Ryan Fitzgerald:
John, welcome back to the One Next Step and thanks for agreeing to answer this bonus question. In this episode, we talked about creating employee experiences that can help with employee retention. I’m also wondering about the way these principles impact our hiring and recruiting. In your experience, how does building a great employee experience help businesses attract great talent? And how can leaders best communicate that unique culture to prospective employees?
John Duisberg:
Yeah, Ryan, so one of the things that we talked about is how do we make this concept of having an employee experience or culture sustainable over time? And we talked about sharing those stories, the milestones, the recognition, kind of bringing those core values to life. So another area of bringing them to life is in the interview process. And so what I’ve seen from other organizations that I think that they do this well is part of their interview process, they actually have a grading of the candidate on how they fit with their core values. And so to me what that does is it serves two purposes. One, obviously you’re actually measuring the fit for someone based on what you believe in terms of your values as your culture as a company. I think that’s super important. But you’re also having those employees that are doing those interviews, they are now living that out. They’re thinking about that, they’re talking about that. And that’s again, how you make them sustainable, make them real, right in that and for their day-to-day operations. So I think that that’s super, super important for both of those fronts as a way to, again, have those values lived out
Ryan Fitzgerald:
When, as you said in the main episode, employees are choosing the employer now. And the more clear our values are and our purposes, the better a decision they can make. because all of us who’ve made bad hires know how not fun that is over time. And so helping someone self-select out is just as important as helping them select in. I feel like.
John Duisberg:
And here, just to give you one quick story on this, so if you’re sincere about this, it can take guts. And what I mean, so I was talking to a CEO and he was telling me this story where this candidate was just perfect. I mean experience, skillset, on paper, this person was the perfect candidate, but it came through that this person just was arrogant and just there was no humbleness and that was really important to their culture. And they decided not to hire this person. And so again, go back to I’m building, I’m selling, I’m trying to build this business and you’re telling me you’re gonna walk away from this rockstar salesperson or engineer or whatever they are because they’re not humble? That takes guts, that takes being authentic about your values. And when you make a decision like that, other people notice. Other people see that, right? And again, going back to making them real. Now all of a sudden those values are real because you stand behind them. And so that was a story that stuck with me because it’s one thing to speak to it, it’s a whole other thing to make hard decision to live them out.
Ryan Fitzgerald:
I feel like this whole conversation has just been a real-life Patrick Lencioni fable, but it’s so true. The thinking about that company, hypothetically, had they made that higher, it would’ve inevitably gone bad. There would’ve been much bigger consequences than benefits. And that’s so important. I mean everybody knows that having to make those hard decisions are the worst part of any leadership job, but they’re incredibly important because of what they communicate to everybody. This information’s been unbelievably helpful. As a manager myself, I feel really inspired to go lead better, honestly. Y’all have a lot of content you’re sharing around this. What is the best way for people to engage with more of your content?
John Duisberg:
So one of the resources that I love to share with people is a podcast that we help facilitate. It’s called the Great Retention. Think of this as a fireside chat with CEOs and other executive leaders from lots of different industries, really kind of getting to the heart of how do they build a purpose driven culture? How do they build a culture where you’re attracting, retaining the best talent? And also hearing about failures, hearing about lessons learned, practical insights. So the great retention, greatretention.com, it’s leaders sharing with other leaders, their lessons learned. So the great resource and I hope people can check out
Ryan Fitzgerald:
And that’s our One Next Step today, to go subscribe to the Great Retention. You don’t wanna miss that. If this information and this conversation kind of jazz you up, that’s the perfect next step. And if it didn’t, you probably should listen to it even more because this is incredibly important. So that’s my challenge today. John, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us and we can’t wait to share this with our listeners. I really appreciate you being here today.
John Duisberg:
Thanks, Ryan.
Ryan Fitzgerald:
Yeah. And to our listeners, thank you for joining us for our bonus next step. Be sure to join us next week for more practical tips and actual tools to advance your business one step at a time. Start by making today count.
