How Langan kept hybrid while its competitors pulled everyone back

Summary In this episode of Beyond the Paycheck, host Kelsey Willock Jones sits down with Donovan Mattole, CHRO at Langan Engineering & Environmental Services, a global firm of engineers, scientists, and archaeologists working in over 100 countries. Donovan explains why Langan pays straight-time overtime to every individual contributor, lets employees bank a week of it as comp time, and kept its hybrid schedule while competitors in the billable-hour consulting world pulled everyone back to the office. He also shares how a 15-year-old wellbeing committee staffed by company owners changed the CHRO's job from selling wellbeing to delivering it, why posted core values should create friction, and what HR leaders should expect from a generation that wants flexibility. This conversation is for CHROs, people leaders, and benefits professionals thinking about total rewards as more than a paycheck.Chapters 00:00 Intro 01:15 Donovan's background and falling into HR 02:30 Langan's workforce of engineers, scientists, and archaeologists 04:30 Growing up off the grid and a first paycheck spent on flight lessons 06:30 A holistic view of what employees get from a company 07:45 Straight-time overtime and the comp time week 10:15 Why Langan kept hybrid in a billable-hour business 11:15 Answering the spreadsheet on the cost of flexibility 12:45 A wellbeing committee staffed by owners 15:00 Core values that employees quote back to leadership 17:00 Local community impact and employee resource groups 19:15 Financial wellbeing and the opportunity to do more 21:15 Peer networks and the civil engineering shortage 25:45 The flexibility shift HR leaders are not ready for 27:15 Dust off your core valuesTakeaways - Langan pays straight-time overtime to every individual contributor from hour 40, regardless of degree, and lets them bank up to a week of it as comp time, giving new grads about five weeks off in year one. - Langan kept a hybrid schedule in a billable-hour business by holding people accountable to chargeability goals rather than monitoring where they are, and it has become a recruiting differentiator. - The cost of an extra week off looks shortsighted on a spreadsheet but supports retention, especially for the roughly 10 percent of the workforce on H-1B visas who want to go home for a month each year. - Putting company owners on the Employee Engagement and Wellbeing Committee means leadership pushes HR on mental health and culture instead of HR having to sell it upward. - Core values only work if they are talked about regularly and refreshed with employee input; posted values give employees leverage to hold leadership accountable.Connect with the Guest Donovan Mattole LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattole/ Company Website: https://www.langan.comSponsor 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/