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HIRED! The Podcast With Travis Miller
Welcome to HIRED! The Podcast, where host Travis Miller dives deep into dynamic dialogues with top hiring experts. Join us for candid conversations that transform companies into coveted destinations for talent and empower candidates to stand out from the crowd.
HIRED! The Podcast With Travis Miller
Life Beyond "Culture Fit" (Ft. Ann Wyatt) | Ep. #46
Recruiting pros, listen up - the latest episode of HIRED! The Podcast is a must-listen. Host Travis Miller sits down with Ann Wyatt, President of Ann Wyatt Recruiting and host of the Workforce 4.0 podcast. Their lively discussion explores effective interview strategies, building positive organizational cultures, achieving work-life balance for employees, and more. Ann offers insightful perspective based on her workforce development background and innovative recruitment firm blending digital capabilities with personalized service.
Ann Wyatt is a recruiting phenom delivering top talent with remarkable retention since 2015. Her passion stems from a trailblazing workforce development career in Kentucky. Now, her innovative firm bridges talent gaps for industrial SMEs and solutions providers by masterfully blending cutting-edge digital capabilities with a personalized approach to forge ultra-vibrant cultures.
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#worklifebalance #career #recruiting #jobs #manufacturing #automation
That's something that you know, I think is a big topic of conversation.
Travis Miller:Hello, and welcome to HIRED! The Podcast as always, or most of the time. I'm Travis Miller. I'm always Travis Miller. But I'm not always the host of hired the podcast, conversation with the best and brightest minds in the world of work today, I am super excited to be joined by an incredible voice on this topic, and why and is the president and owner of Ann Wyatt Recruiting and the host of the podcast Workforce 4.0. She's like I said, she's one of the leading voices in employment in the world of manufacturing. And she's joining us after a week long stint hosting, automate live with Chris Luecke at the Automate show here in Chicago. Ann, we were just talking about this before we hit record, and it sounds like after that you slept for a couple of days.
Ann Wyatt:I did, I had to go home and rest up. I was in Nashville before automate, right before automate and then automate for the entire week. And then came home and packed again, and went off to Grand Rapids to help out Chris Luecke and his his partner swipe guide in their manufacturing Happy Hour roadshow tour.
Travis Miller:Which from everything I heard was a great event. I could not attend the event in Chicago. I had my that night, my daughter, eight year old daughter is in a theater camp, and they did a bunch of eight year olds did a performance of Hamilton.
Ann Wyatt:Oh, that's fun.
Travis Miller:It was fun. I was happy. They did an edited version. I was a little little worried about some of the lyrical and content choices, but they made it appropriate for eight year olds, it was great.
Ann Wyatt:Well that's really cool. I bet you're so proud of her.
Travis Miller:So proud. She's such such a ham. I mean, you can just tell the kids that she is not going to ever have a fear of public speaking in her life.
Ann Wyatt:That's awesome. I feel like you know, and in manufacturing, especially and really in business overall, it's really important for women to be encouraged at a young age to be fearless and have that that ambition and that drive to just go out and be yourself and that it's okay. So I will have that you support that for her.
Travis Miller:Absolutely. And speaking of performing, I'm trying out a new bit here to start off the episode. I want to know what you think of it. Ann, what's your go to karaoke song?
Ann Wyatt:I love that bit.
Travis Miller:Ann starts every show off asking her her guests. What their go to karaoke song is, and I was playing in the sun. I'm like, Oh, I'll ask him because nobody ever asks her and then I listened to the start of like four or five episodes. I'm like, No, that's that's not true. Everybody asks Ann what her go to karaoke song.
Ann Wyatt:Everybody has started asking me that. But you know, they didn't when I first started work force 4.0. And it's been a lot of fun. Now people asked me and I'm like, Thank you, I would love to share my karaoke song with you. And you can use that bit as much as you want to. Because music to me at least makes the world go round. But I so I really want to try out a couple of songs. And you you tell me what you think. Travis? Do you think if I could cut it? Okay. Alright, so I'm thinking that I really haven't done The Cranberries song.
Travis Miller:Which one?
Ann Wyatt:Zombie.
Travis Miller:Zombie.
Ann Wyatt:I really want to try that one out. Because my sister in law we sing that all the time at like our little our family get togethers.
Travis Miller:That'd have to be a performance. It depends on the quality of your, your vocal range. She's she's got a powerful, powerful instrument there.
Ann Wyatt:She does, right? Do you think I could hack it? Do you think I should try it?
Travis Miller:I think you should try it for sure. Is there anything that you you've tried? And halfway through it, like, I've made a giant mistake?
Ann Wyatt:I mean, that's the fun of doing karaoke, I think.
Travis Miller:Absolutely.
Ann Wyatt:You know, you just try stuff. And sometimes it's great. And sometimes you're just not feeling it. You know what I mean? I'd have to say, there was a song that I did one time and I can't remember if it was sublime, maybe what I got. And normally and sometimes it just depends on the mood right? So normally I do a pretty decent job of that song. But for whatever reason, I just got up there and was like, Why did I choose this? You You know, you get to the rapping part.
Travis Miller:Life is too short, so love the one you got, because you might get run over or you might get shot. Duet it, we'll duet it next time.
Ann Wyatt:We will have to do that you'll have to come on my show. And then we can, we can just do the whole episode.
Travis Miller:So I love it that opening the segment to your show, because it does such a good job of getting your guests comfortable. They're like, Oh, this Yeah, I can talk about this. This is This is fun. This is something I can talk about. And I, I wonder if you have any strategy like that, or do you, Counsel, the companies that you're working with that as you're interviewing a candidate? Start off with something, just a little off the wall, a little something a little personal that they don't have to think real hard about? Just to kind of get them comfortable in that situation? Is that something that you put into practice?
Ann Wyatt:I do. And that's really something that I don't kind of advertise to my clients. But yeah, as part of my screening process, it's my job, I feel like to inherently make candidates comfortable in speaking with me and sharing things with me. So a lot of times when I'm recruiting, I'll use different tactics of you know, like, I'll pick their location, or whatever, if they're in a city that I've been to. I'm like, oh, yeah, you know, I was there back in, you know, 2018. And it was such a great experience for me. And, you know, I really liked that one dive bar on that one, you know, on First Street or whatever. And they're like, oh, yeah, you know, I've been there have been there. So that kind of gets the conversation started a little bit. But that is a tactic that I use, and I try to find different ways to do that. So if it's not a city, you know, I do I choose something else, that I can build that common ground with the candidate, and start working on building that relationship from the very first conversation.
Travis Miller:As a recruiter, how much coaching or advice do you give to the people that are doing the interviewing because we're interesting, or I don't want to say we're interesting, but these people that are doing the hiring, most of them don't have a ton of experience in it. And that's fine. It's not, it's not their profession. I'm not an engineer, I would never dream of going into a facility and saying, Well, let me tell you about how to fix this problem you're having with with your robotic arm, we recruit a lot of people that can do that. But that's not my expertise.
Ann Wyatt:Right, yeah.
Travis Miller:And I think about the most leaders will conduct how many interviews per year, depending on the size of their team, depending on the size of their workforce, depending on their role? I guess, a lot of minutes 5, 10, maybe 20? Not if they're in a talent acquisition capacity, but how much coaching do you give them to help them conduct the best interview to land the candidates that they really want to land?
Ann Wyatt:That is a great question. And I love that. So I don't really I don't I don't guess I would think about it as formally like coaching them. But if there are things that I pick up during the screening process, you know, I will reiterate that I think that the client will like, if that makes sense, then I will reiterate those things. I'm more. I'm more prone to get everyone in a conversation before I start screening candidates, okay. And I will go over KPIs and hard skill sets and desired recommendations requirements and things like that. And I, during this process, want to meet with everyone that is on the hiring team. Because I want everyone's different opinion at that point. And then I kind of build my screening based on what their requirements are. If that makes sense.
Travis Miller:That makes perfect sense.
Ann Wyatt:And then I do prep the candidates a little bit. I'll work with them and I have like an interactive interview prep guide that I'll send them just to kind of reiterate okay, this is what you're supposed to do during an interview. This is how you answer situational based questions, which are, you know, so pretty popular. And I'll work with them but I think I think you know, at the at the end of the day, if you kind of get a good read on the company, and what the culture is, and then you are screening against those requirements with the candidate, and then you can get a good read on the candidate that way. I think the risk kind of naturally takes care of itself.
Travis Miller:I would, I would hope so most of the time, occasionally, you hear horror stories about leaders asking inappropriate questions, or trying to gamify the system to figure out things that they can't ask questions about, but most of them are pretty good. But I'm in the same boat as you Oh, I don't do it a lot, either. We don't do it a lot, either to coach people on how to conduct an interview. But now is our opportunity. If you were to give advice to the most of the people that are doing the interviews that aren't skilled at it, or don't want to say not skilled at it, but don't practice it as much as people like us. What advice would you give them when conducting an interview?
Ann Wyatt:Well, I would advise them to- I really like this is not a popular opinion, I don't think. But I think that in the age of data analytics, this goes a long way. But I would advise you to work with your interviewing process have a pretty not necessarily systemized interviewing process, but have general metrics in place for interviewing. And then I really like the the score interviews, I don't think that that's super popular. But I also think that if you can objectively say, you know, this person meets all of these qualifications, and they would be good at the position, then I think that's, that's the best way to go about it. You can also build in cultural questions into your interviewing process. I like situational based interview questions. I know, again, that's really not very popular, but it does let you get a better grasp of the full spectrum of their experience level, if that makes sense. And it also tells you things.
Travis Miller:Tell me about a time when you were working with a difficult hiring authority and how you handled it. Let's do some situational interviewing. No, it's It's challenging. And we've we've tried that before. And especially we've tried that for us to come up with a systemized interviewing process to be able to score candidates in all these different categories. It's just hard. It's really hard.
Ann Wyatt:It is really hard. It is really hard. And then if you have a whole team scoring, you know, and that's really where I enjoy the high functional teams, you know, the companies that have that high functional team environments where it's like, 100% transparency, because you never, you know, you never have to worry about the politics of an organization don't get in the way as much, right? It's like, yes, you know, today I'm showing up as Ann Wyatt, and I'm Ann Wyatt yesterday, and I'm Ann Wyatt tomorrow. And this is what Ann Wyatt's opinion is. And then being able to come to a group opinion on someone, it's a lot harder than then I think sometimes that, that you do that. So if you have those metrics in place, it kind of gives you a good sounding guideline, where you can make sure that you're making the best objective decisions for the organization at large. Does that make sense?
Travis Miller:No, it makes perfect sense. Because so often, when companies are making this dish decision, we fall into this trap, too. It's it's not an objective decision. It's a subjective decision. And I always question organizations that we work with, or they've, they have a called a thorough hiring process, so might lovingly refer to it as a long hiring process. We'll call it thorough. And there's, you know, 5, 6, 7, 8 people involved, there might be panel interviews with potential coworkers and colleagues and-
Ann Wyatt:Assessments.
Travis Miller:assessments and intelligence tests and all of these things. And at any given point, if one person just goes like this, they're done. They're done. And I was always curious why the no is more powerful than Yes. Can you imagine living that? If everybody said no to someone, but one person said yes, then they would hire. But in so many organizations, even if one person says no, they're done, and I was always curious why the no had more power than the yes, when it comes to hiring?
Ann Wyatt:I don't know, that's a good question. And I think that's something that, you know, we were kind of advocating for and all this work that we're we're doing. I mean, really, that's the base of it. Right? You know, I started my podcast to really emphasize the importance of technology, and how that's improving recruitment efforts and retention efforts and how I mean, it's going to have to happen, because if we're looking at the sheer numbers of the workforce, I mean, there's just no mitigating that. And also to advocate for, you know, maybe we need to change our mindset a little bit. And maybe we need to consider things like transferable skills. And if somebody has aptitude and attitude, you know, how do we deploy technology that can get them up to speed skills wise. So and I know that you started your podcast for probably a lot of the same reasons. And at the end of the day, I think that's really kind of what we're out to do is shift that mindset and say, you know, we understand that this isn't the purple squirrel or unicorn you were looking for. But this person meets 90% of your requirements. And if there's anything that we can do to supplement any gaps here, why why not do that?
Travis Miller:Yeah, absolutely. I like to take the approach, though, there are so many I hear so many hiring authorities, and so many recruiters out there, say, tell me about the ideal candidate, who is the perfect person for this job? And although I want to know that, because I'm curious about it, what I really want to know, is what is the worst candidate look like? What is someone's absolute bare minimum level of experience for them to be barely competent enough to keep their job. So we've identified that baseline, good, that's a good way of looking at it. Well, let's find identify everybody that meets that bare bare minimum requirement. And let's talk to every single person above that line. So that we can uncover, uncover the potential, let's uncover all of the things, the transferable skills, the soft skills, the things that can't be identified on a resume, you can't match this part of the resume to that part of the job description. If you're always trying to widen the pool, and the organization is open to lowering the expectations, the purple squirrel isn't what you can do. I think the purple squirrel is who the person is.
Ann Wyatt:Yeah, I mean, absolutely. And I think that's, we have to educate clients on that some as well. And I don't know if you ever find your yourself in that position where you try to work with your clients and educate them a little bit more on, you know, what, what defines the purple squirrel to them? And, you know, where, where the gaps could be with potential candidates that you're submitting?
Travis Miller:Yeah, I don't know how much educating we can do, especially in the moment. You know, I've had let's say, potential customers, not yell at me, but get firm with me, you know, you're presenting me all these people that are that are unqualified, or, you know, you just keep wanting to jam someone in here so that you can get paid your feet. And I don't feel that's, that's it. It's just an understanding that there are so many things that you can train. Let's figure that out. Let's figure out what you can train. What can somebody learn in their first three to six months on the job? So that we can focus on hiring everything that you can't, you can't train? You can't coach? And have you been successful in trying to educate your customers and potential customers on developing that mindset?
Ann Wyatt:Yeah. So I try to do that. And I'll also when I'm screening for candidates, I see I don't ask the base level question. That's a good question to ask. But you know, I do ask about, you know, the absolute perfect ideal fit for this role and then I will go find that individual. And I will present that in you know, I'll screen that individual and I will present that individual to to the to the client, and kind of let them make that decision. And, you know, decide from there. But when I'm submitting candidates, I guess I submit, you know, five or so per position, multiple candidates, right? Sure you all do as well. And then if we do have to have that intermittent meeting, right in the process where you're you're stopping, you're like, Okay, hold up, stop. Because something's not something's not quite right here. You ever we experienced that? Okay.
Travis Miller:Let's have a calibration call.
Ann Wyatt:Yes, let's circle the wagons and kind of get together and decide where we are lacking in the search process here. Because it's not it doesn't seem to be hitting all the marks will say. So. During that process, I think it's really important to it. And if, if I haven't already done the clients, evaluation side of it, that's the point, I will break that out. And I'll say, Okay, I need to know specifically what your metrics are. And, and go from there. So I don't know if you use kind of a partner evaluation tool or a client evaluation tool, but that helps me.
Travis Miller:We don't. A lot of times, it's, it's kind of just feel like if they were just, it's almost like they're searching for reasons to swat away people that we think would be good fits for their organization, just ban them left and rightm Dikembe Mutombo, No, no, no. You kind of get the feeling that these are organizations that truly value the people that are working there. They're the ones that are focused on the skills. And though as much as I'd love to change the mindset of organizations that have that philosophy, I'm not sure how many minds we can change versus working to identify the companies that do value, not just what a person can do, but who, who the person is that doing is doing it. And I know, almost just rather work to find those companies than to educate the ones that don't, and help those organizations find the best people who have the most potential to help them succeed, because I want those companies to succeed. More than the other ones a little bit.
Ann Wyatt:Yeah, I mean, and that's so common on the recruiting blogs. I don't know. Are you, are you on any of those?
Travis Miller:Of course.
Ann Wyatt:Like there's a big one on Facebook called HERC? Are you on that one? David Stephen Patterson?
Travis Miller:I'm not on that one.
Ann Wyatt:It's a good one. It's a pretty good one. But that's, that's something that, you know, I think is a big topic of conversation. And all the recruiting calls, right is like, you know, how do we how do we teach these clients? So, you know, I agree with you. And I think that most recruiters out there, probably agree with that. And another tool that I think is really helpful in, in recruiting is actually the power of retention study. And if you go and you do exit interviews, of, of employees, former employees, and you get down to it, I would almost guarantee you that a lot of your you know, your reasons for leaving, is going to come down to culture. It's, it's going to point back to that. So, you know, if, if that's a situation where you're seeing a super high turnover rate. And AI, I can't, it can't be the culture, because in all fairness, I think a lot of corporations do spend a lot of money trying to improve their culture. I don't I think, you know, sometimes they just miss in certain regards, maybe middle management is a good is a good place to look for that. But a lot of times there's retention studies will come back and they will point directly to your culture. And then you and then it has to be it has to be on you to take that data, which is is people data, you know, like what you get from their machines, but people right, I mean, you've got data here that supports
Travis Miller:that it's cultural, I did and then what you do with that, is is important. Yeah. What do you do with that? I mean, and culture something that no matter how much money you throw at it, if
Unknown:if
Ann Wyatt:The person or people, leading the culture of the organization are broken, I'm not sure how much money you can throw at it to fix it. Money does not fix culture. That is a leadership driven initiative. And I know that we get we, we say that all the time, right. But truly, it's got to come from the top down. And it's got to be driven throughout the organization. And it's hard. It is extremely hard.
Travis Miller:And, you know, it takes a lot of time to improve culture. So it's a big commitment. So what advice would you give to a leader, and if if you have any examples of organizations, that it's probably a pretty small subset of leaders who have identified that there is a cultural issue within their organization, that they're able to identify that leadership is part of the cultural problem. We want to change it. But we don't know how, what advice would you give to that small subset of people?
Ann Wyatt:Well, I think that you've got to work, work on identifying where that specific gap is, within your organization. And kind of evaluating where your feedback is coming from. If there is a big pain point there, then I think, you know, we've got to initiate some some culture, training sessions, if you will. And there's, I mean, there's so many different types of those. Right, and Sherm is a great resource, if you have any listeners that are in the society of human resource managers, their website has a ton of resources. And there's a lot of industry partners out there that also improve cultural and cultural issues if you if you have that. But you have to identify where the source is in any misalignments and culture. And you know, and then you kind of have to have these trainings and assess where you can improve. And, and, you know, appoint champions within your organization that are going to, to continue to build and drive stronger cultures.
Travis Miller:I want to flip the conversation on a little bit, because we've been talking about the leadership side quite a bit. But if an individual is out there searching for their next opportunity, what do you feel that they should be doing? Or the questions they should be asking or the things that they should be looking for? To determine if an organization does have that healthy culture that is going to match with their with their values and allow them to thrive?
Ann Wyatt:Yeah, that's a great question. And, and again, you know, with candidates are people, so not one size fits, all right. And everyone's always asking, like, what, what do I do to fix culture? What do I do to fix recruitment efforts? What do we do to fix retention? It is not one thing, there is no secret sauce here. It's a variety of different things, and really changing the corporate, the corporation's mindset to, to evolve with those those things of, of what your workforce wants, you know, and there's tools for that, but when I'm working with a candidate that is interested in, in making a change of job, jobs, right, and they're looking for companies that they want to work for, you know, I always advise them to write down things that they value. What is What are the top five things that you value in an organization? Ideally, like if you could pick anywhere to work, where would that place be? And then what specifically about that place do you like and then what are your must haves when you are looking for a new role? Because that's going to look very different to just depending on who you are, right? I mean, some some candidates that I work with, they are I mean, they I would dare say they're more like me, like they're fine with with you know, longer hours and the longer shifts and things like that, other candidates you know, they may not they may value work life balance more than they value, title or or financial compensation or have or what have you. So it's really about what you want. And what you what your needs are. If that makes sense.
Travis Miller:No, that makes that makes perfect sense we we go through an exercise with on the candidate side that we work with called called CLAMPS where we'll, we're recruiters we need, we need as many acronyms in our life as possible. That's right. So CLAMPS stands for challenge, location, advancement, money, people, and security. And we asked them to rank rank, what are their top three? Which of these three things are most important to you? In which order? And we'll ask why? And then we'll have to turn. So why are these three important? Not that they're not important? But why didn't you choose to rank any of those in your top three. And you just made me realize that something in there needs to be need to change our acronym, that balance or family or outside of work needs to be included in there too, because that's wildly important to a lot of people these days.
Ann Wyatt:Yeah. And I should clarify, you know, I'm infamously famous for talking about how there is no way that myself as a single mom could go work on a manufacturing floor, because it's very inflexible shifts, right. So I am fortunate enough to work from home. And because of that, I am fortunate enough to work a lot more than a lot more than I normally would if I were somewhere. But I think work life balance is very important to a lot of candidates, especially the younger generations, and especially in women. Because a lot of that parental responsibility is still on us. So that's something that we really have to be cognizant of in, in manufacturing. And that's something that I would like to see change.
Travis Miller:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. But, you know, I'm similar, I'm in a fortunate to be in an environment. And with an organization where it told you my, my daughter had was in a production of Hamilton. And for six weeks straight, I believe, 45 minutes early, once a week to get her to rehearsal on time. How can manufacturers that have plants and systems in place up and running? How do you think they can facilitate an environment where you allow life to happen? I mean, I'm not talking about people can come and go as they see fit. But sure things happen. And family is important and things outside of the your work life are incredibly important. How can manufacturing facilities try to be a bit more accommodating? If that's something that's important to their cultural values? For the people that they want to join their organization?
Ann Wyatt:That's a great question. You know, there's a lot of companies that are trying out this parent shift concept, and I'm very interested in it because, you know, I'm like a nerd at heart, like labor market information, economic development, all this stuff. So I, I like to learn more about, about this stuff, and what other companies are kind of out there doing and innovating. And so Purdue University, they did a big study on the parent shift and flexibility back a couple of years ago, and they published a paper on that, but several companies are trying out what, what they're calling the parent shift, and that's essentially, you know, that starts at like, 730 in the morning, and then ends it you know, 330 in the afternoon, so that the parents are able to drop their children off at school, and then still be there when they're, they get off the bus. And I think that's really fascinating, something that I'm interested in monitoring and a few years down the line and still saying, okay, is this was a successful did this work? Is this the answer? That kind of thing. So the parent shift has been pretty popular, I think over the last couple of years, and then also just being more tolerable of the point system. Like, I know that we need the point system, I guess. But you know, that's really where where's your biggest pain point as manufacturing plant do you need do you need 50 engineers or do you need 50 frontline workforce operators, you know, okay. So those are salaried positions versus non salaried positions. Right. So salaried positions do get a lot of benefits and perks that non salaried positions would not necessarily get right. And one of those perks I think is PTO and, and leave. So instead, so instead we give, you know, our, our, our hourly frontline workforce, we give them the point system, whereas we give annual leave, and all that to our salary positions. So I think trying to figure out some way to mitigate that and trying to be creative in what we allow for the point system would help us out tremendously. Now, I'm not saying that, you know, if you have an employee, that's, you know, I'm constantly late for work, constantly calling in, you know, I understand that. But, you know, if you have a really good employee, that maybe they're just going through a rough patch, if that makes sense, because especially if they have little kids, I mean, mine mine, mine look the wrong way and got in would spike a fever. I mean, kids do this. This is part of what children do. I mean, especially when they're really little right, they get sick with everything. And then what's even better is they give it to you.
Travis Miller:Oh, yeah.
Ann Wyatt:And then you're sick with it.
Travis Miller:We had, it was bought a year and a half ago, it was so traumatic that I remember it vividly. It started with some friends of ours, had a date plan for their anniversary for months, and their babysitter fell through the last minute, they asked if their daughter could could spend the night at our house. And it was her first time spending the night away from their house, not with grandma and grandpa. And she came over. And she caught the stomach flu in the middle of the night. Oh God, and sleeping next to my daughter, and we have to go in there and clean it up. Two days later, my daughter gets the stomach flu. So she's out from school for four or five days. Then my wife gets the stomach flu. Then my son gets the stomach flu.
Ann Wyatt:It's always one at a time. It's never all.
Travis Miller:Oh, yeah. And then, as soon as all four of us had got the stomach flu, then my daughter got strep throat. Then my son got strep throat. Then I got COVID. Then my daughter I mean, it was just we had one person in our house, at least one person in our house, and usually at least one sick kid for over a month and a half straight. And my wife was in a position where she was an hourly employee and her boss, pardon my language gave her so much shit about missing work because she had sick children. That she immediately started looking for a new job. And she got one shortly after that, because it was she felt so unappreciated. Because she had to take some time off. And it was mutual. I was out just as much as she was. She's like, What do you want me to do? I have sick children at home. And she's like, Well, you got to prioritize. And it was kind of, yeah, again, pardon me, but prioritize this.
Ann Wyatt:Well, yeah, right. I mean, where are we get what? What do you think happens? This kills me. So this is what I'm talking about. Because it that is the way it works. So I only have the one that now my brother, he's got four at his house. And you know, of course he and his wife. And I'm, I'm just they're gonna listen to this and be like, really, but you know, not nothing, whatever. But when one of them gets sick, they are down that whole house is down for a month.
Travis Miller:Yep.
Ann Wyatt:Because it just, it just keeps passing on to the next person. And the stomach bug is notorious. I mean, in my experience, the stomach bug is notorious for when Phoenix brings it home. Um, he's sick, and then I'm never sick at the same time. Like, he's sick for a week, and then I'm sick for three or four days after that. So I mean, that's in someone has to take off with them. We cannot. We can't just drop them off at childcare when they're sick. Right? They will send them immediately home. So that's two weeks off of work, you know, effect essentially. So you know, if you think about the point system, and you say you got five points, right. So, that's the average, right, five points, something like that.
Travis Miller:Yeah.
Ann Wyatt:And so every time you're late, it's like half a point. Every time you call in that's one point, right? So if you're out for two weeks with a sick kiddo, then by my calculations, you were fired a week ago.
Travis Miller:Yeah.
Ann Wyatt:And you know, I mean, things things like that happen. And we have to be super conscious about that. And it surprises me that we're not more conscious about that. Because this is something which is not a new thing. I mean, this is not like...
Travis Miller:No, it's not a new thing. And a lot of times, people in those frontline roles out people that are out in the field, those people are incredibly hard to find, particularly really good ones who you can build a level of dedication within them to your organization. And it's, you got a sick kid, you missed five days, sorry, you're gone.
Ann Wyatt:Exactly. And those are in those are really, I mean, really, and truthfully, if you look at the hiring needs of most manufacturing facilities and plants out there, I mean, that's really where the skills gap is. So with your frontline workforce, it's not with your salaried employees.
Travis Miller:It's one of the biggest things we get asked to help with, and we don't we can because to find those individuals is is wildly difficult. And you see so many companies treat them as expendable commodities. Uh huh.
Ann Wyatt:Yeah, I yeah, I just I don't have a big appreciation for that, either. They're extremely difficult to recruit. If they have had such poor experiences, that it's you know, it's it's evident. I think, in a lot of the interviews that that I've had, I don't usually recruit operators either. I have recruited some maintenance techs and to Inditex, things like that. But we, I mean, I don't know that, to me is the biggest elephant in the room, is what is what we can do better to improve our relations with frontline workforce.
Travis Miller:I think you I think you hit the nail on the head here a couple of minutes ago, it's, it's to value them to value those individuals, the same way you value just about any, any salaried employee. It just doesn't matter. If if somebody and I think it goes back to the soft skills that we were talking about earlier, if somebody can enhance the values that your company holds dear, it doesn't matter. If the person is mopping the floor, or leading the entire organization that you should value in, do everything you can to create an environment where that person wants to thrive. And the types of things that you're talking about, it does not show a level of dedication to the people choosing to work for your organization. So why on earth should they be dedicated to you?
Ann Wyatt:That's right. And
Travis Miller:I don't I don't know, we've really got to do we've got to do more, I think to shift that mentality, if you were leaving in a manufacturing organization, and what would you what would be the first thing you would do to shift that?
Ann Wyatt:Oh, gosh. Well, you know, I'll throw that disclaimer out there that I am an HR not operations. But but I guess you know, the really the first starting place is to really assess where you are get a good assessment of where you currently are. With all those things, and I think all of those things are fractional HR. But I mean, they still fall under HR is really like assessing where you're your culture, the health of your culture, and assessing the health of your recruitment strategies and policies and how you're currently doing things. And then looking at your retention rates. And I think it's, again, it's not just one of those things, it's all of those things. It's the entire lifecycle of the employee. And that starts from the day that they fill out that application to the day they the day they leave. And really analyzing that.
Travis Miller:It starts at the top. It's the values put forth by the people, leading the ship leading the organization. flow all the way down to everyone there and every company says we value our people. But if you don't show it, it's going to show and this conversation has been fantastic. I really appreciate it. What should people be reaching out to you about? And what's the best way for them to find you?
Ann Wyatt:Sure, um, you can reach out to me for I, you know, I've just felt like I'm kind of the sister of industry now, at this point. So if you just want to reach out and say hello. But LinkedIn is a good way to reach out to me, I do do recruitment services, retain searches, and then packages. So if you're interested in that kind of thing, but you, you are not already working with the amazing crew at Miller Resource Group.
Travis Miller:It's alright the industry is big enough to support the both of us I have no problem with logging what you do here on this, this show. Don't feel bad.
Ann Wyatt:So so you can reach out to me for that, or if you want to reach out and be a guest on workforce. 4.0 Travis, we'd love to have you.
Travis Miller:Sounds fantastic, Ann Wyatt, Ann Wyatt Recruiting, host of Workforce 4.0 Really appreciate you, appreciate you spending the time here. And this has been HIRED! The Podcast as always, I'm Travis Miller. Big thank you to our producer Noah Cuff and we'll talk to you all soon.
