Ep 144-145, June 2022:

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

Today on Wisconsin veterans forward technology is a beautiful thing. And here we are talking about technology during the Wisconsin veterans chamber of commerce technology month, which is apropo. That makes sense. But when we think of technology, we probably first think of one of these things, right? We, we think of things that connect us globally. We think of

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

Movies, computer graphic, computer generated graphics, video games technology inside of our cars, things with circuit boards that make it easier to connect things that make it easier to be entertained. Those are usually the first things that come to mind, and those are like the sexy things to talk about. When we're talking about tech and tech development, electronic electric cars, plugin, electric hybrids, like those are the things that we think about. However, that is like the tip of a iceberg, a giant tack iceberg. I think even though we gravitate towards those electric car Tesla sort of cool things, when we think of the future of technology, the, the Albatros, the giant you know, under ice giant, part of the iceberg that you don't see is process improvement is, is the ability for tech to improve processes that save people time and save people, money that save. If you are a business owner, if you are a hiring manager, if you are a leader in an organization, we use technology and systems to save time, which saves money. People aren't writing on paper calendars anymore and printing them out and, you know, sending it via carrier pitch into their employees. You know, they're putting it on Google G calendar or through their Microsoft teams, whatever that is a, that is a, a software based tech driven process improvement. That saves time.

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

Of course, you need people to understand those things and manage those things. So it's not like it just like here's tech, your life is improved. There's like there's a, there's a, a barrier for entry. People have to learn how to do it and maintain and update software driven tech. But a huge part of this is that where tech has been underutilized is in human resources and in particular human capital management. So we have an opportunity through these, these tech based systems.

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

And a lot of people don't take advantage of this. They don't, they, they don't, they don't even know where to start. You can leverage tech and new progressive systems to improve your human capital pipelines, your attraction, your acquisition, your employment, and retention of quality employees. People are finally starting to understand <laugh> in this, you know, the, the great mass worker Exodus, where the power is in the worker's lap, people are beginning to really understand as the turnaround is so high, that look, it is so stink and expensive to find new people it's better to acquire, train and retain those people. It's so expensive to find people and have people go through the process of acquiring other people, training those people. It's such a waste to not focus on keeping them around and improving all of those processes. If you have employees, you're always gonna have employees.

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

You're always gonna be looking for employees. There's always gonna be some kind of turn turnaround. So it is insane to not think about ways that you can improve those time consuming and expensive processes. And today we are talking about how every business owner, every hiring manager can, should, and can take steps towards improving those processes to save time, to save money, to improve employee acquisition, performance, retention, morale, all of those things through some simple systematic implementation. That's what we're talking about. We're talking about it with an expert who obviously knows way more about this than I, if I sounded smart about this up until this point, you have reached the extent of my ability to, to be smart on this. I am like you now know everything that I know. This is why we have subject matter experts. Dan cop is the co-founder. I believe one of the guys running the show will get to know him of Dynamico systems and they improve those processes.

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

They help business owners improve those processes. So if you want some tidbits of information on how to improve your hiring acquisition retention engagement processes, leveraging tech to do so, save time and money. Every time you hear tech, save time and money, make things easier. Then you need to stick around and listen to this. And I suggest you do. We're gonna get into it right after this. You are listening to Wisconsin veterans forward. Wisconsin's premier audio resource for veterans, military families, veteran owned and veteran friendly businesses. Wisconsin veterans forward is brought to you by the Wisconsin veterans chamber of commerce at wiveteranschamber.org. Okay, let's go. I'm so excited. I feel like I'm like caffeinated and ready to rock and I'm ready to learn a whole bunch of stuff about something that I don't know anything about. Our our good friend and fellow veteran chamber member, Dan cop. How are you, sir?

Dan Kopp - Dinamico:

I am doing exceptionally well. And that was a great overview of everything I wanted to discuss today.

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

Was it really? Cause I, I felt like, you know, if, when in doubt, when you don't know what you're talking about, just use big words and speak confidently. So

Dan Kopp - Dinamico:

Yeah. And then people, I believed everything you said. So, Hey, I'm told

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

If it passed the litmus test from a subject matter expert, then I think I'm good. So, so first off, tell tell us a bit about yourself. You are a veteran, I believe co-founder of dynamic ecosystems,

Dan Kopp - Dinamico:

Correct. I am a veteran. I was in the us army for a while, a military police officer. And then after that, I went into public education. Did that for 20 years, 10 of which I was a superintendent and the, since 2019, I have owned a company with two partners. So I am technically a co-founder yes. Companies called Dynamico our websites, Dynamico systems.com. And basically we built our company around the premise that we have. We can help employers. And I'm gonna use many of the words that you just heard ahead of use. We help employers save time and money while they attract and maintain great people. Now there's a lot to unpack there, and there's a lot that goes into that conceptually, but it's based upon compensation systems. And after seven years of thousands of hours of, of philosophical discussion on trial and error, we created software that is web based that allows every employer to custom build compensation systems for every employee group. They have.

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

Excellent. And, and now before we move forward for anybody who's watching here, I just want to ensure that you all know that you can throw questions at us about any old thing that pops into your head, via your comments. If you're watching on Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, if you're one of the two people that watch our live streams on Twitter okay. <Laugh> so drop a comment, do a retweet, whatever. But you can throw questions at us. And then also if you're watching this not live on YouTube, throw a question in the comments, we will answer it and we will get to it. We wanna make sure that we are serving you in providing this information to you. Before we get into the now Dan, I just have a question, like why comp employee compensation systems, like were you growing up and even, or as an educator and a superintendent you're were you thinking like, man, I can't wait to retire and, and create this technology? Or like, were you safe from a burning building by a compensation system specialist when you were a kid or

Dan Kopp - Dinamico:

Something, you nailed it right there. I was saved as a young child. Okay. No, actually go back to 2011 in Wisconsin when act 10 affected school districts. And with that went, the union contracts were basically dissolved at that time and became obsolete in many districts and what we encountered and I was running a school district at the time. What we encountered across the state was many district administrators, superintendents, and boards through their compensation systems away because they were part of a, you know, they were embedded in a union contract and by default they must go out with the contract. Wow. So what I quickly learned was no one really had a good system in place to, to replace the, the system that was there, whether it was good, bad in between, it was a system that worked. Hmm. So there was nothing there.

Dan Kopp - Dinamico:

So my partners and I, and we're friends, so we spent, and we're we're, we were all in public education. At the time we spent countless hours trying to figure this out and took us seven years in our goal. Our very narrow focus was to let's create a system for educators. What we created once we started using it in private nonprofit sectors was we've got a tool that literally is so user friendly. Once I show people how to use it in a 20 minute demonstration, they're up and running and creating systems of their own through their lenses, the employer what's important to them. What's important to their employees and it's for every employee group. So even though we are trying to fix a very narrow issue, we created something that can be used by every employer, private, public nonprofit for every employee group. Even if your employee group is one, like we, we could, we've worked with boards to create models for their executive directors in nonprofits. So literally could be a model for one person.

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

Hmm. So so how does, what sets this system apart from more traditional compensation systems, maybe more pen and paper, or like, you know bank information you know bank information for the employee goes to bank ACH transfer, initiated people write down the hours, you know, they get a pay stub, blah blah. Like how do, how does this differ from what we traditionally understand as a compensation system,

Dan Kopp - Dinamico:

Right on so traditionally, and there are some employers we're encountering who are well ahead of the power curve. But traditionally compensation systems are employ, are longevity based. So our system allows you to introduce or an employer to introduce other things that are important for their employees to possess longevity is quite, is important. Don't get me wrong, but it's by default a 20 year veteran because he or she has been present for 20 years by default does not make him or her the best employee. If that's the top of your, your wage scale, it could, but my not by default. So there are other things that go into making an employee good. So we work with our clients to have them articulate what an ideal employee brings to the table on a daily basis. So for example every employer probably has some type of evaluation tool for all their employees.

Dan Kopp - Dinamico:

Typically tools are broken down into sub components, you know, like this part, this whatever. So we can say, all right, this part of the comp of the evaluation tool can be embedded into your compensation system. This part can be embedded. This part can be embedded. They can be valued at different, different ratios based on one may be more important than the other cuz traditional longevity based models don't encourage or reward satisfactory performance, let alone exemplary performance, but an employer could take their tools that they're already using embed those in there and say, all right, employees, if you are satisfactory, you're going to get this amount of money on top of your base. So that would not only encourage people to do it, but it would reward them for doing it. And if we had, if every employer could say they've got what they did, as they define whatever satisfactory is in their mind, however they define it.

Dan Kopp - Dinamico:

And they've got employees across the board who are satisfactory, think what could happen, but we could also introduce into the idea what about exemplary performance? Cause we've got there's employees everywhere who are just phenomenal. Again, longevity based systems. Don't acknowledge that, let alone reward it typically. So let's put in there, we've got the satisfactory metric, let's put in an exemplary metric. So, you know, encourage people to be satisfactory. Great. If we all got there, we've got, we've got a pretty darn good business organization. But if we've also got people striving on a daily to get to exemplary, think what could happen. Hmm. And, and that's the essence of what we bring to the table. So not only evaluation components, but whether certification degrees, ability you know, what people do for us, that's what we help employers acknowledge. And it's not about finding where they are in the market and saying, let's, let's just assume we're talking a custodial position.

Dan Kopp - Dinamico:

You know, the market might be $20 starting. We're not gonna go in and tell somebody, well, offer 22. You know, that, that doesn't fix anything. Make sure you're in the market. Let's talk about the great things custodians do, or you want them to do and start rewarding them for them and acknowledging that. And the win is people in the, the workforce, the 40 and under crew. They really want to make a difference. That's, you know, very general statement about mm-hmm <affirmative> the generation, but they want to make a difference. They also want to make a connection with their employer and they want the efforts they're putting in acknowledged. So our system accomplishes that it allows the employers to make a connection with their employees while acknowledging the greatness, their employees are bringing to the table on a daily basis.

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

So now is this a, so your software dynamic, your systems, are they less of a compensation processing platform, human resources, pay stub management and more of a reman reimagining of how employees are compensated or is it both?

Dan Kopp - Dinamico:

It is the latter. As of right now, it is definitely the ladder. And what's important is, you know, when you hire somebody, when you've got, when it comes, raise time, there's always time allocated to figuring out how much is this employee worth? What are we gonna offer? What's the market telling us, what does he or she bring to the table? What are we gonna offer fast forward a year to the end of the fiscal year, say, all right, what about next year? Our system allows for you to plug in. It's very, very OB objective. You plug in here's the base. These are the things the employee does or is going to do for us. Are the qualifications, the skills, the certifications, the degrees, the person's bringing with them. That's their starting wage. It's you know, the system speaks for itself. You, you check the box, there's the wage or salary.

Dan Kopp - Dinamico:

And then a year later at the end, what what's next year look like? Do they check any more boxes? What me? What type of increase do we want to give the system? And we've got cost controls built in our dashboard. So every year employers have the, the ability to say over current year, what's our spend for next year. Let's put in 5%. All right, you're gonna, it's a 5% overall raise. That's our pot of money to divvy out from one year to the next. There are other cost controls too, that says, you know, theoretically, when you have someone in a current system and you shift to another system, or once you build a system that rewards people for things they're doing, someone might have a great year and kill it in the following year, they sort of drop off. Either scenario leads to someone perhaps being worth less compensation in the subsequent year.

Dan Kopp - Dinamico:

So we've gotta hold harmless in there that acknow let's see employer acknowledge that and say, all right, you're worth less compensation. But using my, my example a moment ago where I said 5%, we're gonna put in there a 3%. So that means despite the fact that our system shows us you're worth less compensation. This coming year, you're still gonna get a 3% raise or an initially it could be 5%. And then year five, as you incrementally implement over time, you could tell your people who are at the top of the salary schedule, maybe your hangers on who've been there 30 years. And they're just getting paid to show up to work, basically, cuz we all have had 'em. So you say in year one, it's a hundred, 5% year two, it's 104 year three, it's 103, et cetera. And all of a sudden year five, it's at a hundred.

Dan Kopp - Dinamico:

What happens? What we've seen with our clients is a couple things could happen. We actually work with a nonprofit and we always encourage our clients to work with the stakeholders because me as a C-suite executive doesn't necessarily, I don't have all the answers. So somebody in the role is gonna have different answers than I do. First line supervisors, people in HR, people in business, everybody needs to have a voice to identify what's important. And we, we put that in the system and then we, we talk about all right, here's what's important. We're gonna take baby steps and increment incrementally implement over time. But a year five, this is what it looks like. So if you do it in year five and you've got that whole harmless, that's 1 0 5 to one, oh, you know, 5%, 4%, 3%, all of a sudden, well they've got a five year warning and what we've seen happen.

Dan Kopp - Dinamico:

We've had employees engaged on the front end, developing these they've appreciated the process. And when they're developed and ready for implementation, we've had literally had employees at our clients organizations say, you know what? I great. You involve me. I appreciate what you are. You articulated your values. You're wearing them on your sleep cuz they're, they're embedded in your compensation system. That's not me. I'm gonna go elsewhere where I fit mm-hmm <affirmative> so that's where the attraction piece comes in for us because then our clients go to market and say, Hey, we're looking for somebody to do these things. If you can do these things, please come to us and we're gonna pay you for 'em. So not only does it attract people who fit you versus people who are just in the market doing a shotgun approach, applying everywhere, you're going to get people who fit you. And then once you've got them there, your odds of retention drastically increase because they're delivering on the things that you find important

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

And that they came there to deliver on in the first place.

Dan Kopp - Dinamico:

Right? Yeah. So in essence, you've got a values based system that you've qualified and quantified, put it into a compensation system, your employees re get re deliver. You, get, you pay them for those things upon which they're delivering. And it's a win-win because you've now got everybody understanding the values of the organization, how their role fits in the bigger picture. And in essence, the values exercise, which provides clarity for the individual provides clarity for the organization and everybody's going in the same direction. Now,

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

You know, I think that it's, it's brilliant coupling compensation or at least above base level salary compensation basing that on key performance indicators for the company like everybody wins when your expectations are clearly defined and launching at least a portion of somebody's salary to that can incentivize that, that performance. And that's one thing that I believe that many corporate entities actually get, right? They don't typically pay money for someone that is not providing a value and they have frequent maybe over the top evaluation periods, but then a lot of them receive annual bonuses based on their ability to execute on those key, those KPIs, those key performance indicators. Now I is, is what your software does basically taking that ethos and bringing it to our non corporate large and our medium sized and our small businesses and our nonprofits.

Dan Kopp - Dinamico:

Absolutely. That's exactly what we do. We actually, our system allows for the management of those, those bonuses as well. So we've made the management easy. What we've encountered are two types of employers or HR people visit people like I don't know how to innovate. All right, we've got some ideas. Let me demonstrate a couple models to get the juices flowing, or I've got all these grandiose ideas on what I want to do, but I've got no way to manage it because at the end of the day, when you've, when you've got a lot of different ideas and then you're trying to manage 'em via spreadsheets, which is typical and logical to do, it becomes a, an arduous task to come up with a process to manage these things.

Dan Kopp - Dinamico:

I was actually talking to a client a couple weeks ago, and they've got 400, 400 different employee groups within one organization. And exactly now to manage each one individually, probably pretty easy if they're doing spreadsheets or in our system. But when you collectively think about 400, like, alright, oh my that's a lot of moving parts. So our system could, can accommodate that. And what we've found is let's assume you've got line workers. You've got administrative assistants and you've got custodians. Those are general categories. I play in a lot of people resonate with a lot of people. So you're going to probably have what some of our clients have called the skeleton of a model that says we're gonna reward every three years of local experience. Great. So three years, six years, nine years, et cetera. And we want these types of stances on our evaluation.

Dan Kopp - Dinamico:

So evaluation component, number one, satisfactory, number one, exemplary, et cetera. So then if you do that through 30 years and for, and you've got three or four different components that might be 15 different variables, you've just introduced that every single employee or any employee and every employee group's going to have. And then you look at all right outside of the general stuff for custodians, what else do they do for us that we think makes an ideal custodian? What does the custodian thinks makes ideal? What do the people in the building think, whatever the case may be, you look at those things and then say, all right, let's add to our skeleton for custodians. You might add another 10 or so now let's talk about administrative assistant. Now let's talk about a business official. Let's talk about your COO let's talk about your director or your president and develop assistant for him or her.

Dan Kopp - Dinamico:

We've got the skeleton. Everybody's gonna get it rewarded every three years. We've got the evaluation components and how we're gonna do that. And then what what's specific to them now, conceptually, that sounds pretty easy. But when you part start doing that and trying to manage that on a spreadsheet, we've all used spreadsheets enough and I'm, I'm terrible at it because, oh, I broke these, that cell again, the, the algorithm no longer works, right? Oops. Who created this one that can fix this for me? Or where's the original, we've got eight people working on it. So our system takes that all away. Going back to your stance, that it saves time and money. There's the time factor right there, right? The money factor is because our employers are making connections with their employees. Their retention rates are going back up pre COVID rates. So they're saving money and time because they're not constantly going to market trying to find people who fit them.

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

So if we, I think we all understand that traditional methods of compensation are antiquated and haven't cut the mustard for a long time. But just now I think we're starting to see people reject the you know, hourly compensation model that, you know, non-performance based or the, the salary model non-performance based, you know, base pay, which in many cases is just an opportunity for an employer to take advantage of and overwork a labor wage employee. And there's no incentive for, you know, for real growth there for the employee or the employer. Everybody just kind of spins their wheels. That said, I, I think we are seeing this change, this shift in a mindset, and it'll be very important for processes and tech to support people's transition from old to new, but people hate change. They're resistant to change. So, so my question is, is when you are pitching this to business owners who may be stuck in these antiquated processes and you see opportunities for them to improve or reimagine or rethink how they do this in ways that could help them and their employees, what resistance do you typically face?

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

Do you typically hear from those people?

Dan Kopp - Dinamico:

Everybody wants process improvement, right? Mm-Hmm <affirmative> provided they don't have to change anything.

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

<Laugh>

Dan Kopp - Dinamico:

I mean, that's exactly what we run into all the time is mm-hmm, <affirmative>, it's the para the paradigm shift that is required to get off of what we all know, and we've all grown up with and we've all used or been in the system of a longevity based system. It's a comfort level. And the comfort level outweighs the need to change is what we're encountering. I literally filled out a something for a different thing. Like who are your competitors? My competitors is, is the fear of change. The that's one of my competitors right now, because we're in like PE people understand, but then it's like, oh yeah, but I just don't think, oh, that just makes 'em uncomfortable. So it's,

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

But they understand it. And they also understand that their potential future employees are craving modernized compensation systems that reward their efforts.

Dan Kopp - Dinamico:

Absolutely. I just read this the other day about again, the under 40 crowded generalization of the, of the generations, but they don't wanna trade their time for money. They want to trade their value. They need to be paid based on their value.

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

Absolutely.

Dan Kopp - Dinamico:

And, and that's exactly what we bring to the table. I was actually work. I also am a leadership coach and I was working with a client the other day. And the person had an opportunity to sort of quasi interview with an an employer. And I said, you can lead this discussion, focus on the things that you are going to accomplish. And you know, whether it's monthly, weekly, fiscal year wise, whatever, focus on the tasks that you said, I will accomplish these when you need them. And they will be done correctly, et cetera. Versus how many days do you want me in the office during the week? And how many days can I work at home? And how many days, you know, how many hours per week get here's the tasks I need done. If you can accomplish them in 10 hours and it takes the other person 27, great get 'em done. I just want them done and done well, mm-hmm <affirmative>. So it is about the value that employees bring to the table. And that's exactly what we help employers recognize

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

That helps everybody avoid wasting time. I mean, if, if, if you own a business and you wanna launch a weekly podcast slash live stream, and it's worth $50,000 a year for you to have that done, and you acquire me and it takes me 10 hours a week to do that, the, for me, I don't wanna have to work in extra 30 hours during that same period of time, just to make it worth their while to on, on my end, you want a podcast it's worth $50,000 to you to have a weekly high quality thing put together. Okay. I can do that for $50,000, if you want more that's and if it's worth more to you, you can pay me more. On the flip side, if down the road, a podcast doesn't have the same ROI for the business owner. They can say like, it's no longer worth that to me. Now it's worth X. So there's, there's a little more onus that is on the employee, but I think our generation and younger we're, we're up to the tent. That's what we're looking for. We wanna provide value, trade value for compensation and take all the other extra extraneous BS that wastes everybody else's time and money and throw it out.

Dan Kopp - Dinamico:

Absolutely. You, yes. Again, you sound like the expert on this call. Yeah, you're exactly right. I had a prospective client talk to me a couple years ago and he happened to own 20 convenience stores and, you know, like what could you do for me? I said, do you ha is there more value when an employee, a prospective employee says to you, yes, I will work second shift, third shift or weekends versus most people just want day shift Monday through Friday. Well, yeah, there's an example of what you could drop in there. So maybe you've got people who are on call, put that in the system. Maybe you've got people say, yes, I'm receptive to second, third shift or weekend shift. Now a lot of employers do that, but they still struggle with the management of that because the, the more parameters you add, especially on the spreadsheet, it, it just gets confusing. So yes, we have 40 hour work 40 hour work weeks for a lot of people. And you can't get around a convenience store where somebody's working the tail. It's not about the value they bring conceptually it's about the 40 hours. It is the, they have to be there for 40 hours. There

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

Is, there are just some right positions that fit that. Yeah.

Dan Kopp - Dinamico:

Right. But at the end of the day, you, we start talking about the, the evaluation component as well. On top of the differential, I just said for different shifts or weekends, we all know that we've gone to convenience stores or a restaurant or any other place of business where we've had great experience where like, Hey, some, somebody get the manager down here. This young lady needs a raise. She should be run. You know, we've all had that where you just run into superstars. So if you start in incorporating comp or your evaluation components on top of those other things, you're already doing to acknowledge their willingness to work second and third shift, et cetera. And all of a sudden you've got that exemplary play. This is gonna sound stupid. My favorite place to shop for years has been the dunking donuts on highway 50 in the interstate in con in pleasant Prairie.

Dan Kopp - Dinamico:

Because the people in there are just absolutely wonderful. It is just a good work environment. And yeah, I, I go in there to get ice coffee, even when I don't need it, because I like interacting with them. So if they've, they I'm sure not everybody there is that great, but by golly, that's the aura they put off. And if they're that great, their evaluation tools should recognize how great they are at compensation. And they shouldn't be there. Oh, you've been here a year. You're at this much. You've been here two years. No, they should reward that greatness because it's just phenomenal.

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

It brings that value. Yeah. You don't have to wait for a year. Right. You know, you, you get to a point where you are providing X value. You get compensated appropriately.

Dan Kopp - Dinamico:

Exactly.

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

You know, who the system doesn't work for is the loafers who just coast. And don't really like to do anything and get paid for doing the absolute less than the bare minimum. They can't stand it. So what happens to them?

Dan Kopp - Dinamico:

That's a great question. I get that all the time. It's sort of coupled with, how do I roll this out to my employees? You know, because it's change what you already hit on, but also because we've got some hangers on and they're not gonna like it because they're gonna have to actually start working. So here's what it looks like. I encourage all employers to say all, get them in your meeting area. If you've got an school district, you've got an auditorium, you've got a large meeting area. Everybody fits have a company meeting an organizational meeting, say, all right, we, as the leaders of this organization, we want to start doing what's right. For all of you, we want to create compensation systems that reward you for the great things you're doing for us. You've got a three year veteran, who's killing it and do like leading this, leading that the best customer service, whatever that person's gonna say.

Dan Kopp - Dinamico:

Great. Finally, I'm bringing value and they want to recognize that and reward that great other people who are on some continuing of goodness to greatness, they're gonna welcome that. But you know, darn well, there's gonna be some hangers on, in the back row, the good old boys sitting back there thinking, wow, uhoh yeah. You know, they're not gonna say this, but this is what they're thinking. Hey, boss, Laney, like what, what happens to those of us who don't deliver greatness, what's gonna happen to us? I mean, all right. So employers, do you want to continue to have systems that allow loafers at the top of your salary schedule? And we all have had 'em I've had 'em too. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> or do you want to create systems that recognize the greatness that a first year employee or a 35 year veteran could bring to the table and say, yes, that is what we expect and want. So when we get to that point, when, when, when they're not gonna blatantly ask the question that I just sort of sarcastically said, but when you start explaining to 'em, Hey, there's this tool in there called the hold harmless. And even if you don't deliver on the things that we want, you're still gonna get a three, 4% raise or whatever the decision is made at the leadership level to, to implement. And that calms people down. Right.

Dan Kopp - Dinamico:

But you also, but in subsequent years, there's no guarantee that whole harmless is gonna keep you whole, we may be having people get, who are delivering, they're getting seven, 8% raise. And those of you who aren't delivering are maybe getting a one or 2% raise. So if you're okay with that,

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

Right. Compared to inflation of one, a 1% raise, if, if inflation is normal or crazy, like it is right now, you know, a 1% raise is, is a decrease in salary.

Dan Kopp - Dinamico:

Yeah. So exactly. But if somebody's okay with that. Okay. But eventually they're not gonna be okay with that. And then it's going to be time for them. You work them out of the system or they work themselves out because they're gonna find an employer who hasn't embraced the inva, embrace the innovation. And I'm gonna go over to the employer down the road where I can coast as a 20 year veteran.

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

Yeah. <Laugh> yeah. So my, my last question for you here is how does your system take into account non-tangible non numeral subjective things that, that a boss normally used to say, you know, like that outside of KPIs, you treat people with kindness. That's not measurable unless they have a, you know, everybody submit a survey afterwards and based on the number of surveys that are positive versus negative, blah, blah, blah. But there are just some decisions when it comes to rewarding and compensating employees that are not measurable, they are subjective. So are you, is your system cutting those things out? So it is a no joke, yes or no, black or white on or off numbered one through 10, or does it, does it give room for, for a, a leader to, to put in those subjective thoughts?

Dan Kopp - Dinamico:

Two ways to answer that? Yes, yes and no is basically the answer. So what we've found is when people start talking about those slightly in subjective things, usually we can point right back to an evaluation tool that says, let's assume, you know, we're talking about a customer service person working the counter at a convenient store, somewhere in that compensa, or excuse me, in that evaluation tool probably talks about professionalism, interaction with others, whatever that's where the exemplary piece would come in, this person's above and beyond what we expect that takes care of it. So 99% of the time we've, we've encountered ideas. What you just suggested. That's how it's usually handled. Because if you think about what the evaluation tool is, and it's comprehensive, oh, it's right there in component two, subparagraph three. That's where that comes out. If outside of that, to, in addition to other extraneous weird hiring decisions, people may make, maybe you, your system doesn't acknowledge, you know, maybe you are an engineering firm, or we actually, we've got a new client as a law firm and they've got veteran lawyers coming to them, theoretically.

Dan Kopp - Dinamico:

They say, you know, our system's silent on what you've done elsewhere, but you're bringing 10 years of experience that we wanna do. So we've got some non variable paid differential variables, oddly stated, but we call 'em pay differential variables. There's some non-variable ones they're, they're static. You could drop that in there. The only person that has that experience coming from that firm over there for 10 years is going to get that box checked and he, or she's gonna get that nobody else is. Right. So what we've found is in this rang through with a school district leadership team I met with about a month ago, it's very defensible because for equity purposes, with act 10, back in 2011 and like many employers do there, aren't a lot of once systems are gone or they're ambiguous. There's not a lot of justification at times for hiring decisions and where someone starts.

Dan Kopp - Dinamico:

So districts who threw their compensation systems away, companies who sort of have an ambiguous, like, all right, where are we gonna part put this person to start five years down the road, HR people, leadership, team members, people who made those decisions, maybe aren't going to be there and have to justify. And this has happened with, with some employers in the state, why is this male here and this female here? And they were hired at the same time. The people who did that aren't here anymore. We our system is so objective. You check the box, you pull it out five years later, say it doesn't matter who was in the HR at that time, because the system's gonna reflect when they were hired. We checked these boxes. That's why he or she was here. And he or she was here. That's where the differential comes in and provided people here to our system with fidelity. It is defendable. And not only is treating people in an equitable manner, the right thing to do outside of that system. This ensures equity based approach, moving forward, not only at the point of higher, but in perpetuity.

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

I love it. I feel like this is I feel like this is a groundbreaking moment and I, and I really hope that these, these ideas through your tech and, and similar ones throughout the country, just proliferate and are able to able to change how we, how we operate and how we compensate people. I just think it's the coolest thing, man. Dan, I appreciate your time and everything that you do. I think Dynamico sounds pretty wicked

Dan Kopp - Dinamico:

Right on. I appreciate the feedback. This is, is been a good experience. And if we can help any of your audience members, chamber members feel free to reach out.

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

You bet. So if somebody wants to get in touch Dynamico systems.com is scrolling across the bottom. D I N a M ICO systems.com. Otherwise they can reach out to you on LinkedIn,

Dan Kopp - Dinamico:

Linkedin, add Dan cop Dynamico. I didn't set it up that way, but I think once I did enough content on LinkedIn, all of a sudden the Dynamico was thrown into my handle. I don't know. Also email addresses, Dan Dynamico systems.com. And again, dynamical systems is along the bottom of the screen. So simple as Dan dynamical systems.com. If you mentioned this, so I, I offhand mention, I do leadership coaching as well. If you if you contact me after watching or viewing this this broadcast, I've got a, an offer for those of you who do that, I I'm offering up five free 30 minute coaching calls to see if it's a good fit moving forward for coaching purposes. Nice, nice. And we've got a licensing fee for dynamic comp, which is our trademarked compensation system will take a percent off of the licensing fee as well. If you mention the vets chamber, when you contact me

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

Outstanding, good stuff. And I'll be sure to put that in the information when, when this episode is released as a podcast, I'll put it in the show notes for sure. Dan, appreciate your time, sir. I'll ask you to hang on the line for just a minute so I can chat with you afterwards, if that works for you.

Dan Kopp - Dinamico:

Absolutely.

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

Excellent, cool, good stuff. You know what just popped into my head at the end there while Dan was talking about equity is I'm a big fan of pay transparency. And I know a lot of people are and becoming increasingly fan of increasingly bigger fans. It's becoming more widespread pay transparency. I think this system is great and, and this school of thought is great because from the front end, you can say, here's what I want. And here's what I value it at. We're do like gone should be the days where we are interviewing people who don't know what the salary range for a position is. It is a waste of time. And a lot of times it's an insult when somebody's going in expecting they're guessing 80 to a hundred, and then they get offered 60, gimme a break. It's it's just a waste of everybody's time. It's disrespectful for everybody's time. And also I think everybody should know what everybody gets paid in the workplace. Couldn't have said it better, myself, other Adam, good stuff, friends. Appreciate you joining us. We'll see you. Same time, same place next week on Wisconsin. Veterans forward.

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

Thank you for listening to Wisconsin veterans forward brought to you by the Wisconsin veterans chamber of commerce. Please visit us at wiveteranschamber.org. Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast, leave a rating and review in whatever platform you're listening through.