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Jennifer Loftus (00:02)
Your pay grades and ranges, whatever you’re basing them on, you need to have confidence in them and say, yes, this truly represents who we are as an organization, our relevant labor markets, what we can afford…

Susan White (00:18)
Welcome to The JoyPowered® Workspace Podcast, where we help people leaders embrace joy in the workplace. I’m Susan White, owner of Susan Tinder White Consulting, an HR consulting practice. Joining me is my co-host and dear friend JoDee Curtis, owner of Purple Ink, which is a large-scale HR firm that I’m a part of as a senior executive collaborator.

As all of you longtime listeners know, we frequently survey you on what topics you would like to hear about on our show, and we love getting your specific workplace questions. An often-requested topic, which usually lots of questions are attached to, that we hear from you is on the topic of pay equity.

I think all of us that are people leaders want to reward our employees fairly, but we don’t always know for sure that we are. In fact, all of us probably have wondered at one time or another if we are earning what we’re worth. And many of us have had staff members come to us and question whether we are paying them what their skill, their effort, and their responsibilities truly deserve. It can be uncomfortable if we don’t know.

As people leaders, it can cause us angst if we don’t have a good handle on what is fair reward for the knowledge, skills, and abilities in a particular labor market is at a particular time. In today’s episode, we’re going to try to make answering our own and others’ questions about pay fairness more comfortable with an expert who can help us de-emotionalize this topic a bit and hopefully help us think about pay equity more strategically.

Our guest is one of our favorite returning guests. Jennifer Loftus is a Founding Partner of and National Director for Astron Solutions, a New York City-based total rewards consulting firm. Jennifer brings 30 years of compensation experience to her clients and to her role as host of What the Comp?!, the Pay Strategy podcast.

Jennifer, welcome back. We’re so glad to have you.

Jennifer Loftus (02:24)
Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me back.

Susan White (02:27)
When you hear the phrase “pay equity,” what does it actually mean? And what are some common misconceptions employers still have about pay equity in 2026?

Jennifer Loftus (02:37)
My gosh, I love that we’re starting with this question because it really sets the foundation for everything else that we are going to explore together today. And you know, you say to anybody, this idea of pay equity, what does it mean, right? So, some people will think this must mean a law, right, or it’s something very complicated, or that doesn’t really apply here.

But at its core, what we’re talking about is that we are paying for equal work, right, for people who are in the same job, right, or the same kind of job, right? Equal pay for work of comparable value, irrespective of someone’s gender, religion, you know, insert protected class here. We’re focusing on the nature of work and what people are doing and not any of the extraneous things that managers will sometimes bring into the conversation.

I’m thinking about one organization where they were saying–it was executive comp and they were saying, “Well, it’s our CEO and here’s the market, and, well, but he’s got four kids and two of them are in college, so we need to do something a little more.” Like, no.

Susan White (03:46)
No.

Jennifer Loftus (03:46)
No, no, right. We’re focused on work, the job, and the organization. And once you get past that, right, what does pay equity actually mean? Then people will start to say, well, that doesn’t really apply here. We have no problem. Right?

So misconception number one: we have no problems at all. And I hope that’s the case, right? But in reality, there’s going to be something somewhere, right? Or this is too big of a problem and we can’t tackle it, so let’s not even go there. Well, ignorance of the law is no excuse, right? We can’t do that. We have to examine what’s happening in our pay. And are we truly living up to that equal pay, you know, standard here?

Or some may say, well, that’s not in my state. It’s not relevant. Yes, it is. And there’s even some holdouts still, especially on the executive level, where they’re saying, that’s a lot of hokum, right? That’s nonsense. What are we talking about here? We go by the market and that’s it. And like, no, no, we’ve got to really look at what are we paying for and where we’ve got some inequities, let’s fix them.

Susan White (04:52)
Love it.

JoDee Curtis (04:53)
Yeah. It — Jennifer, every time I hear that term, “pay equity,” it reminds me of a friend of mine who — she’s a little older than I am, but started work probably forty years ago. And her manager told her that she made less money than the other people in her role because she was a woman. And they were — and I just always think, like, that hasn’t been that long ago, right? We’re not talking about the 1800s. Like they vocally…

Jennifer Loftus (05:27)
Yeah.

JoDee Curtis (05:29)
…spoke about that as if that were completely understandable to everyone. So.

Jennifer Loftus (05:36)
My gosh. And it’s a – first, I’m saddened to hear that story. Of course, if we think, you know, 1970s, 1980s or whatever, it was a different world and things…

JoDee Curtis (05:45)
Yeah.

Jennifer Loftus (05:45)
…were “acceptable.” I’m gonna use air quotes on that one. But…

JoDee Curtis (05:49)
Right.

Jennifer Loftus (05:49)
…you know, 40-some-odd years later, we’re still having this conversation, right? And granted…

JoDee Curtis (05:55)
Exactly.

Jennifer Loftus (05:55)
…many organizations have changed, they’ve made great strides in this area, but still, it’s a daily battle, right, to get everybody on board and do the right thing here.

JoDee Curtis (06:07)
Right.

And that — why do you think just recently it has become a really significant business issue?

Jennifer Loftus (06:16)
Right. Well, I think there’s two main areas that are driving this. And the first is the political environment, right? So, no matter where you are on the political spectrum, right, this is a political issue, right? So, Washington may be saying one thing, states like New York, California, they’re doing things that are to the contrary of what Washington may be saying, right? So, it’s in the news, right, and people are hearing this. And of course, from an HR perspective, we want to do the right thing, right, even beyond compliance. So, you’ve got that environmental factor happening.

And I think the second driving force here is the prevalence and use of social media, right, in today’s world. If I think back to when I first started in comp 30 years ago… well, one, there was no LinkedIn, there was no Facebook, et cetera. But even if there had been, the thought of making comments online or saying something about pay inequity, never, never crossed my mind to do that. But in today’s society, there’s much more freedom, right, with what are we saying and who are we saying it to and where are we posting things, that people are seeing more about this and they’re not afraid to speak up to say that there is an inequity here and something needs to be done about it.

JoDee Curtis (07:36)
Right.

Susan White (07:36)
You’re so right. It used to be impolite to talk about your pay. And now it’s like, people post it. Right. It’s fair.

Jennifer Loftus (07:39)
Yeah.

JoDee Curtis (07:40)
Yeah. Right.

Susan White (07:43)
Very fair. So.

Jennifer Loftus (07:43)
Exactly.

Susan White (07:45)
Jennifer, what are the trends that you’re seeing in compensation and pay equity in 2026?

Jennifer Loftus (07:50)
Yes, yeah. So, if I’m thinking about bigger picture trends, what am I seeing this year and even as we go into 2027, right? This is much more on the radar screen of organizations, right? So, it’s not something that’s behind the scenes. It’s out there. We’re actively looking at our pay equity, building pay transparency into our programs if we don’t already have that, and making a commitment to look at pay equity on an ongoing basis. So, it’s not a one and done. It’s at a minimum every year, right, let’s take a look at this. Or ideally it would be after every kind of salary change, right, whether that’s a merit increase, a promotion that happens, we’re bringing on a new hire, right? Using those small opportunities throughout the year to do that investigation and to make change as needed in the moment so it doesn’t turn into this big problem that we now have to overcome two or, say, three years down the road. So that’s one that I’m seeing.

The second is I’m seeing much more in terms of education, right? Training opportunities. You know, thinking back to the SHRM Annual Conference back in June, there were a number of sessions on pay transparency and pay equity. And if I think back five, ten years ago, that was not the case. Maybe you’d get lucky if there was one topic, right, just on compensation. But now there were several sessions on this.

And we have to think about this from a national perspective. Because Susan, as you know, I presented at the National SHRM Conference on pay transparency folding into pay equity. And I was talking with a colleague of mine here in New York City and telling her about the conference and the presentation. She’s like, “Why would you talk about that?” because we already have that. We’ve had that for a few years here in New York. I said, well, it’s a national audience, right? Different states are doing different things, or maybe nothing at all. So we have to keep that in mind as well. As more states are getting on board, more people are seeing this, right? The interest is there, the educational opportunities are there.

And the third trend that is starting to come in, I’m gonna say right now it’s a little bit on the periphery for us here in the US, but we’ve got the European Union Pay Transparency Directive, right? Which is now partly about what are we communicating with employees, what questions do we have to answer, right, if they ask us, but that goes right into pay equity as well. So if you are working for an organization that does not have a global or European presence, this may be new, right? What are we talking about? But more and more. If you’re reaching out to Europe, you’re going to hear about this.

And as we know, things start in Europe. They usually then go to California, New York, and then the rest of America. Right? So, it is coming. It may take a few years, but we’re starting to see, alright, let me learn more, let me find out more about this so when the moment happens, we’ll be ready for it.

And the third trend that I’m also seeing is a resurgence in interest in internal equity and point factor job evaluation. And we could have a whole conversation just on that topic, but really simply the idea is for an organization to look at all of their jobs and assess them on factors like what kind of education experience is required, what kind of supervisory authority do they have, what budget authority, decision making capability, et cetera, right, in the jobs and then develop our groupings, our rank order, our hierarchy of positions. So, we’re identifying what are jobs of equal value.

And if I think back over my career, for the last 29 years, let’s say, I had one client who actually wanted to put together a job evaluation system. Everybody was focused on what is the market, what is the market, and using that. And in the last six months, I have had four projects focused on this. Now I realize we’re still talking small numbers, but just thinking about 29 years, I did one, and in six months I’ve done four. Right? So, there is much more interest, people are talking about this, they’re saying we need to do something more than just what the market is doing so that way we can say, yes, we have internal equity in our pay grades, our pay ranges, and by extension, pay equity among our employees.

Susan White (12:28)
I love that. Back in the early 1980s, one of my very first assignments in HR was the Hay point factor evaluation system. We stood it up.

Jennifer Loftus (12:35)
Yes, yes.

Susan White (12:37)
Does it even exist anymore?

Jennifer Loftus (12:39)
It does, yes. Now Hay — it has been bought out by Korn Ferry. You know, there’s been some changes there, but yes, and that was where I started too. Yes.

Susan White (12:47)
Amazing. Wow, what’s old is new. I love it.

JoDee Curtis (12:50)
Yeah. I haven’t heard anything about the point factor method in a long, long time. So, yeah.

Jennifer Loftus (12:59)
Exactly. So, get ready. It’s coming back here.

JoDee Curtis (13:02)
Yeah, yeah. Well, and Jennifer, going back to your trend on pay transparency and we talked about different states, we know that many states now require organization to put salary ranges in postings. How do you think just this transparency has changed, or has it changed compensation strategies?

Jennifer Loftus (13:29)
Yes. Well, it certainly has changed strategy. Not so much the right, what is the relevant labor market for our jobs, or are we going to target the 75th percentile and be a market leader, those kinds of things. I don’t think that has changed.

But the strategy more that has changed is putting organizations on notice, right? You have to have your homework done, right, so you have to have a solid foundation, right? Your pay grades and ranges, whatever you’re basing them on, you need to have confidence in them and say, yes, this truly represents who we are as an organization, our relevant labor markets, what we can afford, right? All of those things. Because with pay transparency, it’s inherent in the name. It exposes everything, right? It’s out there for public consumption. So, we need to have our collective houses in order before we start putting jobs on Indeed or LinkedIn with a range.

And the other thing in terms of strategy, when we hear pay transparency, we always think, you know, base pay, right? Someone’s salary, their hourly rate of pay. But really, it’s everything, right? So that includes your bonuses, your sales commissions, even your benefits package is part of this as well. So, we truly have to make sure that we have looked at these things, we’ve done our due diligence, we’ve done our homework, and we have a game plan, a strategy to keep them updated, right? Compensation is living, right? So, what we do here in 2026, it may or may not work in ‘27, ‘28, and so forth. The market’s always moving, so we have to have that strategy in place to keep our systems fresh and relevant to who we are as an organization.

JoDee Curtis (15:20)
Love it. Thank you.

Susan White (15:21)
That makes good sense. So, Jennifer, if an organization has never conducted a pay equity review, where should they begin? We may have listeners that this is very relevant for.

Jennifer Loftus (15:31)
I am confident that there are listeners who have never done this before and they’re probably getting nervous and thinking, this is a big effort, right? Where do I start? What do I do? And I’m going to say first, congratulations and good that you are taking that step, right, to look at this and to make, where needed, positive change in your organization.

But I’m actually going to roll it back a little bit, right? Because before anybody is actually diving in and doing a pay equity analysis, I recommend they actually do what I was just talking about a couple moments ago. Right? Let’s assess the state of our compensation system to begin with. Right? So, do we have a total rewards philosophy? Do we have a policy in place for compensation decisions? What kind of exceptions are we finding that managers are asking for or doing? Right? Do we have pay grades, pay ranges? When was the last time we looked at them? How did we even make them, right? What went into that design? And similarly with our variable comp programs, with our benefits as well. Because as you go through that process, no matter where you work, you are going to find some things that need to be updated, corrected, maybe totally scrapped, and start over again. Right?

So, I would say start there first, because if you go through that process and do it thoroughly, you will find people whose pay may need to be changed, right, based on job-related factors, right, not their children or those kinds of unrelated items here. Then once you’ve gone through that process, then it’s time to say, okay, let’s do that thorough pay equity analysis. And there are tools online that you can subscribe to that will take all of the math and do it for you so you don’t have to worry about coming up with a multivariate linear regression model, right? Phew, for those of us who don’t remember the…

Susan White (17:30)
Thank goodness.

Jennifer Loftus (17:31)
…statistics and calculus and all of these things, right? You can subscribe to those, just upload your employee census, put in, you know, what parameters are we looking at here? Is it gender? Is it age? And then boom, you — it will identify who are the people who need some kind of adjustment and what that remediation adjustment would be, right, to fix the problem.

But let’s say you don’t have the budget for that, or if you’re at a smaller organization, maybe you have only 50 employees, let’s say, right, and then you can’t really get the results you’re hoping for from a regression standpoint. You can look, you know, grade by grade or job title by job title if you have multiple incumbents and say, all right, let’s look at where people are paid within the range. Let’s look at where we would expect their pay to be based on their tenure or performance, for example, right? Whatever is important to your organization, and say, alright, what’s the reality of their pay versus where I think they should be paid? And then make some adjustments accordingly. And then look at that by — let’s look at the women versus the men and look at averages, right? That’s a simple way to start that process.

Susan White (18:42)
That’s great.

JoDee Curtis (18:42)
Yeah. Yeah, that is great advice. I love that. What are some of the most common compensation mistakes that organizations make that may unintentionally create pay inequities?

Jennifer Loftus (18:57)
Yes. My gosh. There’s three that really come to mind here, and the first is not having a policy, right? A policy for how do I determine what the starting salary offer should be for a new hire, or a policy about pay raises, right? What are they based on? What measurable criteria am I using, or is it strictly tenure that we’re going with? Right? What about promotions? How do I determine a promotional increase? Right? If we don’t have a policy we’re left with the wild west, so to speak, of people doing what seems right, what feels right, what we quote, “need” to do to get the person in the door. Right? And then we end up with so many inequities everywhere because each manager is thinking about something different and prioritizing something different in that compensation decision. So that’s one.

The second, kind of the flip side of this is we have a policy, but we don’t follow it, or some people follow it and some people don’t, right? Okay, so now we’ve got an issue there with we’ve got some people who are doing what we have established as appropriate for our organization and others say, gotta have this person, we’re gonna lose them if we don’t counteroffer, all of these things, right?

Susan White (20:13)
I’ve heard all of those things, yes.

Jennifer Loftus (20:15)
We could probably, you know, sit here for a half hour at least and come up with all of the excuses of why we can’t follow the policy, right? But that’s where we get in trouble. As much as we may not like policies per se, they’re here for a reason, right? To make sure that we are compensating fairly, equitably, and appropriately.

And the third mistake or problem that I’ll see is that there are some organizations that are so afraid of committing a pay inequity that they say, we’re going to pay everyone in this job or in this pay grade the same. Right? That way there’s no problem, right? Everybody who is a paralegal makes X thousands of dollars a year, right, or everyone in grade 10 makes whatever that might be. Right? And on the surface, that seems like an easy solution, right? Everybody is making the same. There’s no problem here.

But then, right, as we start to look at what matters to our organization, is it tenure? Is it performance? Is it a combination of things? Is it the competencies someone brings? Then you get the people saying, “I’ve been here longer. Why is the new person making the same as me?” or “I’m a top performer. I’ve got 10 years’ worth of performance appraisals to document this. Why do I make the same as the person who’s on a performance improvement plan?” Right? So, we — paying everyone the same is not the answer here. So, we want to avoid that. Now, of course, if you’re in a collectively bargained situation, you know, those rules may apply, right? But in…

Susan White (21:48)
Sure.

Jennifer Loftus (21:48)
…a non-union setting, right, paying everyone the same is not the answer.

Susan White (21:52)
That’s so funny. I used to always say, my prior employer, some managers just wanted to spread the peanut butter evenly. They just want to spread that peanut butter. And yeah.

Jennifer Loftus (21:58)
Yes. Yes. Yes. And I’m glad you’ve mentioned that because, you know, we’ve done some publications on this trend of “peanut butter raises,” and our colleagues over at Payscale, they’re putting out a whole thing about peanut butter raises related to their latest salary increase budget survey they’re putting out. So, this is… well, again, what’s old is new again here. So, yeah.

Susan White (22:22)
That’s right, that’s right. That’s so fun.

So, Jennifer, many of us, probably all of our listeners at one point or another have had an employee come up to them and say, “I think I’m being paid unfairly,” or “I want a raise,” and that’s, like, the last thing on your mind. What is the best way for HR or for people leader to respond?

Jennifer Loftus (22:42)
Yes, these situations come up all the time. They’re hard to deal with because we’ve got people and their emotions are coming to the fore, right? There may be tears or anger or, you know, who knows. So, first, step one, don’t panic, right? Let’s welcome the person into our physical or virtual office and let’s talk, right? Let’s hear them out. Let’s see what they have to say, right? What research are they bringing to us to prove that their pay should be $10,000 higher, or why they should have gotten a larger pay increase, for example. Let’s hear them out because as we’re talking and as we’re listening, we may find that the problem is not compensation itself, but compensation is coming out as the symptom, right, of a bigger issue.

And I’m reminded of a client of mine that I work with. And funny, I have two stories about the same two people here, both related to compensation. First one was exactly what you shared, Susan, where they said, I should be making more, I don’t think my pay is fair. Right? Well, had a conversation. Long story short, it was that this employee felt that they weren’t being treated fairly by their manager. They were being belittled, and there was a lot of dynamics going on there that were not necessarily healthy, and pay was the easy way to express that. So turned out the person, they said, your pay is okay for now, but we’ve got a salary increase cycle coming up, we’ll look at it then.

So then to continue the story, right? This employee was then asked, we’re going to do some postings for jobs. In fact, the same job that she was in. It’s a multiple incumbent role. And here’s the job description. You can put that on LinkedIn, et cetera. And here’s the salary range. Well, you can probably guess where this is going to go. Her pay was literally $10,000 less than the starting salary on that job posting. So of course, now it’s like, well, why am I paid less than a job I’m posting for? Should I quit and reapply? Okay, so conversation was had.

Happy ending to the story. Yes, she got a salary increase well beyond the minimum of the range, was recently promoted, and the manager who was not so nice has left the organization. So, it has a happy ending. But right, these are the things that we have to listen to, to look at, to solve the problem at hand.

JoDee Curtis (25:19)
Yeah, nice. Jennifer, what else do our listeners need to know about comp? Anything we’ve missed?

Jennifer Loftus (25:29)
My gosh. Well, you can see I’m passionate about the topic. I could probably go on for hours here, but we do not have unlimited time. So yeah, there’s a few things that your listeners or our listeners to this episode will want to think about. First, as I mentioned, comp is always in motion, right? It is never static. And if it is, maybe it’s for a day. So, we have to consider that as we are doing market analysis, as we’re building pay grades and ranges, as we’re analyzing for pay equity, that we’re in essence flying the plane while we’re building it, right? That expression here.

So, expect that there’s going to be a lot of moving parts. And as a result, these processes are going to take time, right? We’re not going to get them done in a week. I wish, right? That would make life so much easier for everybody. So, don’t be too hard on yourself and say, alright, what’s a reasonable time frame? Maybe it’s six months I need to look at this from start to finish, for example.

And then when we’re done, number two to think about is we’re not done, right? This continues on forever, right, because compensation is always in motion. Right? So, we’re going to gather feedback. What worked? What didn’t? What changed in our turnover rates? How about our ability to hire? How has that changed? Right, looking at all of these metrics, looking at how the market is moving, and then incorporating that into version two, right, and version three, and so forth. So, we’re always going on here.

And the one stumbling block that I will see sometimes with organizations is that they say, well, we have to get this perfect before we can go live. If you wait for perfect, it’s not going to happen. Right? Not that we’re going to do things slipshod or anything like that. But you know, if we are ninety-eight percent solid that yes, these are our grades and ranges, these are the pay changes we need to make, go, right? Do it. Don’t let perfection be the enemy of progress in this case. Always keep moving. Your organization keeps moving, the market keeps moving, so we have to keep moving as well.

And lastly, you know, again, not here to discuss politics, right? But the pay transparency and pay equity, there is an inherent political element to them. And depending on your own personal views, what state you’re in, right, if you’re thinking about doing more work related to pay transparency, do it, right? There’s certainly a compliance issue, but it will only lead to better things for your organization. And when the pendulum swings back and pay equity is more directly focused on at the federal level, you’ll be ready. Right? So that way, you know, we’re doing a little bit at a time so we’re ready when that moment comes rather than trying to scramble at the last minute.

Susan White (28:26)
Great advice, thank you. Well, Jennifer, you are probably — you have to be my number one most joyful compensation partner I have ever had the privilege of getting to know. But we’re gonna…

Jennifer Loftus (28:38)
Thank you.

Susan White (28:39)
…gonna ask you the JoyPowered® question anyway. You emanate joy on this topic, but what are you most excited about as you think about the future of compensation consulting?

Jennifer Loftus (28:49)
Yes. My gosh. Well, really, the thing that gives me the most joy and excites me the most is that compensation is always in motion, right, and so is our profession. The future is always in motion. I sound like — I don’t know if you have any Star Wars fans who listens, but in Empire Strikes Back, Yoda says, “Always in motion is the future,” right? And so it is with compensation. It’s always in motion.

And that’s what excites me, right? Because yes, our foundational activities and things, they stay solid. They stay the same. But the challenges that we’re faced with, whether it’s the legal environment, whether it’s AI, right? Whether it’s more of our leaders outside of HR getting excited about compensation and pay equity, those are the things that just make me like, you know, bring it on. Let’s do this and let’s make change that impacts regular people in profound ways, right? We have an immense responsibility in compensation. We are impacting people’s livelihoods, their families’ futures, and the more that we can do good in this area, it it’s all joy. It’s all joy right there.

JoDee Curtis (30:04)
That’s awesome.

Susan White (30:04)
Love it.

JoDee Curtis (30:05)
Yeah. And how can our listeners reach out to you if they would like to continue the discussion, engage you for services, or listen to your new podcasts?

Jennifer Loftus (30:18)
Thank you. Thank you for asking. Yeah. So my company’s website, Astron Solutions, that’s astronsolutions.net, is where they can go on. Lots of resources on there, bios, all good things. Of course I’m on LinkedIn. So, my URL — I’m number 06898, right? If you have — because there are surprisingly a number of Jennifer Loftuses on LinkedIn, but I’m sure they’ll recognize my hair from the profile picture and we’ll be good to go.

And to listen to What the Comp?!, right, we’re on all of your typical podcast platforms. So, Spotify, Apple, YouTube, wherever you get your podcasts, look for What the Comp?! and hopefully you’ll subscribe, like, and listen to all the exciting things that we’ve covered in seasons one and two and more to come in seasons three and four.

Susan White (31:11)
Wonderful. Thank you, Jennifer. It’s been a pleasure.

JoDee Curtis (31:11)
Yes. Yeah.

Jennifer Loftus (31:14)
And likewise, thank you again for having me.

JoDee Curtis (31:17)
Susan, our listener question today is “How do you get leaders to take talent reviews seriously?”

Susan White (31:26)
You know, what I love about this question is that I think at some point in most of our careers, we have worked with leaders who maybe were reluctant to jump into really doing — taking the time and investing the interest and energy into doing talent reviews. Sometimes we’re lucky we have leaders who see the value, they understand that we’ve got to understand who our future leaders are gonna be. We need to do succession planning, all that. But sometimes you’ve got folks that just don’t really understand it. So, I get it. To whoever our listener is who wrote this in. I hope that you’re making headway with your leaders.

Some ideas that I have, first of all, is that I think you have to approach talent reviews as a business need, not as a nice-to-do or an employee need. It’s a business need. We’ve got to understand who our emerging talent is as an organization so that we can retain people that could be part of our vibrant future. We need to look at talent reviews as a need for us to assess the people that are in the jobs they are today. Are they performing at the level that we need for now and in the future? And I also think that it is — when we talk about it being an employee need, I think employees that are high potential that have desires to really grow their career, they want to work in an organization that takes talent reviews seriously.

So, there’s a lot of good, I think, business needs that can be met with doing talent reviews. Sometimes it takes a lot of conversations, it takes sharing with our leaders not only why we think it would meet business needs for them, but also talk about what’s happening out in the world outside of our doors, right? What other companies out there that we may admire are making real headway on it? I’ll get — throw out a few. Bain and Company is very well known for their talent review process. Fidelity, those of you who have retirement accounts of Fidelity, they take it very seriously. Gartner, G-A-R-T-N-E-R, many of you are familiar with them, they are well known in this space.

I had worked at JPMorganChase, as I’ve talked about on this. We spent a lot of time every year doing talent reviews, assessing our talent, understanding where our future leaders would be coming from. And we’d spend real quality time figuring out for those who had high potential, what kind of developmental assignments could we give them? What type of shoring up on some areas that they hadn’t been exposed to could help ensure their readiness when we had some real critical and key level jobs open up. We did not have to go to the market and pay astronomical money many times because we had been really developing our own talent to fill those roles when the when the opportunity arose.

So, I think that sometimes it’s education. And it may not be today that you convince your leaders that we need to be doing it, but hopefully over time you will get them where they need to be so they too really invest in their future.

JoDee Curtis (34:36)
Right, right. And I love all of your advice and everything you said. I think sometimes too we can make it easier on people to complete it just by having better systems, better tools, you know, not ten-page evaluation forms and all these things too. So, anything we can do to make the process easier, but it takes time regardless of what your system is or your process. I mean, a pen and paper can be valuable process if people take the time to do it well and to really think about the importance of keeping and retaining and growing your people.

Susan White (35:29)
Fair. Fair points. Thanks, JoDee.

It’s time for in the news. An article in USA Today on May 26, 2026, entitled “Why Most Americans Retire Earlier Than Planned,” was written by Daniel de Vise and it really caught our attention. We want everyone’s retirement to be as JoyPowered® as possible, so we wanted to find out why are people entering the phase of retirement in their life earlier than they have in the past.

Well, the Society of Actuaries Research Institute found that 59% of retirees are leaving the workforce before they expected to, and only 6% are retiring later than they had anticipated. de Vise reports that an average American worker today — this is May of 2026 — retires at age 62, but most workers really didn’t expect to retire until at least age 65. He cites a Trans-America Center for Retirement Studies report that says 39% of workers plan on retiring after age 70, if at all.

The reasons given as to why people are doing it sooner than what they had been expecting are, first of all, the one that’s sad, unexpected change in health status, either their own or a loved one’s. So, people are leaving the workforce to take care of themselves or others physically or mentally. The second reason that people are leaving on an average of age 62 is because of job loss that’s not their choice. Performance issues, layoffs, maybe they’re slowing down, productivity slowing down, the companies making hard decisions that impacts them. The third reason, people are leaving because of job satisfaction — dissatisfaction. They are finding, especially for those with incomes over $75,000 a year, they make the choice that they’re not enjoying what they’re doing enough, so they’re leaving.

So those reasons are all kind of sad. But here’s the reason that I like the most that de Vise mentions: achieving retirement savings goal earlier than expected. Again, especially for those with over incomes over $75,000 a year, many of them are finding that they have enough in their 401(k)s and retirees. So bottom line, those earning more have more choice in when they retire. And those with lower incomes are more likely to have health or involuntary termination from a company.

On the upside, only 19% of retirees in the survey said that they are worse off financially than they had expected. So that’s you know, one in five, which — I don’t like anybody feeling worse off than they’d expected, but at least it’s not the majority. Only about a half of US households say they have any retirement accounts. And we are all concerned with the current prognosis of Social Security running out of money sometime between 2032 and 2034. I think the message for me and listeners is that it’s never too soon to begin saving for retirement, and it is never too late to rethink continuing working in retirement or rethinking what retirement living looks like to match your abilities to fund it. We want your retirement to be as JoyPowered® as can be.

JoDee Curtis (38:49)
Right.

Susan White (38:50)
If you’re SHRM certified, you can get credit for listening to this episode. To get the code, go to getjoypowered.com slash SHRM and fill out a short evaluation. When you finish the evaluation, you will get a code and a link to a proof of participation certificate. The code will expire on September 21, 2027. Again, that’s getjoypowered.com slash shrm to get the code and it’s going to expire on September 21, 2027. Thank you for listening and thank you for your dedication to the HR profession.

JoDee Curtis (39:29)
And as always, make it a JoyPowered® day.

Susan White (39:33)
Thank you.