a BROADcast for Manufacturers

He is an international collaboration coach and the founder & CEO of Project Connect. A marketing firm in Madison, Wisconsin. He has worked in the restaurant industry. As a general manager, district manager, and consultant with a good amount of time spent at Starbucks in Los Angeles. He uses his experience and training as a facilitator, a futurist, and a conflict resolution mediator to support executives and organizations as a collaboration coach. This work deconstructs collaboration and finds the best ways to lead and design the work to be more efficient and create more impactful results. He has a BFS in theatre performance from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and a master’s in public service from the Clinton School of Public Service. 

Gregg: Yes, first, I need to go back to episode three of your I have to like gush a little bit of a big fan. Yes. And it's Yeah, so what you're doing is very unique, and it is bringing out strains of information that not a lot of people are talking about. So thank you. Okay, I'll go back to what is it. What is it Collaboration Coach too, essentially, it is to get collaborations, more effective and more impactful, that can be done either if we're working directly with a CEO or someone in the C suite, and having those coaching conversations of like, Okay, how did this go? Where's your ego in this, what's going on, and then the, you know, in practicing going back, while also learning my framework of collaboration, which is the lifecycle of collaboration. The other way is actually bringing a collaboration coach on as a contracted employee for a while, and working side by side as a facilitator and coach to the entire collaborative team. Okay, so that can look like facilitating meetings, while also holding the team accountable to this is work time. This is not a question-and-answer time like this is when we're trying to get this portion of the goal or the objective finished. So then we can all come back and assess where we're at. This also is leadership development, facilitation, skills development, and working conflict resolution into the culture of collaboration, which often will, you know, bleed into the company's culture. But sometimes these collaborations are multi-company or multi-organization collaborations, where then it really gets tricky, or collaborations that have collaborations in them.

Gregg: Oh, yeah. There are a few things that Collaboration Coach can specifically help with. And in the manufacturing world, there are two very big ones. One is focusing on silo mentality, and bridging the silos and the communication between silos. Kris, you and I were at dinner one night, we talked big time about the sales team and the marketing team. And, you know, and how sometimes, those two silos are not talking at all. And they are one they are like, together, they're the most important part often, of the collaboration. So definitely that, and then, um, and then increasing productivity. And that's through communication barriers. And if we can create the space, and make sure that everyone trusts and shows up authentically, then we're going to increase productivity ultimately and build a bottom line. So when it comes to manufacturing, those are the two pieces that I see the most.

Gregg: I think the thing that people often look at as a possible weakness, which is something about me, that I love is that I really do care about how people are being held in spaces. And that shows up with you know, me pulling in integrity, like, Okay, I'm you know, is this person really Okay, in this moment is this, you know, and, and as long as I'm still filling my cup, taking care of myself, all those things can be done and, and that's really, really an authentic piece of me that comes out and people don't always get so.

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She is a lifelong writer, who spent 20 years working in the higher education communications world. She was living in Des Moines, Iowa when her husband took a new job and the family moved to Neenah Wisconsin in January 2020. After a short time as a very reluctant pandemic homeschool teacher dabbling in freelance marketing communications work, she jumped at the opportunity to embrace her first love, magazines. So she became a writer-editor at insight publications, a regional business magazine serving Northeast Wisconsin. Today, her primary responsibility is editing the BI monthly magazine insight on manufacturing. 

Kate: So inside our manufacturing has been around for 15 years. We serve 18 counties of Northeast Wisconsin covering manufacturing. And yes, over those 15 years, the internet has exploded. It's gotten noisier digital communications are definitely the thing. But over that amount of time, the appeal of a tangible print product has actually sort of come back in some ways. Our audience is pretty broad-ranging in terms of age. But obviously, some of the folks who've been around a little bit longer are still pretty big fans of holding something in their hands and reading it kind of really diving into a topic, which is what we do at Insight. So, you know, yes, there is still room for print publications to advertisers like it. But we are evolving, just like every other business into doing more digital and insight. But really our flagship, our heart, and soul is still in that print world with the glossy photography in the color and the tangible magazine that people can sit down and have their coffee and read on a Sunday morning or whatever.

Kate: It definitely was intimidating. I mean, I had my father was an engineer. And until I was probably 12 years old, I thought he drove a train. I love it. So I was like, Oh, my God, he makes tractors, I don't really know what else is involved in that. So you know, growing up, it was not something even though he was in the space, I didn't really understand all the nuances of manufacturing. And then when I went to journalism school, I was very focused on sports media and the human interest type of journalism. So yeah, when I'm offered this job to be editor of IOM, I'm thinking oh, my gosh, I'm not a thought leader on manufacturing, I'm going to ask stupid questions. But you know, like I said, it really doesn't matter. If you have that expertise yourself. I'm looking for the experts. I'm not I don't have to be the expert, I have to make what they say sounds good. And, and helpful in connecting people. So it's really been really pretty awesome to learn so much about manufacturing in the process of having this job. And I'm just so inspired and sort of awed by this concept of making, right? You know, this area of Wisconsin has one of the largest concentrations in the country, for manufacturing, and you don't see that everywhere. And you kind of take for granted that people are actually making things here. And it's really, really cool.

Kate: There are so many stories to tell. And the community is actually really collaborative. I think in my brain, I thought, you know, these are competitive, proprietary enterprises that don't want to talk about their problems or share their secrets. And in some respects, that's definitely true. But the competition is global. For most of these manufacturers in Northeast Wisconsin, the collaboration ends up, you know, being pretty localized. And we're just so much stronger, versus a region in Northeast Wisconsin, but also as a state. And every time I can get people to work together, it seems like they're solving problems. So I think there's just such a spirit of getting things done. That's inherent to people in manufacturing. And that includes, you know, solving some of these challenges. And there are big ones, but the workforce and the environment, and education are all big parts of that.

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With over 20 years of experience in the design and construction industry to her role as director of business development at Findorf. As a leader in the male-dominated construction industry, Roberta has served in multiple roles throughout her career, from onsite engineer to virtual modeler to business developer. Regardless of her title, she has a special focus on helping women succeed through mentorship, unique learning opportunities, and encouragement.

Robbie: Well, I grew up in a small town with my mom. We had an untraditional relationship where my mother wore the pants of the family and stuff. And so I always had this female support person who told me I could do whatever I wanted to do. And there was no male work or women's work and stuff. And I was so fortunate. But then when I came into the industry, I noticed not every woman has that. And they don't have the support from other individuals and they don't know their value. So it was really important for me to get involved in some of these organizations and really to help bring up our other women peers in the AEC industry.

Robbie: Oh, absolutely. W. Crew is one of the first organizations I joined, which was Women in Racial Real Estate Wisconsin. And then we have Women in Design, MKE, which is based on a bunch of my design partners and friends as I went to school for architecture. And that was to help us women to promote each other and promote ourselves and share all the great things we're doing. Empower Her is a newer organization that I'm helping with and assisting with. And that is focused on the craft ladies in the field. And then one other one that I'm working with is Women Developing Wisconsin in partnership with MSOE, which is again connecting the bridge between students, and professionals, and really empowering and helping women network so that they can grow.

Robbie: Yeah, no, that's a great question. I feel like when I first started and when I was younger, it was more about professional development. And equity is a big word these days, right? We're trying to get equity for everyone. And so we're focused more on professional women rising up to the glass ceiling, breaking the glass ceiling. And now we're focused more, me being in construction, is looking at the craft or the women that are in the trades and how can we bring equity to those women, anywhere from childcare or just having the support or mentorship to support them. And again, we think about all of us being, I would say, office individuals, but we're not boots on the ground in the field, putting concrete in place. And so as these organizations, as we're growing and stuff, we're really diving in deeper to really help other individuals that may not have the same resources that we have.

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• Women Driving Innovation in Manufacturing:https://www.sme.org/aboutsme/women-influencing-manufacturing/
• Women Make America Initiative: https://www.themanufacturinginstitute.org/women/wma/

Erin: Hey, Lori. Happy International Women's Month. It's about us broads. Yeah. And it got me to thinking, we spent some time talking about the ladies on this show, and we get such cool stories from women in manufacturing and the stories that we share as well. I thought it'd be cool to really dig into the history. Who are the women that came before us? And so when I was doing a little bit of research, I discovered that President Jimmy Carter established the first International Women's Week, the official designation from the White House. And in doing so, he had the most wonderful quote. And can I read that to you? Yeah. And you know what? I might choke up. So please just bear with me, people. Okay. This is Jimmy. I'm not going to do it in a Southern accent, though. From the first settlers who came to our shores, to the first American Indian families who befriended them, men and women have worked together to build this nation. Too often, the women were unsung, and sometimes their contributions went unnoticed. But the achievements, leadership, courage, strength, and love of the women who built America were as vital as that of the men whose names we know so well.

Lori: Wow. You just get all the feels with that right away, don't you? Yeah. 

Erin: Gave me the chills. Just such an honest recognition from the top man in power, the President of the United States, that it wasn't, oh, women in their own right deserves some recognition. No, they built this country. Let's give them their props. And so I think it's really great that we have this celebration and that we get to revisit some of the women in history that, well, we may have heard their name or in many cases not. We just haven't really had the historical reference that we have for a lot of the men's names in history. And so I thought today would be fun to do a little history lesson. What are some ladies we could talk about?

Lori: I like that idea. All right. Well, I'm going to let you go first and set the stage.

Erin: Okay. Sure. I'm going to start with Aida Lovely. S he was... Oh, my gosh. I should know what era she's from, like the 1700s. I have a special connection to her for a number of reasons. One, my children have this amazing book about Aida Lovelace and it's just gorgeous. I've known her story for a while. And two, she's recognized as a woman pioneer in computing and computer science. Although her contributions took place much before we had actual computing technology, the algorithmic and mathematical thinking that really provided the platform from which computational power was built came directly from Lady Lovelace. And even more interesting, this was wild. She's the daughter of Lord Byron, that poet. 

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• OPSisters Website:https://opsisters.com/
• SteelToes and Stilettos: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/steel-toes-and-stilettos-shannon-karels/1139878791

The authors of SteelToes and Stilettos. Is that just the best you have ever heard? Yeah. Kathy and Shannon share in their book, they share the finer points of a comprehensive change process, the challenges, the triumphs, and the real emotion involved during the quest for success and their endeavors. In the book, they each describe the professional journey from their unique perspective and the highlights of an endearing friendship. I love it. That was formed along the way. The story will inspire female leaders and everybody that's listening. I bet you fellas could get some out of this, too. In any organization, showcasing an example of high-performing women thriving in an intense and fast-paced world. These ladies are role models for those juggling, passionate, fulfilling careers alongside life's complexities. Such as dual career marriages and raising children. 

Kathy: The science of human flourishing. I studied it decades ago.  Mr. D. Seligman, who's known as the father of positive psychology and a very renowned global psychologist, decided that if we could use psychology to take people who have issues, issues with their brain and get them neutral, why couldn't we study what could take people to neutral from neutral to flourishing. Or if you're already flourishing, more flourishing. Started this whole branch of science, and there are decades of research about it now and all the things you can do to help yourself and others flourish along the way. So he actually was one of my professors, and he just turned 80 this year. Yeah, it's a really exciting program. I just loved it so much.

Shannon: Well, there were a few reasons. After we had both decided to leave our corporate jobs, we were spending some nice quality time together and reminiscing on how the three years we spent together, what made it magical? What made it successful? How did we do what we did? Because after that, we had gone on to different roles, took the same tools, and the same concepts, and had success in varying degrees. And so we kept just reminiscing and reflecting on why did it work so well when we were together? And we started to really think about the people portion of it, how we engage everybody, and how we are who we are. And we're a little crazy and fun, sometimes. Awesome. But we're also serious business people at the same time. And so we thought, man, maybe we have a really great story to share. And on top of the excellent business results we got, I mean, your results speak for themselves all the time. And we let our results be our calling card. And so we just said, you know what? We want to get this out into the world. And it is a true story. And it does have the nitty gritty of life that goes along with it. And there are a lot of lean books out there that are very prescriptive. This is what you should do. And we just wanted to tell what we  did do and how we did it. Not as much from a technical standpoint, but more of a storytelling standpoint. And then as you mentioned, Aaron, we thought we had an exceptional connection that we created. We wanted to show how women empowering women does exist and that it can generate some amazing accomplishments when we uplift each other.

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• Get it Made article: https://get-it-made.co.uk/insights/manufacturing-industries-that-employ-the-most-women
• THE MANUFACTURING EXPERIENCE: Closing the Gender Gap: Recruiting and Retaining Women in Manufacturing: https://www.themanufacturinginstitute.org/research/the-manufacturing-experience-closing-the-gender-gap/
• Women Make America Initiative: https://www.themanufacturinginstitute.org/women/wma/

Lori: Welcome back, fellow listeners. We are in the new year, which is super awesome, and we're excited about lots of great new things that we're going to be doing on a broadcast for manufacturers. I know you like and very much enjoy our normal banter. But guess what? This entire episode is going to be banter with myself, Erin, and Kris, it's going to be awesome. We found a very inspiring, enlightening article on the website. Get it made. We'll add that link in the show notes. I'm just going to have a little side note that this is well-done marketing content for a manufacturing company. So the article is titled manufacturing industries that employ the most women. And the data is collected from the bureau of labor statistics to rank the manufacturing industries that employ the most women in the US. Today. I found it quite fascinating that only three out of every ten employees in manufacturing are women. And then when it gets to the higher levels, that number gets lower, unfortunately. And the article does a really interesting job of ranking all the different types of jobs and fields in manufacturing. And where you see the most women, which is roughly 50%, is in the textiles, apparel, and leather manufacturing space. 

Erin: Let's say that you're talking to a woman who's at some maybe mid-level leadership right now, and she's got her eye on the prize too. She wants to get there. What kind of advice would you give?

Kris: Yeah, absolutely. I will say that the first thing that I did is I volunteer for areas within my strengths. And a lot of people will focus on their weaknesses and they will think that they need to go work very hard on their weaknesses and they spend a lot of time overcoming them. To a certain degree, of course, we have to be aware of our weaknesses. And if we have a job that requires us to execute certain functions and we have a weakness, then we have to correct that in order to perform our job. But whenever in my career I had an opportunity to volunteer for things that were challenging, I rose my hand when I knew it was to my strength. Which gave me new opportunities to be successful. And as leaders saw me be successful in these areas, I was given more opportunities that aligned with my strengths. This is advice that I share with so many people that I get a chance to mentor all along. And I, of course, am always looking for the team member strengths that exist across our organization. We want to give work to those strengths. So that, I think, is something that has really been a part of my success. Now, I have had tremendous leaders above me who I learned from. I always like to say, you take the best and leave the rest. So that's really critical. But now if we want to just get in the space of how do we ensure we have women who can climb and get to those executive levels of an organization? Where we saw the lack in this article is we have to give women opportunities. We have to be thinking about the women in the room as well. I think it has to come from some intention.

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He’s a serial entrepreneur and product development professional. He use to manage the design team for Office Max and all their private labels. Now, he has owned his own product development firm called Prototype since 2013. He’s headquartered in Fort Lauderdale. He runs a one-of-a-kind development firm that supports inventors, entrepreneurs, and large brands with designing prototyping engineering, and manufacturing. His mission is to make ideas into reality.

Matthew: So it really started when I was a child, and I wasn't sure which direction I would go into, but I was an entrepreneur as a kid selling bubble gum out of my walker and always coming up with ideas, and I always wanted to bring ideas to life. So I always was wondering, where can I do that? And a lot of my professors go into business school, and then I found a career in product design and industrial design, and it really comes back to I think everybody had this where they're like, oh, they see a product on TV or they're in Walmart and they look at something, they said, oh, I thought of that. I thought of that product idea. And so what's amazing about what we do here at Prototype House and other industrial designers is we help entrepreneurs and people take that AHA moment and bring it to life. So that is our mission to create really great experiences for people while they're using those products. So it could be a medical device, it could be a new toy for kids, but it's really bringing that AHA moment to life.

Matthew: So currently we're tinkering with some new dermatology tools and aesthetic tools, which is pretty exciting for me. I love the medical space just because it's always evolving, and I listen to a lot of Ted Talks and things in the medical space. But I have some products here. You can't see them, but some are larger brands, and some are from just entrepreneurs. So here's a cool product. It's called Zippy Cap. It's made here in the US. And what's cool about it is it's a keychain straw. So you always have a straw with you, and it works with any water bottle. So you just pop it open, uncap your water bottle, and drop the straw in and you're ready to go. And you twist it. And then you have a straw and you can go ahead and drink. And it's a local entrepreneur. He is based in New York. And what's amazing is he found us online and was able to develop his invention from just a napkin sketch all the way to production while we were here in Florida. And we never met in person, but he's now on the market and he really wanted to manufacture here in the US. And we're able to make that happen for him. So it's amazing.

Matthew: So this is a really tough question because most of our clients, would love to manufacture here in the US. And I was in DC recently talking to our lawmakers and different people in Congress to try to figure out if can we bring more manufacturing on a smaller scale for our entrepreneurs and startups. And right now it's really not possible, to be honest with you. For most of our products, it's very difficult. So most of our manufacturing happens overseas or a mixture of both. So we've been doing some hybrid models where we get our tooling done in China. And then we can get our injection molding done here and then packaging gets imported somewhere else and we do some packaging and assembly, but for the most part, it's still overseas based on cost and labor. And also the big interesting thing is there is a lot of injection molding shops all over our country. They're amazing, but they turn down small production runs because a lot of our entrepreneurs when they first get started can't commit to 25,000 pieces or 10,000 pieces. They maybe want to do 2500 to get started and get it rolling. And that's not enough for some of the shops here in the US.

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She is the founder of Felt Marketing. She and her team are on a mission to strengthen heart and soul manufacturing for generations by helping manufacturers retrofit their marketing to make sales easier, modifying traditional systems with modern components. She's also your marketing expert on the Manufacturing Masters on Demand platform.

Allison: Love that question. I would say they're still siloing sales and marketing, and they're not. It's a topic we've all talked about for probably two decades, and I still encounter it, even with my clients trying to get the marketing team to meet up with the sales team monthly. I beg I'm like, okay, give us 20 minutes. 20 minutes. I know everybody's busy. And I think that I know that if you would unite your sales and marketing team, you would increase your growth, and you would increase your profits. I guarantee you'll make sales easier. And that's something that we started talking about at Felt probably six, seven years ago. And we put ourselves through our process, and we realized that we were still speaking our language, not our customer's language. And we thought, all right, what do people want more of? What do manufacturers want more of? They don't want more marketing. They want less marketing. They want more sales. And so that was a big shift for us. And so I've been preaching that ever since. If you can bring your sales team, they're in the boots on the ground. So if you can understand, hear from them the stories, the challenges, the wins, and get ideas. The whole reason we exist is to support them and to support customers. And I learned something about a phrase several years ago. I don't know if it was from Bernadette Jiwa or Seth Goden, I think it was Seth, but it was, stop marketing at people and start marketing on behalf of and for them. So if we can shift that one perspective and unite sales and marketing. We will make sales easier. We will help our salespeople sell while they're sleeping and be of service. And that's the whole point of marketing. So what do you guys think? Am I barking up the wrong tree?

Allison: Yeah, well, I had a couple of thoughts. I think this has to start from the top. It comes from leadership. And when I meet a leader that has a sales background, but they don't understand or value marketing, they typically issue my request to bring the two together. And I believe it's just simply based on fear. It's fear of I don't understand what this is. I still think it's smoke and mirrors and fluff marketing. And our sales team is the most crucial part of this company because we make the money and don't have time. We don't have time to be bothered. We don't have time to take out of our day. And so that's the first thing. I think it's got to come from the top down. Second, I think we've got to overcome the fear and simply say, come to the table and say, as a marketer, I always come to the table and say, hey, I want to hear from you, sales team. You have all the knowledge. You are talking day in and day out with the customers and with potential customers. So I need to know what you know. I want to hear from you. I want to hear your ideas. And I think if you're a good marketer, part of our job is to pull it out of them. And I feel like we're good at that. Like I tell people, you don't need special shoes and this isn't going to hurt. It's a conversation. It's dialogue. And trust me, I will artfully pull it out of you. And it's a lot of times those little nuggets that they just take for granted. The thing, too that I find well, I'll give you a super quick example. I was meeting with a client a couple of years ago, and my podcast buddy Ray and I were he was helping me out with this team meeting, and we were desilting and talking about marketing strategy for the next year. And I had several of the salespeople pull me aside. They do this. They're like so they lean in. I'm like, this must be a secret. And they said, this is the first time we've been in the same room together and I don't remember how long. And I said you mean with marketing? And he goes, no, our sales team. He goes, this is fantastic. Plus, you guys are here. So it was like a brick to the head. I thought, wow, okay. Again, that is a leadership opportunity. Not a problem. It's an opportunity. Bring these folks together and encourage it. Encourage that dialogue. I want to see it happening daily. Have the sales team just shoot an email to the marketing director, saying, hey, I just met with such and such client. Here's a pic. We did a selfie. This is something we just help them overcome. There's some brilliant social media content because, again, social media, that's a whole other we could do a series on that, but it's dialogue. It's a two-way conversation. And I think too many people are still using it as an advertising speaker, like blasting, but sorry, that was a segue. But do you guys see the same kinds of things like fear and it's not coming from the top?

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Ashleigh and her family relocated to the rust belt town of Erie, Pennsylvania. In an attempt to revive her husband's family's 56-year-old business, she used the problem-solving skills she obtained while earning her BS in chemical engineering from Auburn. And was able to change the company culture by using a coach approach leadership style. She regularly shares her story with fellow leaders and encourages them to make things better by continuously improving processes.

Ashleigh: So I think it takes both. Kris, thank you for that question. So grit for me is that determination and resilience and persistence because it turns out things don't always go our way right. Or the way that we expect them to. And so we have to be able to make a decision and pivot when it's not going the way that we want, but also grace. And I think grace is one of the biggest components of leadership it's that empathy and compassion for others. And I think if COVID did one thing for us that was good, it was to make us more cognizant of how our peers are feeling, and the needs that they have. Whereas before, manufacturers were pretty inflexible. anyway. Yeah. So grit and grace, it takes them both. And some days it's grittier, and some days.

Ashleigh: Yeah. So servant leadership, to me, means, like, you go to the place where the work is being done to see the work because we all have different histories and perspectives. So sometimes when people are telling you about something, you're hearing it differently in your mind. then it's happening. So going to the place where the work is being done is the number one piece of service. But number two is like when you have that problem going on, or somebody has a problem going on, it's helping them find the resources that they need to overcome the obstacle, not doing it for them. So, as a leader, your number one job is to serve others. And I think historically, we've thought leadership about leadership in a very different way. there to serve us. No, it's the other way around. You are there to serve your followers and make sure that they are successful.

Ashleigh: Yeah, so we started a family-owned business. My father-in-law was not one of the founders but bought out one of the founders. And so it's always kind of been run with those family values, those people-centric values until it wasn't like we needed processes and systems in place and we certainly did. But what we did as a family was having a command-to-control leader come in because we felt like we needed that very strong leadership style and it was a deficit to the company. We went backward under that style. And what you find under that command and control leadership style is that people only do exactly what you ask them to do and nothing more. They're afraid of doing it. So when you're asking people to be innovative and creative back to Lori's question, you have to give them the freedom to fail. And what I mean by that is if you all have ever experimented, how many times is it successful ongoing one note, right? When you're trying to create and innovate, you need to do experiments and you have to have that freedom to fail and learn from those failures and then try, try again. And so that's where the freedom to fail comes in. So as I came into the business and my father-in-law had asked me to review the financials and everything and just typically lead, I figured out we needed to change our leadership style, number one because I didn't. Know everything that was going on in the business, and I needed other people's help and support to help us get going in the right direction. And so I just started asking curious questions. What takes up most of your time or what frustrates you? We started kind of ferreting out those inefficiencies organization and as we got rid of the inefficiencies and people were less frustrated, they had the opportunity and the ability to think and to dream and to make things better. And so now our organizational mission is to make things better. And not just internally here at Onex, but in our world, in our community, in our clients, help them also make things better.

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Nicole has been at ADP for a little over five years and services the small business community. She helps small businesses outsource many of their administrative tasks such as payroll insurance, HR compliance, and employee benefits in a small business environment. It is usually the owner that wears all the hats. It is her goal to provide a one-stop shop service so that all small business owners can focus on the growth and development of their vision. She brings an extremely abundant and wide breadth of insights to the table and finds good client service and support to be of the most importance. Her interests are hiking and camping, camping photography, and meditating. Michele has worked for ADP for 10 years. She primarily services, the small and mid-market sectors across various industries. In her current role, she helps businesses with complex needs meet their goals and objectives by helping them attract talent, keep employees engaged, and drive productivity in a highly competitive market. Michele lives in New York with her husband and two-year-old son. Oh, she enjoys baking volleyball, and bike riding. 

Nicole: As described by the chair of the Federal Reserve, the current labor market is strong but unhealthy. And the reason that is, is because the job openings, new job opportunities per month, are at an all-time record high. So an economist would look at that and say, Great, we're in a great position, like, there's so much opportunity for growth. But on the other side, what else is at an all-time record high is the number of people quitting their jobs. So new job openings, and people quitting their jobs are at an all-time record high. And it's creating this strange phenomenon like this gap for employers, where it's creating a lot of challenges for them. And employees. At ADP, we always say these employees are your biggest liability, but they're also your biggest asset. Yeah. So, where the problem right now for employers is not revenue. For a lot of employers that revenue is actually growing like companies are doing well, like getting new clients, and keeping their current clients. That's not the issue. The issue lies within the employees and having the people do the actual work. And not just anyone but the right person. And what's going on right now is the ball is in the employees' court, they are not shy in asking what they want. And right now the employees have everything that they need to be as picky as they want to be. So an employee is not just you know when there's an interview, it's no longer the employee trying to prove to the employer why their people have reversed now it's the employer trying to prove to the carrier why they should come work for them by their company, culture is good. So all that said, that's kind of setting the stage for what the market labor market is like right now. 

Michele: There's been a huge shift toward trying to figure out, which vendors you can partner with that will actually take on some liability, right? Have some skin in the game with you as an employer, right? So what we've seen, on our side, everyone knows ADP as a payroll company, right? That's the first thing you think of. But what a lot of people don't know is how we've kind of branched out and differentiated ourselves. So one of those areas is in our professional employer, organization, or PEO. So there has been a huge shift, as we see and come across some of these big challenges, right, attracting labor, keeping them engaged, how do we offer these great benefits? Where do we even come up with the strategy? Like who's thinking of these things? Because like you said, usually the person who's doing all of this is wearing a lot of different hats, right? So you know, to think about how to get really strategic with employees usually falls by the wayside, because there's so much more stuff to do, right? So I think if you guys aren't familiar with this term, right, professional employer organization, it's pretty interesting. It's a model that's been around for quite some time and gained a lot of popularity. But basically, it just takes a group, right a business that's out on its own, and allows them to leverage a big company like ADP, right? For our size, and for those resources that they don't have. So they can tap into that. We group, let's say the, you know, 100-employee manufacturers, right, we'll take them and group them with our 600,000 employees, we're on paper really big. But what that does is it shifts liability over to ADP, right? So we're gonna give you support, we're gonna give you, you know, our benefits package that a small business wouldn't be able to get on their own. \So these are some ways that people are thinking outside the box, starting to realize that, hey, we're in a really uncertain market right now. There is, you know, so much uncertainty at every corner, right? We don't know if the economy is good, we don't know.

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Connect with Erin on LinkedIn and visit http://www.earthlinginteractive.com for web-based solutions to your complex business problems!

Connect with Lori on LinkedIn and visit www.keystoneclick.com for your strategic digital marketing needs!  

Connect with Kris on LinkedIn and visit www.genalpha.com for OEM and aftermarket digital solutions!