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The Build a Vibrant Culture Podcast explores the real-world strategies behind building strong work culture, improving organizational culture, and leading with clarity in today’s fast-changing business environment.
Hosted by leadership expert Nicole Greer, this podcast features conversations with business leaders, executives, and entrepreneurs who are shaping modern business culture through effective communication, leadership development, and intentional management practices.
Each episode delivers practical insights into leadership and business, including topics like team communication, project management, career growth, and creating workplaces where people perform at their best.
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Scott trumpolt
[00:00:00] Nicole Greer: Welcome everybody to the Build A Vibrant Culture podcast. My name is Nicole Greer and they call me The Vibrant Coach. And I have another amazing, vibrant guest on the show today. And we're gonna be talking about compensation. Lemme tell you a little bit about Scott Trumpolt's career. His career is defined by the seamless evolution from corporate leadership to independent consultancy, and he's got a new book out on that.
[00:00:23] Nicole Greer: It reflects over 30 years of expertise in compensation planning, HR leadership and reward strategies. For 18 years, Scott excelled in the corporate world holding HR and compensation leadership roles across the United States and in Germany. In 2012, he launched Trumpolt Compensation Design Solutions, also known as TCDS to provide bespoke, don't you love that word, little.
[00:00:49] Nicole Greer: Little English flare thrown in there. Bespoke solutions tailored to the unique needs of organizations worldwide. Scott's corporate experience provided a solid foundation for mastering market-based pay structures, sales incentive plans, and job classification systems, and we all need help with that stuff.
[00:01:08] Nicole Greer: Transitioning into independent consultancy, Scott has spent the past 13 years leveraging his expertise to deliver innovative. Client-focused strategies. This blend of corporate insight and entrepreneurial innovation allows him to navigate conversation challenges from both perspectives, creating high impact solutions that drive organizational success.
[00:01:30] Nicole Greer: Scott's global Reach includes projects across North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, Caribbean, and reflecting his ability to work in diverse cultures. He is a certified global remuneration. How'd I do? Remun...
[00:01:47] Scott Trumpolt: remuneration. Pretty close
[00:01:48] Nicole Greer: Say that with me. Re say it again.
[00:01:51] Scott Trumpolt: Remuneration.
[00:01:54] Nicole Greer: Nicole Greer cannot get this out of her mouth.
[00:01:56] Nicole Greer: Remuneration Professional or GRP And holds a Master's degree in Human Resources Management. I wanna know, where'd you get that? Human Resources management degree.
[00:02:07] Scott Trumpolt: Framingham State University up in Massachusetts many moons ago.
[00:02:11] Nicole Greer: Fantastic. Okay. And has maintained an A plus Butter Business Bureau rating, underscoring his commitment to excellence and client satisfaction.
[00:02:19] Nicole Greer: Scott, you are a force. I'm so glad you're here to teach us today.
[00:02:25] Scott Trumpolt: Thank you Nicole, and thank you for giving me the opportunity to address your audience. This is most appreciated.
[00:02:30] Nicole Greer: Oh yeah. You're welcome. It's a fun bunch, let me tell you. All right, so kick this to kick this off. How did you get into compensation strategy? I mean, like when you got your college degree up north, you know, there's all these parts and pieces of, of human resources. How did you fall into compensation?
[00:02:49] Scott Trumpolt: I didn't immediately, I got my bachelor's degree in a different discipline And I worked for a few years in that field, public administration. But I very quickly realized that I wanted to, to pivot, into human resources. I got my master's degree and I happened in human resources, and I happened to be working at a company that had an opening.
[00:03:14] Scott Trumpolt: It was just a perfect situation. It was an entry level opening in human resources, and the thing that I benefited most from and which has stayed with me all the way through my career, was that I had two mentors. At that organization that in a few years time, I believe, taught me, I don't know, five or six, seven years worth of experience.
[00:03:35] Scott Trumpolt: And I'm so grateful for that. And that's really what launched me. It initially was supposed to expose me to all areas of human resources, which it, which it did. But they very soon discovered that I had an aptitude and there was a need in the compensation area, and I kind of. And I'm still going with that.
[00:03:56] Scott Trumpolt: So that's how I got my start. I was fortunate to have a company that was willing to let me switch over and take a chance on me and to train me and to build me up. And after a handful of years there, I moved to Florida and then my career's been heavier since, so I've been down in Florida for quite some time now.
[00:04:15] Nicole Greer: Yeah, fantastic. And like everybody don't miss what he's saying, like we've got to have mentorship like maybe even more formalized inside of our organizations. Look,
[00:04:26] Scott Trumpolt: Absolutely.
[00:04:26] Nicole Greer: man gets two people that shows him the ropes and then he has a whole career he didn't even know he could have. I'm just a huge believer in mentorship.
[00:04:34] Scott Trumpolt: That's what
[00:04:35] Nicole Greer: Yeah.
[00:04:35] Scott Trumpolt: it's.
[00:04:36] Nicole Greer: Yeah, absolutely. Very good. Okay, well, we're glad for these two leaders and that they took time to, to spend time with you. All right, so when leaders hear compensation strategy, many of them think it's about pay bands. How do you explain what it really means and why it matters to executives? So, you know, I've got all my HR generalists listening, my HR managers listening, maybe even the CHRO is listening.
[00:05:02] Nicole Greer: What do we do to get the executives to understand how important this is?
[00:05:07] Scott Trumpolt: Well, pay bands are just an outgrowth, a foundation that builds a compensation that comes from a compensation foundation that's built upon a philosophy. And I think it's very important for organizations and executives to understand that there is no one set approach to compensation. You have to look at your company philosophy.
[00:05:34] Scott Trumpolt: And how you want to pay people. Do you want to pay them more than market? Do you want to pay them under market and base pay? But you want to have more on the variable side. And it's not just about pay bands or pay structures, it's about all the other aspects of compensation, whether it's variable pay, whether it's long-term incentives for higher level jobs.
[00:05:57] Scott Trumpolt: So the first thing that happens, and this is what has created a career for me as an independent consultant, because the first thing that I do when I go into an organization is let's not start with the outputs of what you want. Let's take a step back and look at the overall philosophy of the organization.
[00:06:15] Scott Trumpolt: Where do you see yourself in terms of, of, of being competitive with the marketplace? What sets you apart from the others? It's not a one set solution, so we can get, we will get deeper into different areas of compensation, but I think that's, to your question, I think that's what's missing the most is just immediately go to the pay structure.
[00:06:36] Scott Trumpolt: And so for example, in my area of work, sometimes depending on the company philosophy, where that organization is in its development. Are they a company that is growing very fast and changing all the time? Or is it a company that is pretty much staying static in terms of what they do, the type of jobs that they hire, and that's gonna make a big impact on whether we're gonna use a broad career band system or if we're gonna use more of a traditional pay structure, the number of the pay grades.
[00:07:12] Scott Trumpolt: How does that link to career development? How do you create succession planning? So it starts the ball rolling to a lot of other aspects of compensation. But the way to sum that up is to just say that pay structures themselves are just an outgrowth of a philosophy and you need to get the philosophy correct first.
[00:07:32] Nicole Greer: Yeah, so I love that so much. You don't even know because when I sit down and do leadership development with leaders, I'm like, what's your philosophy? And they almost kind of go like, what do you mean?
[00:07:42] Scott Trumpolt: Yeah.
[00:07:42] Nicole Greer: do you, what do you believe about work? What do you believe about leading teams?
[00:07:45] Nicole Greer: What do you believe about development? So, I I, I, I wanna go down a little bunny trail. So, yesterday I was teaching the essentials of human resources at UN UNC Charlotte. And we were, we were talking about compensation. And one of the examples that I often share is there's a oil company, a gas station company called QT.
[00:08:05] Nicole Greer: Do they have those in Florida where you live? QT?
[00:08:08] Scott Trumpolt: No, no, that's not familiar.
[00:08:11] Nicole Greer: well, they're all over North Carolina and they are lovely. Clean bathrooms. They have huge selections, very, very nice. And when you walk in they greet you, you know, they're like, welcome to QT. Lots of good training must be going on. But the thing that I noticed, Scott, was out by the fuel pumps, there's a sign that says, come be an assistant manager with us.
[00:08:32] Nicole Greer: And make, you know, and make x amount of dollars a year. And it was a, you know, and I can't quote the number that was on it, but it, it was like, you know, $25 an hour or something like that. And I'm thinking a young, eager, excited person who wants to make good money right outta the gate, they may have never thought I wanna work in a gas station,
[00:08:51] Scott Trumpolt: Yeah.
[00:08:51] Nicole Greer: them in.
[00:08:52] Nicole Greer: So, so there's a philosophy under there that we pay top dollar. What, what, in your experience, what puts a leader in that mindset? That we pay top dollar. Like how, how do we get our leaders to think like that? Because I think that's, I think it's a great way to see it. People are valuable and we need to get young, hungry people in here who wanna work.
[00:09:15] Scott Trumpolt: Yeah.
[00:09:15] Scott Trumpolt: Again, it it, it starts with the philosophy of the organization and how they wanna position themselves. How much do they want to go after the top talent, and oftentimes the top talent. Out there is linked to particular jobs in the marketplace that that company may very well sponsor. Like for example, although my career has been one of primarily compensation for 30 years, I did have a stint about three years as a human resources director, and I worked at a startup that was very much software development engineers.
[00:09:53] Scott Trumpolt: So we were paying top dollar and not only top dollars, but looking within specific schools. This is how specific it was because the leader of the company had a software engineering background, and so we would recruit from certain schools. He knew were really solid and we paid appropriately. So we were paying, even though we were a startup, we were paying well above the market.
[00:10:16] Scott Trumpolt: So again, it goes back to the philosophy. Now, I can't speak to this company that you bring up right here, but they may have a urgent need to get those type of roles in place. Based upon their, so again, it goes back to the, the business model is so important and what you're trying to accomplish, and that's gonna set some of your pay philosophy.
[00:10:39] Scott Trumpolt: And you're right when you say that, sometimes they look at you like, what do you mean our compensation philosophy? And, and if you press them, they will say, well, we wanna pay competitively. Okay, well, what does that mean? Do you, I don't wanna make this too complicated, but the idea is, do you want to be competitive
[00:10:56] Scott Trumpolt: across the board, or are there only certain jobs that you really want to zero in some, perhaps some jobs you want to pay more than market. And I have companies as, as a consultant, where they will say to me, I'm not really concerned with what the market's paying. We want to pay more for certain positions because those jobs are of more value to our internal organization than other jobs.
[00:11:21] Scott Trumpolt: Now that can lead you down a rabbit hole in some areas. But the important thing is, is as a consultant, as a compensation consultant, is to first, you know, really listen to, to them and to, and fortunately, over many years, you start to get more and more adept at asking the right questions and helping to get the responses, not the responses you want to hear, but to have clarity in their response.
[00:11:48] Scott Trumpolt: So that's, that's crucial. And again, it goes back to those fundamentals that I was talking about.
[00:11:52] Nicole Greer: Yeah, and, and I would just correct me if I'm wrong, Scott, but I also think like the philosophy's in place so that then we can make a decision on this one hire and this one hire. And I think a lot of times we're just making decisions on one hire, one hire instead of the whole thing. Right? Yeah. And
[00:12:11] Scott Trumpolt: Yeah.
[00:12:11] Nicole Greer: and, then we get a, a real wonky situation with people making all sorts of different things, and it, it gets, it gets messy as we like to say.
[00:12:19] Scott Trumpolt: Yeah, you have to, you have to have a defensible system. And that, that's, that's another area where I come in there, there was nothing wrong with paying different people, different rates of pay, but you have to have a logic behind it and you can use the market to do this, to do this very much. Maybe the person that you're gonna be bringing into the organization.
[00:12:44] Scott Trumpolt: Maybe it's not. That's gonna leapfrog in terms of the pay of the individual that's already there. Maybe that initial person was someone like me 30 years ago who was trying to just get in the door to learn and didn't have really a lot to offer in that specific area where the other person has All the skills.
[00:13:03] Scott Trumpolt: So you don't necessarily always pay the market competitive rate. That's where the individual comes in. Obviously you pay based on the job, but where the individual comes in has to do with the relevant contribution they're gonna be able to make to the organization, and they can grow that contribution over time.
[00:13:19] Scott Trumpolt: And that's where career development comes in.
[00:13:22] Nicole Greer: Yeah.
[00:13:23] Nicole Greer: absolutely. Yeah. So, and that's also why we have a range, right? You know, so top of the range, they've got all the things. Bottom of the range, they're hungry, they're eager, we love their attitude. They've got an education. Let's see what we can do. Yeah. Very good. Okay, so, can you share a moment when compensation decision clearly helped or hurt
[00:13:44] Nicole Greer: business performance?
[00:13:47] Scott Trumpolt: Well off the top, I can think of one that that comes to mind a lot 'cause I've seen it several times is one where from it's, and it's a mistake. Internally in the organization, you'll have someone. This happens particularly in information technology, and I deal with a lot of companies, information technology firms.
[00:14:05] Scott Trumpolt: That's their main emphasis. Oftentimes IT jobs are paid a little bit more than say, other jobs, other functions at the same level. Not always, but it's just a function of market. But, and this gets into our discussion about career development. One of the things that may happen, and it's not unusual, but it's still very much something that I see happening, is there is an individual contributor, fantastic technical individual contributor.
[00:14:34] Scott Trumpolt: Because they're so good as an individual contributor, they promote them into a people management position, which has a different pay scale, but it more importantly than the pay scale, it has a different type of skills that are required. And the person going into it usually has been focused so much on being an individual contributor and being a technical expert that they haven't had the time nor the opportunity
[00:15:01] Scott Trumpolt: to develop as an individual leader, but they say, well, they're so good as an individual contributor, that they just have to be good as a people leader. And that's oftentimes a mistake because it's a completely different skillset. The great thing though about solving that issue is from a career development perspective, some, a lot of companies still have this feeling like, in order to make more money, in order to get up the hierarchy, you need to become a people leader.
[00:15:31] Scott Trumpolt: And that's not true in the marketplace. If, for example, in many roles, not just information technology. But in many roles, you can continue to demonstrate different dimensions of the same job, but at a higher level, so your scope and complexity of the activities. And so what happens is at some point, if you are an expert level individual contributor, you're gonna get paid the same as a people leader, director.
[00:15:57] Scott Trumpolt: Or if you are a fourth level specialist in information technology, you're gonna get paid around the same as a manager or even a senior manager. So there is this dual career path, and I think a lot of companies don't understand that. They, they tend, I see it over and over where they promote someone and all it does is promote a person that isn't ready for a different skillset.
[00:16:20] Scott Trumpolt: And now that person is barely at the minimum of the people leader range, because they haven't really grown them yet as an individual contributor. And so what you're doing is, yes, you're giving them a pay increase by being a promotion, but at the same time, with the greater transparency that's going on in the marketplace, that person is eventually gonna know that they're getting paid very, very low where they were getting paid competitively as an individual contributor.
[00:16:46] Scott Trumpolt: Now they're getting paid very, very low. As a people leader, so this is a big mistake that I see, and I mentioned that one because I see it happen over and over and still throughout my career. It's one of the few constants that I've seen.
[00:16:58] Nicole Greer: Yeah, and, and, and it's really awful. When we promote this person
[00:17:03] Scott Trumpolt: Yeah. '
[00:17:04] Nicole Greer: cause we're setting this great technician up to fail because they have no idea how to communicate with people or they don't have the emotional intelligence or the change management or the understanding of personality and character and all the things, all these
[00:17:17] Nicole Greer: little complex humans have. Yeah. So I think your point is definitely well taken. And I love the idea of the career path for somebody who wants to lead people and the career path for somebody who wants to become an expert. I work with a company over in Danville, North Carolina. It's called Blum. And we have a whole training program that's called, and leadership training. So you don't have to be a people leader to be in this program. But if you're an, if you're an expert and people are coming to you for your expertise, you still have to have these people skills.
[00:17:52] Scott Trumpolt: Absolutely, and think about it. Think about it. Also, your experts should be sharing information. We talked at the very beginning of this call about about mentors. One of the keys to being an expert is not only being able to do that job, but to be able to impart that knowledge both to people that are clients of the company, but also internally with the people that want to get to that level. So, that distinguish, that's one of the distinguishing A lot of people think that, Oh you're an expert when you have 10 years of experience in something. Well, we all know people that can be in the job for 10 years, but they've learned two years and That's where their comfort zone is. And then you find other people that have three or four years of experience who are actually operating at a much higher level.
[00:18:38] Scott Trumpolt: It has to do with skillset acquisition, it has to do with personal initiative. It has to do with good management. But, so I don't take anything at face value. But what I will say though is that is one, again, one of the issues is that you're absolutely right.
[00:18:56] Scott Trumpolt: You do need to have outlets for training, even if they're an individual contributor.
[00:19:01] Scott Trumpolt: They still should be growing those people skills. Maybe not at the intermediate, you know, the entry level, but when you start getting up into that senior and specialist and expert level, you need to be developing those kind of skills. Whether or not you ever move into people management, you still need to develop them because it's part of the job.
[00:19:21] Nicole Greer: Yeah, and, and you know, things are. Things are not simple. I mean, there's, there's a lot of
[00:19:26] Scott Trumpolt: No.
[00:19:27] Nicole Greer: complexity in our businesses these days. Right. I just interviewed a guy JC Gaillard and you know, and he, he, he is trying to help these guys the, the CISOs, you know, the cybersecurity dudes that are out there in the, and dudettes that are in the world, and, talk about hard to find human. A CISO is very hard to find. But anyway, so the other thing too you made me think of something Scott, is, you know, a lot of times I'll have leaders say to me, you know, we've talked to John or Susan or whoever Jose, about moving up and he's just really happy where he is at.
[00:20:02] Nicole Greer: And I, I'm like, well, you know, Jose, and you know, Susan and John, they might be in their own way. You know,
[00:20:08] Scott Trumpolt: Mm-hmm.
[00:20:09] Nicole Greer: , we have to challenge these people to learn and to grow. You know, they might just be keeping themselves small. And so providing these trainings and also explain, and if we have really clear compensation philosophy you know, I think people might try a little harder to get out of that comfort zone that you talked about.
[00:20:27] Nicole Greer: I think sometimes people just need to be encouraged, you know?
[00:20:31] Scott Trumpolt: Yeah, they need, they need to be encouraged, but also I think it's important to say that to them that, you know, our business model, bringing it back to the business, we need you to grow. We don't need you to continually be, because what's gonna happen is that individual is going to cap themselves out.
[00:20:49] Nicole Greer: That's right.
[00:20:50] Scott Trumpolt: Pay at that level because the company is only gonna pay people wonder, well, why shouldn't I
[00:20:55] Scott Trumpolt: get a a, a pay increase? I've been doing the same job for 10 years and I'm great at it. And my response is, well, you should be great at that job because you've been doing it for 10 years. But you know what, but you know what, even more important than that is the idea that if you have those 10 years, you should have learned something
[00:21:13] Scott Trumpolt: in those 10 years, that makes you more valuable to the organization in a higher level role. So at a, at a certain point, the business needs to, to push back a little bit and say, you know, you did a great job, but in order for you to continue to thrive and to be here and to continue to grow your pay, this business, this business needs you to do this.
[00:21:35] Scott Trumpolt: A business does have a right. We talk a lot about employees today and absolutely we should, especially when it comes to pay transparency, but we need to talk about businesses being open and honest and align, aligning career development. We can give all the training we want on career development, which is great and it's most needed, but we need to also factor in that it needs to have an outlet at the end, and the outlet is the business need.
[00:22:03] Scott Trumpolt: Needing to grow people to assume higher level positions, so you're not always going from the outside. Possibly creating compensation difficulties internally, as you mentioned much earlier in the call. But there needs to be this business need, and if a manager can't communicate the business, need the immediate manager to the employee, That's an issue because That's the kind of engagement we need to have between manager and employee.
[00:22:27] Nicole Greer: Oh, I agree. Yeah. Employee engagement, it's all about the manager and the employee relationship and, and, and how they are developing those folks. And, and you know, the thing is too, is like, you know, like, I don't know if he wants to learn that. And I'm like, you, like, let's not make it optional. I need you to learn this.
[00:22:44] Nicole Greer: In order. Yeah. Because the business needs this done so that we make money, so we all get a paycheck on Friday, you know,
[00:22:50] Scott Trumpolt: Yeah.
[00:22:51] Nicole Greer: it all goes together. That's right. Okay. So there,
[00:22:54] Scott Trumpolt: otherwise we can get, someone else to do that intermediate level job for less pay, because that person needs to grow up to that level. You're already beyond that level, so
[00:23:05] Scott Trumpolt: Yeah,
[00:23:06] Nicole Greer: All right, so there's always tension between paying competitive competitively and managing costs. How do the best organizations navigate this kind of scale here? Right.
[00:23:20] Scott Trumpolt: Well. One of the things that they, they need to do is to have systems or programs in place where they are managing costs, but they are recognizing top performance. So for example, most companies have an annual merit review process, and this is one of the few opportunities that perhaps an employee has to sit down with a manager to discuss their pay.
[00:23:48] Scott Trumpolt: If a merit pay system is, is prop, a lot of managers say, I just want to give everybody the same 3% merit increase. That's what's fair. No one will argue about that. And but the problem with that is, is if you, what I always work with my clients on is saying, look, for whatever reason we may have individuals that are underpaid, that may be our top performers.
[00:24:11] Scott Trumpolt: It happens. It really does happen. It can happen for a lot Of different reasons. And what I say to them is, your question was about managing these pay expectations and having limited budget and things like that. You should use that 3% budget. That's 3% Of payroll. And if someone is paid below their market value, but they're a top performer, they shouldn't get 3%.
[00:24:38] Scott Trumpolt: They should get five or 6%. Because we wanna recognize their performance, the performance, and we also want to adjust. So it's using the budget in a more systematic way. Now for people that are already above their market value and they've been with the company and they've been in the same job, there should be no problem saying to them, look, you are at your, you are above your market value for this job.
[00:25:05] Scott Trumpolt: You are doing a great job. Say they're a top performer, but we expect you to be a top performer after three or four years in this organization. You are paid above market for your role. You're gonna get a 2% merit increase. And so That's the thing that I think sometimes is missing is having a system that helps you.
[00:25:25] Scott Trumpolt: Now, merit pay is only one example. You can do this with equity adjustments as well. But merit pay is a good example because a lot of companies say, okay, 3% budget, and they, they do the merit review and they have the employee come in and they talk about what the employee did, right, what the employee can focus on.
[00:25:41] Scott Trumpolt: And then they say, after all of this. 3% and the employee goes the top performing employee goes away thinking, geez, I did everything right. Why am I just getting a standard merit increase? And that, and then people and employees talk and so they see some and then they see someone else that. They know is not really putting their fair share in and they're getting the same type of increase.
[00:26:05] Scott Trumpolt: So we need to align budgets. With this kind of market-based philosophy, if your company has a market-based philosophy and people, you have people under market, but they're top performers or even solid performers, you know, they need to get more than 3%. So, and also if you look at the market, a lot of companies usually will like to do
[00:26:28] Scott Trumpolt: equity adjustments at the same time of year.
[00:26:30] Scott Trumpolt: They usually have a percent extra for equity adjustments. That's a great opportunity because you've got to protect your top performing employees and also your employees that have a lot of growth potential. You have to make choices.
[00:26:44] Nicole Greer: Yeah, absolutely. And you know, I think that. A lot of organizations I work with, like this isn't, this isn't talked about as a strategy in terms of, you know, equity having a extra percent, like you just said. I, I don't hear that a lot. And the other thing about these merit reviews, you said the manager sits down and says, you did this, you did that, and you need to work on this or that.
[00:27:10] Nicole Greer: I was in this meeting the other day, Scott, and these, these leaders, middle of the organization leaders said, oh we compared our reviews, what was written down. We compared between us and it was exactly the same. We think they did it on chat GPT, and I was like, heartbroken. And so, you know, for those of you listening, you know, this is the one time a year like Scott said, where somebody, the, the employee actually gets like 40 minutes or an hour, maybe, hopefully longer with this leader.
[00:27:43] Nicole Greer: And then the leader wants to just be, protect themselves and give everybody 3%. Instead of really doing some leadership work and some, you know, thinking about what's the right strategy here. So I think that the review process, oh my gosh, we gotta, that's, you know, you need to write a book about that, Scott.
[00:28:04] Nicole Greer: Let's get that fixed.
[00:28:06] Scott Trumpolt: well, you know. Well, thank you. I mean, the other thing, the other thing a a about this that I find is you, you've really got to get managers focus in on getting a little bit away from the tactical. I know that they want to get this out of the way. They wanna talk about the merit.
[00:28:23] Nicole Greer: it's a tactic. That's right. Yeah. Check the box on reviews. Yeah.
[00:28:28] Scott Trumpolt: They've gotta look at the, the longer term strategic aspect. And again, that business need. What is the next step? The employee should at least go away from that meeting knowing what is the next step. The manager can't lay out their whole future because part of that is dependent on the employee, but they need to at least have that.
[00:28:46] Scott Trumpolt: Okay, well, what's gonna be the next step for me? Am I gonna come back a year from now and we're gonna have the same 40 minute conversation? So they gotta be thinking about where, where does this lead? And by doing that, it starts to make it a little bit more strategic, a little bit less tactical, and a little bit of the awkwardness starts to diminish.
[00:29:06] Scott Trumpolt: That's what I see. And you know, there are companies that are doing this. You see these companies, top 100 companies to work for. One of the things that they're getting right is employee engagement. They have higher employee engagement levels for these top 100 companies to work for, and part of that is compensation.
[00:29:25] Scott Trumpolt: How they talk about compensation. They talk about a lot of the same things that other companies do, but they do it in a little bit more strategic way. And that happened that lightens the mood. It's not being fake. It lightens the mood. It allows for development discussions, which is the ultimate thing that's gonna lead to more pay.
[00:29:47] Scott Trumpolt: You know, these pay transparency laws out there, they're, they're, they're good from the incentive that it's making Companies take a close look internally at their internal operations, that's good. But to an outside employee looking at pay transparency laws, all they see again is that range. And it's kind Of like a dead end.
[00:30:07] Scott Trumpolt: The key to me to pay transparency is the idea that greater pay is linked to career development and we have to bring those two concepts together and to say why you're getting paid, what you're getting paid, and what does the future look like? And so that's the great opportunity. It's not just about meeting a compliance issue because if it is, we've lost.
[00:30:30] Nicole Greer: Yeah.
[00:30:31] Nicole Greer: well, I, you know, I, I oftentimes, I'll have a group again of like leaders in a room. Oftentimes they're the middle of the organization and we'll talk about, you know, career pathing and this kind of thing. And they're like, well, you can't promise people that they're gonna get promoted. I'm like, of course not.
[00:30:46] Nicole Greer: Of course you can't
[00:30:47] Scott Trumpolt: No.
[00:30:47] Nicole Greer: promise anything, but you can develop them, get them to the point where it's a, it is a possibility. And then if the possibility comes, the person moves up. So, you know, in my own career, I used to be in property management and I ran beautiful apartment communities all around the, the southeast.
[00:31:04] Nicole Greer: And, you know, I, I was hired in as a leasing agent that that's the ground level. And they, they were talking to me about being a manager, like at orientation. You know, and, and, and another thing I'll just kind of say is, you know, sometimes HR leaders and leaders are like, know, this is just uncomfortable to talk about money.
[00:31:24] Nicole Greer: And I, and I'll say to them, you know, if somebody comes to you and they say, I want a raise, you shouldn't be like, oh, they want a raise. You should say, wonderful, I'm so glad you want a raise. Here's where you are. Here's where you need to be. Let's get this gap filled in leadership development or professional development, and then maybe we can get you there.
[00:31:47] Scott Trumpolt: Yeah.
[00:31:47] Nicole Greer: Isn't it wonderful that somebody wants some promotion or they want a raise, you know, so we just
[00:31:50] Scott Trumpolt: Yeah.
[00:31:51] Nicole Greer: braver or something our talking to
[00:31:54] Scott Trumpolt: Yeah.
[00:31:54] Nicole Greer: more sure of ourselves.
[00:31:56] Scott Trumpolt: And I think on the employee side, the employee should go in and knowing that they want to make more money, that's a natural instinct and
[00:32:03] Scott Trumpolt: everybody wants that, but they should start approach it from a career development perspective, what skills do I need in this particular business that support the business model that can put me on a trajectory, not only to make more money, but to develop more?
[00:32:21] Scott Trumpolt: So what do I need to do? And look to their manager to say, well, give me some advice here and approach it from that perspective, because the money always follows when you strengthen your abilities to support the business need, and the money always follows. I've never had to ask for a raise in my life.
[00:32:42] Scott Trumpolt: It just, you go in there and you start, you start to think about what you need to do next to build your career. And everybody's different of course. But that's an important thing is the, the bottom line is that the employee needs to take some responsibility as well.
[00:32:58] Nicole Greer: Yeah. And you know, and oftentimes if I have an employee that's talking to me, like maybe I'm an interim HR leader for an organization, and I'll have somebody come in and say, you know, you know, you know, they gave me the, like you said, the 2%, and I'm like. Well, I wanna tell you something. I've never got an amazing chunk of change more until on I, until I took on an amazing amount of responsibility, you know?
[00:33:23] Nicole Greer: Right. So it's like you're not gonna get the big fat pay raises unless you're gonna take on the responsibility and the role and develop the skills
[00:33:31] Scott Trumpolt: Yeah.
[00:33:32] Nicole Greer: I mean, it, it, again, it has to support what the business is trying to do. Okay. So you mentioned pay transparency. Hot, hot topic out there. What's your take on where companies are getting this right, and where are they struggling with this pay transparency?
[00:33:47] Nicole Greer: You kind of alluded to it, but let's go a little deeper.
[00:33:49] Scott Trumpolt: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:33:51] Scott Trumpolt: They struggle. They struggle when they see it on the surface as just another compliance issue that they have to deal with. That is the big struggle, and I think in the back Of their minds, they may even think human resources is, is just, you know, influencing this based on their experiences and it's another area.
[00:34:14] Scott Trumpolt: And when we in human resources simply become an agent for compliance, we are not strengthening our role as a strategic business partner. And this can really be an opportunity for human resources from a compensation perspective to get managers aligned on the basics. This is, this is where, where it falls down because the conversations are going to change with employees having more.
[00:34:43] Scott Trumpolt: Because in, in a way, the employees now have more questions than ever because they see this,
[00:34:47] Nicole Greer: Of course, they're so smart.
[00:34:48] Scott Trumpolt: They see this, they see this broad range now, and they say, okay, thank you but why am I not here? And things like that. And so um, it no longer can be a discussion about compliance. It needs to be a discussion about employee engagement.
[00:35:05] Scott Trumpolt: Some of the kind of things that I talked about where managers are gonna have these few opportunities during the year, like a merit process or during a promotion process, or even doing a new hire process to emphasize the career development aspects of pay transparency and developing a dialogue that's not directly about pay, but the fact that.
[00:35:31] Scott Trumpolt: These individuals are gonna be able to grow their pay over time if they develop their career in a way that supports the business model because the employee, the employee themselves, may not have specific ideas about how they want to grow, but if you can focus, if the manager can focus them on the specific business need of that company and to get the employee's reaction and to see them, them grow, because I've seen seen examples of this in my own
[00:35:58] Scott Trumpolt: career where one of the things I'm proudest of, I'm not a people manager anymore, I'm an independent consultant, but I used to be, and several of the people that worked under me became directors and one of 'em is even a head of human resources for a major function.
[00:36:14] Nicole Greer: Doesn't that make you so happy in your heart
[00:36:15] Scott Trumpolt: She did, she ended up being, and you know, when she came into my organization,
[00:36:20] Scott Trumpolt: she was a benefits person. I know people like to lump comp and benefits together, but they're quite different. But she wanted to learn compensation after being in benefits. And I took her on because she was so fantastic in, in benefits. I can, I can teach the compensation part and I knew that and she ultimately got further in that company than I ever did.
[00:36:43] Scott Trumpolt: So, you know, these are the kind of things that happen. When you
[00:36:47] Scott Trumpolt: turn pe employees onto possibilities in career development, and managers though need to have the tools. And so here is where human resources comes in. Human resources cannot be the, the go between where the employee goes to human resources.
[00:37:08] Scott Trumpolt: We've gotta encourage them to go to their employee, to their manager to talk about these things, but. The human resources role can play a strategic partnership to the business and having one-on-one with them and giving them the data behind their employees saying, you've got an employee here who's been proactively been here for five years.
[00:37:28] Scott Trumpolt: You say they're a great performer, yet they're still getting paid below the midpoint of their range. That's something that human resources knows, but they've gotta get out and provide that proactive advice and information to their managers, then they become a strategic partner. And when they do that and give that type of information, That's valuable to the managers that they can share in this post transparency age with their employee, they're gonna become more viewed, more as a strategic partner and not an enforcer of compliance.
[00:38:01] Nicole Greer: Hmm.
[00:38:02] Scott Trumpolt: This is the challenge for human resources and perhaps these new pay transparency laws are gonna help promote that even more than they did before because now it's being enforced.
[00:38:12] Nicole Greer: Yeah. Fantastic. All right, well I got one last question for you. So we've talked a lot about compensation, pay transparency, reviews, all that. How can compensation be used intentionally to reinforce a vibrant culture? The values and the behaviors that leaders wanna see, you know? So, you know, we've got the carrot and the stick and the carrot is the pay, I guess.
[00:38:37] Nicole Greer: So talk a little bit about how we can use camp compensation to get the the culture we want.
[00:38:45] Scott Trumpolt: Well, the culture we want
[00:38:47] Scott Trumpolt: should certainly be one of engagement,
[00:38:50] Nicole Greer: Absolutely.
[00:38:50] Scott Trumpolt: employee engagement. As I said earlier, the organizations that are top 100 best companies to work for, they're winning this battle of engagement. So I think from a starting point, some companies run surveys. They've gotta have a starting point in terms of their employee engagement, and they've gotta assess it through employee opinion surveys and ask specific questions
[00:39:17] Scott Trumpolt: about compensation from the employee's perspective. Do I understand how to grow my pay at the organization and let the chips fall where they may? But they have to have a starting point to ask specific questions of employees because the answer to those questions are going to then help us develop programs.
[00:39:35] Scott Trumpolt: I've seen this before. I've worked at a company that had low employee engagement surveys. We put in a career architecture program. Employees understood not only how they could grow vertically, but laterally. Sometimes you need to move laterally to gain certain skills in a different area so you can move up within an organization.
[00:39:55] Scott Trumpolt: So by making our career development program very transparent rather than the pay, it led into a conversation about compensation. So that's the difference. You, we, I think a lot of companies have got to do. Again, at a starting point, see how their employees really feel about what's going on within the walls as far as their compensation.
[00:40:16] Scott Trumpolt: And then build appropriate programs, like I said, that are linked to career development because that's where we've gotta make this connection. The two have to be much, much closer. They can't operate in silos. That's the biggest takeaway I think that needs to happen, is to understand where you are and then know that
[00:40:36] Scott Trumpolt: a winning culture is one that has employ high employee engagement levels no matter what kind of company it is, no matter what they do. That's crucial. And so from there you can start to work with people like myself and others to really evaluate the responses to the questions and build something that doesn't.
[00:40:55] Scott Trumpolt: It starts off as a program, but when you start to get supporters internally and you start to highlight what those people are doing internally as contributors to that culture. It starts to grow.
[00:41:08] Nicole Greer: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And I often say it's like, I light the match, then I light your match. Then that match gets lit and off it goes. Right? And now we're vibrant. So I'm with you a hundred percent. So it has been so good to talk to you about compensation. This is a much needed dialogue for everybody to listen to, but we, you have a book out.
[00:41:28] Nicole Greer: You wanna hold it up and show it to everybody. It's not about compensation, but you know, I think that HR people are like internal consultants, right? We're business partners. So tell us about the book.
[00:41:38] Scott Trumpolt: Yep. It's called the Defragmented Consultant, and it's out on Amazon. It's in all the different versions including ebook. And as a, as a matter of fact, if you're a member of Amazon Unlimited or Kindle Unlimited, you can read it for free. But it is available for those who like paperback and hard copy, the Defragmented Consultant.
[00:42:00] Scott Trumpolt: What I was trying to do with the book
[00:42:01] Scott Trumpolt: was to, my next book is gonna be specifically about pay transparency, but this book is more broader for all independent consultants out there. It's trying to give them a nudge to people that have a lot of experience. But the thing is, is you're gonna be a force of one, most likely an individual contributor an individual consultant.
[00:42:23] Scott Trumpolt: And so you're gonna have a lot of demands on your time. So what you're gonna wanna do is take all of that experience that you've had in the past, but redefine it. In a way that's gonna make you more efficient on a daily basis. I had to do this because I had seven or eight clients that I was helping at at the same time. So.
[00:42:42] Scott Trumpolt: I created kind of a method of my own over the 13 years, which had to do with awareness, sustainability, method, these three areas, and I, I apply as an analyst. I started applying it to my work. How can I work faster but more efficiently and with a higher quality? And it also goes into the book talks about some, because I think some people that were in the corporate world have have the illusion that they're safe there.
[00:43:09] Scott Trumpolt: Whereas, 'cause they often ask me, don't you, aren't you worried about where your next paycheck is coming from? And I said, no, I'd rather have seven or eight clients. And if one falls out, I'm not gonna, and it's different when you're in the corporate world and you have to kind of start from scratch after you leave.
[00:43:23] Scott Trumpolt: So I try and get that point across. Ultimately, I'm trying to encourage people that have a lot to offer, but can only reach a certain point of self-actualization in their current corporate life. If you really love what you do, you should spend a maximum amount of your time doing it. And so I try and lay out a roadmap to how to do that, and in the process, hopefully encourage people to lean on this process, to help them get them through those first early difficult years, to a point where you're going five years, 10 years, I'm going on thir 13, hoping to get to 15, and things are looking good.
[00:44:01] Scott Trumpolt: So That's what it's got to offer.
[00:44:04] Nicole Greer: Yay. That's great. All right, so everybody, you can find Scott Trumpolt on LinkedIn. You just type in his name. Let me spell it for you real quick. S-C-O-T-T-T-R-U-M-P-O-L-T. Of course, we have all his information down there in the show notes. His website is hr compensation consulting.com and reach out to him, see if he can help you get your compensation going the right direction.
[00:44:28] Nicole Greer: Get a philosophy in place and then the process, procedure, and all the good things around it to get it going. I'm so grateful for you being on the show. Would everybody go down and do a little like, and leave a little love note for Scott? We'd appreciate it, Scott. Thank you so much.
[00:44:43] Scott Trumpolt: Thank You Nicole. It's been a absolute pleasure talking to you and to be on your show. Thank you so much.
[00:44:49] Nicole Greer: I'll see you next week.
[00:44:51] Scott Trumpolt: Bye bye.