How we standardized benefits globally. After we messed up.
Solving benefits in a Global world - Part 1.
We began an initiative with our People team years ago about improving our benefits. I’m sure many companies have done this. Fueled by the ever-growing pressure of keeping up with the market, demands from our team and benefits group were growing and growing.
For many CEO’s, finding time to properly set out and own a benefits strategy isn’t second nature. Our role is to run the company and the priorities placed upon us by our stakeholders, our board and customers is to grow the company, take care of customers, provide our products and services and grow our people.
So when it comes time to put effort and energy into benefits, the time available to get into the details is limited. I can only imagine those CEO’s in a Private Equity or externally funded company have even less time to do so.
Our first failed attempt at global benefits
Back in 2018, our team came up with some nice principles, they were:
Global Mindset
We have a consistent perspective on Total Rewards across all geographies. Our rewards are clear, competitive, flexible, and well-governed regardless of location.
Local Application
We have an accurate representation of rewards in each of the local markets, to attract , motivate, and retain local talent.
Universal Fairness
Rocketeers perceive fairness across ServiceRocket. We have the right balance of total rewards between countries.
A slide from our 2018 Benefits Proposal Deck.
As a CEO, I thought “Great, go do it”, so I could focus back on the business itself. Remembering that at the time that things in the business weren’t all sunshine and rainbows.
But upon implementation we began to stall.
Our pattern was a common one, we tried to baseline all our benefits on the “best” one that a country had available and level up the others to that one. It didn’t work. It failed miserably. And it’s unfair.
Those in countries with higher taxes to support their programs get nothing.
As each country has elections and government changes, you have to keep adapting your program to match. Each time a new government announced a random public holiday, everyone else felt it was unfair.
You get stuck in a never-ending cycle of trying to match.
And it really came home in the form of feedback from one of our teams who were presented a bunch of benefits that in their country, we were legally obligated to provide.
Imagine that, your team presented to your team the great benefits you provide that you were legally obliged to provide.
As a CEO, I had to own that. We had hit rock bottom. The walk didn’t follow the talk. We fell short of our principles.
The fact is, employees do not see the value in benefits that you, as a business are legally obliged to provide. Regardless of how good they are.
Our team did the best of what they could do, with the limited energy and attention I gave them. I could do better.
A second example, Maternity and… Returnity?
All was not in vain though, here’s an example where our team got it right: Returnity.
Let’s look at some data on Maternity leave globally. You can see below that depending upon country, the benefits differ widely. Also, which is unseen is that people in each of those locations pay different tax rates in those locations for their social security benefits.
The initial proposal that our team came up with was logical. Align them all to be the same, picking the country with the best benefit in a particular category as the benchmark so that all employees get the same benefit. Makes sense, right?
Wrong. We learned from the above that it wouldn’t work.
So we set out to build the GPS 🛰️🛰️🛰️.
For the company, the goal was to support working parents (mothers in this case) onramp back to work. If employees didn’t come back to work, then we lose great people, regardless of how long they were away.
For the mothers intending to come back to work, we realized, after speaking with many Rocketeers that the most stressful part of coming back to work after having a child was indeed that, coming back to work. Going from full time at home with a newborn child to 5 days a week in the office working overnight didn’t seem logical and no amount of leave can prepare a family for that. Sorting our childcare, the increased anxiety of separation and adapting the the new normal.
And our team came up with the concept of Returnity. And the best solutions are often the simplest. It works like this:
Take as much time as you need for your maternity leave. Whatever your country/local requirements mandate and give you. Take longer off unpaid if you need to.
When it’s time to come back, we onramp you back over 8 weeks:
Stage 1, The first 4 weeks - Work 2 days a week, remotely or wherever you want and we’ll pay you full time.
Stage 2, Weeks 5-8 - Work 3 days a week, remotely or wherever you want and we’ll pay you full time
Stage 3 - Welcome back!
And Returnity was born. A way to reduce the anxiety our new mothers felt in coming back to work. A way to standardize the benefit globally and fairly. And a way to ensure that the company invests resources in a way that Grows the Tree 🌳 And it’s been in place now for 4 years and been used many times successfully!
This is interesting for me. My company is fully remote and we have people in 8 states. We have tended to go with the best policies from each state and used that for everyone. I wonder if we need to revisit that assumption.