Talent Matters

We’re all familiar with CEOs and CFOs, but we’re well overdue for a Chief Officer in the HR department. That’s why Amanda Young is here as Chief Human Resources Officer at Bankers Trust — to talk about what that role means and how the expectations have changed over the past two decades.

Amanda started her career in HR, working through internships and learning from mentors along the way. She found herself as an HR manager at 27, and today she is one of Fortune’s 40 under 40 as the CHRO at Bankers Trust. She manages a team of 525 employees and, although banks are known for being stuffy and structured, Amanda brings new life to the industry by focusing on creating the meaningful work experiences employees want.

Just over the past two years, the talent landscape has changed. People are leaving behind traditional roles for a variety of experiences that bring new depth to their careers. It’s less about climbing the corporate ladder and more about enriching the work experience. For Amanda, it’s about creating the flexibility for her team to do just that.

Like many businesses, Bankers Trust transitioned to a more flexible workplace over the pandemic. But more than going online, the bank relaxed the dress code and maintained its focus on leadership and managerial training. Amanda is still facing a few obstacles in the coming year, but learning to respond to changes instead of just reacting to them isn’t one. Her intentional responses and the deliberate and collaborative programs she’s implemented for her team continue to provide them with the meaningful experiences they need.

Of course, not every program can be a success story. Amanda shares her pitfalls and what happens when the programs you plan don’t have any follow-through. It really takes a team to manage a company, and she takes care to enrich and empower her team just as much as she empowers herself. Tune in now to hear more about the role of a Chief Human Resources Officer and the resources Amanda uses for herself.

If you would like more information on the resources Amanda discusses in this episode, check out:

Jeff Russell started as a journalist — he never could have guessed it would lead him to become the President and CEO of Delta Dental, the largest dental insurance carrier in Iowa with over one million members. The wide array of experiences Jeff encountered on his career journey prepared him to run a company, just not in the way you would think.

How exactly does journalism prepare you to run a company? Jeff breaks down what it’s like to get an assignment and write a story. Developing quick-thinking life skills made him more adaptable at work. Jeff is used to seizing opportunities when they strike, and he had the chance to step into multiple different roles as he worked his way up the corporate ladder.

However, when it comes to hiring his own employees, he doesn’t like to use the term “ladder.” He explains how that vertical-type thinking can narrow your perspective of the workforce. He prefers hiring people who have real-life experiences to rely on because it builds better teams and stronger leaders.

The pandemic really put a damper on those real-life experiences in the office setting, and we discuss how we’re all using technology to stay connected with our teams. Jeff is a tech guy at heart, and he shares what he’s doing to pivot and connect with his team in new ways.

Employee engagement is integral to the success of your business, but what does your company culture look like when you go remote? The best things happen organically when the whole team is together, and the most important questions we need to be asking ourselves as leaders are: How can I stay flexible? How can we reinvent collaboration for the online world?

Jeff is focused on fostering collaboration and inspiring spontaneous connections in the next year. He shares some of the new talent initiatives he’s planning and what it looks like to move his company culture forward in a digital office space. It takes a team to reinvent a company, and Jeff wants to keep planning ahead with his to see what the company can become for the next generation of customers and employees.

When we talk about talent in the workforce, we aren’t just referring to the development of our current teams and employee culture. We are talking about the future workforce and our role in inspiring and preparing the next generation. We have to prepare now for the future of work, and Tony Timm is doing just that in his current role as the CEO of the Boys & Girls Club of Central Iowa.

The Boys & Girls Club creates opportunities for kindergarteners to high school seniors to succeed in school and secure the skills they need to start college, find jobs, and lead successful adult lives. Right now the club, which can accommodate 1,000 children, serves about 350 kids and teenagers, with over 100 more on the waiting list. The issue? Staffing.

Tony has spent his whole career in nonprofits, so he’s familiar with the strain of staff shortages, but nothing like what the pandemic has brought. He walks us through a typical day of a kid in Boys & Girls Club, the kind of activities offered, and the type of mentors needed in both a working and volunteer capacity, and he shares the reality of the grind the team has endured to meet the needs of their community.

When schools closed their doors and went digital, the Boys & Girls Club remained open, extending their hours to help students accommodate to remote learning. The team is short about 50 part-time employees, and Tony discusses the challenges of filling part-time roles with a workforce today that requires full-time hours and pay. His clever way of affording people the right opportunity to have an impact and still support themselves financially benefits both his team and the community, which is a balance many employers strive for.

The investment in human capital is key here. Not just in the dedicated employees and volunteers at Boys & Girls Clubs across the country, but in the children who use these programs to learn and develop their own skills. We are a community that needs a workforce, and failure to invest in this future generation is a failure to invest in ourselves. Improving the labor force is more than increasing wages, and Tony Timm has more than a few ideas on how we can help build tomorrow’s future.

Links Discussed:

Darin Brush is laser-focused on education, but he isn’t an educator by trade. That’s why we’re talking with the President of Davis Technical College because you never quite know where you’re going to end up in your career. A professional path can carry you in so many different directions, and Darin never figured he would end up on a college campus.

Davis Technical College offers training in 35 different programs, ranging from nursing assistants to welders to cosmetology and plumbing and electrician apprenticeships. Nearly 500 part-time and full-time employees make up a staff of trainers, teachers, and industry experts who have solid experience in their fields, even if they aren’t necessarily educators by trade.

Not coming from an educational background gives Darin an edge when it comes to finding the right talent for his students. His recruitment process focuses on finding altruistic people who share a passion for success in others even if they don’t have the teaching experience. Hard skills like that can be taught, but a passion for learning and helping others isn’t trainable.

More importantly, Darin involves each and every employee in the college’s strategic planning. Darin’s team is one of the only business structures we know of that involves every employee in every step of the process. Darin believes that employees are more engaged when you take the time to ask their opinion and respect them enough to listen. You don’t have to implement everyone’s ideas, but simply listening to them creates a culture where every member of the team feels appreciated.

Most companies have one person in charge of culture, sometimes called a Chief Culture Operator, but not at Davis Technical College. To Darin, he thinks it unfair that one person should be responsible for everyone’s workplace satisfaction. That responsibility falls on every employee on campus — it’s our culture and it’s our time to own it, he says.

Inspiring 450 employees to own their workplace culture involves a lot of steps and a lot of listening. Darin shares the plans he’s initiated as President and how his employees have responded to them. We discuss what’s worked (and what hasn’t), and how his own team inspired the five-year plan that’s in place for the students. Listen now to learn how involving every employee at every level can change the way you run your business.

Traci Galligan is a mentor in a lot of ways. As Senior VP of Human Resources at a large insurance firm, she has years of experience learning and growing into her role. You wear a lot of hats when you work in HR, and Traci is breaking down all the roles she’s played and how she got there to help all of us find the right talent we need in the HR department.

Many of our listeners have questions about HR: When should I hire a full-time HR position? Which certifications are valuable and relevant? What roles should the HR department play in my business?

For Traci, she sees HR as a business partner. And not just a business partner for the executives and top-tier management, but a partner for every employee, from the bottom to the top. While certifications can set someone apart on a resume, it will be the interpersonal skills and compassion that make for a truly talented HR leader.

It is up to HR professionals to build relationships and earn trust among the employees ahead of running the day-to-day operations. The goal is to create and/or improve workplace culture, and this perspective has changed the way Traci recruits and trains new hires. She discusses the biggest changes she’s seen in the recruitment process over the past couple of years and shares how she looks for talent.

Traci seeks out those with the hard skills, experience, and certification, but she’s also looking for influencers with leadership skills and the emotional intelligence to tap into an employee’s needs and goals within the company. The top three things Traci looks for is someone who can:

There are so many new ways to manage and inspire your employees, and the pandemic has created some interesting opportunities for leaders to get clever with how they create and maintain their culture while working from home. You can’t force people to do what you want them to do, so tune in now to hear how Traci meets employees on their level to create a talented workplace environment that builds on everyone’s success.

On this episode of Talent Matters, we’re veering off of our regularly scheduled programming to chat with one of our own consultants, Alex Aanderud from Legacy of Results. We’ve worked with Alex over the years, and we love the unique perspective he takes on when he’s helping businesses find talent.

Alex started as an engineer with Boeing, but he’s a people person at heart, and he took his love of systems and figuring out how they worked and applied that concept to people. Instead of working with something tangible like a jet engine, he wanted to apply his skills and knowledge to something more intrinsic and intangible.

The systems he works with now focuses on what makes people different and how these unique individuals can fit into a team or business model. He created the asset management tools that we use to look at how people, communication, culture, and trust all work together to create successful teams of employees that not only do their job well but also find pride in their work.

One of the biggest changes we have all seen in the talent pool is that employees are not feeling fulfilled in their work. Jobs are becoming more of a means to an end, rather than a space where a person can be their authentic self and fulfill their potential.

For Alex, this lack of fulfillment calls for a change in leadership. Leaders need to adapt to the current hiring pool and better communicate with their teams in such a way that makes them feel valued.

Value is more than just a paycheck to some employees, and there are four key points that Alex discusses with every organization he works with to make sure there is a process in place that inspires work fulfillment. These four points are:

Alex explains how these four points create authenticity in an organization and how this authenticity can be used to motivate your team and establish a sense of pride within the company. The team is always right, Alex explains, and it’s up to those in leadership positions to recognize where the team is coming from and motivate them appropriately.

Listen now to learn if you have the right process in place to make your employees feel valued and how you can inspire them from a place of authenticity.

Matt Barbara lives his life in the fast lane. He was born in Australia and came to the U.S. as a race car mechanic. He decided to stay in Iowa because it is home to one of the best race tracks in the world, but his business isn’t in racing. Matt is the founder and CEO of Kustom Concrete Pump, a concrete pumping business that is about to pass its tenth anniversary.

How did he go from race cars to concrete? Well, his father worked in concrete and construction, so you could say concrete is in his blood. However, it isn’t the construction side of things that gets Matt’s heart pumping. It’s building a company around a team of employees, some of whom have been with him for 5+ years, that inspires him to go to work every day.

Working in concrete and construction isn’t for everyone. These are long days in hot weather carrying heavy equipment and shouting to one another across sites, which makes hiring and keeping employees a very tricky business. Matt discusses some of the changes he’s seen in the job market over the past decade and how he has evolved to keep up with them.

The biggest changes he’s made are in employee engagement. Employee engagement includes fishing trips and year-end parties, but it also extends to offering work opportunities in the off-season and creating a safety department that is headed by two of his best operators. Being able to anticipate the needs of his employees not only keeps Matt one step ahead of the game, but it also shows his team that he listens to them.

Ten years into the game, Matt now has the time to sit back and take a closer look at the things that work and those that don’t. Listen now to hear about some of the new initiatives Matt is planning to implement and how they can be applied across blue-collar and white-collar organizations.

Who says success has to stay stationary? Our guest today worked his way up the corporate ladder through different clients and seized different opportunities to learn, grow, and climb to the top. Today, Tom Dastrup is the CEO of Honeyville, a family-owned company that hired Tom a little over two years ago to develop their team and expand their business.

Tom found success through the intersection of sales, marketing, and engineering. When he started in this industry, it seemed like there were 10 people for every job. But today it’s as if there are 10 jobs for every one person, and really good talent is that much harder to find. He’s had to dramatically change the way he looks at hiring, and he’s evolved his hiring structure to meet the changing talent market.

We discuss the transition from temp agencies to hiring full-time employees and what it looks like to work with local colleges and programs to train your own people, but Tom has the unique perspective of working with a family-owned business staff. When your talent pool is centered around a family business, many of these employees have never worked anywhere else. Training and hiring become less about skills on a resume and more about developing programs to hone talent that honors the family’s vision as well as the current market.

Tom’s developed some significant training programs over the past two years and created an executive leadership team that helps the rest of the team recognize their own strengths, weaknesses, and preferences in the workplace. While some programs failed, others made glaringly obvious that Tom didn’t have as many people in key positions as he needed. This created new opportunities to find new employees to fill the voids, and new team members have ranged from salespeople to engineers to maintenance staff.

Turnover isn’t high at Honeyville, and Tom doesn’t mourn the few employees he’s lost over the past few years. No one left with hard feelings, but one of the most important lessons to learn as the leader of a company is how to let good people go. When employees don’t see themselves in the future of a company or have yet to seize an opportunity to grow themselves, you often have to give them that space to stretch and grow.

For Tom, someone who has grown with many companies over the years, he understands how important it can be to change your path. Listen now to learn how change and growth can change the way you create your own business plan as well as the plan for others.

We are starting our sixteenth year in business helping business leaders and owners navigate today’s changing talent landscape. This pandemic has changed the way we work and the way we hire our employees, and we’re back with our guest Brian Kellen to talk about some of the things he’s done right - and wrong - when it comes to talent acquisition.

Brian Kellen is the president and founder of FlexPack. The Results Group has been working with Brian for many years helping him develop the metrics to hire his dream team. Too often companies become too systematized when it comes to hiring and promotions, but Brian has never lost that spontaneity. It helps him meld the unique skill sets of his employees with his business plan.

But what happens to this spontaneity when you acquire existing companies and employees?

As Brian works to expand FlexPack with two new acquisitions later this year, he’s changing up more than just his hiring process. Brian is updating his business model and creating equity programs for his executive team, something that is new territory for him. He shares how he reached this stage of business ownership and what it means to hire someone to help you out.

Knowing when to ask for help is key to bringing FlexPack to where it needs to be. As Brian explains it, he is a natural salesman at heart and a business owner in training. He is trying to figure out how to grow his business as well as how to use his hiring metrics with the new team members he’ll acquire practically overnight.

Hiring is a top concern for Brian right now, not just amid COVID-19 but also amid his own evolving business landscape. You can acquire stock options and warehouses, but acquiring a team with the right mindset is not as simple. When you come from a business with a strong culture as we see at FlexPack, it’s not always easy to carry that vibe over to established employees within another company.

Establishing a healthy work culture is one thing to do internally within your own organization, but when you’re going out and bringing in new companies, the trajectory of your original plan is going to change. Listen now to hear how Brian is changing gears and using business development managers to teach newly acquired sales teams the FlexPack secret sauce.

Links Discussed:

Steve Smith joins us from his remote office in San Diego to talk about company culture. More importantly, we’re discussing how to change your company culture. We all have an idea, an intention of what we want our businesses to represent, but having the talent to manifest this intention as we grow our business is a completely different can of worms.

Steve learned early on that scaling a business around your best intentions relies heavily on the team of people you hire and the company culture you create.

Steve is the founder and CEO of G-commerce. G-commerce creates cloud-based supply chain solutions for some of the largest auto parts manufacturers and vendors in North America, and he is blessed with having the talent to run an organization of 10,000+ customers with only 50 people. Technology definitely makes it easy for his small team to work remotely, but fiber internet and Zoom calls don’t create company culture - people do.

We dive into how Steve defines company culture and what inspired him to create a culture around integrity, accountability, and innovation. “It’s the purpose that holds us together,” Steve explains, and he sees his purpose as one of service to others and to industry. He shares his strategies for empowering people and how he builds productive relationships between not only his staff but his customers as well.

Creating a company culture like Steve’s starts with your recruitment process. People are at the core of Steve’s business strategy, so hiring from the right talent pool is key. You have to reimagine what it means to work for someone and look for candidates that are working for more than just a paycheck.

To attract the right employees for your culture, you need to create a work environment that is energizing and inspiring. Steve has worked in many different parts of the country and dipped into a wide variety of talent pools. We discuss the changes we’ve seen over the past decade and steps to take to create a recruitment process that better speaks to your company’s culture and values.

The market is getting tighter, but it’s never too late to reinvigorate your organization with a fresh perspective on company culture. Listen now for the top two things you can do today to create a new company culture.

Links Discussed:

The Five Temptations of a CEO by Patrick Lencion