Creative Ways to Combat Talent Scarcity with Ben Eubanks (Podcast Transcript)
Welcome to HR Superstars. I’m Adam Weber, former chief people officer and creator of the HR Superstars community. I am excited to introduce you to one of my favorite HR thought leaders, Ben Eubanks.
Ben is an author and chief research officer at Lighthouse Research, and I think you’re really going to enjoy how he translates his deep research into practical ways for you to differentiate your talent acquisition process and ways to more deeply engage and retain your employees. Ben is a wealth of knowledge, so let’s dive in.
All right, everyone, I am so excited to introduce you to Ben Eubanks, a researcher, author, speaker in the HR space, and Ben first, welcome to HR Superstars.
Ben Eubanks:
Hey, I’m so glad to be here with a fellow HR Superstar, Adam. So looking forward to this.
Adam Weber:
Yeah, I’m always looking for chances to try to partner with you just like I really appreciate and respect your insights. And so I wanted to actually start there. For those that don’t know you and your company, Lighthouse, you survey thousands of companies employees every single year, and so you have this unique perspective that you can look at the whole market, not just in the day-to-day stressors of an HR person’s world, but the market as a whole. And so before we dive in to your story and your book, I wanted to just hear what’s the big summary of what you’re seeing in the data in the market right now?
Ben Eubanks:
I think a lot of employers are struggling with either on the hiring side or the retention side, but the big struggle they’re having is how do we create connection? And that threads through how we communicate, that threads through how we enable our managers, that threads through pay transparency, lots of ways employers are trying to solve for that. And I see that thread coming up over and over again, whether I’m surveying on mental health or I’m surveying on a big one going on now, employee engagement and culture and impact, those kinds of things, that thread of connection comes through on the employer side, here’s what we’re trying to do, we’re trying to solve for, but also when we survey the workforce, they’re craving that comes up over and over again. They’re saying, I want an employer that really sees me more deeply than my job title, more deeply than my resume sees who I am and what I want to be.
That’s what we see over and over again, and it’s always been a little bit of an interesting theme, but in the last year, I’d say that’s been the biggest one that resounds through everything we’ve done.
Adam Weber:
Yeah, I could see that. How do we create connection? Why do you think that is? Why do you think employers and employees are craving for that or what’s the cause of that?
Ben Eubanks:
If I can be very honest with you, the headlines about quiet quitting and all the other junk drive me a little bit baddy because what I see from the workforce is there are a lot of people who say, you know what? I’m working for an employer that doesn’t care who I am, so let’s look at some creative or silly way to just play this off. And that’s their way of a dodging the issue of I want a place that cares about me. I want a manager that really respects me, a manager who understands me, all those kinds of things. And when they don’t have that, you see the great resignation and some of these other things pop up where people are quitting and leaving their jobs because they’re not seeing that and in spite of the news kind of sensationalizing this or romanticizing, oh, people are leaving their jobs, people hit that eject button when they feel there’s no other choice.
There’s a great book written a couple of years ago called Necessary Endings, and the author/psychologist talks about how in our life, whether it’s a work relationship, it’s a personal relationship, we need to end that when we lose any hope that will ever get better. And so for those people, they’re losing hope and they hit that button to leave the employer at Jackson to find somewhere else hoping to find that. The hard part for me, the thing that I’ve seen in the data that hurts my heart is we see all these people who transition to another job and then they regret it and they transition to another job, they regret it because they’re just moving and moving, seeking that connection. And hard part of that is they don’t always know what that looks like, what they’re looking for. If you’re always running from something instead of running to something, it’s a recipe for continued results in the wrong kind of way. So it’s a tough place to be in right now.
Adam Weber:
I really resonate with the statement about when you lose hope, it’s like time to leave, but also have seen that personally too, countless amount of people who may, especially right at the height of the pandemic where people are just had a lot of other things in their life that were impacting them and they just needed a change in general. But then they made the change and they still found out that where they went, they were still with them, all those issues they hadn’t resolved in their life were still manifesting themselves. And I think that for a lot of people, maybe they’re kind of now on the back end of that, maybe even two jobs later now at this point.
Ben Eubanks:
Yeah, the big transition for a lot of people was, oh, there’s more money to be had. People are posting the pay and it’s more open and suddenly you can jump ship and all the data showed that unfortunately, if you stay committed to an employer for a long period of time, your pay goes up at a slower pace than people who are willing to jump to another company, and number one to solve for that, everybody out there listening into this will solve for that, but the thing that tells me is people are leaving for pay. When I look at this data and look at it by pay levels, I can see what people make, at least in a general sense. And even people who are at the highest pay levels still have the same levels of dissatisfaction and regret leaving their job. So just jumping and saying, I’ll make more, that’ll solve my… No, no, I won’t.
Adam Weber:
This is interesting though, with pay, I feel like pay, even three years ago when I wrote my book, I have a whole section on how the values of the workforce had shifted and pay was not as highly valued. I’m not quite sure I still agree with that. It does feel like now inflation, macroeconomic trends, I think when the pandemic came work has felt more transactional at the macro level just as a whole how employees relate to their companies. Do you see that too, that pay is now a little bit more important than it was two, three years ago?
Ben Eubanks:
So two things. Number one, we had a big survey last year of frontline workers, specifically. The people who say they were most satisfied at their employer, we said, what do you attribute that to? What was tied back to that? And the number one answer was I’m paid fairly. Okay. So not just what you make, but what you make relative to what you think others make and to others in the marketplace is a big part of that. The other thing, same thing in the book that I wrote recently, the thing I talked about in there was for a long time it’s been, hey, pays not a big motivator. Once you solve for some basic level of pay, other things start to matter. That kind of got turned on its head when suddenly there’s, Hey Adam, guess what? You can make not 5% more, but you can make 50% more if you’re willing to change employers.
That breaks a lot of those other things because in the normal situation, I’m willing to say, you know what? That’s a dollar more an hour, but I’ve got a great manager who really lets me work a flexible schedule. That dollar an hour is not worth it to me. I’m going to balance those things off. But if you said you can make 50% more something like, I’m willing to try that, I’m willing to give that a shot. And a lot of people made that transition as we’d already talked about, that made it for the wrong reason and have ended up not being very satisfied with that. In the data, we see people saying, I missed the people I worked with, the relationships, the social costs of changing a job. I missed the manager that I worked for. We had some rapport, we had some trust, and you have to start all over again. So there’s a lot of things we don’t think about. We’re like, oh yeah, more money, great answer. But that’s not the only factor in variable when it’s making a change. And people have found that the hard way unfortunately.
Adam Weber:
What are the things that jump out right now as the reasons, like what people do value or what is creating that connection for people where they go, you know what? I’m settled here. The way I was thinking about it for a job, I guess to create longevity is you have to basically go, this job has a reason in my life right now. There’s a reason that I’m doing this. What does it take for someone to have that kind of connection to their job?
Ben Eubanks:
One of the big things we see in the data is a sense of belonging, which you’re like, okay, gosh, we’ve had an engagement forever. Now let’s get something even more abstract like belonging and try to say this matters. But there’s actually a psychological definition of belonging that says, I’m accepted, respected, and appreciated at work. When people hit those things, when they feel like those things are in touch, they feel connected, they’re more likely to stay at their company, they’re more likely to say the company as a whole is more open and transparent. They’re more likely to say they have an equitable experience at work.
And guess what? They’re seven times more likely. If they feel like they highly belong to this company, they’re seven times more likely to recommend their employer as a great place to work to family and friends. And so for all the people listening in thinking, man, we’re struggling right now with hiring, guess what? If you can create a sense where your people feel like they are accepted, respected, and appreciated at work, they’re seven times more likely to go out there telling others about your company and helping you fill those jobs instead of you having to do it all by yourself.
Adam Weber:
I love that. And now we get to spend the rest of the time just diving into whatever we want because you just gave an actionable tip, everyone, if you’re just looking for one thing. There it was. And now I want to talk about your book. And I just shared how now my book has a section that’s outdated because stuff changes so fast in HR, but I’m curious for you, you wrote the book Talent Scarcity. What prompted you to write the book?
Ben Eubanks:
So in the last two, three years, again, probably everybody listening in has asked this question or had this question asked of them, Hey, where are all the people? What happened? It’s suddenly difficult to find good talent. It’s harder than ever to find good quality individuals. So where are all the people? After I heard it two or three times, I was thinking, oh, this is really interesting. I should write a blog post or something, after I heard it for the 40th time. I’m like, I’m writing a darn book because everyone wants to know the answer to this. It came out earlier this year in January, and the biggest regret, and I put this in kind of the afterward in the book, it’s like I don’t have a time machine. I couldn’t release this a year ago when this was even more pressing than it is now.
But what we see in the data is that there are a tremendous number of employers that can’t find quality people. They can’t find the right types of talent or quantities of talent they need, and the answers, the reasons behind that come back to something you said in some cases a few minutes ago where you said, Hey, a lot of people have made these transitions in the last few years and they’re still looking for that thing. And that’s what we’re finding in the research is a tremendous number of people who have said, I’m not at the company I want to be at or I’ve made a pause during the pandemic and said, I don’t know if this is the kind of company I want to work for, the kind of leader I want to work for, the kind of job I want to do. So a lot of people made different changes for personal reasons.
I’m going home for a while, or I’m going to prioritize care for my kids. Someone that works on our team said, I’m going to step back. They were now part-time saying, I want to care for my son while I can because this is the most important thing to me right now. And so a lot of employers are facing those very same needs to be flexible people, but there’s also a tremendous number of people who are out of the workforce that no one knows why. No one understands. They’re called NILFs, not in the labor force, NILF. And these people, there are millions of them who are prime working age, who are physically capable of going to work, that are not looking for work, that are not on the unemployment roles. And when the government’s tried and the economics experts have tried to look at these people understand what’s going on there, but they can’t figure out why they’re not in the labor force and they’re not participating.
Even though any of us right now are like, yes, sure, we take five people. If you threw the at us and they were qualified to do the job, let’s do it. And so there’s all these different things factoring into it. So long answer to your question of why the book, but that’s why, because I want to understand that. So the first third of it is around the problems, the challenges, the issues, and the latter two thirds of the book is how to hire in some creative and unique ways, things that most employers have never thought of, and then how to keep our people. I’m a data nerd, you all can already tell probably, but I’ll love to bring in stories and examples too to make it really practical and tangible so we can all do this. Because when I wasn’t HR leader, when I started out my career, I loved through practical stuff, not just more theory, because that doesn’t help us get our job done.
Adam Weber:
Yeah, I do want to dive into those back two parts of the book, but I want to spend a little bit of time though maybe just taking a wild guess. I think everybody’s had that thought of where are all the people? Is it a specific job level or pay grade where the people are missing? And then I have a follow-up question too, which is really, do you have a wild unfounded guess as to why these people are choosing to not work, why they’re not in the labor force?
Ben Eubanks:
So there’s a couple different things. What we’ve done in the book is I’ve really tried to dive deeper than just, oh, there’s 50 million people or whatever else. I try to go really as deep as I can to say, okay, this many people retired early, they’re not coming back. This many people left because they went for childcare. But guess what? All the stories about two years ago about women leaving the labor force, if you look now, the participation rate is back where it was pre COVID. So the women left and many of them… Much all of them came back. So I talked with that a little bit to say this did ebb and flow, but now we’re back where we should be. But some of the other things, it’s again, it’s all over the place.
When you actually look at the data and you look at some of the time use surveys, now we’re going really deep here for a second. Stay with me. When we go look at time use surveys that these demographics experts are looking at for these individuals who are not in labor force, their time spent on social activity on screen time and on leisure activity is multiples higher than it would be for you, me or anyone else listening in who is holding down a job. So they’re spending their time doing other things, not looking for work, not interested in work. Someone else is supporting sustaining them financially. And so they have no urgency to get up and leave the cave essentially.
Adam Weber:
Yeah, that’s interesting. There’s a part of me that wonders if like technology addiction is playing some role in people feeling disenfranchised, it’s very complicated. It’s some combination of just not feeling like there’s inspiring work for them to do, but I also wonder if that might play a part of it as well.
Ben Eubanks:
That’s one of the things that I’ve actually done in the book is I talk about, for example, the number of people who have drug abuse issues or who have suffered from long COVID symptoms. That group of people may never come back to the workforce again. That’s not one where we can say, oh, let’s just change this policy and they’re going to come back. For these individuals I do believe there’s some way we can get through to them. There is some way we can create a workplace that does have the right elements to it. Not that we’re catering or bending our backwards, but saying, you know what? This work is engaging. It is exciting, and here’s the mission. Here’s the problem we’re solving. One of the things we did in a recent study on talent acquisition is actually had experiments in there and let job seekers tell us what they referred.
And as an example, we gave them this very bland and generic, probably like mini job postings, very generic, this is what our company does. And the other one was little more mission oriented, this is the problem we solved for the world. And again, candidates are much more likely to pick that second option because they’re like, oh, I want to get on board with that. I want to be part of that mission solving that big problem for the world. I don’t want to work for a refrigeration company. I want to deliver safe food to countries around the world where it otherwise wouldn’t be accessible. That’s exciting. And I think that kind of thing would help us to draw some of those individuals in if there are others that were affected by this that are not going to be coming back. I didn’t talk about the birth rates. Look globally have fallen, and especially in developing countries, we’re below what demographers call the replacement rate right now.
The only reason we’ve kept our population at the same level is because we’re importing people from other countries. It’s called immigration. But other than that, we would be shrinking as a country and we’re seeing other countries, developed countries around the world facing that same problem. 10 years from now, 20 years from now, we’re going to start feeling the effects of this long term and it’s going to create some real issues. And so I’m sharing these things only to say, Hey, you should be aware and it’s already creating pressures on you and this is some of the why behind that.
Adam Weber:
Yeah, I really appreciate you sharing all of this. And even with jobs today as you’re writing job descriptions, those that are more mission focused, no matter the topic, this is something that I’ve talked a lot about actually. I was in a conversation once with Mike Stone, who’s the CEO of CertaPro, which is a paint company. They’re like one of the largest paint companies in the country. And I used to share like, oh, people really want to work for… It’s a story of the janitor who is cleaning the rot like at NASA. And Reagan walks up to him and says, what are you doing? He says, sir, I’m helping put a man on the moon. And people would always be like, oh, it’s easy for you to say that, you have an employee engagement company. You talk about culture.
And Mike one time came up to me and said, there’s no more affordable way to transform a person’s home than by applying a coat of paint. I thought it was such a good practical example. It doesn’t matter what you do, refrigeration, painting, engagement, there is a way to make what you do matter and to remind other people who work for you why what you do matters in the world.
Ben Eubanks:
So again, another practical tip for everybody listening right now. One of the ways to weave this in is let’s say you’ve got someone coming in, they’re starting with you, telling the story as part of either the hiring process or as part of the onboarding process to really connect them to what those values are you have as company is powerful. There’s a company not far from here where I’m based in Huntsville, Alabama, and it’s called Gator Technologies. And back when Hurricane Katrina happened, communications were down. This gentleman who lives here in town had built a mobile communication satellite prototype, put in the back of his for explorer, drove down there, popped up this mobile communication satellite, and the Red Cross started using it to coordinate support for people and relief for people right there on the spot because all the cell towers were down, everything else was down.
And so every new hire who came through their doors heard that story from him one-on-one and said, this is the impact we’re having on the world. We’re giving people communication where they had no other option, no other choice. We’re creating options and opportunities for them. And that connects people and makes them more excited what you’re doing. And it can’t be, hey, you’re about to step into the worst possible workplace ever. Here’s a fancy story. Some polish, get to work. It’s got to be woven into this. You have to have service, you have to care about the values. But this is a great way to kick off that relationship with something that they are proud to tell others about.
Adam Weber:
Let’s talk about part two of your book, which is the how to hire section. So if there is this talent scarcity, differentiating through talent acquisition is as important as it’s ever been. And so what did you learn? What are some things that are working right now with how to attract people into your company?
Ben Eubanks:
So we talked a little bit about your proposition, your employer brands, some of those kinds of things, right? The way you’re telling your story. So if you have any responsibility for the job postings and things other than adding some pay to it, which increases the click-through rate by about five times other than adding pay data to that job posting, creating that clarity there is important. So the other things that I’ve seen though in there are being willing to look at and consider hiring in places no one else is even thinking about. I’ll give you two examples of that real quick. So there’s a company based on Arizona called Televerde. They run a lot of call centers. So any of you listening and have call center operations, this will blow your mind. If you pick up the phone and you call and a Tele Verde associate answers, chances are very likely that’s a woman currently living in a federal prison.
So they go to a prison, they find a group of women that want to do some work, and they give them training, they employ them, they’re answering the phones, running a call center, and they’re actively earning money and saving it up for their transition once they’ve completed their prison term. And what I love about it is it’s helping them to build skills. It’s reminding them they do have value. So they’re helping them make that transition by giving them work while they’re there. The other story I love, there’s a healthcare company they, like every healthcare company, we’re struggling to find nurses. So they actually went down to one of the US territories, so no immigration requirements, and went to a graduating class of seniors in the nursing program and said, Hey, listen, here’s what we’re going to offer you to your contract, you come to the states, we’ll fly you there.
We’ll get you back home a couple of times a year to see your family. At the end of two years, you can decide if you want to stay or if you want to come back here, no pressure at all. Here’s the rate we’re going to guarantee you for those two years. And they got more than half of that graduating class to raise their hand and say, I’m going to the States, let’s go do this thing. And they became a set of bilingual nurses they had when everybody else is struggling to find talent. So looking in places everybody else isn’t looking, being willing to try some creative stuff, that’s what I’m seeing over and over again with the employers who are successful. It’s not just post another job and cross your fingers and hope for the best because that’s not going to work today.
Adam Weber:
Those are awesome stories by the way. So to reflect back what you said, there were really three parts to it. The first was basically bring your job descriptions to life by sharing the company purpose of the bigger story. The second was just be super transparent with your pay data and it’s going to help. And then the third, I love this. The stories are so good that hire where no one else is thinking about. And with your stories, what I heard is don’t go recreate those stories. Think about your unique organization, what makes it unique, and where you could create that creative application, find that kind of niche or pocket as well.
Ben Eubanks:
For sure. Yeah, there’s a researcher at Harvard that’s doing some work right now on what he calls the hidden workforce and some of these individuals who maybe they have already come out of prison, so they’re in that population of people who a lot of employers won’t consider for employment. They’re out of bounds for them or they won’t touch them. There are people who are like that or who are underemployed, they’re working in a job for a couple of hours a week, whatever else, but they’d be willing to take on another role if we had a way to find them. That’s one of the things that I’m really intrigued by because that won’t solve all of the issues for sure. But for a lot of employers out there, if you said, Hey, I could fill half my jobs by really tapping in some of these more creative things, it would create a lot less stress for your existing people. And your recruiting teams are probably finally able to catch their breath because most of them have been running at breakneck pace for as long as they can remember and they’re getting tired for sure.
Adam Weber:
And that kind of leads perfectly into that last part of your book too, which is like if you spend all this effort on talent acquisition and onboarding and then you lose your people, you just end up in this vicious cycle of not being able to create the type of culture that you dreamed of to try to activate the full productivity of your workforce, all those things. And so part three of your book, how do we keep our people? Talk us through that.
Ben Eubanks:
Goodness. So there’s a lot of things we can do in here, and one of the things that you and your team do really well that I very much appreciate and owe you a kudos for is y’all focus really hard on making sure we enable our managers to be great developers of people. The data around the world, various studies, a lot of our research all indicate that that manager is the key linchpin in someone’s relationship at work. And one of the things I’ve taken to recently talking about this, because it’s easy to say that and people just kind of let it go, a lot of the things we do as HR leaders are policy decisions. We believe in DEI, we believe in flexibility. We believe in work-life balance, but it becomes a relationship issue.
If we say we believe flexibility, and that manager says, yep, as long as you’re here at 08:00 and you leave by 05:00, no big deal, flexibility’s great with me. They’ve just negated everything, all the effort and resources to put into that policy by making it a relationship issue. And so our managers need to understand that piece of it. One of the big things we saw in a study last year for example, is that statistically there is a 0% chance that a worker will feel supported by their manager if they aren’t first understood by that manager. And understanding is not just, oh, I know your job title, I know your pay rate, right? Anybody can figure those things out. Its I know what kind of work makes you tick. I know what work you are so excited to do and I need to give you more of it. I know what work wears you down makes you frustrated, and I need to try to help avoid that or delegate it somewhere else if I can.
But really understanding that person well is a hallmark of a great leader. Unfortunately, a lot of managers aren’t quite sure how to do those things. Either they haven’t been taught or they’re too busy with all the other things that we’re giving them logistically don’t have time to get into these things, but we have some opportunities there to do it and do it well. I was talking with the head of leadership selection for the Mayo Clinic recently and she said, we attract so many superstars here because just the name of the organization is great, but we don’t hire a bunch of people who are superstars who think they are because they want all the spotlight on them and they’re not willing to make sure others get their share of it.
And so they really hire leaders for those who are willing to help their teams be the superstars, help elevate the stories and elevate the successes and elevate the skills, the people who are working under them. And I think that’s a key thing we see over and over in this data for how to keep people, if you got nothing else out of this today, but I’m going to go spend some time with our managers and find out how to help them be more effective and spend some time understanding what they need from us, that’s a critical piece of this.
Adam Weber:
Yeah, I couldn’t agree more with probably the topic I talked the very most about. You think about how many top individual contributors get thrown into management without any sort of training infrastructure or any soft skill training, and they just wreak havoc on organizations. They just are trying to manage people exactly how they were instead of looking at each individual and managing with good solid principles and practices, which is hard to learn. It’s actually a skill set that needs to be learned.
Ben Eubanks:
One of the hard things though is that that is a one-way path within the company. You step up into that and you either make it or you sink or swim. And if you sink, you’re got to leave just to save face. I got to talk to a former HR leader from Yahoo recently, and she was telling me that one of the things they actually did was that try before you buy for managers. So let’s say Adam wants to be a manager, okay for six months we’re going to let you give feedback to some people on your team. We’re going to let you weigh in on interviews. We’re going to let you do some of these key things managers have to do. And at the end of that six months, you can say, that was amazing. I loved it. Let’s go all in. I’m changed my title, let’s go.
Or Whoa, whoa. That was not at all when I expect it to be. I’m perfectly fine where I am. Thank you very much. Y’all have fun with that manager position. It’s not for me. And there’s no weirdness. There’s no expectation that, oh, you couldn’t cut it. You couldn’t hack it, look at you. No. Yeah, you gave it a try like you would try anything and you didn’t like it. And so I think that’s a great recommendation. That’s very uncommon because for as long as you and I have been in the workplace, this, oh, we promote people because they’ve been here for a long time. Oh, you’ve been here long enough to be a leader. No wait, that has zero correlation with their capability of being a leader. We need to understand do they have, as you said, the skills, the right competencies, the things that make a great leader great.
They don’t just need to be a great individual contributor because you’re taking them out of a job they’re good at helping them to manage other people who are doing that job they used to love and they’re doing a job they’re completely uncomfortable with. Now all of the three strikes are against you in this. And so if we’re going to do this, make it less of a weird thing for them to try it and then transition back if they don’t like it. And if they do go into it, we have to go all in with them and make them capable and able to do that. Talked recently with Kamaria Scott, she’s a manager enablement expert at Accenture. And one of the things that she instituted there was manager circles. So let’s say you have a bunch of leaders who have stepped up into leadership role in the last six months, put them in a group where they can meet privately and say, Hey Adam, I don’t know if you’ve seen this, but I was meeting with a person the other day and they said this thing, have you ever seen that before?
How’d you respond? What did you do? And just giving managers a safe space because when we get them in this role, suddenly they’re closed off from all their former peers and people who they could talk to and we have to create those new connections with them in a safe space or they’re going to feel completely lost. And based on the data we have, managers want to learn new skills, not with a bunch of training and content and courses. Those are helpful. But they want to learn it through experiences and socially through those other conversations with people who they can talk to without feeling like they’re being judged or something else.
Adam Weber:
I think you’re spot on. For me, when I was in the chief people officer role, one of the most important things I felt like I did were those small group meetings where it was one hour. We did basically a mastermind group or a hot seat where you share a problem you were facing. It was a safe space. And we just let people do realtime application. And even if you look at like 15Five, I think there’s a reason why our manager accelerator, the transform programs, the fastest growing part of our business. It’s because it’s this combination of both the tactical skills, like someone needs to teach you how to do this, but then the application practice in real time, right? That’s where it actually comes together is like you read one thing, but then when you are faced for the first time with a really challenging situation, you need the support to be able to resolve it in the moment, like in real time.
Ben Eubanks:
Yeah. The manager piece is big couple stories and examples here too. So if any of you have a very tenured workforce or a workforce who’s more experienced, people who are nearing retirement age, there’s an aerospace company that’s called the Aerospace Company or Aerospace Corp, it’s very great name. One of the things that they’ve done to realize when someone retires, we’re losing all their knowledge, all their experience, all their expertise, their customer relationships, all these things we’ve cultivated for a long time. The second they retire, that’s all gone. So they started putting together this phase retirement program so that the day you retire the very next day, you can come back as a part-time employee working up to a thousand hours a year. That’s the maximum allowed. And you can either do that all at once, I’ll work for three months on a big project and then take off till next year or I’ll work a few hours a week every week for the duration of the year and just stay plugged in.
And what’s amazing to me is the company’s benefiting tremendously from having access to these leaders. They’re keeping them in touch, they’re keeping them sharpen their skills. But there’s a lot of data that show that when people retire and completely disengage, they die early. The company didn’t start it to prolong the life of all these people, but it’s actually statistically prolonging the life of every person who’s participating here because they’re getting a chance to be reminded every day or every time they touch this project or touch their peers at work. You have value. You are bringing something important, right? The world still needs what you have, and that’s a really important place to be. So there’s some fun stories like that one.
Another is that I get so excited about it because it comes back to that connection thing we started with today, right? These people are being reminded that the connections they have at work, the connections they have with their ideas, with their creativity, those things all are continuing to generate financial returns from them in terms of income. But it’s benefiting the workplace because all of us are benefiting from some of the things that they’re creating in those different companies and so on. So it’s really just incredible to me to see the bigger impact that we can have and also bring that down to the very personal impact for each one of those people.
