Mark Hall, with TalentLogistiX, talks about how your why can help you retain employees.
Here is the transcript from the presentation:
Ryan: Alright so ladies and gentlemen, November is Career Development Month, so all month long we are looking for, we are, we are going to host meetings here that bring you experts on various topics on how you can sharpen your professional skills and one of them is making sure that you have the best talent available for your business and how do you make sure that when it’s time to hire that that professional to work with you, that you’re making the most of their talents and preventing them from just walking right out the door to another position.
Ryan: So, everybody I’d like to introduce Mark Hall with TalentLogistiX. Let’s give him a hand.
Mark: Well, thank you so much. You probably should wait until after I talk a while before you give me a hand.
Mark: See if the information I’m going to give you has, uh, much value.
Mark: All, my, I communicate with storytelling much more effectively than I do in formal presentations, and then the interaction towards the end where, hopefully, some of what you’re going to hear today will prompt some questions. And we can have some, some interaction.
Mark: I have learned over the years of doing this that most people have questions. They’re just hesitant for some reason to ask them, so I’m trying to create a very comfortable environment, right with the fireplace. I didn’t light the fireplace up, but a comfortable environment so we can have an effective dialogue.
Mark: The, the best business is the business that has no employees and has no customers. None of us experience that, so we’re all dealing with people. Denise, as you would look to launch yours, you would have to deal with people both on the client side as well as on the employee side.
Mark: For the better part of the last 30 years, we will be, our 30th birthday will be next November. I have started exactly where many of you were at once, in a spare bedroom, in 146th and River Rd on the South side of Noblesville, in a room that was maybe 10 by 10. My wife and I put up temporary walls and I went to work.
Mark: My business was born from the lack of integrity that there was in the traditional staffing, recruiting space.
Mark: All too often, too many people were, would play God. You’ll hear me talk about that, as it pertains to retention, and they would put a person in with a client because they could make more money.
Mark: I, I had three small daughters at the time. Now they’re all grown women at 40, 37 and 33, and 34 with seven grandkids. But at the time, I couldn’t stand the hypocrisy. How could I hold them accountable to not lying and cheating and stealing some gum at the store and yet their dad went to work for an organization that not only supported it, but they encouraged it.
Mark: So, so, that’s where our business was born. The original company back in 1993, is one of the brand names we operate today. It’s called PinPoint Resources.
Mark: I will see if I can do the technology correct and share the screen with you. I’ve got just a few slides to go through and I’ve got a lot of stories I want to be able to tell you as well, so hopefully if I do this correctly.
Mark: You can all see that. And if I get a thumbs up? Good, people can see it.
Mark: So again, my name is Mark Hall, our featured brand is TalentLogistiX.
Mark: As we talked about the other day, or day, or earlier in the day. I have three brands that we operate. One of them does skilled trades work, one of them does white collar work. TalentLogistiX is our outsourced brand, where clients will hire us to, to go in and take on all of their labor.
Mark: That’s all of the human resources, all of the sourcing, all the payroll, all the benefits, all the work comp, all of the yuck that goes along with finding people, sourcing them, identifying them, employing them, and making sure for their care and feeding.
Mark: And then, as we’re going to talk about today, managing the retention or managing the turnover. We have been in business since 1993. We have an office in Noblesville. We have an office here where I’m talking to you today from, at 63rd and Shadeland on the North East side of Indianapolis. We do business in between 20 and 27 states a year, typically, in all of our space, and let me see if I can get this to actually advance. There we go.
Mark: Company values, and this pertains to retention. I’ll tie it all in as we talk. What you’re going to find is, if you go to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there the federal government website will tell you that, on average, we’re dealing with between 50 and as much as 80% turnover baked in the cake.
Mark: Values have a tendency to tie people in. If you’re hiring people based on the values, you’re, that you have as a business, your retention goes up.
Mark: You can see our values honor God in all that we do. Integrity, respect, fairness, quality. These aren’t just words for us. We live that out and I’ll talk more about that as we go.
Mark: Treat each other with fairness and respect. We deliver a high-quality service as measured by customers and so, it’s, growth is critical, as it is to all of our businesses and #4, meet and exceed defined goals through effective communication accountability, we encourage and solicit their feedback.
Mark: These can’t just be words. They actually have to be the way you lead. Since 1993, our companies have done over 300,000 assignments, and let’s talk about what that means.
Mark: Somebody going to work on a permanent basis for one of our clients would be an assignment. Somebody doing contract, an electrician that works for six months in a manufacturing plant or for a contractor, that’s an assignment.
Mark: TLX, the third brand I mentioned, is a full-service outsourced partner. We can white label all of the work that we do or we can be completely separate, independent.
Mark: Again, you’ll see the next bullet point. We go out and do all of the sourcing. If people understand what a PEO is at a 500-foot level. Our business blends what a PEO does with what a recruiting and staffing firm does, into one outsource solution.
Mark: The purpose goes beyond just a paycheck. We put people in jobs so we can help them feed their families.
Mark: This goes to our why, a why is critical to retention. If you don’t have a why, get a why. Something that you’re passionate about, even if you’re a solopreneur, be passionate about what you care about.
Mark: Whatever your passion is and share that with people. If you hire them with the alignment to your passion, your retention will, will go up dramatically.
Mark: If you just hire them to fill a job, you just hire them out of need, then your retention is going to be more along the lines of what the Bureau of Labor Statistics will talk about, as that 50 to 80% turnover. In manufacturing now, it’s well beyond 130% turnover. In many firms that I come in and help, that turnover is well over 200%. You’ll see at the bottom we’re going to talk about this next.
Mark: Our why, we hire someone so they can feed their family because we put them to work, then our clients also get to feed their families because we put them to work. We get to feed our families and very important, integral to what we do, is the ability for our 501(c)3, we formed it several years ago, called FeedingTeam.org. FeedingTeam.org today is-
Mark: I went the wrong way guys, FeedingTeam.org, FeedingTeam.org today is 49. What you’ll see on your screen are the little outdoor sheds. These are food pantries 24 by 7, 365, no questions asked, completely anonymous.
Mark: 23 of them located in around Noblesville. 49 located mostly in central IN. Although we have one in Tulsa, OK, we have one in Las Cruces, NM and we have requests for them as far away as Washington DC. We just can’t handle the demand.
Mark: We take a piece of our proceeds, so every time someone goes to work, a portion of their effort is used to buy food for a neighbor that otherwise wouldn’t have an opportunity to be fed.
Mark: 49 of these pantries last month produced 9,200 nonperishable meals that went out to, to neighbors that will never know who they are.
Mark: But I can tell you from a business perspective, the retention that goes with this, because people that we hire are aligned not only with our values, but with our why. This why is very easy to understand, we make a, a purposeful effort to integrate every single employee into the charitable side of our business.
Mark: I can tell you from experience, there are people that will leave a job for $0.25 more an hour. But if they’re embedded into a bigger purpose, if they’re embedded into something bigger than themselves, if they’re embedded into something that helps the community, their neighbors, and themselves.
Mark: Those, they’re much less likely to leave for $0.25 an hour because they’re part of something bigger than themselves. Learning to get to a place where you have a why that you can then integrate into your business was key for us in mitigating turnover. Even our field staff.
Mark: The, the national turnover percentage for staffing businesses, and two of our businesses are absolutely staffing, TalentLogistiX is an outsourced labor business, but the national average is 415% turnover, we’re less than 20% of that.
Mark: We’d like to think that’s in direct proportion to how we operate.
Mark: The values that we present into integrating in a why, because why you do what you do, in, in my argument is much more important than what you do, especially relative to retaining and recruiting the talent that all of our businesses would need, if you want them to grow.
Mark: Services we offer, in the TLX Manufacturing, all under one roof. A good client for us is anyone in that, that $1,000,000 a year space to the $500 million a year space, and they would look you in the eye and they’d say, my workforce is broken. I don’t know how to attract people. I don’t know how to keep people. I don’t know where to find the people I need, and then when I hire them, they, they don’t normally perform the way I need them to perform, and I need to swap them out for somebody better.
Mark: Hey, uh, in an elevator pitch, it is, I need more people, I need less people, or any different people.
Mark: You’ll see all of the different service level offers.
Mark: We have a specialty in manufacturing. We have a specialty in the security industry, commercial security camera installation as well as physical security. 95% of what we do is outsourced labor. The other 5% would be considered contract to hire. I don’t advocate permanent placement. I don’t advocate head hunting.
Mark: I don’t think it’s, it’s a good investment of business owners’ capital today, given the fact that you’re leaning into such a high percentage turnover environment today, we’re dealing with things like quiet quitting, we’re dealing with things like workforce ghosting. The newest thing that we’re actually dealing with is called training surfing.
Mark: And what we’re finding are, people that will take the job and they’ll go to work, and they’ll go through the training cycle in the jobs two weeks, three weeks, 4 weeks, and then when it comes time to actually start doing the job, they leave and they go to another place of business in order to go through their training cycle. And then this pattern repeats itself.
Mark: Because in, in today’s marketplace people are so desperate for talent. They’re even more desperate for good talent, that they’re willing to accept abusive behavior by potential candidates.
Mark: The, the marketplace will swing back, but not for the foreseeable future. Uh, it’s, it’s in particularly, and, and Denise I would, I would caution you with this. It’s particularly prevalent, prevalent in healthcare and within that vertical, within nurses and within that vertical, travel nurse because they can go across the street and get a dollar more an hour.
Mark: So, recruiting the right talent without a good retention strategy, and I would argue that it goes beyond cash. It goes beyond gifts.
Mark: If there’s not an emotional tie in addition to those things, we give out gas cards and we do Christmas bonuses, and we do referral bonuses and we do all of the, the check the box things.
Mark: But if we didn’t have a way to tie people into a bigger purpose, to being part of something that was bigger than themselves, if we didn’t have that, we would struggle with turnover, again, in our industry it’s closer to 400%. That has my contact information on that last slide. I put it in the chat as well.
Mark: So, let’s, let’s talk about a couple of things relative to retention.
Mark: If you can’t get people, you can’t retain them. And I’m not, I’m not trying to teach you anything you don’t already know, but recruiting is more challenging today than it’s been.
Mark: I started, goodness in 1987, 87 or 88, when I started in the business. It, it is more challenging today than it ever has been.
Mark: So, if you were planning to grow and build your business, you need a definitive strategy that includes what, when I teach this, when I write on it, every business has a natural line and what I mean is, above this line are people that have intellectual property that’s important to the business. It’s vital to the ongoing, it’s, I call it specific knowledge of the, of the business. It’s institutional knowledge, that if those people were to leave, the business would be irreparably harmed.
Mark: It would suffer dramatically. Typically, it’s a core group of people. It might be your executive team. It might be people that have specific knowledge about, again in Della, in your case about the patent and the execution and how that would work.
Mark: But, by definition, if you have people above the line, then you have people below the line.
Mark: And my argument is in an 80 to 150% turnover world, why are you investing what the Society for Human Resource Management will tell you is $8000 per hire. Your time advertising, recruiting screening, background drug tests. Why are you investing that $8000, three and four times a year for this same job?
Mark: You can move that to an outsourced model, invest your retention in those that are above the line. Those that are below the line, given that they’re going to turn over 50, 80, 100, 125%.
Mark: Then you lean into the problem and you partner with a firm. Whether it’s a firm like Bills, or whether it’s a firm like, like mine, that can then accomp- be an accompaniment to those that you’re going to make sure you retain the cost savings that you derive from having a variable model as a portion of your workforce, then get plowed back into the retention of those people above the line.
Mark: Today, we’re in a world where a big company like Salesforce, right downtown, the Salesforce Tower in Indianapolis, a multibillion dollar national conglomerate. They do things like concierge dry cleaning. People can come to work and have meals delivered on site. Daycare, massages, concierge vacation trips integrated in with conferences.
Mark: I can’t compete with that. Most businesses can’t compete with it. It’s, it’s an unrealistic playing field.
Mark: So, how do you compete for top talent? How do you retain top talent from being lured away to go to that?
Mark: I, I must admit it’s very tempting to, to go down there and get a massage every week. Have my dry cleaning done. Have, in my case now my grandkids, taken care of on site. I can drop them off and pick them up. That’s what the battle for talent has become.
Mark: So, if you can’t compete to get them, you are sure not going to be able to compete to keep them.
Mark: So, you need a defined strategy. It’s got to be part of your business plan, if you want to grow.
Mark: I have these conversations with business owners all the time and I hear the following. Well Mark, we’ve always done what we’ve always done.
Mark: And I’ll challenge them, and I’ll look them square in the eye and I’ll say how’s that working for you?
Mark: I wouldn’t be here if it was working well for you, if you didn’t have 100% turnover, if you couldn’t find the talent that you need.
Mark: I have businesses that are walking away from 7 figure contracts ’cause they can’t find the talent they need to execute it. They won’t bid on large 6 or 7 figure contracts.
Mark: Oh, pretty, Kitty.
Mark: Because they’re too terrified that they’re going to underperform. And I can’t go get the talent. Let alone deploy the talent, let alone manage the talent, so I’m terrified.
Mark: One of my very first, you saw in the slide deck. We have an offering that’s a concierge outsourced offering. Our very first, was a company out of Sacramento, Suisun City, California, called Vysor and they never had more than 40 FTEs the entire 12 years we worked with them.
Mark: At its largest, we had 500 people working on contracts, on their behalf, in concrete plants, in gold mines and in manufacturing plants doing work. They made money off of our staff when the project was over. We reassigned them elsewhere or we moved into another assignment with a different client. They played much larger.
Mark: It’s like being, I’m, I’m 6 foot tall. It’s like, I played like I was 6 foot eight. I can go after business that I couldn’t go after. I can, I can play like I’m much bigger than what I am, and I rely on the variable solution of a labor provider that can actually make me more successful than what I’ve been, what I am today with my own capital expense, my own G and A. They had 40 that they kept statically and then the rest of them would all, would all be provided by us.
Mark: That’s just one example, but if you can’t get them, you can’t retain them.
Mark: My argument is you focus on the those that you need to retain that have tribal knowledge for your business. Strategic knowledge of your business, intricate knowledge. These are people that you want to build your company around. These are people that in my word, become business family, that you know, their families. You care about them. You are having them over to dinner and you work purposely to retain that core group of people.
Mark: Well, how do you afford to do that and compete with the Oracles or the IBM’s or the Sales Forces of the world, who are giving them massages? Who are giving them free dry, free dry cleaning?
Mark: I can’t compete with that.
Mark: How do I compete? I can make them feel special.
Mark: That’s one of the gold nuggets that I want you to walk away with today is, for that core group of people above the line, every interaction, you pretend they have a placard sign around their neck that says, make me feel special.
Mark: You pull them to get to that conclusion. You don’t push them, you work with them.
Mark: Below the line is a different case. Remember, below the line is already going to turn over. That’s a foregone conclusion. That’s the data talking. That’s not more call talking. That’s the data talking.
Mark: Now I have clients that are completely insistent, I’ve got to own the labor. I’ve got to own it, and I’ll give you an example.
Mark: A large electrical contracting client, they’re about 300 million a year. I gave them a mathematical proof about retaining. The cost they were investing in retaining their people was about $8 million.
Mark: They were investing in culture. They were investing in all the things we talked about, gift cards and vacation. All the things we’ve talked about, and their turnover was still beyond 85%. And I showed them the mathematical model about moving those below the line into a variable model and they agreed with the math.
Mark: It was their numbers. They couldn’t really disagree with the math.
Mark: And here’s what it came down to, the pain that they already knew was better than the pain that they didn’t know.
Mark: We already have sunk $2,000,000 a year into all of these systems and people and processes that have to go hire the 1,800 people a year.
Mark: And we’re too afraid that the pain that we would have in a new model is different than the pain we have today. In other words, we’ve always done it this way and, and we’re going to keep doing it this way, because it’s what we’re used to.
Mark: So, let’s talk specifically about retention. Then I want to open it up for questions.
Mark: And the, the retention I’m talking about here would apply to any employee I mentioned earlier. The most effective one that, that we use here, that was used on me. I completely plagiarized the idea, had to do with taking care of the family.
Mark: Bill talked about it earlier, I think somebody mentioned the, the trip to, for HHGreg, I don’t know if that included family, but we’ve done family trips.
Mark: It did not include family, but sending the, the small gift card, the medium package, or the larger package to the spouse or significant other, has gotten me more mileage and more goodwill than you could possibly ever purchase, and again, if you’ve captured the significant other in their life, then you’ve captured the, the person’s heart as well.
Mark: Getting the family involved in the why, so we have grandchildren and children that will come in stock pantries. They’ll go and meet. They’ll bring canned goods. They’ll take whatever they have extra out of their out of their pantry, and they’ll go put it in the pantry and they get to be a part of blessing someone else.
Mark: When you, when you capture their hearts like that, retention automatically goes up.
Mark: If we think we’re going to be able to compete and buy people, retention with a bonus check it helps. I’m not, I’m not making the argument it doesn’t, but there’s always someone who has a bigger check.
Mark: That, that’s just the fact, there’s always someone who is going to go write them the sign on bonus that’s bigger than the bonus check I could write.
Mark: What I’ve found is find a way to capture their heart, find a way to get them emotionally tied to you.
Mark: Yes, you need to do the gift card. We do gas cards, we do at retention bonuses for people in the field, but when they’re a part of FeedingTeam.org, when they see someone in need come to a pantry and be able to get themselves fed and they know they’re a part of it, they’re in.
Mark: So, retention is emotional. It’s not just financial.
Mark: There is a component that’s financial. I’m not arguing that it isn’t, but if you can capture their heart with your why, your retention will automatically go up.
Mark: And I would argue that you’re going to feel much better about your business as well. You have a purpose to it that goes beyond just making money.
Mark: Again, I see, on the back of Jamie’s wall. Yes, for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.
Mark: Every pantry has my life persona, Colossians 323-24. Very similar in purpose to what Jamie is written, but you do everything you do, as under the Lord. I’m not here to proselytize. I’m not here to, to Bible thump anybody.
Mark: But I can tell you that, that approaching it in a God honoring fashion has been a key for us to be able to attract the right talent and retain the right talent in an uber-competitive marketplace.
Mark: With that, I am happy to answer any questions that anybody has.
Mark: If we were in a room together, I’d start calling on you. I’d pick somebody and I would make you actually answer, ask me a question.
Shelly: Mark, I have a question.
Mark: Yes please.
Shelly: You talked about the people above the line and below the line. The people that are above the line, are they always in your top tier management or can they be scattered throughout the organization and how do you sort of differentiate treating them differently, if everybody in their group is doing the same job?
Mark: So, that’s a that’s a wonderful question.
Mark: They are scattered everywhere. So, I can have a line supervisor that is so strategic to me that, because they lead their group effectively, but they’re yet, they’re not an executive, so, the way the process actually works, if you’re if you’re familiar with the sales parlance, it’s called a Country Club close.
Mark: So, if you draw, if I had a way to draw this, on one side is that, there’s a wall. There’s the Country Club and it’s got all the amenities of the Country Club and the golf course and you, and you have a picture of people that are on that side of the wall, the Country Club. The folks are on the other side of the wall, they really want to be part of the Country Club. I really want to pay the price to be part of the Country Club. I want to be treated special, also. So, you treat them special, remember the placard example.
Mark: But they don’t have to be in your executive level meetings to be treated special. You can have a key group meetings. You could have luncheons of those, and you don’t want it to be so exclusive that it works as a deterrent to everyone else.
Mark: You want them to see the country club, hey, I want to be a part of that, what do I have to do, Shelly, in order to be a part of that crew.
Mark: Well, attendance bonus, retention, show up on time. Don’t cuss when you’re out on the line, pick up after yourself, be a great example for other people you want to be part of that group. Wonderful. Lead by example.
Mark: I’m more than happy to have you be part of our monthly key group luncheon. Just because you’re part of the key group luncheon doesn’t mean you’re not valued. It means you’ve distinguished yourself, you’re exemplary in your behavior. You’re exemplary in your production. You’re exemplary as an example to other people.
Mark: So, you want the folks that aren’t part of that group to want to be part of it.
Mark: Typically, the way it works is, your executives, the ones that would have specific intellectual property specific knowledge. They’re, by definition, they’re going to be in that group, but I’ve had people that, that are really amazing electricians or line folks, I need to learn from.
Mark: And then, tell me what’s going on. I need to be connected to you, you are so valuable because of the example that you set, you’re going to be part of this group.
Mark: Did that, did that answer your question? That make sense?
Shelly: Yeah, it gave me the second question, which is, like, you’ve got this group, how do you, as a manager or as a HR manager, explain that you’re treating these people differently. Do you do it in this sense of, like you’re part of this key select group?
Mark: For me, I’ve seen it done a half a dozen different ways, almost never comes from HR, ’cause again because HR and the compliance that comes from HR.
Mark: So, this is, this is led by someone that’s got the emotional leadership title for the business. OK, so these are key individuals that are great feedback for me. They’ve, they’ve demonstrated, they’ve set themselves apart. Whether it’s retention or performance or productivity.
Mark: They’ve set themselves apart, so they’re part of a focus group of the business that I need to stay very connected to. I make them feel special because they’re contributing in, in very different ways to the business beyond simple production.
Mark: So, this isn’t a discriminatory policy at all, at all. You’ve earned the right to be there, no different than those that come working overtime, you’re going to pay me time and ½. I’ve earned the right to be part of this group, who are helping to formulate policies and helping to drive the business and the business priorities.
Shelly: OK, so it’s sort of like a cross department, up and down group, that comes together because you’ve identified select individuals that can drive the business forward versus every line manager.
Mark: It, it has been for me, yes, if, if you’re in a, oh, there are some line managers that do really well on this. There are other line managers that want to come to work at 7:00, at three the clock, boom, and they’re gone. They’re probably not going to be part of the Country Club.
Mark: Yeah, they’re probably not going to be part, again, how you brand it internally could be focused group, by how you brand it internally could be a rewards group.
Mark: They’re awarded for exemplary performance, but if you don’t have the feedback system that’s in place, if you don’t actually listen to what they have to say, it becomes patronization. And now it works and it works in an opposite way.
Mark: The purpose of the set aside group is to be able to make them feel special, make them be tied to it. And yes, you can actually give them different benefits. You have the ability as the employer there.
Mark: There’s, there’s nothing to say you can’t bonus them for what they’re doing. There’s nothing to say that you can’t offer them a select, different kind of benefit because they’re participating in this group.
Shelly: OK, thank you so much. I’m just sort of playing it out, how it didn’t play out in my previous position.
Mark: I have seen people use it for manipulative purposes and it never ends well, if your heart’s pure and you’re really trying to take care of those folks that are taking care of you.
Mark: You do it with sincerity and you really care about them. You’re trying to get good feedback. And you’re really trying as the, as the leader of the business. You’re really trying to make them feel special.
Mark: It’s the tie that you’re after. It works very well, if you have a why.
Mark: Simon Sinek, have you, Google Simon Sinek, has a a very effective video series on getting to your why. There are a number of authors that have written on it.
Mark: My argument is the why becomes what drives you. We all do what we do to be able to make an income, but what really drives you? What really makes you get out of bed in the morning and, and go bust it for 60 hours a week as an entrepreneur.: 00:31:33: It’s got to be something bigger, it’s got to be a bigger purpose to it.
Mark: For my, my business family, it’s the ability to feed people. And the ability to be fed ourselves.
Mark: The more people we put to work, the more people we feed, the more our clients feed.
Mark: The, the more than now that we can go and feed literally hundreds and hundreds of families every month through our effort.
Mark: So, it’s, it’s a circle for us, it’s, it’s the ability to have a bigger purpose and you can be a, a $10.00 an hour person working on the line and having a heart to feed your neighbor. And they can be a part of that. They’re tied in.
Mark: They’re probably not going to be considered above the line. You know, my key executives are above the line, the people that are key or lead and delivery are above the line. Key supervisors in the field are above the line ’cause if, if they left, the business would be irreparably hurt for a period of time. It would take a lot.
Mark: So, you want to retain them, recruit them, right, align them with.
Mark: Your values give them a why and your retentions automatically go up.
Mark: But, if you take away nothing else, someone else can always write a bigger check.
Mark: They can always give them, we give you give people a $500 bonus. I have, have clients that are writing $1000. sign on bonus now.
Mark: If you’re a medical surgery nurse, you can get a $20,000 sign on bonus to go to work for a hospital. Now, they expect you to stay for two years, but there’s always someone that has the ability to write a much bigger check than what we can write.
Jamie: Mark, thank you so much for that. Let’s everybody give Mark a round of applause today.
Mark: My pleasure, thank you for the time.
