Executive Insights: June Talent Report

Description: In this episode, we’ll explore the June edition of MRA's monthly Talent Report: Employee Engagement and Assessments. 

We’ll hear from Jim Morgan, Vice President of Workforce Strategies, on best practices regarding employee engagement, uncover C-Suite priorities and top creative HR strategies, learn how to improve employee retention, and more! 

Resources:

Talent Report+ Webinar Series 

MRA Membership 

About MRA 

Let's Connect:

Guest Bio - Jim Morgan 

Guest LinkedIn Profile - Jim Morgan 

Host Bio - Sophie Boler 

Host LinkedIn Profile - Sophie Boler 

Transcript:

Transcripts are computer generated -- not 100% accurate word-for-word.

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:21:03
Unknown
Hello everybody and welcome to 30 minute Thrive, your go to podcast for anything and everything HR, powered by MRA, the Management Association. Looking to stay on top of the ever changing world of HR? MRA has got you covered. We'll be the first to tell you what's hot and what's not. I'm your host, Sophie Boler, and we are so glad you're here.

00:00:21:04 - 00:00:55:23
Unknown
Now it's time to thrive. Hello, everybody, and welcome to this episode of 30 Minute Thrive. We're excited to go over this month's talent report with Jim Morgan, vice president of Workforce Strategies. As we kind of go into what you've been seeing talent wise for June. So just as a reminder, if you aren't familiar with the monthly report, Jim Morgan gives an up to the minute review on what's going on in the world of business with an emphasis on talent, which is based on input from CEOs, CFOs and HR leaders from MRA's 3000 plus member companies.

00:00:56:01 - 00:01:21:20
Unknown
So thanks for coming on the podcast again, Jim. Glad to be here. Well, this month it looks like you're focusing on employee engagement. So why did you choose this topic for you? You know, we've talked in the past on the Talent Report about, you know, last couple of years were attraction, attraction, attraction and everybody spinning. And now people are starting to take a look at retention and how do we hang on to the people we've got.

00:01:21:20 - 00:01:43:12
Unknown
So we're not spending quite as much. And so employee engagement is just a huge part of that. And, you know, one of the things that we do here at MRA- to do employee engagement surveys and do employee engagement strategies, because I mean, right now companies are really trying to get a handle on to what extent are their employees invested in the organization.

00:01:43:14 - 00:02:04:10
Unknown
How do we how do we get them engaged? How do we get them aligned with the mission and vision of the organization? How do they know that what they're doing truly contributes to what it is? The organization as a whole is going to do? And really just trying to figure out, you know, how do we make sure they know their contributions are valued?

00:02:04:12 - 00:02:28:23
Unknown
And that all sounds very oh, of course, you know, it's value. You know, we want to have you here, but, you know, if you're a couple layers removed from the top of the pyramid here, they can okay, I'm just down here and I'm running the marketing department. What do I have to do with the other things? It's really trying to make sure that everybody understand what you did here today makes a difference in everything that we're we're trying to do to accomplish.

00:02:29:01 - 00:03:04:04
Unknown
So I think part of it is just trying to figure that out and then, you know, really trying to look at those employees that are having an organized national impact that are not just in my little corner doing my own little thing, but I can see how if I keep doing this and add this to it, it has even a bigger impact, you know, on the organization and really some of those employees that are going the extra mile, that that usually is a pretty good sign of engagement that, you know, we asked Sophie to do a and she went and did A, B, C and D and engaged employees that you want me to do

00:03:04:04 - 00:03:23:05
Unknown
A, I'll do it when you add those other things on. And that's usually a pretty good indicator that you've got somebody that is good, is engaged and you really want to keep an eye on and those are the people you want to retain. And so how do we put something in place then? You know, we talked about emerging leader programs and things, you know, a week ago or were a month ago.

00:03:23:05 - 00:03:44:00
Unknown
And it really does take that to say, okay, so if he's an overachiever, let's make sure, you know, Sophie wants to stay with us so everybody thinks you're the greatest person ever because you're my example for everything. So I know I was going to say, gee, it's just an honor. I know you have Kristie Haase joining you, our employee engagement survey director.

00:03:44:00 - 00:04:15:08
Unknown
And she was just on the podcast, too. And she's got some great insight. So, yeah, Kristie is really good at what she does. I mean, she really understands and has helped a lot of companies. Absolutely. Well, let's talk about what's happening in the recruiting and retention world right now. So, Jim, what's what's new here? A couple of things that, you know, I've heard over the course of the last month, you know, people are talking a lot about perfect attendance for employees and trying to hang on to them.

00:04:15:10 - 00:04:43:02
Unknown
And, you know, some folks may or may not know, but if you reward someone for perfect attendance, that might get into some salary and wage related issues that, you know, you may want to talk to your legal counsel about, but it affects their income. And so companies are now taking a look at you know, maybe what we should be doing is offering paid time off for perfect attendance, because in essence, those people are there every single day in one.

00:04:43:02 - 00:05:01:08
Unknown
The PTO might mean more to them and two, it gets them away from some of those wage related issues. So companies now are looking at, you know, if you have perfect attendance for a quarter, you you earn 2 hours or you earn 4 hours. And so if you do that all year long, you can earn an extra day or two of paid time off.

00:05:01:08 - 00:05:26:23
Unknown
So try to use that perfect attendance as a motivator by providing paid time off is is a new one for us, an interesting one and kind of the negative side, talking to some people somehow we were talking about what their recruiters are seeing and companies are starting to see folks say, oh, you know, it says on your resume that you grade that you graduated from UW Lacrosse.

00:05:26:23 - 00:05:54:12
Unknown
Yeah, yeah, I did these. We called there and they don't have a record of that. Oh, I'll send you a copy of my diploma. And candidates are photoshopping diplomas, putting their name on it and sending it off to people. So I think employers are getting very smart about checking and double checking. I think it's pretty safe to say that if the registrar doesn't think you graduated, that's probably the person that you're going to go to.

00:05:54:12 - 00:06:12:18
Unknown
And because you sent me a Photoshopped picture of a diploma, that's probably not going to do it for me. So points for creativity, but I'm not sure you're going to get away with that. I was going to say, if they're going that far to get the job, yeah, I think I would just go back and take the six more credits and actually get the diploma.

00:06:12:18 - 00:06:40:12
Unknown
I think if anything else that's going on, yeah, we've talked in the past about, you know, companies that were rewarding people for if you were fired, someone that they hired, you would get a bonus or whatever it might be. And we had an interesting come another one from a company that said, you know, we're now rewarding people for just giving us a qualified candidate, even if we never interview them and we never hire them.

00:06:40:14 - 00:07:08:09
Unknown
We're just trying to increase that funnel of people whose names we have should we ever need them. And so they're now rewarding. I think it was with gift cards, someone who I just write, Hey, I know Sophie Boler. She's really good at marketing and social media. Just want to throw it out there. And even if they're now looking for a social media expert or whatever it might be right now, but they look at their resume and they say this would be a qualified person if we were ever looking.

00:07:08:11 - 00:07:39:04
Unknown
They'll reward them just for that, just so they've got names in the hopper. So that's sort of going a little bit farther than we than we have before. And then lastly, you know, there's been some surveys that have come out now just on employee engagement. And this is going to be a mixed message talent report. But the Conference Board had said something out that, you know, work life balance, satisfaction is up, workload satisfaction is better than what's been performance review is better.

00:07:39:06 - 00:08:02:06
Unknown
So they're getting a lot of feedback from employees, basically saying, you know, things aren't quite so bad. You know, I think, you know, we're doing okay here and it's hard to read yet whether or not we've been through so much in the last three years that I don't know if they'll ever be normal again or they'll love or be like the dust has settled and now we're back to even.

00:08:02:08 - 00:08:24:08
Unknown
And it might just be that some employees are starting to settle back in to say, All right, either I moved in, this is where I'm going to be now. And so I'm more content or I didn't go, but people took care of me and so I'm more content. So the engagement statistics from the Conference Board, at least have a little bit better, a little bit more positive in terms of employees outlook.

00:08:24:10 - 00:08:49:10
Unknown
I'm going to contradict that in about 5 minutes. So, you know, I feel like an economist, the economy might go up, might go down. One of those two things is probably going to happen. So but there is some positive news out there. So another topic I'd like to dive into is thinking section. You talked a lot about training and change management, so can you expand a little on that?

00:08:49:12 - 00:09:19:09
Unknown
Yeah, you know, the change management thing with everything that's been going on, remote work, new resources, new technology, we've started, disrupted everything and companies are always talking about, boy, we really need to prepare people because we're about to move or we really need to prepare people because the shock is about to hit the organization. But the shock that's about to come ends up overriding the needs.

00:09:19:10 - 00:09:43:09
Unknown
Okay. We got to we got to give everybody some change management skills so that they're ready to go. And so one of the companies that we talked to said, you know, we have now made it part of our managers and hiring managers job to have conversations about change management with their employees at their one on ones. So they change management training at least took place at the higher levels.

00:09:43:09 - 00:10:06:05
Unknown
But their job now is to say, look, we may not have time to send 200 people through change management, but here are the skill set. So we want you to be talking about your employees, about how people adjust to change differently, how people prepare for change, some terminology and nomenclature about what change management might look like. But they've almost taken it to a one on one stage.

00:10:06:05 - 00:10:31:12
Unknown
It sounds like this is an important skill set for you. Here are some resources for you, but if we're not going to have time to get everybody through our typical four or eight hour training session, we're at least going to expose everybody to some of the training that is necessary for for change management. So it was just a different way of approaching it and trying to make sure at least everybody had had a little bit of a flavor anyway of what's available up there.

00:10:31:14 - 00:10:56:06
Unknown
Yeah, that's a great example. Anything else you're seeing here? Well, the other thing, this will be sort of the I guess this is still part of the good news part. But on the retention side, you'll survey by a dive that was talking about, again, how companies are trying to in essence double down on let's identify what are the roadblocks and problems for people.

00:10:56:06 - 00:11:21:23
Unknown
Let's identify, you know what, I just started those stones in their shoes that maybe we can get some of those things out of the way to really better understand what's causing some of the strife in their employees or what. Maybe there's just some little things that we're this close to making them really happy, but we're going to really start trying to get some of those things out of the way that if this is what the stickler is, we can change the coffee in the coffee machine.

00:11:21:23 - 00:11:42:12
Unknown
We can do this type of flexibility, we can have healthier snacks, just some of the little things that might be irritants. But now we're trying to really adjust those and get them out of the way for people. All for kind of keeping that positive vibe here in the from the field section. You mentioned that American workers are more content than ever.

00:11:42:12 - 00:12:00:21
Unknown
According to a recent survey from 2023. So why is that? You know, I guess I think I'm going to go back to what I just said a couple of minutes ago, is that there was so much turmoil, turmoil and so much change and so many people realizing I can make four bucks more an hour, six bucks more an hour.

00:12:00:23 - 00:12:21:23
Unknown
I'm in demand right now. I can get a signing bonus if I go someplace else. All of those things are very attractive and I think people went and did them because there was obvious personal benefit. But that's a little bit of turmoil in your life too, that all of a sudden you uprooted yourself. Maybe you had to move, maybe you've got different hours, you got to meet all new people at the office.

00:12:22:01 - 00:12:50:03
Unknown
And as good as it sounded and as great as the money was, you now have to figure out a whole bunch of things. And that all happened a year and a half ago. And so, again, I think we might be back to people are now settling in again like, okay, I've been here. I'm a little bit happier with my pay maybe now because I moved or I went to a working office, whether it was in-person or remote, that better served me.

00:12:50:05 - 00:13:08:22
Unknown
And so I made a decision to go somewhere that met my work life balance, that met my needs and demands. And I think you're starting to see that now as people are starting to report out on here's what's going on, here's what we're seeing. And now there are just a little bit happier about some of the things that are happening.

00:13:09:00 - 00:13:36:16
Unknown
Yeah, it's all good stuff. Yeah, there's the good stuff. So there's my there's my contradiction of what's happening out there. Right. So how about C-suite level, what our leaders doing now and what should they really be aware of right now? There's a couple of things going on. One of them that was sort of interesting is, you know, in a lot of cases, companies are using their own employees as trainers and which is a wonderful thing.

00:13:36:16 - 00:13:57:04
Unknown
It's complimentary, you know, and we may come to you and say, Hey, Sophie, can you put on just basic training on social media for some of our people that are engaged, or can you do a little advanced training for some of our people that are engaged? And while I'm sure that would that's flattering to you to say, oh, people recognize that I can be training and teaching on these things.

00:13:57:06 - 00:14:34:06
Unknown
I also have my day job and now I've got to start to prepare for that. And so people are being picked because of their subject matter expertise to go train others on some of the things that are going on. And companies are now rewarding that, saying, look, you know, you're making blank dollars an hour or we're going to give you an incentive if you're an hourly person to say, we'll upgrade when you're doing preparation and training because we know it's above and beyond for you, or we'll provide you a bonus to do this one time, prepare, execute, measure your success.

00:14:34:06 - 00:15:00:22
Unknown
And so they're realizing that that's not everybody can trade. And so if you've got a subject matter expert who can train, you know, let's begin to reward them for some of that. You're actually we're seeing things now on the economic uncertainty, you know, continuing to sort of swirl about. I don't think anybody's in panic mode still. It's like it's always three months away and it's been three months away now for a year.

00:15:01:00 - 00:15:29:06
Unknown
But it's causing companies to start with some of the, you know, what ifs. If something happens, if all of a sudden sales dropped, if we can't get raw material, if we have to cut back, what's the playbook look like? Like, let's think through this when we have time to think through it so that if we actually do have to execute it, it's sort of like, you know, we all did disaster recovery plans a while back where we thought, boy, we better be prepared for this.

00:15:29:08 - 00:15:48:10
Unknown
We've all put cybersecurity plans in place now because we think, boy, we better be ready for this. The same things happening now with just what if we have to cut back or we have to adjust and, you know, reduce our expenses, whatever it might be, They're started putting in the what if playbook so that they're they're prepared for it.

00:15:48:12 - 00:16:21:03
Unknown
And the last thing that we're hearing a lot about is sort of this environmental, social and governance issues that are going on because of the European Union's corporate sustainability anti reporting directive. And that's a whole bunch of words or letters around words. But it's on CRT, those radar because the European Union has set these rules around environmental, social and governance issues that have expectations around, you know, what are your emissions, what's your social contract, how are you running your organization?

00:16:21:05 - 00:16:45:22
Unknown
And even though it's not an American requirement, if your mother ship is in Europe or you are a supplier to a market to a European company, they're now looking down the supply chain and saying, okay, well, we're being judged on this and we're supposed to be judging our suppliers on this. So we now have some questions for you around your environmental, social and governance issues.

00:16:45:22 - 00:17:10:08
Unknown
And can you report back to us on this? And so companies are now you're starting to see it pop up on websites. They're starting to review some of the things that they're doing to make sure that they have data to back up their environmental footprint or whatever they might be doing to reduce emissions. So it's putting a little bit more pressure on companies to be telling your story, to be recording what they're doing.

00:17:10:10 - 00:17:32:22
Unknown
So seeing a little bit of more of that and that's becoming, I don't want to say a headache for people, but it is another piece of information that they have to in essence begin to record. And you don't see what's happening now on some of the earlier strategies you mentioned for under succession planning, but any other creative strategies you've been seeing here?

00:17:33:00 - 00:18:01:17
Unknown
The succession planning is it's sort of omnipresent now. Everybody's talking about it. Everybody knows what should be going on. I think I talked a month ago about there seems to be a little conflict growing between some of the people who are looking at maybe demographics, a whole bunch of other things, saying, you know, we're going to lose 75% of our executive committee in the next five years or 30% of our staff are over the age of 60.

00:18:01:17 - 00:18:20:12
Unknown
We're going to have a lot of intelligence walking out the door, really just trying to get people to think strategically about, are we ready for this? What happens not only if we lose at this level or we lose at this level or three key people out of one department can, in essence, shut that down? Are we ready for that?

00:18:20:12 - 00:18:43:14
Unknown
So they're really looking strategically around the entire company to say, you know, if we lose this person or two people out of this department, or we only have one person who knows how to run this piece of machinery, those people are just as important. And succession planning now as who's the next CEO. So who's the next CFO? So it's really become almost a strategy within strategic planning.

00:18:43:14 - 00:19:07:17
Unknown
Now on the talent side to say, what are our biggest weak points here where, you know, where can this all break down? But it's going to have just an incredible sort of impact on us to say if this happens, we don't really have a plan B. So I think they're just trying to make sure there's a plan B for just about everything that's out there.

00:19:07:19 - 00:19:26:02
Unknown
And I'm looking at the end of your report now, the last section, you've got a chart there that shows the top six reasons why different generations stay in their current job. So can you kind of talk about what's on the chart for a little bit? Yeah, The first one we looked at is why did you decide to stay?

00:19:26:04 - 00:19:46:22
Unknown
And, you know, this was done by McKinsey and it's a very large study and it took all of the generations into place just to see if there were differences and things like that. You know, and in terms of overall, the number one reason for staying was total compensation. You know, so we talk about a whole bunch of things, but money still matters.

00:19:47:00 - 00:20:12:00
Unknown
And it mattered more to the two older generations, the Gen X and the baby boomers. But it really was right there in second place for the millennials, Gen Z. It was actually at the very bottom. And I think that's mostly because their first job probably increased their salary by four fold and they just wanted for making $12 an hour somewhere, getting their job.

00:20:12:00 - 00:20:35:12
Unknown
But for just about everybody else, that's still a big deal. The second big deal is meaningful work, and that is really amongst everybody that I want to know that what I'm doing actually makes a difference. And, you know, I'm having an impact on things. So that was number two. And number three was workforce flexibility. And we hear that absolutely everywhere.

00:20:35:12 - 00:21:00:07
Unknown
And we hear it from basically everybody that I'm looking at. You know, I want to be able to work a little bit on my time and, you know, my my situation, the work life balance. I want to be able to do it. And the way I moved here, the money is everything across all five, four generations. Money matters.

00:21:00:07 - 00:21:26:03
Unknown
That was was basically number one. The second one, though, with the people who took the new job was career development and advancement potential. So that might be one where on that retention side, wherever they were working, they weren't paying attention to what are these people looking for and what is it that they need? So they're really that one jump up between, you know, why I stayed and why I left.

00:21:26:03 - 00:21:44:11
Unknown
So I think it really speaks to that career ladder. The where am I going? How am I going to get there? That part is really a big deal. And somehow these new companies that they went to, they offered them money and that probably got the retention. But then they were very excited to find out the development advancement opportunities.

00:21:44:11 - 00:22:11:11
Unknown
So I think that plays a little bit more to the long term of what they were looking for. So money matters, but I think that advancement and that, you know, feeling like I'm wanted and feeling like I'm, you know, sort of loved here in terms of what's going on does make a difference. DO Yeah. As we wrap up here, I've got to ask you, can you give us a sneak peek at next month's July ten report?

00:22:11:15 - 00:22:44:18
Unknown
Yeah, I'm pretty excited for the July one. We're going to be talking with the head of our Roundtable's department. We have over a thousand people in our roundtables throughout our now five state area, representing about 600 companies. And this is everything from payroll h.r. Generalist rose marketing, i.t. cfos, ceo hours. And we're going to be talking about basically cumulatively, what are we hearing out there?

00:22:44:19 - 00:23:02:07
Unknown
Like what's going on? This is not just a focus group of a thousand business people to say when we look at the first six months of this year and maybe the last 18 months, what are they talking about? What's the commonality? Is the same thing on the mind of a CEO as is on the mind of a benefits manager.

00:23:02:12 - 00:23:21:03
Unknown
Are those completely separate? Where are the differences and things like that? So I think we're going to have some pretty interesting insights from business leaders all over the upper Midwest and all different levels talking about, Hey, this is what's keeping us up at night and we'll see how that relates to some of the other things that are going on out there.

00:23:21:05 - 00:23:46:19
Unknown
And well, I'm excited for that one. Looking forward to it. Yeah, I think it's going to it's going to be fun. Yeah. Well, thank you again, Jim, for being on 30 minute Thrive and sharing June's report. You always bring great insights and information, so we appreciate it. It's my pleasure. Love doing. But to our listeners, I'd encourage you to share this episode, leave a comment or review and consider joining MRA if you aren't a member already.

00:23:47:01 - 00:24:09:00
Unknown
We've all the resources you need in the show notes below. We've got Jim's bio and LinkedIn profile along with some talent report resources in the show notes as well. Otherwise, again, thank you for tuning in and thanks. Thanks, Jim, too. And we'll see you next week. And that wraps up our content for this episode. Be sure to reference the show notes where you can sign them to connect.

00:24:09:00 - 00:24:24:03
Unknown
For more podcast updates, check out other MRA episodes on your favorite podcast platform. And as always, make sure to follow MRA’s 30 minute Thrive so you don't miss out. Thanks for tuning in and we'll see you next Wednesday to carry on the HR conversation.