118: How to Turn The Great Resignation Into The Great Retention

1. Define your employee experience. It’s no secret the way we work has changed. The old ways that we used to promote community, culture and teams has to be reworked in order to stay relevant. The paradigm has shifted and the employee is now choosing you and the company they want to work for. Discover ways to keep employees connected, feeling appreciated, and aligned to your mission, purpose and values. 

2. Have a pulse on employee sentiment. It’s invaluable for a leader to be able to understand where people are at. Ask for feedback on some type of consistent basis so that you can begin to hear and understand. Experiment with different ways to draw connection and emotion from and within your team.

3. Recognize your employees correctly. Employee recognition, when done right and in a social experience, creates awareness around what it means to live out the values and purpose that you’ve defined for your company. You’re educating and teaching people along the way what this means for their role. This is how you start to make something sustainable. Create a strategy around how you start to recognize the day-to-day wins that are tied back to your purpose, mission, and values.

John Duisberg:

So I’ve been asked something similar along these lines where an executive team or you know, CEO, they hire a big consultant, go through this whole process around branding and so forth, have a big event, these are our new values, right? And then six months down the road, no one even talks about it, right? And so the question I get from, from these CEOs and leaders is, how do you make it sustainable? How do you make it to where it lives on?

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Welcome to One Next Step, the most practical business podcast in the world. You’re now one simple tip, practical tool, and small step away from growing your business. One Next Step is brought to you by BELAY, the incredible 100% remote organization revolutionizing productivity with virtual assistance, bookkeepers and social media managers accomplish more, juggle, less modern staffing from BELAY. And now to your hosts.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Welcome to One Next Step, the practical business podcast that helps you run your business so it stops running you. I’m Ryan, and today I am so excited about this conversation. We have the opportunity to speak with John Duisberg. He’s the co-founder of Cooleaf, and he’s the host of the Great Retention Podcast. We’ve all heard about the great resignation that’s making it difficult for many businesses to attract and retain strong talent. That’s why it’s more important than ever for leaders to focus on creating an engaging experience for employees. In this episode, John is going to share some of the common problems he’s noticed around employee engagement and experience. And he’ll walk us through a few practical steps you can take to start solving these problems in your business today. I can’t wait for you to hear this conversation that’s full of practical advice. So let’s go ahead and jump into it. 

Ryan Fitzgerald: 

John, thank you so much for joining us today on One Next Step. I’m so excited to have you here.

John Duisberg:

Absolutely, Ryan. Honored to be here and looking forward to the conversation.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Yeah. And today we’re gonna be talking about the employee experience. And I just think one of my favorite experiences I have regularly, and one of the things we always start with here is just kinda like a random icebreaker question, but is like meals. It’s like going out to eat. So I guess I’d love to know like, what was the last great meal that you ate?

John Duisberg:

You know, that’s a good icebreaker, and I’m gonna tell you a funny story. 

Ryan Fitzgerald: 

Oh, I can’t wait. 

John Duisberg: 

I’m gonna preface this with saying I love my wife, okay,? She’s my best friend. She’s amazing. And she’s pregnant right now. She’s due October. This is our first.

Ryan FItzgerald: 

Congratulations. 

John Duisberg: 

Thank you. I’m so grateful, feeling really just blessed and excited. Something I didn’t know is that apparently it’s common to have smell avers. Okay. So she is super sensitive on smells. For example, I have to make coffee in the morning upstairs in the bathroom with a vacuum on. Can’t stand the smell of coffee. She also cannot stand the smell of cooking any meat in the house. So I’ve basically become a vegetarian for the last couple months. And this weekend I got to cook on the grill, a great steak, and it was amazing. And I was super happy. And so that was my last good meal. And a little story about my wife there too so.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Well that’s that’s amazing. Can she eat meat right now? Like does she want to eat meat or does she not want to eat it either?

John Duisberg:

It depends on the day. I mean, I never know. I never know and so it’s always, yeah, it’s always a surprise what she’s gonna be in the mood for. So I can’t be the only guy, but I’m just learning every day when it comes to this. But it’s good.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Every experience — and even I have two kids. My two experiences were totally different. So you know, you just never know.

John Duisberg:

But I got a lot to learn. I know that.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Well, hey, for our listeners, I’m so excited about today’s experience cause I think, or kind of this conversation where we’re gonna talk about employee experience, because no matter where you’re at in your business, if you’re a small business owner, you might be thinking about employee experience for the first time as you’re scaling up. If you’re a large business, you might be thinking about exploiting, you know employee experience in a totally different way because of the economy or the, you know, what we’ve gone through in the last few years. But, John, I guess I would just love for you, before we really talk about specific strategies, I think it’s always helpful to define our terms. What exactly do you mean when you talk about the employee experience?

John Duisberg:

Yeah, Ryan, so great question because I think it’s one of these terms that if you ask 10 people, you might, you know, get 10 different answers, right? And so I’ll, I’m gonna do, you know, my best job at defining this in a really simple, concise way and hopefully it makes sense to our audience here. But the way I think of employee experience, I actually use the term, the employee journey. So it’s the journey inside of your company. And when you think about the journey I’m making as an employee, this starts in the interview process, onboarding, all the way to the exit interview, right? And what I would challenge our audience to think about is employee experience employee engagement is not an annual survey that goes out. Employee engagement survey that goes out once a year.

John Duisberg:

And, you check the box That is not employee experience. To me, you know, another way to think about this is do your employees know the why behind why your company exists? You know, what is the purpose? What is the mission? What is the values? And that then translates to how I operate on a day to day, how I work with a customer, how I work with a colleague, a coworker, right? And, and so to me, that employee experience, it is broad, it is that journey, but it all kind of stems from do I understand our purpose as an organization? And, you know, an interesting kind of, just kind of what I see in the market right now. So I saw a statistic recently — I think it was 84% of Gen Z won’t even work for a company if they don’t feel aligned to their mission and values, won’t even work there. And so the market is, is changing, right? In terms of just what employees expectations are in their workplace. And I believe that in the future, every forward thinking company will have an employee experience strategy. It’s gonna be part of their operations because that’s how they’re going to attract and retain talent.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

That’s so interesting. I lead a team and I have multiple generations on my team, and it’s so interesting to see the different generations in how they engage at work. You know, I have to tailor my management really specifically depending on who it is, but the overall experience and engagement into our organization, I see that immediately, exactly what you’re talking about. I see that kind of in and out. Why is employee experience and engagement such a problem for businesses today?

John Duisberg:

You know, take a step back. Think about the last couple years, right? And I’m gonna state the obvious here, but had the pandemic, a lot of companies went remote. Right now we’re starting to get into this hybrid kind of environment and so forth. But all those things that if you were a leader and you believe that your culture was a reason why people came and stayed at your company. Well, what does your culture mean to that person who’s never met anybody, right? What are your value values mean to them? All those things that you used to do the in all hands meetings and outing, well, you’re not doing those. So how do you keep your people connected? How do you have people feeling appreciated? How aligned to your mission and purpose values?

John Duisberg:

And so, you know, over this last couple years as we’ve — kind of the way that we work, has changed the old ways that we used to try to promote community and culture and team people had to rethink that, right? And not everyone has, and to enter in the great resignation, right? So now all of a sudden, people are starting to look, well, what else, what else is out there? Right? What other opportunities out there? Hey … I enjoy working with my dog at home now, right? And this company is not gonna allow that anymore. And so, and, and so how we think as leaders in terms of the employee experience has to reflect our environment, right? And that’s what’s, that’s what’s happening right now. And I’ll give you one example.

John Duisberg:

One story I heard recently from a CEO. So this is so interesting, Ryan. So he told me recently he was interviewing somebody, pkay? So in the interview process, and this employee made this statement she said, “I chose your company because you know, x, y, z.” And the reason I, that just was such a wake up call was traditionally, as an employer, I’ve got my stack of resumes or my candidates and hey, we’re choosing this candidate because of X. And now the whole paradigm has shifted. Now the employee’s choosing you, right? Versus you choosing the employee. And so that’s the, the market that’s, that’s where we are today. And that’s why employee experience is, is so important right now. Yeah.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

The power dynamic has shifted. And honestly I think through the great resignation, it was one thing. And then now through a volatile economy, it’s less clear, we’re in a new place. But at the same time, it’s funny, the majority of my career has been working with creatives and creatives have kind of always had the power. Like they’ve always able to been persnickety. But now all of a sudden that exists across the whole organization. And every, from accountant to account manager there are the, the ability to really pick your values and where you go changes kind of in and out. You mentioned a few minutes ago about Gen Z and how their perception of work is totally different, but we’re also in a different kind of psychological and sociological place kind of post pandemic. Are there trends or things that employees are asking for now, not just generationally, but kind of across the board that have changed in the last two years? You mentioned a having your dog with you, and it’s funny, I have a friend who works at a Fortune 100 that literally takes their dog now with them to the office. And that was wild to me. What, what else have you seen specifically?

John Duisberg:

I think that there is the, I guess I’ll use the term flexibility. There is this idea that, hey, I can work from anywhere. We have an employee at our company. She’s getting it ready to work in Panama for two months. And we’re okay with it, right? We’re, we’re empowering her, her we’re, we have tr we’re, we’re truing her, we’re respecting her that she’s gonna be able to perform and do that while she’s having this life experience. And that’s part of who we are is from, from a culture perspective. But also, that’s how I believe you keep really talented people, is you meet people where they are, you give them that flexibility and you also give them that trust and respect. Obviously it goes both ways. And that has to be, you know, maintained and so forth. But, you know, that to me is, is kind of what I see as an underlining theme. It’s how do you meet people where they are? How do you provide that flexibility of course while seeing the performance within that role.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

I feel like you’ve given us one example specifically for you, but at a high level, what can business owners and leaders do to create a more engaging employee experience? Are there any key principles we should be focusing on?

John Duisberg:

So I’ll ask a leader of the question, When is the last time you communicated your purpose to your people? Okay. And so how do you bring your core values to life? Right? And so it can’t be  it literally cannot be a poster on a wall because people may not even be going in and seeing the poster anymore, right? So how do you do that? Right? And one of the ways that, you know, I encourage other leaders to do that is through storytelling. And what I mean by that is when you have these virtual all hands, or even in person, right? You have the opportunity to speak about how individuals, the story about how they’re living out that value and taking care of that customer or hitting that deadline. And I believe that articulates your purpose, right?

John Duisberg:

Because people relate to stories, right? They remember stories. And let’s say I’m coming in new to the company and I don’t know what these values mean, but now I’ve heard this story about my colleague who’s in the same role treated this customer and it’s tied back to this value. And now I’m like, Oh, that’s what this, that’s what these values mean to me and my role, right? So to me, that’s what leaders can, can really at a high level start to do to, you know, create that more engaging environment is to consistently communicate the, the why, the purpose, and to share those stories about how people are living those out. Because that’s how it becomes real, right? And that’s how people, that’s what people remember from what I’ve seen.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

That’s amazing. At BELAY, we’re just recently kind of reevaluating our in-person meeting strategy cause we’re a fully remote company. And one of the things we talked about, and you just gave me some really clear language as like articulating the purpose in driving that home through the values. For us it was like, Hey, what can you only do when you’re in person? And for me it was like, you don’t have this glass wall in between you and everyone else. Like you can create this like emotional experience that people can connect to in a way that you couldn’t otherwise. And I think in some ways in this world that where we’re at, like that’s more important than ever because one, we’re experiencing that all the time through the media we’re consuming. But two, we get even less emotional connection with our businesses and our organizations that we’re a part of. Cause there’s probably some version of non-traditional work environment almost everywhere at this point.

John Duisberg:

Yeah, yeah, totally. And by the way, we primarily operate remote as well, but once a quarter we bring our entire team together for a few days. And consistently what the feedback we hear is that that’s one of the most important things to them. And so even though people will say, Hey, I want my … my remote or, or whatever it is, there’s still that need, that desire, that value of that, that human connection and getting to have that relationship happen. So I’m totally with you.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Gosh, that’s so good, John. In some ways it’s almost more important than it was before because you don’t have it.

John Duisberg:

Yeah, absolutely.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

I think we talk a lot about like, hey, here’s what you should do. But one of the things I haven’t heard people talk about much is like, what are some signs that maybe our strategies and processes for engaging employees are not working? Like, are there any pitfalls or red flags we should be watching out for? Like what’s that indicator that we go, Oh, this is a problem for us.

John Duisberg:

Yeah, I know. That’s a good question. So, and this is gonna sound super obvious. What I would say ask your your people, right? So actually get feedback from your people on some type of consistent basis. Okay? Now the important thing here is that if you do ask for feedback and then you don’t do anything about it, it’s worse. Right? So if you do ask for feedback, make sure you are ready to respond to it. Absolutely. But yeah, in terms of just having a pulse on employee sentiment. And being able to understand across your locations, across your different roles and organizations, where are people at? I believe that’s so powerful. And, so if you’re, if you know it’s okay to try different things, it’s okay to experiment and roll things out.

John Duisberg:

I mean, that’s startup mentality. Love it, right? But get feedback right hear and understand what impact is it making? What are people saying, right? And so, to me, it’s like we’re so quick to, you know, talk to our customer to do anything for that customer, right? It’s, well, I believe we should have the same mindset for our employees. We’re we should be quick to talk and give feedback and understand, and then obviously continue to, you know, to continue to iterate and evolve our strategy to improve that, you know, that experience.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

So you don’t necessarily believe that the only time we should get feedback is during the exit interview. Maybe we should ask before that.

John Duisberg:

Yeah. I hope that’s not the case. Yeah, no, so, like tactically speaking, there’s a lot of strategies around pulse surveys, right, that you can deploy. There’s a lot of tools around pulse. We offer a tool around pulse surveys. And by the way, survey fatigue is real, right? So I’m not saying they just, constant flood people. I’m saying little light, one, two questions. employee net promoter score, for example, having that one question, you know, once a month, for example. Or, you know, you can come up with what the cadence is for your, based on your culture, but being able to have a lightweight way to collect feedback consistently and kind of see what sentiment looks like I believe should be part of every experience strategy.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

So I’d love to talk now specifically to kind two groups of leaders. And then this first question I wanna talk about, like, what advice do you have for those who are leading maybe a newer company, whether they’re just starting to hire a team or they need to think about employee experience for the first time. Like, what advice do you have for those people who are really engaging in this conversation for the very first time?

John Duisberg:

Yeah. So, you know, I’m like the broken record here around purpose and mission. So in a newer company, and I know because I’m the founder of a company, so I’ve lived this, right? You typically think about two things, building and selling, and that’s it. Okay? And like you are heads down survival mode. How do you build your product? How do you sell your product? How do you drive some revenue? How do you, you know, how do you keep it running? Right? Which I totally understand. That’s what I did. It makes sense. And it’s almost, you think about these things around values and purpose, and it’s like, yeah. You know we’ll that, that’ll take care. Well, I would just really encourage new business leaders to be thoughtful about the why behind what they’re even doing, right?

John Duisberg:

The why they exist as an organization, and making sure that they take the time to define this for themselves, right? I’ve learned starting a company, it’s gonna take way longer than you ever imagined it’s gonna cost way five times as much a lot more. Right? And you and it, you are in it, right? If you want this to be successful, get ready for a 10-year journey. Okay. And if you’re gonna put your heart, soul, invest everything into this, make it something that you know you believe in, right? Make it something that you feel like you’re making a difference, in the world and a positive outcome for others. And, and so to me, it, yes, you gotta bill, you gotta sell, but make sure that you, you spend some time to, to think about that because this is what you will be investing your time in, you know, for a long, long time to come. Right? And so, to me, it’s so important for those new, new leaders not to overlook that, I know I’m kind of the broken record on this, but I really believe that’s super important.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

No, I think so many business leaders find themselves, especially right now in they’re, they’re scaling their, you know, demand is outpacing supply, you know, like they are figuring out how to grow their business. And that’s a lot of the people we get to work with and listen to this podcast and to be able to scale well, to scale with solas. I have a friend who says regularly. You have to be able to, yeah, you have to be able to define who you are and what you’re doing it. And I think just, I think the reason you keep going back, if I perceive this correctly, to the whole kind of start with purpose and how’s that connecting to your employees is because if you don’t have that, none of the gimmicks are gonna work, right? Like, it’s basically gotta be that. I imagine like that’s the core foundation for a successful company.

John Duisberg:

You’re absolutely right. I believe that people will sniff out really quick if you’re not authentic about what you stand for, what your values are. And the way I kind of think of it is, I personally, I want to be a leader worth following, Okay? And I want to, I wanna live out on the day to day what these values mean. And I believe what I’m by doing that, that’s how managers who are built up in the org, that’s how they’re gonna then, you know, live out with their teams and so forth. And so to me, it starts with that purpose.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

That’s awesome. All right, now go into kind of the other side, the other, the other audience, if you will, for leaders who are running more established companies where the employee experience has been maybe undermanaged. What are the first steps they can take to start creating positive change? And it doesn’t just feel like, Oh, one day we realize we need to do it, but it actually feels authentic in the way that you just said.

John Duisberg:

So I’ve been asked something similar along these lines where an executive team or you know, CEO, they hire a big consultant, go through this whole process around branding and so forth, have a big event, you know, these are our new values, right? And then six months down the road, no one even talks about it, right? And, and so then again, what is, what does it mean for that person that you’ve hired six months down the road? Right? And so the question I get from, from these CEOs and leaders is, how do you make it sustainable? How do youmake it to where it lives on, Right? And, and for me, it’s not one like silver bullet, it’s not one thing. One of the things that I, kind of going back to storytelling.

John Duisberg:

So people talk about employee recognition, okay? Someone could misinterpret that as, hey, what, you know, hey, that’s fluffy, you know, nice to have, you know, people should just, you know, feel like they’re getting a paycheck, whatever. That’s the old school way to think. Employee recognition is, if you do it right, meaning you do it in a way that’s a social experience, other people get to celebrate in that recognition. what you’re doing is you’re creating awareness around what it means to, again, live out those values, what it means to live this purpose. And you’re educating and you’re teaching people along the way, you know what this means for their role, right? And so, to me, that’s an example about how you can make something sustainable, is you create a strategy about how you start to recognize the day to day wins that are tied back to your purpose, mission and values. And then, and then people talk about it. The buzz gets generated. It’s happening at those weekly standups, those monthly meetings, right? And that’s how it lives on versus the big shot party and then it’s, it, it’s gone. So that’s a, I guess a tangible example in terms of how you make this sustainable for, I guess we’ll call it a more mature organization.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Gosh, I’m feeling really challenged because I’m definitely more of like a do it all you like, you know, And I find myself you know, burning out really fast on like, oh gosh, I just created a whole system that no one can participate in. I guess Jim Collins talks about bullets, not cannon balls. And I think maybe that, you know, like for you to really see sustained change that’s a real challenge I think for a lot of leaders, especially if you’re entrepreneurial because you really run towards something fully, whatever it might be often. And I think that is such wise advice for more established companies that are like trying to make a small change instead of a giant change and it actually be received well.

John Duisberg:

Yep. Absolutely.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Have you seen examples of this done poorly? Like, is there a, hey, here’s an example of like, gosh, you don’t have to name names, but if you want to, that’d be fun. You certainly don’t have to, but like, what have you seen kinda examples of that done really poorly?

John Duisberg:

Well, I’ll give you an example. And this probably applies to more companies than we know of. But so every metropolitan city has the you know, the top workplace list, right? And so the way that you get on that top workplace list is you do a survey, right? And they’re really smart. They give you the survey, but you want the results, you gotta pay. But anyway, that’s a whole whole other thing. So when the results come from that survey, you know, all of a sudden, you know, the leadership’s like, Well, we have to, you know, do something from that, right? And it, and, and they fall into this trap. It’s just, it’s just reactionary, right? And so they’re trying to react to this, this once a year, whatever survey that they get this data without any strategy with so without, and it, again, it goes back to your purpose.

John Duisberg:

It’s like, hey, like I want to have a vision of where we want to go as a company, a mission of where we want to go as a company, and all these things are gonna happen. Like highs, lows, all these things are gonna happen, but that I should still have that kind of true north of where I’m going. And so versus, “Oh gosh, we just got this feedback, we’re gonna respond to that.” And so, to me, I see companies fall in that trap. And to me it’s so much more important to take a step back and really say, Hey, what do we want our culture to be? You know, I get that this feedback’s happening, but is this a symptom of a bigger problem? Do people not understand what we stand for and why we do it and how their job matters? Or is tied back to that purpose? And so to me, that’s something that comes to mind that I see. And you know, I hope that people are able to kind of take a step back and really evaluate the overall purpose, mission and values that they’re striving for.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Gosh, that is so, so challenging. I think even as a leader it’s so much easier to be reactive than it is to be proactive. But if you are proactive in creating the culture you want, that feedback helps you be more effective in your proactivity instead of like massive course correction over time. That’s so helpful. Thank you so much. As we kind of wrap up this conversation, I guess I’d love to know, can you tell us more about Cooleaf and then like the specific ways that you are helping leaders solve this problem?

John Duisberg:

So, absolutely. So with Cooleaf, we help design the employee experience strategy for an organization, and then we have a platform that runs this, this strategy for with their teams, their employees. And so this is how they recognize individuals for living out those core values, right? This is how they share those stories, right? This is how they bring people together through events, virtual events and challenges to make people feel like they’re part of a community no matter where they are, right? I might be in Atlanta or I might be in San Francisco, but now we’re part of this challenge together, whether it be a wellness challenge or it’s, you know, sharing my pet photo or whatever it might be, right? We’re coming together as a community. And so we’re helping these organizations again, to really think about their overall strategy when it comes to employee experience.

John Duisberg:

But then through this platform, we have a way to actually make it data driven through things like employee recognition, through things like employee surveys, through things like these team competitions and so forth. And so you know, that’s a little bit about a little bit about Cooleaf. And obviously we’re super passionate about this. We believe in it. We believe it’s the future. And, for us, you know, regardless of people work with us or not, it’s that they’re, they’re starting to adopt this mindset that they have to be purpose driven to win in the future of the workplace, because that’s what talent is gonna demand from them.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Gosh, and I think listeners of One Next Step, that is what they want to do. They want to grow their businesses and they want to be successful, and this is a huge way to do that. If people want to connect with you or connect with Cooleaf, what are the best ways for them to do that?

John Duisberg:

Yeah, absolutely. So John Duisberg, I’m on LinkedIn. You can hit me up there, of course, obviously cooleaf.com just our website, Learn all about, you know, different, different folks we work with, customers and so forth. But, but yeah, happy to share, happy to, you know, share what we’re seeing in the industry, right? I talk to a lot of leaders, by the way, Ryan, and it’s like, Hey, we’re not ready right now, and it no problem, right? But what are you planning for next year? Yeah, right? We’ll start seeing what your peers are doing in terms of their, their strategy, right? And start learning about that, right? And so to me, it is a journey. You know, we’re happy to share about what we’re seeing in the industry and help where we can.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

That’s awesome. And John, this has been such a great conversation and thank you so much for this. I think it helps our listeners just in a huge way. To our listeners, John has agreed to stay on as we do most weeks to answer one more question. And he’s gonna talk all about incorporating the employee experience into your recruiting and hiring process. You’re not gonna wanna miss that to hear that clip. Subscribe to our email list, and we will send you a link to our bonus content or visit onenextsteppodcast.com where you can find a link in our show notes.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Wow, I really enjoyed that conversation with John, and I felt like it challenged me in a lot of the ways that I think about managing my team and creating an experience and the way that they’re tied in to the purpose of what we do. And today’s One Next Step is really simple, and I would love for you to take it. I’d love for you to subscribe to the Great Retention Podcast and enjoy the movement to increase employee retention and job satisfaction. If you’re a business owner or a leader, this is something that you just simply can’t afford to not do. It’s really important in this season. So thank you so much for tuning in for this week’s One Next Step. To make sure you never miss an episode, subscribe on Apple Podcasts or follow us on Spotify. And if you’re ready to start accomplishing more and juggling less, go to belay solutions.com. For more episodes, show notes and helpful resources, visit onenextsteppodcast.com.