Most conversations about compensation focus on numbers: market data, salary ranges, incentive formulas, and budgets. But for Scott Trumpolt, Founder and Managing Director of Trumpolt Compensation Design Solutions (TCDS), that’s only half the story.
With more than 30 years of experience in compensation planning, HR leadership, and rewards strategy—across both corporate roles and independent consulting—Trumpolt has come to a clear conclusion: compensation is not just a financial function. It’s an empathy function.
In his interview on The Empathy Edge podcast with Maria Ross, he explores how empathetic thinking transforms compensation from a “black box” into a powerful driver of engagement, clarity, and growth.
You can listen to that conversation here:
https://red-slice.com/the-empathy-edge/scott-trumpolt-beyond-the-paycheck-strategic-compensation-through-an-empathetic-lens/
This article builds on the themes from that discussion—showing how empathy, when applied thoughtfully, elevates compensation consulting from transactional to strategic.
Beyond the Paycheck: What Empathy Really Looks Like in Compensation
Empathy in compensation isn’t about being “soft” or ignoring business realities. It’s about understanding how pay, progression, job titles, and development are experienced by real people—then designing systems that respect that reality.
Trumpolt describes compensation as an area that often sits “in the shadows,” seen as technical and opaque. Many employees don’t know how pay decisions are made or what growth looks like beyond their current role. That lack of clarity can quietly erode trust.
An empathetic approach to compensation asks:
- Do employees understand how their pay is determined?
- Can they see a path forward, not just a position today?
- Do they feel like more than a number in a spreadsheet?
- Are managers equipped to have real, one-on-one conversations about growth and compensation?
These are human questions, not just financial ones—and they sit at the heart of modern employee compensation strategy.
Career Architecture: Empathy as Clarity
One of Trumpolt’s core frameworks, Career Architecture, is a clear example of empathy in action.
Traditional compensation practices often focus on a single role and its pay range. Career Architecture takes a wider view. It links:
- business needs
- role design
- skill development
- market-based pay
- long-term growth
Instead of telling an employee, “Here is what this job pays,” Career Architecture says, “Here is where you are starting—and here are the paths you can grow into over time.”
For example, instead of simply “hiring an accountant,” an organization might define:
- tax accountant
- cost accountant
- intermediate, senior, and expert levels
- associated skills, responsibilities, and pay bands
An empathetic compensation strategy doesn’t just set a starting salary. It shows how effort, learning, and contribution translate into future opportunities.
Trumpolt emphasizes that this is where employees feel truly seen:
They spend a significant portion of their lives at work. They want to know they’re part of something bigger than a static job description—and that their employer has thought through how they can grow.
From One-Size-Fits-All to One-on-One Conversations
A recurring theme in Trumpolt’s work is that compensation is not one-size-fits-all.
Two employees might have the same title, but very different motivations. One may be most driven by base pay. Another by flexibility. Another by growth opportunities, global exposure, or leadership responsibilities.
An empathetic compensation strategy consultant recognizes that pay is only one component of a broader rewards picture.
This is where managers become critical.
Human Resources can design robust pay structures and Career Architecture frameworks. But if managers are not having thoughtful, individualized conversations with their people, the system stays theoretical and remote. This partnership between the manager and their employee is the very essence of employee engagement, which is the hope that businesses want to tap into and encourage for better business results.
Empathy shows up when a manager can say:
- “Here’s where you are today.”
- “Here’s what the next level looks like for you.”
- “Here’s how your skills can develop in ways that support both your interests and the business needs.”
That kind of conversation requires preparation, clarity, and a structure HR can provide. But it also requires empathy at the managerial level—an understanding of what matters to each individual.
Trumpolt notes that organizations have spent years teaching managers how to handle discipline and compliance. Far fewer have invested in teaching them how to talk about careers and compensation with empathy and clarity.
Pay Transparency: Risk, Opportunity, and Empathy
In other articles and interviews, Trumpolt has critiqued how pay transparency is often implemented without context. On The Empathy Edge, he adds nuance to that perspective.
Posting salary ranges can be helpful—but only if organizations are willing to look inward and address the structural issues that transparency reveals.
On the positive side, transparency requirements are prompting many companies to:
- examine internal pay equity
- audit disparities across gender, race, and other protected classes
- clarify their job architecture
- rethink title inflation and misalignment
- formalize consistent placement practices
This is where empathy and compliance intersect. The laws may force the conversation—but leaders choose whether to address the underlying inequities with integrity.
Trumpolt’s consulting work often involves helping organizations:
- analyze internal equity
- ensure similar roles are treated consistently
- address historical imbalances
- rebuild structures so titles, responsibilities, and pay are in alignment
From an empathy perspective, pay transparency becomes valuable not because ranges are public, but because companies use that visibility as a catalyst for real change.
Job Titles, Reality, and Respect
Another area where empathy and compensation intersect is job titling.
Trumpolt has seen many organizations—especially fast-moving or early-stage ones—hand out senior titles generously. It might feel harmless or even kind in the moment. But over time, it creates confusion and inequity.
A “Director” role that pays like a mid-level individual contributor creates problems:
- externally, when compared to market data
- internally, when trying to correct imbalances
- developmentally, when there is nowhere left for the person to “grow” on paper
An empathetic compensation approach respects employees enough to:
- define titles clearly
- ensure titles match responsibilities and impact
- provide room for progression
- avoid setting people up for disappointment later
This isn’t about withholding prestige. It’s about aligning reality with labels—and ensuring employees can build careers on a foundation that won’t shift beneath them.
Culture, Not Just Programs
Trumpolt has a simple way of describing what actually makes compensation work: programs don’t create engagement—culture does.
A pay structure, a career framework, a set of ranges: all of these are essential. But they are only as powerful as the culture that surrounds them.
In one example he shares, a large nonprofit partnered with him to build a market-based career architecture for key roles. They linked compensation more clearly to development, communicated career paths, and made internal structures visible through their intranet.
Over time, follow-up employee engagement surveys showed measurable improvement in how employees perceived compensation and growth opportunities.
The difference wasn’t just the system. It was the ongoing use of the system:
- leaders talking about it
- managers modeling it
- employees seeing real movement and development
- HR reinforcing the message consistently
Empathy here is not an abstract idea—it’s expressed through sustained clarity, consistency, and follow-through.
How HR Can Build Credibility Through Empathetic Compensation Strategy
For HR and compensation leaders, this empathetic approach offers more than employee goodwill. It builds credibility with the business.
When HR brings forward:
- data-driven market insight
- well-structured career frameworks
- clear analysis of pay equity issues
- practical tools for managers
- a plan for how compensation supports engagement and performance
they move from being seen as a transactional function to a strategic partner.
Trumpolt’s own path—from nearly two decades in corporate roles across the U.S. and Germany to over a decade as an independent compensation consultant—has shown him both sides of this equation. He has seen how difficult it is for HR teams to meet modern demands with “stone knives and bearskins,” as he puts it, when they lack the right infrastructure.
Empathy, in this context, includes empathy for HR itself: acknowledging their constraints and equipping them with the structures and support they need to succeed.
Compensation as an Empathy Practice
At its core, Trumpolt’s perspective reframes compensation in a simple but powerful way:
- Pay is not just about the present moment; it’s about the journey.
- Employees are not interchangeable roles; they are individuals with different drivers and aspirations.
- Transparency is not just about posting numbers; it is about explaining systems.
- Programs are necessary, but culture is what makes them real.
Empathy in compensation is about seeing people clearly and designing systems that reflect that clarity—without losing sight of financial discipline or business strategy.
In that sense, compensation consulting becomes much more than modeling spreadsheets or benchmarking jobs. It becomes a way to bridge business strategy and human experience.
For organizations willing to take that step, compensation stops being a black box and becomes what it should have been all along: a transparent, structured, empathetic expression of how the company values its people.
Connect with Scott:
Website: https://hrcompensationconsulting.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-trumpolt-m-a-g-r-p-257a6b317/
Listen to the full Empathy Edge episode here:
https://red-slice.com/the-empathy-edge/scott-trumpolt-beyond-the-paycheck-strategic-compensation-through-an-empathetic-lens/