Recruiting and retaining the right talent continues to be highly challenging for many organisations. Understanding the key drivers here is critical for any company that wants to achieve a competitive talent advantage.
It’s starting to become clear that the impact of prioritising wellbeing on an organisation’s culture is significant enough to have a powerful influence on hiring and retention. So, what can employees do to move the needle here quickly?
My guest this week is Beth Ridley, founder and CEO of The Ridley Consulting Group. Beth works with CEOs to achieve thriving workplace cultures and embed diversity, equity and inclusion values into their business. She has some brilliant insights to share on the relationship between wellness, culture, recruiting and wellbeing and also offers some highly actionable advice.
In the interview, we discuss:
• Culture and leadership
• Diversity as an asset
• Applying an inclusive lens to leadership
• The role of culture and wellness in attraction and retention
• How can recruiting be more inclusive?
• Values, expectations and outcomes
• Elements of Wellness
• The value of wellness for employers
• How small things can make a big difference
• Generational expectations
Listen to this podcast on Apple Podcasts.
Transcript:
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[Recruiting Future theme]
Matt: Hi, there. This is Matt Alder, welcome to Episode 558 of the Recruiting Future podcast. Recruiting and retaining the right talent continues to be highly challenging for many organizations. Understanding the key drivers here are critical for any company that wants to achieve a competitive talent advantage. It’s starting to become clear that the impact on prioritizing wellbeing on an organization’s culture is significant enough to have a powerful influence on hiring and retention. So, what can employers do to move the needle here quickly? My guest this week is Beth Ridley, founder and CEO of The Ridley Consulting Group. Beth works with CEOs to achieve thriving workplace cultures and embed diversity, equity, and inclusive values into their businesses. She has some brilliant insights to share on the relationship between wellness, culture, recruiting, and wellbeing. And also offers some highly actionable advice.
Matt: Hi, Beth, and welcome to the podcast.
Beth: Hi, there. Thank you for having me.
Matt: An absolute pleasure to have you on the show. Please, could you introduce yourself and tell everyone what you do?
Beth: Yeah, my name is Beth Ridley. I’m based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and I’m a leadership and workplace culture expert. And so, my consulting firm, Ridley Consulting Group, we do all things related to helping leaders develop a thriving workplace culture because that is paramount when it comes to attracting, engaging, and retaining top talent. So, we dive into everything around diversity, equity, and inclusion, belonging. A big thing what we do is we work with a lot of leaders who maybe got in their roles because they have deep subject matter expertise and a lot of tenure, but never really saw themselves as people leaders. So that people element doesn’t come naturally to them, but they really want to get better in that space because they know it’s important to be able to inspire talent to bring out the best in everybody in order to achieve their goals.
Matt: And tell us a little bit more about your background, your story, how’d you get to do what you do now?
Beth: Well, I have a really diverse background, so I have about 30 years in corporate mostly, worked a little bit in the nonprofit sector, but half of my time was spent overseas and so I’ve lived and worked in London, Bangkok, Tokyo, South Africa. So, for me, when I think of diversity as an asset, not something to be feared or tolerated at work, but when you bring people together that have different life experiences, backgrounds, skills, customs, traditions, that all leads to more creativity and innovation if you allow that diversity to really thrive. So that was sort of my first step into diversity, equity, inclusion, before those words even meant anything.
Then, my work in the United States, I had a lot of different leadership roles, from leading marketing to technology, to sales, operations. I also did lead DEI efforts for a large financial services company. But what I found is that really the work of creating culture has to be more than just something that’s done as an initiative out of HR. It really has to be every leader’s priority. And it doesn’t mean that you have to take time away from doing the things that you need to do as a leader. It’s just about doing those things that you do with a mindset that appreciates diversity, values inclusion, and takes a flexible or an equity approach to what you do. And it’s really, really, really easy to find ways to do that in your day to day if you’re just aware of it.
Matt: Mm-hmm
Beth: And that’s where you really start to get the biggest results, because at that point, it costs nothing to do but the upside is huge. So, it’s always a positive return on investment when you just apply an inclusive lens to leadership, as I like to say. So, I think it was just sort of coming to that from my own learning of what helped as a leader and realizing that nobody was really approaching diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging quite from that lens and making it really simple and relevant to leadership no matter where you are in the organization, especially if you’re not in HR.
Matt: No, interesting. That makes a lot of sense. It’s a very dynamic time at the moment in talent markets and work and all those things. So, from your perspective, what are the biggest people or talent challenges that you’re seeing in the market at the moment?
Beth: I’m going to say two, because I’ve been to just– it’s like the season of conferences and I’ve attended my own for my own skill building, and the two topics are always emerging together, which is culture and wellness. Culture and wellness, I think we’ve finally settled on that is what matters when it comes to attracting, engaging, and especially retaining talent which I think is a big topic that all my clients care about. It was a mad scramble to hire people. They’re not fully hired yet, but they’re in a better position than when they were, let’s even say, six months ago. They spend a lot of money to get the talent that they need. They are desperate to keep talent because it is expensive. Attrition is expensive. So, it really comes down to culture and wellness because at the end of the day, there are only three reasons why people don’t show up at work, either they are sick, someone in their family is sick, or they just don’t want to be there. [laughs]
So, it’s really culture and wellness. And the two, at this point, we used to treat them separately. But it’s almost like you can no longer pull the two apart.
Matt: Interesting. And we’ll talk more about that as we sort of move through the conversation. To start with recruiting, I mean, “How can recruiting be more inclusive?”
Beth: Oh, well, there’s so many ways. So, I’ll start first. And to me, it’s inclusive of what. So, it’s inclusive of diversity. What do we mean by diversity? We mean in the broadest sense of the word, diverse skills, experience, life experience, background, leadership styles, all of that matters because again, when you have more diversity that just leads to– you can look at your challenges and opportunities in a business from broader lenses than if you didn’t have diversity and that leads to better discussions, which leads to better decisions and better outcomes. So, I think the first step to being more inclusive is to really think about and be specific what’s the diversity that’s lacking in our organization that could really complement the skills and the experience and the expertise that we already have.
Sometimes it is around the obvious things, gender, race, ethnicity, that does matter. And it is also things around professional experience, geographic diversity, different leadership styles. So, I think there should just be a real conversation around what’s the diversity that will enhance the count that we already have and then that helps you to have a more inclusive approach once we know what we’re trying to include.
And then I would say just the second main strategy or best practice is after you define the diversity that you’re interested in cultivating into your organization, be very clear on your company values, your expectations, your desired outcomes. That should never waver, like that’s a commonality that’s good, but be open to the package that someone brings in order to support those values, those expectations, those outcomes.
There are many different ways that people can think about approach, look at the lens that they bring to support those core things that should be shared across the organization. So, I would say again, it’s a lens, it’s a mindset, but those are two important things to really be thinking about if you want to have successful inclusive recruiting strategies.
Matt: You mentioned retention right at the start of the conversation and one of the things that doesn’t get talked about perhaps as much as it should as part of this whole picture is onboarding. Do companies need to think differently about how they onboard people, and how does that affect retention?
Beth: Yeah, one of the main things to think differently about onboarding is it’s more than just a day or a week. So, if you think about– again, belonging is such a key piece of retention. Everyone wants to feel like they matter, they’re valued, they can be more of who they are versus having to work extra hard to fit in. And there’s nothing that makes you feel less that sense of belonging than when you’re brand new at the organization. And it takes more than just a day to feel that you sort of belong and you’re valued. It can take up to a year or longer. So, onboarding really should be more of an ongoing process.
There are ways of doing it where again, it doesn’t have to take up a lot of time or money but you could pair the new hire with– some companies have like culture concierge, so someone who is respected in their organization who can help the new employee navigate all the unspoken rules and just sort of things that you can’t read about or learn at an orientation. Making sure that the new employee has regular lunches or coffee chats scheduled throughout the year with people that they should be meeting, not just in their immediate work team, but across the organization, so that they see that there are many different types of people that can be successful and many different career paths within your organization and so that they feel connected to a bigger whole than just their immediate work team.
And frankly, you can also ask the new employee what do they need to feel that they’re part of something and feel that sense of belonging. And there might be very easy ways to help to accommodate that for the employee because the needs may be different for each individual. So, I think a long-term view, a holistic view, it goes beyond just equipping them to do their immediate job better, and also a flexible view. What does one individual need in order to feel that true sense of belonging, that should all be baked into the onboarding process.
Matt: What are the other key drivers of retention that you’re seeing in the current labour market?
Beth: I would say again it sort of falls into categories of what helps individuals thrive. We all want to show up feeling like where we spend the majority of our hours in any given day fill us up more than deplete us. And so, the categories of that are physical wellbeing of course. So, your physical health, emotional wellbeing, so belonging gets to that somewhat. There’s also a mental health component, there’s also occupational wellbeing. So, do you feel equipped in your job? And you feel that you’ve got opportunities to learn and grow and develop? Spiritual wellbeing, maybe that might be through community service. You’re doing something for a higher good. And then intellectual wellbeing. Do you feel challenged? Do you feel that it’s a culture that can help you take risks and learn from mistakes as opposed to mistakes are punitive and it’s a scary environment to want to speak up and step outside of your comfort zone.
So, I think all of those categories really speak to retention. That’s a lot to take on. I think companies should be thinking about small ways they can start to invest in that but also ask employees. And again, to me, the whole thing that’s really exciting about talking about retention now is we’re so much smarter. So, we did collectively a huge investment in themes around diversity, equity, inclusion.
Getting smarter and more comfortable, talking about wellness from a physical and emotional standpoint, let’s merge all those together and know that what someone needs to thrive is probably going to be different for each person. So, how can we take a more flexible approach, customize someone’s wellbeing journey? And again, not be afraid to test, learn, and modify. And don’t assume, “Oh, this is going to be hard. This is going to be expensive,” because again, mostly it comes down to the environment that the leader is creating simply by how they choose to engage in your daily interactions with people, I think goes a long, long, long way.
Matt: I think it’s really interesting because breaking wellbeing down there into lots of different categories. I think that in many organizations it’s still seen in a very kind of simplistic level. And as you say, it’s critical, it’s a critical part of retention. How can employers think about this differently? How can they actually build strategies around this? And what value is there in it for them and their employees in terms of approaching it in a more strategic and holistic way?
Beth: Well, everybody wants to know sort of what the bottom line is. Is it either going to help us make money or save money? So, I think start with the assumption that it’s really about the cost savings with the retention. It’s really expensive to find talent, more expensive when you can’t keep them. So, continuing to invest in finding the absolute best talent and all these strategies help with that because obviously people want to work for companies that have a thriving workplace culture, but continue to invest in them to protect your investment in your people, to minimize retention. So, I would say start there and that will help elevate it as an actual real business priority as opposed to nice to do when we have time and money, which is never.
Then, I would say again, so much of this needs to be customized for your employees, for your work environment, for your industry. And I would say ask, don’t assume. Ask via surveys and ask via interviews and empower employees to be sort of like the representative of their peers by forming a council or a working team to sift through the feedback and to decide, “What are, at a minimum, your low hanging fruit initiatives? And what are some longer-term things that you can invest in?”
And I think companies who I do this work with are always really surprised of what– And I always tell them, “Why don’t you just get together with a diverse group of people who can bring diverse perspectives and brainstorm for five minutes? What could we do to help employees thrive or pose the question that’s appropriate for you?” And it’s amazing the ideas that can come out in five minutes. Okay, well now what if you actually did it more seriously, and again, did some actual gathering data, feedback, survey, and spent maybe like two hours sifting through that?”
A lot of times the ideas that are going to be most impactful are, again, are those small things that can make a big difference. Just give you one actual tangible example. Something that’s emerged from a lot of my clients is this concept of having safe and brave spaces just to talk. And employees are smart and savvy. They know a lot of the things that they need to thrive are outside of the scope of what an employer can provide for them. It’s like things that they sort of have to do on their own, but, but sometimes just the opportunity to talk about something and to be heard is huge. And to be able to talk about things without feeling like they’re going to be marked as a failure, a bad employee, a complainer.
A tangible example, I did some work for a nonprofit organization. They have a lot of social service workers that do a lot of social work and it’s really taxing emotionally. They have to bottle it all up and always be professional and never talk about what maybe they experience that’s really impacting them emotionally at work, that’s super hard. They were really suffering from burnout and attrition. And when we asked employees what they needed, they said, “Can I just have a safe space to talk and share?” Not for anyone to fix or solve problems, but to just sort of release it and know that I’m not alone and not have it go into my performance record where I could be penalized. And they experimented with that in their own way. And it was huge.
People could opt in, gather for 30 minutes with food and just kind of share. And it was not a complaint fest. It was, “This is what I’m struggling with.” And asking their coworkers to listen, not to solve a problem, but just to listen to be heard and that’s it. And it gave them that boost that they could go throughout the rest of their day. And the byproduct of this is it really deepened relationships and connections is the number one source of joy and meaning in life. So small things like that, I think you’d be surprised of if you just spend a little bit of time asking people what can come out of it.
Matt: So, final question. How is everything going to evolve as we move forward? It’s a time of great change of great disruption. What do you hope the future of work is going to look like?
Beth: Oh, that’s a really good question. I think all of this stuff is going to continue to evolve. We’re going to get smarter and more comfortable and confident with what diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, emotional wellbeing looks at work.
Well, first of all, the fact that we’re talking about it and we have language around this is huge. And second, I do think it’s going to change, fundamentally change, what it means to be a leader. A leader is no longer a technician, a subject matter expert, or someone who’s just been doing their role forever. I think just the definition of leadership is someone who is not afraid to have these conversations, even if it pushes them outside of their comfort zone, is willing to be a little bit vulnerable in order to initiate these conversations so that people feel comfortable opening up and leading with more empathy and understanding. I think that’s going to be the shift, and that shift has already been happening. I just think these things are going to accelerate it. I see no turning back, no turning back. [Matt laughs]
People won’t stand for, especially these Gen Zers might– being through three of them, I see the decisions that they’re making. And I have this funny little quote, I don’t know what generation you fall in, but after I explain, you can tell me if you agree. So I’m Gen X, and I say us, “Gen Xers, we’re like just happy to have a job.”
[laughter]
We didn’t ask for anything, and we don’t, because in the back of our minds we always feel like, we’re just one mistake away from being fired, so we’re just happy to have a job. And I would say millennials were like, they were savvy enough to get the job and then started asking for stuff once they got the job. Gen Zers, they are not afraid to ask what they want and what they expect in the interview.
Matt: Yeah
Beth: [laughs] I have never– they’re brazen. And think what you may, but they are fundamentally changing because they have this attitude, like, “I have options, and that option may be driving Uber,” and that’s an awesome option for them. This gig economy and the ability, the resources to be self-employed make it possible that they’re okay, like, “I’ll step away, it’s just this culture is not a place where I can thrive or it’s filling me up. I’ll do something else until I find something else.” So anyways, I think they’re forcing that hand as well.
Matt: Absolutely. And as a Generation X, with decades of career trauma behind me [Beth laughs] in terms of having and keeping jobs, I say that’s absolutely fantastic, that’s the way things are going.
Beth: Love, love, love.
Math Alder: Beth, thank you very much for talking to me.
Beth: Awesome, thank you.
Matt: My thanks to Beth. You can subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify or via your podcasting app of choice. Please also follow the show on Instagram. You can find us by searching for Recruiting Future. You can find all the past episodes at recruitingfuture.com. On that site, you can also subscribe to our monthly newsletter, Recruiting Future Feast and get the inside track about everything that’s coming up on the show. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next time, and I hope you’ll join me.
