Total Rewards Trends Your Nonprofit Should Focus On

Download the full PDF here.

Atokatha Ashmond Brew: Hello, and welcome! 

Thank you for joining us this afternoon for Nonprofit HR’s Virtual Learning Education Event. Today’s session is entitled Total Rewards Trends Your Nonprofit Should Focus On. My name is Atokatha Ashmond Brew and I’m Managing Director for Marketing and Strategic Communication at Nonprofit HR. I will be your conversation moderator for today. 

We have a lot of great content to cover. You’re going to walk away with a solid understanding of today’s total rewards trends specific to nonprofits and a few of tomorrow’s trends, as well. You will have the opportunity to submit text questions to today’s presenters. We will collect these and address them during the Q&A session and at the end of today’s presentation. As a live webinar attendee, you will also receive codes for SHRM and HRCI recertification.  

Just a brief note about Nonprofit HR. Since 2000, Nonprofit HR remains the country’s leading and oldest firm focused exclusively on the talent management needs of the social sector, including nonprofits, associations, social enterprises and other mission-driven organizations. 

We focus our consulting efforts on the following practice areas: Strategy & Advisory, HR Outsourcing, Total Rewards, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion and Search. We were founded with one goal in mind: to strengthen the social impact sector’s talent management capacity by strengthening its people. Today’s conversation panel is chock-full of total rewards subject matter experts and highly experienced consultants. And now, I would like to share a little about our panelists. 

Lisa McKeown is Managing Director of Nonprofit HR’s Total Rewards practice. Lisa offers clients more than 25 years of experience in global benefits, compensation and HRIS with unique expertise in global compensation strategy, program design and operations. Throughout her career, Lisa has held several prominent roles within well-known brands. She held multiple roles with Pathfinder International for nearly 10 years, culminating in the role as Director of Total Rewards and HRIS, through which she paved the way for the company’s first global total rewards structure. Lisa has also held roles with Staples, Inc, TRW, Inc, and other mission-driven organizations. 

Our second panelist is Eric Salyers, Senior Consultant for Total Rewards. Eric provides advanced subject matter expertise, advice, insight and strategic-level guidance to our clients for the full suite of employee benefits plans. Eric is a highly skilled thought partner in auditing benefits plan to ensure compliance. You may find links in the comments section to Eric’s recently published blogs on the Nonprofit HR website. 

Next, we have Stuart Wales, Consultant for Total Rewards. Stuart is an HR technology advocate working with clients to leverage solutions that align not only with their current needs, but also their strategic needs for the future. Stuart works with clients to streamline and adapt existing processes and HR programs from a technology lens to transform HR into a strategic partner with the organization and improve mission outcomes. You may also find links in the comments section to recent blogs published by Stuart. 

And, last, but certainly not least, we have Tina Twyman, Consultant for Total Rewards. Tina has over 15 years of human resources experience in a variety of organizations, including nonprofits, higher education institutions, financial services and technology firms, and other industry sectors. Tina is a strategic partner who advises senior leaders and executives on compensation, job organization restructuring and organizational development. 

You will have an opportunity to ask questions throughout the webinar and during a formal Q&A session at the end of the webinar. 

Lisa, I’d like to turn the conversation over to you to share any opening remarks about today’s discussion and to share any information about the work you and your team are doing through Nonprofit HR’s Total Rewards practice. 

Lisa McKeown: Thank you, Atokatha. It’s good to be with everybody today, and it’s good to be with the Total Rewards team as well. The Total Rewards practice area encompasses three major areas of work: benefits, compensation and HR technology. And we’ll be discussing different themes today related to those three areas of our work. We partner with mission-driven organizations in creating benefit programs that meet the needs of their staff by assessing and recommending ways to remain competitive in their programs and add additional perks and rewards and recognition programs. We also work with a lot of our clients in ensuring that they’re meeting their compliance needs, of which there are a lot around benefits, as well as guiding them through selecting benefit brokers, retirement plan advisors and other types of benefits vendors. 

Our work around compensation really evolves from job descriptions to creating your compensation structures, to helping to analyze your roles, to thinking through policies and practices around your pay programs and to help your organization decided the best way to communicate about compensation to your people. 

And then, lastly, we guide clients through the many HR systems which enable efficient processes and procedures that are vital in all of the talent management initiatives, such as recruitment, onboarding, performance management, compensation, learning and development, open enrollment and so many others. We really give a firsthand understanding of how we develop communication programs to align with your organization’s mission, culture and values.  

When we were preparing for this discussion today, Atokatha, we really thought about what some of the themes are that have been occurring over the last year that really have impacted where total rewards is advancing.  

The first area is diversity, equity and inclusion. Throughout all the talent management initiatives, it is infused through technology, benefits and compensation. The second theme that we’ll talk about today, and its impact on total rewards, is the global pandemic. It has impacted beyond ways that we could have even imagined through benefits and how we manage benefit plans; compensation, how compensation has impacted where staff are now working, from home or diverse populations; and the, how you manage the influence or impact on your total reward systems and your HR technology system to support these changes. And then, lastly, we’ve seen some changes that have been driven by employers themselves, so we’ll talk through a variety of different areas and how these themes have impacted. 

Atokatha Ashmond Brew: Great. Thank you so much for helping the audience understand, Lisa, what the various themes are for today. As you mentioned, equity is that first theme. And Stuart, I have a question for you to kick off the conversation. How should DEI factor into your HR technology implementation and usage? 

Stuart Wales: Sure. Thanks, Atokatha. I think the first factor that I would want to talk about with in terms of DEI and technology is really accessibility. 

We have our traditional disability accommodation, not just for compliance, but for doing the right thing for those who are disabled and making sure that they can work with technology. But also, we want to talk about physical access and moving outside of those traditional accommodations.  

I had a client, for example, that had field staff, and in looking at implementing new technology, particularly around timekeeping, those field staff couldn’t use a mobile device because they just didn’t have wi-fi or good cellular reception from where they were working. A lot of those staff in lower paying jobs were from communities of color, and we wanted to make sure that they had a positive experience with the technology as well. So, we had to be thoughtful in making sure that they were able to do their jobs with the technology that we put in place, and not have that technology be any less effective for them as it would be for your traditional office staff. 

Outside of that, looking at the platform itself, and for those organizations that are multilingual, having a platform that does support languages other than English, so that you can cater to those communities where English may not be their first language, and they’re more comfortable with Spanish or whatever else is relevant to that community. So, I think in terms of accessibility, those three wrap up that first factor of what I would recommend for our clients to look for in factoring in DEI. 

I think another major area that we need to consider is data capture. And it’s important for us to be able to not just visually look around and see how diverse we are, but also have metrics around how diverse we are so that we can make those data-driven recommendations and ultimately, solutions that will be effective for the organization.  

If you don’t even have a baseline of where you are, you’re not really going to be able to tell the story of how far you have come as an organization. So, you really need to look at your processes and look at those different points of entry for data capture. Whether it’s during the recruiting process, when you’re onboarding employees or, even if you’re going back after the fact with folks that have been in your organization for a while to make sure that the data is current. That would be the second factor.  

Beyond that, it’s making sure that you’re implementing and finding tools to help listen, engage and act on these different initiatives. And then, certainly, we have surveys that we can put in place and things like Slack or Microsoft Teams that we can use to help us engage. But, it’s about moving beyond those things and helping us to act on them and communicating what we have done, so that it’s not just us saying, “Oh, it’s nice to get your feedback,” but rather, “We are actually doing something about it. Here’s what we’ve done and here’s how we are improving our DEI initiatives, our culture and why this is important to us.” 

Atokatha Ashmond Brew: Great. Thank you so much, Stuart. 

And, I was wondering if there was anybody else who wanted to chime in on what Stuart had to share or even focus on a different aspect of equity? 

Eric Salyers: Sure, I can start talking about health equity and why there’s such a focus on this critical issue. 

Stuart started talking about how different things lead us to the spot where we start considering equity in our HR technology. Then, I’m going to talk about how we do the same, like in our health plan design. Diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, those were already out there and, and steadily growing. I do think that the events of the last summer and just the national consciousness of organizations wanting to demonstrate the value of being equitable to staff really took hold. And we, here at Nonprofit HR, saw quite a bit of organizations responding to that, and there’s quite a bit of tentacles that have come out and enriched a lot of different areas within HR administration. 

So, from a benefits perspective, when we’re talking about health equity or ensuring that you have equity within your health plan design, we’re talking about how easy it is for all the members of your workforce that are covered under your health plan to access those benefits. Let’s talk about how we got into that spot. If you have any hand in doing benefits administration at your organization, you are aware of that year over year, healthcare costs continue to climb; that never goes backwards, it never recedes, it just always costs more each year for these services that we need. Then, you’re looking at your renewal, your broker or strategic partner there that is working with you and your insurance carrier comes back with the renewal, and then, we’re always hoping for that best worst-case scenario. It’s at that time that organizations try to decide, do we absorb the costs ourselves? Do we pass some of that along to employees? And it’s always a very involved conversation and decision, and sometimes the broker can be really helpful into some negotiation that gets you on the spot. But ultimately what happens, and we see it time and time again, there are strings that you start to pull and levers to offset some of that cost. You might make your co-insurance where the employee has to pay a little bit more out of pocket before the plan pays. You might change out of pocket maximum. You might change deductibles. Basically, the plan starts to get restructured in such a way that the employee has more skin in the game, which decreases the premium. Then, it becomes an indirect way to sort of deal with that problem that we just talked about—do we absorb the cost? We don’t have the budget. Or do we pass that along to employees, which is not favorable?  

Health equity is exciting because it’s catching. It’s definitely a trend and it’s catching hold. We’re seeing organizations talk about it more and we’re trying to help bring awareness to the fact that, yes, those practices that we’ve done for years now have accumulated to the point where if you’re in a high deductible plan only, and some of your staff just don’t have that amount of savings to even do some of these services, then they’re putting off care. And we know that putting off care can lead to your plan incurring a much larger cost later down the line, when that employee ends up in the ER because they didn’t do some of these maintenance tasks earlier down the line. 

Some of the things that organizations can do to address health inequity in their plans is to take a look at it. Take a look at your plan, look for spots where you have made some of those changes in past years to offset costs and consider some different methods to provide some more first-dollar coverage in your plan. You can do that by implementing a health reimbursement accounts arrangements, where in the employer puts aside a pot of money, basically, that employees can draw from, and then that helps with those higher deductible plans that you might have in place.  

I also want to go ahead and mention that Nonprofit HR is doing quite a bit of work in this area. We actually partnered with an organization, Nonstop Wellness, and our two companies have created this executive guide that has a really awesome checklist in it. It can really help stakeholders such as yourselves, if you’re involved in benefits administration, to really start to wrap your head around what we’re talking about here. We go into detail and it expands on what I’m saying here now, but it also gives you a brief checklist that allows you to start taking a look at these things. And we know you can’t go from 0 to 60 overnight, but maybe you can work with your broker and implement one or two of these things, and get yourself on a track where you’re making your health plan more equitable. 

Atokatha Ashmond Brew: Well, thank you so much, Eric, for that. And for those who are interested in learning more about that Health Equity Executive Guide that Eric mentioned, you can find that at nonprofithr.com/healthequity. We will also share that link in the chat on this webinar.  

I’d like to move over to you, Lisa, and to ask you a question regarding pay equity and pay transparency—really around who’s driving the demand on these issues. 

Lisa McKeown: Yeah, thank you, Atokatha.  

We have seen that demand coming really from both the employee side and the employer side, but also just what’s going on in our external world today. Equity around pay and transparency around pay, they’re two separate things, really. 

Equity is about, can an organization answer the question that my staff do understand how we make salary decisions and it is fair and it is transparent and it is equitable? And also, do we make decisions, maybe as a leadership team or as an HR department or as one person in HR, that are based on facts? Such as, do you have job descriptions that really define your roles? And a lot of organizations are coming to Nonprofit HR and really with all of the different partners that we work with and those colleagues that we stay in touch with as we work in this in this space. A lot of organizations are hearing from their employees that pay equity is causing mistrust, it’s causing staff to leave or to not understand how they make the salary that they make, and is it based on what’s competitive in the market? Is it based on the level of my role? What are some of the things that my organization is doing to really make sure that my salary is not only equitable externally, but also, internally equitable to the staff around me, that have similar level jobs? Also, we’re hearing a lot from clients that employees are advocating for each other. This is something that we see a lot, and we have DEI committees that specifically have a focus that are on salary decisions and how pay equity is ensured throughout the organization.  

So, there are a lot of different factors that are coming into play that are pushing this demand for pay equity and also, pay transparency. One of the largest trends that we’re seeing, and with a lot of our nonprofit partners that we work with, and we also encourage as best practice as well, is many organizations when they post jobs that they have open, they are posting a salary range on that posting. And it’s creating an understanding for the person that could be looking externally to join your organization. It really sends a statement that you are committed to pay transparency and pay equity because you are putting those ranges out there in public for everybody to see. But you’re also making a commitment internally to your staff that you’re going to consider pay equity as part of your decisions. When it comes to pay transparency, what are you providing to your staff? 

Many organizations are at the minimum providing their compensation structures and where the jobs fall within each of those structures, and they’re really paying close attention to job descriptions. Are they well written? Do they define the roles well? Can employees use those job descriptions and look at other job descriptions within the organization to help determine their career path and their development goals within the organization? 

There are lots of drivers and lots of concern, lots of mission-driven organizations are very concerned about pay equity and equity as a whole because it is core to their mission and their value statements. So, they are definitely doing a lot of work in this area, similar to the work that Eric described in health equity. 

Atokatha Ashmond Brew: Great, thank you so much for that, Lisa, and a follow up question for you especially regarding compensation is, do you recommend sharing salaries and job postings? 

Lisa McKeown: Yes, absolutely. 

We have clients that do that already and for a lot of the partners and the colleagues that I work with in the space that I connect with all the time, most organizations are doing this, and we absolutely recommend posting job salaries. It doesn’t mean you have to post the full breadth of your range, the minimum to the maximum. It’s really being mindful of, what is the job that’s being posted and what is the hiring range for the role? Because generally, when you post a certain position, you’re looking for a certain level of experience for that role.  

So, it’s really just thinking through mindfully before you post that range: What is the salary range you’re willing to pay for this role? And then, posting that and enabling folks who are looking in to see that. Because asking folks what they currently make when they’re applying for roles within your organization is a practice that really has gone to the wayside. Even many states have laws now around not being able to ask what your salary is and the impetus for that is to create equity, so that if you’re coming from a position where you’re making less than you should, based on your gender or your race or your ethnicity, it’s trying to course correct some of that. So, yes, absolutely. We encourage all of our organizations that we work with to post ranges on their job postings. 

Atokatha Ashmond Brew: OkayOK, and we do have another question regarding best practices for gender wage gap. What are some guidelines to exterminate, or to determine? 

Lisa McKeown: I think there are a couple of things that an organization can do, but there are some foundational things before. A lot of it is getting your compensation house in order. Really, it’s making sure that you’ve got job descriptions in place, like I mentioned, that really reasonably describe the roles; that you’re looking at market data at least minimally every three years to make sure that your salaries are competitive to the market; that you have some pay practices in place around how you consider a new, higher salary. What are the ways that you determine that? What if you have a promotion that’s internal, how are you looking at the salaries around that particular individual, either being promoted to a department, a similar level role, working on your particular manager, et cetera? There are lots of ways that organizations can look at data to really ensure that they’re making equitable decisions around pay, that’s just some of the few.  

There are a lot of other suggestions. When we help organizations look at their pay equity data, these are some of the things that we look at to ensure that they’re making good equitable decisions. 

Atokatha Ashmond Brew: OkayOK, we’ve got several questions, Lisa, that are coming in regarding compensation, but we can save some of those for later if you’d like to move on to our second theme. Great, so our second theme is pandemic impact. And Stuart, you’re up first for this question and it is, how has work from home or hybrid work styles impacted HCMS? 

Stuart Wales: Yeah, thanks for that. Really, it’s created a reprioritization of your HR tech stack. 

I think more broadly, it’s prioritized technology usage within organizations as a whole. And it’s been a, what I would call, perfect exercise in business contingency planning because this is one of those disasters you weren’t planning for and it happened and how do you deal with it? 

And for those organizations that really didn’t put a focus on their HR technology, they were forced to scramble or didn’t have a plan in place to do it. They were forced to scramble. So, it created a need to make a critical assessment of your capabilities as an HR function and using technology to facilitate everything that you’re doing. You’re trying to update out of date functionality, trying to even make more use of everything that you’ve purchased, just to be able to facilitate meeting the employee where they are now, which is not in the office. 

At a minimum, it was a nearly overnight transition from, what I would arguably say were, unsustainable practice of paper-based transactions to really technology-driven solutions. It’s amazing how many clients we have that still operate in, we’ll say, an analog world. They focus on just the transactional aspects of HR, when there is so much technology out there available to really accommodate those transactions, so that you can move to being a more service delivery type function. 

We shouldn’t be spending that much time running down pieces of paper to make sure that open enrollment, for example, is complete and that we have everybody’s data that we need to make sure that they still have benefits for the upcoming plan year. And so, in that respect, certainly we’ve seen an increase in use in employee self-service and relying on employees to really manage their own data and to go into these systems to get the information that they need when they need it and not relying on us as HR practitioners to respond to their inquiries at some point in the future. But again, they can go in and make those updates themselves. 

Atokatha Ashmond Brew: Great. Thank you so much, Stuart, for that. And Eric, I have a question for you regarding the pandemic and how it is influenced medical and mental health services and how those services are being provided. 

Eric Salyers: Sure, thank you. So, if you think about the pandemic here, we’ve been in it for a year plus now. But, if you think back to how we felt last March and April, just sitting around and not really quite sure how long this thing was going to go on. We saw the news articles coming in all the time, and if you think about the fact that, as a whole, in our country, so many of us were thinking about healthcare and access to healthcare at the same time, which is not normally the case. There was suddenly a big focus on, do I have the ability to access a doctor if I need to ask questions, or seek reassurance about what was going on at the time? 

The flip side of that was, we were all on lockdown, and we couldn’t get outside. So, these services that we call a telehealth or Teladoc, different insurance carriers have different names, but it’s basically going off the coattails of what Stuart was just saying. Our technology has really helped us be able to access some of these different services in our world in such a different way. Telehealth and Teladoc services, those really became more prevalent. We had several clients, in fact, if you were on a fully insured medical plan, which quite a bit of our nonprofit clients are, then those insurance companies were pretty much rolling those out already. And then, I know we had some larger nonprofits that had some self-insured medical plans and then, those insurance companies through their administrative services platform were making those recommendations down to our clients to incorporate some of that, which they did.  

And if you’ve not used the service, you don’t quite know what we’re talking about here. It’s a whole lot like doing FaceTime on the phones or like what we’re doing now. We’re doing something virtually right now. It’s a very similar method, so that has expanded beyond what was in place prior to the pandemic. Telehealth has been around now—I can’t remember quite when I first saw it in some of the plans I was administering—but it’s definitely been around five plus years in its most generic, broad sense.  

I was just on my own personal platform the other night, which is a CareFirst plan, and I noted that they even have access to psychiatry service, which I found pretty interesting. I was wowed by that because one, psychiatric services typically are hard to find. It’s hard to find a participating provider in your medical plan to begin with. That entire subsection of the medical specialties, they’re not a big fan of insurance. Some plans don’t cover that already, so some of them just have pulled out of that and don’t even really like to play in that arena to begin with. Sometimes, you have to pay those types of services out of pocket. So, for me to have seen that, I was like, “Wow, that’s pretty cool.” There are actually five or six different types of specialists that were on my platform there to be able to access and do those things virtually. 

I think the pandemic definitely had a huge influence on that. Mental health services are so desperately needed and continue to be. That’s something that we’re still going to have a need well beyond right now. We’re hearing that this could still be another year before life is 100% back to the way it was, so technology really has helped us out there. 

Atokatha Ashmond Brew: Great, thank you so much for that, Eric, and we’ve got questions just flying in regarding what you were just talking about. I’ll save some of those because I do want to get to Tina, I have a question for her. Before moving onto Tina, I wanted to know from you, Stuart or Lisa, did you have anything that you wanted to add to what Eric just shared? 

Lisa McKeown: Go ahead, Stuart.  

Stuart Wales: I was just going to add that I think, as Eric was saying, technology has certainly helped us in this arena. I think we’re going to see more in the way of implementation and just creation of technology around well-being, around employee health. 

There was a report I was reading the other day at work from Oracle, and it was saying that about two-thirds of employees prefer to talk to a robot as opposed to their own manager about their level of stress at work. And an additional, I think it was, 80% said that they would feel comfortable having that as an arrangement to talk about their mental health. So, I think it sounds a little bit impersonalized, impersonal, but certainly in terms of the future, we’ll begin to see more of that and more incorporation of that, even if that’s just through EAP service providers. That will become a stronger offering moving forward into the future. 

Atokatha Ashmond Brew: Great. Thank you so much for that, Stuart, and very funny story there. I know it’s not very funny, but it’s quite comical just to consider. 

Tina, how has the pandemic, both at the height of it and now as we recover, impacted organizations and their management of staff salaries? 

Tina Twyman: Thank you. Many organizations chose to freeze their salaries. Some deferred their pay practices or pay increases until they had a better idea of what was going on with the pandemic. Or they applied for the Payroll Protection Program and then followed that application and process. Some chose to administer lump sum payments instead of their traditional merit and COLAs (cost-of-living adjustment). And some decided to move forward, but very conservatively and gave out merit or COLA increases. 

Now that they’re recovering, and depending on the industry, obviously, some are recovering faster than others, they really are starting to think about their workforce planning and recruiting and retention. And so, they are really looking at their budgets and coming up with ways to move forward with giving out those pay increases. And they’re still keeping in mind the same type of practices that I mentioned before. Some are a bit more aggressive and really thinking through maybe doing a partial or something conservative with their COLAs and merits and combinations of bonuses and so forth. So, they’re really thinking about retaining their employees and as the economy, and we, continues to recover, really recruiting and using their pay practices during a transition before they go back to, if they ever do go back to, how it was done before. 

Atokatha Ashmond Brew: All right, thank you so much for that, Tina. Do you all want to stop and take a few more questions? We’ve got them rolling in here. 

Lisa McKeown: Yeah.  

Atokatha Ashmond Brew: Great, so here’s the first one. 

How do we expand the non-salary rewards and comp for staff to promote longevity, to reward performance and remain competitive? 

Lisa McKeown: So, more around rewards and recognitions or perhaps benefit programs to help retain and recruit? 

I know Eric has got some great suggestions around benefit programs, but I do know that some organizations are coming, as Tina had mentioned, off a pandemic, and a lot of organizations had funding sources that became unavailable to them. So, many organizations are looking towards paid-time-off programs and lead programs, more flexible work schedules allowing employees to continue to work from home or having some sort of a hybrid model. 

So, I think now that employees have actually been working from home, oftentimes, it’s been very successful for organizations, for nonprofit organizations that we have worked with. I think definitely flexible work schedules or things like spot bonuses, where leaders in an organization or even colleagues within an organization can recommend staff for different things or great things that they’ve done toward a project or assistance that they’ve given are very low-cost ways to increase engagement as well. 

But I’ll let the other practice area folks chime in on some other suggestions they might have too. 

Eric Salyers: Sure. You can go ahead, Tina. 

Tina Twyman: She was talking about some of the comps, so I just thought I’d jump right in there, Eric, I apologize. I was just going to say, some of the clients that I worked with were also really focused on development, giving stretch assignments and recommunicating to their staff about stretch roles and development and opportunities for those stretch assignments. So, in the future when the budget permits, they can potentially get those promotions or other opportunities. 

Eric Salyers: Yeah, sure. So, Lisa mentioned a couple of things that I’ve seen a lot of clients embrace, and I think they all speak towards that awareness of the employees’ mental health position. It’s been extremely difficult. And I think organizations had a lot of focus on that in the first three or four months. Then, we had Zoom burnout and then we were like, “Gosh, this is going to last forever,” and we went into different states.  

I live in a small 700 square foot apartment. This is where I work and where I sleep, and it really sometimes becomes almost as if you’re in a rut on somedays. So, I’ve seen a lot of things pop up, and Lisa mentioned flexible arrangements. I happen to know one client that does Mental Health Fridays where every other Friday, their employees are off. And that’s something that I happen to know they really look forward to. They recently decided to extend that through the end of the year.  

There are some companies that have actually also sprung up, responded to this and created some offerings that brokerage firms are starting to pass out and put in front of their clients as they approach renewals. Some of those programs are really cool; I would love to have some of those, myself. One of those just takes the fringe benefit concept, and just modernizes it. An employer can put a certain amount of money in a bucket, so to speak, that each employee can access, and then they can use that for just a ton of options. You can pay for Netflix service or Hulu. You can use that for Grubhub cards. I’ve seen it for pet services. It’s just a huge range of things that is really appealing to staff because it’s something that we are using because a whole lot of us are still at home. I use Netflix every day. Those are tools that have become a means for locating us and helping us feel consistency and security through this time. So, I’ve seen a lot of creativity around that front. 

Atokatha Ashmond Brew: Great, Eric. We had some questions come up in regard to some of the content you were sharing earlier around mental health resources. But also, questions around solutions to childcare and when employers should be considering that. In addition, there’s a question about students and volunteers, what are some trends around that, as well? 

Eric Salyers: Yeah, thank you. 

I’ve read some stories about some really interesting things I’ve seen companies do for day care because that was a huge concern. Depending upon your industry, some of us have entered the workforce more quickly than others. And, there was definitely a concern around healthcare. I’ve seen some really creative arrangements there. Naturally, that is going to all reflect backward on what organization you are and what kind of resources you have available, and also, tie into your missions’ values. 

Atokatha, I need a little help understanding of the last part of the question as far as the students and things. If you could reframe that question for me, I’m one of those people that if you read it to me, it just doesn’t land on me as well as if I see the word sometimes.  

Atokatha Ashmond Brew: Let me see if I can grab ahold of it. What kinds of benefits are there for students and volunteers? What are the trends in that area? 

Eric Salyers: Thank you so much because that really helps reposition that for me.  

The things that I was mentioning is what I’ve seen as well. So yes, I was talking about that more in the context of our nonprofit client base. But the first time those benefits came across my face is when I was doing benefits for a retail organization. And I’m lumping those together because sometimes, it’s the same younger type of demographic. You can certainly utilize those types of benefits to be attractive to that section of the workforce. Like I said, those things like getting Spotify and Netflix subscriptions, and getting just access to all of those things that we’re already craving and using and probably have money being taken out of our bank accounts—$5 or $6 bucks here and there, for a lot of these things—those things are attractive to the student-aged demographic and the volunteers. Those are not ERISA-type plans. And what I mean by that is ERISA is a federal law where a whole lot of our benefits regulations are housed, and it has all kinds of bearing on how you run a plan and so forth. These are sort of looser; you certainly have some things to consider around IRS and the terms of imputed income, but those programs help you help you deal with that. But there are easy things that you can put into place, and I can’t reiterate the importance of the flexibility in your day and having different PTO arrangements. That speaks volumes sometimes, just to be able to have that mental health day and pull out and refresh. 

Atokatha Ashmond Brew: Thank you so much, Eric, and I think we’re ready to move on to our next theme.  

With employees now working remotely and likely not returning to physical workspaces right away, we would like to focus on dispersed employee geographies. And the first question comes to you again, Stuart. This one is, how is technology transforming the employee experience and the new work-from-home reality?  

Stuart Wales: Sure. So, again, it’s really going back to meeting the employees where they are, in working from home. 

So, it’s not just your traditional accessing from laptops, but you’re seeing a lot more mobile, and not just in HCMS, in other platforms as well, whether it’s Zoom or Teams or Slack or what have you. But it’s being able to provide them the access to the data and the resources that they need when they need it. Particularly when you have an employee population that is from coast to coast. We have our own challenges as consultants working with clients. I’m here based in DC, and I have several clients currently in California and on the West Coast, so making that work, making that scheduling work—even just having that tool to be able to tell the two time zones and when they line up, so we’re not crossing paths in the middle of the night. I think really beyond that, it’s making sure that you have a true digital workspace that provides a foundation to transform that employee experience. 

Before I get a little bit too much into that, I just want to harken back to that transition that we had from a lot of us being primarily office-based to being a remote workforce. And saying again that the report I mentioned earlier, that particular report found that there are about a third of executives all the way down to individual contributors that had a difficult time adjusting to remote work and, ultimately, using the technology needed to do work. 

So, it’s in that mind, in that sense, as we continue to plan for the future and do contingency planning, we need to be mindful that we are reaching out to our staff to make sure that they understand the tools that they are being provided to them, to be productive and to connect with one another. And when we’re able to address that, people have found that they are more productive in working from home on an ongoing basis. So, it’s putting the human back into that and making sure that we are mindful of that. 

Going back to that new digital workspace, we need to make sure that we have tools that maintain connection with one another. And while we are all Zoomed out and all the rest, we need to make sure that we’re looking at it from a holistic standpoint. Certainly, even internally, we’ve done our own Zoom happy hours. Those quickly dropped off after a while because we sit on Zoom all the time when we’re meeting with each other, with clients, whatever it might be. 

So, we need to look at other ways to maintain that connection whatever that might be. And that’s really speaking to how we modernize the employer employee relationship. For us, it’s looking at how we transform HR from a traditional, transaction-based function to putting the human back in human resources. Focus on those activities that really build value for the organization and for the employees themselves. Not that we’re not necessarily wanting to be a therapist for all of them or going that far, but really, being that partner and helping them through benefits decisions and helping them understand compensation in those practices. Again, spending more time on that human interaction as opposed to collecting pieces of paper. More broadly, as part of a true digital workspace, just being able to support productivity anywhere that employee is. And if you don’t have those tools to be able to do that, then certainly, you’re not going to see success within the organization to be productive, whatever that is. 

We can look at any number of paper-based processes that we used to have, whether it was performance management or whether it was recruiting. All of those things really need to be facilitated now in a digital environment, to be able to share that information readily, for anyone to be able to access that information readily. Not just internally, but we’re talking about recruiting, for example, the candidate experience as well and meeting them where they are too. Particularly since they’re not coming into the office anymore to interview.  

On that end, we have seen a lot of a lot more readily integrated video conferencing solutions with applicant tracking platforms. Just be able to make that digital connection. All of this is really built around leveraging technology to nurture and reinforce the culture of the organization. 

Culture doesn’t necessarily live in a vacuum, and just because you’ve moved to a work-from-home situation doesn’t mean that that culture went away. You’re really only getting as much out of the technology as you’re putting into it. And when you don’t have those moments in the office anymore, you have to now leverage other ways to create those moments, those watercooler moments or whatever you want to call them, to, again, reinforce that culture that you want. 

By the same token, if you weren’t doing a whole lot in terms of your culture at your organization, the use of technology makes that a lot more visible. If there are not a lot of kudos on the Slack channel or what have you, if there isn’t anything around surveys and getting that feedback from your staff, that becomes even more apparent when employees are a little bit more isolated because they’re looking for that connection. They’re looking for that outreach and engagement with them to keep them connected to not just their work, but to the organization. 

So, I think from a holistic perspective, it’s finding new and creative ways to just use what you already have as part of your HR tech stack to, again, communicate what it means to be a part of your organization so that you don’t lose employees along the way. 

Atokatha Ashmond Brew: Thank you so much for that, Stuart. And Eric, and there’s a question for you regarding how organizations can be reimagining their leave programs with dispersed employee geographies? 

Eric Salyers: Sure. One of the things I want to talk about right off the bat regarding leave program is at the top of the program, I discussed equity within your health plan design. That’s not the only area within the overall benefits or total rewards zone that you can take a look at. There’s a pretty easy way to look at your leave programs and do a review of those and ensure you’ve got an equitable leave program there as well.  

And one of the easiest ways is if you think about how some of these leave programs are specifically tied to family-type events. So, your organization’s definition of family: Is that inclusive of your workforce and the different types of individuals within your demographic? Consider expanding that if it’s not so that does open those programs up a bit. 

Now, and I also want to connect the dots and lead the story here. As far as trends, I know a lot of our clients here in the DC area and last July, the DC Paid Family Leave was finally born into life, and individuals were able to start making claims and receiving benefit payments. 

We saw a great deal of our clients struggling to figure out how to coordinate their in-house leave benefits with the DC Paid Family Leave Program. And what made that even a little more interesting is DC, the District, threw a wrench in things when they said they’re not going to coordinate benefits. Basically the District said, “They’re going to make a claim. If it’s approved, we’re going to pay it out, and we don’t really care if you’re getting the money too.” So, employers, we saw a great deal make some modifications to their leave programs to work alongside the DC Paid Family Leave. And there’s been a great deal of conversation with many of our clients because leave is a complicated subject. Even in the same type of leave scenario, it feels different from individual to individual. There are so many things and nuances that come into play and most employers are trying to actively work with their employees and have generally a really great mindset there and trying to provide these leave benefits. 

As far as the as the dispersed employee geography, that’s impacted and changed that some. One that I’ve seen, and this ties back into an equity concept as well, if you’re here in the District, or you could be in other places too—I should mention that because it seems like overnight these leave programs through different states kind of pop out of the ground like mushrooms. I know a handful of states that are in the process of collecting premiums now through taxes and will start rolling up benefits as well. So, if you’re organized or headquartered in one of those areas where you have to comply with that benefit type, but you also have a national or semi-national presence elsewhere, 

I’ve seen organizations start to pay attention to that.  

They’re thinking from the perspective of employees here in DC, they’re able to make that DC Paid Family Leave, they get that. They’ve said, “We have decided not to really change our in-house benefits,” so they’re getting that too. But maybe this person in Florida doesn’t have that same ability, so I’ve seen some organizations take on some rather challenging work in that arena, where they’ve tried to develop an in-house program that maintains as much equity there as possible. And I’ll tell you right now, it’s difficult. It’s a hard thing to do, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t give some thought to that and be mindful of how employees living in different areas might not have the same access as others. And how that’s going to be interpreted and perceived through your staff’s eyes. 

Atokatha Ashmond Brew: Thank you so much, Eric, for that. And Tina, and we have one question for you in this section: Return-to-work plans and geographically dispersed employees have made compensation management more difficult, how are organizations addressing this? 

Tina Twyman: Thank you. I have been working with organizations with fewer than 20 employees to more than three times that number, and they all are seeking guidance on how to pay a geographically dispersed workforce. And some of these organizations were virtual before the pandemic and have decided to go virtual since. 

We have been working with clients to actually establish a formal structure; some of them didn’t have a formal structure in place. Drafting a compensation philosophy as well as their compensation statement; looking at policies and practices, whether they had them or not; and really making sure that their compensation strategy aligns with their recruitment strategy. And for a more informal or smaller organizations, again, going through the same process: What policies and practices that they have in place, they may not have any, taking a look at the compensation philosophy strategy and taking a look to determine where we need to refine those pieces as well. 

Also, as Stuart has been talking about, technology. Are their systems configured? Are really capturing the right data in order to track and manage the workforce and then, actually pull the data and perform analysis and make informed decisions based on that? So, policies, practices, established structures, being a little bit more informal around policies and practices and, definitely, their technology are all things that organizations are doing to try to manage the dispersed workforce, that should be diverse as well. 

Atokatha Ashmond Brew: Thanks, Tina. And before we move on to our fourth theme, Lisa, do you have anything to add to dispersed employee geographies? 

Lisa McKeown: No, I think Tina captured it. 

I think the one thing that I want to leave behind and say is that if organizations are going to allow staff to continue to work from home, meaning they can live wherever they want to and actually work from, essentially, they should think about what makes most sense for their organization. From a compensation perspective, ground your compensation and your market data in one geography or maybe apply geographical factors and things, these are some of the things we help clients think through. 

Atokatha Ashmond Brew: Thank you so much, Lisa. So, we’re going to move on to our fourth theme. And after this theme, then, we will move into a general question and answer session. And this fourth theme is around employer-driven initiatives. And, Stuart, you’re up again first for this question, which is: What are some of the pain points for organizations currently using in HCMS and how is that impacting their strategies for management of their HCMS? 

Stuart Wales: Sure. 

First and foremost, I’ve seen that essentially organizations aren’t keeping up with product updates, so vendors are consistently looking to improve their products based on client feedback. There are a lot of things that we’ve seen clients ask for and have subsequently received with vendors to improve the candidate experience, the administrator experience. And if they’re not paying attention to those, those notices, they may not know that those things have been turned on or that they’re available.  

Some of these updates aren’t necessarily rolled out all at once. Some are staggered, so I would say really pay attention to those email blasts from your HCMS vendor to make sure that you’re staying up to date with what is happening in your own environment. 

I’d say another pain point might be that clients aren’t really making the most of the product that they purchased. They really haven’t moved past a basic setup. And sometimes a lot of that is really from a bandwidth standpoint, that they just didn’t have the time to think through what all it could do, the technology that is, to facilitate whatever it might be.  

I had a client not too long ago that was setting up their onboarding, for example, and I happened to be out of office when that was happening. But when I came back, all they had done was just everything that needed to be done for payroll and payroll alone. They didn’t look at all the different forms that need to be filled out or collected or acknowledged. So, for things like that, you really need to think beyond the short term and more towards the long term. 

Another pain point, I think, is a lack of actionable data. As we’ve been talking about all along, there are the appropriate capture points for data to make data-driven decisions for all of your HR programs. And I think the other piece of that would be just a lack of well-integrated solutions. There was an HR.com report recently that said about two-thirds of organizations state that their individual components were moderately to very poorly integrated. And when that happens, and when things aren’t talking to each other, you’re not going to be able to even pull a report to be able to make those decisions on. Actually, I just had a call this morning with a new client, and in talking through some of their pain points, that was one of them, that they had so many disparate systems that don’t talk to each other. And in the end, they made the comment that they didn’t know that they could pull a report from any one system that would give them accurate data. 

So, again, it has a long-term effect when that isn’t happening. And there are so many products out there right now that have open APIs to accommodate those integrations. I’d say that that shouldn’t be a problem anymore, but it still is with a lot of legacy solutions. 

Lastly, and this goes back to some of the other things I’ve said, maybe a lack of in-house expertise for organizations that have an HR department of one or don’t have an official HR function at all. This isn’t within their scope of their normal job, but they have to do it anyway. So, it gets pushed to the side. And unfortunately, that means that, again, it’s very basic. It doesn’t necessarily improve on the employee experience. It just sits there stagnant. And that’s something that has long-term effects on productivity within the organization. 

Atokatha Ashmond Brew: Thanks, Stuart. And Eric, this next one is for you: What are some ways that an organization’s benefits program can engage staff? 

Eric Salyers: Sure. Some of these I’ve already alluded to and sometimes when we do these type of panel discussions, the organic conversation will just naturally pick up some of those things from other lanes because it all ties together. But I’ll kind of reiterate and try to talk at it from a different angle. 

We talked about how organizations have been very mindful of the mental health of employees and have looked at some of these additional type of add-ons to help staff feel more connected and engaged. And I want to mention right now, for those of you that are in the audience and you are considered a stakeholder at that table making benefits decisions, your benefits broker is a really great partner. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve gone into an organization and, I see that sometimes our clients, they feel like the broker is only the person they engage when it’s open enrollment time. If you have that concept in your head, it’s time to toss that out and realize that they’re there year round, and they can’t help you solve their problem if you’re not engaging them and talking about it. 

Benefits brokers are huge problem solvers. They are being given challenges from their groups and their clients all the time, and they work day in and day out in this stuff. They see these new trends that come down. They see these products, these new platforms, so definitely engage your benefits broker and just start talking about the subject, and more than likely they’re going to be able to take that and run with it.  

But also, any of those types of programs that just get away from this. I mentioned that I had some involvement in a restaurant group, like a retail setting. When I was there, I was really trying to preach the “one-size benefit program does not fit all.” When you think about some of the core parts of a benefit program, we usually think about it for an office staff, white-collar professionals, that type of thing, with your medical, dental, vision, life, disability, those types of things. All of those are great, but if you’re putting something together for, to tiptoe back to a couple of questions, a student group or something like that, be mindful that while all those programs are important, how do those look through the eyes of the person to whom you’re trying to craft this program? I will tell you that for a younger demographic in retail, they really don’t care that much about disability. That doesn’t mean that we don’t help educate them and help them see the importance of it, but there are other things that are going to ring those bells more quickly for them. And part of that purpose of the benefits package is to attract and retain as part of your strategy, so those are the kinds of things you want to do. 

I’ve seen some interesting things being done in the past year with student loan benefits. Some of the more creative ones have been changing. For example, if an employer is providing a contribution towards retirement plan, I’ve seen some organizations offer the ability to where instead of getting that contribution towards that plan, you’re getting money towards paying down your student debt. That’s naturally going to lend itself toward that younger demographic as well and the individuals that are newer out of college, joined your mission-based organization and are still carrying that type of student debt. 

But there are a lot of creative programs out there and I sit in a lot of our clients’ broker meetings when they’re going through renewals, and I see the brokers are the ones that are bringing a lot of these things forward. And I talked about Telehealth a couple of questions ago. I’ve seen even that initiative being taken and grown even larger to almost where, and when I heard this at first, I asked, “Is that really what you said?” I’ve seen some programs where individuals besides the employees, like girlfriends and boyfriends, could actually call in and use the Telehealth system. That is much more expansive than the traditional program that we’ve dealt with from day to day.  

But, there is a lot out there: childcare, elder care, home and auto insurance, pet insurance. There are a lot of different programs that fit into this bucket that a broker can help you put into place and it would help engage your workforce. 

Atokatha Ashmond Brew: Right. Thank you, Eric. You wrote this great blog some time ago on the signs it’s time to break up with your broker and so, we’re going to share the link to that. As we move on to this last question in this section for Tina, we’ll move right into your general Q&A. We’ve got a bunch of questions there.  

So, Tina, there seems to be a growing trend in organizations defining their compensation philosophies. Why is this important and what are the major components in a philosophy that an organization should consider? 

Tina Twyman: Thank you. 

A comp philosophy is really just a broad statement of what the organization believes about how people should be rewarded and paid, and it obviously should support the organization’s business strategy. It should include guiding and specific principles for compensation design and administration. It’s essential to articulate some of the key competitive information on how the organization’s comp levels compare to the market. 

And it’s important to set levels to attract and retain the workforce that’s needed to achieve the business strategy goals and objectives. Some of those components around desired pay levels, market data, defining your market and the mix of rewards and elements, those are all wonderful and helpful and informative components to include when someone’s looking at your organization and trying to make a decision about if they should come work for you. They’re much more well informed when they’re comparing one organization to the next. And so, that definitely helps with attracting the talent that you need and retaining that talent. And we don’t, obviously, go sit down and go pen to paper, or type on your iPad or Mac or Dell, or whatever your technology form of choice, and start writing and drafting a compensation philosophy and strategy. You really need to start with having clearly defined job descriptions, knowing your relevant labor market, the market data, those factors influencing compensation, your current position and things of that nature before you even start to develop a compensation philosophy. That was just short and sweet because I just noticed where we are with time.  

Atokatha Ashmond Brew: Thank you so much, Tina. We’re going to go through a round of rapid fire. We have all these questions, and I’ll just throw them out there, and everybody respond. I do want to leave a few moments, Lisa, for you to just wrap up anything regarding additional trends that we may see and that you all have been watching. 

So, the first question is how can organizations do a better job in communicating the value of benefits provided? 

Eric Salyers: Yeah, that’s a great question, and education is a key part of the success of your benefits program. What I tell groups all the time is, again, there tends to be a great deal of focus on that in open enrollment, and then it just drops off until the next year. If you think about how that lands, if you’re the employee, you’ve got a lot of information coming at you quickly and it’s kind of overwhelming. So, I would say a broker is a great partner to help strategized there on that communication. But what you can do on your own is spread that out.  

Let the new plan year begin, and then maybe once a month in a little newsletter-type fashion, go into some detail about one of the benefit plans and educate throughout the year. But it’s a key part. I have gone into organizations where I’ve been told, “Hey, our benefits aren’t great.” And then I get in there and look at them and I’m like, “Wow, these are phenomenal.” You all have something that you just don’t realize what you’ve got, and that’s because the employees aren’t educated on it. If they don’t know how to use it, it’s a bad experience, and it feels like it’s not a good benefit, so that’s a great question. 

Atokatha Ashmond Brew: Great. Next question, and everybody jump in where you feel inclined: What are the risks to employees weighing in on an organization’s total rewards? 

Lisa McKeown: Yeah, I’m happy to start this one off and then, and punt it to Tina or anyone else that would like to add in.  

I think there are no risks. Honestly, I think there is a risk in not having a total rewards statement that really delves into your organization’s commitment. I refer to it as an outward expression of that document, however, you share that with employees. What do you consider part of your total rewards program, it’s compensation, it’s benefits, it’s other things that you offer like leave and PTO. So, I think there are not a lot of organizations that generally leave it open to be developed by the broader employee organizations. But if there are organizations that have DEI committees, that is often one of the first places that an organization can go to have their total rewards philosophy debated and discussed, and they can ask, does it make sense? And, what are some of the other things that we should include? So, there is no risk to having staff get involved in providing feedback or thoughts on it. And it’s not a static document either. It’s a document that should evolve and change as your organization does. 

Atokatha Ashmond Brew: Yeah. Tina, did you want to add to that? 

Tina Twyman: I was just going to say that surveying employees and engagement, as Lisa mentioned, there’s no risk to that. Obviously, organizations have to make those final decisions on what they can afford, but organizational effectiveness surveys and engaging employees and giving feedback is great, it’s welcomed. 

Eric Salyers: I’ll quickly add we do use surveys and focus groups to get feedback from employees, which is great, it’s vital. But just be careful; don’t ask questions that would be for initiatives that you don’t have any appetite in doing. An example is if you’re never going to do an unlimited PTO plan, don’t put it on a survey because putting it out there and asking about it kind of negates it. They get hopeful. And then if it’s never there, it’s going to work against your initiative. 

Atokatha Ashmond Brew: Great. Thanks, Eric. Here’s another question regarding bonus structure. What are your thoughts on nonprofits developing a bonus structure? And is this a trend? 

Lisa McKeown: Do you want to take it Tina and then, I can add on? 

Tina Twyman: I’ve worked with several nonprofit clients that have a bonus structure. Absolutely. And as a result of the pandemic, I’ve worked with at least four or five who are considering implementing and adding a bonus structure to their compensation program. Lisa?  

Lisa McKeown: Yeah, and I think it’s really about, just as you would plan your budgeting every year and you’re thinking about merit increases and potential equity adjustments, nonprofits often don’t think that they can have a bonus program in place. But more and more of them are deciding to do that. Many do the very traditional merit promotion, equity adjustments, perhaps some spot bonuses or maybe considering bonus programs for leadership roles. But nonprofit missions, just by the nature of who they are, their desire is to be more equitable, so there’s different ways to have bonus programs. That could be one that’s based on meeting financial goals or meeting performance goals. So, again, it’s all about defining the parameters, being clear about them and making sure that employees understand how bonuses are awarded to staff. 

But, we are seeing more do this. It’s not uncommon. I’d probably have to say around 25 percent or so of the organizations that we currently work with offer them, but that’s more than it was five years ago. So, definitely it’s trending toward adding those types of programs. 

Atokatha Ashmond Brew: All right. Thank you, Lisa. We’ve got one more question we will take. And then we’ll move right into trends that you’re foreseeing in the future, Lisa.  

Stuart, this one is for you. Are you seeing a trend toward organizations purchasing standalone systems or investing in a comprehensive HCMS? 

Stuart Wales: No real trend one way or the other I would say. I think, anecdotally, smaller organizations tend to opt for an all- or most-in-one solution just from an efficiency standpoint, because they don’t have a lot of different platforms. In larger organizations, again, when you have an HR function, that tends to be a little more split up and I don’t want to say siloed, but split up. You’ll have your talent acquisition folks that are on a standalone system, you might have your comp and benefits folks on another and so on and so forth. But, again, I think it really just depends on the organization’s philosophy around their tech stack and what kind of experience they want to provide for their employees. 

Atokatha Ashmond Brew: All right, thank you, Stuart. Lisa, I want to turn it over to you to talk about any additional trends you all are watching for. 

Lisa McKeown: Yeah. Really, really quickly, here are a couple of different trends for the different total rewards areas. We are definitely watching the impact of the pandemic on market data both for salary and benefits. Typically, for the market data that we’ll see in our salary surveys, it’s always six-months to one-year old and they refresh themselves every year or so. So, we haven’t yet seen the impact of the pandemic. We’re starting to see the impact on market data, so we’ll be thinking about, how do we want to advise our clients in a year when market data generated early now or later in this year? How do we want to use that data? We’re looking to see what it looks like and how we use it ourselves in the work that we do. 

We’re always looking out for benefit regulations that are being released, either by the state or federally, but we’re always watching FFCRA that was released during the pandemic; The Cares Act, which is providing stimulus benefits during the pandemic; COBRA is being impacted, so that act that employers are required to provide an option to continue health insurance; section 125 which oversees things related to pre-tax benefits. All these are issuing new releases, new updates, for this year, so we’re keeping an eye on them. And in the technology space, we’re looking at technology mergers that are happening that could impact systems, such as HCMS, Ultimate and Kronos are merging and forming an organization and JazzHR and Jobvite are merging. There are a lot of different technology mergers happening. There are a lot of systems out there and some pieces of that work really well. They’re gobbled up by larger ones that want that expertise added on for their partnering to build their strengths. So, there’s a lot of mergers that are happening in the technology space that we’re keeping an eye on too. 

Atokatha Ashmond Brew: OkayOK. Thank you so much, Lisa. I just want to thank you and Eric and Stuart and Tina for all the information you shared this afternoon. What a great and timely discussion. If there are any other questions that you needed to ask our team today and you did not get a chance to, please feel free to send those to [email protected]. We will forward those questions on to our presenters, so that you can speak with them or get an answer to the question that you did not get a chance to have answered today.  

I also want to make sure you know that we have many upcoming events for Nonprofit HR. You can learn more about those events at nonprofithr.com/events. I want to mention that we have a survey that’s going on right now, it’s the Return to Workplace Pulse Survey to understand and share information about organizations’ plans to return their staff to physical workplaces and spaces. That survey deadline was originally Friday of last week on May 7. It has been extended to May 14. The survey takes about 10 minutes to complete, and if you respond, you’ll be among the first to receive survey results. To find out more about that survey and to complete it, visit nonprofithr.com/2021RTWS.  

And be sure to complete the feedback survey that will pop up once this webcast has ended. Your comments help us to further our planning and inform the topics that we select. 

If you would like more information about the services or support that Nonprofit HR provides, please email [email protected] or visit us online at nonprofithr.com. Thank you again to all of our panelists Lisa, Eric, Stuart and Tina, and have a great day. Thank you.