How to Attract and Retain Top Talent in a Tight Market

This podcast is brought to you by Wells Fargo Advisors. Looking for a firm your clients can't outgrow? Wells Fargo Advisors offers financial advisors full balance sheet solutions with wealth planning, investment products, banking, and lending that meet the needs of affluent to ultra-high net worth clients. Build your practice your way and on your schedule with independent and employee model options designed to meet your needs today and tomorrow. Learn more at joinwfadvisors.com.

One of the reasons why the big advisory firms keep getting bigger is they do a better job of creating an environment and culture that attracts and retains top talent. In today's show, we tackle the big issues related to talent and discuss ways that you can design your organization to become a talent magnet. I'm business coach Steve Sandusky. And my guest today is Brian Kropp. Brian is distinguished VP research at Gartner. He oversees the research tools, services, and support that Gartner provides to chief human resources officers and their leadership teams. With that, let's get started with Brian Kropp. One comment that I hear all the time from leaders is how difficult it is to find and retain top talent. What would you say, Brian, are some of the key macro factors that are in play right now that are making it so difficult for companies to find and retain this top talent?

Yeah, it is incredibly intense out there in terms of competing for the best talent. A couple of data points I'm going to share with you to help frame what that looks like. One, we're still at record unemployment levels. And, you know, the economy might get worse, there might be recessionary things, whatever it might be. But even if that happens, the best estimate that we have from the HR executives that we talked to is that the war for talent is going to stay intense. We asked them a question which was, even if there's an economic slowdown, what are your plans for hiring? And two-thirds of them said they're going to keep hiring. So hot labor market overall, really intense competition, even if the economy slows. It's kind of one thing that's there. Second thing, remote hybrid work. It just creates a lot more options for employees about where they could work, who they could work for, and so on. And what we expect once we're past the pandemic, whatever that looks like, whenever that occurs, turnover rates are going to be forever 20% higher just because it's easier for people to change jobs. You don't have to move to change jobs. So just more churn in the labor market. And then one of the other things that we see that's going on is that the emotional and social connections between employees are weaker now than we've seen any time in the past. And one of the fascinating things we've learned is historically it would take about it took, you know, 5, 6 months for new employees to feel really embedded in the network of their coworkers when they started a new job. Now, 2 years in, when we go back and look at data from people that were hired in March, April of 2020, they still do not feel embedded within their organization. They don't feel connected. So 3 things that are going on there: hot labor market, more choice for employees, weaker connections. All of those are contributing to just a really tight labor market where there's growth and churn occurring at the same time.

Let's start with that third one there about the weaker social ties, and I've got some personal experience in that. Back in 2001, I started working for a company in the same town, was there for 4 years running it in the office, and then in 2005, my family decided that we were going to relocate. So we moved to a different state and I still ran the company, but I did it remotely. And it worked great. And I think the key reason why it worked great is because I had 4 years in the office. I had all of the ties established. I hired a lot of the people. Now, contrast that with another situation where I was doing some work for another company and it was all remote from day one. It was much more difficult to establish the ties and establish the relationships because I wasn't in the office all the time, and it was a big effort to travel, get on a plane, and go meet these people. So your point about the weak social ties is so critical. So how can companies do a better job of onboarding people? Like here in the past couple of years with the pandemic, it may be months before you meet the person in person. How do we do a better job when it's all virtual like that?

Yeah, for some people it's been years since they've actually met someone in person. You're absolutely right, is that those lack of connections if they weren't established before, are truly problematic. One of the things that we looked at was comparing intact teams versus teams that had a lot of turnover. Well, those that have been intact for the last 2 years, their connections are much tighter. Those that have had a lot turnover, their connections are much weaker, even for the people that have worked at the company for an extended period of time. So it impacts the new hire, but it also impacts everyone around them as well, which then just gets to the question, like, what do you do about it? First, you have to realize that it's a problem. There's lots of ways that you can look at this and understand what that looks like. But first, kind of size the problem and identify the problem. Places where you've had more churn, it's going to be a bigger problem. Places where you've had less churn, it's going to be a smaller problem. Places that have been growing quickly, ironically, you're going to have more of a problem because you don't have people that have worked together and you just have a lot of new people on the team and so on. So first is identify where you've got that problem is the first thing to think about. Second, you have to be incredibly intentional. One of the things that was true of an in-person world, and this is gonna sound harsher than I probably mean it, but it's true, is that we could be lazy. Because we're all in the same place at the same time, we could be lazy because those social and emotional connections and interactions just occurred. We came into the building at the same time, it was raining outside, so we could commiserate over traffic or being wet or any of those sorts of things. We got hungry at the same time. And so we would just go get lunch together. We'd need an afternoon coffee at the same time. We would just do it. So in an in-person world, the patterns of the day just let us be lazy in some ways about thinking about these social-emotional connections. And now we have to be intentional about them. As a leader or as a coworker, what you should be doing is kind of on Monday morning, take a step back and say, who am I gonna reach out to? Who am I gonna have a personal conversation with? Not just a work-related conversation that's there. Because one of the other realities is you tend to have work conversations and work connections with those people that are in your immediate circle. But those people that are one layer out that you have occasional interactions with, that's where you start to see the most weakness occurring within those connections. So every Monday morning, what are the things that you're going to do to reach out to one or two people in that extended circle and just check in with them, see what they're up to, how things are going? And what's important about those check-ins, it's not just another Zoom happy hour sort of moment. You actually have to ask questions about what's going on with them. What are they experiencing? What are they feeling around things that are outside of work? And be willing to be uncomfortable about pushing into some of those places. When you do, you're rewarded by building those deeper emotional and social connections that are there. So that's really critical. The third thing I would say is you can't underestimate the importance of at least occasional in-person interactions. And again, being intentional here. There are some companies that have been very extreme about this, by the way. So you look at, you know, salesforce.com bought a dude ranch where they send all their teams to once a quarter. That's probably out of the price range for a lot of companies out there to buy a ranch just for connections. But the intent of it makes sense, which is at least a couple of days a quarter. So think a day a month. You have to intentionally create in-person moments. And those occasional in-person moments actually then stretch out and have a broader benefit through the years. But the most important thing here, whichever way you want to build it, is it getting together for dinner once a month? Is it being in person, working from the office on collaborative projects once a month? Whatever it might be, you have to plan for it. You have to be intentional about it. We no longer live in a world where we can let the serendipity bumping into someone while you're getting coffee moments be the cornerstone of our connection strategy. It has to be intentional. And there's a nice turn of phrase that I've had in the back of my head for a while, which is when you think about culture and those connections that come from the culture, the way we used to define culture was how we do things around here. What happens when there's no around here anymore? It's how we do things everywhere. And we just have to start being much more intentional about creating those moments around here. Where we come together and interact on the non-work-related parts of our lives.

And if you're not intentional like you're describing, your retention rate is going to go way down. And you mentioned another item you said here a moment ago was you think that turnover is going to be 20% higher permanently. So let's dissect that a little bit. What are some things that as leaders we can do to create an organization that A, is going to attract the right people, and B, is going to retain them in this new environment.

Let me take apart that 20% number, because when you hear it, you're like, oh wow, that is something. And it is. So here's how to think about it. If your turnover rate historically was 10%, on average it's going to move to 12%. If it was historically 20%, it's going to move to 24%. And it'll go up and down based upon labor market conditions, all sorts of stuff, but it's going to be oscillating at that higher level.. And there's two major reasons why that's occurring. One is it's just easier for employees to change jobs. And to simplify it, I don't have to move to change jobs. I don't have to take my kids out of school. I don't have to find a new church. I don't have to find new friends. I don't have to sell my house and buy a new one. Like, you don't have to do any of that sort of stuff. And even if you're not looking at remote, the hybrid world expands the geographic footprint through what you're willing to look for a job. So here's how you think about that one. I might not be willing to put up with an hour and a half commute each way, 5 days a week, but I'll do it twice a week for the right job. And so your geographic footprint just expands. Layer on top of that the emotional and social connections part of it. And when you don't have those connections there, you don't worry about friends that you're quitting. There's always going to be bad managers. There's always going to be bad organizations that you don't like, aren't a right fit, whatever it might be. And that was there before, it's going to be there after. But what's different now is by those weaker connections, if you're changing jobs, you're not quitting your friends. And so put all of those things together and what you just see is higher turnover rates for forever into the future. And that is half of what you do as a company and as a manager and as a leader to try to build those better connections. But half of it is just the reality of that the way we work is changing. The labor market is changing. The opportunity set is changing, and you can't control any of that. Now, your first response and reaction might be, well, if remote and hybrid causes these massive turnover problems, let's not do the remote hybrid thing. Let's just have everybody come into the office 5 days a week. That doesn't work either, because when you do that, about two-thirds of employees say they will not work for a company that doesn't offer them flexibility. And given how many opportunities are on the labor market right now, they'll quit and find someplace else that does. About 3 out of 4 employees say they won't apply to a company that doesn't offer flexibility. So by not offering it, you can't attract and retain anybody. By offering it, you can attract, but it's hard to retain people from there. So there's, there's one set of solutions here about building those emotional and social connections. There's another set of opportunities here as well, where you can think about creating a broader geographic footprint of where people can work from. Of meeting their flexibility needs in the way that makes the most sense to them. Where companies have been thinking about it for the last couple of years is really defining flexibility around where you work, which is an important component of it— from home, from the office, from a hotel room somewhere when you're traveling, whatever it might be, the beach, you know, the mountains, whatever your thing is, right? But you can think more broadly about flexibility than that. Think about giving flexibility around when people work. Think about creating flexibility for employees around how much people work. Nowadays, flexibility around where you work doesn't actually give you any benefit because it's table stakes. The lack of flexibility, you'll get punished by it, but offering flexibility about where people work, because everyone else does it, it's no longer a differentiator. Those differentiators around flexibility are going to move into the when people work and how much people work.

Yeah, and I got a quote here from something that you wrote in HR Review in the UK, and you said, quote, "Hybrid work will also bring changes in traditional design structures that have underpinned organizations for decades, one of those being the 5-day, 9-to-5 working week, which is looking massively outdated in modern times," end quote. So yeah, right in line with what you're just saying here. So, but if we say, okay, you can work remotely, maybe once a week you come into the office, or once a quarter we get everybody together and do a big shindig à la Salesforce. But then what do you say to leaders who say, well, we need to have some core hours. We need to have from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM where everyone is available. We can do meetings at those times. What do you say to those folks?

When you look at the hybrid world, there's a couple of different models that are emerging. You know, it's kind of funny. You put 10 different HR executives in the room and you ask them what their definition of hybrid is, you get 15 different answers. As to how they'll talk about it. But it generally falls into two different camps. There's one camp, which is this idea of radical flexibility. And that is letting employees work when, where, whatever makes the most sense for them. And as long as they're getting their work done, that's all that matters. That model is really attractive to employees. It's what they like the most. It also gives you the best real estate savings costs. However, it's the hardest to manage. From there. All the way at the other end of the continuum, there's the model which is Monday and Friday you work from home, but Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, everybody's in the office. The advantage of that model is that, yes, employees like it more than being in the office 5 days a week, but not as much as the other choices that give them more flexibility. You also don't get the cost savings that are associated with that because you have to maintain the real estate footprint that you had before. But it's the easiest to manage. Managers know where people are, when they're going to be there. You can coordinate around that. You can schedule meetings around it, all those sorts of things. So what it really comes down to around this question of how do we make sure we've got collective time that we're getting together and build these connections to have meetings, to collaborate when it makes the most sense, a lot of people think the decision should be about the technology that you've got, and that's the defining characteristic. Around how to make this work. I don't actually think that's the case. I think the technology is necessary, and as long as you've got some, you're fine. The real question is the level of maturity that you have of your managerial population. Can your managers manage in a way that has a lot of uncertainty, a lot of variability, that requires a lot more intentionality on their part, or can they not? If your managerial bench is really strong, if they're really sophisticated, if they're really mature, then these questions around how do we make sure we've got the right people in the right time, we've got core hours, all those sorts of things kind of go away because your managers will be able to figure it out. Alternatively, if you don't have the strongest managerial bench in the world, then you're actually much better off having some version of the second model. And there's lots of different forms and flavors of it. But what you really wanna have within that second model is some defined time period where people know when they should be available and then give them the flexibility around that. And the other component of that that's really important is to get agreement between employees and managers about what sort of activities need to be done in person versus what can be done remote. 'Cause the places where we see it breaking down the most in the hybrid world breaking down It's not because people don't have Zoom or Teams or whatever it might be. It's because tomato, tomato sorts of problems. And what happens is employees think they can work from home this day, managers disagree, or vice versa. So what's really important is to get everybody on the same page about are you gonna have a core set of hours or not? Are you going to have a specific set of activities that have to be done from the office or not?. And it's that coordination managerial costs and questions that you really need to focus on, not the technology or not the other policies that are there, but just how much uncertainty, variability, lack of clarity can your managers handle? The more they can handle, the more flexibility you can offer.

This decision on where and when people work, is that something that should be top-down driven? Or should it be left to each department, each manager, to determine what works effectively in their area? And if it's at the managerial level, how do you deal with, well, that manager is letting their people work from home, why can't we work from home?

Yeah, one of the things that is so tough here is different people are going to end up working different ways. And when you think back to February of 2020, what was true is that we all kind of for the most part came to the office. I had a really consistent experience. When the pandemic hit, it was hard, it was difficult, and we all moved remote, but we moved remote together for the knowledge workers and the employees that can work that way. It was hard, but it was consistent. We're all working the same way. Now we're moving to this time period where it's going to become highly variable, where some people are there, some people are not. Some people are going to decide rules one way, Some people are gonna decide rules another way. Now, as we've looked at which of these approaches, a top-down, bottoms-up, are more effective, it's not clear yet what is the right answer. And different companies are gonna work different ways. But there's a couple of things that we do know. One, employees have to feel that they're involved and have input into the conversation. If they're told what the answer is without their input, they're gonna feel like it's wrong, no matter what it is. It's almost like you've got a teenager No matter what you tell your teenager, your teenager is going to disagree with you, and that's just the reality of teenagers, right? Employees are similar in that way. You have to have their involvement, you have to have their input and feel like they're empowered as part of the decision. That's there. Two, there's some jobs within a company that can be done remote and some that can't. We often think about those who can't do their job remote as frontline employees, retail, those sorts of things. That's a really incomplete way of thinking about people who can't do their job remote. I don't know about you, but I don't want my surgeon to be doing their job remote. I want them in the operating room with me. If there's people that are working in highly secure environments because there's top secret stuff or whatever it might be, they have to go in. There's a lot of jobs that theoretically could be done remote, but for a variety of factors can't. And so what you have to think about is not necessarily who gets more flexibility, who gets less. Some of that will be defined defined by the nature of work, by different decisions that managers make. What you have to be focusing on is what is fair and equitable across the workforce. And so some of the smartest companies that we work with, the way that they're approaching this problem is to say, well, this group of jobs, you can work flexibly. You can come in the office or not. You can do whatever you want to or not. And if you have that type of job, that, that's how you're gonna work. These other jobs that might be paid as much, if not more, but have to be done on site, The way that we're going to make it fair is to give people who have that job an extra 5 days of PTO per year, or an extra day of PTO per month, or some variant. But the key thing here is not that just that some people get to work flexibly and some people don't. It's that how are you creating a fair and equitable experience across the whole experience for different types of employees? And I'll be honest with you, I think this question of fairness and equity is going to be the most important question that executives are going to struggle with across the next 4, 5, 6 years as they manage their workforces. We're seeing it now play out around remote work versus non-remote work, but it plays out a variety of ways. So a lot of companies have increased the benefits that they offer to their employees who have children to help pay for child care because schools are closed or whatever. Might be. That's great for those employees that get the benefit, but for other employees who don't have kids that are that young, they don't get anything. That doesn't seem fair. There's other things that are being created to help pay student loans for younger employees so they've got better financial health. That is wonderful for those employees, but what about the employees that had to spend 5 years eating canned soup every night for dinner to pay off their college debt? Why didn't you help them? That doesn't seem fair. And all of these questions that are manifested within a remote world, like another good one is two people are doing the same job, one's moved to a lower cost of living location, should you pay them less? Good reason to do it, good reason not to do it. But the bigger point here is that as the world and work becomes more uneven in terms of how people work, when they work, how much they work, the benefits and support and coaching that one person gets compared to another person, These questions of fairness and equity become all the more important as each person's experience becomes more variable. And what you have to be asking yourself as an executive right now is, the thing I'm doing, the decision I'm making, is it fair or is it not? And by the way, there's times when it's okay to be unfair because it's the right business answer. But in the bigger picture, in the long run, Are you being fair and equitable or not? And what I would recommend for every executive is, as we're starting to tackle some of these societal cultural issues, some of these fairness and equity questions, you could really help yourself out by reading a lot of ethics books, textbooks, finding a professor at your local college that can teach you ethics and values, because those are going to be the tools that you're going to use to make big decisions with. Not just analytics and data. The analytics and data are important to help inform the decision, but your ethics and values are gonna be what is important to help you make the decision. And that knowledge, that capability, that framework, those mindsets are incredibly important going forward. And every executive needs to have their toolkit about how to make ethical and values-based decisions not just numeric and analytical-based decisions.

Yeah, and that's one of the things that makes a leader's job so difficult today. I mean, it's always been difficult to be a great leader, but today, particularly with the environment that we're operating in. And you talk about morals and ethics. We did a show here recently with Eric Pleiner, who is the CEO of YSC Consulting, and that's exactly what we talked about. And he has a 3-part framework to really make these difficult decisions. One revolves around ethics, one revolves around morals, and the third revolves around role responsibilities and really looking at those three in the interplay to help you come up with decisions that are really difficult. So that takes a lot of self-awareness, a lot of introspection to really understand what do I believe, what is societally acceptable, and what does the role require? Tough decisions there. So I appreciate you bringing that up. One other question here is, are we looking at a permanent change in the nature of work? And what I mean is COVID was such a black and white moment where everybody had to do something different. Now, let's just make an assumption here for a moment that at some point in the future, COVID is either going away or it's going to be viewed as the common cold. Now, that may or may not be true, but let's just assume that for a second. So we're in the future. Are we going to go back to the way we used to be with everyone in the office, or is this a permanent break from the way we used to do things? And we now live in a world where employees have a little bit of the upper hand. They can work remote, they can demand pay raises, and so on.

How do you think about that? There's a variety of things there. I fall into the camp that this is a permanent shift. And that we're not going back to the way we were before. And there's a variety of reasons why. One, after close to— we're closing on 2 and a half years, right? People have built the muscle and figured out how to work this way. And leaders realize that, well, not perfect, uh, better than before. And they see the productivity and performance maintenance, or in some cases improvements, that have occurred. They see performance that, you know, back in March of 2020, there's so many CEOs that I talked to What they were convinced was going to happen is that we're all going to move remote and employees were just going to sit on their couch and take naps and eat pizza and watch Netflix all day. That turned out not to be the case. People work really hard. Those that don't, that's a performance management problem, not a remote work problem. Performance has not suffered, at least individual performance has not suffered. Two, there's enough companies that have already shut down office space and realized the cost savings associated with that, And as long as there's a significant percentage of companies that are willing to work remote, and frankly, they don't have any choice now because they got rid of the real estate, they forced themselves into this environment, that puts pressure on all the other companies to offer that flexibility. And they're going to have to answer with either, "Well, I'm going to pay you a lot more or give you flexibility." And there's going to be a huge segment that's going to stick with that. I think the third reason why I believe it's going to maintain is one of the other things that's occurred across the last couple of years is an increased focus on employee wellness, mental health, mental well-being, and a much better understanding of that, and a realization that the traditional 9 to 5 in the office 5 days a week isn't supportive to mental health, mental well-being, and so on. So that's another reason why I think it's likely to stick. So performance, individual performance has stayed the same. You can save money from doing it. You create a better relationship with your employees by doing that. I think all of those things speak to it sticking. Here's another angle in though that gives me more confidence that for a large swath of the population, it's going to stay this way. I was meeting with the leadership team of a Fortune 10 company about 2 weeks ago. And they've been thinking hard about— and their preference, in all honesty, is to have a largely in-person environment. What they're finding is that they have to pay about a 10% to 15% comp premium to get people to come to the office 5 days a week. The choice that you're really confronted with is, do I offer flexibility or do I pay people 10% to 15% more? As soon as you have that conversation with your CFO, the CFO has an answer. It's give flexibility because for a typical company, about two-thirds of the costs are paying people, putting another 10% to 15% increase on those costs, the economics of most businesses just don't work at that point. Point. So cost-wise, performance-wise, employee preference-wise, employee well-being-wise, access to more talent, all of those sorts of factors tell me that this is a permanent shift. Now, it might swing back and forth and oscillate a little bit as things go by and we learn more and, and there's different employees that have different preferences that are there, but this idea of a significant percentage of the employees who can work remote or hybrid doing so, I think, is a permanent shift. Or as permanent as anything is nowadays. You know, they're kind of these forecasts of what's going to happen in 20 years, I think, are nonsense. But like the next 2 to 3 years, we're going to be in this world. It's going to be as permanent as things can be nowadays.

And I think the potential societal ramifications of this could be huge. And what I mean is, for many people, going into the office 5 days a week gave us discipline, gave us a sense of order, gave us a lot of friends, a lot of communication, a lot of community. But now when people are working remote, you have so much less of that. So what's going to replace that if we're not going to get that sense of community and friendship in our workplace? Sure, we can do it via the screen like you and I are doing here. I wonder what's going to replace that and what role does a company have in trying to continue to foster that?

I think the long-term societal implications of this shift are enormous, and we are barely scratching the surface. Let me share with you just a couple of things that, that really strike me as interesting. Think about large-scale public transportation infrastructure. So I live in the Washington, D.C. area. They've been expanding the Metro there for years, and it takes forever to happen. And when you think about those large-scale public transportation infrastructure initiatives, they're really about, at least in the DC area, of getting people from the suburbs into the city and then back. The economics of any of those large-scale public infrastructure initiatives completely fall apart if ridership declines by 10%. The economics just don't make sense anymore. They're huge money-losing kind of white elephants that are out there sort of thing. The forecast for remote and hybrid work is about 80% of employees will either be working remote or hybrid. So out of the knowledge worker segment, about half of those employees are going to be working from home on any given day. That translates to roughly about a 25% decline in total ridership, things like the Metro in DC. What happens? I have no idea. But what I do know is that the economics of it don't make sense anymore. And so either prices have to go up, taxes have to shift, something to keep there. One example. Here's a second example. This one's super fascinating to me. Where do people find their spouse? Number one way is through friends. Second most common way is through work. So let's just think about that for a second. If you're not going to work as much, you don't have all the same opportunities, you're not building the same friendships there, will people be less likely to find that person that they get married to? It seems like that's a real high-likelihood possibility, and it seems like a really strong hypothesis that that happens. You know, what happens within society— I don't know if it's good or bad— but if fewer people are getting married, or they're getting married later in life, I don't know what that means. But you could talk to lots of sociologists, and they'd probably tell you it means something, something big and something important. And those are just like things that right off the bat are gonna have huge impacts from the shift to remote and hybrid work. How big or how small, how long-lasting, what is the ripple of the ripple? But what I believe is true is the second-order implications from the things that happen tend to be more profound than the first-order implications. Just think about what happens to our communities when there's less public transportation. What happens to our families when fewer people are getting married? Like I said, I don't know the answers to those, but they're going to have big changes and big impacts that occur.

Yeah, and along those lines, I agree 100% that I think the ramifications of what has happened here in the past couple years are going to be unraveling and unfolding literally for decades to come. And so along those lines, I've started to see this new C-suite position called the Chief Purpose Officer. And that may actually fall right in line with what we're talking about here in terms of what is the nature of work? What is the nature of an organization? What is the responsibility of a company? How should an employee feel what their connection is to a company? So if you could, tell me a little bit about this idea of a chief purpose officer in a company. What does it mean? What do they do?

Why is it important? Yeah, we talked about a little bit. Around how do you attract and retain talent, how do you keep them from quitting in this remote hybrid world. One of the tools that I think is available is give those employees a reason for being together that isn't about making money, because the making money part of it is important, and I don't mean to imply that it's not, but it's a very rational reason for being, and for some people that's the right answer. Beyond that, more people want a reason for being about the impact that they've got on the world around them and how they're making it better on the world around them. So one of the things that we're really seeing arise, and just like you, is this idea of a chief purpose officer of what do you stand for? And that's not just around diversity, equity, inclusion. That's not just around making donations to charities. Much more than that, it's why do you exist as a company? How are you going to make the world net better off by what you're doing. And helping employees understand what that looks like, I think, is absolutely critical. And then I'd layer one additional thing on this question of Chief Purpose Officer, which I personally find really interesting. Depending upon the survey data that you look at, somewhere between two-thirds and three-fourths of employees expect their employer to get actively involved in the societal, political, and cultural debates of the day. And companies do not have a choice anymore but to get involved. Their employees want them involved. Their customers expect them to be involved and support one thing versus another thing. How do you navigate through all of those decisions? What happens with Roe v. Wade? And how, as an employer, do you decide if you have a reaction to that or not? It's incredibly difficult places to navigate. You've got employees that feel very passionately about both sides of an issue. But both sides of your workforce are going to expect you to do something. And how do you navigate those difficult challenges? And this, this chief purpose officer is going to have a lot on their plate as the company's role in society moves from our purpose is to make money for our shareholders to our purpose is to make things better for our stakeholders. And that's a very different, subtle but different approach that companies have to take. And they need people to help them do that.

Yeah, and this idea of these big issues that companies face, we've seen examples with Disney and the governor of Florida, for example, where Disney initially tried to not really do a whole lot, but then their employees basically forced them to take a stand on what was going on down there. And again, you know, with Eric Pleiner, we talked a little bit about that. So you can go back and listen to that episode. But as our world is continuing to polarize and separate, I think that that is going to be an issue that every leader is going to have to address. And you can't just hope that it'll go away or that your employees don't care about it, because they absolutely do.

Yeah, and those conversations are occurring within your company. You have a choice as an employer to say, am I going to be part of the conversation, or am I going to stick my head in the sand and hope it goes away? There's a right answer from my perspective that you need to be part of the conversation. It's just a question of how do you do it in a way that is productive?

Well, and yet on the other end, we've got companies like Coinbase and Basecamp who have said, you're not going to bring those issues to work. We're here to work. We're here to do a job. And if you want to have those kinds of conversations, do it on your own time. Now, there was, of course, some backlash at those companies, and people quit and so on. Everyone has an opinion, and, you know, we'll see how it shakes out. And again, it all goes back to your culture. It's like, what do you believe? What do you stand And that's why it's so important to have this introspection and this self-reflection to really figure out what do I want my company to be? What do I want to stand for? And what am I going to go to bat for? And what am I going to die for? And that's more important today, I think, than ever. Well, Brian, I'm going to ask you another question here. We've got companies like Google, Netflix, and Amazon. And I think a lot of people look at those organizations as leaders and they say, hey, if they're doing it, it must be a good idea. And Netflix, for example, one of the things they're famous for was the big culture deck that Patty McCord had a strong hand in putting together a number of years ago. What are some ideas that you can think of maybe from those 3 companies that you would say those are really effective ideas and those are still effective today? And maybe 1 or 2 that seemed right in the moment a few years ago, but no longer makes sense in this environment.

Any thoughts on that? Yeah, I get to spend a lot of time looking across companies and trying to figure out who's really doing the most innovative things, who's really come up with new ideas, new approaches. And one of the things that I've learned is that you can look at a lot of those big companies and see what they're doing and try to emulate them. The advantage that some of those companies have is they have business models where they just print money. And if you're lucky enough to work at one of those organizations or have your own printing press, then you should absolutely take a look at them and try to learn from them. What I've learned through time though, personally, is that the right set of companies to learn from aren't necessarily that group because they're just resourced differently. The best set of companies to learn from are those that had near-death moments and survived. And what did they do? And the reason why I tend to think about those companies to a greater degree is that when they have that near-death moment, they didn't have suitcases full of money to throw at a problem. They had to be frugal. They had to be innovative. They had to understand the core problem and solve that core problem. And I would actually encourage people to look at the, the near death rather than the hugely successful to learn from. With all that said though, I think when I look across all those organizations, the thing that really unites them the most are two thoughts that I think are really applicable now. The first one is that big or small, some of the companies that you mentioned, some of the ones that I'm thinking about, they've all had a very similar realization, which is you don't have workers, you don't have employees, you have human beings that happen to be working for you. And how do you treat those people like human beings, not like workers? And understand that they have a life and work is part of their life rather than work is their life, or that they're balancing work with their life. They have taken a step back and they've all said, work is part of your life, and we're going to have different value propositions associated with that. And we're going to be clear about what that looks like, but they've realized that. And so even in the case of Netflix and their culture deck, you could say, well, they really just cared about high productivity, high rewards. Absolutely true.. But what they realized and what they were clear about is how that value proposition fits into your life. And is that the sort of life that you want to have or not? So it's not that they were humane, it's that they were human and created different human value propositions that were there. And you could, as an employee, pick which human value proposition makes the most sense for you. Some it is, I'm going to work a ton and I'm going to get paid really well. Some it's going to be more paternal, more nurturing. Any of those are fine. But they were clear about thinking about as a human being, not just as a worker. It's kind of one thought. Second thought, they all have a set of things that they stand for. And what they've done really smartly is all of the decisions about how they engage their workforce are mapped through those sets of things they stand for. So the benefits that you offer, the support that you offer, your performance management system, your learning and development system, how you treat people during pandemics, all of that is aligned with what their values are. So one of the most important things that I think leaders can do is take a step back and say, what are our values? And as you think about any decision you're making, not just these ones around, should we get involved in this political debate or not, anything like that, everything you do, does it align with our values or not? If it does, then it's probably a good decision to make. If it doesn't, then you probably shouldn't make that decision. Having values-based decisions, and not to say one set of values are better than the other, you can have different sets of values and be successful, but that your decisions are aligned with whatever values you have, that I think is one of the most profound lessons that I've learned by talking with all these different companies and executives through the years.

Yeah. Well, what's coming through loud and clear here, Brian, with the conversation is So often we hear people talk about values and mission and morals and ethics, and we think, ah, you know, that's the soft stuff. That's the touchy-feely stuff. But the fact is, that is the most important stuff. And that's the hard stuff in that if you can get that right, and if you can really understand those things, how you think about those things and what those mean to you, and you can effectively communicate that through the organization, you can imbue it throughout the organization, and you're going to attract people for whom those are desirable traits and characteristics, you're going to have a winning organization. All the other stuff about strategy and tactics, I mean, that stuff can be more mechanical, but it's this glue that keeps the whole organization together. I think particularly in this environment where people are going to be working remotely, What's going to be that glue that's going to keep people together when they're not in the office every day? It's these soft things that we're talking about right here.

Yeah, and that's where I think the future of talent, HR, those sorts of things, it's going to be this amazing combination of brilliant quantitative analytics combined with values and morals around the messiness that human beings are. And those that strike the right balance between that science and art, those organizations will be rewarded with better performance. Arguably, even more importantly, those human beings that happen to work for those organizations that do that well will be rewarded with better lives. And when we do this well, our companies are going to outperform, and those human beings that happen to work for us are going to have better lives, and their families are going to have better lives. And I think when we do it well, there's a lot of gold at the end of that rainbow. And it's going to be hard work. It's going to take time to get there. It's going to take effort to get there. We're going to make mistakes getting there. But when we do, we are going to be better off as employers and our employees are going to be better off as people.

Very well said, Brian. Well, let's wrap up here with two quick things. So one is, if folks want to get in touch with you and the folks at Gartner, what would be the best way for folks to connect?

Yeah, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn or Twitter, @BrianKropp on Twitter, B-R-I-A-N-K-R-O-P-P, or check out smarterwithgartner.com is another place where we put a lot of our insights out there. Excellent.

All right. So final thing here is I've got a little thing going here where I ask my previous guest to come up with a question that I should ask my next guest, and they have no idea who my next guest is. So the pressure is on in this moment. It is. It is. Yeah. So the previous guest, her question was, what is a common mistaken assumption that people make about you?

Uh, you know, people hear about me and it's like, oh, you got a PhD, you're a researcher. You must be really sophisticated, highbrow, and all those sorts of things. I am one of the most amazing lowbrow people you can imagine. I'm a college football fan. I'm a lowbrow sort of guy. The basic things in life matter a lot more to me than the more sophisticated things in life. I would rather just be hanging out on a beach somewhere than go to a fancy city and see museums. Even though if you looked at my resume, you'd be like, "Oh, super sophisticated, highbrow guy." I'm not that guy.

At all. Okay, so college football team, who you rooting for?

Uh, Clemson Tigers. There's only one that really matters.

Well, I think we could have an argument about that. And then favorite beach? So hanging out on the beach, where are you hanging out?

My in-laws actually have a house, and we've got one right next to them on, uh, the Chesapeake Bay. So we go there, and it's great to just spend some time on the bay and then having crabs on the back porch. Outstanding.

All right, Brian, I appreciate it. Thanks for the conversation and the wisdom.

I appreciate your time here today. Sounds good.

Talk to you soon. My key takeaway here is don't just pay lip service to the idea that the soft stuff is the hard stuff. It's not only the hard stuff, it's the best stuff. And if you want to stand out in a sea of sameness, then spend some serious time getting clear on your values, morals, ethics, standards of performance, team member wellness, and wrap all of that into creating a culture by design, not default. All right, that's all for today. Make sure you like and share this podcast through your favorite social platforms. And for more great podcasts, visit us at barons.com/podcasts.

Take care and be safe. This podcast was brought to you by Wells Fargo Advisors. Looking for a firm your clients can't outgrow? Wells Fargo Advisors offers financial advisors full balance sheet solutions with wealth planning, investment products, banking, and lending that meet the needs of affluent to ultra-high net worth clients. Build your practice your way and on your schedule with independent and employee model options designed to meet your needs today and tomorrow.

Learn more at joinwfadvisors.com.