How Very Publishes Every Pay Band Before You Ever Apply

00:00 Haris Ikram, CandorIQ
Hello everybody. I'm excited for episode number one of our webinar live stream, and I couldn't be more honored to have Jessica on as our speaker number one. Jessica and I met in New York at a CHRO breakfast about a month and a half ago, and Jessica had some really sharp pointed views around pay strategy, how to design it, why it's important, how to execute, which I get a lot of questions about from other people leaders and people teams. I thought she would be the perfect guest for our inaugural episode. Jessica, would love to get to know you, your background, what you're doing at Very, and how you got into the people role.

01:07 Jessica Begley, Very
Thank you for having me. My name is Jessica Begley, I'm the chief people officer at a company called Very. Most people in the people world don't end up there by design. There's something that takes you there. I wish I was smart enough to design my career path to where it got me today, but I definitely didn't. I've always been interested in the intersection of psychology and culture, and the world of people was a nice intersection for that. My master's is in organizational psychology, and after that I ended up in corporate retail HR for a number of years. The reason I stayed is that they let me do a career lattice: recruitment, HR business partner, talent performance, compensation, policy, labor relations. Trying to craft policies for 130,000 people is really challenging stuff, but also really interesting. One of my biggest projects right before I left was a huge compensation leveling program for 11,000 people, both hourly and exempt. That was an amazing time to dig my teeth into understanding compensation, and honestly it propelled me forward. When I came to Very three years ago the idea was to build out the people function, and because I had had all those lattices it served itself well. I wanted to go to a small company. I was done with having ID numbers, I wanted to call people by their names. Very is fully distributed, no office, no headquarters, across five countries. We are an IoT services consulting firm, we build hardware devices for companies.

05:41 Jessica Begley, Very
Here's the reality. As much as people should never attach their worth to their compensation, people do, which is part of why compensation is one of the hardest things to have a conversation about. A lot of people still feel it's taboo. Some want more information, some want less. It's very personal. So it's really important to have a defined strategy so you're crystal clear in the way you approach it. What I'm about to say might make you uncomfortable, and that's okay, one size does not fit all. We approach transparency from the very first moment you ever learn about us. Regardless of geography or role, every single job posting has the role defined with the comp band, and it is not a Netflix-esque band. None of this several hundred thousand dollars. Every comp band is a 10 to 15 thousand dollar range. There's a little elasticity because sometimes there are differences in levels. We even define within the job description the breakdown between base and variable. Someone at that breakfast said to me, what if you find the perfect person and it doesn't fit in the band? And I said, then they're not the perfect person. What I usually say in that moment is, this isn't the right job or the right moment, we wish you well, let's stay in touch.

08:13 Jessica Begley, Very
Our company is over 80% engineering, and because we are in IoT we have software engineers, firmware engineers, data scientists, electrical engineers, mechatronics engineers. Everyone in the company can see the comp defined by three factors: the function, the geography, and the level. It directly translates to this is the base salary and this is the variable compensation. We do not deviate. Everyone in that role level position has that pay. The way we have levels defined is that we publish internally the technical skills by level and the behavioral skills by level. It's not subjective or mysterious, why is someone a senior two and I'm a mid two. All of our managers fill out a talent development card twice a year on those capabilities, so people are clear on where they rank and where the development areas are.

09:32 Jessica Begley, Very
We do promotion cycles once a year where people can raise their hand and say, I think I'm at the next level, and we put them through a 360 degree view process. What this allows people to do as they plan their year ahead is see, if I get this promotion, this is the comp I will be at. There were times in my career when I knew I was up for a promotion but I didn't actually know what that meant until after it happened, and then there's this awkward, are you supposed to negotiate, is that final. This takes down the feeling of, am I being paid equitably, is this fair across my peers. It takes a lot of the confusion out of the process.

11:14 Jessica Begley, Very
We have a documented 90-day window. When new hires come in, if we feel we've hired them at the wrong level, and we typically hire low because it's much harder if you hire high, we'll say, come in 90 days, if you show us you really are a lead one in those first 90 days, we'll change your comp up to that level automatically. So we give ourselves wiggle room to make sure we are accurately leveling. Internally we see the work day to day, but external can be tricky. We loved making transparency part of the comp process, and ensuring we removed as much subjectivity as possible, because that is where confusion and emotionality come into play.

11:59 Haris Ikram, CandorIQ
There were so many gold nuggets in that. One thing you said is that the way you did this successfully is there was no mystery behind the comp. You had the numbers, the salary, the equity, the levels, the job description, the skills and competencies, shared with employees and managers. And you have your merit cycles, and you do adjustments if a candidate proves they're a level higher, so there's flexibility. People often do one half of it, they define the bands and the levels and the titles, but then as an employee you're comparing yourself to your peers and you don't know if you're overperforming or underperforming. A senior software engineer on one team might have different goals than a senior software engineer on another team.

13:26 Jessica Begley, Very
That alignment internally is where leadership teams hesitate to roll out something more structured and transparent. They want the slack in the system, because they might not be fully aligned. That's where you have to take the time, have the process, the documentation, the communication plan, all of those things, so you can ensure you have the alignment for this to be successful.

14:19 Jessica Begley, Very
There's been an evolution. Very has always, even before me, been incredibly transparent. They used to have fully transparent compensation when they were much smaller, everyone's comp was listed. We removed that over time because it got complicated. Sales is a great example, where comp is structured so differently between base and variable, and leadership at certain levels has a very different formula. As we grew and had more one-of-a-kind roles it got complicated. But we felt strongly that in the areas where we have more than one of a kind, it makes sense to publish. We are very transparent in our financials generally, more than most companies. People can see comp in our expense line, we show that to the company every year. It's not a full mystery, we just don't break it down by person.

15:59 Jessica Begley, Very
When you're a startup and you're growing you kind of don't know, you have to go out into the market. A lot of people don't have a Haris in their life, they're going out and waiting to hear what people say to them, and that's how they calibrate. That is not the right way to do it, especially for people like us across five markets with a full range of functions. So we got very intentional about listing the tight salary bands, the breakdown of variable versus base, and all of our benefits. We send a benefits one-sheeter to look at the full package early on. We are intentional about not deviating from our structure, so why not be honest and upfront about that early.

17:11 Jessica Begley, Very
We looked at this recently, at hindsight to last year. Our acceptance rate from offer to accepted last year, we only had one person decline us, because we had talked to them the entire time about what the offer was going to be. The offer was not a surprise. Our final interview is always with our CEO and one other member of the executive team, and we have a prep call before with the hiring manager and the candidate. The hiring manager says, I just want to reiterate, this is what the offer will be. If they say at that point, you guys are great, I thought a lot about it, it just doesn't work for me, no problem, we cancel the final interview. That alleviates the pressure points through the system. We're never waiting to see if a person is going to accept. We know if they get through that process, they are in.

19:16 Jessica Begley, Very
One of the big drivers with this rollout was driving retention and upskilling our workforce. In the technology world there's constantly new technology, that's the space we work within, we're always pressing the boundary. So we are incentivized as a business to have people who are continuously learning and growing. Them upskilling is a win for their own development, a win for us as a business, and a win for our clients, because we can take on more interesting and complex technology challenges as we upskill. Laying out the comp bands plus the technical capabilities plus the behavioral capabilities gives us an unbelievable group of voracious learners. At any point you say to somebody, what are you reading right now, and I promise you they are reaching across their desk and pulling out one, two, three books.

21:24 Jessica Begley, Very
For us it's a hook. There is a quantifiable number sitting ahead of that person showing what their compensation will look like should they upskill in this way, in this timeframe. Any business owner, CEO, founder is going to look at that and say, the ROI on pushing them into learning and growing is going to come back to the business.

21:56 Haris Ikram, CandorIQ
So building out your comp strategy is not just about comp. It's about learning and development, career growth, and performance. It's all tied together. And culture starts from day one, from the day the candidate is accepting the offer, finding the right person, setting the right expectations. It's not a series of silos, here's the candidate experience and here's the employee experience and here's the growth plan. It's all connected.

22:49 Jessica Begley, Very
I'd go back further. It's from the moment they find us and the first conversation they have with us. We have had people who interviewed with us, who we did not select to go forward, and they have referred people to us. That is because they see us and they go, you are doing things differently. It doesn't take so much to stand out as a great employer right now, honestly. Just being open and honest with people, being transparent around compensation, laying out a path for them. How many people right now are saying, I don't even know how I would get to the next level. I have friends who are senior directors and VPs at big corporations and they are clueless as to how that would happen. It gets trickier the higher you go, that's the reason it's the shape of a pyramid, but for the majority of it, it should be an open and honest dialogue. It should not be so much smoke and mirrors.

24:38 Jessica Begley, Very
I'm sure some people are sitting there thinking, I don't know how I would convince my leadership team this was a good idea. After that breakfast I rode the subway with an HR person who said, my CEO barely talks about compensation for the company with me. If we learned anything from these rounds of layoffs, it's that people are going to talk about it all. As the demographics of our workforce change, the Gen Z-ers I have are very open in discussing compensation. The level of taboo is coming down fast. All these new terms like loud budgeting really just mean talking about it with people. They're going to talk about it if you don't. So don't you want to control the narrative?

26:28 Jessica Begley, Very
For most businesses payroll is your most expensive line item. So when you have strategies for every expense in your business except the biggest one, just think about it for a minute. I find that asking provocative questions stops people for a minute. And then what I usually say is, what are you scared of? What are you afraid of? Because a lot of times holding on to the information is fear. So when you're talking about top level buy-in, it's one, getting them to recognize that it is silly not to have a tight strategy around your biggest expense line. Any business person will think that way. And the second part is, let's write down all your fears, let's write down everything you're afraid of, let's talk about it. That requires some space and some reflection.

27:19 Jessica Begley, Very
If you're going to do this, you had better have every base covered. What's the plan? How does it tie together? What's the narrative? What's the communication plan? What's in it for you the executive, for you the IC, for you the manager? How would people see that there's a hook here that's important for them? And then how do you have transparency and documentation around all of it? The matrix we have defined about technical capabilities by level, a lot of companies still don't have that, but they have people at different levels. So how would people know? Documentation, clarity, expectation setting. All of these are critical components.

28:46 Jessica Begley, Very
We do everything in a town hall. We're on camera, we are right there, the chat is on, and you just have to say the things, but you have to have a plan. We always tie it back into our values. We talk about what the plan is and the format for asking questions. When we've made a bigger change we'll have two town hall conversations, and I'm doing one-on-one conversations on the side because sometimes there are individual questions people don't feel comfortable raising, and that's okay. You have to be ready to have a lot of conversations, and that is the other thing people fear. If you are not fully clear and aligned you might feel like you're going to misstep. But if you have your leadership team aligned, you won't.

30:19 Jessica Begley, Very
We will typically go to the directors first. We don't always go to the managers, for a variety of reasons, but the directors are often the operational function leader. We talk to them about what the change is and we get questions from them. It's more about, ask us questions, what's the feedback, where do you think our blind spots are. It's not up for negotiation necessarily, but it's up for conversation in terms of what did we miss. Those conversations are also a good tactic to form FAQs.

31:03 Jessica Begley, Very
We use Guru as our internal space to have everything documented. We outline the change, the supporting documentation linked to anything people might need, and a corresponding FAQ that we continue to build out as questions come in. Very likely if you have a question, somebody else has a question. We're really big fans of test and try. The larger the organization the harder that gets, but in smaller orgs, if you set the standard that testing and trying is part of your culture, a lot of times I will say as we're rolling things out, everybody, I don't think this is going to be perfect, we very likely missed something, please approach this with positive intent. And the team does. Reframing it as asking and learning together with positive intent is how you make it through the big transformative moments.

32:44 Haris Ikram, CandorIQ
The analogy I'm drawing is that iteration is a big part of software development, it's accepted and understood, and our customers understand it too. So why not use the same mindset for internal decisions and processes? If you set the right expectation, people anchor to it, and it's a lot easier than treating it as never done. The organization is growing and changing, so naturally your programs and strategies have to change as well.

33:18 Jessica Begley, Very
We use Agile development, not Waterfall, so for us it's even easier. We're not waiting for the next product release, we're going to do it as we go and iterate and make changes. A lot of the reasons executives hold back on these decisions is that they're afraid. What if we didn't get it perfect? What if we missed something? Who rolls out anything that's perfect? Let's release ourselves from thinking that and instead create the forums and the feedback loops, rather than presenting it as a fully perfect package with zero flaws.

34:35 Jessica Begley, Very
A lot of people listening probably think this transparency thing is going to get pushback. We actually got pushback on being more transparent and more equitable. We had people who wanted to go the other way. We do have different pay in different markets, because there is different equity in different markets. We have a few Argentinians, and if anybody's been following Argentina the last couple of months, there's a lot going on in their currency. We have a software engineer who lives in Argentina but not in Buenos Aires. One day we were talking about everyone's homes in Slack and he gave us a quick video tour of his apartment. It has a little balcony. And he said, and I pay 200 US dollars a month. This is why it's not equitable to pay the same for the same role across different geographies, because the cost of living basis is so significantly different.

35:47 Jessica Begley, Very
We have three main geographies: US, Canada, and Latin America. They are multipliers of each other, so people can quickly calculate, but it's laid out on the grid so you don't have to calculate anything. Those apartment examples help people wrap their head around the idea that pay does look different in different places. The other thing is that benefits differ. What's a 401 in the US is an RRSP in Canada and does not exist in Latin America. It's hard to be equitable on some of those because they don't exist, so let's just lay out what they are. We publish the US benefits, the Canadian benefits, and the Latin American benefits, so it's clear to people what exists for them. It's important to educate yourself and be able to speak intelligently as to why the differences exist, so you're not feeling stuck if people ask questions.

38:02 Haris Ikram, CandorIQ
You talked about how people are the number one asset and also the number one line item. That's exactly why we started CandorIQ. We felt that a lot of the solutions out there were about benchmarking data here, org charts here, performance information there. Ultimately what people want to do is hire the best people, retain them, and help them grow, and connect the different systems and processes together. That was the hypothesis for CandorIQ.

40:33 Jessica Begley, Very
You work with a lot of people who are doing this for the first time, building a strategy. What do you think are the important first things to know and consider?

41:18 Haris Ikram, CandorIQ
When people take on this project, either building for the first time or revamping their pay strategy or job architecture, they think they have to boil the ocean. Sometimes that is the case, but usually not, especially for younger organizations. Start with one department or job family. If you're a 50-person company and most of your team is in engineering or sales, build out those two. It'll get you really far. Take one job family, build out the ladders, build out the skills. And you have to go all the way, so it's not just titles and ranges. What are the technical skills, the other skills required, the competencies. Build it out, roll it out, then test it. There are a lot of frameworks out there, but it doesn't mean you have to have eight levels just because Radford says so. Take a pass at what makes sense for your organization. Start small and simple and iterate into more complexity, because unwinding complexity is harder than going from simple to complex.

42:56 Jessica Begley, Very
So many people just get overwhelmed. That's why having partners is important, because you might feel like you don't have the education or you're unclear where to start. Don't feel like you have to go figure it out on your own. I don't know how many people go and try to figure out comp on Glassdoor, but that is the wrong place to look. You need real, actual information in order for your comp strategy to be successful.

43:04 Haris Ikram, CandorIQ
That's right. If you can't explain a compensation to an employee, then there's probably something wrong. And if you have to quote Glassdoor, that usually means there's something wrong.

43:32 Jessica Begley, Very
Find me on LinkedIn. We're working in a really interesting and dynamic moment. I'm part of Chief and they published an article this week that said CHROs are the new C-suite power players, and I thought, all right, I don't know about that. But there's so much changing: the demographics, the way of work, distributed or hybrid companies, the people complexities are increasing. It's not so simple as everybody walks into one place at 9:00 AM, punches a clock, and sits down. AI is so hot right now and it's everywhere, but AI can't solve these problems. People have to solve these problems, because they're nuanced and incredibly complicated. So my takeaway is, find people to have those conversations with. Find the partners who can help you navigate. Don't feel like you're in a vacuum. You want to make sure you have the people and the information to make really smart decisions. It's not one size fits all. Compensation is very unique, but you need to be educated and have perspective on it before you can make anything work.

45:32 Haris Ikram, CandorIQ
Jessica, that's a great place to pause. So many nuggets around strategy, so much great tactical advice, great anecdotes. This was a really amazing session, so I'm grateful for you coming on the show for episode number one. Thank you so much.