The PEO Edge June 2024:
6 Ways to Be an Employer of Choice

Please note that these sessions are for educational purposes only. TriNet provides HR guidance and best practices. TriNet does not provide legal, tax or accounting advice. The materials in these sessions and the products, advice and opinions expressed in these sessions are solely those prepared by the presenter and not necessarily those of TriNet.

Narrator:
This presentation is for educational purposes only. With decades of experience supporting small and medium-size businesses, TriNet has unique insight into HR best practices for businesses. TriNet does not provide legal, tax or accounting advice. Reproduction in part or in whole is not permitted without express written authorization from TriNet.

Talent acquisition is probably first among the many benefits of being an employer of choice, and attracting top talent is much easier when an organization is on the short list of places where candidates want to work. Top talent in your workforce can improve the overall performance, growth and profitability of your organization.

Let's give a warm emoji welcome to Tyrone Houston, Executive Director, Customer Relationship Management, TriNet, as he explains, “6 Ways to Become the Employer of Choice.”

Tyrone Houston:
Welcome to TriNet's six ways to become an employer of choice webinar. Appreciate the introduction. Again, my name is Tyrone Houston, Executive Director of Customer Relationship Management, which is essentially, I think in a more generic term, manages the account executives here at TriNet. So me and my team work with all of our customers here at TriNet to, in part, do what we're talking about today.

So all that said, I'm really excited to be here today and speak to you about what it means to become the employer of choice. Okay. First, I want to get through some logistics. When I went over the content here and what we're talking about today, it strikes me as content that's going to be a little bit more interactive, maybe a better context for a workshop.

So I say that because we have a Q&A at the end, but I want to open it up for you to ask questions anytime. I've got a great team behind me and they can send me chats. Feel free to interrupt me. As we're going through this content, it just has a feel that if you have a question, I would like you to speak up.

I've got my notes here. So I've got a screen on the slides, I've got you and I've got some notes or some statistics and some things I want to make sure that I convey. So if it seems like I'm reading here and there, or distracting myself from you, I assure you I'm not, but there's some cool content that I want to make sure you leave this webinar with.

Okay. So with that, oh, we have some polls too. So be ready for that. Your engagement interactiveness here is appreciated. So with that, I'm going to get through this disclaimer real quick, and then let's just start talking about what it means to be the employer of choice. So, obviously attracting talent is good for your business.

When we think about what it means to be the employer of choice, what it really means is how you, as a small and medium business, are positioning yourself to move up the category of where people want to work. Okay? One of the things I think about when we're thinking about what it means to be an employer of choice is how much sort of strategic thinking and effort an SMB puts into that right.

And that's not a knack, right? That's because you're out there selling your product and services to the market. Right. So I think sometimes it's easy to think and consider some of the more administrative tasks, you know, secondary, which is fair. Having said that, what we find with respect to being an employer of choice and attracting the right talent, you've got to make sure that you're putting the right effort and impact into bringing the top tier on.

Okay. So, again, when I think about this session, one of the things I want to think about as we go to what the six pillars are, is I don't think there's anything on the screen that none of us in this webinar kind of intuit or already know. Right. I can look at these six as I'm sure you are right now.

And there's a version of this conversation goes. Well, of course, I need to understand and offer a good compensation package. So, I share that because I want to make sure this doesn't come across again as a lecture or me telling you something you don't know. My assumption is you kind of know all this stuff.

What we want to convey today and have you think about and really walk away with is what is your strategy with respect to these buckets? And are you fulfilling that strategy? And then also, you know, near and dear to my heart: Don't undervalue what it takes to complete some of these tasks. Okay.

So I'm going to say some things today, I think, that are going to land like you already know it. Good. That's great. When that happens, what I'm going to ask you to do is consider, all right, since you already know it, are you achieving the objective you set out when you think about employee development and when you think about enhancing culture?

Okay. And you may be and that's great. What we're going to talk about today is how important that is, and how you can start to set a baseline on building that infrastructure, right, or that foundation is what I call it, to propel your business to become again an employer of choice. All right. Now, it would be remiss for me not to share that underlying this presentation is what TriNet does and an opportunity for us to provide that service for you.

So I'm going to sprinkle that in throughout this. But I do want to say at the beginning that what we're talking about today, well, it might not be the core of your business. It's not necessarily the products and the services that you sell, the ability to have a strong foundation and a strong infrastructure human capitalized, you're going to set yourself up to become an employer or maximize and grow from the employer of choice that you already are.

Okay. So with that, we're going to get into number one, benchmark, your compensation and benefit plan. Okay. And again, I think a lot of us probably intuitively think that, but one of the things that struck me when I was reading this and sort of digging in was this is sort of the end, but a 6%, for companies that benchmark and understand where their salaries for their people sit, a 6% increase in salary increase retention by 16%.

Okay. So just, just think about that. There's a whole process for benchmarking. There's a whole perspective of, you know, spending or investing the resource to understand where you are and then attracting that talent with a competitive package, compensation, benefits, 401k, all of those things. And knowing where you sit helps you understand what to pay people and a smaller percentage of what you pay them could double, almost triple your retention of those people. Right? That's really important.

The other thing I like to think about with respect to comp plans is, it's okay if you don't want to pay your people what the top of the market is. The key there is understanding that if you don't, certain talent may not be looking for that job. So the other thing about going through these six buckets is there's no right, no wrong, necessarily, but it helps to understand where you want to be in the market.

And then even within your own organization, maybe if you're building websites or maybe you're a biotech firm building a new drug, obviously for the biotech firm, you may invest more and have a different compensation structure for your PhD scientific researchers than you do your finance. And that's perfectly okay.

Doesn't mean you're going to pay your finance folks top tier like JPMorgan Chase might, right? But what you want to consider and what you want to think about is the ability to benchmark gives you the opportunity upon which to have that strategy and then glean from it and learn from it.

Number 2, employee development. So, once you get them on, you want to develop your employees. This one kind of speaks for itself. And again, requires a certain level of infrastructure. My stat here is 24% higher profit margin for companies that offer employee development programs. That's staggering, right? The literature and the studies are pretty clear there.

People, us, I mean, I'm sure you do, we all want to learn, right? We all want to grow. And to the extent we can do that within our own companies increases retention and ensures that you are offering a package to employees to grow themselves, which in turn helps them grow for you. So, for your advancement, the opportunity to move up in the organization, again, are all things that you want to consider.

I recognize and have some customers that are pretty small SMBs, so obviously, if you're a small company, there's only so many positions and so many avenues you can offer. Having said that, that doesn't diminish the importance of the foundation that you can establish to build upon, right? So that's where, if you're thinking about the compensation package and then the employee development package as part of your compensation package offering, you can include maybe an interview. Hey, here's what our learning development. Here's what our training programs are. Here's how we see this position or this skill set within our company evolving and it's different for everyone. Again, there's no right answer, but the ability to think through that, the ability to understand that is going to be very, very important and start to set you apart as an employer of choice.

And when you set up good training programs and have good compensation plans, then you get the opportunity to enhance your culture. What we're talking about here is really the changing demographics of the workforce. This one blew my mind. 86% of Millennials and Gen X look for DE&I impacts at the workplace that they choose to work.

Millennials and Gen X make up two-thirds of the workforce, right? So, if you do a little math there, almost 60% of workers today are looking for social, responsible company, and that's huge. So your ability to move up the spectrum of being an employer of choice is critical to your ability to offer, understand and accept inclusive environments and what it means to be an inclusive employer.

So, embracing diversity, understanding the multiple voices that are out there is really, really important. I recognize that there's going to be different interpretations of that, different versions of that. I would stress that the data is becoming only clearer and clearer. Our data right now is Gen X and Millennials. I suspect that Gen Z is going to look very much like this, if not skewed more to an inclusive environment. So, again, as part of the strategy, as part of you thinking about becoming an employer of choice moving up that spectrum and wanting to attract talent, the ability for you to articulate and understand the sensitivities of the culture are second to none and can set you up to be an employer that people want to go work for.

Number 4, listen and act on employee feedback. I'm going to digress from the script a little bit because this one is actually near and dear to my heart and I'm going to share a personal anecdote because we've been working on this at TriNet, let's say internal, quite a bit. And I think there's something here that speaks to a little bit beyond just the employee piece, right?

So the employee piece is pretty self-evident, right? If you listen to your employees and you ask for their engagement and their feedback, they're going to feel a larger part of your vision, of your mission. Right? There is a shift in work that we've seen over the last, I'd say 20 to 30 to 40 years, where we've gone from sort of that Jack Welsh command and control and top-down driven companies to a more interactive, more collaborative work environment. And I think this speaks to that more than anything. And listening to employees is hands down one of the things that current workforce demographics are showing you need to do. All right, back to my anecdote. What I think is really interesting because we spent a lot of time at TriNet doing this.

And this really cool thing happened. After a couple of years of feedback and surveys from the workforce, what we started to see was, yep, more engagement, right, more commitment, but we started to see better feedback. We started to see employees kind of wake up and go, wow, they're listening to me. They're actually taking what I say and improving my work environment, improving how we do business internally. And that comes with the responsibility, right? That comes with some accountability because if an employee knows that you're going to listen to them, they're not going to waste that opportunity.

So I think it's really interesting how this sort of has a, we're here talking today about how to become an employer, a preferred employer primarily from the employee and what employees want. I wanted to sprinkle in on this slide too. I think there's a real benefit here for you, for leaders to engage in this behavior because you're going to start to not for the employee's sake, see them more engaged, see them more responsive, more committed, but they start to get a little bit more accountable and a little bit more assertive in what they offer and how they engage with those surveys and with that feedback protocol. So small digression there, but wanted to share that. Because I think it's pretty cool.

Listening equals commitment and I think that's the yin and yang there is, if you listen to your employees, they will be committed to you. Now, the key is, you got to go implement it. You got to show that you're doing that. And again, if you do now, you can stand in front of your employees at your town hall and say, “Hey, this is what we've done.”

You asked for this. This is what we've done. Pretty, pretty powerful. Okay. Bring your A game to HR. I'm selfish plugs here for TriNet. But let me take a step back first, because I do think this is really important. And one of the things that we focus on, one of the things that again, one of these intuitive things, I call it the fallacy of common sense, right?

There's you know, we all go to webinar. We all go to seminar. We all listen to podcast. We read. We professionally develop and I'm guilty, maybe you're not guilty of listening to something and that's common sense, right? Okay. Yeah, that doesn't mean it's easy. Right? That doesn't mean I know how to do it.

So I think this is one of the things that I think an HR function that isn't for most companies, that's not their core business. That's not what they go after. It's something we can all articulate and understand, needs to get done, but it does require some level of administration and effort and what this slide is trying to say and what we're asking folks to think about is that biotech company that I brought up earlier that's hiring that PhD, maybe someone that has a lot of scholarship has written published articles and they're excited to work for your firm, right?

They're excited to come on board and start developing the next generation of GLP-1 drugs, right? Well, there's their first interaction with you, as your company is going to be an HR system most likely, right? It's going to be a job description, it's going to be a process by which they submit a resume. It's going to be an interview process or protocol. It's going to be an onboarding process. It's going to be understanding benefits and what they can enroll, things like that. So that's what we're talking about here, is the infrastructure, the foundation of your HR has to be something that your company, it's in your vision, that you own, has a requisite support system and that, when that's seamless and when that's good, now things start to click.

So the takeaway here is, as it says, first impressions, but the real takeaway is the resource and the input into building that infrastructure and building that foundation is key because while everyone's excited to go do the work that you hired them to do, the initial interactions and that first impression tend to be HR-related activities, and it's something that can set the tone for what they think, see and expect as they get ramped up, get trained, and then really start to add value for you and your business.

Flexibility. This one I love. Oh, wait, I think I see a question. Case study. Love your case study on involving employees and how it positively affected the company. How do you prove to your team that the results and feedback will actually be heard? In the past, it has not. Great question. So, I'm going to go back a slide.

I really appreciate the question. How do you prove to your team the results of the feedback will actually be heard? That, and when it has not, that sounds like an opportunity to help leadership understand the importance of listening. So it sounds like you're getting the feedback and in the past, it hasn't been implemented and there's a couple of things, first and foremost the way the feedback is digested, right?

Does it fit into the company strategy and the company direction? Because if it doesn't, then there's an opportunity to communicate. You get back to the workers and say, "Hey, we appreciate your feedback. Here's what we heard." And then, you know, construct an approach of what you're going to do with what you heard.

There's also an opportunity to do another survey. If everything's in line and the feedback was good, and it's just leadership in action, then at that point, there could be an opportunity to reflect on, “Hey, maybe we need a strategic session with our leadership team, because here's the impacts of not acting on this feedback.”

All right. And again, here's a plug. One of the things I like about TriNet, I've had a customer that came to me and said, "Hey, we want to do some surveys. We want more organization in this direction or that direction.” I would set them up with our HR service team where we have survey experts that could construct a survey in a way that's pretty customized for you to hopefully get the answers you want, but then we'll lead into a potential think or development session, right? Maybe with the leaders first help you build a calm plan and then go back out to the employees to instigate now and share with them what you're changing.

The best part about this question, I think everyone needs to, it is a two-way street, like this feedback one is really a two-way street, because if they do the survey, they give the feedback and you don't act, now there's a cynicism that starts to sort of sneak in there. There's a, I call the eye rolling component, right?

I'm always asking my peers and my leaders, "Hey, are we going to induce eye rolls?" And I'm very nervous about inducing eye rolls because that's when you start to lose listening. That's when people start to not look at you. Really appreciate the question.

Okay. Flexibility. I love this topic. And every customer I know that I'm fascinated at a macroeconomic level, right? Real estate, commercial real estate things. I'm fascinated at where people are starting to move and live. For the context of this, I want you to walk away with a couple main things. There's no right answer here. You know, obviously, there's some jobs that have to be on site.

What we're seeing and what the data, and think of it, you know, data post-pandemic, right? So we are in a post-pandemic world. And I think the key here, there's two big keys. There's no right answer. You have to be confident and sure of how you want to run your organization, real estate plan, right? All of those things.

But you also have to understand that big number on that screen. Most people want some level of flexibility. We don't see anything that indicates that the world's going in a different direction. Okay. So your ability to assess your real estate footprint, your creative understanding of how you want your culture you know, and maybe even where you want your people to be, right?

There's complexities there as well, balanced with what we know people want, which is some level of flexibility is and it is a big deal. So, anecdotally here, most companies today that I work with and support specifically at TriNet, I was in Miami last week, meeting quite a few. I was in New York a month ago, meeting quite a few, hybrid, right?

That tends to be where most folks are falling. So the takeaway is, and maybe part of the feedback, maybe part of the survey. Number 4 is what do your folks want, right? There are, again, just waves and waves of support and data coming out that the employee wants some level of remote and companies again, that's a bigger TBD. I think the most important piece is being confident and comfortable in what you deploy and being very prescriptive about it and making sure employees understand what their boundaries are. Okay? Okay and getting my time, I've done pretty good. I can talk about this stuff all day.

So I really appreciate everyone's time, but this is how we're going to end. And, you know, coming out of the flexibility slide, you know, there are things to think about being remote, like compliance issues, state, local, right? As you go multi-state, things like that. And I think that leads nicely into this slide, which again is patting ourselves on the back here at TriNet because we're proud of this back, we're proud of the opportunity to offer support in every area that we talked about today, right, which in our estimation, our mind allows you to grow with confidence, right? Focus on your business.

Simplify, right? Reduce some of that complexity. One of the things I love about working at TriNet is, like the question we got here today, I can get you engaged with our HR experts and it doesn't have to be a big thing, right? It might be a conversation. You need a sounding board, right? Or it could be a big thing.

Maybe they come on site and help you with some more development, right? Maybe they do some culture mapping for you and your leadership team. There's just an opportunity for support there that doesn't require a huge built out HR team, but where you can leverage our scale to help you achieve your ends and again, focus on your business, have your employees focus on your business, and that's where the take back time comes from, right?

It really is an opportunity for you to get your time back, because if you have that strong HR foundation, and if you sort of attune yourself to these six pieces and get that infrastructure and that foundation built, then not only are you going to be able to take your time back as you bring people on, as you bring on the talent that you want to bring on, whatever level that talent is, you are going to be able to focus on getting them to help your top line and your bottom line get where you want it to go. And that's really the takeaway here is a little investment or a little understanding now, an investment could be time, could be money, just be strategic thought in your HR infrastructure. Becoming an employer of choice is going to yield benefits as you move forward in your short-, mid- and long-term strategic vision for your company.

Okay. I think I've talked enough. Again, I could go on another 30 minutes, but I'm getting the time signals. We have opportunity for Q&A. If there's any, I know I got a question during, I really appreciate the time. I hope you walk away with some tidbits here and some thoughts about how you can help your business build that HR foundation, build that HR infrastructure to enable you to move up the scale of becoming an employer of choice.