Engagement, Retention, and Employee Career Planning Part 1

Speaker A: Well welcome all who are here and thank you for those listening in. I'm Rania Francourt and today's session is employee retention, employee engagement and as uh, us, the employer, the manager, the leader of the organization, what can we do to help our employees along their career journeys within the organization that we run and how can we retain that talent? So the format is here always as we invite Randall Craig, CEO of the Brain Trust to come and share a few ideas, some thoughts to get us started and then we'll uh, we jump into questions from you, questions from me. As usual, Randall has no idea what's coming his way. What we're going to ask, what I'm going to ask makes it more interesting a little bit about Randall. He has founded several successful startups. He's held a longtime position at a big four consulting firm. He's been a senior executive at American Public Company. He's the author of eight books in the speaker hall of Fame, Master facilitator. He's helped over 100 organizations scale and he works with me at the BrainTrust Professional Institute helping organizations grow their businesses with executive coaching, leadership retreats and facilitating conversations with teams. Okay Randall, where do you want to start today?

Speaker B: Well first of all it's wonderful to see everybody, um, you know, I think we realize most people spend more time in their career than anything else they do in life. So it makes sense to plan your career strategically. Um, and, but, but this is really from an individual's perspective, you know and my question today is what role does the organization play? Should they play? Now traditionally, you know, organizations played a very much ah, a cradle to grave kind of thing with um, uh, a lot of investment in training, leadership, uh, development, more. And then all of a sudden there's zero. Uh, there's layoffs, uh, there's no learning and development investments. Um, there is, there is um, very little leadership training, um, and, and, and very little else. And, and certainly with AI um, this question about how much we should invest our, in our employees rather than just say laying them off is also a big thing. So, so you know it's going to be, you know, it's going to be a difficult time on one hand and my question really today is, is um, is there cost to all this strategically and might we want to take a different look at what we might want to do with respect to our, our employees, uh, to actually well, be a little bit more strategic And I guess the question is why the heck do we really care? And, and maybe what is the cost? Um, let me just Give a couple examples. I don't think this is rocket science. Less engagement, um, there's lower retention, um, there's less alignment across the team and certainly with the individual team members and the org's uh, uh, Overall uh, goals etc. There's ah, greater disruption. There's a lot of organizational knowledge and industry knowledge that leaves the organization that goes elsewhere when they go elsewhere, perhaps a competitor, uh, there might be some IP loss as well because, so there's all these costs to all this and you know, I don't buy G. Once AI is fully, fully know, it really won't matter. I, I think people do matter. You know, um, years ago a steel company would say, uh, our product is steel, um, our strength is people. I do think they, they still make, make a, a ah difference. And so that's how I wanted to frame it. I've, I've got a bunch of other thoughts and some ideas as well. But um, Rania, let's just open up for questions from, from everybody and I'm sure if there's not so many, you'll have some as well. Um, and just see where it goes.

Speaker A: So a disclaimer from me. Um, we've done different sessions before on leadership that include you know, the leader, employee dynamic. We've done sessions on culture before. We've done sessions on motivating employees and that staff development. So if any question comes from me, I always try to brainstorm different ideas that we haven't covered before. You're welcome to pick up on those uh, topics we've done before on our website or on YouTube or Spotify. Um, so a clarifying question to start with. Randall. Okay. We were, you and I are working usually with, directly with the senior people and we're advising them on how they're leading their team. So when we're talking now for this conversation, when we're talking about retaining talent, uh, you know, engaging people, career paths, are we talking about those senior positions or are we talking about the whole everyone in the org chart? Like what is, what do you want on the table for today?

Speaker B: I'd like us to focus on the more senior roles. Okay. And I'm not talking about the C suite, although that's very important. I'm talking about the in, in the largest organizations several layers down to that level. Because if you do the right thing, my view anyway is if you've got the right uh, behaviors and processes modeled up top to the next level and you require them to teach their children, if you will, to teach their children, it should Sort of cascade throughout the organization. Right. Um, uh, that being said, you know, there's a number of things that the organization as a whole should do culturally so that even though we might be focusing on senior management and perhaps, uh, a little bit of the middle management, um, everybody should get some benefit out of a culture that focuses on building engagement and stewardship and so on.

Speaker A: Employee retention really are the conscious choices that an organization makes to keep their employees, keep their talent. It's their strategy, the practices, the policies. Now tell me if your experience is different than mine, Randall. When I'm out in the zeitgeist, when I'm reading books about business, when I'm clicking around on LinkedIn, the, when, when the concept of employee retention or engagement, like, hits me, it's either in the context of like, statistics, like the show off or like, ooh, the scary statistic. Or it's, you know, in the context of like the brag. These are like the perks that our company, our company offers. Meanwhile, if you peel back often, it's not so perky behind the scenes. You know, there's always good and bad in every organization. Like, do you, can you help clarify, like when you're talking with, with a client or senior person about employee retention? Like, what, what is that?

Speaker B: So what I would do is, I would say it starts before. That's the end result. You do a bunch of, you have a bunch of inputs. The output is, retention is good, retention is bad. Right. Okay. So one of those inputs I think is very, very important is employee engagement. If people are not engaged, you'll either, um, they'll leave or worse, they'll actually stay. Right. And so we want to make sure that we were focusing on that kind of dynamic first. And there's a whole bunch of other stuff. Is the comp in the right way? Is it a, um, psychologically safe environment? Okay. Is it one, for example, where this alignment. There's a whole bunch of other factors, excuse me, um, having to do with employee retention, by the way, the not least of which is that people rarely leave the company. Usually they leave their boss, they quit their boss. So, so I, I think that if we focus on engagement a little bit more. Okay. We'll probably have, ah, an employee who actually, um, likes what they're doing and yeah, this is important work. Right. And, and thus will affect the retention statistics. Right. You know, we, we want to, um, you know, a before the hand stat, not an after the fact, um, look at the result kind of stat, which is, oh, gee, we lose X amount. We've got such a high churn or, or whatever. Churn is so expensive. Uh, so we certainly want to avoid that. Let's work on, let's work on engagement

Speaker A: everyone here I want to share. Randall, if you have anything top of mind for you. I'm going to keep going here. Um, if you do any reading on these topics, pick any books from the Library, go to YouTube, watch your the top five most popular webinars. It's always the same recommendations. You listed some of them right? It's always the same. Those, those you know, how to win over your employees, how to retain them, etc, and yet we know both employee engagement and retention, the results are, you know, suffer across the board. Like Dr. Randall, like what's the diagnosis? Is it that companies are not doing these obvious things? Or are these obvious things really sort of like not the whole picture? Or are they, they're harder to implement than people think.

Speaker B: So, so they, they are harder and they're also easier. I, I, I think apathy, laziness, uncertainty, um, um, not knowing some of what these buttons and levers are. All these things are, are um, things that need to have, need to be in place frankly before a manager actually uh, can do some of these things. I would say that we should look through it through almost two different lenses. One lens is the one on one interaction that happens between a manager or a leader and their direct report. Uh, the interaction, for example the liaison that happens between uh, that manager and their team at whatever level of the organization. And if we think about what can happen within the context of that one and one relationship, there's a whole bunch of stuff there. I got a whole bunch of ideas we can go into if you like. The second part of it is I think is ah, a little bit more systems thinking organization wide. What are some of the um, uh, processes and structures and systems that need to be put in place organization wide. And I could just run through a big list. Um, you know, are we doing a good job as an organization to connect everybody to that greater purpose? Right. If everyone is buying into that greater purpose, everyone's not doing it just because their boss says or just because they're going to get a commission or whatever, but they feel that, that this is, this is God's work. This is like really, really important stuff. We're going to make a difference in the world by what we're doing here. And if you take a look at many of the organizations that truly are mission and purpose driven, this is something that can animate everything. Um, I think um, Another, uh, big driver of this from an organization, uh, perspective is the tone from the top. Are the senior executives as a CEO and everyone in the C suite modeling the behaviors that they actually want? Are they, quote, ruthless and, and authoritarian? And this is the way it goes is if that's what you're modeling, that's what you're going to get. If it's, gee, we don't care about people, or, gee, we don't hold people to account, guess what? That's what you're going to get as well. So if we think about what we want to model, everyone looks at the senior folks and says, okay, to be successful, I got to be like that, right? And I think that that's, that's something that's really important. Here's another one. Uh, how about, um, uh, internal versus external hires? Many organizations say, you know what, um, and it's, it's a really problem, a big leadership problem. If you hire from outside, you're going to get outside perspectives. You'll avoid group think. You'll get. It's a, it's like new ingredients into the innovation mix. Okay? You've got that opportunity to have some new views. Okay. On any particular topic. Right. On the other hand, if you, uh, hire from within, you promote from within the roles, you're saying, hey, listen, you do a good job here. You know the organization, you know the clientele, you know the systems, the processes, the suppliers, you know, all of that. And you've got that informal network that you've got in order to sort of make things happen. And by the way, you work really hard, you can get promoted into that role. And so that's something that's highly, highly motivating, uh, for people when they're thinking about what the next step in their career is. If they always think that somebody externally is going to get that role that they're really going for, they're going to say, why bother? There's going to be some disengagement. So how do you get the right balance between those two is something that organizations and the best ones do. This, um, that organizations need to think through. Um, simple things. Employment, uh, engagement surveys. Um, big HR departments are very, very happy to do lots and lots of surveys, right? And this is one of those ones where you can gauge what's the change, right. Over the time, uh, leadership retreats. That's another great example. How do you get alignment so that everyone's doing the same message, right? Are you doing that kind of thing or are you not doing that kind of thing? Not just at the senior executive level, but maybe at the divisional level or at the certain team level where everyone can work on the business. Um, Rania, should I keep on going or should I take a break? Please?

Speaker A: Donald, let's hear.

Speaker C: Um. Randall, this is such an important topic and you're so darn brilliant on this stuff. You talked about alignment. I wrote it down. Alignment with our greater purpose. And my experience is that one of the problems is that many businesses don't have a greater purpose.

Speaker B: And this is, ah, um, this is a bit of a problem because you know, we, we were taught certainly in, in business school years ago that uh, you know, the, the, the, the stakeholders are really the shareholders and gee, we have to make sure that we focus exclusively, uh, on um, shareholder return. And in most large organizations it's quarterly short term, uh, performance so that you can keep the stock price up and you get your bonus. Okay, to speak crassly. Right. And then all of a sudden we've got this, this whole um, shift to, to um, a little bit more of gee, we've got all kinds of stakeholders. We've got the labor force as a stakeholder, we've got overall society, we've got this group, we've got that group and the other group, right? And we sort of moved there and all of a sudden a lot of people had this big aha moment. You're right. Okay. And, and, and that makes it a little bit harder sometimes for the person on the street, particularly the employee, to say, wait, what am I supposed to do here? Am I supposed to um, you know, cowtow to the objectives of all these different stakeholders? Or am I supposed to be focused on what that mission is? And gee, let me look at what that mission is because it's uh, you know, Donald, I think, you know this. It's not those words on a poster that's outside the elevator, right? It's got, it's got to be something that's, that's totally intrinsic.

Speaker C: And I think that a customer is anyone whose enthusiastic support you require to grow your business or your life. Treat them all like customers. So your bank manager is a customer. Your team, internal customers. It's just a different mindset. And as you said, uh, back in business school and I went there long before you did, but the um, that was the focus and it's, it's really changed so much now and for the better. Although we see a, we see a drifting away from that more holistic approach lately that concerns me.

Speaker B: Mhm. Yeah, I think it's uh, I think It's a back and forth and, and the alignment with, with purpose that you know, um, which by the way means that you actually have to decide on what that purpose is. You have to decide on what that mission is. Okay. And then frankly, um, uh, probably another real problem is, is that there isn't congruent internal and external communications. Right? Um, yes, there might be a communications group that sends out a newsletter. There may be posters outside the elevator that say something. But as the behaviors of those in, in. In who've got responsibility for leading the organization congruent with that, uh, with all the managers talking to their staff every single day in those meetings, are they saying, are they saying that? Right. Is there a conversation? If I went, for example, the frontline workers and said, can you please, um, define um, what the organization's mission is? Uh, I was leading a retreat g must been around 10, 15 years ago, um, where I said to everyone around the table, can you just tell uh, me what such and such was? Okay. And, and it was, it was kind of like um, the division's mission, if you will. And everybody had different words. Now it's okay to use different words if that's what you know, makes you understand it. But those different words were different concepts altogether. And so when they meet with their customers, everybody around that table, guess what? The words are not going to be the same. Right? The company might mean different things to different people. And internally it just sort of, it just reverberates backwards. Because if everyone isn't aligned, um, you know, we've, we've got a problem. Some people think it should be this, some people think it should be that. And people, people, uh, will, will govern themselves accordingly. Which, which is different.

Speaker C: Um, the Old Testament spoke about this. And I'm no Bible thumping guy by a long stretch, but the, oh, in the Old Testament it says in proverbs, when the. I believe it's when the trumpet gives forth an uncertain sound, who then shall prepare for the battle? And in management, when we give forth an uncertain sound, who then is preparing for the battle? And I think we can all agree that whatever business you're in, it's a battle. It's a battle for customer ownership, the retention of great talent and whatever. So um, for a decent bottom line,

Speaker B: let me take that up. Donald, thank you. Um, and point out that there's a whole bunch of ways that leaders can have a certain sound. Um, uh, in a client that we did. It's a global organization. The CEO, we were doing a retreat and the CEO shied away from doing town halls and all hands meetings. Uh, and there's no reason for that kind of behavior. It's an amazing tool that's available exclusively to the most senior leadership in any organization to actually get that same message out to everybody. If I'm speaking to an entire organization as, as a speaker, that's the same message to everybody. Um, if there is management, um, training that everyone's got to go through at a certain level. Right. It's the same message to everybody. Right. It's not just a question of what's in the newsletter. Right. Uh, you know, uh, but, but getting that, that that particular alignment is, is particularly, particularly important. And it's not just alignment, but it's this question of saying, okay, this is why we're here. And I think that connection to that greater purpose, that mission, operationalizing that beyond the C suite and it's, you know, uh, Ronnie and I were at, were leading ah, a retreat, um, for, for a hospital chain in a certain part of the United States not too long ago. And there was no question that everybody was clear on the mission of the organization. They totally got it right. Not every organization is like that. The challenge though is to say, yes, the leadership team is aligned, but what's happening to get it to the next level and the next level under that and so on. That I think is the missing piece in many organizations that, and it's not, let's blame middle management. That's not getting stuff done. They're getting it from below and they're getting it from up top. It's a hard job, but unless leadership says this is something very important. Now we're really, really straying away from the topic of today. Which is, which is, you know, how leaders can drive both employee engagement and retention by creating organizational culture of delegation and succession planning. Maybe we're not straying too far from it, but, but I want to sort of tie it back.

Speaker A: You guys are doing well here. Okay, I have a question. Randall, you and I have not discussed this before. Um, but in your leadership, in your other organizations that you ran and owned, presumably you had employees, employees you liked and loved, submit their resignation to go on to greener pastures. Like, looking back on those situations, Randall, like, are there any things you wish you had done differently or things that you let slip through the cracks that you knew better? Like what lessons learned can you share with us?

Speaker B: Oh man, that's such a tough question. And it's, it's an embarrassing one because it forces you as a leader to be honest with yourself and saying did you do everything you could?

Speaker A: Okay, well then pick examples from your clients.

Speaker B: Whatever you want, I'll loan it. I'll own it, Rania. I'll own it. Ronnie, what I will say for every leader, uh, who's ever sat in a chair, um, what you are today is a function not just of the great stuff you learn, but you're also a function of, uh, doing, um, that postmortem and say, gee, what could you have done better? And then over the years you're collecting all these experiences and maybe today you would have, you would have done something differently. But back then, okay, you knew what you knew, but you didn't know what you didn't know. So, so today, Randall, we'll go back to the mistakes of the Randall of yore. Right? And, and I can tell you a couple things that I absolutely did not do. Okay? And, and, uh, thinking back to my first company, I had some amazing, amazing high potential leaders. Okay? I'm thinking of two people, particularly amazing people. They truly, truly were. And, and uh, and what I didn't do is I didn't feed them, I didn't give them challenges so that they can grow to their greatest potential. Right? I, I didn't, I, uh, did mentoring. I was, I've always been a coaching kind of manager. But, you know, I didn't let them take the bit themselves to actually say, okay, let's see about how far you can go on this one, right? Uh, let's sort of give you that much more authority to actually run your division, if you will, um, and make something of it. I'm here to support you. Right? So this is much, much earlier in my career. I wish I'd given some of those high potentials the space to do the crazy, crazy things that over time I know that they've done because I still keep in touch with them, right? So that's one thing that I wish that I had done later. And the whole question of identifying your high potentials, I think is something critical that too often, because you're in the business, you're working, you're doing your job as a leader, you don't stop and say, who are those superstars in the middle of the organization or maybe even further down in the middle of the organization that we need to do something about. The largest companies usually have some structured programs that they'll, they'll fast track these people on, they'll give them some coaching, right, so that they can learn faster. They'll put them in on special projects. You know, they'll do a Bunch of those, you know, medium sized small organizations. Um, you know, sometimes you do it, but it's a little bit more opportunistic. I'm saying that that's something that I should have done much earlier and, and the companies I, I ran and owned would have been more successful because of it. Um, the other, I'll give you another example, but this is the opposite, uh, where I kept somebody because I was sure that because I was such a good manager, I could bring them up. And what I should have done is fired them. And it's not because they didn't do their job, but I think that, uh, that, you know, everyone's built for something. And for me, in my immaturity, uh, okay, I didn't realize that they weren't built for the role that they were currently in. They were built for the role that they were in before they were promoted. Okay. They were not built for that role. Then rewinding them back to the other role was not, was, was not, uh, something that was possible. What I should have said is for their own good is I should have said goodbye. Right? I did that. I learned that lesson after that. I did that twice and I said goodbye. One person, um, uh, I said to him, goodbye. And the reason why I'm doing this, you're not going to thank me now, but you will in a couple years, is because you're destined for greatness. But you cannot grow there to that here, in that particular person case, they got an amazing role. They eventually did an executive mba and they, they sort of moved up, uh, to, to the executive ranks. Right. Somebody else. Wrong industry. Right. And this person who I'm still in contact with as well, is a completely different industry. Right. And, and, and so, um, you learn and then you sort of execute. So that's a tough question, but thanks for bringing up those, uh, those. And, and by the way, I will say, if you work for me in the past and you're listening to this, you're welcome to actually reach out to me and say, ren, was that me? Randall, was that me? I think it'd be kind of fun to have a conversation.

Speaker A: So I know, Randall, for you, in your heart, as a leader, for you, it's a badge of pride that you retain talent that they stay, they stay with you and you develop them. And like we, we talk often, you know, that, that loyalty between that employer to the employee and the employee to the employer, you know, it's more or less the thing of the past. Nobody, you know, stays at the same company for their Whole life or like people jump around a lot now, right? Like do you think there's a path to find that sense of loyalty and longevity anymore? Like how do we get back to it? How do you, how do you trust it?

Speaker B: So, so I know that our, our listeners, our viewers are, some of them are, are small medium M sized companies and some of them are very large global organization. And I think that the, the answer to that question is very different. Okay. The, the smaller uh, and, and the startup uh, scale up the, the, the smaller um folks. I, I think that the one on one, the fact that everybody makes um, a difference um, in those particular cases. Yeah, loyalty is a big thing and it's not that hard to do in the larger organizations. Um, I think there's been some real problems with respect to um, leadership saying you let me demonstrate by example why you don't matter and then magically expecting that they, all of their staff will say gee, I guess I matter, I'm going to be loyal. Um, let me give you a very specific example. Not every organization spends their time on uh, doing career planning. I'm talking about large organizations career planning with every single person in the mid to senior area. Uh, they'll do some with respect to succession planning. Okay. For the most senior levels there's spots within the organization in the mid level where people are concerned about who's going to fill in and everything like that. But, but you know there really isn't the uh, um, um time. There's employee appraisal. Right. There's objective setting but very little career planning. And I think that uh, if organizations um, just went a little bit further to learn a little bit more about uh, what it is the particular person would be interested in doing over the next medium. Longer term, um, it becomes an awful lot easier to say, you know something if that's what's going to really motivate you to do better. Let me as, as your manager help find a path for you to do that. You know, gee, the next thing that you'll need to do is get some experience in another division, gee, or another geography. Uh, gee, the next thing that you're going to have to do is change your functional area to learn more about your supply chain. You're going to learn about marketing, gee, you're in finance, you're going to learn about uh, hr. I don't. Whatever it is it. So, so the idea of saying hey, we're not just sort of slotting you here, but this part of a bit of a plan, right? And you know, certainly it improves career enrichment. It gives you experiences which, by the way, will be valuable outside should you choose to leave. But, you know, it's the other point of how do we reclaim the loyalty of the people around? And part of it is having this particular kind of conversation, right? What's going to engage you more? What are the things you love doing? Okay. What are the things that you think that you're built for that we can give you more of? Right. Um. Um, I've got a favorite phrase called, uh, like, everyone knows what delegation is. You're a leader, you're a manager. You delegate down to the next level some work and say, uh, here's what needs to be done. Here's what it needs to be do. You're not responsible for this. Uh, flip it around. And, uh, it's called pull delegation. See, what is it that you as an individual can pull from your manager that you can actually do? Right? So if we're able to sort of have this very good dynamic where, where there's enough trust between, um, uh, the two people, that there's both delegation and pull delegation happening, that builds loyalty, it builds a stronger relationship. Right? And people will stay because of their manager, not leave because of their manager. Right? And that's for, for larger organizations, uh, where it's really tough, smaller, it's a lot easier. It's a lot easier.

Speaker C: Well, you just articulated it so, uh, brilliantly. But it's, it's. It is a conversation twice a year, probably with every person on your team. Where do you want your career and your life to be in three to five years, and how can we help you get there? But, um, so many, most businesses don't ever have that conversation with their employees. So there's no career concern or career planning on the part of their, of their boss or the organization. So they go where they think the grass is greener.

Speaker A: Thank you for bringing that up, Donald. It goes into my next question. Very well. You have companies, like you said, who don't have this conversation. Companies that do have these conversations. And I know people are clients where they've said, I've asked for, uh, a lateral, you know, job change, a lot asked, uh, for promotion. I've asked for more money, and it doesn't come. It doesn't come. It doesn't come. And they're patiently waiting. So this is my next question. Randall, the easiest way to get those things that you want that Donald's talking about is to change jobs. Unfortunately, the, the best way to get a significant raise is to switch jobs and the best way to get a promotion is to switch out of the company, right? So, so you have your high performing, high value employees. They're not getting what they want. Presumably the company's doing the right things. They're asking, but they're not delivering on that for whatever reason. You know, is this the best cycle? Like, is, isn't there a better way of doing this?

Speaker B: No. And uh, what I will say though is that for the best, best, best performing people, usually there is something, okay, that that actually happens. It's for the people that aren't at that 110%, the people at the 90%, at 70%, at 60% where there's absolutely nothing. And, and they end up going. The people who are the dead weight, sadly in many organizations they stick around, right? Um, but the super performers, the stars, they usually, they usually get some attention because they truly are doing some, some things. I, here's what I would say for any manager who's saying, well, you know, I want them to, to, to be where they are. It's why should I delegate? I've delegated enough. Gee, I'm not so sure. Um, here are, well, let me give you three reasons why I think this is just so, so, so important. Beyond the obvious of hey, you get more time because you, to move the monkey onto somebody else's back, et cetera. Um, number one is, is that it builds capacity and capability, right? If somebody is able to take on a responsibility and they learn it, that means that your team now has a better delivery capability. Number two is that it's an amazing test for succession planning. If you give people some responsibilities and they do very well, okay, they get exposed to that particular area because they're doing it directly. They're not just watching, but they also get exposed to the area and they, because they're watching in that area and they're able to wire things together. It's a test for succession planning. If you are a CEO and you're doing succession planning correctly, you will have a couple people, two, three, four people who are potentials. And part of your job obviously is to give them tests by giving them responsibilities to see how they do right, you'll learn an awful lot about their capabilities doing that. Eventually when succession happens, when the choice is being made, you look at how everybody is done on these tests, if you will, uh, of, uh, different giving different responsibilities. I think there's a third reason as well, and that's the whole question of, of um, if you give people these new responsibilities, if you delegate these tasks, these Accountabilities to them. What you're also doing is you're giving them a chance to be seen as successful by others in the organization. At the most senior levels it's the board, right. But at uh, below that level, you know, called the director VP level, it's everyone around them. Gee, that person did so well over there. Yeah, I could trust that they understand. Gee, I've seen them over there as well. And every time you expose these people to new experiences, everyone around them says yeah, they're good. Yeah they're good. Presumably successful. And. And so delegation isn't just a question of manufacturing time for yourself. I think it's a. Ah, pardon me. Delegation is a core part of the job of succession planning.

Speaker A: I want to circle back. You talked earlier about uh, hiring, uh promoting internally versus hiring externally. And you know we see it with our clients all the time. The politics and hurt feelings and communications and all things that have to happen around uh, those kinds of decisions.

Speaker B: Uh. Right.

Speaker A: Tell me if you know better than me. I am unaware of any organizational health metric that measures the ratio of internal promotions to external hires. Like would there be any value in such a thing with all like the braggy, the braggy kind of uh, statistics that are out there.

Speaker B: In one of my points, former executive roles, I had the entire uh, organization's HR, uh function reporting to me. So while I might not be a pure HR practitioner, I've certainly uh, uh, led that function. Um, so the short answer question is um, I don't know of a particular metric or market study that shows sort of the impact. I'm sure there's a fair amount of research that's out there but I don't have it ah, close at hand. I will say though that if you think about what an organization's culture is. Right. I think everybody understands what the real world metric within that organization because that actually affects the culture. We never hire people externally. We always look for new blood and new ideas. Okay. We can always, always, you know, we think people need to understand the way our organization works. We've got unique technology or we've got unique whatever it is M. We don't want to have this huge, huge wind up time, onboarding time uh for somebody externally. We need, we need people internally um, versus the other. So I don't know of any particular stats. Uh, I'm sure that there are and I'm sure that there's academic studies as well that shows this is better, that's better. I think it's just one part of the uh, engagement uh, retention sort of matrix. And uh, for me, I've always felt that it's incredibly inspiring when you're able to say to people, the majority of our hires are internally because we've trained everybody to be exactly what's needed to be successful here. And, and that being said, sometimes we need specialist skills or specialist knowledge, um, or a specialist network where we can't hire somebody internally and we specifically need to go outside. And if people understand that kind of thing, it becomes a lot easier to say, aha. Ah. This is the kind of place that I work, you know, okay, I get it, I get it. It's not about me. I didn't get that job. It's just what they're looking for in that, in that role is something else. So good, uh, question with that.

Speaker A: On that topic, we're going to break right here this conversation and Q and A on all things employee retention, employee engagement, and how we can really help our employees, our high performers careers within our organizations to retain that talent. We'll be back for more in part two, but if anything we've talked about so far resonates with you. If you'd like to reach out, do so at request randallcraig.com or book a call at www.randallcraig.net 30 and see you more back in part two.