Boncom: From Process to Best Practices

Today, we are joined by Roger Pimentel, Vice President of Marketing at Boncom. Boncom is a full-service advertising agency specializing in elevating beliefs and shaping behaviors. Roger has led Boncom in implementing some of the ElevateHER principles, particularly focusing on gender pay equity.  Roger shares the evolution from an informal approach to a structured, transparent system backed by third-party certification and international regulations. This episode sheds light on the tools and methodologies that have helped Boncom ensure fair compensation, highlighting the importance of objective measures in fostering a more equitable workplace.

Roger also discusses the company's dedication to promoting diversity and supporting employees throughout their careers. We explore the benefits of transparent pay structures, the significance of an internal pipeline for women in senior roles, and the advantages of diverse executive teams in driving creativity. Hear about Boncom's supportive policies for parental leave, the balance of remote work post-COVID, and men's crucial role in advancing diversity initiatives. 

https://www.boncom.com

www.wliut.com
@utwomenleaders

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:05

Welcome to Elevate, a Women's Leadership Institute podcast where we showcase stories, celebrate successes and shift culture.

Speaker 2 0:14

Welcome to another episode of the Women's Leadership Institute Elevate podcast. My name is Chris Jenkins, I'm co-hosting again today and we've got Patti Cook, who's leading this podcast. Excited to have you here, patty. And we also have our guest, roger Pimentel from Boncom, who's the vice president of marketing. Welcome, yeah, great to be here. Thanks, guys.

Speaker 1 0:33

Thank you for coming. Could you? We always like to start with something personal about you, like to help people get to know you a little bit. Could you tell us something maybe others don't know? I know it's a broad range of things. Yeah, yeah, bit of an open book.

Speaker 3 0:49

Yeah, you know, live, live in Draper with my wife and four boys. You know, probably the the most interesting kind of hidden nugget from my past is I was a former yo-yo champion when I was a teenager, that's cool, Went to the world championships and various things.

Speaker 3 1:07

And you know people like to ask me you know, oh, you're teaching your kids to do yo-yos and that sort of a thing, and the answer is, you know, no, it's not like the legacy that I want to choose to leave, but you know, it was a really interesting thing for me to learn about committing yourself to something and to learn kind of this basic premise of when you practice at something, you get better at it, and that's something that I hope I am teaching my kids and that I've been able to kind of build on in my life. So kind of a weird funny background thing, but but I like to think it's turned into, you know, real life skills and that sort of a thing.

Speaker 1 1:44

Yeah, that's it. So that's a good party trick for you, world champion. Do you still do? It is the question.

Speaker 3 1:49

Oh, just a little bit. Just a little bit.

Speaker 1 1:51

Yeah, that's a fun nugget. So you work for Boncom, which is a cause driven advertising agency. Yeah, could you explain to us a little bit of a little bit more about it and what you do there?

Speaker 3 2:08

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's lots of ad agencies, you know that do all sorts of different things. So you know a lot of e-commerce. You know lots of different clients, that sort of thing. We specialize in specifically cause-based clients, and so we have a lot of clients here in Utah. We do a lot of work with the state kind of in public health type spaces. So we do work around, we do campaigns around suicide prevention, opioid addiction You've probably seen some of these teen marijuana education, so those in that public health sort of space, but also fire safety and some other things like that, which is fantastic. And the Smithsonian Institute we've done a number of projects for out of DC, which is really, really cool, and so our clients generally don't have something to sell.

Speaker 3 2:50

A lot of the, a lot of the ways that you measure success just aren't there, and so a lot of what we do is about changing behavior, and that's that's really where we try to specialize. So we think of people as having a set of beliefs and then ensuing behaviors, and we all want to do the right thing, you know, and the example I like to use is you know, we all, we all know you should brush your teeth for two minutes, is it? You know 15 seconds, and you're on to the next thing, so sort of a thing, and so there tends to be a gap between those beliefs and behaviors. Yeah, and so that's something that we work really hard to try to close. You know, we're not we're not measuring our success in terms of units sold and that sort of thing, but sometimes it's literally in life saved and that sort of a thing, and so that's.

Speaker 1 3:51

That's a really rewarding thing about what we do. I love that One of the taglines was elevating beliefs and shaping behaviors. There it is Right, which elevate is something that is true to form for the Women's Leadership Institute. So I was really curious about that and I'm interested in how do you measure cause driven things, because that's what our organization is as well, right?

Speaker 3 4:06

Right.

Speaker 1 4:07

How do you figure out the measurement of that Part of this podcast? Is anecdotal right Measuring it that way?

Speaker 3 4:13

What are some other?

Speaker 1 4:14

ways you've found to measure that.

Speaker 3 4:15

Yeah, you know, we get some clients that come to us and say, hey, I want to drive impressions or visitors to my website or that sort of thing, and what we're generally doing is having a deeper conversation with them and saying what are you really trying to accomplish, what's your bottom line here? And so, working with the Department of Health and Human Services on suicide prevention, it's literally, we want to reduce the number of suicides. Wow, you know, and that's the sort of thing you can't really, you know, keep checking your Web metrics and see if you've accomplished it. That has to be a longitudinal thing, that has to be something over time. You know I mentioned fire safety. We've had some really, really good success. If you've seen in the news, the last few years human caused wildfires have been way, way down in Utah. That's really gratifying to us because we've been able to be a part of that effort. So generally we're looking kind of way downstream on what are we really trying to accomplish here?

Speaker 1 5:08

Oh, I really like that because it's generational right, it's longitudinal, as you said, it takes some time. How did you get into this advertising space? What brought you into this?

Speaker 3 5:21

Yeah, I've been in it my entire career. You know, it's one of those things. My dad was a marketing professor and so you know, maybe the apple didn't fall too far from the tree or something like that. So yeah, I've worked in a number of agencies and then went client side for a while. That's what we would call being out of agencies for a while. I call being out of agencies for a while. I worked at Amazon for about seven years in Seattle and and kind of swore off agencies and said I'm done, I'm out of this world. You know, it's a client services business, it's a professional services business and it's fast paced and it's challenging and those sorts of things. And and lo and behold, I'm back. So and glad I am, and it's really great to be back in that agency space where I came from originally. Advertising is kind of in my blood, but I get to do it for things that I feel really good about.

Speaker 2 6:16

What are some of the key differences, would you say, from those? Because I loved how you said generally advertising for marketing and selling, and now it's not necessarily selling a particular product itself, right? What are some of the differences between the ad agencies you were at before and now this more cause-driven agency?

Speaker 3 6:35

Yeah, I think probably the biggest thing is we're using a whole different set of skills and so when you're trying to change behavior, you know ads by themselves aren't changing behavior, and so we're really focused on using principles of behavioral psychology to actually be informing and, over time, changing behavior. So we've developed a curriculum that we teach to everybody on our staff so that we're using the same language around behavioral psychology and doing more than hey, let's do a funny ad, you know. Hey, let's do an ad with some bathroom humor or you know these sorts of things which you know.

Speaker 3 7:10

I don't want to look down on any of that, but we have the luxury of being able to approach it in a different way, and that's been really great.

Gender Pay Equity Certification Process

Speaker 1 7:18

Yeah, that's really thought provoking, right, changing behavior that way. So your company how I came across, you is your company, boncom, uh, took the elevator challenge, of course yep and uh, you dived into it. Uh, as far as pay parity, and I thought that was really interesting. Some of the things that you found um would you share with us, like how you came across the elevatorvator Challenge and why was Pay Parity something you wanted to start with?

Speaker 3 7:46

Yeah, absolutely yeah. It's funny you talked about. We kind of renewed with the Elevator Challenge. We had this funny moment where we were looking for ways to elevate the stature of women within our organization, came across the Women's Leadership Institute and saw our logo on your website.

Speaker 1 8:05

Yes.

Speaker 3 8:06

And so we had this funny moment where we said, well, we're already a part of this. Yeah, maybe we should. Maybe we should go ahead and double down.

Speaker 1 8:12

Someone committed us a while ago.

Speaker 3 8:13

Yeah exactly, Exactly, and it turned out to be a really good fit for us. And so, you know, when I started about five years ago at Boncom, we were transitioning from being a small company to being, you know, a midsize agency. We're about 100 people now just over 100 people. We recently launched offices in Mexico and Brazil which is really exciting.

Speaker 3 8:35

So we've got a bit of a global footprint now, and that's a very different thing from being a company of 15 or 20 people, where it's a little more of a family and you can just say hey, I'll take care of you, don't don't worry about it. Compensation, you know these sorts of things. Yeah, just don't worry about it. And hiring tends to be like hey, does anybody, anybody know somebody who can do?

Speaker 2 8:58

this OK.

Speaker 3 9:00

OK, you're hired, Come on, come on in, right, this sort of thing. And so we were really at this point where we needed to be formalizing processes and really needed to be kind of growing up as a company in a lot of ways, and so that was that was something that was really working on for some time is OK, for hiring, we need, we need fair hiring practices and we need them to be, you know, real concrete processes for us to follow. And same thing with compensation. We can't just do it by the seat of our pants forever. You know, we need to have, we need to benchmark against the industry, we need to have real solid salary bands and and and be very clear with our, with our staff, about you know what's going on in compensation. And so we really had kind of a, a two I would call it a two stage approach on on pay parity, um, and the first stage was best intentions.

Speaker 3 9:48

Right and and what that was was, you know, when we were giving raises or this sort of a thing. Uh, our head of HR and I would sit down and look at it and be like, oh Gosh, what do you think? You think we're paying people equally and fairly? Feel right. Yeah, yeah, exactly A little, a little bit of this, you know, a little a little bit of just trying to make sure it all, it all, felt right. And I don't want to, I don't want to diminish that either, because because that was that was a really great step for us and I think many people begin there.

Speaker 3 10:19

Yeah, oh yeah, you start somewhere right, yeah. And so, yeah, I do think we fixed some problems we might have backed into otherwise and made things a little more equal in that way, and so that was good. That always felt a little bit unsatisfying to me a little too much art, not quite enough science in that art, not quite enough science in that. And so I started looking around for, like, gosh, is there, like there's, some Excel formulas I can use? Is there something that I can apply that will tell me objectively, yeah, you're good, you're paying men and women about the same for the same roles and these sorts of things. But but there's another issue here which is, with the best intentions approach, even if I felt like we were really doing the right thing by our employees, we also have to tell our staff about that, and and they don't always believe you this is sort of a thing.

Speaker 1 11:18

Transparency is not always good. Is that what you're saying? Well, you know.

Speaker 3 11:21

I could say, hey, yeah, we're, we're, we're really trying, we're really taking a look at this and they go well you know, share the money yeah yeah, exactly, exactly. And so so I got into this idea of is there a third party that can certify this for me and say, yep, we've looked at the data and, and we certify that? And say, yep, we've looked at the data and we certify that, yes, you're doing this right, so that I can have a really clear and concise story for the staff.

Speaker 1 11:46

Sure.

Speaker 3 11:47

And say, hey, we're trying really hard. And just so you know, somebody else has looked at it and they agree we're in really good shape, and so you know, I'm looking around for a solution. Turns out there's, you know, consultants that will do this for you, this for tens of thousands of dollars.

Speaker 3 12:02

And that was kind of maybe not the right fit for us at the time, sort of a thing, but the more I researched, the more interesting this got, because it turned out that there are countries that are now requiring companies to have fair pay across genders and even requiring an audit process to prove that. So I think Iceland was the first company doing this, and now it's kind of throughout Scandinavia and some parts of Europe and these sorts of things where if you have more than and it varies, but more than 25 employees or something like this, then you have to have a third party certified that that you have gender pay equity, which I love and this is amazing. You know, step in and make sure people are going to do the right things. I kind of love that, and so along the way, I found this tool, and this is like the gem of the story for me which is.

Speaker 3 12:57

I found this tool made by the government of Switzerland, or at least it's on the government website in Switzerland, and it's this tool that is designed for exactly what I was looking for and you anonymize your compensation data, you upload it and it takes a couple of minutes and it runs some statistical analysis and then spits out your results at the end and it gives you like a green, yellow, red, like green.

Speaker 3 13:22

You're doing it right or yellow and red. You know you got got some things to fix and gives you some of the statistical results and these sorts of things. It's a great. So I plugged in our data and it spit it out and and and validated for me that our best intentions had been working. It said, yeah, you're, you're doing the right thing, you're you're paying men and women the same for the same roles and that sort of a thing. And what it turned into is this repeatable process for me.

Speaker 1 13:46

Sure.

Speaker 3 13:51

So we have a twice a year cadence where we do promotions and raises for the most part, and so once we've got those all figured out, before we execute, before we hand out those raises, I run the updated data through this tool and say, if we make these changes, are we going to break something or are we going to be OK? And so that was the science that I was looking for, where now I have this third party that certifying us twice a year and every time we make major changes to compensation, to say, OK, we've double checked, we double checked it yeah, and and you're, you're in the right spot, and so that's something that I've showed to our staff.

Speaker 3 14:25

If they ever ask, I can pull up the most recent one and say, hey, let's take a look at the numbers and let's see, and that's worked out really great. So for anybody who's listening, who wants to know, I had to watch a YouTube video to figure out how to pronounce the name of the tool- Just to make sure I was getting it right.

Speaker 3 14:43

I was not at the time. It said it's called Logib and it's L-O-G-I-B and it's this free tool. It's in English, like that was an important piece for me and it's a tool that has worked really well for us in making sure we're being fair with pay.

Promotions and Diversity in the Workplace

Speaker 1 15:01

Yeah, I love that you wanted to align both your good intentions with a solid process. Right, I love that. The double on that. You touched on pay and promotions, sure, and I want to talk a little bit about that of what is the process for being promoted in your company, and is it as transparent as your pay structure? Yeah, what does that look like?

Speaker 3 15:28

Yeah, great question and that's really the other half of the question here right is are we paying men and women fairly in the same roles?

Speaker 3 15:36

Yes, does that mean that we have equal numbers of women in senior management and things like that?

Speaker 3 15:44

That's a work in progress for us, and I think it is for a lot of companies and, yeah, trying to figure out the right processes to make that happen and that sort of a thing. You know, the work that we do is fairly specialized in a lot of ways, and so sometimes that hiring pool can feel really small, yeah, and you kind of have to hire the right person for the role you know, regardless of gender, and that's good ultimately. And so what we've really focused on in the last few years is building our internal pipeline and so hiring women at all levels in the organization. We have more women than ever before in director level roles, which is really really great for us, that are kind of on the bench for executive roles as they become available and that sort of a thing, and so that's worked well for us. We are fortunate that we have good retention. We kind of count on people staying around for a while and really hope that we're playing the long game correctly and making sure that women have those executive level opportunities.

Speaker 1 16:40

I love that you talked about the pipeline, the internal pipeline, so people can move up and they know how to move up if they want to. I think that's something you talked about as well, Chris, right with your company, that you've started of gathering women on your team and how that works, especially when you have a small pool.

Speaker 2 16:58

Yeah, I think it's interesting as you think about, you know, the long game of how you want your company to look and there's a few things that came up as a technology startup right, that's raising money and capital and, you know, trying to grow a business where, at a certain stage, if you don't have diversity or women on your executive team, then the next few people that you hire, the data shows that they don't stick around as long simply because they don't think they can get promoted or they don't feel like there's support at that level.

Speaker 2 17:28

When you think about it from that kind of long-term perspective, obviously you guys have this great benefit that they stick around for a long time, right, which is a great. It's great for your company, your business and you've built a great business to do that. How do you think about it now, as the now that you have this bench of women that are at that director level, that, can you know when those executive seats open up can move up? How do you think about that in terms of, like, your long-term play where you see women and diversity in that executive team?

Speaker 3 17:57

Yeah, absolutely. You know, ultimately we're a. We're a creative business. You know that's. That's what advertising is. It's a creative business and we've figured out which you know. It shouldn't have been such a big surprise, but when, when women are in the room, the ideas are better and the work that we do is better I do really believe that.

Speaker 1 18:17

I know lots of people say that, but is that really the case that you found?

Speaker 3 18:20

Absolutely A hundred percent. You know, and sometimes, sometimes you're doing a campaign where you're targeting women and it's a very obvious connection in that case. But you know, even if I expand that umbrella a little bit, as we've pulled in, you know, our team from Mexico and our team from Brazil and as we've added more different voices the work keeps getting better and so that that is really important to us.

Challenges and Opportunities for Women

Speaker 3 18:47

And and yeah, sometimes it's hard and it's tricky and you know a lot of people can relate. In a, in a company that's not huge, you know, if this was Amazon or Google or whatever you have lots of executives, you have lots of lots of opportunities and these sorts of things. And when you're a small company or you know 100 people just over 100, like we are those don't come around every day and you can't just keep adding vice presidents all day long until everybody in the company is vice president and that sort of a thing. And so you know it's really this intersection of preparation and opportunity. You know an opportunity comes when the opportunity comes.

Speaker 3 19:21

Somebody leaves, something opens up. You've grown enough that you need to be adding positions, that sort of a thing. But one thing that we can be confident about is that we have women that are really prepared and preparing for those roles when those things open up and become available. So you never want to make excuses right about like well, there's no openings or whatever, but there's also there's a pragmatic element of that, and so we want to make sure that when that intersection comes around and those opportunities open up. We have the right people for those roles.

Speaker 1 19:51

Yeah, I really appreciate how you are thoughtful in your approach on best practices and the longitudinal approach. In your approach on best practices and the longitudinal approach, what I was thinking is I've heard many people say many women, their careers are not. They're very zigzaggy, they're very in and out right. We're pretty seasonal in how we do things and how we work towards things In a longitudinal approach. How does that work with women? Because they might not be able to stay there the whole time. They might have a gap of six months for taking up for their children or caring for elderly parents or those kind of things. I don't know. Do you have any perspectives on that or thoughts on that?

Speaker 3 20:33

Yeah, that's a great question. You know, we hire a lot, of, a lot of junior level people in general. This is something that we see a lot, you know, not just with women, but with men also, that are taking some time out for parental leave and these sorts of things, which is which is really great, and you do the best you can. One of the big changes that we made in that respect was, well, we made some changes around how much parental leave we're able to give, which is which has been great, but making sure that we're providing a variety of opportunities for people to come back from that. And, and one thing that we've seen be very popular with new moms especially is, hey, can I come back part time?

Speaker 1 21:15

Sure.

Speaker 3 21:15

And this is another thing where we turn best practices into a process and and and this will be my, my theme for the day which is, you know, again, when you're a small company of 15 people, you say, yeah, yeah, there would be women or men who went out on parental leave and maybe didn't have that relationship with senior management and felt like their options were limited, sure, and so we needed to be very clear and say, hey, we have established processes around this. You want to come back part time? We're going to make that available to you, and we've had a number of people take advantage of that or any number of variations around that, but that's the one that kind of stands out is you know, people have something new going on in their life which is which is so exciting, and and we want to be accommodating to that, and and we, we, we still want to have them, you know, we still, we still want them to to work for us and bring their skills and do all the great work that they do.

Speaker 1 22:15

I love that. I love the variety Right it as people's lives change. One of the conversations we've been having lately a lot is about remote work. Sure, Right, Full in office remote work what does that look like? And I think I don't know. I think it's going to be really interesting for companies to figure that out and maintain it. Do you have any thoughts on that? I know that that's not particular to the elevator challenge, but just in general as business, because you're so into process Right, which I think is great. What does that look like, do you think?

Speaker 3 22:44

Yeah, it's been a really interesting evolution since the start of COVID.

Speaker 1 22:49

Yeah.

Speaker 3 22:49

You know which? You know March of 2020,. We all went home and you know hope, you had a good chair at home and you know all of those sorts of things as we all adapted to working from home, which many of us had not really done before. When we came back to the office, we came back two days a week, so Tuesdays and Wednesdays, with the other days working from home, and that's largely what we still do today, but the way this is framed and what I hear from the staff is is a lot different than it used to be.

Speaker 3 23:21

So when we came back, there was a lot. There was not a lot, but some pushback hey, can I just, can I just keep working from home? It was really productive for me, these sorts of things. But but again, we are a creative business and and so we have teams that like to be in the office with a whiteboard and, you know, brainstorming and coming up with ideas, and you know I obviously want to create an environment where they can do that. And so, you know, maybe a year into that, our creative and strategy teams came to me and said, hey, we want to come in another day.

Speaker 1 23:54

Oh, interesting.

Speaker 3 23:55

Is that a problem? I said, no, you know, we don't. We don't lock the doors on the other days. We have the space, yeah, come on in, come on in and use it, and so now some of our teams are coming in a third day and there's been this shift from like can I do fewer days, can I just be work from home all the time to? Oh gosh, I'm actually really seeing the value of being in here with with the team and and doing work in that way.

Speaker 3 24:21

And that, that's not a. That's not an.

Speaker 3 24:22

Aha, that's not a told you so or anything like that. But that's just something that I've observed and it's been been really interesting. Now, working from home is another thing that we've seen with new parents, where they're saying, hey, you know, I've got a new little one to take care of at home, but I can put in 20 hours, can I do this from home? And you know we don't like to do that forever, we like to get them back in the office eventually, but that's another thing in our toolbox that we can use.

Speaker 1 24:46

I love that and I love I think it's going to be different industries, right, and, like you said, different teams. I'm a really visual person so I'm like, yes, let's get the whiteboard, let's get the stickies, let's get together. I've tried it on Zoom. It is not the same for me, but for some people that's really their jam, so I love the adaptability of that. As far as Utah, it sounds like you were out for a while in Seattle and then coming back. We're a Utah based company. What? What are some things you hope for the future of Utah and their talent pool and engaging women and diversity in that talent pool as a state, as a state as a state?

Speaker 3 25:28

Yeah, yeah, great question. We tend to, you know, from our inside view on Utah, we tend to think about Utah as being different than other states, right, and you know, in focus on family and some other things, and so you know, we'd love to see continued progress from the highest levels in that. You know, I think parental leave is actually a really good example here. You know, while I worked at a big tech company at the time, they changed their, their, their policy and gave six weeks of parental leave and now at the time, that was groundbreaking and that was huge and it's like man, it's like you're never coming back sort of a thing. It was like unbelievable and and so much progress has been made since then. And our most recent parental leave policy maternal policy specifically goes up to 16 weeks of fully paid, which we're really excited about. It's so funny to be on the running the business side of things because you go, man, we're going to be without this person for four months.

Speaker 3 26:33

This is going to be going to be something else, maybe something else, but then when you, when you look globally, you know the US is one of, I think, five countries still that doesn't have a federal paid parental leave policy and some of these other policies again in Europe and other parts of the world, you know, put our 16 week paid leave to shame, you know. And it's 26. It's all relative, it's a year and these sorts of things. And so you know, I'd love to see more things that rely less on individual companies kind of doing the art of this but having some science behind it and saying, hey, here's how it's going to work, we're going to be fair to everybody. It's not going to depend on what job you have as to, you know, how you can take care of your family, and that sort of a thing. So, yeah, I would love to see just continued progress in that sort of thing.

Speaker 1 27:23

Yeah, more standardized process.

Speaker 2 27:25

For sure. I think it can be, you know, kind of scary the first time that you decide as a company, especially as a smaller company right, that you're going to do these kinds of big benefits right, Because you know that person has such a large impact on your business to just like let them go fully paid, you know, for that amount of time and I think there's lots of other types of, also, for those of us that have you know or are making those decisions right now, you know whether or not we're going to offer those kinds of benefits. Or or you know, not bring people into the office or let them go remote, or whatever the option is. Um, that first step is always scary and and I love that you have made those conscious decisions to do the scary thing how do you get through that when it may feel as a company, especially as an executive team, hey, that's a hard choice.

Speaker 3 28:27

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And you're always trying to think about what's the kind of second order effects of what's going to be that side effect of a new policy or a new benefit or that sort of thing, even with parental leave. It's like are we, are we incentivizing people to have children, like I said now you know, I have four kids, If anybody thinks that having a child so that you get a few months of vacation is an equal

Speaker 3 28:54

thing like that. That does not work, that math does not check out. I don't think anybody would do that or they would learn pretty quick. But you know, yeah, you're always thinking about the second order effects, and so we've done the thing before. Well, actually, I can give a good example, which is when we came back on the hybrid schedule with two days a week and it was the middle of the year it must have been June of whatever year that was and we said, hey, this is our plan through the end of December, and that was all we committed to, and said, ok, we are going to do an experiment on this hybrid work schedule and we'll see how it goes. Because we didn't know, yeah, and we felt like we were rolling the dice and not everybody was coming back to the office at that point.

Speaker 3 29:36

You see more of that now in the news and we're we're a lot closer where we were pre-COVID than we were just a little bit ago.

Speaker 3 29:43

But so, yeah, we tried it out through the end of the year and and found it to be successful, you know, and it was working well for the staff, and said, ok, we're going to, we're going to renew this and, you know, eventually said OK, this is our, this is how we do it, this is our policy going forward. Okay, this is our, this is how we do it, this is our policy going forward. We have some other benefits that we explicitly renew year to year and say, hey, you know, as long as budget and other things allow, and we're going to have this benefit and we've committed through the end of 2024. We'll look at it again and you know we've been in a position to keep renewing some of those benefits, which has been great, but that's been our way of putting a toe in the water. And if you need to not that you want to backtrack but if you need to adjust a little bit, if you need to do something different with it, then you can.

Speaker 1 30:30

Yeah, I really like that. That's a great question and, as you've been talking through this, it sounds like with the pay and with the coming back to office, you have gotten feedback and then incorporated that feedback, which is kind of what it seems like you're saying right now too.

Speaker 3 30:44

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1 30:45

Yeah, I think that's smart.

Speaker 3 30:46

Yeah, sometimes more feedback than you were looking for.

Speaker 3 30:51

No our staff is great. You know I we're still a small enough company that you know. I know I know everybody in the company at least at least a little bit. You know some are new hires. We just got a new batch of summer interns and I don't know all of them yet and that that sort of a thing. But people know that my door is open and they can come in and talk and and and a lot of people do, and that's that's really valuable information for us as a company.

Speaker 1 31:13

Yeah, I think that's very cool. Well, as we wrap up, is there any other questions you have or anything else you'd like to share on this topic that we haven't talked about yet?

Speaker 3 31:23

You know, I just love to say that I'm honored to be with you guys and be able to share some thoughts here. You know I have so much respect for the Women's Leadership Institute and the work that you guys do. It's a little bit funny for me to come on as a man and, you know, try to explain all the great, great things I'm doing and you know all of these sorts of things. But you know it's it's something that's really important to us and that's that's why we jumped back in on the Elliott Her Challenge and and we're proud to be a part of that and proud to be working with you guys.

Appreciation for Diversity and Collaboration

Speaker 1 31:54

I love that. Thank you so much. Thank you for your work on it and continuing with it and for coming on, because, as you know, we need men in this as well. So absolutely appreciate it Anything else, Chris.

Speaker 2 32:08

No, thank you very much. It's been a pleasure getting to know you and learning all the things you're doing. To me it's an inspiration as a as a founder of a company, learning that, yeah, you can experiment and test things out.

Speaker 1 32:30

And and and to that, the work that you've done has proven that some of the things that we all think that, yeah, it is better to have more diversity in the room, it is better to have options that allow for that diversity. Yeah for sure. Yeah, thanks for sharing that and being here. Yeah, you bet. And likewise, thank you so much, thanks.