Laurie Robinson – Burton Snowboards’ Journey into Pay Transparency

Connect with Laurie:

Connect with Dwight:

• 
• dwight.brown@salary.com

Connect with David:

• 
• 
• david.turetsky@salary.com

Podcast Manager, Karissa Harris:

• HRDataLabs@salary.com

Production by Affogato Media

Resources:

• Burton Snowboards
• Compensation Consulting Services
• HR Data Labs Season 6 Episode 6
• HR Data Labs Season 6 Episode 4

• “The business partners had to be able to understand why we were doing this . . . so that they can get ahead of the questions.”
• “The job is what we base our wages on, not the employee.”

Announcer: 0:02
Here's an experiment for you. Take passionate experts in human resource technology. Invite cross industry experts from inside and outside HR. Mix in what's happening in people analytics today. Give them the technology to connect, hit record for their discussions into a beaker. Mix thoroughly. And voila, you get the HR Data Labs podcast, where we explore the impact of data and analytics to your business. We may get passionate and even irreverent, that count on each episode challenging and enhancing your understanding of the way people data can be used to solve real world problems. Now, here's your host, David Turetsky.

David Turetsky: 0:46
Hello, and welcome to the HR Data Labs podcast. I'm your host David Turetsky, like always my friend and partner and co host Dwight Brown from Salary.com. Hey, Dwight, how are you?

Dwight Brown: 0:56
I'm good, David, how you doing?

David Turetsky: 0:57
I'm great. Today we have with us a very fun guest, Laurie Robinson from Burton. Laurie, give us a little bit of background as to who you are. And by the way, hi.

Laurie Robinson: 1:06
Hi. Hi, guys. Thank you for having me today.

David Turetsky: 1:10
We're very excited.

Laurie Robinson: 1:11
Yeah, so am I! So as you said, I work at Burton Snowboards. I am a talent strategist in the people and culture department. So that's what we call HR. So I've been at Burton, this time around for just about a year and a half. But I've been a Burton enthusiast since I learned to snowboard, which was way back in 1991. So I've been in the snowboard industry on and off for a long time if you do the math.

David Turetsky: 1:37
We won't.

Laurie Robinson: 1:38
I took it in college as a class. I became an instructor right after that.

Dwight Brown: 1:43
Wow, really?

Laurie Robinson: 1:43
Yeah. UVM that was a really great bonus, that credit.

Dwight Brown: 1:47
Now that's a class right there!

Laurie Robinson: 1:49
Yup! And it became sort of my first career which to the maybe chagrin of my grandparents and parents. So

David Turetsky: 1:57
Not a lawyer, you're not a doctor. You're a yeah. snowboarder?

Laurie Robinson: 1:59
Snowboarder! So yeah. So I, you know, I taught snowboarding and started programs and did all sorts of stuff around North America. And then I came back many years later here and just landed this job in this fabulous company. And I'm really excited about what we do at Burton. And I'm glad to be part of this team.

David Turetsky: 2:21
What a cool company to be a part of where its mission is joy, right? I mean, if you think about Burton, you think going down doing something you love. Right? And, and being able to live your best life, you know, on a mountain, so isn't it amazing? I think I don't know why I'm set trying to sell you on it.

Laurie Robinson: 2:42
I think one of our unofficial slogans is have as much fun as possible. That is definitely what we tell everyone and each other, you know, on a regular basis.

David Turetsky: 2:51
That's awesome. You may know one of the things we have to ask you next, Laurie, is what's one fun thing that no one knows about Laurie Robinson?

Laurie Robinson: 3:01
I know. And I'll tell you what, I tend to overshare and talk a lot.

David Turetsky: 3:06
Hey you're like me!

Laurie Robinson: 3:06
So I feel like there's almost nothing that people don't know about me, at least, you know, some person or another I thought about this so hard. I mean, I guess I could say because it just happened yesterday, I went on this fabulous bike ride with a bunch of really athletic women and I was riding with them. And I was in the back the whole time. And at one point, I started crying because it was so hard. It was so hard! But every time I rolled up to them, I'd be smiling. And I was really feeling the joy. But there was a moment where I sort of my gear got stuck and I was going up the steep hill and I was like just wanted to keep up and a few tears fell.

Dwight Brown: 3:43
Yeah, that's when you know you're getting a good workout. If it makes you cry, you're gonna feel the burn, feel the burn!

David Turetsky: 3:53
Exactly. I was having run 5K's and being in the back of the pack. I understand what you're saying. But I can totally empathize.

Laurie Robinson: 4:02
Luckily, the scenery was beautiful. Vermont is a beautiful place to ride. So

David Turetsky: 4:06
That's awesome. So today, we have a fascinating topic, one that's very close to our hearts. And that's how is Burton implementing or dealing with pay transparency. And so we're gonna get into it. We're going to tear it apart, put it back together again, and talk through it.

Laurie Robinson: 4:25
Awesome. I can't wait.

David Turetsky: 4:35
So, Laurie, where is Burton right now on pay transparency?

Laurie Robinson: 4:41
Well, we've been going through a process over the past, I'd say year and a half since I joined the company, of trying to make sure that we're paying people according to market and just not according to whim. You know, so we're trying to we've been accessing market data. We've been rewriting a job descriptions we've been trying to really align with as much measurable things as we can. And in doing that, we've also started getting questions from employees and also talking to employees about how we do come up with pay. So we've started the conversations, and we've started some beta group testing of like, this is how we do it. And how did people react to what we say? Then with pay transparency laws coming down about job postings, we started to then start to think about how are we going to put this into our postings. We've created pay grades. So we're working on refining those. And we've started using the pay grades and the composites that we build in Salary.com. And the tools that we use in that regard to have conversations with the managers when we have a new job or a new hire. So I'd say we're, we're in the beginning, late beginnings of it, maybe in the middle?

David Turetsky: 5:56
Well, Laurie, let me just ask the really, I guess, what might seem obvious to a lot of other people, which is the what was the impetus for actually doing it? Was it something cultural at Burton? Was it something, you know, responding to the pay transparency regulations that are happening throughout the US? What was it that kind of, like, tipped it off and started it?

Laurie Robinson: 6:18
I think it was more, yeah, cultural and wanting to be able to have reasons for different pay rates. We wanted to bring it, you know, to something measurable versus just very subjective, you know, maybe boys club, bro club thing. And that was way back. Burton's 40 years old! So it's gone, almost 40, so it's gone through a lot of evolution. And snowboarding has evolved as well. And so I think that we just wanted to hone in as we have done in all aspects of our business on ways to be very intentional about how we structure our pay.

David Turetsky: 6:58
You mentioned something really interesting there, you talked about how snowboarding has evolved, right. And if we think about the typical snowboarder, and maybe this is me, just not knowing as much about snowboarding, I'm a hockey player, and we typically don't don't go down the mountain.

Laurie Robinson: 7:13
That's the right season.

David Turetsky: 7:16
Too busy. I'm coaching and playing Yeah, but but you know, typically, and you know, correct me here, but you'd think about Shaun White, or you think about somebody who's an Olympic, maybe I'm wrong about Shaun White, but an Olympic, you know, boarder and, you know, typically you think male, you know, you know, teenager, or young person who's who's male, how has that evolved to become more inclusive? And how has snowboarding transitioned?

Laurie Robinson: 7:43
I mean, that's a great question. And maybe another thing that not many people today might know about me. But when I started snowboarding in 1991, that was it was very male dominated. And I really thought that would be a great way to meet guys, actually.

Dwight Brown: 7:58
Oh the alterior motive!

Laurie Robinson: 8:00
You know, that's what I did. I was like, yeah, this is gonna be a good place.

Dwight Brown: 8:03
Great idea!

Laurie Robinson: 8:04
I also became one of the only female instructors at my ski resort for quite a few years. So it has really evolved. And I think companies like Burton, probably Burton leading the way. We have women athletes, and we've had women athletes since the beginning. And so they've really spoken out as far as the sport, then we came up with a women's line of clothing and the way things fit. Then, I'd say maybe 10 to 15 years ago, Donna Carpenter, who is the wife of the founder, Jake, Jake Carpenter, stepped in to help with the business. And her priorities, were bringing more females into the management levels, and then to focusing more on women in that regard. Now we've transitioned, you know, from men and women to transgender and non binary sort of approaches to things and we have now a line of clothing that is neutral lines. So it's evolved and also in inviting all all people to participate in the sport as far as diversity, and we've got a lot of really great initiatives for that, too. So I think, I hope that we've been leading the charge and all of those ways. That's how I feel anyways, and we're continuously trying to evolve the sport forward.

David Turetsky: 9:18
And so because the sport is evolving, Burton has evolved alongside that, right? You, you look more like the audience or the customer base, right? And so you become as well a lot more integrated. Correct?

Laurie Robinson: 9:32
We're trying! I mean, we're trying to create a diverse customer base, I think we're really leading that charge because all winter sports are still quite white and not so much male dominated, I would say anymore, but certainly that and so we are really, really making efforts and initiatives to change that like proactively and be inviting and make sure that our athletes in our company, and our just everything that we do is inclusive and inviting.

David Turetsky: 10:03
And so that transitions to the now trying to recruit people who are more diverse, and trying to establish communications and connections with them. Now, when it comes to pay transparency, when we do the reach out to them, now we're trying to and I'm coming full circle back to where we started. Now we get to the, you know, how do we invite them in and make sure that we understand, or they understand how we want them to feel as they come in?

Laurie Robinson: 10:32
Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, and we want them sold on that transparency side of things. Again, we want everyone to know that we're, that this is who we are, this is what we do. And this is where you can be if you come to our company as a new employee, as far as pay goes. But this is where you can get to, this is where the whole paygrade can get to. And of course, all of our other communications about who we want. And we ask questions, like, what makes you different? What kind of, what perspective are you going to bring that we've never seen before? And then I, I write some of that stuff as a recruiter too. And I just think I'm just gonna say that, and I want people to bring their full selves to that answer.

David Turetsky: 11:17
And so have you seen a difference in the candidate experience then and how they perceive those changes in the communication?

Laurie Robinson: 11:27
I mean, that would be hard to say, from my perspective, you know, but what I, what I notice, I mean, I just ran an intern program in the fall. And that program, we had nine, nine interns, they were very diverse. And they were actually from across the country as well. And we hired on as a temporary employee, I think three of them. And again, very diverse, we are reaching women, we are reaching LGBTQ community, we are reaching people of color, people with just different life experiences, you know, who had grown up in different different levels of access to sport and winter sport. So I, I can see it sort of happening in those bigger groups of interns. And then on the one by ones, we definitely are looking for different perspectives, and people that can show themselves to the rest of our customers and to the rest of our employees.

David Turetsky: 12:28
Well, that's a good result, because nothing is better than actually seeing people get hired, who are, you know, kind of put the context to the, well we're trying to become more diverse, and then actually getting the results against that. So that's great. Congratulations.

Announcer: 12:46
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David Turetsky: 12:57
So question for you, let's go back to pay transparency for a minute. And you were talking about changing job descriptions. And you're talking about creating grade ranges and updating your salaries and your benchmarking, and then and then creating structures. So tell me about that process. You know, what kind of spurred that? Obviously, it was transparency, but but how did you get started in it? You know, you start with job descriptions, and then go to market pricing, you know, what was the process there?

Laurie Robinson: 13:24
Well, I know that the process was going on before I arrived, and it kind of wasn't moving very quickly. And so the reason that that Burton started on the process is because we had made a commitment to pay. Well, at first, we just wanted to make sure we were paying to the minimum of any job description or job composite. So as we did that, we realized that every year that minimum was bouncing around, you know, up and down. So we call it chasing the tail. And we were we just wanted to put the jobs into bigger buckets, so that they there'd be more stability of how we had to address mid, Low, Mid or Max, because we're also our philosophy is to pay more to the, to the midpoint of pay grades, right and be more be competitive and pay for great talent. So that's where I stepped in was okay, we're kind of at this point where we need to really get into the pay grade part of the assignment. And so that's where I said, well, first, let's look at all the job descriptions. So we involved all the managers, and everybody just reviewed the job descriptions upon which we were basing our composites because we want to make sure we were doing the right, the right composite with the data from all the surveys and from the jobs and things like that. And so as the managers revisited their job descriptions, the business partner group here, then looked at the composites and also at the age of the surveys and things like that. So we got all of that done. And then once we felt confident enough that everything was up to date, then we use the tool in Salary.com to create structures, and we just played with models. And we figured out how to do that. And the structure, we came up with a 13 level structure because Burton has a superstition with the number 13, a really positive one. I mean, we're even located off of Exit 13 on the highway here in Vermont. And yeah, it's been a number with us forever, forever. Even the B a long time ago looks like a 13.

Dwight Brown: 15:25
Oh I like the 13. Yeah.

Laurie Robinson: 15:27
So we said we're gonna do 13 and we call it PG 13. We make a little kind of fun with that. And yeah, so that's, that's kind of where we are where we came to, most recently.

David Turetsky: 15:39
And so the next question is, how do you keep this all current? Because obviously, one of the things that we do is we invest a lot of time in setting it all up. But then how do you make sure that this is where it needs to be for the future?

Laurie Robinson: 15:55
That's a great question. And that is what we're currently working on now. So we were really, you know, I came into it not knowing as much about compensation as I do now, a year and a half later, or pay grades. And so we set it all up, we set it up according to data that was from, let's say, 2021. And also we we just use the algorithm to match the wages, not as much, exactly the specific jobs, although they do kind of organically settle out into different levels. So now as we speak, actually, and we're entering our merit process right now. Now, the business partners, and I are looking specifically at the groupings of jobs, well, we already updated our data. So you can choose to update your actual pay grades, you know, every couple of years, or you can age them at the percentage that you're aging or whatever. So. So we're like, okay, let's, we updated all the data for 2023 in April, and then we now are looking at the job groups that they're kind of hanging out with the similar jobs in their grades, then we're going to review the grades that we currently have versus the way the algorithm set up the new grades. And we're going to just tweak it if we need to. And we hope with that, because we didn't do that as thoroughly right at the beginning, like all of us were new at this whole pay grade thing. So we were and we had a consultant helping us for sure. But now we're like, okay, we get it. And we also get that when we explain it to people, we want it to make sense, we want for them to understand why their jobs are in certain groups, and where they can move, you know, across the grade, if they would like more experience in different areas, or just even how their pay can increase, or how they can also look to increase to move up vertically as their career progresses.

Dwight Brown: 17:48
And you bring up a good point that we see a lot of organizations go through with pay transparency, and that is that is that the it's a learning process for you as the keepers of pay. Oftentimes. Sometimes you'll have a comp department who has somebody who's got very deep comp experience and can understand it and explain it. But it sounds to me like the experience that you had, and as with many companies we talked to, is first you had to understand what went into it before you could communicate that but at least you had that vision that we want to get there. We want to be able to communicate it. We want people to understand this. But you had to allow yourself to go through the learning process with it.

Laurie Robinson: 18:32
Exactly, exactly. We definitely involve a consultant who was a compensation expert. But we want to be able to do a lot of this on our own once we've gotten going and exactly that. The business partners had to be able to really understand why we were doing this, what pay grade was, how it's related to all the other parts. Like I mentioned earlier, we did a beta sort of conversation with about 10 employees in a particular affinity group that we have. And we did it, we gave the information but the business partners feedback actually was they didn't quite understand it fully enough. And so when they're getting questions, they were like, trying to figure out how to answer it. So now you know, fast forward six to eight months later. Now that we know what we need to know. And we know what we want to explain to others so that we can kind of get ahead of the questions almost.

Dwight Brown: 19:29
Yeah.

David Turetsky: 19:31
That's definitely one of the learning curve pieces. It's not just about the employees learning about how this all fits together. But it's how we talk about it because in compensation, and I've been doing comp for a very long time. We tend to use big flowery language that we've grown up with. Like midpoint progression, and spreads and you know, structure movement and things like that and it does not translate well outside of compensation.

Dwight Brown: 20:01
Even Google Translate can't do it.

Laurie Robinson: 20:04
That's right.

David Turetsky: 20:05
Google Translate does not have a good filter for this. And so what we tend to find as we start those initial conversations with those stakeholders, they look at us with those blank faces. And we realize we have to change what we're doing. And I think one of the beauties of pay transparency is it's creating a lens where employees and other stakeholders are getting smarter about pay, and how pay gets set up. And we're getting more attuned to what are the better ways of communicating it? Because the ways we currently do don't make any sense at all.

Laurie Robinson: 20:39
I mean, that I would agree with that.

David Turetsky: 20:41
So Laurie, you mentioned that everybody learned along the way, were there any really interesting learnings that came out of that in the original conversation with that resource group?

Laurie Robinson: 20:50
I think some of the great learnings were once we were able to explain to them how we come up with this using Salary.com's data and surveys and explain a little bit about where those surveys come from, a lot of our employees then that were in the group said that they felt like they were paid fairly. And that was one of our goals is to ask that question and to be able to have that answer. So they understood it more. I think, on the business partner side, what we started to learn and understand, which now we're working on more, is that there can be ranges, you know, the pay grades that we have overlap a little bit, and thinking about progression of the employee, you know, and the job that we're benchmarking. So the job is what we base our wages on, not the employee. And that was also a actually a big learning. Previously, it would be, here's John Smith, we want him or he does a great job or whatever, whatever. So we need to pay him a certain amount. So they'd be kind of moving around in those composites and grabbing data that was about the person and not about the job. So for us, a huge, like thing was that we're doing it on the job, once we have a job description, and the composite, figured out with this job with the years of experience, with education with the skills that we take the people that are either currently in the job, or that we're hiring. And then if they're outliers in that, that's another learning we had is okay, well, why are they outliers? And do we need to adjust something else? Or is that just the way it is right now?

David Turetsky: 22:32
Right. And I think everything you just talked about is one of those really wonderful, interesting, cool things that we do as we're doing the compensation planning. And we realize that, you know, when we're finally doing pay analyses that makes sense, we start to look at those cases, and then we highlight them, and then they're always going to stay on our radar now. And so we can, as the market moves, as things change, we're going to come back to them and go, hey, you know, let's look at John Smith, you know, because maybe the markets moved significantly. And now instead of giving him lump sums, we can give him a regular merit increase.

Laurie Robinson: 23:07
Yeah. And that's what we're learning. Actually, David, that's another thing we're learning is that the market does change with certain categories or certain regions. I mean, we tend to use national data, like aggregated across the nation, but we have our retail shops in New York City, and Santa Monica, Boston, you know, in all the major cities, so then we have to look a little bit closer at those employees and their locations, because they have to live there, and figure out what those are too, so yeah, things change. And that's what we're trying to plan ahead for is like, Okay, once we set this, what we feel is gonna be like, a really strong paygrade. Now that we know, all this other stuff that we've just learned, but how do we make sure that we can move that forward over the next five years or so, like without having to do any other drastic changes. So what do we what do we use for all those terms? Like you said, the spreads and the percentages? How do we make that make sense so that we can explain it to people and especially business

David Turetsky: 24:10
Well, and I think now that you've partners? established a baseline, one of the things that you have to do is be very mindful of if we do make drastic changes. How are we going to now tell people? What is going to be the way in which we describe this, because you just told them about how things were a year ago. Now you're gonna come back to them and say, oh, yeah, okay, well, the markets were wrong, right? They're gonna be like, yeah, something is a smell right here. Hey, are you listening to this and thinking to yourself, Man, I wish I could talk to David about this. Well, you're in luck. We have a special offer for listeners of the HR Data Labs podcast, a free half hour call with me about any of the topics we cover, on the podcast or whatever is on your mind. Go to Salary.com/HRDLconsulting, to schedule your FREE 30 minute call today. That gets into the next question, which is how can you keep your stakeholders informed? How have you started to do that planning have all the different stakeholders, the managers, the candidates, the employees? How are you going to keep them up to speed on how things are going?

Laurie Robinson: 25:25
That's a good question, too. And that is, again, where we're actually at right now. I appreciate the fact that you're saying, you know, we don't want to do some hard left, after we've told them, this is how we're doing it. And that in a way is, we haven't unveiled like, the exact pay grade concept or anything as much as I wanted to way back when we said that, like, let's make a big presentation and tell people how exciting this is. And everyone was putting on the brakes for me on that one. But now I can see that it was that that was good. And what we're going to be able to do is explain, what I wanted to do is explain why we came up with the the formula of the structure. So that'll be one thing like explaining why certain grades progress quicker than others and really educate the managers and the employees to a certain level, like, this is how it set up. So that when something does change, or a job becomes a little bit hotter, or we have to kind of shift everything up X percentage, we would just want it to have the same structure. And I don't know, I mean, because again, I'm still like an intermediate at this thing. So I'm sure I'll learn more. But this is my our vision and our hope. And then we're gonna start unveiling it a through posting it in, in job postings. Like that's, that's kind of what we're aiming for by August or September, when we do our seasonal hiring is we're going to be able to post ranges, and pay grades for these seasonal roles, these frontline roles, entry level roles. And then as everybody starts to see that, there's going to start to be, you know, maybe individual questions or manager questions. And we're going to be able to give some educational sessions, you know, like, we do these big zoom calls, from all departments, like if you want to learn about marketing, or you want to learn about mission. So one of them will be that if you want to learn about pay grades, join this call, and we'll give you the down and dirty, simple.

David Turetsky: 27:26
Laurie, I'll bet you right now, I think FanDuel is already putting odds that this will be the most populous call when you do the how do you interpret pay?

Dwight Brown: 27:36
Yeah.

Laurie Robinson: 27:37
I think you're right and we're nervous about that. Like, I mean, I don't I'm not as nervous. Maybe I should be more, but that certainly the sentiment of our department is like, oh, no, what's gonna happen? I don't know.

Dwight Brown: 27:50
But you think of the advantage that it gives you, you know, and I in your shoes, I'd be nervous too. But at the same time, the questions that will come up will help you to continue to refine your understanding of it, and maybe make changes to what you have. And so it's it yeah, I totally understand that discomfort at the same time, it is all part of that progression to as this matures in the company.

Laurie Robinson: 28:18
Yeah, that's true. Thank you for that. And also, we just, if we don't know, something, we just say that, you know, or if it's something that we're looking into. I think our hope is just letting people know that we're that we want to explain it, you know, and that we're okay with questions. But also we have this level of, you know, structure, that that's the way it is. And yeah, so I think it'll be fun in a sort of stressful way.

David Turetsky: 28:44
At least you know though, most companies that are that have not talked about pay in the past are going through the exact same thing right now. I think a lot of listeners are gonna say, Yeah, David, that's kind of stating the obvious, but they're probably as nervous as you are. Because opening up pay and opening up the conversations around compensation get rather difficult, especially given the fact you're going to now find compression issues, maybe some equity issues that might be uncovered?

Dwight Brown: 29:14
Right.

David Turetsky: 29:15
And, and my advice to you, as well as many

Laurie Robinson: 29:16
I love that! other companies that we've spoken to about pay equity is

David Turetsky: 29:19
The rush that you get from then hearing the that, you know, that first like, like, that first weight on the mature conversations and mature questions coming back from your front foot going down the mountain, right? Yeah, it's exhilarating. It's scary, but it's exhilarating. And then employees. And I'm basically, you know, this to you people at don't be afraid of it. Because if you're afraid you're never

Laurie Robinson: 29:33
And you would almost hope to, in a way? gonna go down the mountain. Okay, my my now the analogies Burton, trust your employees that they're going to come back are gone. with great mature questions, not about themselves, potentially, but about how everything works. Because going from a box to one that becomes open, you're gonna get questions, you have to, right?

David Turetsky: 30:13
Well, yeah, I mean, the worst thing would be if nobody asks a question and you're like, wait, what did we do wrong? Right?

Laurie Robinson: 30:23
A little pro tip on snowboarding, David, since used that analogy, when you put your weight forward, that's when you're in the most control.

David Turetsky: 30:31
Oh really? Cause that's when I usually fall on my face.

Laurie Robinson: 30:34
Scary, like you said, scary. You don't dare do it because it doesn't make sense that it actually would make you more in control. But once you have come over that little that little hump, or that, that thing, just like this conversation with pay transparency, I think the hardest part is that first step, because we're not, we don't really know, we don't know what that's gonna feel like yet. But as you said, once we take that first step, and when we lean into it, lean downhill, if you will,

David Turetsky: 31:02
There you go!

Laurie Robinson: 31:03
then we'll, we'll see that it's going to flow.

David Turetsky: 31:06
There you go. That's a beautiful way to end. But before we do, I wanted to ask, do you have two or three things like bits of advice to give other people who are going to be going through the the openness or the attempted openness on pay? Is there any is there any advice you could give them?

Laurie Robinson: 31:33
Well, I mean, setting it up ahead of time would be step one. And that might sound obvious. But the real, like we did so much work over the past year and a half of coming up with the job descriptions and composites, we learned a lot from our Salary.com consultant, as well as our own consultant. So like doing that initial groundwork, and maybe not trying to rush it too much, unless there's some reason that you have to. So really being as thorough as you can, that would be my first one. My second one would be, then when you start to do it, you know, try these conversations in smaller settings, maybe? Like we did with our focus group, involve, you know, our VP, our Senior VP of people and culture was right there with us and leading it, in fact, and not not afraid to have those questions, like you just said that, that maybe we weren't ready to answer yet. Because then we learned some questions that we needed to figure out. That'd be my second one. And I think my third one is more what you just said is like, gotta then take that step, that first step into it, and not be afraid. And I liked what you said, to trust your employees to actually respond intelligently and with mature questions, and with curious questions. So trust them, that they're going to respond positively, but maybe, curiously, and then build on that. You know, give them credit.

David Turetsky: 33:03
All great advice. And I think it's a perfect way to end. Laurie, thank you so much. You're awesome.

Dwight Brown: 33:09
Thank you very much,

Laurie Robinson: 33:11
Thank you guys. Dwight and David, that was fun, really fun. I love talking about this.

David Turetsky: 33:15
Our pleasure. And good luck with Burton. And good luck with your merit increase process. And sure, it'll be fun. You know, hopefully, at some point in the future, what we'd love to have you back on is to see how things have gone. And any learnings that you can come up with maybe six or eight months later, that, you know, could also impart wisdom, because as you know, many other states are actually introducing pay transparency legislation on top of their pay equity legislation so that this is still an evolving topic.

Laurie Robinson: 33:45
Absolutely. That would be a perfect timing, because by then we will have done all the things and then be responding to our intelligent employee questions.

David Turetsky: 33:54
All right. Well, thank you again, Laurie. Thank you, Dwight.

Dwight Brown: 33:56
Thank you. Thanks for being with us today. Laurie, this has been fascinating.

Laurie Robinson: 33:59
I appreciate it.

David Turetsky: 34:01
And thank you all for listening. Take care and stay safe.

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