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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 - Corinna Carbone-Stephens
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[00:00:00]
Kelsey Willock Jones: Welcome, Corinna Carbone-Stephens, Chief People Officer at VLS Environmental Solutions. We're so excited to have you this Monday morning. To kick us off, I'd love for you to share a little bit about your career background, current role, and where you're calling in from today.
Corinna Carbone-Stephens: Thank you. Thanks, Kelsey, and thank you for having me today. All right, so I'm in Houston, Texas. I'm based here, south and humid Houston . A little bit about my career background. So I've been working for a long time of my career in the oil and gas industry for an Italian oil and gas organization company.
I was working... I start working in Italy, started also to have experiences abroad, and about 2012, I was sent in the United States as an expat. So that was my first experience in the United States, where honestly I learned a lot and I was so fascinated about the framework around, everything related to [00:01:00] the profession of human resources that, we found a kind of common ground with my at the time, company and I became a local.
So I moved from being an expat to a local employee. And then when it was come time, I would say, to move to the next step, of course, the organization asked me to come back, and that was the time where I start looking, a different path, I would say. I quickly joined the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
That was a, an amazing experience. But then after that, I felt my natural, I would say, organization was a fast-paced organization with where actually I was in a position to make a strong impact. And that's why I moved into private equity-based organization. So VLS Environmental Solution is one of the portfolio companies of I Squared.
an organization that has been grown a lot since I joined. After I Squared bought the organization in August 2022, I joined [00:02:00] in September, and it's been an amazing journey from building a team to putting in place, tools and a framework to support the employee experience. So this is an overall summary, I would say, of my experience.
Kelsey Willock Jones: And can you tell us a little bit about VLS itself? How many folks work at the company, a little bit of the demographic breakdown of the workforce?
Corinna Carbone-Stephens: Again, VLS is a result of acquisitions mainly, right? So the growth has happened organically and inorganically. We have currently four divisions of which two are in the waste, hazardous, non-hazardous business. Then we have a division which is the rail division, where we do cleaning and repairs of all rail cars.
And similar to the rail, we have a marine division where we do the same but with barges. So we're located in more than 52 locations across the United States, and we have also locations with actually a [00:03:00] very important population, 350 employees in Mexico, which I would say is our international location, Mexico.
In terms of demographics our organization is labor-intensive, and I would say 73% of our workforce is hourly. ,
Kelsey Willock Jones: Really excited to dig a bit deeper into the work itself that you're doing at the company. But before we get there, I want to take a bit of a step back into the past. So tell me a little bit about your first job ever, and if you remember, what you did with your first paycheck.
Corinna Carbone-Stephens: Okay. So again, my first job was with the Italian oil and gas organization. And, when I first started, I didn't start, to be honest, directly into the human resources. After my degree, I was passionate about journalism, and I became a journalist in Italy. So that was my entry point into the organization at that time.
So I was in the public affair, external relations, where, I [00:04:00] had to take my interview, and I remember clearly my minor is in Russian language, and I had to do a translation of an entire document. It went pretty well. So I got the job and yeah, I was very excited at that time, to see that, I was becoming independent, and I was getting my first paycheck.
Yes, and then things, of course, changed. After a couple of years, I got fascinated by the HR world, thanks to a mentor, where the importance of people you really meet in your journey, professional journey I feel very fortunate for everybody that I have met and I've been working with.
Kelsey Willock Jones: And how do you think your early career and money story itself has influenced how you think about supporting your people, making decisions in terms of pays and benefit and beyond?
Corinna Carbone-Stephens: I believe everything that happens to us, and specifically to me in my career, has an impact on the way, you continue grow and learn and look at, [00:05:00] what's important, right? And I believe that shift that happened early in my career towards the human resources area was a strong testament of my interest to support the organization, helping people growth making people, understand the value that they add to an organization.
And since then, to be honest, that has been my focus, really helping and supporting the organization to grow and people, of course, being successful
Kelsey Willock Jones: So double-clicking on that, I'm super curious, when you think about supporting the whole person at work, what is really lighting you up? We're seeing a lot of trends right now where companies are investing in the physical health of employees, mental health, financial health, and beyond. How is the company and you yourself focused on supporting the whole person?
Corinna Carbone-Stephens: That's a great question. Thanks for asking, because actually we have taken an holistic approach. So at the beginning of my journey with this [00:06:00] organization, of course, we looked at the foundations. I remember that I went back and look at everything in terms of infrastructure typical of an organization.
So from the HRIS in place to medical benefits the 401(k), and everything that, was, established in a way to support the whole being of our employees. After, of course, we tackle that, one thing that, and I'm still working on that I feel is very important is leadership. Leadership is very important, it's the core of the culture, and making that the organization is aligned to the same leadership philosophy is really crucial.
When we think about leadership, we think about, oh, leadership is universal. That's not the case. Because every organization, of course, has different type of leadership and all aligned to the type of business, the industry, and even, the C-suite or ELT teams' examples.
And so what we have [00:07:00] done with my team is to build an internal leadership development program to help our managers to be aligned and to give them the tools to be successful. Because one of the thing that today when we look at the market and the way to attract and retain our employees is resulting crucial is the opportunity to grow.
The opportunity to see the future with an organization is no longer a paycheck, right? That's important, right? Still important of course, and, we need to make sure that our employees are situated in a position that is competitive considering our current market. However, making sure that we give them the tool to be successful, to grow, to meet their desire and needs, I believe is one of the most important aspect of our initiatives that we have put in place.
And I have to say, in addition to the leadership development program I have the honor and pleasure to work with [00:08:00] great leaders in this organization. So another initiative we, again, put in place internally is the mentorship program. 'Cause we thought how we can best support our employees with our internal resources, and we have great leaders who are very available, open to support other employees and to help them growth.
And so that's something else that we did, as well as the internship program that we just closed for this summer, which has been a joy and a pleasure again with all these brilliant students that we have, they've been around for the entire summer, we've been working with, and really nice to see that we have created this this amazing culture, I would say, at VLS
Kelsey Willock Jones: Can you tell me a little bit about how you make the case for investing in programs that support the whole person, such as investing in these leadership and mentorship programs when the spreadsheet doesn't obviously support those outcomes?
Corinna Carbone-Stephens: [00:09:00] Yes and you're right. I've had that experience. Two things. First of all my strong argument it's internal, and I'm working on the development of this program with my team. So specifically for these two programs that we have launched there was no external consultant involved.
So that's one of my strong argument. However, I have the fortune to work with a CEO
and also board, and they understand exactly the importance of these type of initiatives. Not only, because, they look also across the portfolio and, where this type of initiative can be launched as well but they see also how this type of activities, initiatives will impact on the performance of the organization.
Because at the end, how you can see, how you can measure all of these. You can see the profit, you can see retention going higher, turnover going lower. An healthier organization across the board, and that's not by chance. The way it happens is because, something has happened.
You put in place some of these initiatives. [00:10:00] So that's the how, I'll say.
Kelsey Willock Jones: Can you tell me a bit about a program that you introduced where the outcome didn't necessarily go the way you expected, whether it was introducing a new benefit trying out a new strategy and what you really learned from the experience?
Corinna Carbone-Stephens: I would say that we have been struggling with, I would say financial wellness benefits. Looking at the market and benchmark, right? Respect to, where we stay with our benefits I believe our results are stellar. But when you look at participation into this type of webinars or we have a, coaches available for financial, awareness or growth or to help employees to understand where to invest or, when to invest and how to prepare to retirement, or what is the smartest move, due to your career expectations, age, and all this type of initiatives, I still see there is a struggle.
We have changed a couple of [00:11:00] partners with in this area. And again, I'm still trying to find the right entry point to gather and trigger, I'd say, that level of attention that I haven't seen so far. And this doesn't happen across the board. Of course, you have specific demographics where you see there is more reluctance to get engaged.
Sometimes I feel there is a sort of fear to start talking about financial topics. So that's where I feel there's still space for improvement, and for sure we'll continue working in that area.
Kelsey Willock Jones: And why is financial health so important to the organization, especially to get it right?
Corinna Carbone-Stephens: It's very important because again, it impact the whole being of the employee, but not only of the employees, but their family. And, in an organization like ours where, everything is around people, that's our core business 'cause our people are the core of everything we do, and it's not a [00:12:00] slogan, this is the reality for the nature of what we do, right?
The fact of, have a peace of mind and, understanding where they're positioned and, feeling secure understanding everything about their future or having the right coverage in terms of, their retirement funds or even in their, medical area coverage where it's necessary and extend it to the family, I think that's very important because that will be reflected into the results of the organizations, into, whatever job they're doing
Kelsey Willock Jones: I imagine there's a heightened level of, complicating factors when you have a workforce that's, partially this more traditional in-office employee, and then you also have hourly workers. It's a very diverse workforce, and oftentimes point solutions are built for a specific subset.
And so finding that right partner like I can imagine it gets more challenging because of the diversity of the folks at the company.
Corinna Carbone-Stephens: You're correct. And our [00:13:00] workforce is quite diverse, and I'm very proud of that because again that's also one of our pillars. In terms of diversity, speaking about data we have 47% of workforce that is diverse, which I think it's an amazing point when looking at, again, at benchmark.
But going back to your question, yes, and what we have been doing is trying to meet the different needs of the different segment of the organization. One of the first thing we did, which was so simple, it was not in radar of past I would say people in this area, was the language.
So one is the language, and two due to the nature of their job, not everybody has a computer. So again, like you were saying not everybody's sitting behind a desk. We implemented two fundamental actions. One, of course, having everything in dual languages. Spanish is the majority of, the other language speak by our employees.
And secondly is to have communication sent through [00:14:00] their phones. So now we have through our HRIS we have the capacity to broadcast information through text messages on their phone. And so they can get all this, informations or opportunity to engage into webinars or any type, again, of financial, other benefits information through their phones, which I believe has made an impact 'cause the engagement is totally different since we started with this practice.
Kelsey Willock Jones: So one thing I'm super curious about is how you are, staying ahead of innovation and even, better understanding how to, meet the needs of an ever-changing workforce and demographic. We're seeing technology speeds completely ramp up in the world of HR. How are you staying current on what's working and those new innovations, whether it's conferences peer networks, different ecosystems that you've been a part of?
What's working best for you?
Corinna Carbone-Stephens: I think it's a mix of everything you have listed. Personally, I'm very much [00:15:00] involved with- in the community. I try to participate in all the conferences and talk to peers in the industry and understanding, how everybody's advancing. Of course, we're talking about technology. Imagine AI is a big topic around, especially HR.
As a matter of fact with my team, we have embraced that 'cause I believe in addition, of course, to the traditional I- IT, I would say responsibility, HR is positioned very well, very strongly to be, I would say the, , the prime or premier, I would say testimonial of a success story.
And with the team, we've been starting to use different tools leveraging our current partners and their embedded AI systems, and that's the way we've been trying to stay, I would say, aligned to the market evolution from a technology perspective. Of course, it's so fast that I would say sometimes I [00:16:00] feel we're a little behind in respect to where we should, but I feel that we have made great progress in that area.
So but staying connected to the network and stay connecting to the community of HR, I believe is one of the strong way that we keep up with technology advancement.
Kelsey Willock Jones: My last question for you that I love asking everyone that comes on the show is, what's a major change that you see coming in, whether it's benefits, strategy, HR in general, that you see coming that most HR leaders are not ready for?
Corinna Carbone-Stephens: One of course again, probably because it's my passion again, is making sure we don't lose, I would say, sight of the human aspect of everything we do. And to your point, technology is very important, and we should leverage technology to make everything easier. However, when we talk about, connecting with people, we talk about empathy, [00:17:00] we talk about social intelligence we talk about understanding the needs of the organization, I believe that human aspect and understanding that part should be something we should continue developing, especially for those people who want to become manager.
How many times we see promotions of employees to managerial roles and they totally fail? And they don't fail because they become stupid overnight, right? They're smart people, they're very competent, they've been fantastic individual contributors, and then yet into a managerial role, they fail.
And that's because, again, probably we are so much focused on technology that we're not really putting all the attention and effort on that leadership human aspect of the growth of the organization. So that's the one thing. And also, looking at the way we recruit and, all the changing in the market, I believe we need to pay attention and we need to evolve and changing even the strategy of [00:18:00] recruitment or even the way we pay, or even without talking about performance, right?
that area needs to be completely changed. And I think we're at a point where probably we need to shift into a more robust way to evaluating people more holistic again and more simultaneously. Again, think about the different generation working together, the need for instant gratifications coming from social media, and the way still organization do...
Like our organization, we do quarterly review, and probably that's no longer enough if we need to stay at the pace again of where the world is going.
Kelsey Willock Jones: I think it's just a wonderful way to wrap up our conversation because one of the things you can probably see in the themes, the questions I ask it's all around the person and what is the company doing to support the whole person the human aspect of the world in which we all operate in.
And so I absolutely adore [00:19:00] speaking to leaders such as yourself that remind us that even in a world of rapidly changing technology, humans are what matter most and are at the center of the use of said technology, the building of said technology, the after effects of us adopting said technology. It was an absolute pleasure speaking with you.
Thank you so much for being on the show.
Corinna Carbone-Stephens: Absolutely. Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Kelsey Willock Jones: And where can our listeners connect with you beyond this conversation?
Corinna Carbone-Stephens: I'm on LinkedIn and my profile is just public, so anyone can connect with me. Looking forward.
Kelsey Willock Jones: Wonderful. I hope you have a great rest of your week, and thank you so much again.
Corinna Carbone-Stephens: Thank you. You too
[00:20:00]