorry.Because why aren't you GMP then?

 

Steve Kolnick: 2:09

Global made,well, I don't know.

 

David Turetsky: 2:11

It's like ADP,always designing for people or whatever else they can come up with. So Steve, give us a little bit background on you. Tell us you know how you got to this point?

 

Steve Kolnick: 2:20

Sure. You know, I was I worked for almost my entire adult life at ADP. And the last seven years, I was in global sales for ADP. And every now and again, I would run across a project that we couldn't fulfill. They needed a more specialized solution in one or more countries. And I used to refer my clients from time to time to this company. And then I retired from ADP as part of their voluntary early retirement program. And it was a natural fit to join this company post retirement from ADP.

 

David Turetsky: 2:51

There you go. I actually think I turned 50. So it was three years ago so I was53 when I left ADP and was not part of a retirement program. So there you go.

 

Steve Kolnick: 2:58

I had just turned55 when I got the email that says if you if you're 55 or older and you've been in the pension longer than 10 years,you may retire.

 

David Turetsky: 3:10

You may. Yes,you may. That's that's great.Thank you ADP for that. So Steve, what's one thing that no one knows about you?

 

Steve Kolnick: 3:18

Until I was 23 or24 maybe? I thought I was going to be a rock star. And that would be my, my career. Yeah.

 

David Turetsky: 3:29

What kind of rock?

 

Steve Kolnick: 3:32

Well, my favorite bands at the time was Led Zeppelin. So I would have been

 

David Turetsky: 3:36

Everybody loves Led Zeppelin in our age group anyway.

 

Steve Kolnick: 3:37

And I would say when then I heard Eddie Van Halen play the guitar. And I realized, you know what, I don't think I'm cut out for this. He's just too good.

 

David Turetsky: 3:46

Well, so back then. So for some of our listeners who don't know this,or remember, back then you were either a Zeppelin or a Van Halen fan, you really weren't both because it was such a different rock sound. It was a different,it was really a different sound.And one was a British band one's the US band. But other than that, love classic rock. Tell me about GP a little bit. Tell me about the business problem GP tries to solve.

 

Steve Kolnick: 4:11

Sure. Maybe I'll tell you the origin story of our founders really quick. So Nicole Sahin worked for a company whose sole job it was, was to help businesses, US businesses expand abroad. And the only way at the time that people knew how to do that was to set up a business in that country, open a bank account or register as an employer, hire a staff. She told me that after she had set up 100businesses alone in Germany,more than 100 in the UK, and 100in France. She had this idea,what if I set up one company and gave my clients access to it?

 

David Turetsky: 4:51

Yeah.

 

Steve Kolnick: 4:52

And that was the genesis of this industry, the globe, the employer of record industry.

 

David Turetsky: 4:57

That's wonderful.it's so much to do that, because when I was at

 

Steve Kolnick: 4:58

Yeah, yeah, it is painful. And then if it doesn't Yeah!Workscape, we set up the UK office. And actually, our friend Nick Adams, who works for GP was the first hire there. And he was the MD, essentially, of that office. But wow, what a pain in the butt to get that started.work out, then you have to unwind a business which can be painful.

 

David Turetsky: 5:23

Unwinding a business in a country you don't know about, even for a country you know about is problematic.For a country you don't know about it's even worse.

 

Steve Kolnick: 5:30

Yeah.

 

David Turetsky: 5:31

It probably has a very long tail on the on the unwinding.

 

Steve Kolnick: 5:34

Yeah.

 

David Turetsky: 5:34

So the topic we wanted to talk about today was fascinating. It's a remote workforce in a hybrid world, or remote work today. There's a lot of ways we could put that topic.So So tell me, what makes remote work, work and not work today?

 

Steve Kolnick: 5:53

Yeah. Well, it's interesting. When I started here, at GP, I was a remote worker. I worked for ADP, and I worked from my home. And I rarely went out of my home.

 

David Turetsky: 6:07

We all became shut ins right away.

 

Steve Kolnick: 6:09

This was even before, long befor COVID. You know, I just, I just was a remote worker, and it was okay,I was okay with it. When I started here, at GP, there was an expectation that I would be in an office every day, all day.That the only way to get absorbed and absorb our culture and, and to really be part of GP was to was to work in an office.And then COVID hit, and then there were no offices!

 

David Turetsky: 6:35

And then everybody became a remote worker!

 

Steve Kolnick: 6:37

And then everyone became a remote worker. And now it's we've really transformed.So we are now we would call ourselves a remote first company, meaning there's no expectation that you ever work in an office only if you choose to work in an office.

 

David Turetsky: 6:53

Right.

 

Steve Kolnick: 6:53

And we keep we have a few workspaces around the world where people can work if they choose. But for the most part, we are a remote first workforce. I think with the with the new technologies available,like Zoom and Slack, we can almost work together as a team,even if we're in different parts of the world, so that's been a help, right? Just having the right technology. But we also realize that you could be a remote worker, and you could absorb the culture of the company. And it does work that way. At the same time, there are people that want to go to an office every day, and you kind of need that that space as well.

 

David Turetsky: 7:30

I think some people crave that need to not just connect with people, but to feed off of people. And I don't mean that in a negative way. I mean, they feed off the energy of other people. And there's some magic where ideas happen when they are co located. Now,to your point before technology has come a really long way from the early days of the WebEx is and the Teams and the Zoom,where it used to be painful to get on a call, it is actually somewhat still painful to get on a call. But now it's almost become expected that it's called first meet second. And usually,if it's a meeting in person,there's somebody who's gonna get fired, or there's something bad's gonna happen. Well, I shouldn't say that. There are a lot of reasons why people still get together, especially celebrations or, or milestones or things like that. But tell me in GP and what you've also seen work in other places, what are the things that really work about remote? What's, what's the benefit of working remote these days?

 

Steve Kolnick: 8:35

Well, the work life balance. Not having to commute to work. That could be,you know, coming living in Southern California, that could be soul crushing, you know, to drive into LA and out of LA every day.

 

David Turetsky: 8:47

Right. It's not just wear and tear on the car,it's wear and tear on you.Right?

 

Steve Kolnick: 8:52

And, and so I think that. We have so many people on our team, that just,they wouldn't now work any other way. Because they can take their kids to school everyday and pick them up after school. It's just such a different way of working,when you have this ability to be there and present when you need to be with your family. And, and or just maybe you just want to,you know, take a bike ride, take a nice walk, you know, during the day, which is totally fine!

 

David Turetsky: 9:22

One of the things about remote work is is that you're gonna get the work done.

 

Steve Kolnick: 9:25

Yeah!

 

David Turetsky: 9:26

It doesn't necessarily need to be nine to five, unless it has to be nine to five. But it actually can happen other hours and giving you that or affording you that opportunity to take that bike ride.

 

Steve Kolnick: 9:36

The other extreme is that working from home where you're no longer commuting, in many cases, you work even more hours than you might work otherwise if you were commuting to work, so you you have to be cognizant of that as well that that you don't get burned out because you're always at work.

 

David Turetsky: 9:54

And I'm certainly guilty of this because I find myself after dinner and after cleaning everything up.Then going to the couch with my computer, sitting, you know,with my kids watching whatever drivel is on television, and then, you know, responding to emailsm reaching out to clients,you know, trying to finish whatever I had forgotten for that day. So it definitely does extend the day beyond six, seven o'clock all the way to midnight,potentially, because, you know,something's gotta get done. And,you know, if I had to go to an office, single dad, what do I do? I mean, I don't even know how I would do that these days.

 

Steve Kolnick: 10:31

Exactly. It's right for a lot of people. It doesn't work for some people.But for me, I like it.

 

David Turetsky: 10:40

What accommodations do you think companies are starting to make because of hybrid work? Meaning those other people who want to come to the office who want to be able to have that experience,where they're feeding off of the energy of other people? Again,not in a creepy kind of science fiction kind of way. But what what kind of accommodations are you seeing there?

 

Steve Kolnick: 11:00

Well, in our organization, for example, where we have a critical mass of people, we will get a shared workspace like WeWork and make it available to the staff in that part of the world. There are also ways to use technology to have events. So we'll, we can do a happy hour on Zoom, we might even ship two bottles of wine to everyone's home and do a wine tasting.

 

David Turetsky: 11:27

Wherever legal.

 

Steve Kolnick: 11:29

So you can you can do, you can do group events virtually as well. And people can connect that way.

 

David Turetsky: 11:36

We actually do have on Fridays, Salary.com does some wellness events, where we'll get our remote workforce on Zoom. And there's actually organized activities that are professionally done, where we either do trivia contests, or we do, especially when we were doing things like for Black History Month, we were doing learning sessions and then q&a around specific topics. And it was fascinating, fun, wonderful interacting with everybody. And because we had some breakout rooms, we actually got to interact with each other, and really have fun with it. So it made us feel not just a part of the greater whole of the company. But it also drew us closer together. Because we're just having fun together.

 

Steve Kolnick: 12:20

We even implemented like a plugin to our Slack environment that we called, Donut Be Strangers. And so you're randomly, you're randomly paired with someone and you both get a Slack message saying you've been paired.Here's some available times where you're both free in your calendars. I've chosen you to create an event and get to know this person. So

 

David Turetsky: 12:42

That's really cool.

 

Steve Kolnick: 12:42

Every six weeks,we meet someone that we haven't met before in the organization virtually over doughnuts and coffee.

 

David Turetsky: 12:49

That's really cool. I like that. That's really neat. And especially if it's you're having virtual coffee and doughnuts, because you don't actually gain weight from eating virtual doughnuts, as far as I know. One of the things that I found working at Salary.com is we actually have a bunch of people in the organization, in the Waltham office in Massachusetts that actually play hockey. And one of the things we've been struggling with is trying to find a time to get together and actually get out on a sheet of ice and play hockey together. So yeah, it'd be really cool. But doing that virtually isn't as fun. No, no,no. And it actually might cause a lot of damage to your house.So So let me ask the opposite question. What do you think are the downsides of the remote work and where it's actually gotten to? Even with the flexibility?Have you have you seen a lot of downside?

 

Steve Kolnick: 13:38

I know that I crave to get out of my home sometimes. So I do feel like I need to I need to get out of the house. And I maybe need to take a few days off. Because I do work too much I feel. And so I think that's the downside is getting so absorbed in work.Because you're always at work. I don't know that there. I mean,there's the crave craving to meet other people. And if you you know, maybe you just moved to a new place, you don't have a large network of friends. You might crave that that work environment as well. For me, I'm at a time in my life where I have grandkids and lots of things to keep myself occupied.So I don't crave that as much.But I can see that could be a downside as well. Just not being amongst people.

 

David Turetsky: 14:21

Absolutely.Well, I know that it definitely does affect people's mental health to not have that interaction and whatnot. And if anybody who has problems, please reach out. You know, talk to your HR people, talk to your mental health professionals or even just talk to your GP, your general practitioner and work on it. It is a problem. It is a very big problem. There's almost an epidemic these days, not just because of remote work, but because, trying to say this the right way, but shit's hard. This is a really difficult time to be alive. And you really do need to take care of yourself. So I like the idea you had before though Steve, where you're talking about taking a bike ride or just taking a walk, we're getting into the spring and summer here in 2023. You know, it's the best time to be outside and to smell,you know, the air and to to just take stock of everything.

 

Steve Kolnick: 15:12

Agreed.

 

David Turetsky: 15:13

Yeah. So let's wrap this up by saying, What do you think the future of remote work is?

 

Steve Kolnick: 15:19

I don't see it ending. I feel like companies are now rethinking the way they recruit talent, they're no longer recruiting people within a commutable distance of an office, they they're recruiting people wherever they can find talent, the best talent. So I don't see that changing now that companies have opened their eyes, there's still plenty of businesses where you need to,you know, in hospitality or manufacturing, where you're gonna go to a place of business every day. But if people can work remotely, I think that is clearly here to stay.

 

David Turetsky: 15:54

I think one of the things that definitely need to improve are the laws regarding overtime. And how we count hours is very interesting,because they haven't been updated in years with respect to the way we work electronically,and how we put those hours in.And I'm not going to sort of talking about exempt non exempt,you know, that's an argument that I can actually have on a complete podcast. I'm talking about the regulation of the 40hour workweek. And obviously,there are experiments going on with four day workweeks and other things. But the ability for people to be more flexible,as well as to not have to carry their phone that has their corporate email on it, and have Teams on it always or Slack or whatever. The laws just have not necessarily caught up with the way we work today.

 

Steve Kolnick: 16:43

That's 100% true.Yeah. It's very different. And you're right, nothing's really changed.

 

David Turetsky: 16:50

No, no. What's worse is, I don't know how you solve that problem. Because you can't take people's phones away,right? And companies necessarily don't want to pay accurately to the amount of time even though we could probably using analytics figure that out. But I think that's another podcast in and of itself, don't you think?

 

Steve Kolnick: 17:10

Very much so.That's a very interesting topic.I would like to hear that.

 

David Turetsky: 17:13

Me too. So anybody who wants to talk about it, let me know at HRdatalabs@Salary.com! But Steve, thank you so much for being on the HR Data Labs podcast. We really appreciate it.

 

Steve Kolnick: 17:24

It was great talking to you.

 

David Turetsky: 17:25

Great talking to you as well! And hopefully we'll talk again soon.

 

Announcer: 17:29

Like what you hear so far? Make sure you never miss a show by clicking subscribe. This podcast is made possible by Salary.com. Now back to the show.

 

David Turetsky: 17:39

Hello, and welcome to the HR Data Labs podcast. I'm your host, David Turetsky. We are here at the ADP Pro Summit in beautiful Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, Nevada. And I'm talking to Ken Clemens, a business consultant with Salary.com. Hey, Ken, how are you?

 

Ken Clemens: 17:52

Hey, David, this is exciting. Thanks for having me on!

 

David Turetsky: 17:54

My pleasure.Ken, so describe who you are,and what got you to this moment in time.

 

Ken Clemens: 17:59

Sure. So I'm a consultant with Salary.com. And my focus is mostly on our software stack and our software products. So I spend a lot of time investing in the product, I spend a lot of time talking to current and prospective customers about their specific problems and trying to figure out how we can provide solutions for them. And my background with this company is I spent a couple years implementing customers in a customer success role, a lot of time working with companies from 10 employees up through the fortune 500. And my background prior to this was actually in tech, working with tech startups; implementations,solutions, architecting, and things like that. So it's been it's been fun to kind of take that technology expertise and merge it with the compensation and HR side of things.

 

David Turetsky: 18:41

And Ken's being very humble. He's one of our best solutions consultants, and really understands the business problem that the clients are trying to solve, and really knows how to show what the product can do to be able to solve those client problems. So that's really cool. So Ken,what's one thing no one knows about Ken Clemens?

 

Ken Clemens: 19:00

Just in general?

 

David Turetsky: 19:01

It could be in specific, it's okay.

 

Ken Clemens: 19:03

All right. Yeah,I'm colorblind, and it causes more problems for me than I'd like to admit.

 

David Turetsky: 19:07

So is it all colors or just certain ones?

 

Ken Clemens: 19:09

It is mostly focused on red green, but in general, if it's earthtones, I,I really struggle.

 

David Turetsky: 19:14

So we're not going to be driving in a car with you. Is that what you're trying to say?

 

Ken Clemens: 19:18

Well, that's yeah,I do manage to drive around. But when I go anywhere that has the horizontal stoplights, I'm in trouble.

 

David Turetsky: 19:23

Yes. Okay. So there it is. Everybody do not drive either behind or with Ken Clemens.

 

Ken Clemens: 19:29

Yep.

 

David Turetsky: 19:29

That's okay. So,so Ken, we were just talking and one of the things that I think you had said was a passion of yours, something you've been talking about a lot lately as job descriptions and skills. So let's get into it. So what do you think have been some of the issues that you've seen with job descriptions and you've been talking to clients lately?

 

Ken Clemens: 19:48

I think one of the biggest pieces and remember,we're, I'm coming at this from more of a compensation perspective. So a lot of the folks that I'm speaking with are, you know, comp professionals or folks in HR who are focused heavily on comp and that's the start of most of these conversations, and I think we find across the board that job descriptions are a prerequisite for all of that work.

 

David Turetsky: 20:06

Absolutely.

 

Ken Clemens: 20:06

And and it's something that never gets any focus. There's no, most companies, at least no director of job descriptions, there's no one who owns that process. And so much of this ends up falling on the people to deal with comp,because in a lot of cases,they're the first ones that actually have to go through and inventory all of the jobs and accompany and need good documentation.

 

David Turetsky: 20:24

And at the end of the day, though, really, job descriptions should be an instance, in theory should be owned by managers, because they're the ones who are giving that documentation or should be to the recruiters to try and find the right people to fill roles that they have, right?

 

Ken Clemens: 20:38

Absolutely. And then you cannot take them out of the process, no matter how hard you try. And I think the issue that so many of our customers run into is they say, Hey, we need to make organization wide strategic decisions. We need real information on these jobs,that knowledge needs to come from these managers. But even in situations where the managers are doing a great job with it,they're inconsistent, they follow different formats, there are a lot of times geared towards recruiting. And I think that causes a lot of problems when you have to sit down and compare jobs across different areas of the company.

 

David Turetsky: 21:09

Well, the inconsistency I'm sure kills them.

 

Ken Clemens: 21:12

Absolutely.

 

David Turetsky: 21:12

But then again,the other the other problem is do people really know what they're actually working towards?

 

Ken Clemens: 21:17

I think that's that's a huge part of it, too.And I think what ends up happening in a lot of these cases is that the the compensation team ends up owning so much of this job description process. But then there are so many downstream parties in the organization that need this info, learning and development,you have the folks in, you know,talent management that ended up needing this information as well. So it's really, it's really tricky. And most of the time, it's not optimized for that.

 

David Turetsky: 21:41

So Ken, what are the issues that you find that stakeholders are looking for when they're trying to solve problems using job descriptions?What are the main problems that they're trying to overcome?

 

Ken Clemens: 21:52

The big and it depends on on who we're talking to. But I think primarily with with the folks that we deal with a lot on the compensation side,it's of course, figuring out,how do we have a good understanding of what a job is,so we can pay correctly for it.But how do these jobs compare to one another? How do we decide,especially in the terms of pay equity, and transparency, what is comparable work look like?And if you don't have descriptions that are consistent, even if they're great descriptions, if they don't line up with each other,and capture the same types of information, you're gonna have a really hard time doing that.

 

David Turetsky: 22:18

So we've heard a lot about things like skills and how skills are coming into descriptions. Obviously, we've been using skills in descriptions for a while, what are the new things that we've been talking about with clients around skills?

 

Ken Clemens: 22:31

Yeah, absolutely.And I think skills have become a really important part as we need to get to that next level of specificity with these descriptions, and, and again,that consistency and tying them all together with each other.And we've we've developed the skills and competencies framework that we've been working on over the last year and a half plus at this point,and it really

 

David Turetsky: 22:48

Shameless plug.

 

Ken Clemens: 22:49

Absolutely, that's what we do. But that's, but on the skill side, you know,viewing that as kind of the connective tissue between all the jobs in your organization and being able to say, hey,these, we know that maybe Job A is going to require these skills at this proficiency level, here are the specific behavior indicators, we can tie back to that, and then being able to run that up against any job in the company, whether you're a warehouse employee or an HR director, and be able to line up exactly how those jobs are connected to each other in some way, shape, or form.

 

David Turetsky: 23:18

And I think what this gets to is an ability for a person who's in a job to see what their career path would be.And then they can, basically, or HR can create what we call career frameworks, so that you're giving a person an ability to see if I stay with this company long term, with the skills I currently have, and with skills that I want to develop, where can it take me and where can I go? Right?

 

Ken Clemens: 23:39

Absolutely. And I think people don't understand how much of a retention killer not having that career pathing really is. And to think about,like the top three reasons,people are going to leave a company one;s obviously, comp,one could be their manager,cultural issues. But the other huge one is career opportunity,if folks don't understand, and it's not just, I am an entry level accountant. And I want to become an intermediate level accountant. It's, I'm an entry level accountant. And I want to get into tax accounting, or I want to get into billing, I want to understand what my career path could look like. And kind of the different versions and shapes this could take for me.So having that framework in place to be able to connect the dots from where an employee is and where they want to be. And having that on demand is a huge retention tool.

 

David Turetsky: 24:20

And I think one of the things you have to mention when you start talking about skills is that there's an obvious another effect, which is that it gives someone that, that understanding about whether I can get on the job training or whether I have to go and get another degree or, you know,what do I need to do to improve myself? Right? So if you're giving them a career framework,and you're telling them what skills they need to develop,then it comes to a conversation about how do I go do that?Right?

 

Ken Clemens: 24:44

Right? How do we help you get there at the end of the day. And when you can align that the next level with workforce planning and say great, here's here's what, what you can do today. Here's some options for you and align that with what does the company need not just today, but how are our needs an organization going to evolve when you can get synergy between your employees' career paths and kind of tomorrow and what that looks like for your industry, you're in a fantastic spot.

 

David Turetsky: 25:05

Oh, and it becomes the supply versus the demand part of the workforce planning equation.

 

Ken Clemens: 25:09

Right.

 

David Turetsky: 25:09

And, and that that's another good point is that workforce planning without descriptions, and without an understanding about the base of skills in your organization,really is kind of a more of a theoretical exercise, isn't it?

 

Ken Clemens: 25:21

Absolutely. And I think it's really important too so you can understand, hey,these are the areas where it makes sense to develop people.There might be complete blind spots for your company, where you say, hey, it's gonna be way easier for us to hire some folks into these roles instead of develop, and being able to make that distinction, make those strategic decisions is really important.

 

David Turetsky: 25:37

Now, when we talk about the fact that you're developing these descriptions,and these skills, and you're going to publish them for people, have you seen any downfalls or any pitfalls with,you know, having those descriptions like, you know,what, what are the things that people can expect, not just from the positive side, but from the negative side about descriptions.

 

Ken Clemens: 25:58

So, so with descriptions and skills, I think in a lot of cases, sometimes you'll see organizations where they start to do that type of project and find out that you know, a little bit down the line that it's really hard for them to actually get to the core of what these jobs actually do. And you end up in a position where the information might not be exactly right, or the information might not be as complete as it needs to be for those specific jobs. And you end up in a situation where you're providing this transparency to employees, they're like, great,I want to get here, here's what I want to do. And either it's not as relevant as they think it is, or you're not equipped to actually help them get to that next step. And I think that's where, with descriptions and skills, keeping the line managers, keeping folks in those positions closely tied into the process is absolutely critical.

 

David Turetsky: 26:42

Right. Because if the line manager really knows what the work is, and yeah.

 

Ken Clemens: 26:45

They're subject matter experts.

 

David Turetsky: 26:47

Right, right.But then again, we all know that managers love when HR calls and says, Hey, I have a question for you, can you help me with something, it's only going to take you 15 minutes, and that 15minutes, turns into half an hour, an hour, you know, and then it becomes an iterative thing.

 

Ken Clemens: 27:01

Right.

 

David Turetsky: 27:01

So how do we make sure that managers or supervisors, we're not burdening them with too much of this stuff?

 

Ken Clemens: 27:08

Yeah, I think it's being able to end when it comes to descriptions. And you're gonna hear a couple more shameless plugs in here with part of this, but, but when it comes to descriptions, I think when you can hand HR a library of descriptions that aligned with the market, some pre written content to say, Hey,I'm, I might not be an expert in software development. But I do have a pretty good library of different types of software developer jobs, it's gonna give me a really good starting point,I'm going to be able to get a lot of this work done, before I even hand this off to the manager, and then get their feedback and say, Hey, I've done as much of this work as I can,please come in and clean this up, and also reducing that administrative burden. You know,having one common place where people can work, track everyone's changes is going to be absolutely crucial. So that's a that's a big part of it as much work as you can do in advance.

 

David Turetsky: 27:52

Job descriptions, never stay accurate. They're always getting stale.

 

Ken Clemens: 27:57

Right.

 

David Turetsky: 27:58

How do we stay on top of this? Is there like a rule like with the smoke detector? Where anytime the change, daylight savings, time change, you're supposed to change your batteries in your smoke detector? What would you suggest that companies do to keep their job descriptions up to date?

 

Ken Clemens: 28:13

I think anything you can do to reduce the administrative effort that it takes to review job descriptions. The pitfall that we see a lot of customers fall into and, and just companies in general, is they run, they're like, Okay, we need to update our descriptions, we know but there are 30 other things on fire that we need to get to. So they end up carving out three months, every two or three years to revamp their descriptions.But these days, so much changes in six months. So if reducing the time that it takes and having a system where you can say, Hey, I know exactly where this description is today, I can pull in the people that I need to pull in, in order to get this done, and even set up some things like proactive alerts to say, hey, it's been six months since you've touched this description. And then I'm going to quickly send this out to a manager, get the sign off and have it up to date.

 

David Turetsky: 28:57

But especially when they're doing interviewing,especially when they're doing hiring. They need to make sure it makes so it's really incumbent upon them. They are stakeholders in the process, but it's really incumbent upon them to make sure that everything is as accurate as it can be.Because if they're hiring people and the descriptions bad, it's never gonna go well.

 

Ken Clemens: 29:15

hiring the right people, make sure that you're getting the right skills in the door that you need to that it actually aligns to the job. So that's that tends to be a pretty good opportunity to come up review. And again, if you've got some tools in place to make that easier, that's fantastic.

 

David Turetsky: 29:37

Hey, are you listening to this and thinking to yourself, Man, I wish I could talk to David about this. Well,you're in luck. We have a special offer for listeners of the HR Data Labs podcast, a free half hour call with me about any of the topics we cover on the podcast or whatever is on your mind. Go to Salary.com/HRDLconsulting to schedule your Free 30 minute call today.So I guess the last question I have for you around this is,does pay transparency change anything with respect to descriptions and skills? Does it make it more important? Does it just not change it, it's still important? What's the effect of pay transparency on descriptions?

 

Ken Clemens: 30:16

It makes it even more important, I mean, it makes having job descriptions even more important, and making sure that they're accurate and consistent, too. Because with pay transparency, that comes transparency with just about everything else. If people are really going to understand why they make what they make they need, they need to understand that you understand what they actually do. And from the market pricing perspective, from determining what to pay people perspective, you need to have that accurate description, in order to compare and make sure you're doing something that's competitive. But at the same time, you also need to be able to look internally and again,compare your jobs to each other and say, This person is doing this level of work. That is why they make this much more or less than this other person having that documentation as backup is critical for those conversations.

 

David Turetsky: 31:00

Excellent. So is there anything from parting words perspective, any advice you'd give people as to how to manage their descriptions and,and skills that are part of that?

 

Ken Clemens: 31:10

I think, first and foremost, make time for it,especially with a lot of the smaller and midsize companies that we work for. Again, lots of fires to put out and job descriptions are something that usually don't get planned as proactively for. But it really is when we're doing things correctly the first step. So planning in advance and building this into your process, knowing that job descriptions are going to be a critical part with downstream effects for everything you're doing is huge.So just making the time and making sure it's not a fire drill every two or three years.That's that's probably the biggest piece of advice.

 

David Turetsky: 31:40

Okay. Ken Clemens from Salary.com, thank you very much.

 

Ken Clemens: 31:43

Thanks a lot,David.

 

David Turetsky: 31:44

Take care and stay safe.

 

Announcer: 31:48

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