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HR Voices is a scenario-based podcast for People Leaders who’ve actually had to make the call.
Each episode brings experienced HR and People leaders into realistic, anonymized workplace scenarios—the kind you recognize immediately. Performance issues. Messy conflicts. Investigations that don’t fit neatly into a policy box. Instead of talking about their own companies, guests react to outside cases and walk through how they’d think it through in real time.
There are no right answers here. What you’ll hear is judgment: how seasoned leaders balance risk, fairness, legal reality, and humanity when the stakes are high and the path isn’t obvious.
HR Voices is for HR, People Ops, legal, and leaders who want to hear how other smart humans actually handle employee relations—without confidentiality breaches, hypotheticals that feel fake, or a lecture on “best practices.”
Rebecca Taylor (00:16)
Hello and welcome to HR Voices. I'm your host, Rebecca Taylor, and I'm here with Ami Graves, the CHRO of Bell Techlogix
Welcome, Ami Thank you so much for being here.
Ami Graves (00:26)
Thank you, thanks for having me, glad to be here.
Rebecca Taylor (00:29)
I'm so excited. And for those who are new here, HR Voices is a podcast where we explore real and fabricated anonymized employee relations scenarios through the lens of experienced HR and people leaders just like Ami. So we're going to evaluate a realistic workplace situation and demonstrate how someone will assess risk, apply judgment, and design practical responses. So our goal here is to reveal how strong HR leaders like Ami think when they're facing ambiguity. And we're not necessarily looking for a single correct answer because
We often don't have that luxury in HR. There often is not one single correct answer. So this is kind of just talking through that and, you know, seeing how we make decisions.
Ami Graves (01:06)
Yeah, that sounds great. I feel like that's exactly what it is, right? HR is always operating in the gray. So here we go. Yeah, gray. Honestly.
Rebecca Taylor (01:13)
it is. feel like that should be like our new palette should be like gray, just like the gray of everything.
Okay, so for your scenario today, Ami, we're calling it the pay transparency mandate. So a state enacts a new law requiring employers to include salary ranges in all job postings. The company's current practice is to post wide ranges. So for example, like 60K to 120K depending on experience to maintain negotiating flexibility.
Ami Graves (01:27)
Mm-hmm.
Rebecca Taylor (01:41)
Employees discover significant pay disparities when they see the ranges for their roles. Several file complaints alleging they're being underpaid compared to new hires. Others demand raises to reach the top of the posted range. So this is a fabricated scenario, but I feel like this is also just the diary of a CHRO these days.
Ami Graves (01:46)
Mm-hmm.
Honestly, yes, yes, yes. So real. Yeah.
My very first thought is when you said they posted a wide range to give them flexibility. So my thought is, well, is that actually the range? Right?
Rebecca Taylor (02:11)
Mm-hmm.
Ami Graves (02:16)
Is it actually the range? Because 60 to 120 K is not an actual range for a position, right? That's a, that range is a hundred percent. Anybody working in comp or HR would know that that's not an appropriate range for any job level. So that right there is creating some uncertainty and
Certainly, I mean, you know, is an employee going to look at that and say, that's a range is 100 % and ranges should not be that they should be, you know, 40 or 50 % or whatever. They're probably not going to think that they're going to have, how does this impact me types of thoughts, right? Rightfully so. But I guess, again, that my first thought is, well, that doesn't even sound like a legitimate range to begin with. So let's start there. Right.
Rebecca Taylor (03:06)
Let's like really consider, right? Because I mean, you're right, because it's not a real range. And if an employee is in this job and they're making $75K, like they're higher than the lower end, but they're like, wait, you're going to pay up to $120,000 for someone to do the same job? What the heck? Like really? Rightfully so, right?
Ami Graves (03:10)
Mm-mm.
Yeah. I mean, yeah,
absolutely. I was gonna say I'd be, I'd be thinking the same thing. And I think that's, that's the very first, maybe that's not the first problem. There's probably a problem before that and I'll get to that, but that is the problem inherently with posting a wide range. That's not the true range of the position. Number one, it's just not honest. First of all, let's, let's start there. Number two, by the way, the whole point of posting it is for pay.
Rebecca Taylor (03:42)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ami Graves (03:50)
transparency. So if pay transparency is the reason we're posting ranges and you're posting a range that is not legitimate, then you're negating the whole purpose of putting the range out there to begin with it because it's not transparent or true or valid, right? So that's a point. But I guess I would rewind a little bit and say, anytime
Rebecca Taylor (03:51)
See, mm-hmm.
Yep. Yep.
Ami Graves (04:13)
Yes, pay transparency laws are enacted, they're continuing to grow. And I think that we've got to be thoughtful about as we post ranges, we should absolutely expect our employees to be seeing those. And we hopefully have done some sort of an audit previously. And by the way, the audit of our internal pay practices should not happen just because, no.
we have to put our pay ranges in a job posting now. We should be doing that anyways. Absolutely, we should be walking that analysis already to make sure, even if you just think about it from the perspective of we wanna make sure that there's no discrepancies for gender or race or disability or whatever, right? We need to be looking at our pay practices internally and our equity way before.
Rebecca Taylor (04:44)
Yeah, you should be doing it anyway.
Mm-hmm.
Ami Graves (05:08)
pay transparency started to kind of become a thing, right? But let's just say we weren't doing that, which by the way, for the record at my company, we were and are. But I do want, but I want to say, right. But I want to say that, you know, let's just say that, you know, for whatever reason that you weren't, you as a company, you weren't doing that prior. I hope before you are putting a range out there for, to apply or, know, comply, I should say with pay,
Rebecca Taylor (05:16)
You
Good.
Ami Graves (05:36)
pay transparency practices, that you're at least doing it right before that, right? Where you're saying, OK, we know we're going to put pay ranges out there for the whole world to see. And that whole world includes our employees. We should probably just take a quick look internally and make sure that we are paying our employees fairly across the board and appropriately for the range. I guess the perspective is,
Do the audit first before you even put the pay range on there, number one. And number two, based on the scenario you just described, I wouldn't call that an appropriate range to begin with. The whole point of pay transparency is not to give us these huge wide ranges so we can negotiate salary that negates the whole purpose of pay transparency, right?
Rebecca Taylor (06:12)
Yeah.
Yes, yeah, yeah. And
it's true because it's like, it's something like this, the scenario like this where it starts off with the state enacts a law requiring pay transparency. That's why they're posting this. So I remember I was working in New York when ⁓ New York mandated pay transparency. And it was and I was, you know, I was in HR and I had, you know, I was doing recruiting. And so all the things that sort of, you know, this sort of weighs into.
Ami Graves (06:35)
Mm-hmm.
Rebecca Taylor (06:50)
New York was one of the first states to do it, so we were kind of like figuring it out as we went. And you get time. Like they announced that the law is passed and it's like a year before it's actually put into place. So my question here is, what were you doing the whole time between when it was announced that the law was passed to when the law actually went into effect? Because that's the perfect time to just get your house in order, because that's where the risk becomes, right? Because now you've got like the double risk of...
there could be different parameters that explicitly state that the range has to be within a certain percentage for it to be considered technically transparent according to the law. ⁓ But then you also can have a whole other can of worms with discrimination. Why are certain people paid more for the same job than others? All these legitimate questions that you can file it under just employee grievances, but it's usually not just that. It usually is that there's something that's going on internally that needs to be fixed.
Ami Graves (07:24)
Mm-hmm. Yep.
Mm-hmm.
Rebecca Taylor (07:46)
And this is like the perfect time. That to me is the risk is like how far back do these issues go? Because, yeah.
Ami Graves (07:52)
Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.
Because what pay transparency does, it reveals, ⁓ potentially reveals a problem that you already have, an inequality in pay that you already have internally. So again, you think about, go back to the auditing, if you're not looking to your point, you've had a whole year to prepare for this. What have you done in that year? Some of the steps that we should be taking in that year are,
Rebecca Taylor (08:02)
Mm-hmm.
Ami Graves (08:17)
again, if we weren't taking them already as we should be is looking at pay inequities internally. So hopefully companies have gone through that exercise already. So that way when this new law pops up and they're like, that's going to be happening in 12 months, hey, we're good to go. We've already taken a look at our pay practices, right? Our comp strategy is strong. Our ranges are good. We've taken a look to make sure there's like no pay disparities.
no problem, we're ready for that law whenever it goes into effect, right? But unfortunately, that's not been the case for a lot of employers, right? They weren't paying close enough attention to that type of stuff. And then when the pay transparency law state to state is enacted, it's a, know, crap, hurry up, you know, we've got to hurry and do this. And then this is the other thing that happens is when you have 12 months,
Rebecca Taylor (08:47)
Yeah.
Yep.
Ami Graves (09:10)
you could start making some small adjustments, right? Some stair steps of pay. Let's be honest, we're running a business, making pay increases, especially if there's a lot to make, it has an impact. It has an impact on your margins, on your bottom line, on all those things. It really does. And we understand that. So you've got 12 months to hopefully kind of stair step some of that, you know? But if you've waited till the last minute, you know, you're in a pickle.
Rebecca Taylor (09:12)
Mm-hmm.
You're going to get issues. Yeah, you're going to get issues.
And even as you're kind of, know, if we're going deeper into this, like this scenario here too, and what could happen, There's risk in, you know, possibly just very unlevel, you know, inequitable payment practices that currently exist that you're going to have to deal with. ⁓ So who are some of the people that you're going to want to talk to?
Ami Graves (09:45)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Rebecca Taylor (09:59)
Because I'm also like, yes, there's the HR side of this that we want to talk about, but I don't think HR is the only one who's in charge here. Because I'm like, where were the managers communicating all this? Where are the managers stepping in and looking at their employee's salary? So who else do you want to talk to?
Ami Graves (10:07)
absolutely.
Absolutely.
Yeah, certainly managers, right? Because managers are the ones that are closest to the employees that could have grievances, first of all. But even I think a step beyond that is your department or operational, your leaders that are managing the P &L, because trust me, those are the ones, I think sometimes what employees don't think about is, hey, it's ⁓ just a little bit of a raise. It's just a few thousand dollars. Yes, for you, but...
when you've got hundreds of employees, we could be talking millions of dollars. We could be talking a couple of hundreds of thousands of dollars. This is not small stakes. Understandable that managers and or leaders, people that are responsible for their P &Ls, for their departments are not, you know, just jumping on to say, ⁓ sure, make it all happen today. I understand that, which is why we have time. That's why there's like a, hey, you've got some time to...
Rebecca Taylor (11:04)
Yeah. Right?
Ami Graves (11:08)
get your act together here. So I think that that's important. Absolutely. It's those those leaders because they're going to of course, good leaders want to pay their people appropriately. So number one, I wish we all had great leaders at all companies, but that's not always the case, right? But but I like to think that most leaders want to do the right thing by their employees, first of all, but they also have a bottom line, and likely a margin target to meet as well. And so
Rebecca Taylor (11:22)
Yeah. Yeah.
Ami Graves (11:37)
big swooping comp changes are exactly that. They're big and they make an impact. So you do have to kind of manage through those. Sometimes you can't do all those changes right at once. It's HR's, I think, responsibility to provide some education and guidance. Our leaders have to be making some tough decisions. what I mean by tough is, you know, we got to do the right thing despite what that could mean to our margin, right?
Rebecca Taylor (12:02)
Yeah.
Ami Graves (12:02)
bottom line and that's that could be a tough conversation to have. mean, what other departments do you bring in? Certainly finance, obviously, right? ⁓ Potentially, you know, potentially legal if it gets to that point. But I think that if you've got a really strong kind of, you know, leadership and HR function, hopefully you don't even need to go down that path, right?
Rebecca Taylor (12:23)
Yeah, you want to flag it only if you absolutely have to. Because there is a difference between employees claiming discrimination and actual discrimination, right? Sorry to cut you off, but we have to figure out if that's actually happening before we even raise our hands with legal.
Ami Graves (12:26)
Yeah, absolutely. Yep. And even if
No doubt about it. No, yeah.
Absolutely, because the truth is, there are the reason behind the range, there's a lot of reasons that are valid that somebody might still be at the very bottom of that range, right? In the beginning of the range, generally speaking, and there are some exceptions here, right? ⁓ For extremely like critical skills that are hard to find. Sometimes you see a little bit of this in tech or whatever, but truly,
The bottom of the range is an entry level, right? You might not have a lot of experience. And so you're probably not going to be, you know, a hundred percent proficient right out of the gate. That mid range is you got it. You're doing your thing. You're hitting on all cylinders. You've got your experience. You're right in that middle of the range. And the top of the range, generally speaking, high performance.
Rebecca Taylor (13:13)
Right.
Ami Graves (13:27)
very tenured people that have spent time moving through the range if they've been in that job for a long time. So there are some defendable reasons, right? Why somebody would be getting paid less in the range than somebody else that's getting paid more. Oftentimes, especially if you've already done those kind of audits on the front end, if somebody came to me in my company, I'd feel really comfortable defending.
you know, but I understand not all companies are. I think that, I think that hopefully, again, hopefully you don't have to pull in legal for those types of situations because you've handled that stuff on the front end and you're not kind of worrying about, have we done something wrong here? Everybody thinks that they should make more money. mean, everybody, everybody, we should, pay me more too.
Rebecca Taylor (13:55)
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Right. I think we should all be making more money. Why not? Right? Yeah.
Ami Graves (14:17)
⁓ We all want to make more money and I get that, but that doesn't mean that there's something illegal happening because you're not farther in the range that is as much as you'd like to be. And I think that's key. Yeah.
Rebecca Taylor (14:27)
That's the key. Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah.
And so in a related sort of like thread, what do you think is the biggest mistake HR teams make in situations like this?
Ami Graves (14:37)
Mm-hmm. ⁓
Rebecca Taylor (14:39)
And I say related because
I have thoughts, but I want to hear yours first.
Ami Graves (14:42)
Yeah,
I can't wait to hear yours too. I mean, a couple, right? One is just lack of preparation, which we've already talked about. I think that's a big one. And so to me, that's probably one of the biggest ones. Two, let's not jump to conclusions and think that anything that we've already have in place, the ranges we have are wrong. think employees can get emotional and we care about employees, so we want to fix things and we want to take care of them. But let's not assume that we're doing
we the business are doing something wrong. I think that most of those decisions we can defend. I think that HR should be able to recognize that. I also think it's HR's responsibility to, we gotta be coaching our managers on how to have better conversations around pay. I think that that's a struggle, especially with kind of frontline, first line managers.
Rebecca Taylor (15:33)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Ami Graves (15:38)
that I hate all the time. HR told me or HR said I can't. They deflect, right? So.
Rebecca Taylor (15:42)
Yeah, they deflect. Yeah. It's like, I don't
control the salaries of your team, believe it or not. You do. It's your P &L.
Ami Graves (15:48)
Yeah, absolutely,
absolutely. But I do believe that that's because they don't feel equipped enough to have those conversations and be really, they can't have those robust conversations because we've not, maybe we as a business haven't taught them to do that. So there's a little bit of responsibility there on us to do that. It's a manager's responsibility too. I love it when a manager says, I did some research. When they take it upon themselves to say, I wanna be a better leader and so I need to become more,
equipped and informed about how compensation works. Can you help me with that? my gosh, like, can you just send every manager that way? My way? Yeah, but unfortunately, oftentimes what we see is managers saying, I don't really know, go talk to HR. I'm not really sure HR made me do that or they told me I couldn't. I can't tell you how many times we've heard that in our HR careers over the last 25 years. Like, HR won't let me, you know, it's not much. No, absolutely not.
Rebecca Taylor (16:24)
Yeah, yeah.
All the time. All the time, yeah.
Yeah, it's like, I'm sorry, I'm not here to police you. That's not my job.
Ami Graves (16:46)
Absolutely not.
Rebecca Taylor (16:47)
Yeah, I think that one of the biggest mistakes is assuming that people won't notice because like the way this scenario is written and I understand that it's fabricated, but I've also feel like I've seen this movie before. ⁓ It's like, you know, we understand that we have to post to pay transparency. We're just doing this to be compliant. So technically, maybe the range that we put up there is technically compliant with the law.
Ami Graves (16:51)
Yes.
No doubt.
Rebecca Taylor (17:07)
But they assume, they might be assuming that people aren't gonna notice that the ranges are up. They're not gonna notice what the ranges are. And they assume that, if you're assuming that people aren't gonna care, then that's like the biggest mistake. Yeah, yeah. Because like, the whole thing to me is giving ostrich theory. It's giving like, I know this is coming, but I'm just gonna pretend it's not happening until I have to deal with the mess later. Which can happen a lot in HR when you're juggling a lot of things. Sometimes it's like,
Ami Graves (17:13)
Mm-hmm.
Big mistake. Big mistake.
Rebecca Taylor (17:37)
I don't even have the bandwidth to get ahead of this. I'm just gonna clean it up when it all explodes. ⁓ I'm not condoning that, but that's just sometimes the reality of the situation. But this is a big one that I don't think needed to just, that should not have just been HR's responsibility, but unfortunately, HR's responsible for cleaning it up. ⁓ I wanna know, did managers talk to their employees at all? But yeah.
Ami Graves (17:40)
Right, I get that.
Yeah, it is.
Yeah, that
to happen, right? It does tend to happen where HR gets either, you know, because it's easier for the manager to just say, ⁓ go to them, talk to them and figure it out. Or the lack of education. But that's not just a, as you know, Rebecca, certainly not just a pay thing. I feel like that happens in a lot of area performance and other types of areas of
Rebecca Taylor (18:10)
Right.
Yeah. Yeah. yeah. 100%.
Ami Graves (18:23)
of our
business too.
Rebecca Taylor (18:26)
Yeah, all the things that we end up having to deal with when it's just like, I have to talk to you about your performance. I have to give you feedback about a conversation you had. Or it's kind of funny just how those skills are just not flexed the same way as they probably, not probably, as they actually should be. And there's a lot of managers that are kind of deflecting to AI right now to give people feedback. But that's probably a whole other scenario to sort of uncouple.
Ami Graves (18:33)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, I was gonna
say that's a whole nother podcast, Rebecca. There's definitely a lot of that happening too. you know, listen, AI is a great tool. You're gonna find a lot of great information, you know, through your chat bot, chat bots or AI tools, you know, all the things. I use them daily. So I'm certainly not against it, but AI should help us give us options, should not be decision makers or give you the...
Rebecca Taylor (18:52)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Yes.
Ami Graves (19:12)
Please don't copy and paste and read from it. You know, when you're talking with your managers, like no way.
Rebecca Taylor (19:15)
Yeah, yeah.
My new analogy is like AI can be like makeup. It enhances what you currently have. So it's like you have to have the skills that can enhance what you have, but if you're trying to like, you know, reinvent some skills you don't have, you're gonna be going down a whole different rabbit hole. But yeah, don't do that.
Ami Graves (19:21)
That's right.
Yeah, please don't do that. Yeah, don't do that.
Rebecca Taylor (19:35)
So there's a lot of competing pressures here, right? Because there's the external view to the market. There's just a wide range posted from the market. I would look at that and I'd be like, either they're gonna lowball me or this is a role, let's say that is the real range. And I look at it as like, that's a job that I'm expected to be in for a long time. Like doing the same thing, maybe getting incremental raises year over year. Maybe there's no growth for me from here. Like there's so many different competing pressures. So you've got the external side.
Ami Graves (19:40)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm, right.
Rebecca Taylor (20:02)
You've got the legal risk, you know, how do you weigh them?
Ami Graves (20:06)
Yeah, I mean, I think that.
It's tough to weigh it because what you're really doing is weighing the financial impact to the business and employees perception and a candidate's perception. Here's the thing, our fear in HR or as a business with posting a range, it's not, really, again, maybe this is like me Pollyannaing a little bit, but like, I really wanna believe that
The whole reason we've been a little nervous to do that is because we don't want to miss out on a great candidate that would see our range and say, ooh, right? I mean, I think there's a little bit of fear there. What if they saw our range and they said, oh, 120 is the cap. I got to have 150. I'm not applying. But what if that candidate, exactly, but what if that candidate was
Rebecca Taylor (20:46)
It's true, yeah.
I'm not even gonna apply, yeah.
Ami Graves (21:03)
had a very like niche critical skill or some kind of experience that was even beyond what we asked for, but ooh, we knew we could use that in our company. Like those are the kinds of things that I think about that from that perspective, it's like, we don't wanna miss out on that candidate. So putting a range out there is a little scary for that. Now the flip side is.
Yes, there are companies that are, want to pay the least amount we can possibly pay. But honestly, companies that are doing that, and if those companies are scared to post their ranges because they were hoping to get away with paying a little bit less, you're just shooting yourself in the foot because all you're doing is bringing a candidate in that's gonna work for you for 12 months and gain a little bit of experience. And then they're gonna take that experience and go get paid what they're worth and what they can go get.
Rebecca Taylor (21:31)
Right.
Ami Graves (21:54)
somewhere else and you've been the quickest stepping stone ever for them in their career. If that's what you want to do, more power to you as a company, you're going to have a lot of turnover, turnover costs you money, a lot of training hours. If you have, I assume you'd have clients, it's going to impact your clients. There's just too many reasons to not go down that path. So the range itself is meant to be helpful to candidates.
Rebecca Taylor (22:16)
Yeah.
Ami Graves (22:21)
It's not meant to be hurtful to companies.
Rebecca Taylor (22:24)
Yeah, yeah, I think it's the perfect way to put it. And it kind of is about when you think about it as power dynamics too. Like previously, before salary ranges were posted, it was up to the candidate to start the negotiation, right? Because it's like, what are you looking for in a salary? Or it used to be, what do you make? Or what have you made before? you know, yeah, we're not, no, yeah, no, we're not. But like, that's how it started, right? That's what it used to be. And it used to be up to the candidate to be the one to put that number out there first.
Ami Graves (22:37)
Mmm, yeah.
Ugh. Mm-hmm. We're not asking that anymore. You better not be.
That's right. Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Rebecca Taylor (22:53)
That's twisted, right? Because it's like they're the ones who need a job ⁓ or who are considering other opportunities, whatever it is. So this kind of evens the playing field or at least puts the ball in the court of the place with more power. ⁓ Sometimes in a candidate's market, in a candidate's market, you could walk in and you could say, I want this and I'm not going to move for anything less than this.
Ami Graves (23:05)
Hmm.
Yeah. Yes. Yeah.
Rebecca Taylor (23:18)
There's probably, you could probably still do that in a lot of places and the company can decide what to do or not do with that. But salary transparency was specifically to drive more equity in the way that roles are paid and more transparency for the average person who needs a job, right? We're not all Don Draper walking into an ad agency saying, pay me a million dollars and here's all the things that I can do, right? Most of us are just like, we're just trying to make a living here. And that's where a lot of it comes from. ⁓
Ami Graves (23:20)
Mm-hmm.
That's right.
Yes. Yep.
Funny story. This is actually embarrassing now that I ⁓ have been, I've had some life experience now, but I will never forget my very first job. Not my first job. I had, worked as a teenager, but my very first like real job, the recruiter, this, now I am dating myself here. This is 2030. It's a long time ago. Okay.
Rebecca Taylor (23:50)
This is safe space.
Ami Graves (24:09)
I remember they offered me $20,000 and I was like, that's annual salary by the way. And I was like, my gosh, $20,000. Like I asked the recruiter, no kidding. The recruiter that's working with me, offering me the job. I asked the recruiter, what should I do? Should I negotiate? And she was so sweet. She was like, sure, yes, yes, you should negotiate.
Rebecca Taylor (24:16)
Mm-hmm, yeah.
Ami Graves (24:33)
And I'm like, okay, what should I negotiate with? What should I ask for? I am asking the actual recruiter. Listen, please give me a number. She said 21,000. I said, deal 21,000. That's what I want to negotiate. Oh my gosh, you guys, please don't ever do what I did. I can't believe I've made it this far in life knowing it after telling that story. But I'm just, my whole point in that is like, oh, the burden of salary negotiations. I'm going to tell you for the last 10 years of my career.
Rebecca Taylor (24:40)
to give me a number.
Ami Graves (25:04)
I don't like to, I will not get into a negotiation with salary. I just won't do it. I'm gonna come to you with, I'm not saying I won't negotiate ever, but my whole point in saying that is I'm come to you with the best strong, I'm never gonna hide comp. We're gonna talk about comp from the beginning. This is my range or this is where I'm at. I'm looking to offer you $80,000. This is, know, but if I'm at the top, I'm like, look, 80 is the best I can give you. 120 is the best I can give you.
I don't like to negotiate. I want to like give you the strongest offer I know my company can give you. And then let's keep it moving with, let's get it going, right? If that's acceptable to you, let's move. And if it's not, then I understand. We got to, you got to do your thing and we got to go do our thing, right? I don't like to be in a position where can you give me 82? No, but I can give you 81.5. Like, no, I'm not going to do it. Well, I'm not going to, it's, are you kidding me? We're not getting into that battle. Like it's just not worth it. Listen, if you're going to make an offer,
Rebecca Taylor (25:36)
Yeah.
Yeah, that's just pennies at that point.
Ami Graves (25:58)
If this is a candidate you really want, come with a strong offer. That tells them out of the gate, we want you, right? And that makes them feel good. Why are we negotiating over $1,000? That's just wild behavior, right?
Rebecca Taylor (26:06)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. So there's a lot of like, there are a lot of sort of takeaways too, just in terms of like, what can happen even after like when you're in the negotiation phase, post this, you know, this whole scenario too, because, you know, if you're if you're an employee who takes, you know, this job that's posted, you know, that has this like wide salary range, and let's say, you know, that you're at the higher end of things, then you're kind of walking in.
You know, sounds like in this specific scenario, it sounds like there hasn't been paid transparency historically at the organization. So now there's like this weird expectation of, you know, am I getting paid a lot more than the people around me? Does that make them hate me? Does that, how does that impact like my experience here? And that's the, those are sort of like the ripple effects of something like this, right? Like it's never just one little issue. It's always sort of how it affects everybody's ability to just do their best work. And like,
Ami Graves (26:48)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm. Yep.
Rebecca Taylor (27:03)
You know, some of the patterns that I see in situations like this is like this one specifically is pay transparency is considered, is maybe not anymore, but at the time was considered radical and very progressive and very like, my God, like why would you do that? Now it's becoming standardized, right? Because it's, you know, it's becoming sort of a thing that's sort of going state by state. So the pattern that you see is something is, you know, seen as progressive, the more, you know,
Ami Graves (27:14)
Yeah. Right.
Rebecca Taylor (27:29)
quote unquote, more progressive states will adopt it first. Like California and New York are usually some of the first. You know, you Colorado, Illinois, like they'll kind of like sprinkle in there, right? But like you, as HR, you can't ignore things that are happening outside of your own state, or you can't ignore things that seem like too progressive and will never come here because...
Ami Graves (27:33)
Right. For outrunners.
Mm-hmm.
Rebecca Taylor (27:52)
If you're ignoring that, then by the time something like this comes to your organization, you are going to be caught from behind. You're not paying attention to how other organizations did it better. And that's not great for your culture. It's not great for your people. And it could just open you up to a lot of risk too, because you're going to be less informed in how to make it effective in your own company.
Ami Graves (27:59)
Yeah.
Absolutely. And I think there's some like additional thoughts there too. One, like we're in a global economy. unless you're a small business, there's not a lot of places that are only operating just solely in their one little spot. Talent is everywhere. it's important that we're paying attention to what's happening in other states around us, even if you don't have an employee there. Because just because you don't now doesn't mean you won't in six months, right?
Rebecca Taylor (28:19)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Exactly. Yeah.
Ami Graves (28:39)
So we've really
got to be paying attention to that stuff. And by the way, it's not just pay transparency. It's the same thing with like, if you think about drug screening, like those kind of the pre-employment drug screenings. mean, what was it like five, four or five years ago, New York passed a law. Not only did they pass a law about you not being able to test for marijuana, but it was, you can't make a tangible employment decision. There was employment protections in there for New York.
Rebecca Taylor (28:47)
Yeah.
Ami Graves (29:05)
Lots of states are moving in that direction. So we just have to be mindful of that. No matter where you are, we got to be paying attention. NHR, because that's our role, is paying attention to what's happening from a kind of, that could impact our people, therefore our business, and not just the state we're working in, but in the states around us. Because to your point, Rebecca, if it's happening in California, in New York now, in Illinois, I mean, I'm in Indiana, it's coming. It might be a little slower, but it will be coming.
Rebecca Taylor (29:13)
Yeah.
It'll get there.
Ami Graves (29:33)
And we need to be prepared. That's right.
Rebecca Taylor (29:33)
It'll get there. Yeah. Yeah. And so I want to, so I know it's funny because I like, we're at time, but I feel like there's so many more things that we can dive into with this because it's just, think it's also very timely with so many people interviewing for jobs right now, you know, out of work, kind of trying to navigate this. And right now it's very much an employer market, right? Because
Ami Graves (29:45)
Yeah.
Rebecca Taylor (29:56)
That's just the truth of where we are now, but everything is cyclical. So I'm always excited to see how these laws kind of get, or these policies sort of change as the tables are turned. Because it will, you know, they will turn, it'll happen. But like as sort of our closing question, what's one assumption about HR that you think needs to be challenged?
Ami Graves (29:58)
Right.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Just one? Just one?
Rebecca Taylor (30:19)
I know, just one, just one.
You could do like one and a half if they're related.
Ami Graves (30:23)
Yeah, you know, I
think the one assumption that's not even just related to what we're talking about today is that
HR is the sole responsible function for all things people pay, performance related. It's probably the thing that drives me the most crazy and gives me also a lot of passion to kind of help educate. And we are here to do that. We are here to educate and help inform and...
and not to tell you no, but to explain the risk and then the business leaders get to make those decisions with of course our input and our guidance and our advice on how much risk we as a company are willing to accept. So we get, they think that they have, we have a lot more power than we actually do sometimes to be honest, right?
In terms of line, kind of those frontline employees, it's HR, it's HR, it's HR. It's the business. It's the business. We get to help deliver the message and I will carry it as the champion if that's what I need to do, of course. employee, we have a little, not as much power as you think in terms of making those business decisions that could impact you. And by the way, I'm an employee too and those decisions often...
Rebecca Taylor (31:38)
Yeah.
Ami Graves (31:41)
impact me as well. You know what I mean? That's sometimes I think forgotten.
Rebecca Taylor (31:43)
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, I love that. And I mean, I love that you said that because I think that it is very true where, you know, sort of people think that HR is up there like making all the decisions and telling the CEO like, hmm, yes. It's like, we don't, that's really not our style. Like we work, like you said, we're employees too. And, you know, it's like most decisions are a result of multiple people weighing in and ultimately just getting to be the right thing. It's like,
Ami Graves (31:57)
Hmm.
Yeah.
Rebecca Taylor (32:13)
Just like HR and business, there's so many gray areas. There's never gonna be a scenario where everyone is going to be happy with everything. ⁓ And you decide what to do with that, right? As the employee and as just someone who's here.
Ami Graves (32:17)
Yeah.
Right.
That's right.
You got it. You got it. I think at the end of the day, know, I, ⁓ this whole, know, HR is walking in the room, you know, HR is not your friend. You can't trust HR. It's unfortunate because I think that it's actually quite the opposite. If you have a really good HR team and function in your company, we are your advocates. You might not know this, but we are in the rooms advocating for you.
We're also advocating for the business. We know we need to do that. That's really important. There's no harder job in my view than balancing the needs of the business and the employee. And that is our job. I'm never gonna walk around like the compliance police. You will never see it. It won't happen. Not under my watch. I know people like to think that that's all we do is walk around with a handbook and beat people over the head with it. Please, no, don't do it. And by the way, HR practitioners, if that's you, just stop. I mean...
Reach out, me and Rebecca would love to guide you. Yeah, there's other ways, right? There's a better way, that's right.
Rebecca Taylor (33:22)
There's other ways. Yeah, there's a better way.
That's so true. And thank you, Ami, for being here, for sharing all your wisdom and for having this chat. think there's so many good takeaways from this that I think that anyone who's listening can really kind of sort of apply to maybe a current situation that you have. If you have any questions for Ami, you can find her on LinkedIn. Or you can find me. I can connect you to her.
Ami Graves (33:33)
Yeah.
Yeah!
Rebecca Taylor (33:51)
⁓ You know, thank everybody for listening and thank you Ami for being here and hope you all have a great day
Ami Graves (33:55)
Yeah,
my pleasure. Thanks for having me, Rebecca.