The war for talent

In the wake of "The Great Resignation" and a competitive job market, employers are looking to reduce turnover and attract top talent. In this session we will share results from EBN's new research to better understand the current and planned tactics, technology investments and benefits strategies employers' are deploying in the race to win the war for talent.

Transcription:

Carrie Gross (00:08):

Hello everybody. Good morning everyone. Sorry, I thought maybe there was going to be an announcement of us, but not. That's fine. Carrie Gross. I'm the director of research intelligence for Arizent which is the parent company to Employee Benefit News and workplace strategies. And just to start, I wanna welcome everyone. Thank you so much for being with us here in Austin. I'm really excited to share this piece of research. And with me is a Chad Deshler. He's the Chief Revenue Officer for Flow Health which is an AI driven women's health product that supports girls and women at every stage through their reproductive cycle. And Chad, is a healthcare executive, more than 20 years of experience ranging from health plans and onsite clinics to EMRs and digital health solutions. And he brings experience across several fields of healthcare and the healthcare economy, including insurers, providers and employers. And as the Chief revenue officer at Flow Health he's responsible for growth, client success and marketing across their whole B2B enterprise. And just a little bit more about flow health, they're a global healthcare company that's headquartered in London and has over 400 employees worldwide. But Chad is based in Kansas City and joins us there, here today.

Chad Deshler (01:25):

Wonderful, Thank you. Pleasure to be here with everybody. We look forward to this topic today, so thank you for the time.

Carrie Gross (01:30):

Yeah. And it sounds like from that last presentation we heard the war for talent is really timely. I'm sure everyone of you in the room knows it's timely we know it's timely. We've done this piece of research that I'm really excited to talk to you about. We talked to 599 people in HR and people leader roles across industries in the US to really understand how the tight labor market is impacting businesses and evaluate possible solutions. And I'm so glad Chad's here to talk about the things that he's seeing when he talks to employers too. So in this piece of research, 93% of our respondents were people leaders. 34% are leaders of leaders and 59% are leaders of individual contributors. So really understanding what is the experience of folks who are managing people, which is really important in understanding how folks are doing within their roles. And then half of our respondents were also in an HR benefits related role. The majority of those are in compensation and benefits management, which is perfectly aligned with everyone. Most of the people in this room and 71% are in employment and placement. And then just thinking about the employee size of the organizations we talk to, 70% have more than a hundred full-time employees, and 50% have more than 500 full-time employees. So really kind of larger organizations and the folks who are really thinking about the war for talent. So let's jump into the results. What did we actually hear from people and what we see, we ask this question, how big of a challenge is attracting key talent, retaining key talent, and maintaining a large enough workforce to do the work? And what we see is that across all sectors folks are challenged by this. 50% say that attracting key talent is a problem. And Chad, I'd really love to hear from you when you look at this, when you think about the war for talent, what are you hearing from employers?

Chad Deshler (03:23):

Yeah, I think it was already stated a little bit earlier in the first address that we had, but the great resignation is causing a lot of, imposing a lot of challenges to people. Not only people in this room but all over the world. And we're a global company. We speak with employers in the United States, in Europe, everywhere else. And it's a similar problem that everybody is facing right now. I think there's a couple things to note here. Number one, as HR executives, some of which are in the room here today, I firmly believe that we should not take that burden on ourselves. This is a collective challenge. It requires cross collaboration, cross-functional collaboration with people within your organization. And at its core, I think to address some of these issues that you're seeing on the slide, we need to reimagine and rethink things the way we approach it. I also think that as executives within organizations to sit down, if the opportunity is there with your executive team to also reshape and reimagine this discussion the way we have tried to address this, we've never faced anything like this in the recent years. It just needs to be done in approach differently. So that's one thing I've heard. And I keep hearing that the way that the conversations have happened need to pivot, need to change. Some are reluctant to do it, but most are quite open to new ideas.

Carrie Gross (04:49):

In the past two years have really changed the landscape for everyone. I'm sure if everyone in the room thinks about what's changed in their lives in the past two years, everything has changed and it's not unusual to think about how work has changed too, right? And so it's really, we're talking about a ground level shift in how we think about and approach work.

Chad Deshler (05:06):

Exactly That's very important. It is ground level and I would encourage everybody to have those conversations sooner rather than later. For sure.

Carrie Gross (05:14):

Yeah, and we learned a little bit about this. We were under wanted to understand why are companies losing talent? And what we see is that overall, the top two reasons folks think that people are leaving their company, not necessarily this is what they think our people are leaving. Number one is compensation being too low, followed by a lack of advancement. And we've talked, these are the standard two that we heard even pre pandemic. But I'd love to hear your thoughts on these two before we look at some of the ones down.

Chad Deshler (05:44):

That's a good question. A couple things. I think as HR leaders, it's important to ask yourself a couple questions. When you see results like this, specifically the very first one that we're all aware of which is the compensation is too low, the first question you need to ask yourself is the only reason why somebody is at your organization because of the paycheck. And if that is the core reason for it for them being there, then I would argue that this is a transaction that is happening. This is not a career opportunity, this is not longevity, this is a transaction. And sometimes those are tough things to hear. I was at a conference last week in Los Angeles and it was with healthcare executives and one of the biggest challenges they're facing is, can I pay a nurse $25 versus $24? And now they're saying, I want to pay them 26. It's just this volume back and forth that is almost a no one situation. So that's one thing I think we need to look at. And I think you need to look at things as these other factors that are popping up just a little bit differently. The other thing to look at is instead of just shifting the conversation, having the conversation at the compensation level is where is the advancement in career opportunities? Which leads into the second thing there. Where are those opportunities within your organization? What programs do you have today that focus on that versus the compensation discussion? All these other factors are creeping up lack of flexibility in the workforce, lack of flexibility to a work schedule given the pandemic. These things are coming up more and more and more. So that's something to look at. The last question I would ask us to ask ourselves is are we aligning our benefit structure with the priorities of our employees? So there are things that are of more interest to people now than what they were five to seven years ago. If you spend any amount of time in Silicon Valley and you've worked for any large company out there, I have lunch provided I have breakfast, I have movie night, I have all these things that keep me on campus that are nice to haves. I think those are changing. The times have changed on that. And now I have three kids. I'm balancing work and life. How can I work from home for this time period? I can't get to the office. So again, just things to think about when you think about attraction and retention of talent.

Carrie Gross (08:07):

Exactly. And it really comes down to what are the kinds of employees you have at your organization. Not all companies have the same types of employees, but we were really curious, are organizations seeing differences in losses at any particular job line? And what we see is that the top two are really job roles, right? Employees in frontline or off individual office contributor roles and employees in technical or computing roles. Those are areas frontline workers at the frontline of risk in covid experiencing different challenges that I think folks all know in their room. But the things that are really interesting to me are the things that are more about the characteristics or the status of the employees, not the job role. They play employees with children younger than 18 employees with caregiving responsibilities, female employees. Seeing those folks leaving in bigger drove speaks to this ground level shift and what do these employees actually need? And I, I'd love your thoughts on

Chad Deshler (09:00):

That. Yeah, I actually wish this survey was done five years ago to see what this slide in particular would've looked like. For example employees with caregiving responsibilities is now 24% of the group. I would bet that was far less years ago. What is interesting in here, there's a number of factors, and I actually jotted some of these down when I saw this data. The tendency seems to be, as you see here, higher attrition for caregiving roles. And if you think about the challenges that we have in the workplace, and this does fit into some of my business that I'm in, but women make up more than half the workforce today. If you, we've all heard the great what's the name of the great resignation, I would argue, and a lot of media outlets have said this as well, that it's more of the great resignation of women in the workforce. That has happened in the past year and a half to two years. Massive, massive change in the workforce from asking for caregiving, asking for different dynamics that we alluded to a little bit earlier. There's a massive loss of female talent in the workforce. And I mean even some of my colleagues recently have changed their direction because, hey, I've got other things I'd like to focus on. And it does kind of bring us back to what's most important. We at Flow, about six months ago did a survey, a little small survey, and an interesting statistic came of it when we interviewed some of our users, our of our female users. And it said seven out of 10 women do not feel like their employer understands their basic needs, their basic health needs seven out of 10. That's amazing. I do know the survey we took on that included employers as small as 200 lives up to as large as 10,000. So there's a little bit of a disconnect and I think that's something that we have to notate. A couple other things here that I think is important to call out. And I know this is very hot topic recent, but the recent overturn of Roe and Reverses Wade, that also causes some additional questions and some thoughts about what we are doing as a collective group of professionals to help women in the workforce. What are we doing to assist people in making informed decisions? I mean, all of these things here that you guys see at these statistics there's a lot of losses that are happening out there. And I think it is important for us to think about some of those creative ways to curb against some of the statistics that are quite alarming.

Carrie Gross (11:40):

And I think too, these speak to the structural pieces of work who were workers 50 years ago in the U.S. The traditional kind of model men worked and women were at home, not universally. When we think about the structures within your company, has your company evolved since then? If half of your workforce or more are women, have you evolved from some of the practices that have happened? And I see that here in this data?

Chad Deshler (12:03):

Yeah, you do. And I will say each organization here represented in the room has probably done little things, different things, maybe large and scale, small and scale. One thing that we just implemented this year for our health plan for our employees was we put in a six month maternity leave and we put in a one month paternity leave, which is given that we're a global company that's actually under the bar globally and it's well above the bar domestically. So that was one thing we had to do. The other thing that we've not touched on that I think is important when you look at numbers like this of how to attract and retain talent is what happens when you have a loss in a family. So another thing that we did, and I've heard other organizations do this as well, is we actually implemented a dedicated pregnancy loss policy within our organization. And it's been one of those benefits. That's not money in terms of compensation, but it's a way to show that you care about your population and the challenges that they all face.

Carrie Gross (13:09):

And that piece of knowing that you're job's going to be there when you're in a place to be there for your job, that if you expect your employees to come in day in and day out and be the exact same, that's not really honest us to how an employee is, right?

Chad Deshler (13:23):

Correct. It is it not. And I think it's just important to look at this fundamentally, it goes back to the ground shifting way of rethinking the way we approach benefits.

Carrie Gross (13:32):

And we asked about that too. I asked all these leaders, what would you do to improve attracting employees at your organization if you could do anything? These are coded open-ended responses, which is why the percentages are slow low. But I think what's really interesting, wage salary planning we already talked kind of a little bit about that, but I think some of these other pieces here, flexible work location that are more affordable, benefits or perks, flexible work hours, those all stand out to me as things that have really changed in the past couple of years, particularly the flexibility. But I'd love your thoughts on what's happening here.

Chad Deshler (14:06):

Yeah, before I address that, I'm going to actually look to the audience really quick and I can see most of you, but by a show of hands, how many people actually make benefit decisions for your organization in some form or fashion are involved? So a good percentage of the people in this room, so I'm going to use a silly example to address this. An analogy, and please bear with me on this, but I feel that a lot of HR executives, decision makers within HR, just having to deal with benefits are kind of like a peanut butter sandwich and most importantly, the peanut butter inside the sandwich. Here's why I say that. You as executives are facing pressures from top down and bottom up. And from the bottom up you have employees that are coming to you asking for the best benefits. Why didn't you do this this year? We need this support going forward. You took this away from me. And then that top down that other piece of the sandwich is you're the executive team that's saying we need to offer the most competitive benefits at the best price that addresses our business goals and objectives. And so you are that peanut butter inside. And it's tough because it's very challenging to address both sides of that. And that's a very difficult thing to do. And I've talked to multiple employers and this is why I thought of that in my mind was I keep hearing this and it's a real tough situation to be in. So, it was mentioned earlier in the previous keynote as we kicked this off, one of the ways that can really kind of help in that scenario is she used the word listening. So, right now with all of the things that are happening in the country here with the changes that have been happening and the changes in the war for talent, all of these things we're talking about, if we don't listen, we're we are having a big disconnect. And I think that when you do listen and you do hear what your population is saying that's oftentimes more than worth than what you put in place. And so I think that's a big part of it. The other thing as part of that listening is rather than jumping to a conclusion or jumping to a solution and saying, let's deploy this benefit, we need to do this. We have wellness funds, let's do it. Step back, think twice about is it addressing some of these things that we've talked about versus just another compensation component. I think those are just things that we have to look at. And I think it's important to recognize that people do change all the time. This dynamic may change, but being able to understand the concerns of a population I think will get you out of that sandwich example and free you up to address both sides in a better way.

Carrie Gross (16:51):

Definitely. And I think in my own personal career, anytime, usually when I bring a concern, I just wanna hear that it's heard and then get given information back so I understand how the company's making decisions for me and my own personality. That's what I wanna know, and I wanna be able to understand the company decisions. And so it's with listening and being as honest as you can and being able to facilitate those honest conversations, which I think is what the last person exactly telling us think about. And I think too, we were really curious, this goes back to the bigger picture culture that's within an organization. And we wanted to understand this too. What are the cultural resources that people, leaders and HR folks have available to them? And I personally was kind of shocked by these findings that only 25% of people, leaders saying that they have the right processes and tools to manage employee performance resources to invest in their employees' continued skill and development and growth guidance for employees on how to excel at the tactical elements of their job. All of this goes back to those advancement pieces that we were talking about at the front, right? If advancement is the number two reason that folks are leaving and only 25% say they have all of the resources they need to invest in this, that seems like a problem to me. I'd love your thoughts, Chad.

Chad Deshler (18:03):

It is. It's interesting. We spend a lot of time focusing on the attracting of talent. And when I saw this slide as well, I wrote down another question here, and I said, in essence, career develop development is very crucial. We know that and we need to focus on that. So are we putting the same amount of effort, time, and resources into creating an environment where we can retain that talent as we are attracting it? And I don't have to look any further than our own organization. We've had to make some shifts in that structure because we are a global workforce and what is attractive and what is retaining for somebody in Europe is different here in the US. And so I think that as a company, that's something we've had to focus at and look on. So I'd encourage you to ask yourself that question. Are you focusing on the retention aspect, just as important as the attraction part. And then the other thing is to prioritize mapping out that career development plan. How much focus and effort within your organization are you taking to create programs that are focusing on upward mobility programs that are focusing on mentorship? These are things I remember when I started my career over 20 years ago was around, oh, who's your mentor that's been assigned to you? And I think we spoke one time in a period of six months, and it didn't provide me the much value, and I'm sure it didn't for him either. And I think we need to ship re-shift that thinking as well to create something that's sustainable and worthwhile.

Carrie Gross (19:36):

Definitely. And other pieces of investment I see here too, about just 23% saying they have all the support they need in terms of resources to help employees maintain their physical, emotional and mental wellbeing, which I think goes back to that listening piece that we were talking about before. And these pieces were cultural pieces that we were talking about. We also really wanted to know the technical tactical investments that companies are making. And this for me is kind of a stark reminder of where dollars sometimes get spent is that 75% of organizations have personal management systems to manage attendance. Really important, making sure your people are around when they are, but bigger picture thinking about the other kinds of things that companies can be or maybe should be investing in, particularly the green bar on this is folks who say they don't have it but they need it. We see almost a third saying a third to 40% saying that they need workforce productivity planning and tracking system. But down at the bottom, for me, the biggest ones, mentorship programs for your own growth as a leader and mentorship programs for your staff to participate in. That's really stark to me. I'm curious, what are you struck by?

Chad Deshler (20:43):

I mean, I just alluded to that the mentorship programs is quite low. I am a little encouraged to see that areas, and this, let's be honest, it's kind of been more of a recent thing that has happened around the diversity, equity and inclusion training and focusing on that organizations are adopting that some later than others, some earlier than others. But that is a recent thing that's happening. The fact that we are spending so much time on tactical things about, we were saying this earlier, if you were my boss, I can come to you and say, Hey, I'm going to take vacation these days. Oh by the way, do I have to go log? Yeah, go log that. Put it in the system. We gotta track it. And you spend so much time. And that's where it goes back to, are we having a qualitative discussion or a transactional discussion? And those are things that I think have to change. So that's one thing. We spend so much time there. I would encourage, and when I talk to companies, consultants all over the world, we talk about creating productivity and tracking what is most important within an organization ultimately. And I think everybody in this room could hopefully agree with this, that people are our greatest asset. And so if people are truly our greatest asset within an organization, we need to treat an asset. We would any other asset and treat that at high priority. And as HR leaders, we should not be viewing this as a transaction. Some of the data that was shared in the previous presentation, it's amazing how I think the statistic was, and I may butcher this, but people are looking for jobs within six months. They're already, it's not surprising that people, if it's not piqueing my interest, I'm gone. And I think that if you incorporate some of these things, we've talked around career development mentorship programs, in addition to some of that compensation type discussion, you are creating an environment that people wanna stay.

Carrie Gross (22:45):

And I think too, going back to that leadership piece, the listening you were talking about and thinking about mentorship programs for your own growth as a leader. And when I think about the things that make me excel as my job as an individual contributor, my actual tactical jobs are very different from the things that make me excel as a leader in my company, as a mentor to the people who report to me. And thinking about as HR leaders, how do we facilitate a space for people to learn how to listen and to communicate if they haven't learned that before, which I don't think it's necessarily assumed that we should expect that all of our managers are already good listeners. Yeah. What are the skills that we're developing in that way? Yeah.

Chad Deshler (23:22):

No, I think that's true. I'm going to pose one more. I know this is a little off script here. Yeah. I'd like to pose another question to the audience and I'd love to, if there's a volunteer or somebody can speak, as we've talked about some of these things, is there something we may have missed or maybe something you've incorporated within your organization that has been best practice that you've seen to have success? I'd love to know if there's anyone out there that would like to share that. And if not, we'll continue to go. But throw that out there.

(Audience Member) Debbie (23:52):

My name's Debbie. I'm the founder and CEO of Village. And what we do is we help managers to lead with empathy through their employees personal life events. And I think that's something that's lacking on this list of something that leaders are in need of right now. We've elevated leaders and kind of throwing them out there in this new role where culture is how they respond to employees on the other side of the screen. But we haven't given them the skills, the skills to understand, as you said, what happens after a pregnancy loss or what happens when someone's juggling responsibilities at home. And I love what you said about having that qualitative versus quantitative discussion, not just how many days are you taking off, but how are we going to tailor a plan to ensure there's coverage and productivity moving forward? And that's an area where we have yet to really step back and say, we have to empower our managers on just the personal stuff.

Carrie Gross (24:46):

And I think too, that speaks to bigger picture. The conversation around what is work is work fi, and this is kind of revolutionary for lots of companies, but is work five days a week, eight hours in the seat or is work getting what needs to get done, done and whatever time is flexible for a person to get it done? And coming back to that human piece, if we think about the company as the work that needs to get done and the human as the person that does needs to do it, how does five days a week, eight hours fit into that? Some companies are that some companies you need to have coverage at a specific physical location, but not everything.

Chad Deshler (25:20):

It's interesting, the manager training aspect if you go back to some of the loss of female talent in the workforce on average, women incur six work sick day work, they apply for six sick days of work per year due to health related issues women's health related issues. And most of those women would never ever feel comfortable going to their manager explaining, I'm not going to come to work today. And here's why. A lot of which is because managers are not trained, they're trained. I don't wanna talk about it, just do what you gotta do, do what you gotta do. And I think that there's a disconnect right there because that topic needs to be discussed and be comfortable around that because it impacts, it does impact work, it does impact the bottom line, and it impacts the fact that, wow, he or she listened to me and I feel more comfortable coming to them with this discussion. So we didn't touch on the manager training aspect, but that is so key to this because traditionally it's just been one of those discussions we just avoid.

Carrie Gross (26:31):

And we're very good at avoiding discussions here, at least in the US. And I think that for me is kind of the biggest takeaway as we wrap up our time here, is really thinking about how are we enabling listening among our populations as so much has changed. I do wanna tell everyone, this piece of research is part of a bigger, there's lots more data and there's a research report that was published on Employee Benefits News for you. If you wanna figure out some more information about this. Chad, what are the takeaway for you?

Chad Deshler (27:01):

Yeah, I mean the takeaway, I think I've said this and I don't want to go down the path much further, but there's so much opportunity here. I do want to pause for a second and applaud and recognize a lot of people in this room that are doing things to address these issues. And whether they're small or large in scale, the fact that you're aware of it and that you're having these discussions with your executives, you're having these discussions with your employees, that's the starting point. And if you can start there and then take these baby steps forward, that is part of rethinking this differently. And I think that it does take a team of people to make that happen. You should not feel like it's a burden for you but you do have support to do that. So I want to take this survey next year at this time. I want to see what it's going to be like and see if the numbers change at all. But this has been great, so thank you.

Carrie Gross (27:51):

Yeah, Thanks Chad. You've given us so much expertise and I'm really excited too to hear if we wanna talk to either of us after we'll be around. Feel free to approach either of you have any questions about the research or just wanna talk about what we do. Yeah, I'd love you to do that.

Chad Deshler (28:05):

Thank you all.

Carrie Gross (28:05):

Thank you everyone.