Summary

The Mayo Clinic once surveyed its employees and found a 17% positive perception of pay. A year later, after running better enablement and transparency sessions—without spending a single additional dollar on comp—that number climbed to 80%. 

That story says a lot about what's actually broken in total rewards, and it's exactly the kind of thing Chris Toney thinks about every day. 

In this episode, Kelsey Willock sits down with Chris Toney, Senior Director of Total Rewards and HR Operations at Quest Software, for a warm and refreshingly candid conversation about pay, benefits, and the deeply personal nature of both. Chris started out as an English literature major who, by his own admission, is bad at math—and somehow ended up leading total rewards for a global tech company. That mix of left and right brain comes through in how he talks about the work. He and Kelsey get into why comp can't be purely prescriptive, how job-hopping has scrambled the math on raises, what he looks for when introducing benefits like fertility coverage, and why the biggest gap in most programs isn't the design—it's the communication. If you lead people, design benefits, or just want to think more clearly about pay, this one's worth your time.

Timestamps

• 01:28 Chris's earliest money memory and the first communion savings bonds
• 05:01 Taking money off the table versus fairness relative to peers
• 07:08 The tension between structured comp and a deeply personal pay experience
• 09:49 The subtle shift from "what do you make" to "what do you want to earn"
• 12:03 Introducing fertility benefits and why it's personal for Chris
• 15:10 Measuring benefits impact through utilization, exit reasons, and round tables
• 17:23 The weight loss benefit coaster and where AI may change the game
• 22:50 The Mayo Clinic pay perception study that moved 17% to 80%

Takeaways

• Design comp structures that are compliant and fair, but leave room for the fact that pay is deeply personal
• Check your ranges and then communicate the "why" behind them—enablement moves perception more than dollars do
• When you introduce a high-impact benefit like fertility coverage, pair it with the other programs that make it meaningful
• Use round tables alongside surveys to hear from quiet employees, not just the most vocal ones
• Spotlight one benefit at a time in an ongoing communications channel so employees find the value before they need it
• Every time you get a raise, bump up your retirement contribution before you adjust to the extra money

Guest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-toney/

Company website: https://www.quest.com

Sponsor

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/

• (01:28) - Chris's earliest money memory and the first communion savings bonds