Cash, Clarity, and Care: Pay Transparency, Total Rewards, and AI with Sertara’s VP of HR

Summary

In a year when healthcare costs are climbing and “cash is king,” how do you design total rewards that actually improve lives?

Serena Filson, Vice President of Human Resources and Total Rewards at Sertara, shares how her comp/HR tech roots (Johnson & Johnson alum) and consulting mindset shape a modern, data-informed, and human approach to pay and benefits.

Serena explains why leaders must challenge their own money assumptions, educate continuously (not just via one lunch-and-learn), and communicate the “why” behind difficult comp decisions.

She details building a globally relevant benefits ecosystem—from critical illness coverage that lets parents focus on care, not claims, to culturally specific perks like rice allowances in the Philippines—while pushing toward measurable ROI through prevention.

Serena also walks through embedding AI in open enrollment to improve plan selection and previews near-term trends: on-demand pay, fractional work, and the heightened importance of cash.

Expect practical frameworks for transparency, education, and measurement that any people leader can adapt.

Timestamps

[00:45] – Serena’s path: compensation/HR tech at J&J to leading Total Rewards, HR ops, HR tech, and TA at Sertara

[02:15] – Money story and scarcity mindset: how early experiences inform financial behaviors at work

[09:15] – Designing for diverse needs: challenging assumptions and building inclusive pay/benefits

[12:40] – Where comp/benefits break down: education and communication gaps on both sides

[15:10] – Communicating hard changes: bonus/equity realignment and defining success by transparency

[18:20] – From attraction to transformation: gap-closing, culturally relevant benefits; a critical illness example

[23:30] – Measuring ROI: prevention over treatment, linking wellness to claims, and what’s realistic today

[27:24] – Practical AI in benefits: guiding open enrollment choices and tracking downstream impact

[28:51] – What’s next: cash-first mindset, gig/fractional work, and the rise of on-demand pay

Takeaways

- Audit assumptions and co-create: involve diverse employees to design rewards for real financial realities.

- Educate continuously: replace one-off sessions with multi-touch, targeted benefits education you can measure.

- Communicate the why: lead with business context; define success by clarity, not universal approval.

- Invest in prevention and relevance: close core coverage gaps, localize perks, and spotlight real impact stories.

- Apply AI where it helps: use decision-support tools in open enrollment to improve plan fit and track outcomes.

- Prepare for near-term shifts: prioritize cash competitiveness and explore on-demand pay for applicable roles.

Aura Finance helps you simplify compensation and benefits planning by bringing everything into one streamlined platform. No more juggling spreadsheets, disconnected tools, or manual calculations

Aura gives you a single place to design, compare, and communicate total rewards packages with confidence.

With AI-powered insights, it takes the guesswork and busywork out of comp decisions, helps you spot pay equity gaps early, and makes it easy to model scenarios that keep your teams engaged and your budgets on track.

See a demo at https://www.aurafinance.com/