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Beyond the Paycheck brings you candid conversations with CHROs and top people leaders who are rethinking how compensation and benefits impact 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, not just attract talent.
This podcast is sponsored by Aura Finance, the financial wellness platform designed to help employees feel confident, secure, and in control of their money.
See more at aurafinance.io
Beyond the Paycheck - Donovan Mattole
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INTRO: [00:00:00] 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
Kelsey Willock Jones: Welcome, Donovan Mattole, CHRO at Langan Engineering and Environmental Services. We're so excited to have you this Friday afternoon. Thanks so much for joining us. To kick us off, I'd love for you to share a little bit about your career and background, current role, and where you're calling in from today.
Donovan Mattole: Excellent. [00:01:00] Thank you, Kelsey. I'm very happy to be here. And I love your podcast, and I'm looking forward to talking. So my background, so I am the chief human resource officer, as you mentioned, at Langan. We're a global engineering and environmental services company, and I've been doing human resources for too long.
No, not too long at all, 25 years. But I started, I fell into HR, so let's just put it that way. I didn't start in HR.
Kelsey Willock Jones: We always love someone that comes from a unique background because I am sure you have very unique perspective on this conversation today. So look forward to learning so much more. And can you share a little bit about your workforce? Where's the population? Tell me about the type of person that works at the company.
Donovan Mattole: It's a fantastic workforce. So it's the majority of the employees are, we're professional services, and so they're scientists and engineers. We're spread across 58 offices around the world and all the major cities in the [00:02:00] US from Chicago to San Francisco to New York City. We have offices in Panama, in the UK.
We do projects in over 100 countries around the world. It's a unique business in that we have archeologists, geologists, biologists, civil engineers, geotechnical engineers. the majority of our employees have some type of technical knowledge. And so technical excellence is one of our kind of main attributes, and so we're consulting, and we work, like I said on the coolest projects ever.
Kelsey Willock Jones: Sounds like such a unique and interesting workforce when you started mentioning things like archaeologists. It's not every day that people get to even meet people like that.
Donovan Mattole: yeah
Kelsey Willock Jones: So how cool that you get to work with those folks day in and day out.
Donovan Mattole: It's so fun. I was in San Francisco a couple weeks ago, and I was talking to one of our archeologists, and I just wanted to talk to her for hours. I was like, "This is [00:03:00] so cool what you get to do," and all the Native American work that she was doing, and just every construction project in most major places you need an archeological
survey and work done ahead of time. And so she's doing some cool things. And it doesn't matter what it is. I've talked to landscape architects that are designing parks and waterfronts, and just very cool things
Kelsey Willock Jones: Before I ask you a million follow-up questions on your current role, I want to take a step back into the past and learn a little bit more about your first job, if you recall, and what you did with your first paycheck.
Donovan Mattole: Okay. That is very great. I grew up in Northern California, so we grew up off the grid, so no electricity or hot water. We were about an hour, 10 minutes from the closest town. And my first job was in that town, in Garberville, and I got a job at 14 working at [00:04:00] the Sherwood Forest Motel. And I was responsible for all kinds of handyman stuff and mowing the lawn and clipping things, and my parents would drive me into town, drop me off, or I'd go after school. And then I transitioned into working at the local gas station, and I worked there until graduating from high school. So those are my first jobs. We were fairly poor. I used my paychecks to buy clothes for myself. I was I actually started flying at 15 so and so all my extra money went to flight lessons, which I did at 15 and 16, so I'd fly all over Northern California in the mountains and stuff, and that was my passion during high school.
So yeah, it was a lot of fun
Kelsey Willock Jones: Your path toward, being in the world of environmentalism makes so much sense with childhood, where I imagine there was such a heightened level of appreciation even for nature and the world around you. So what a cool [00:05:00] background that you have.
Donovan Mattole: I'm still very involved. I'm on the board of the Mattole Restoration and we're the longest, the oldest watershed restoration organization in North America.
And we've done so much for the salmon and the habitat in the valley I grew up on the watershed I grew up on.
And so even though I don't live there anymore, I'm still intricately involved because it's a passion, and it's where my childhood was. So
Kelsey Willock Jones: And it's so beyond important. So how do you think your money story, whether it's, early career, first jobs, how you were raised, has influenced how you think about showing up for your people and making decisions in terms of pay, benefits, and even beyond?
Donovan Mattole: I think for me, I look at the whole picture, and I know you've had other guests in the past talk about this, but for me, it's not just your immediate paycheck, it's the holistic view of what are you getting [00:06:00] with the company. And so I try to provide that opportunity for career advancement.
I think that's really important. A lot of the additional support you may not get with other companies, like we pay for all of your prep for licenses or certifications or any continuing ed. You don't have to go do that on your own if you're-- it's for your job. And so making sure as a company we're holistically looking at that. And then I look forward to getting into it a little bit later, but we provide other things that I think are very important to employees that support, like flexibility which is a huge issue right now with employees
Kelsey Willock Jones: I'd love to actually just get into that. So obviously right now we're seeing this massive trend of folks and companies investing in the whole person, whether it has to do with their physical health, their mental health, their financial health, even as we've mentioned, the flexibility of their lives.
So tell me about something that you're particularly excited and proud [00:07:00] of that you've introduced, whether it's a benefit, it is some type of an initiative or beyond that helps support the whole employee.
Donovan Mattole: Well, I can't say I've introduced it because this has been part of Langan for a while, but I'm excited to share with you what we do. So we hire... We're consulting and so we hire right out of university. And keep in mind, as like kids coming out of school may have worked part-time, they may have had an internship, but usually we're their first professional job, and they're used to having a lot of time off. They're used to like, "Hey, I want a spring break. We're going here. In summer I'm going here, and then I'm gonna hike in the Adirondacks and then this summer..." And so they come in and they're introduced with, "Here's your sick time and here's your vacation time," and that's kinda all you get. And one of the things that we've done at Langan to really bridge that and create some flexibility is we've said we're gonna pay all [00:08:00] our individual contributors straight time overtime. So you're an engineer or a scientist, you go into most companies and it's a professional job. You may have a master's degree or even a PhD in civil engineering, and you start and you immediately are exempt and you're putting in a ton of hours. We pay overtime beginning at 40 hours. So it doesn't matter what level you are.
You're an individual contributor. You come in, and it could be for the next five years you're getting overtime. And so what we do is we say, "Not only are we gonna pay you this overtime, but if you wanna set aside up to a week a year for additional time off," we call it comp time, "you can set that aside."
So they get two weeks of vacation, two weeks of sick time, and then they can have an additional week off. So you're right out of school. Now, there's reason-- there's rules around those things but from a total time off, you're getting like five weeks, where some companies [00:09:00] you have to be there 20 years to get that kind of time.
I don't think sometimes all of our young Gen Z employees understand that this is... You don't get this everywhere. But it provides a lot of flexibility Kelsey, and something we're really proud of.
Kelsey Willock Jones: And I love that you're talking about it in the perspective of investing in the whole person because, how people take their time off is completely up to them, but we do know that time is so valuable for people. In this post-COVID world, we're used to spending more time at home with friends, with family, so what a cool perk that the company offers.
Donovan Mattole: Yeah, and w-we're also hybrid. Many companies-- And we're in consulting, and so every hour is billed, similar to attorneys or architects, engineers, and scientists, same thing. We're billing in 15-minute increments. So time is critical, and what I've noticed is a lot of our competitors have brought everybody back full-time [00:10:00] because they wanna be monitoring them, they wanna see that they're working, they wanna make sure that chargeability is there. And we have said, "No, we're gonna continue this hybrid work schedule to provide that flexibility. At the end of the day, you're responsible for hitting your chargeability or billability goals, but we're not gonna be worried about exactly where you are at all times. Instead, we're gonna hold you accountable for kind of what the expectations as a consultant is." And I think that's went a long way when we're recruiting people and we're saying, "You know what? It's, two or three days in the office." It makes a huge difference.
Kelsey Willock Jones: Where do you think companies are falling short when they think about or maybe don't necessarily think about investing in the whole person?
Donovan Mattole: I think it's easy to start looking at the cost of everything and how they add up, right? So the cost of that week of comp time, when I talk to my peer companies, they're like, "You do what? [00:11:00] Wait, we're-- You're a consultant. Like, how can you afford for an extra week off?" And it's very shortsighted because yes, it's an additional time off where we're not billing. We're not getting revenue for that time. But it it provides that holistic support for the employee who wants additional time off. We have a lot of employees on H-1Bs. About 10% of our workforce are international students, so they came to the US they got an advanced degree in engineering or some kind of scientific field, environmental sciences, and they wanna go home, and they wanna go back for a month every year to go to India or go to Colombia or wherever they're from. And so this provides that flexibility, and it's pretty cool
Kelsey Willock Jones: I absolutely love that. And I wanna actually double click on the point around, just looking at things from, the financial
Donovan Mattole: Mhm
Kelsey Willock Jones: How do you think about getting buy-in or driving support internally [00:12:00] when the spreadsheet doesn't so obviously support a program, initiative, et cetera?
Donovan Mattole: I think, so Langan has had... And I've been here less than three years as the CHRO, so I have to give credit to my predecessor, who was the CHRO for 20 years, the CEO who's been in position for 20 years, and all of our executive team in looking at that holistic person. And one thing we really are focused on is engagement and culture and wellbeing. So over 15 years ago, we created a committee called the Employee Engagement and Wellbeing Committee. And that committee's entire focus is the wellbeing of employees. And so the committee is made up of a dozen people, but almost all of them are owners in the company. And so it's a gift because, Kelsey, I know you talk to a lot of CHROs and chief people officers, sometimes you're constantly having to convince them, and here they're [00:13:00] reminding me engagement and wellbeing is critical.
What are we doing from a mental health standpoint, Donovan? What are we doing to create a great place to work? And we switched our engagement survey, Kelsey, since I've been here this is one of the things I was passionate about, to Great Place to Work from Gallup. And in a previous role, I spent years getting our country certified as a great place to work. We did this survey, and immediately were top-tier certified, one of the top companies out there our first time going through, and it's because it's already existed. So long answer to say I haven't had to do a lot of convincing. It's in the DNA of Langan.
Kelsey Willock Jones: I love that. And it's so important because I know for many of the folks that I interview can often be an uphill battle, whether it's, getting the CFO on board when the spreadsheet can be challenging to make sense of something that, in your bones just feels right and is [00:14:00] right. But it's cool to see Langan, really just say it's at the core of the business to invest in the wellbeing of our people because we know that will have an impact in how they show up, in the quality of their work, the motivation that they have.
Donovan Mattole: It's in our values. So we feel strongly about our attributes and our values, and our attributes are how we show up with our clients, and that's technical excellence, practical experience in client technical excellence, client experience, and practical excellence. But our core values are excellence, knowledge, opportunity, commitment, and citizenship. And that opportunity piece is all about creating opportunities for our employees and for their career advancement and for their development. So we're kinda held accountable because those values are posted everywhere.
And we say, "Citizenship is critical, so we want you involved in your [00:15:00] community, and we are gonna provide opportunities."
So if an employee says, "Hey, would Langan support this?" And we say, "No, we're not... It's we can't afford it," then you get the counter "immediately I thought opportunity was one of our core values."" And so you have this great dialogue between employees and leaders sometimes around, "Okay here's what we are doing." But it's a great give and take, and it's centered around kind of our core values.
Kelsey Willock Jones: I've actually been, I, and I had another interview today, and we were talking a little bit more about core values. It seems as though not every company these days is as invested in their core values or highlighting them as much. Maybe it's, I'm a big believer in the innovation and technology, et cetera, but maybe they'll say, "We're an AI-powered company."
But what does that mean from a core values perspective, not just technology? So I always love speaking with people that say, "We not only live our values, they've been written on the wall, so we [00:16:00] remember we need to continue we hold ourselves accountable to them and we do the things that align with them."
Donovan Mattole: It's interesting 'cause a lot of companies have them on their walls
Kelsey Willock Jones: Mhm
Donovan Mattole: have them on their websites, but they don't live them. And so I would rather we live them and not have them on our walls than have them on our walls and not live them, right? And I think Langan does a really good job of doing both. But really the kind of living them and leaning into them. We also have a corporate social responsibility committee which also has owners on it. But that entire committee is focused on what are we doing in the communities. And some companies, it's not a negative it's just a different philosophy, but they go, "You know what?
We're national, we're global. We're gonna partner with the..." And pick an organization, right? Out there at a national scale 'cause then we can get more recognition nationally, we can make a bigger contribution, the [00:17:00] impact is more noticeable. We actually take a different approach and we say, "We really wanna make a difference in San Francisco." And so rather than do everything corporately, what are we doing in San Francisco? And so they will do a back to school drive with backpacks. They will do work in the local homeless shelter or a food pantry, those type of things. And then we really support our employees to do that. We have champions in every location, which is a volunteer employee driven thing. And so rather than it coming from the top, it's kinda driven locally it's, it's-- and makes a difference on the culture. Similar with our employee resource groups. We have 10 of them and employees are passionate about them.
And these are the extra things that really impact culture beyond the paycheck
Kelsey Willock Jones: I love that you added that pun in there of our conversation. And it's I see so much overlap with that and wellbeing. When people [00:18:00] feel, they're really investing not only in their company but the communities around them, it can-- it'll be so much more motivating in the work that we do.
E-e-everything you've been saying so far continues to just reinforce how Langan just continues to invest in their people a-a-and the world in which the people do their work in. So very cool.
Donovan Mattole: Thank you. I've worked for fantastic companies but Langan is a special place. We're private and employee-owned and very values kinda driven, and it's just, it's a gift
Kelsey Willock Jones: A little bit about how the company thinks about financial wellbeing. How important is it as a part of kinda even holistic wellbeing? I'm deeply interested in this space, even you can probably tell me asking you what you spent your paycheck on. So tell me a little bit about that.
Donovan Mattole: Yeah. I would say we have some opportunities on education because when you look at kind of a holistic look of employee [00:19:00] wellbeing, financial is a big piece of that. We do webinars every year. We have a 401, we do a match, we talk about investing. But I think we could go beyond that.
We do provide, the comp time and the overtime for everyone up to manager. At the manager, we try to make sure we're bonusing above market. So as you move up, you lose the overtime, but you're gonna get a bigger bonus. And then as you move up to an executive level, you can buy into the company and become an owner in Langan and be rewarded financially, again, beyond your paycheck in long-term kind of incentive, which is fantastic. We have auto escalation, auto enrollment, a lot of the kind of the tools that you put in place from a financial standpoint. But educating I think is really important, and we could do more.
Kelsey Willock Jones: And I imagine also with such a young workforce, there's such [00:20:00] opportunity, in the perspective of
Donovan Mattole: Very much
Kelsey Willock Jones: They have such an asset of time that not all, folks have. I appreciate you being as transparent about that. So another thing I'm really interested in is obviously the world that we're operating in is moving at a rapid pace, and new technology, new regulation, shifts in the industry, it's hard.
You look online every day and something has happened. How are you staying current on what's working? Are there specific conferences, peer network ecosystems that you have found to be particularly helpful as this world we're in is so ever-changing?
Donovan Mattole: A I'm involved in a number of things Kelsey. But I would say one of my favorite groups is not a paid membership. It is, It's a group of about 30 of my peers. We're part of the ACEC, but it's the AEC industry is architects, engineers, and construction. And so we get together in person twice a year. [00:21:00] And many of us are competitors and what we make a very strong point of is we wanna raise the entire industry that we're in, and so we're not gonna talk about detailed trade secrets or anything that could get us into trouble from a colluding or whatever on financial things. So we don't talk about pay. We don't talk about what we're paying our interns or anything like that. But what we're talking about is how do we make this the best industry to work in? Civil engineering is just one example. We-- There is 20,000 civil engineers graduating in the US every year and 20,000 retirees.
So it's literally a one for one, yet the world is growing, the population is growing, housing is growing, infrastructure is growing, and so there's an additional need for about 30,000 civil engineers. So we're 30,000 civil engineers [00:22:00] short a year, and so we're talking about how do we get young people interested in civil engineering?
A lot of them will be interested in engineering in high school, but they're talking about "Oh, I wanna be in aerospace engineering
Kelsey Willock Jones: Right
Donovan Mattole: or chemical or..." The... they're looking at space studies. They're looking at all these other things, but they don't think of like civil engineering, and it's such a cool field. Think of all the people that love Legos and love building things, and it's just so cool. So that's the kind of thing we're talking about and I think that'll go a long way. And we talk about benefits, we talk about comp, we talk... But not in the specifics. It's more of the generic, how are we kinda raising the field?
Civil engineers, it's one of the coolest professions. High schoolers, I'd recommend any high schooler, look at it because it's guaranteed job. You get an offer a year before you graduate, and you're probably gonna get two or three offers. But it's still [00:23:00] one of the lower paid of the engineering fields.
So how do we change that? If there's a shortage and huge demand, then how do we make it financially more attractive? Those are the kind of things we're talking about, and it's very cool
Kelsey Willock Jones: And it is this concept of, rising tides lift all boats, and
Donovan Mattole: Ab-absolutely. And then you get to know them, and it's like you hear-- We may be competitive on a bid with, one of our competitors but I know the CHRO. We're friends. We get together twice a year in person, and we're getting drinks, and we're talking, and so you're like, "Okay, we're all in this together at the end of the day."
Kelsey Willock Jones: I absolutely love that, and especially again, just going back to the lifeblood of the organization and the motivation that you have in terms of maintaining environmentalism. I-- you have to have these relationships with even your competitors. You're all, in the pursuit of the same thing, which is doing things right for the environmental [00:24:00] world.
So
Donovan Mattole: it's very cool.
Kelsey. And I've had some cool world small world things happen. I'm when I grew up out on that in the middle of nowhere, we used to read Organic Farming and Gardening Magazine by Rodale.
And so when I moved to Pennsylvania I realized the original Rodale Farm and all the organic gardening stuff that my parents read when we were kids in the middle of nowhere was in my next door, and I got heavily involved with Rodale, and they're all about regenerative organic and how do we take care of the earth. And so then I joined Langan and they're like, "Oh we work with Rodale. We've been working with them for 20 years." So I... It really is cool.
Kelsey Willock Jones: What a cool full circle moment
Donovan Mattole: Full circle moment. Yep.
Kelsey Willock Jones: So what's a change in the industry, whether it's, compensation, benefits, HR in general, that you see coming that most HR leaders are not ready for?
Donovan Mattole: [00:25:00] I think this flexibility thing is really important, and I think there is a little bit of a feeling like, okay, we're post-COVID, it's back to work, it's all the same. But I think there's gonna be the next generation and this current generation who are entering workforce, there's gonna be a time where they're just like, "No, I want more flexibility." And I got used to it in college. I got used to it right out of school, whatever they are. And so programs like what we have, where my peers, we're the only ones in the industry. They're-- we're the only company that I know of that does this. And they go, "You do what? You let them just take an extra week and save their time and take other weeks?" I think other companies will start doing similar things because employees want that flexibility. So I think that's that's coming
Kelsey Willock Jones: I know I resonate with that as someone that's, been given the pleasure of, being able to work from home, [00:26:00] being able to, be with family and still do my job from wherever in the world is such a huge benefit. But also being able to have opportunity to be with the people that we do our work with day in and day out is also, a wonderful thing.
So you're completely right. I think there's some tension going on right now. Should we go back to the office five days a week or be fully remote? No, maybe there's a world in which there's a bit more balance than that.
Donovan Mattole: Exactly. It's-- That's why I I really do like hybrid
because it's-- There are huge benefits from a development standpoint, from a collaboration, a teamwork. I'm sure you hear other leaders say that. And I completely agree with that. But there's-- It's about flexibility
Kelsey Willock Jones: And my last question for you, Donovan, is are there any last words that you wanna share with our community? And you can take this in whatever direction you'd
Donovan Mattole: it w-, Kelsey, you said a lot of companies have lost the values piece, and I would say really take the time to refresh them. I think at this [00:27:00] point, most companies have some type of core values or principles that they have and dust them off talk about them. I travel around the country to our locations, and I always try to do a lunch and learn with all of our employees, and I always talk about the values.
I say: What's your favorite value? Let's talk about it. Because if you're not talking about it, then eventually you're gonna start losing it, right? And they become just on the wall. So that would be my advice. It, the values might be different for your company, but figure out what they are. And also don't be afraid of redoing them. There's nothing wrong with saying, "You know what? We created these 20 years ago. This is not really who we are today. Let's do them." But I would get employee buy-in. I would do workshops. I would talk to employees. I would make it true to where you want to go as leadership team, but also who you really are, and make sure you get the insight. But bring out those core values. [00:28:00] Don't let them get dust on the shelf
Kelsey Willock Jones: I love that. And it's such an easy thing that we can all do just to, take a peek at what we've written. Does it still hold true? And it's not an exercise that it takes a lot of effort, but it's not, this massive investment that we need to do. It's simply the investment of our time and our reflection.
Thank you so much for sharing that and for lending your time this Friday afternoon. It was a pleasure speaking with you, and thank you so much again for joining us.
Donovan Mattole: You're welcome. Very nice and nice talking to you
Kelsey Willock Jones: All righty. Have a good one