Thrive Together: Lumen’s SVP on Pay Transparency, Preventive Care, and Personalized Benefits
Summary
Are your employees leaving money and health on the table?
Erika Hurtado-Dupont, SVP of People Operations and Total Rewards at Lumen Technologies, shares how her team is redesigning compensation and benefits so people actually use them.
Drawing on her own money story and years in the service industry, Erika explains why equal pay for equal work, radical transparency, and “moments that matter” benefits are the new baseline.
She breaks down where total rewards most often fail basic financial literacy and underutilized preventive care since COVID and how Lumen’s Thrive Together model steps in with survivor salary continuation, 12 weeks bonding leave plus a phased return, and backup care that removes day-to-day friction.
Erika also details the measurable impact: lower turnover, higher engagement, and business momentum and what’s next as AI personalizes benefits delivery while protecting privacy.
She closes with a 30-day activation challenge that helps every listener stop leaving value on the table.
Key Timestamps
- [00:45] – Erika’s remit at Lumen and the transformation of PeopleOps and Total Rewards
- [01:36] – Money as freedom: early jobs at 14 and how that shaped career and work ethic
- [04:26] – Service-industry lessons for HR: execution, time management, and people complexity
- [07:52] – Compensation philosophy: fair, competitive pay and intentional, family-centric design
- [09:17] – Where it breaks: literacy gaps, misunderstood benefits, and preventive care drop-offs post-COVID
- [13:37] – Thrive Together: survivor pay, 12-week bonding leave + phased return, and caregiver backup
- [16:55] – Results: lower turnover, higher engagement, rising sentiment—and business performance
- [18:14] – What’s next: pay transparency at scale, AI-personalized benefits, and a 30-day activation challenge
Takeaways
- Center compensation on equal pay for equal work and make transparency a management habit.
- Close the benefits literacy gap with simple, mobile-first education on paychecks, 401(k), HSA, and preventive care.
- Design “moments that matter” benefits that remove friction: survivor salary continuation, parental leave with phased return, and backup care.
- Track utilization and outcomes—not just offerings—and pivot to programs with measurable ROI.
- Use AI to personalize benefits bundles and timing while safeguarding privacy and trust.
- Run a 30-day benefits sprint: audit what’s offered, meet vendors, discuss with family, and enroll so you stop leaving money and wellbeing on the table.
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/