Rosaria Sasso likes to describe the early years of her career in a global management consulting firm as “playing a pension actuary on TV.”
While she managed to pass some of her actuarial exams, Rosaria discovered that it was her communication skills that made her uniquely suited to address complex topics with her clients.
Specifically, it was her clear, understandable manner that translated well both for HR as well as finance and legal. Over the years, her focus expanded from retirement plans to the broader total rewards landscape, with an emphasis on compliance and internal controls.
For nearly a decade, Rosaria has been applying her expertise to the corporate world, serving as the VP of Benefits Strategy and then the SVP of Global Total Rewards Strategy for a global media and entertainment company. During this time, Rosaria has led numerous initiatives that created strategic impact. These included refining the benefits programs to better reflect the needs of employees and the business, enhancing compensation programs to differentiate on individual performance and implement new vendors, and launching technology transformations to provide an enhanced employee experience in a cost-effective manner.
Rosaria earned a Bachelor’s degree in Applied Mathematics and Statistics from Stony Brook University. She is also a graduate of the Betsy Magness Leadership program, the flagship leadership development program for female executives in the cable and television industry. Rosaria lives on Long Island with her husband, three teenagers, dog and two guinea pigs.
More from Rosaria…
Rosaria Sasso says when it comes to total rewards, one aspect of it that’s often overlooked is risk. And she tells us every single decision made within the total rewards space involves some level of risk.
She says:
“In total rewards, there is risk in everything that we do. And I say that not in an exaggerated way. But it’s the one space where you can have all types of risks.
You can have financial risk. So for example, if you’re managing a large pension plan, there’s financial risk to the company, which is related to the assets underperforming the liabilities. And so you have to make sure that you understand the intersection of the two and what the liability streams are. And if you don’t do that there’s a cash requirement. Some of that’s in your control. Some of it isn’t in your control.
There is a risk around compliance. So whether or not your plans and your programs are non discriminatory, whether they satisfy the tax requirements in order to maintain the tax deductibility to the company.
There’s really reputational risk, which is not often considered, but do your programs reflect the reputation of the company? And so are they reflecting what you put outside of the organization within the organization.
And you also have vendor risk, which often is overlooked. But total rewards is the one space, I think. Each portion of HR might have some external relationships. But total rewards is really dependent upon vendor relationships and external vendors. And so the risks inherent with those vendors are also a risk that you have to take under consideration. What I mean by that is things like consolidation within the industry. So a vendor may spin off a portion of the business to another vendor, which may or may not be as well known, may not have the same footprint, may not have the same resources. So then understanding how that’s going to impact our service relationship, and what risks that’s going to put into place.
The same is what you have for your own organization, when you’re going through a transaction and a change. Will there be talent loss? Will people be distracted? And what does that mean, then to the service that you’re receiving? Does that mean that my employees will suffer from operational failures? Are there risks inherent of the technology, because I haven’t gone through the whole RFP process?
So it is a very broad-ranging focus around risk that I think gets overlooked oftentimes, but it’s why there’s such a close relationship between total rewards, legal, finance, and also an understanding of the role of who the auditor is throughout that process as well.”
