In a recorded roundtable, Bob London raises the issue of post‑COVID employee churn, suggesting that workers now seek alignment with a company’s values and vision. He asks Erik Linn whether living those values over time contributes to growth. Linn explains that Cross Country’s growth is a natural outcome of a disciplined commitment to core values, hiring exceptional people, and maintaining high standards, even if it means forgoing short‑term growth percentages. He contrasts this approach with larger firms that prioritize growth targets over cultural fit, arguing that hiring only top performers and refusing to lower the bar will ultimately give Cross Country a competitive advantage as competitors hire “B‑players.” The conversation underscores the link between values‑centric culture, employee retention, and sustainable growth.
Chapters
I was in a roundtable the other day with some technology company executives, and a couple of them were talking about having retention issues or that there was recent unexpected churn. And I think this was coming out of the lockdown, quite, quite frankly. And I made the comment, stuck my neck out and said, you know, I'm hearing employees saying that they've had time to think during COVID and they want to have a chance to be aligned with a company that they feel proud to work with and that that company has values and has vision. And I asked the team to comment and there was not a lot of uptake on that. It was more like growth trumps vision. And I, so I, it didn't really make sense because you can't really separate those two. I didn't get into a battle with them or anything, but I would say to you, do you feel like having the values, having the vision and, and living it for years on end has helped with growth? It doesn't maybe lead directly to double-digit growth, mid-double-digit growth, but it does— it make growth easier in some way?
What—
how do you relate that, the culture, the values?
And yes, so we talk a lot about this, Bob. We are really proud that we've grown, but the growth has been the output or the outcome of the commitment to the values and hiring exceptional people. And so we We talk a lot about if we hire the best people in the market and we're giving them this better experience and they're staying at our firm, we're going to grow. And so we're not saying we want to grow 80% or 90%. We're saying if we hire the best people in the world and they stay at our firm, we're going to grow. And so we will walk away from growth opportunities to, to keep what's special about our firm. And so if we grow 25% instead of 30%, just as an example, because we couldn't find enough people that fit our bar for excellence and collaboration, energy impact. That's fine. It is, again, it's a little bit of reverse. When I work for larger companies, they would do anything to hit their growth percentages. We just have a different philosophy that if we stick to what's special about Cross Country, the natural byproduct will be growth. In a market like we have right now, you know, the market is fantastic for all consulting firms. A lot of our competitors are hiring B players right now. They are hiring people that they're going to regret 6 to 9 months from now, and that's going to translate into poor client service. And it's probably going to cause some consternation internally trying to staff people that aren't, aren't top performers. And so we're actually really proud that by being disciplined and sticking to our standards, we think we're going to outperform those other firms by not lowering the bar, by keeping our focus on what's, what's unique and special about our firm.
