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5 Bob London + Erik Linn - How do you keep "people first" from being a cliche? Action your culture.

Name: 5 Bob London + Erik Linn - How do you keep "people first" from being a cliche? Action your culture.
Uploaded: 2021-08-02T13:15:11+00:00
Duration: 10 s
Channel: Bob London
Description: In this conversational interview, Bob London asks Erik Linn how a firm can keep the ‘people first’ mantra from becoming a hollow slogan. Linn explains…

2 Aug 2021 · 0 min

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In this conversational interview, Bob London asks Erik Linn how a firm can keep the ‘people first’ mantra from becoming a hollow slogan. Linn explains that many service firms become overly client‑centric, which leads to employee burnout. Cross Country flipped this model by deliberately protecting employees’ schedules, offering extra time off for extraordinary work, and giving highly personalized rewards (e.g., theater tickets for a theater‑loving employee). This people‑first approach creates happier staff, which in turn is visible to clients and drives exceptional client service. The discussion also touches on the cultural contrast between a traditional, top‑down, always‑on mentality (exemplified by a CFO who had to abandon a vacation for a staff meeting) and Cross Country’s “soul and heart” culture that resists that ownership‑by‑position mindset.

people first, employee first. Is it a cliché now? And how do you stand out as a company where employee first, people first means something versus just it being a cliché?
Yeah. So we actually had the great experience in our prior lives of seeing clients first in action, which is, you know, we're in the client service business. Your clients have to be happy, but a lot of times firms get so oriented on clients first that they forget about their people and the employee base. Become so focused on exceptional client service that you burn people out and they don't get that extra appreciation and gratitude from, from their leadership. It's not just a concept for us. It is core to who we are as a firm. So we flipped the model on its side and we put people first. And so that, that means actually trying to protect people's schedules so that they're not working excessive hours and making sure they get additional time off if they've done something extraordinary and being thoughtful and gifting to people. So If someone really loves the theater and we want to thank them, we'll buy them tickets to a show. And so just really personalizing how we, we thank people, reward people. And I think that by flipping the model on its side and putting people first, we have happier employees, which our clients can visibly see, and it translates into exceptional client service. So we end up with the same results, but with a happier employee base who's excited to be part of the Cross Country family.
So on that note, someone said something to me, a professional colleague whose husband is, I'll just say the CFO of a Fortune 500 company, and they were on vacation and, you know, a call came from the CEO's assistant and said, we're having a staff meeting tomorrow. And he, he had to leave the vacation. And she said to me, when you get to a certain level, they, you know, they kind of own you. And I, you know, I've set up my world to be the antithesis of that. And it sounds like Cross Country is similar in that you've just got a soul and a heart.