Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
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 - Gin Kirkland Kinney
===
INTRO: [00:00:00] Hi everyone, and welcome to Beyond the Paycheck, where we bring you candid conversations with CHROs and people leaders who are rethinking how compensation and benefits impact far more than just employee bank accounts. From the first paycheck to financial wellness programs, we explore how money shapes identity, equity, purpose, and power at work, and how forward-thinking companies are using pay and perks to transform lives.
This podcast is presented by Aura Finance, a psychology-based financial wellness employee benefit that combines coaching and financial management. Now, let's get started and jump in with our next guest
Kelsey Willock Jones: Welcome, Gin Kinney, NRG's Chief People Officer. We're so excited to have you this afternoon. To kick us off, I'd love for you to share a little bit about your current role, your background, and where you're calling in from today.
Gin Kirkland Kinney: Ah, super. Thanks for having me. Yeah, it's great to be here. So [00:01:00] background chief people officer for three years now. But my background's not in traditional HR. My background is in business development, public relations, marketing, sales. So I really came from a different background than a traditional chief people officer, and I've really utilized kind of those skills and that knowledge that I have to really think about how can we be a value driver for the business moving away from back office support, even though that's incredibly important.
But really how are we driving business value for the enterprise? And, that's what our team is focused on today. I'm calling in from Houston today. Our corporate headquarters is in Houston. We also have a pretty big presence in Salt Lake City and Princeton, New Jersey. But I divide my time among the three offices, but today we're in Houston.
Kelsey Willock Jones: Fabulous. I will say hi to your office out my window as I'm currently in Salt Lake City today in a 100-degree day in Utah.
Gin Kirkland Kinney: You might beat us today on the temperature register.
Kelsey Willock Jones: It's hot [00:02:00] quite across the country. Can you also tell me a little bit about NRG and the workforce itself?
Gin Kirkland Kinney: So we are quite diverse in our work structure. We're an energy company at the heart of hearts. We are solving the energy challenges for customers and communities all around North America. We own power plants. We operate power plants. We generate electrons. We sell those electrons to end use customers.
We also have a pretty large smart home, intelligent home operations. It's based in Salt Lake City, and we acquired that company really to kinda delve in deeper to the customer experience and the whole home experience. How can we make the lives of our customers safer, simpler, their homes more efficient, without them really having to think about it, right?
And so that's the nature of what we do. We've been around for quite some time now and we have about 20,000 employees across North America. And our focus is really on solving those big energy challenges [00:03:00] of tomorrow.
Kelsey Willock Jones: Not many energy challenges in this day and age. So not that big a problem to bite off, I'm sure. Before I get into all the follow-up questions I have for you, which I have many, I'd love to take a step back and get to know you a bit more personally. So can you tell me a little bit about your first job and if you recall, what you spent your first paycheck on?
Gin Kirkland Kinney: Wow. So first job out of college, we'll start there was at an ad agency in Atlanta focused on the hospitality industry, and I was an account coordinator. And my wee little tiny paycheck was spent, I think, on rent. So it wasn't anything exciting or for me, it was literally to live. And so that's where the career began.
Kelsey Willock Jones: And what do you think your, relationship with money and whether it's your earliest career, how you spent that dollar, has influenced how you think about supporting your people thinking about making [00:04:00] decisions around pay, benefits, and beyond?
Gin Kirkland Kinney: Yeah. I think, in this current role, when we think about what total rewards as it's called, right? Total compensation, what that looks like, it's, we have to be mindful that our people don't leave the rest of their lives behind when they come through the door. They're thinking about their health, their families, the financial pressures they have, their ambitions, their sense of purpose.
And so approaching, financial aspect of what that financial being is also very much in line with mental health, physical health, ambitions, like where people want to go. In our company, and I see this quite a bit people may turn down a role that pays 5% more if they feel like the balance from learning to culture to interactions to growth to opportunity is there.
It's more than just the dollar. It's also the entire employee [00:05:00] experience, and I think that's how we've really tried to focus our total rewards. It's not just on the actual paycheck, but what is the value add? Just like we think about that with our customers. It's not just the service we're providing them.
It's what is the value we're bringing to them?
Kelsey Willock Jones: So I wanna double-click on that because I think that we're seeing a lot of changes in terms of, the whole packages that we are seeing in terms of the industry. We're seeing a major trend around supporting the whole person, which you've started to touch on, whether it's their financial health, their mental health.
What's a program or initiative that you're particularly excited about or proud about that is an example of investing in the whole person, whether it's physical, it's mental, it's financial, or even otherwise?
Gin Kirkland Kinney: I guess two things just off the top of my head come to mind. One is around that employee moving a step beyond just a traditional employee assistance model into more meaningfully think [00:06:00] about mental wellbeing. It's something that we've really only started talking about in the last decade or so of not just being prepared for the job, for the skills that are required of the role, but also supporting the employee through. There have been a lot of stressors that have happened in the last decade that we never probably would've thought about. We probably would've thought about a pandemic. We probably wouldn't have thought about a lot of the things that have had impact on mental health. And so something that, that we've done is really focus in on mental wellbeing and mental health as an offering, because we wanna ensure that we're just creating this, seamless path to quality care for our employees and their families.
And this one program that we've initiated and have for the past three years, it's around fast access to support. It helps individuals find the care that's right for them, and then also supports this continuity of care, and that's through our medical plan rather than having to start over after trial and [00:07:00] error.
And then I think the second piece there is supporting our employees when they're in need. We have a financial program. A lot of our employees live in hurricane-prone areas, and so ensuring that if something catastrophic does happen, that there is a financial resource where employees can apply and get that financial support they need in a way that feels that we're just really trying to help them get back on their feet.
So those are two programs that we have that I'm really happy about. And I guess I'm gonna go to a third one, sorry. But a third one is thinking about how we give back. We our volunteer programs, we used to have a big volunteer event once a year, and now we've divided that up into multiple events over the course of the entire year so that people can get out in our communities and volunteer, whether it's, a response to an event, or it's a response to back to school, or it's, something like meal packing or around the holidays gift wrapping and [00:08:00] things like that.
So giving our employees the opportunity. We're paying them to go volunteer, and that feels really good when your company's investing in you to go invest in the community
Kelsey Willock Jones: I love that example. I remember my prior employer I used to lead a volunteer initiative, and why that was so impactful for me is, someone that wanted to make an impact, and I think that we often hear that from employees, whether it's wanting to make an impact broadly, whether it's make an impact at the company.
Volunteering is such a wonderful way to do so. And it might just be one day of the year, but the boost of morale that you get from that one experience itself, I think is such a great thing that companies don't do enough of. So really cool that you are doing that.
Gin Kirkland Kinney: Team building and trust are really important to creating a culture. And again, when we go back to the paycheck, I'm here, yes, because I get paid. To be clear, I am here because I get paid. But if I can also have these experiences that are enriching to me and to my [00:09:00] values with my colleagues, I think that's just an added benefit that we probably don't quantify, but it definitely is something, it's a real difference maker
Kelsey Willock Jones: You've mentioned financial health a few times
Kelsey Willock Jones: and this might sound like a redundant question, but I'm just trying to dig a bit deeper into why is financial health for employees so important to you and the company, and how does the improvement of financial health really show up in the company's impact?
Gin Kirkland Kinney: I think one, we have a 401(k) program like a lot of companies do for full-time employees and eligible employees, and we're doing a campaign this year to get more participation because we have a matching program, and it's free money, right? And so I think we've all seen the impacts of increase in cost of living, increase in basic goods and services, and companies can't always keep up with the cost of inflation.
And so if we can offer more programs to say, "Okay, we may not be able [00:10:00] to keep up with the cost of inflation but let's talk about how we can help you with your retirement," or, "Let's talk about how we can make better financial decisions." Or we have, a suite of programs with different banks that offer preferred rates and things like that.
I think that is really important because if you have, all the many stresses that people bring to the office every day financial stress is certainly one of them. And if we can focus on financial well-being and offer just a little bit more financial peace of mind, then that's one less stressor that an employee is bringing to the workplace every day, and allows them to focus on their career.
It allows them to focus on interacting with their colleagues, and it allows us to better serve our customers and communities if we can just take a little bit of that burden off by providing tools and resources that are meaningful and move the needle from that perspective
Kelsey Willock Jones: And some of the, examples that you gave, whether it was around volunteering or, helping support folks' financial or [00:11:00] mental health, these initiatives don't always have the most obvious ROI impact when it comes down to the spreadsheet. So when you're making the internal case for investment or time in these specific initiatives that, don't have spreadsheets that obviously support them, how do you make that case?
Gin Kirkland Kinney: One, we look at, we do surveying. We do pulse check surveying to get an understanding of where our employees are on a number of topics, and financial, mental wellbeing is one of them. But beyond just the how their job is going, like really focus on the person.
And so we listen to our employees, what's important to them, and then out of that, respond to the feedback with action, right? If they feel like, "Oh, we want a different type of program because it's more meaningful to me to have this program rather than that program," we listen. And where we can change and shift the benefits that we offer we do that.
And I think where [00:12:00] it may not show up on straight-line ROI, but I can tell you that our eNPS improved. I can tell you that our intent to stay improved. And if you look at things like intent to stay and involuntary attrition, if we're keeping our better and best employees, and we're not having to go out and recruit, we're not losing time in that whole process of training someone new.
It costs real dollars to go recruit new employees. It costs real dollars to... while someone's bringing backfill. And we're actually tracking those type of KPIs within our operating model for the people organization, and we can take it to the P&L leads and say, and to our CEO and say, "Look we've actually made meaningful progress, and we've saved either productivity or, attrition has a direct cost to it."
We also feel like there's a direct correlation, and we'll start to prove that out around employee satisfaction and [00:13:00] productivity and production
Kelsey Willock Jones: Some of that, it's really about starting at the right place, which is listening to your people. And when you listen to your people, it can therefore have really positive impact within the company, including the bottom line
Gin Kirkland Kinney: Right
Kelsey Willock Jones: Can you tell me about a benefits experiment strategy that you ran that maybe didn't go the way you expected and what you learned from it?
Gin Kirkland Kinney: Let's see. We've had a couple of different programs that kind of fell a little bit flat. One in particular was, like, having a points-based wellbeing platform. For a, a few years we heavily incentivized healthy activities through a portal, and it just felt very flat and very stagnant.
And we tried to like, "Oh what other kind of rewards points can we create?" And it was confusing. There were multiple layers. I think the biggest improvement we made was just having a single portal where I can single sign, I can click and get to what I need. [00:14:00] Because when it's buried in five different, sign-ons, employees are gonna find that frustrating, and we have day jobs.
We can't spend all of our time trying to figure out how to access a rewards program through, talent, culture, people, organizations. So I think that's the biggest one, is like really listening what's important and then simplifying how do we get there, how to take it from five clicks to two clicks, or even one click, and just being responsive to employees saying, "I need you to make this simple for me."
We've also started gamifying things a bit more as our employee population kind of shifts and changes, and we all have different expectations about our interaction with AI and our interaction with technology in general. So I think it, it goes back to that employee listening and looking at participation and making those decisions.
Today, we're making them a lot more quickly than we would have in the past. Instead of run a program for a year, we run it [00:15:00] for three months, and we see it's not working, scrap and let's pivot, move on to something else, and that we can improve upon the experience for our employees.
Kelsey Willock Jones: The pace of technology and innovation is moving so quickly. The pace in which we test it to see its viability should also move at a similar speed, so that completely makes sense to me.
Gin Kirkland Kinney: Yeah, that's right
Kelsey Willock Jones: You've elaborated on a really, I know, a lot of really interesting programs, and we've started to broach the topic of innovation.
How are you staying current on what's working and all of the new innovations happening in this space? Are there particular conferences peer networks, startup ecosystems that have been particularly helpful and energizing to you?
Gin Kirkland Kinney: I would say, having conversations with other CHROs, chief people officers, just more organically. Attending some of the big conferences. This year CERAWeek is a big energy conference. It's one of the biggest in the world. It happens in Houston [00:16:00] once a year, and the conversations have always been so traditional around, what's happening in the power space, what's happening in the oil space.
It's been very focused on the actual business of the business. This year, I was on two different panels, and I was surprised, all focused around people. People and technology, how AI is impacting the workforce. We just haven't had these conversations before unless you were at a more industry-specific forum.
But now we're having these discussions about what does the future of the workforce look like? How is AI impacting the workforce? As we are moving to more of a this kind of mini industrial revolution with onshoring of jobs and of businesses and building out power infrastructure and building out data centers and other large loads, like, how are we gonna compete for this workforce, this skill and trade workforce that we haven't really focused on, and AI can't replace that, [00:17:00] right?
So I think it's become interesting to see these conversations take place in less traditional forum than we did even two years ago. And to me, that's great because it gives us the opportunity to not just network with fellow, subject matter experts, but talk to the businesses and talk to the business owners, talk to the operators.
What are you hearing? What are you seeing? How is how is this impacting your bottom line? And I think that's where we're getting the best insights of how we move forward
Kelsey Willock Jones: So I obviously interview a lot of folks in the chief people officer, CHRO position, but this has been a trend that I find fascinating. Whereas, in the past, maybe the major conferences would focus on CEO, CFO type roles, but I'm seeing so many more chief people officers, so many more CHROs take this more chief strategist like position in the conversation, which has been really cool.
And it [00:18:00] also it's also interesting that it's not just AI, it is completely, as you described, what about the people? How is AI impacting the people? It's not just about the technology, it's how do, humans adapt to the use of said technology? How do humans keep pace? So I think it's gonna be really cool to see over the next even few years how, CHROs and chief people officers continue to elevate in these
Gin Kirkland Kinney: a huge part of the bottom line, right? When you think about the, the labor force and, salaries and benefits, it's a huge part in some companies. In some companies it's not. Some of the more heavy industrials it's much smaller percentage of the opex.
But how do we budget? How do we completely redesign workflows around new operating models with new technology and new strategies in place? And again, I think before HR could be seen as it's the service provider to my needs, and now we're really shaping the strategy of the business, [00:19:00] the type of people we need, the number of people that we need and how we really think about using our people as one of, next to IP, one of the, most strategic parts of any company.
Kelsey Willock Jones: I think this is a really natural way to ask my final question for you, which is: What is a shift in compensation and benefits that you see coming that most HR leaders are not ready for?
Gin Kirkland Kinney: Oh, that is a great question. The shift that's coming that we're not quite ready for I think as we're redesigning workflows and as we're rethinking roles and responsibilities and moving away from a job description to really okay, what are the skills that we're gonna need for that role, and then how do we price that?
And as budgets or are expanding and contracting, how do we deploy those resources for the talent in the right place at the right time, at the right [00:20:00] cost? And so I think we're gonna have to be a lot more prepared for the, I won't call it volatility in the traditional financial sense of volatility, but I think we're gonna have to be prepared for a lot more fluidity in thinking about how we price roles, how we think about geography of roles and really tying those to the bottom line, and being able to draw some of those ROIs from role to how it's driving business value.
I think we have enough data, we just gotta connect the dots, and I think that's the next fun challenge for us, is how we're connecting all of these dots
Kelsey Willock Jones: Gin, thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate your time. Thank you so much for being on the show, and I hope you have a wonderful rest of your week
Gin Kirkland Kinney: It's been fantastic. I really enjoyed our conversation. Thanks, Kelsey.
Kelsey Willock Jones: All right. Have a great one
[00:21:00]