HR professional: Every employee is different — how HR can find solutions for each of their needs

Stephanie Schomer, Editor-In-Chief, Employee Benefit News; Lauren Uranker, Head of Corporate Relationship Management, Goldman Sachs Ayco Personal Financial Management

Transcription:

Stephanie Schomer (00:07):

But thank you guys for being here. My name's Stephanie Schomer of Employee Benefit News. I am joined today by Lauren Uranker, head of Corporate Relationship Management at Goldman Sachs Ayco. Thank you so much for being here. Today. We're talking about how obviously every employee is different but how can we find solutions that really work for everyone? So Lauren, I know you have many perspectives on this but before we dive into it, I would love if you could just tell us a little bit about your background and of course your work at Goldman Sachs Ayco.

Lauren Uranker (00:36):

Of course. Of course. And I also acknowledge I'm like the only thing between all of you and happy hour, so I recognize that. So thank you for being here. Really good to be here. I've spent my last 10 years at Goldman Sachs Ayco focused exclusively on financial planning as a workplace benefit.It's a personal passion of mine. And before that, I spent five years in HR actually. And I loved it and it was a great first job out of school, but I realized I was the friend at dinner that was always asking people if they were maxing out their 401K, right? And so I said to myself, I wanna pursue a career in planning. So that's what landed me here at Ayco. That's great. Yeah, I mean, we were talking earlier about this idea of how the diversity of the workforce is only increasing. And I know that that's something that you guys are talking about in terms of how you really serve your clients. You mentioned that you oversee a team of, I think 35. And in total you guys are working with more than 500 employers. So how can you possibly start to meet every employer where they are, help them meet every employee where they are?

(01:39)

What are some of the top concerns that you guys are working to solve for them? I mean, think we talked about a lot in the last session that is on the top of mind of every employer and so many vendors as well. So I promise I won't do this for every question, but I jotted down three words to start with the same letter so we can all remember it myself included. Listen, leverage, and learn. So the first is just listening, right? We talked about that in the previous session, but there is, I think, such a desire for the employee voice to be heard. They just wanna know people are listening. And when you throw your vendor partners into that mix and ask your vendor partners to use their resources to be an ear for you in that listening, it can create some really great results.

(02:26)

So one example we were partnering with one of our largest corporate clients, and we hosted a financial planning session specifically for the LGBT plus community. At the time, marriage just became a thing, this was like in 20 15, 20 16. And that changed the dynamic of the planning that their workforce was doing in the L G B T community estate planning, how they think about life insurance, et cetera. But the best thing that came out of that was it opened up a dialogue between an employee and the employer, and it was around how they constructed their reimbursements for family planning. They allowed you $5,000 per occurrence of adoption or surrogacy, but this employee who happened to be a gay man said, our only option to start a family the way that we want to is surrogacy, and that costs way more than $5,000. Can we at least merge those four occurrences for one, a one-time $20,000 lifetime benefit?

(03:25)

And it was amazing that the employee employer really quickly changed the benefit. And that only would've happened from the listening and the dialogue. The leverage also talked about in the previous session, we as vendor partners to all of you, really, really want to do better and grow and evolve our practices. And so push us to do that. We can only do it with your great ideas, your partnership. And so don't ever leave that resource on the table. And on the learn side, right now, I'm seeing way more HR teams look to their chief diversity officer, their diversity and inclusion teams, and also their head of talent strategy to say, what are you seeing? What are you focused on? Because that's going to influence your benefit strategy short and long term. So hopefully that's helpful. Absolutely. We were speaking before about the idea of generational wealth, how kind of home ownership fits into this?

(04:19)

And I don't wanna keep us focused exclusively on financial things for too long, though I, we can talk about it a little bit more, but how does that kind of idea of D E I fit into those challenges and how are you guys working to solve it and make sure that there's kind of that culturally competent support for a workforce? Yes. I think that two things really need to be understood before you can successfully address the unique needs of the workforce. One is just historical context. Oftentimes I'm asked how do I be a good ally to the L G B T community? And I typically say, stop asking me all the questions. I'm not your encyclopedia. Do some learning and listening, right? And really work to be a great ally. So understand the historical context that impacts what I would call marginalized groups. The second piece of that is just around the cultural nuances.

(05:15)

I mentioned the L G B T session that we did, and just how culturally we had to think about estate planning differently. My wife and I thought about it differently before we were able to legally get married and also share that my wife is from the black community and we've had a lot of discussions about tax planning and tax refunds and what she was raised right to think is normal or appropriate versus what I was raised on. It's just tax planning. And many people think that taxes are the most black and white thing, no pun intended, but they're not. And there's cultural nuance there that we had to discuss both as a couple but also in relation to our financial planning. So I think those two things are just so critical Internally at Goldman. How are you guys making sure that for couples like you and your wife, how can they connect to the right financial support that they need?

(06:07)

And how are you guys helping to provide that? More so now than ever, and honestly, it was the momentum caused by the pandemic in 2020 the focus on racial justice in 2020. That really, we started hearing almost exclusively that the coaches, the financial coaches that we offer to our partners, they've got to match and mirror the employees that they're speaking with. The number of requests that went up to be connected to another woman, another person in the Hispanic community, another person who identifies as having veteran status or as a part of the people with different abilities that it just increased tenfold, I would say over the last two to three years. And so we're revamping our hiring practices. We're very focused on that. And also from a technology standpoint, I think Lira Health does a really good job here, but being able to actually see a picture of who you're connecting with, it doesn't mean you always choose someone that looks like you, but at least you're able to see what's out there and what's offered.

(07:12)

So I think from a technology standpoint, we're we're all moving in that direction. So interesting how much during this conference, the idea of technology helping humanize these processes has come up. We were just talking about it next door, that using the technology to find that human touch and amplify the human touch is so vital to making people engage with these things more. Lauren, and I wanted to ask, in the conversations that you and your team have with CHROs across organizations, what are some of the top concerns that they're bringing to you that they're needing help solving for their employee base? So we were talking about this in the hallway. I was like, should I keep talking about student loans? Cause I feel like we talk about it all the time, but honestly, that's so still top of mind for employers and employees. So student loan debt and repayment still something that I think is so critical.

(08:06)

Whether you provide the financial support to help people pay down debt or take out debt responsibly, or you provide the financial education around best way to maximize the repayment of your debt. Emergency savings, I think as comes as no surprise, especially after the last few years, that emergency savings is top of mind for employers. I think the really interesting shift in the past, I would say six to 12 months to be a little more nuanced, is that they understand that people need to save more. They wanna help people figure out how to save more for an emergency. But the latest shift is how do we make it easy for them to do so and very automatic. And so the push is now in the space of making sure that automatic payroll deductions could be funneled into a linked emergency savings account, hopefully one with a really good a p y.

(09:01)

And so the theme there I would leave you with is it's not just now about education and educating on financial wellness or any benefit, it's education and action. I'm reading this really interesting book called The 100 Things We Lost to the Internet, and I can no surprise to all of you. One of those is attention span and time and just focus. And so can we make it as easy as possible during such a busy day for our employees to take the education that you give them through your benefits and just help them seamlessly transition that into actually starting to fund these different accounts that they're flagging is really important. And then lastly, I would say retirement, but very specifically how to deccumulate assets in retirement. I think with market volatility in particular, people are very nervous to retire. We're seeing and hearing a lot more data that says people are hanging on longer than we would anticipate them too.

(10:04)

Pensions have gone away, that secure paycheck has gone away. And so many companies are contemplating how to structure their plan design within the 401K to make it easier for folks to deccumulate assets when they decide to make that change in the chapter of their life. So that's been really interesting to start to hear. Those are a lot of big problems that you're also, I know know. So when it comes to employers, how can you guys help them figure out what to prioritize for a workforce that also has different priorities within it? Especially keeping the idea of cost in mind. How can you deliver all of this and help people really understand what will most serve the biggest part of their employee base, but not isolate or abandon anyone, right? It's just such a's not an easily answered question. I told you I cut this question, right?

(10:55)

No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I think so I heard it in the last presentation as well, just this concept of surveys. And so I'm not sure I thought that I would ever live to see the day that Goldman Sachs not only surveyed all of their people, but then showed you the results, right? We are not an industry or a company known for its transparency, but we're getting better because we have to. And so just over the past two to three years Goldman Sachs instituted what we call the People Pulse survey. So I believe it's on a biannual basis. They go out and ask questions just about how people are feeling about certain components of their roles, the culture of the firm, things of that nature. And then they show the results of the survey and then also address how they're hitting on some of the key comments or areas that were identified as opportunities.

(11:47)

And so I think just the surveying, just the understanding on a regular basis is really important. And then the second piece is really committing to answering the question, what problem are you trying to solve? I think we get lost in responding to every request and trying to, I'll say, boil the ocean. But if you can hone in on a north star of what problem are you actually trying to solve, I think that can help guide how you prioritize what I'm sure is just an unbelievably long list of things that we wanna get done for employees. What have you seen come from those pulse surveys at Goldman internally? So we are at the far end of believing in getting people back into the office because it's such a culture of mentorship. But the surveys have reinforced that people really want mentorship. They want those relationships at work.

(12:42)

They want someone to help them navigate their career and help them grow. And so we have formalized how we think about things like performance management. And so that connection piece, what we've done is established something called three conversations beginning of the year is goal setting often done in January or February? That's when you get together with your manager and just have that initial dialogue, what am I trying to accomplish this year? How does it tie to the goals of my team or the business unit that I'm in? And does this align with what my manager thinks is success? The second conversation typically happens sometime in late June, early July, and that's a check-in to say, Hey, how am I doing? What am I doing great? Where can I continue to improve? How am I tracking relative to my peers halfway through the year? And then the third conversation happens typically in the November timeframe, and that's more of the formal performance appraisal.

(13:42)

We use Feedback 360 at Goldman. So it's not just the manager's input, but it's the input of your peers and colleagues as well. And that goes into the third conversation to say, how did the year go and what are the opportunities and places where you've really shined? And so that was a result of the survey as well. And then we're working on a bunch of other feedback points that the team collected. That's really terrific. I think it's really encouraging to hear you guys thinking about professional development in that way. I think as we move through this kind of crazy time in the workforce, increasingly we're in our coverage. At least we're getting to a point where so many of the employers that we speak to are, our teams want to know how we're going to develop them and how we're going to grow. And I think especially at a time when so many young people over the course of the pandemic were kind of thrust into these management positions because of the great resignation or whatever, and they don't really know how to lead.

(14:34)

So how do you answer for that? Yeah. Are you guys doing anything internally there in terms of not just having those conversations about performance and performance reviews, but how can you say, this is the upward trajectory that we want you to be on and here's how we're going to help you get there? Yep. I'm really happy you brought up managers. I'm a newish manager myself, two to three years in. And I often say it's the best and worst thing I do every day. It's really, really hard to manage people as I'm sure many of, but it's honestly the most rewarding thing and the most rewarding part of my job. And so what we are seeing I would view this twofold. One from the vendor perspective and the other, just from the employee perspective, from the vendor perspective, we at Goldman Sachs Ayco on the financial wellness and planning side realize that if they're not coming to HR with a question about what should I do with my finances, they're going to their manager. And neither of those groups are necessarily equipped to answer personal financial planning questions as an example.

(15:40)

But what we are doing is realizing that we could do a much better job arming the managers with quick sound bites information about how employees can successfully navigate the complex benefit landscape. And I think it gives managers a confidence that maybe they didn't have before or the expertise given the fact that so many people have been put into these roles but it allows them to be an amazing resource and conduit between the employee and all the amazing benefits that are offered through your organization. And so I think there's an element of just making it easier for managers to understand the benefits. And then on the management growth side we've put in just a ton of mentor programs. These mentorship programs are there for women, they are there for up and coming managers. They're there for up and coming folks who are viewed in some type of leadership role.

(16:34)

And I would say that's grown at least twofold in the past two to three years, where some of it's grassroots, some of it's been formalized, but there's just been an incredible commitment to it, which honestly is a new manager gives me a lot of hope and optimism about my ability to keep growing into this role. That's fantastic. I did wanna ask you, so I know you've been at Goldman Sachs Ayco for 10 years. Obviously you've seen a lot of changes. I really appreciate that you're like, we're doing this. Can you believe that we're doing this transparency survey but what other changes have you seen? I know we were talking a little bit about some family support benefits. I would love if you could speak to that. Cause I think that's also your viewpoint on that was so valuable. And echo some themes that we've heard.

(17:15)

So I'd love you could share with us from. Sure. So earlier this year Goldman Sachs enhanced our leave benefits and notably enhanced and really formalized the leave benefits associated with having a miscarriage. And I think what was really impactful to me as someone who doesn't intend to start a family was the goodwill that they generated from me as an employee, just feeling really good about them doing that. We were doing it anyways, informally, managers are generally really good with things like that with their teams, but seeing it in writing and seeing it formalized and seeing the commitment that the firm had made to employees going through something really, really hard, just bound me closer to my employer. And I think oftentimes we miss opportunities to communicate the awesome benefits broadly because we think, well, it doesn't apply to everyone. Well, even though that doesn't apply to me, it doesn't mean that I don't care deeply to work for a company that does the right thing.

(18:20)

And I think Gen Z and the younger millennial generation, they really want to know that the values they have align with our employer. The other interesting point that I wanted to just make, and I'm curious for the group's thoughts, honestly, the benefits that you offer have to align with culture. And I think oftentimes we spend so much time and money implementing a really, really good benefit. And I'll make the example of sabbaticals. So mental health, time off, all coming into focus so sharply over the past two to three years. But if your culture doesn't support people taking time and you make them feel bad or they come back to an absolute disaster, what's the point of having the benefit? And so there's gotta be work done in conjunction with the folks who are sort of leading culture or doing that work with the implementation and communication of benefits.

(19:20)

Yeah, that's such a great point. And I think I mentioned to you in one of the earlier panels, Lori, I think you might have said this, or at least someone on your panel did, but just, you know, wanna know that the benefits are there, even if they don't apply to you, it's reassuring as an employee. Lauren, I wanna jump back to your experience as a new-ish manager. I'm curious about what that's been like. What are some of the challenges that you've faced that maybe you might be craving a solution for as you step into this role? I myself am a new manager and one of my reports is in this room, <laugh>, Deanna, you missed it. But she said that it's the best and worst part of the day and it's a lot of pressure and it's so rewarding and that I adore you, but I'm losing sleep at night. I'm like, I'm failing them. So yeah. What are you worried about and what solutions do you wish were available or maybe more accessible or more communicated? Yep. That's a great question. So yeah, I do wish, going back, I wish I knew more about all of the benefits offered and how to communicate them effectively to the people on my team. I generally have a sense for what they can take advantage of, but I would love more on that as a manager.

(20:31)

I would love to be able to better articulate how performance links to compensation. I think that is, I'm not alone in that journey but just training and reinforcement and support in helping people understand those two dynamics and how they work together. And then lastly, I don't know how companies can formalize this piece of it, but we're talking about empathy a lot. We're talking about emotional intelligence a lot more, and I think really good managers have and show both of those things, but I'm not sure that we've figured out yet how to help people get better in those spaces if it doesn't come naturally. And so I think there's a way to formalize those pieces of the job, which I think are really important especially to newer and younger generations coming into the workforce. Or I'll share a really quick anecdote. We had a conference a few weeks ago and we had a great panel of speakers and one of them was the former head of HR of Goldman who came in 20 plus years ago to the role.

(21:48)

And at the time when someone said jump, it was how high. And with this younger generation, when someone says jump, they say, well, can it be more of a skip? And do I have to do it now? And well, why am I jumping right? And so having again, the competency of the generations of different cultures I think is a really important part of being a manager to get the most out of the people that are around us. I wanna make sure that there's a minute or two left. If anyone has any questions, we can open it up. But Lauren, I so appreciate you sharing all of this insight with us, both from your perspective as a vendor and also an employee. And I appreciate the candor, but does anyone have anything to ask for Lauren today? Or advice Yes. Or advice?

Lauren Uranker (22:39):

So I'm curious in your excuse both as an employee, as a leader, human manager how important do you feel it is for employees from different segments? She give visibility into other parts of the business, especially if they're more early level of tactical minded employees to get to see the strategic side of the lens. How important do you feel that?

Stephanie Schomer (22:58):

We were just having a conversation about this and there was an amazing body of research done on what that understanding does for retention. And we've done a ton of work at Goldman on internal mobility. It's a big firm of 45,000 plus people, and we wanna keep them, even if they want something else out of their career, want to grow in a different direction. So I think being communicative and having a very clear offering around internal mobility is really important. And then I would say that don't be afraid of lifting up the curtain and showing folks what else goes on to run a large complex organization, even if their work is more tactical and mentorship. I think having a program that binds them to people outside of maybe their direct kind of business unit doing that cross mentorship is huge. Thank you so much. Of course. Great. Lauren, thank you so much. Thank you guys for being here. We really appreciate it. Wonderful. Thank you all.