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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
Kelsey (00:00)
Welcome Stacey Porter, Chief People Officer at Procept BioRobotics. We are so excited to have you today. Thank you so much for joining us. To kick us off, I'd love for you to share with our audience a little bit more about yourself, your career and background, where you're calling in from, and your current role today.
Stacey (00:19)
Okay, Kelsey, for sure. And I'm super happy to be here. So thank you for inviting me. So as you mentioned, my current role today is at Procept BioRobotics. I'm the chief people officer here. But it's interesting because I came into this career in kind of an unusual way. I started in sales, I sold an orthopedic product. I was in a master's program at the time, and I was like, you know what, this is just kind of a job for now, but eventually I'll like be
Stacey (00:46)
following my career and my academic training, and I'll be, a therapist of sorts. but what I found was that I was less enamored of kind of the medical model in my master's program, which was in clinical social work, and I was fascinated by the performance psychology model of my sales team, where we were rather
Stacey (01:08)
ordinary people who came together and were so tight on what our common purpose was and what our mission was and the way that we could support each other and help each other that we really created this like aerodynamic, high performing team and quarter after quarter had a lot of success. So I started studying performance psychology. I did my doctoral work in habit formation and performance psychology and then came to California and started
Stacey (01:38)
my career in pharma, had some time in tech and then was in med device and I've been in med device for for quite a long time now.
Kelsey (01:45)
And can you tell me a little bit about the company? How many folks work at the company and what kind of work you all do?
Stacey (01:49)
Yes, we're so we're almost a thousand people. We're in San Jose, California, and we have got a surgical robotic platform for men's health and it is a treatment that uses a water jet for resection that is used for BPH, which is a prostate condition where men have urgency, but because of an enlarged prostate, they don't have the capacity.
Stacey (02:17)
either to void reliably or they may be even in retention. And our robot and our therapy is cleared for that indication and has incredible clinical outcomes.
Kelsey (02:27)
Such an important and fascinating work that you do. So I have so many follow-up questions, especially as it pertains to how to
Stacey (02:33)
Mm.
Kelsey (02:33)
support the people that build such a unique and important healthcare tool. But before we get there, I want to take a step into the past and learn a little bit about your first job and if you remember what you spent your first paycheck on.
Stacey (02:47)
yes, I do remember my first job. So I mean, I'll skip some of the like the early, like the babysitting, the lemonade stands, some of those kind of things. But when I was in high school, I was working in my neighborhood in this, I can't even believe that this existed, this drive-thru video, like pagoda. and it was this tiny little building.
Stacey (03:13)
in a kind of a like a shopping center and you could drive up and you could order a movie there were like a hundred to choose from and you could say I'll have like Top Gun and I'll have some like Twizzlers and Reese cups and I worked in this tiny little you know building and as people would come through I would ring them out and give them these like videos and of course this was like VHS tapes.
Stacey (03:41)
and whatever candy or popcorn or, kind of movie food that they wanted. And the best thing was I also got to watch movies the whole time. So I was very up to speed on like Midnight Run and like Footloose and all these movies of the time. lots of scary movies too. So it was actually quite a fun little experience.
Kelsey (04:00)
That's a dream job for someone of that age.
Stacey (04:02)
It was actually a
Stacey (04:05)
dream to have at a lot of different ages because you got to eat all of this terrible, non nutritious food while you were watching great movies. So it was it was pretty cool.
Kelsey (04:14)
Do you recall what you spent your first paycheck on?
Stacey (04:17)
actually I think I do. there was this like leather jacket that I wanted, which was kind of ironic because here I am in Kentucky, which you know, the summers are really hot. Like you walk outside and immediately you're drenched. but I remember and I think it was navy blue and I'd been watching it for a while. So yes. and I I'm sure my parents have it somewhere in some like back closet, but it was quite a coveted item.
Kelsey (04:42)
When you can remember what you purchased, it means it meant something big. How
Stacey (04:45)
Mm-hmm. Yep, I
Stacey (04:47)
still have a pension for leather jackets, as my team will tell you.
Kelsey (04:51)
I love
Kelsey (04:52)
that necessary in in northern California.
Stacey (04:55)
This is true. this weather system works for that kind of look.
Kelsey (04:58)
How do you think your early career and money story has influenced how you think about showing up for your people and supporting them, whether it has to do with decisions around pay and more?
Stacey (05:08)
Yeah, so here's what I would say. when money's not enough, it's an issue.
Kelsey (05:15)
Mm-hmm.
Stacey (05:15)
when it is enough and it's compatible with your life present tense and your dreams future tense, you can think about higher up on like Maslow's hierarchy of, you know, self-achievement and self-actualization.
Stacey (05:32)
But what I would say is what I have always been really interested in is money's role in motivation, right?
Kelsey (05:41)
Mm.
Stacey (05:42)
and also just kind of like intrinsic motivators and extrinsic motivators. So
Kelsey (05:47)
Hm.
Stacey (05:47)
what we consider, you know, just the perks and the value of doing hard work.
Stacey (05:54)
it can certainly be cash and it can be equity and it can be rewards that are tangible and it can be other things that create your skill set and your experience and your viability long term in the marketplace. So I'm interested in both sides of that equation.
Kelsey (06:10)
So fascinating. I could spend probably the rest of our conversation just there alone and the psychology of it all, but
Stacey (06:14)
Yeah.
Kelsey (06:15)
I won't allow myself to fall victim to that temptation. I want to dig a little bit deeper into supporting the whole person. So can you tell me about an example where you are particularly proud of an investment in the whole person, whether it had to do with a mental health, a physical health, a financial health initiative?
Stacey (06:34)
Yeah, so that's a great question. And I think that companies have gotten very thoughtful about what motivates their workplace, right? I mean, if you're gonna ask somebody to put their skills and their talents and their strengths to work every day on display, you have to think about what's the the balance for employees and what do they get out of it. So one of the things that's always really critical to me is that we have
Stacey (07:01)
incredible benefits. you've got incredible frictionless medical dental vision. So health benefits. And you have peace of mind with that. Because when you ask somebody to do a really hard job and it's multifactorial and it's just looks like five things in one, you do want to make sure that people have the cognitive space to actually you really think about how to do that job well. And if they're worried about
Stacey (07:28)
Health benefits or just, ways that they keep themselves healthy, you're gonna get a different version. So that's always core for me. I think the other thing that I'm really passionate about and have been for a long time are two things. One is the experience and the exposure of being able to create communities and communities where you learn from other people. So whether that be mentorship, whether that be some kind of
Stacey (07:54)
a community that comes together and you do special projects or you're chartered to do something purposeful in organization. I'm fascinated by creating those structures and maintaining those structures. The other thing that is an obsession and I'm not kidding, it's like with a capital O for me is if you're gonna organize your team around teams, you need great managers. You need
Stacey (08:20)
Great managers, and you can put good humans into management jobs, and they can still fail if they do not have a couple of key skills. And so I am really passionate. This is something I wouldn't leave the chance for one second. so in the organizations that I've been in, that's always just a layer that I put a lot of time and attention into because when managers have a skill set and they've got a language.
Stacey (08:44)
And they represent their the ground force to the air strategy. They transform an organization. They do. They transform it with their vocabulary, with their rituals, with their behaviors. they do create culture.
Kelsey (08:59)
And it's a tale as old as time. People don't leave companies, they leave the people they work for. So if you can Right.
Stacey (09:04)
They leave people that they don't want to work for anymore and they follow people
Stacey (09:08)
where they feel and the word safe is getting thrown around too much these days, but they follow people that they trust who are trustworthy and who've created environments where they feel like they can actually do their kind of a best version of their work.
Kelsey (09:23)
How do you make the connection between, supporting employees and the quality of their output?
Stacey (09:29)
Yeah, so that's a great question because here's something really important. When you join a company, it's a psychological contract, right? It is, hey, I'm gonna ask you to do this in this way, and I'm gonna reward you, commensurately. and I'm also going to mine and show you opportunities that might exist so you can prolong your career here.
Stacey (09:54)
What I think that is really important when you think about employees is making sure there's like Uber and I do mean like ridiculous clarity about what's expected. Because here's the thing employees don't want to underwork their work, right? Like they want to achieve the right quality at the right time, but they don't want to overwork their work either, where they
Kelsey (10:15)
Mm.
Stacey (10:15)
actually
Stacey (10:16)
put too much effort or maybe tinker or maybe have too many cycles of iteration to get to a deliverable. And then you're pathing too tightly in the corners versus being able to smooth around the corners. So our focus with employees is always clarity. It's robust information flow. It's giving them great managers so they have support system and then understanding kind of the network appears where
Stacey (10:41)
your ownership begins, and maybe somebody else's ends or vice versa.
Kelsey (10:46)
I'm kind of almost at a loss of words because I think it's such a fascinating way to think about that question. I think so
Stacey (10:51)
Ha ha
Kelsey (10:51)
much of the time. the direction that the question usually leads to is X leads to enhanced MPS or X leads
Stacey (11:00)
Mm-hmm.
Kelsey (11:00)
to enhanced this or that. But I think it's it's very clear from our conversation so far. You think about things from more of a psychological angle and it's no
Kelsey (11:10)
surprise given the background and and even the research that you've done from an academic perspective. So it's really cool. How do you make the internal case for investment in people when the spreadsheet doesn't so obviously support it?
Stacey (11:22)
How well especially now, these days, right?
Kelsey (11:24)
Right.
Stacey (11:24)
It's tricky because it's like, let me build this org chart where we have humans here and we have agents here. And so there's kind
Kelsey (11:32)
Mm-hmm.
Stacey (11:32)
of this like mashup of human intelligence and artificial intelligence. I I think you make the case for humans on a couple different levels. One is what are the jobs to be done? Right?
Kelsey (11:44)
Mm-hmm.
Stacey (11:44)
Like what are the jobs to be done? what is the time limit? 'Cause actually
Stacey (11:48)
We try to pretend that jobs are like infinitum, but actually a lot of times they do have time time periods on them. So they're more like opportunities than jobs. so you make the case for work. The other thing is you make the case for like tribalism, right? And what do I mean by that? I mean that you make the case for people to do things individually and then you make the case for them to do things collectively. And collective work is
Stacey (12:16)
the brainstorming, the idea generation, the process improvement, the continuous kind of iteration so that you've got a higher level of organization performance and productivity. And then I think you make the case for growth. So you make the case, like we said, individuals have jobs to be done. They do it in these ways where they create tribes and they create, you know, these these
Stacey (12:39)
ways of supporting one another where you get a multiplier effect. You get more than the the individuals. And then you make the case for growth. And the case for growth is about careers, right? It is about seeing yourself in an organization not for one year, not for two years, not for five years, for ten years. And that by the way, I am gonna sound like some kind of like like the throwback. It's not even Thursday, but because, you know
Stacey (13:07)
The loyalty is not to companies anymore. It's to careers. And the average tenure in the valley is two years. So to get really good and get deep at something, you need to see some cycles of iteration there. You need to see some kind of different climates in your company. and so I think if you can create a growth culture where people can move around and you've got a growth rate that's in the teens, you know, maybe the high twenties would be ideal. hard to do, but
Stacey (13:35)
but where you can create a place where people can say, I'd like to try this gig, I'd like to try this opportunity, I'd like to mirror this team, I'd like to get involved with that initiative. If you can create the paths for that, that company has a really interesting value proposition to their employees.
Kelsey (13:54)
It sounds like making the case for it is all about this is going to impact the bottom line of the business. This is going to maintain trade secrets. This is going to develop the right people within the company with longevity. Is that right?
Stacey (14:09)
It it is right. And you know what? It like if I had my CFO sitting right here, he would say, he headcount is such a cost. Of course it is.
Kelsey (14:16)
Right.
Stacey (14:17)
I would say it's an asset. He would say it's a cost. but what you can think about, and this is my mantra, is how do you design an organization with the highest performers and the fewest of them? So
Kelsey (14:29)
Mm-hmm.
Stacey (14:30)
the ability to kind of grow thoughtfully, to give people big careers, to give them
Stacey (14:36)
opportunity. So that workforce just stays with you. And it's it's interesting when you come into organizations where they have like higher tenure rates, right? An average tenure
Kelsey (14:47)
Mm-hmm.
Stacey (14:48)
that is, you know, five years, six years. That's unusual these days. Typically average tenures are between maybe 20 and 30 months. I talk like somebody who's has a baby that's like 14 months or 22 months.
Kelsey (15:00)
Ha ha ha
Stacey (15:01)
I don't my kid is 17, so he has a lot of months.
Stacey (15:04)
But I I do think that you y if you really build for the most aerodynamic organization, highest performers, fewest of them, robust information flow, decentralized decision making, you're creating an atmosphere that's pretty unusual these days.
Kelsey (15:21)
Right, and and there is a price tag associated with that, which
Stacey (15:24)
Uh-huh.
Kelsey (15:25)
in your case it could be cost savings, if you're talking to the CFO.
Stacey (15:29)
It it
Stacey (15:29)
it could be cost savings, especially when you start to know a job well, right? we're talking about these shorter tenures and careers. But as people get into like their second and third and fourth year, a lot of times they're getting really good at those jobs. So they're
Kelsey (15:46)
Mm-hmm.
Stacey (15:46)
doing them in a more networked way. They're doing them with you know, kind of cleaner execution, if you will.
Stacey (15:53)
because they know how things are done in the organization because they're culturally significant and culturally acclimatized at that point. So you do get productivity savings there.
Kelsey (16:03)
So shifting gears, I'm really interested in the topic of financial health. Can you tell me how important financial well being for employees is to the organization and why?
Stacey (16:14)
Yeah. So this one's an interesting one, right? Because you could say, well, listen, is that in the realm of what we should be doing as an employer? Should we be, getting into our people's finances? and it's really never about that, but I think what you want to do is you want to create systems so employees can envision the the way they want to use money when they're employed and the way they want to use money when they're not employed.
Stacey (16:42)
So 401Ks and vehicles where they can think about employee stock purchase plans, ways they can think about building wealth by investing in the company and investing in these vehicles that are offered so that when they do have time where they're, you know, say retired or taking a break or just giving themselves some space, they've got access to funds that they can use however they see fit. So we get very involved in creating vehicles like our
Stacey (17:08)
our 401k is really robust. We think about, offering, just webinars and things about organizing your life, organizing your financial well-being, organizing your kind of emotional well-being. There's a couple of different ways that you can slice this in this kind of busy world, even like practical things you know, organizing your time, time blocking, just, you know, managing cognitive load. So certainly we think about the reward aspect of it and we think about
Stacey (17:36)
How can employees, realize life goals while they're at work with us? And how do they plan for when they're not working and how they want to use funds and how they want to invest now?
Kelsey (17:47)
I imagine that's in direct alignment with, better understanding intrinsic motivations, motivation to stay with the employer as, certain things are in alignment with their, personal financial goals that the the company itself is is directly tied to. So it completely makes sense to me.
Stacey (18:04)
Well, and and if you have a company that, you believe in the mission, it's thriving, you've got opportunities to invest back in that company, you can with vehicles like an employee stock purchase plan, y that creates real retention because you not only have been given maybe equity awards that are vesting over time, but you're also putting your own money in.
Stacey (18:26)
your company and it's not diverse. I get it. It's not diversified. But at the same time, it's a real kind of indicator that you believe in the longevity of your company
Kelsey (18:35)
Absolutely. How are you staying current on new innovation? There's so much constant change going on in this industry right now. And when I say industry, I mean in HR. Are there conferences, peer networks, startup ecosystems that have particularly lighted you up or or otherwise?
Stacey (18:52)
Well, I don't know if you can see in my office, but I'm definitely a reader. so I I always have a book in my hand. My team is always laughing that I go home and I've got like four books under my shoulder. so so I'm I'm a reader. I I have a lot of different networks that I'm a part of where we talk about things like this. Hey, what are you doing for employees these days? How are you?
Stacey (19:14)
doubling down on productivity, how are you creating communities or how are you creating common ground? Just these different things. So, so certainly the the exposure piece of getting together with peers, reading webinars, I mean, I am definitely listening and learning, adapting, piloting, divesting, doing something new, you know, I mean, so so I I have a pretty iterative nature.
Kelsey (19:38)
I love that. And my last question for you is, what's a shift in compensation benefits that you see coming that most HR leaders are not ready for?
Stacey (19:48)
that's a great question. I think that it's always interesting to think about rewards because you're thinking about kind of like rewards in your day-to-day, right? Like kind of base salaries. You think of like bonus programs and incentivize orchestrated performance. You think of equity programs that you know incentivize long-term performance over time and and retention.
Stacey (20:12)
But there's also a lot of things around team performance, right? how do you incentivize teams? How do you you know, think about the opportunity for employees to explore
Stacey (20:23)
different parts of an organization where you could potentially add comp to that. So we talk about like, you know, moving around within companies. A lot of times it's really tricky to go from a role in marketing to a role in another organization because you've got
Stacey (20:39)
a deep specialist skill set. But if you could do shorter term opportunities and there's a compensation attached to that, you could really create, you know, opportunity that's nano kind of like smaller, smaller bytes in an organization and you could put a value to it. And that that I'm really interested in. It's a little bit like pay for skill, but at the same time it's pay for contribution.
Kelsey (21:03)
And it's also so directly aligned with motivation of an individual that's curious, Correct.
Stacey (21:08)
And we we just have shorter attention spans these days too.
Stacey (21:11)
And it also creates an opportunity to get a quick burst of a skill set
Kelsey (21:17)
Mm-hmm.
Stacey (21:17)
in a period of time where a manager can say, Well, I can lose you for a week or two. I can't really lose you for three months or six months. That's harder to conceptualize.
Kelsey (21:25)
Right. Well, Stacey, thank you so so much for your time today. I've learned so much from you and I could certainly talk to
Stacey (21:31)
You're welcome.
Kelsey (21:31)
you for another hour. Yeah. You're such an eloquent speaker, and I really just loved the psychological angle that we really took directionally in this conversation. So thank you for your time and and spending it with us.
Stacey (21:44)
Kelsey, I so enjoyed it. We'll we'll do it again soon.