The Human Advantage Series: Building Trust in Times of Change & Optimizing Benefit Usage

Welcome to the first episode of The Human Advantage, a series where I talk with the people leaders shaping how organizations actually treat the humans inside them. The premise is simple: in a moment obsessed with automation and speed, the companies that win will be the ones that never lose sight of the human element.

I couldn't have asked for a better first guest than Chad Thompson, a Chief People Officer with more than three decades in HR. As it turns out, we share a bit of common ground: Houston. It's my hometown, and we may have even crossed paths back when I spent time in the energy space over a decade ago. But what struck me most in our conversation was Chad's refusal to separate the humane thing from the smart thing. Here are the three ideas I think every people leader should sit with.

1. How you handle a layoff ethically

I asked Chad for a moment when the employee experience was truly done right. He surprised me by describing a restructuring.

A leader in his business once announced a reorganization affecting roughly ten thousand people, including his own direct team. Rather than move fast and quiet, the leader got on a plane and traveled the world to explain the why in person. He deliberately slowed the process down to keep it fair, and gave employees multiple chances to compete to stay.

You cannot prevent restructurings and downsizing in the world we live in today. But there's a way you can treat people that will help them feel valued.

The proof was in the data. When engagement scores came back, the part of the business being downsized landed only marginally below the part that was thriving. People going through something traumatic still felt respected, because of how it was handled.

It's not when things happen, it's how they're managed.

For people leaders: In a hard moment, transparency, pace, and visible leadership accountability aren't soft extras. They're what protects your engagement, your brand, and your ability to rehire and retain on the other side.

2. Why benefits are the most undervalued part of comp

We then turned to everyday employee experience, and the gap between what companies invest in benefits and what employees feel they receive. Organizations pour resources into HSAs, FSAs, wellness perks, parental leave, and retirement matches, yet much of it goes unused.

Chad's reframe: benefits are one of the most undervalued parts of compensation, usually reviewed once a year through the narrow lens of "how much are my premiums going up?" The real opportunity is helping people see the value they already hold.

We frequently don't monetize that value. To say: in addition to your salary, if you monetize these eight weeks of parental leave, that's how much money you're actually being given.

He's watched senior leaders lose millions of their own by letting stock options expire, and new hires skip a 401(k) match that amounts to free money. The issue isn't carelessness. It's that the system does a poor job of making value visible.

Sometimes, rather than trying to add, it's really about optimizing what we have. The grass is greener, but as my wife would say, the water bill is higher.

I've felt this personally, holding roles where I didn't know I had certain stipends until it was too late to use them. It's the exact gap that drives our work at Caeli. Caeli is an AI benefit advisor that helps employees actually see and use what they already have, surfacing the HSA, FSA, and wellness dollars they'd otherwise forfeit, and translating a dense benefits package into plain, personal terms. It's an idea we call benefit-maxxing: better utilization of existing benefits engages employees and strengthens retention without piling on new cost, while lifting a real load off people ops and HR teams. Value people can finally see is value that finally counts.

For people leaders: Before adding a new perk, audit utilization on the ones you have. Translate benefits into dollar terms in your total-rewards communication, and give employees tools to track and act on what they're leaving on the table.

3. The four intelligences every business needs to run on

With so much doom in the headlines about AI erasing jobs, I asked what Chad feels optimistic about. He called himself an optimist and, deliberately, a slow adopter, wary of a culture that moves fast on fads and fear of missing out. No business, he believes, gets "radically destroyed" by AI if leaders return to fundamentals: Who are we? What do we do? How do we serve our communities and our employees?

Then he shared a framework I keep coming back to, the four intelligences every business runs on:

We still need human intelligence. We're always going to need humans. There's artificial intelligence now. There's spiritual intelligence: how do we treat others, how do we connect with a higher purpose? And the last is how we're going to leave our communities better than we found them.

In our rush to make quick decisions and transform businesses, he argues, we've sprinted past things we'll have to reclaim: real training, longer talent benches, the patient work of building capability rather than just buying it. He sees the return-to-office pull the same way. People are seeking the connection we lost when work got done but no one felt tied to a mission. The path forward isn't nostalgia or novelty. It's keeping what genuinely adds value, like flexible work, while re-grounding in what made the work meaningful.

The more things change, the more they remain the same, but the world gets better if we intentionally focus on what makes us special.

For people leaders: Let AI sharpen your fundamentals rather than replace them. Adopt at the pace of your strategy, not the pace of the hype cycle, and keep investing in developing people. It's the bench you'll need when the fads pass.

Chad's Rapid Fire Answers

To close, a few quick-fire questions. No thinking, just instinct.

Most overrated word in HR? "AI." And "engagement," because too many companies call people their most valued resource and then act otherwise.

Advice for a brand-new people leader? Learn the business and build relationships with its leaders. "If you don't understand the business, you're not going to be the highest-value contributor to it."

A perk employees sleep on? Time off, especially in America, where taking it is too often read as a lack of commitment.

Time off is valuable for recharging the spirit, soul, and the body.

You know HR is working when... "Nobody notices anything going wrong. When things go right, it's the business. When things go wrong, it's HR. So if you want to be in HR, grow thick skin."

The unsung heroes, exactly.

The takeaway

Across every topic, Chad refused the false choice between doing right by people and doing right by the business, because, done well, they're the same choice. We're in a collective recalibration, and the organizations that come through strongest won't be the fastest movers. They'll be the ones with the strongest core, who remember that beyond profit, the real work is building a place people are proud to be part of.

That's the human advantage, and it's the thread I'll pull on throughout this series.

You can connect with Chad Thompson on LinkedIn.