Summary

Jeremy Stick, CHRO at DaBella, joins host Kelsey Willock Jones on Beyond the Paycheck to trace a line from his first paycheck, $2.35 an hour washing dishes in a junior high cafeteria, to the way he builds benefits education and development strategy for twenty six hundred employees across twenty eight states. The conversation covers why he trains people so they can leave and then treats them well enough to stay, how he uses regrettable turnover to make the financial case for people programs when the spreadsheet does not obviously support it, and why the moment someone gets a raise is the single best moment to talk to them about money. Along the way he unpacks how he takes the fear out of high deductible plans and HSAs with a simple Excel breakdown, a wellness program that went sideways, and why he thinks the return to office shift is going to trigger a talent war most HR leaders are underestimating. Built for CHROs, HR leaders, and total rewards teams who want practical language for defending people investments and teaching financial wellness in a workforce focused on right now.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction

00:42 Meet Jeremy Stick, CHRO at DaBella

01:52 The first paycheck and the first Game Boy

02:53 Why delayed gratification drives benefits education

04:11 Stumbling into HR from educational psychology

06:02 Train them so they can leave

07:02 Measuring regrettable turnover

09:14 A wellness program that spiraled

11:10 Taking the fear out of HSAs and 401(k)s

13:56 Lifestyle creep and the raise conversation

16:20 The return to office shift

19:12 My name is Jeremy, not HR

Takeaways

-Train and develop people so they could leave, then treat them well enough that they stay, and call it a graduation when the next step genuinely is not available internally.

-Track regrettable turnover as its own line, then price the six month lag of three months to backfill plus three months to ramp, including the load it shifts onto remaining employees.

-Take the emotion out of benefits by showing the math, breaking down premiums, a worst case out of pocket cost, HSA contributions, and tax deferment in a simple spreadsheet.

-Catch employees at the raise, because the highest leverage financial advice is to keep spending where it was rather than scaling it to the new salary.

-A 401(k) is a time horizon problem before it is a knowledge problem, so frame it as the Game Boy later instead of the candy now.

Connect with the Guest

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremystick/

Website: https://www.dabella.us

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