MillerKnoll

Bill Tompkins is a Total Rewards leader at MillerKnoll, a global design company serving workplaces and living spaces. His experience across consumer finance, retail, manufacturing and technology has given him a broad understanding of how different businesses create value through talent. He applies this perspective to reward strategy, compensation, benefits and executive pay, working with HR, finance and business leaders to ensure talent decisions support organizational priorities.

Translating Strategy into Reward Decisions

The greatest challenge in Total Rewards is rarely the mechanics. The technical side of compensation, benefits, equity or executive pay can be learned. The real work lies in understanding what the organization is trying to accomplish and determining how rewards can support that ambition. That is where I begin.

Every organization has a different business strategy. One may be pursuing growth or market expansion while another may be focused on profitability or managing costs in a mature market. Those priorities create different requirements for talent and, consequently, different considerations for Total Rewards.

Culture matters just as much. I look at how an organization balances individuality and teamwork, how much collaboration matters and whether it views talent within functional silos or as an enterprise-wide asset. Those choices help me understand the behaviors the organization needs and the culture it wants to reinforce.

I think of those factors as coming together to shape a rewards strategy. Total Rewards should reflect the business rather than exist beside it. When we understand the strategy and culture first, we have a better foundation for deciding which reward approaches can support them.

Strengthening Engagement Through Purpose and Belonging

Compensation will always matter, but I do not believe employees experience their relationship with an organization through a paycheck alone.

People want to feel connected to the mission. They want their personal values and aspirations to have some alignment with those of the company. They want a sense of belonging and, increasingly, they want to know that the organization contributes something beyond its financial performance.

At MillerKnoll, our mission is to design for the good of humankind. That gives our work a broader context. Sustainability and philanthropic interests can create a similar connection by giving employees a sense that the organization is contributing to society.

That sense of connection also depends on how people experience the workplace.

“Total Rewards should reflect the business rather than exist beside it. When we understand the strategy and culture first, we have a better foundation for deciding which reward approaches can support them.”

Our organization is a leader in creating workspaces that inspire creativity and innovation. These connections are important for ourselves and our customers.
 

Building Stronger Rewards Leadership Through Better Questions

Effective Total Rewards leadership requires more than knowing the mechanics of the profession. I need to bring technical knowledge, strong relationships and business acumen to the work.

That means understanding areas such as ERISA, reward strategy, equity and executive pay. I also need to build relationships and know how to consult with HR business partners, HR leadership and finance. Just as importantly, I need to understand how the company makes money and what drives its performance.

I have seen what happens when one of those capabilities is missing. Someone can be an excellent technician and still struggle to diagnose the real issue, work across the organization or connect a reward design to the company's culture and business priorities. That is why I tell my team that success in our field comes from asking the right questions rather than immediately offering answers.

A specialist can become attached to the science of the discipline and feel responsible for producing an answer immediately. But the better starting point is often to understand the problem more deeply. What behavior are we trying to encourage? What does the business actually need? What could this decision cause people to do differently? That last question is particularly important because of the law of unintended consequences. Reward systems can reinforce desired behaviors, but the behaviors they inadvertently discourage can be just as significant.

My experience across consumer finance, retail, manufacturing and technology has made that especially clear. The industries may look very different, but each has talent that creates value in distinctive ways. Investment bankers may be critical in financial services. Designers and merchants may be central to a retail organization. In manufacturing, the way teams work together can be central to success.

The role of Total Rewards is therefore not to fall in love with compensation as a science. It is to understand the talent the business needs and use our skills to attract, retain and engage that talent.

Broader Exposure Sharpens Business Judgment

A broader understanding of the business is difficult to develop if we remain inside our own specialty. I have found it valuable to take on roles in other areas of HR and spend time experiencing the business from a different position.

When I joined Coca-Cola, I spent two weeks with merchandisers in Italy. I wanted to understand what franchise bottlers actually did when they visited stores, put up signage and introduced new products. That experience gave me a view of the business that I could not have gained by staying within my own function.

I encourage Total Rewards professionals to take roles in areas such as HR business partnering or talent. Becoming, in a sense, an outsider within your own specialty can be useful because it forces you to question assumptions that once felt like common sense.

I also believe we need to look outward. HR professionals can become so focused on the work immediately ahead that they miss developments taking place beyond the organization. Changes in regulation and society can eventually influence how companies approach issues such as transparency. Total Rewards is particularly well positioned to watch those changes and consider what they could mean for the business in the years ahead.

I would also advise HR professionals to build their networks throughout their careers. The people we meet become part of a network we can learn from and rely on as our responsibilities change.

For me, all of this comes back to curiosity. I often think of the line from Ted Lasso—be curious, not judgmental. It is a useful way to approach the work, because the more willing we are to ask questions, step outside our assumptions and understand another perspective, the more useful we can become to the organizations and people we serve.