The Proven Playbook to Attract, Engage and Retain the New Workforce with Dr. Kent Wessinger of Retention Partners

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The Proven Playbook to Attract, Engage and Retain the New Workforce with Dr. Kent Wessinger of Retention Partners

I have with me Dr. Kent Wessinger, who was my first guest ever on the show years ago. I’m so excited because he said he would come back on the show, and I’m even more excited because the workforce has changed significantly since he first came on the show. I think that we need to hear a word for leaders about our new workforce.

Let me tell you a little bit about Dr. Kent. Dr. Kent Wessinger is a People Scientist and Principal Partner at Retention Partners. Dr. Wessinger’s globally recognized research and five years of implementation experience make him the expert on the attraction, engagement, and retention of Millennial and Gen Z employees and clients.

He successfully helped Fortune 500 financial services companies, engineering firms, manufacturing companies nationwide, real estate and insurance firms, governments in North and Central America, nonprofits, and many small businesses develop a strategy to solve their workforce crisis. Kent is also a dear friend of mine and one of my new partners in Retention Partners. Kent, thank you so much for joining me. I’m so excited. I cannot wait to have this conversation.

Thank you. I’m honored and humbled not only to be on this show but honored and humbled to be your friend.

Thank you. Let’s start by talking about your work and research. I want to hear all about it and a little bit about how you started.

Several years ago, I developed a research project because I could not find any valid and legitimate information that leaders could depend on to solve their workforce crisis. Several years ago, there wasn’t much of a workforce crisis. Many leaders didn’t see a workforce crisis, but for some reason, I saw this well beginning to come.

When I began to dig into it, I couldn’t find much information at all, especially with the younger workforce with Millennials and as Gen Zs were entering the workforce. I developed a research project, hoping to get maybe 500 or 1,000 participants in it so I could use that information and take it to leaders so that there would be clarity about what was going on and what was about to happen. The research project is open-ended, tracking the maturity of the generations as they assimilate into leadership positions, not only in the workplace but in the community and their homes.

Now, the research project has over 44,000 participants from 29 nations. The research has been implemented in companies with over 100,000 employees down to the last company that we implemented the research in has eight employees in it. What I know based on that research and wherever it’s been implemented is when leaders reach out to me, I not only can bring them informed, tested, practical solutions.

I can bring them information and implementation experiences that allow them to have some clarity and cast a little bit of vision and comfort into their workforce crisis, which ultimately feeds into their growth goals. At the end of the day, I don’t want to be the guy that’s solving the workforce crisis even though that matters. I want to be the guy that leaders look to and say, “We solved the workforce crisis, and now we have achieved our growth goals.” That’s why that research project is continued. The foundation of it continues to feed on and feed for leaders all around the world in all different sectors of our economy.

Talk about your company, Retention Partners.

I go back to the informed, tested, and practical side of providing solutions to the workforce crisis. The reason that I like to hang my hat there is let’s start with informed. One of the things that leaders continually communicated to me was that they were frustrated about investing resources, time, energy, and money into hypothetical or hypothesized information that they thought would solve their workforce crisis, and then 2 weeks or 6 months down the road, they still have the same workforce crisis.

One of the reasons for that is that there’s not a lot of tested information out there that’s specifically honed in and focused on these generations when it comes to the maturity and the decisions they are making inside the workforce. Informed, I’m bringing them 44,000 participants from 29 nations and a lot of implementation experience.

Anybody can hypothesize what a solution to a workforce crisis is. Anybody can come up with any kind of theoretical concept. What we know is that there are a lot of people that are throwing things against the wall, and whatever sticks the longest, they are taking and funding it, but they are still getting the same outcome.

Those are 44,000 participants from 29 nations where the information has been implemented in organizations. We know what works and what doesn’t work. The outcome is this. I grew up in a small business family. My mother owned two real estate companies. She battled, fighting the big boys on the block many times. What I learned not only from her but from working with leaders all over the world that are dealing with this is that they want practical common-sense solutions to solve their workforce crisis.

Don’t give me 12 or 8 things to do. Give me one thing that will help my employee engagement. Give me one thing that will help retain my employees. Give me one thing that will help attract my employees. When we provide those knowing that they are informed solutions and they have been tested, what we know is we know with absolute certainty. When they take these practical solutions, we know what the outcomes are going to be.

Let me add one more thing to that. I know that the manufacturing sector, the healthcare sector, the financial services sector, and a compartment of the technology sector are still struggling ridiculously badly with this workforce crisis. Let me start at the backside of technology. The headlines now are that technology companies are laying off people all over the world. We know that many in the sector were overhired to grab the growth. No fault, not casting blame or judgment to grab the growth during a moment where they could grab that growth.

Some of them are coming back to the reality of where they should be. However, what I know from working with a lot of leaders in the technology sector is that they are still struggling to attract, engage, and retain those workers that are in the field. I don’t necessarily like the whole blue-collar designation, but what I do know is that they are struggling to attract, engage, and retain those workers that are in the field.

I hear the same thing from manufacturing leaders. The employees that are in the plant are struggling with attracting, engaging, and retaining them. Healthcare is a different bird. Healthcare from top to bottom, especially with the nurses, is struggling. Financial service is a whole other paradigm. The average financial service employee now is almost 59 years old. They are struggling from the bottom up.

There’s no way around it. They are in trouble. The sector that’s in the most trouble, especially attracting, engaging, and retaining our younger workforce is the government. When it comes to law enforcement, public safety, social work, and regular government offices, there’s not one government office where leaders have reached out to me that they told me that they are over 50% capacity in their employees. Most of them are under 50% capacity.

I’m saying all that to say if anybody is planting a seed in any leader’s mind now that this workforce crisis is coming to an end or it’s over, it’s nonsense. It’s not true. There are many sectors that are still struggling and they are going to continue to struggle with this. This situation is not going to go away anytime soon.

You are so right. Many people will say telecom is also a technology industry, but in telecom, we are struggling with the same thing, attracting, retaining, and engaging workers in the field, hourly workers. We have more open jobs than people to fill them with many roles. Especially now with fiber and what’s on the horizon with the broadband and infrastructure bill, the job market is still tight despite economic conditions. I wanted to go into a little bit more detail about this workforce crisis and what very specific challenges you are hearing that companies are experiencing now.

Let’s go down three, attract, engage, and retain. We will stay in those three veins right there. One of my clients years ago was a larger client. It’s a Fortune 100 client. I’m going to stick to the field workers. For every one job they had open in the field, they would have a minimum average of 25 applicants for that job.

They got to take top talent in the field in every single one of their positions. That same client tells me that for every one field job that they have open, they schedule 25 interviews. On average, 1.3 people show up for that interview. I know a lot of leaders are struggling, not to just recruit, but to attract people into their organization and their structure. That’s one thing.

The second piece is engagement. I want to say this and I hope that we will be able to unpack this further in a moment. I believe that engagement is the absolute key to attracting employees and retaining employees. What I know from the research is this, and I’m looking at for-profit here. Only 4% of all for-profit corporations have a tested and informed employee engagement strategy, which tells me that is right at the heart of the workforce crisis.

When we don’t have an engagement strategy, we are going to remain on this recruiting hamster wheel, but we are going to struggle to retain the employees on the backside because there’s a lack or a void of engagement there. Employee engagement is the second piece. Attracting top talent first, engaging our employee base is the second one, and retaining them.

When we don’t have an engagement strategy, we will remain on this recruiting hamster wheel, but we will struggle to retain the employees on the backside because there’s a lack of engagement.

The overwhelming majority of leaders that come to me, they come to me without one word. “We can’t retain our employees. We are struggling to retain our employees in the field. We are struggling to retain our nurses. We are struggling to retain our guys, our people coming into the warehouses.” That retention issue becomes a big deal.

What my research tells me is that it now costs an average of $34,000 to replace one employee. I have discovered that the overwhelming majority of leaders are not factoring in any financial structure, budget, forecast, or anything. The question then is, “Where is that coming from?” It comes from bottom-line profitability, whether we like it or not. As leaders are beginning to take note of what this retention issue is costing them, not just from a productivity perspective or a bottom line perspective, they are desperate to see their retention rates increase.

What I have noticed is that the overwhelming majority of leaders have come to the place where they feel the only way to solve their retention issue is to pay more. I can tell you that pay, even though it’s critically important, is not the solution to retention. Attract, engage, and retain are the three major pieces that we are dealing with in the workforce crisis.

I got to tell you that my implementation experience shows me that in retention, most people think it’s impossible to solve. I will even argue. It’s not even hard to solve. When we take this tested information and the practical solutions that it provides and implements them, what we know is this. We can improve retention rates by 63%, and that’s growing.

We know that for absolute certainty, 63%. If anybody says they can solve your retention rate by 100%, I would encourage you to run from that person and not give them one penny, but we know that we can increase it by 63%. There may be other people out there that can do it, but I haven’t seen it. I haven’t seen a research project, nor have I seen practical solutions that align or come close to what we are providing now.

Let’s get into some of these practical solutions and some of the actual strategies that leaders can use in order to attract, engage, and retain. Let me ask you first because I want to understand. There’s generational conflict and how we in the older category see the younger workforce versus how the younger workforce sees themself. Where is the opportunity here?

I am technically a Baby Boomer. You are technically a Gen X. Let’s think about this. The first question in the research project is this. As soon as you jump to the very first question in the research project, “What’s the first word that comes to your mind when you think of a Millennial?” when that’s asked of Baby Boomers and Gen X, entitled, lazy, and selfish are the first three terms.

Continue to be the first three terms from 500 participants to over 44,000. When we ask the same question to Millennials and Gen Z, all of the younger workforce, let’s not overlook the fact they are the largest block of the workforce now, and that’s not going to change anytime soon. When we combine those two and we ask them the same question, “What’s the first word that comes to your mind when you think of a Millennial?” and now we ask, “What’s the first word that comes to your mind when you think of the younger workforce?” creative, innovative, and smart are the top three answers.

Entitled, lazy, selfish, and creative, innovative, and smart. Those are 2 different employees, 2 different mindsets, and 2 different perspectives, but I would also argue this. They are two different types of leaders. Who are we going to lead into profitability, the entitled, lazy, and selfish or creative, innovative, and smart?

If we know how to tap into creative, innovative, and smart, which that’s what our practical solutions do, and help leaders tap into that, all of a sudden, what we have is we have a structure that’s producing creative, innovative, and smart, not only ideas, but concepts, realities, and growth. Whereas if we are sitting in the seat of judgment and say, entitled, lazy, selfish, I promise you cannot keep them in your building. You cannot keep them in your organization. They are not going to stay with that mindset. When it comes to the way they see themselves, it’s critical that we tap into that innovative, creative, and smart mindset that they provide and bring into the building and the company structure.

We as Gen X and Baby Boomers need to have a paradigm shift in the way that we are viewing the younger generation. In other words, what we believe will happen. I truly believe that if you believe someone is great and you believe someone can do it, and you believe in someone, then it gives them power and they can feel your belief in them. Is that what part of this is that mindset shift and a perception shift of our generation?

Let’s look at it from the other side of the coin as well. Ultimately, all of us as leaders, no matter what sector we are in, whether we are in technology, telecom, healthcare, manufacturing, financial services, or government, our ultimate aim and goal boils down to one thing, which is growth. What we accomplish is measured by growth. Is not measured by survival. It’s measured by how well can or how exponentially even can we grow our organization. If we are judged by growth, what we know is this. We want the best employee base that we can have providing that growth for our structure.

We have to empower them not only from a mental perspective but in the way that we see them, like innovative, creative, smart, and I can go on down the list. There are about ten more adjectives there that we can describe. If we empower them with the right tools and the right structures for those things to be produced to become realities, what happens is we as a leader experience the reality of growth. If we fail to tap into those things or provide those structures of innovative, creative, smart, and on and on, then the outcome is not going to be growth. It’s going to be a digression.

I want to talk about the challenges for leaders nowadays. Remote and hybrid work and the needs and demands of the new workforce is a major challenge for leaders, especially in the area of accountability. From your view, what does accountability mean to these workers? How do we hold this new workforce accountable? I hear complaints all the time saying that it’s a challenge. Let’s put it that way.

It’s one of the core concepts that I begin with when I go into an organization. The reason for that is that my research and implementation experience has shown me that seasoned leaders are growing more and more timid about holding their younger workforce accountable for productivity. The question then becomes, “Why is this all of a sudden happening?” It’s rooted in fear in the bottom line, both of those. They are timid about holding their younger workforce accountable because they are afraid they will leave. Maybe not even leave as an individual, but leave as a group or a team. They know the struggle of replacing them. All of a sudden, accountability has begun to fade a little bit in an effort to keep this younger workforce in the building.

I can tell you that the pushing back on accountability is pushing the younger workforce out of the building. There’s another way to look at this. The younger workforce, I see it every single day. They are begging. They are crying out for leaders, “Hold us accountable for productivity.” They want to be held accountable for productivity.

However, accountability in a lot of leaders’ minds, including mine up until a couple of years ago, looked like the same paradigm that it’s been all of our lives, which is hierarchal from the top to the bottom. Accountability now is reciprocal from the company through the employees back to the company. What’s happening is the younger workforce is saying, “Hold us accountable for productivity,” but here is the new experience. This is what sets this workforce apart from all of the generations before, whether we want to call it nerdzy, courage, or whatever we want to do. There are a lot of other choices of words I could say there. This workforce is now holding the company or the organization accountable for structures of success.

What they are saying is, “We came to work for your company for a reason. We believe in your mission. We are passionate about your mission. Ultimately, we want to succeed. What we need from you is we will be held accountable for productivity. We will optimize your productivity, but we need a couple of things in place for us to succeed and to optimize that productivity.”

What I know from experience and also the research is when companies stick a hard line to that hierarchical form of accountability and don’t provide those simple practical structures of success to this younger workforce, they don’t stay. Keep this in mind. In January 2020, the average Millennial stayed on the job for sixteen months.

I drew a lot of delineation in January 2020 because I wanted to see if the workforce would return post-pandemic to the same type of tendencies. What is now in the research is that the average Millennial stays on the job for only eleven months. To make it even worse, what I also know is that those that leave at 11, 12, or even 16 months, those that leave have already filled out an application, a resume, or a CV at the six-month mark to leave the organization.

The question then becomes, “Why?” If you believe in the mission of the company, you have a great wage. You have what you would define as good leaders. What in the world at six months would make you make this decision to fill out a resume, an application, or a CV to move on to the next position? It’s all about that accountability structure. It’s all about that engagement structure and that retention structure.

What we know is this. They get in your building and they get in your company. They want to be held accountable for productivity. If those structures of engagement and retention are not there, in their minds, they are not looking at it as engagement and retention. They are looking at it through one lens, which is success. If we provide those structures of success for them, what we know is they don’t even think about leaving your company. When they are absent from there, they are moving on to the next company until they find them.

Can I have learned this from you four years ago? I have made this part of our culture here at Broadstaff, and it works. I have listened to every word you said and implemented it here in the company. What I’d like you to talk about now is this. Let’s say I’m a leader. I’m hearing this and I’m saying, “What do I need to either add or take away from my company culture that is going to help me to attract, engage, and retain this new workforce?”

I will give you an example. One thing that has been instrumental with us after learning from you a few years ago has been giving every single employee, no matter what their age or position in the company, the same voice in the company and a seat at the table. It has been a phenomenal retention strategy. I know our retention rates are through the roof here. I want you to look at me as an employer who’s a leader who’s saying, “Help me here. Give me a few strategies that I can take right now back to my company and say, ‘I need to implement these things now or I need to stop doing them.’”

Here is one of the reasons that Broadstaff and Carrie Charles in the entire team of Broadstaff that I’m convinced of this. Beyond your phenomenal leadership and all of the leadership and everybody else represents in Broadstaff, that one piece of voice, I see it over and over. In every single company that has activated the voice of its younger workforce, we see retention rates soaring in a positive way.

I will come back to that. You alluded to a moment ago this battle that we are dealing with in regard to working at home and working in the building. I know Elon Musk is blowing that up, and a lot of people are blowing that subject matter up now. Ironically, I watched an interview with the Shark Mr. Wonderful. I can’t think of his name now.

He saw it the opposite. He sees his profitability up with workers at home instead of in the building because of its real estate costs, infrastructure, and other things like that. The reason I bring that up is this. There is one issue that I would love to have a conversation with Mr. Musk and Mr. Wonderful about.

What I know from employees working at home, the research emphatically tells me that they are struggling with engagement. This younger workforce thrives on engagement. Let’s take it even one step further. They thrive on collaborative community. What if we are not careful? We isolate and compartmentalize individuals in their homes, and all of a sudden, the fabric of the community begins to tear, and the cohesiveness of collaboration begins to dissipate in our company.

For most of us, that collaboration and that community are key to making sure that our workforce is growing and helping us grow our bottom line. That engagement piece, I cannot emphasize enough to every single leader that’s reading this that you have to get employee engagement right, whether they are at home or in the building.

Collaboration and community are keys to ensuring our workforce is growing and helping us grow our bottom line.

That employee engagement piece is developed around one idea, community. How do we develop community? What the research shows us, the practical solution, is through a mentorship structure. When we have a mentorship structure, not the old wise sage speaking into the young doe or buck, but small group, whole life focused, keeping each other accountable, developing a culture of accountability with some cohesiveness, collaboration, transparency, and vulnerability, all of those things happening there. What we know is this. Employees are not leaving companies where there’s a thriving mentorship structure.

Those employees are not only getting healthier from a whole life perspective. Their levels of productivity are exponentially increasing when we have a healthy and thriving mentorship structure. To your point about the voice, that goes to the retention piece. When we intentionally activate the voice of this younger workforce, what I mean by that is not a box on the wall, not an occasional conversation at the water fountain or over lunch. Nothing like that. When we have intentional environments to activate that voice, what we know is that new streams of revenue are being generated for the company that most leaders did not know was there, did not know how to activate, and did not know how to implement.

I know that’s a tough pill to swallow for a lot of leaders. Ultimately, that activated voice, along with that mentorship structure, not only keeps employees in the building, but it increases profitability and revenue for the company. That younger workforce will be your leadership moving forward. If we are not engaging and retaining them, we are going to struggle with leadership moving forward. I know I’m speaking the language to a lot of leaders. If that younger workforce is not becoming your leadership, you are going to struggle with profitability and revenue moving forward.

It is activating the voice of the younger workforce. Give me one example of how I can do that.

We started an event. It’s called Create to Elevate Event. What we do is divide the company, whether we be a department, the company, or whatever up into teams of 3 to 5 people. What we do is coach them through a two-month process. It starts with idea generation. In other words, we plant this seed and say, “Share one thing that you know that would elevate the company or elevate the customer experience with the company, or elevate your job or whatever not to complain but to improve things.”

We then collectively put these groups of 3 to 5 people in a room and they come up with an idea to elevate, whether it be the department, the customer experience, the company, or whatever. What we then do is coach them through a process of implementation, financial cost, forecasting, and all of those things. The last coaching piece is we coach them on how to present that idea.

Here’s the activated voice piece. We have an event that looks like Shark Tank on steroids, where every single group that came up with an idea, who understands all the nuances of it, who now understands how to present this idea comes to a stage. They have 5, maybe sometimes 10, depending on the size of the company, minutes to present their idea. The leadership is sitting in front of them. They quiz them or ask questions about the idea. They step off. The next group comes on.

At the end of the event, the top award or top three ideas are rewarded. What I know is this. Every company that we have done Create to Elevate event wants to do it every single year. They want it to be annual. There are a couple of reasons for it. It is because they know it keeps the employees in the building.

That whole collective community, and this adds a competitive component to it, keeps employees engaged in it. They are talking about those ideas. Their eyes, hearts, and minds are open to ideas of how we can improve the company all through the year because they are looking for that Create to Elevate event because they want to win.

The Create to Elevate event keeps the employees in the building that whole collective community, adds a competitive component, and keeps employees engaged.

They want those prizes and those rewards over the next years. They also want to look at their coworker and talk some smack and say, “I won this year. Not you,” but the leader sees it differently. The leader sees that as a healthy piece, but the leader sees it a little bit differently. I will give you an example. One of my clients is a landscape architecture engineering firm. They do Create and Elevate events every year.

Some of the streams of revenue that have come from them have been $10 million plus. Brand-new streams of revenue have come from their employees with their employee’s ideas, and the leaders themselves said, “We would have never thought about it.” Not only would we have never thought about it, but they also brought us the entire package of this idea. We know exactly what we have to do to implement it and we feel pretty confident about the outcomes to it.

As a result, they give their employees, the winners, some pretty significant trips, automobiles, and everything else every year for the Create to Elevate events because the streams of revenue are far outpacing the amount of reward that’s coming to those particular employees. That’s how we activate the voice. That’s the most effective way that we have found to activate the voice.

Let’s say one more thing about it. I want to say this to every single leader. There are things that you are doing, whether it be a July 4th barbecue or a three-legged race. I don’t care what it is. If there are a lot of things you are doing that you think that are bringing people together, and I’m not throwing that under the bus, as bad as it sounds, I promise you that not one employee stays in your company because of your July 4th barbecue. Not one company stays because you take them to the mountains in a cabin. Not one thinks about that when they think about leaving the company.

Take those same resources, and invest them in something that we know keeps them in the company, which is activating their voice, which ultimately pays for itself. It’s a no-brainer. I’m encouraging leaders to engage that mindset. I know from post-event interviews consistently what employees tell me is, “My voice was heard by the leaders of my company. My ideas were respected.” That piece alone is the most valuable piece of the event. It is knowing that their ideas and their mindsets were heard and respected by the leaders or the owners of their company.

It sounds to me that we as leaders need to think differently. As you said, there’s nothing wrong with barbecues. I love barbecue and country music, but leaders need to think differently and say, “What does this new workforce want? What do they need?” We then craft our culture, programs, and experiences based on meeting those needs. That’s the bottom line. Let me ask you in closing. As a leader, if we could take one thing and we could take it right into our companies and use it now, what would you say that we should do, be, or have?

Mentorship structure, without a doubt. Mentorship structure is the biggest piece of the solution. Remember, employee engagement is king, and there’s a backside to that. I believe that based on the research and the implementation experience, the new metric of growth with this younger workforce is a culture of accountability.

That’s the new metric of growth. What I have witnessed is everything else flows out of that culture of accountability. A mentorship structure breeds a culture of accountability. Does it happen overnight? No. It’s a process. Once we get down the road in that process, that culture of accountability begins to impact every single corner and nuance of our company, and then we follow it by activating the voice. I would encourage every leader to engage in a mentorship structure. If you need any ideas, guidance, or instruction about how to do that, I’m encouraging you to reach out to me and I can provide that guidance for you.

Dr. Kent, that’s a great segue to find out how we can contact you. I wanted to add too that you can contact me as well. Retention Partners is a sister company of Broadstaff. Dr. Kent, since he’s come into our lives and my life, has helped me to become a better leader. I thank you for pouring your heart out now to our audience. I know this has helped, but how can we reach you and also reach Retention Partners?

Two ways, [email protected]. When you go to [email protected], there’s a very short intake form. You fill that out. It comes back to me. I want to build a relationship with you. I will tell you that we are not consultants that are breezing in and breezing out. We want to build relationships with you because we know that relationship is ultimately going to culminate in your growth, productivity, revenue profitability, and all that. [email protected] or you can simply go to RetentionPartners.com, or the last piece, you can go to [email protected]. Any one of the three ultimately gets to me.

I will tell you that you are not kidding when you said that you will help anyone and you talk to everyone. It has been a pleasure knowing you, Dr. Kent. Thank you for being on the show. I know you have provided incredible value for the audience. Thank you for coming on, and I hope we can do this again in the future.

Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity. I’m not going to apologize for being passionate about helping people grow. I want leaders to grow and solve their workforce crisis. Thank you, Carrie. I appreciate the opportunity.

I love it. I will see you soon. Take care.

Important Links

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About Dr. Kent Wessinger

Dr. Kent Wessinger is a People Scientist and Principal Partner at Retention Partners. In 2016, he launched and continues to manage what many C-suites have called the foremost proprietary data bank on growth and revenue with millennials. Dr. Wessinger’s globally recognized research and 5 years of implementation experiences make him the expert on attraction, engagement and retention of Millennial (and now Gen Z) employees and clients. He’s successfully helped Fortune 500 financial services companies, engineering firms, manufacturing companies, nationwide real estate and insurance firms, governments in North and Central America, non-profits and many small businesses develop a strategy to solve their workforce crisis. 

Having spearheaded decades of focused research and data collection, he understands employee behavior intimately, and the surgical approach to winning in our current business environment. Utilizing his proprietary research and successful implementation experiences, Dr. Wessinger can strategically help you shift from recruiting to attracting top talent, develop critical employee engagement structures, mitigate cross-generational conflict, create a leadership pipeline and more.