Building a Sustainable Hiring Strategy

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You can have the best vision. You can have the best values and strategy in place. But if you're hiring is creating a perpetual revolving door, your teams will always be in firefighting mode. So how do you fix it? The problem is that when you get into revolving door mode, it's hard to get out. In fact, as a churn keeps occurring, functional leaders will be star for talent and will be more apt for looking for short term fixes But what if the urgency for the short term fix is the root of the problem?

How do you break that cycle? Those are the questions that we'll be tackling today with our featured guest jennifer okoma Jennifer is a proven executive leader with an outstanding track record of building high performance teams and managing top talent She's got a strong focus on the successful implementation of high profile projects.

She's [: 00:01:00

[00:01:20] Jennifer Akoma: Thank you very much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

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[00:01:48] Jennifer Akoma: Sure. Sure. It was a, it's a unique and interesting way. We we've gotten to this point Android is, has a very long history in the automotive in [00:02:00] industry. When I joined we. We had a very large contract and I joined as the Talent Acquisition, Talent Development Manager, the very first one.

We had to hire 1, 800 people in 18 months, which is quite a bit. That is a very fast time period. So we grew very quickly. And had to bring all those people on board. As we were doing that in the automotive industry and in the world, there were some things that happened back to back.

2019 you had the UAW strike, which hit the auto industry pretty hard. And then as we come came out of that, you have. COVID that hit and everybody knows what COVID did to staffing and trying to staff positions and get people to come back to work, especially those deemed as, essential workers people that.

ay or into a factory. It was [: 00:03:00

[00:03:27] Dr. Jim: It's interesting that you're describing all of these different pivots during your time at Android, but one of the things that I'm curious about is that when you look at the size of the organization, roughly a 4,000 person organization, your HR organization is pretty lean.

So when you're looking at crisis after crisis. And you're looking at a large organization that is distributed internationally. How did you make the decision on what to prioritize with an especially thin HR team?

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So we were able to do that with a system and we did it quickly. So we got past that and then as you do You're working through one problem and you start to notice other things, right? And so you're solving one and then you're already have a list of many others. So you go on to the next challenge, right?

roll. And that was it. So for: 4000

[00:05:04] Dr. Jim: That's interesting that you had to scale up with little to no infrastructure in place. I guess one of the things that I'm curious about in that sort of environment when you're in an infrastructure, poor environment and you're running a thin HR team, you still have to get all of that hiring done.

What's looking back at that scenario, what were some of the things that you put into place at that time that got the job done, but you might, looking back, think, oh, that was probably not the right way that we should have approached it?

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It would take quite a long period of time to get people hired. But when you have a focused talent acquisition team that is able to spend the whole day on calls, getting people in the door, organizing job fairs scheduling interviews the. It goes much quicker, much smoother in it.

It's a, it's an art, right? So I think I would have tried to push going in that direction a little quicker.

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And if I am. What were the things that you did during that transition phase to help [00:07:00] shift that perspective into something that is more modern in terms of how each are functions in our organization.

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And the culture is good, but so much more to offer. And I think one of the things especially when you're looking at an HRS system is the data, right? There's so much information that you can provide to an organization with the people data. that you have when you have a global HRAS system put into place that I don't think our organization ever thought of.

we aren't getting any people [: 00:08:00

When you have the data versus, an emotional type of reaction. I think that was able to use that as my first building block of, okay, let's look at this and now we can problem solve from this data and really figure out what we can do instead of, just reaction after reaction.

That doesn't get you anywhere.

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You inherited an organization and you really grew up as an HR professional in an organization that [00:09:00] That were, that was experiencing a lot of different pain points, but those pain points weren't being surfaced. So tell us about what you observed and how you leveraged what you observed to make the case for doing something different.

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We need a salaried employee. Let's get a contractor or let's, get a recruiter on that. When I came in it was August timeframe. And because we had at headquarters as much hiring as we did in the plants, there was over 750, 000 spent on on recruiter fees that we were able to completely wipe out that for the next year.

That was a, complete savings [: 00:10:00

So they don't know your culture, they don't know your people. And so it was retraining the company You can interview, you can spend a little bit more time with these people and find the right fit and all positions, including direct labor. We can drug screen, we can test them, we can get them in the door.

much time training and with [: 00:11:00

[00:11:02] Dr. Jim: So I want to dig in a little bit on some of the things that you mentioned, and one of the things that stood out is that once you had the data in front of you, the organ, you found out that the organization was spending almost a million dollars a year and recruiter fees. And your comment was, temp agencies are fine as a backup solution.

What I'd like to hear from you is a little bit more insight into how you should Use temp agencies as a supplementary tool for your talent attraction strategy or talent talent acquisition strategy versus a primary tool.

So map that out for us a little bit.

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Sometimes, in, in engineering too, we use engineers in that way. In the summer a lot of times we have we have unions in a lot of our plants, they have PTO and we have a lot of PTO happening and so we have higher absenteeism at the same time. So we might, carry some carry some temps at that time, just so we have coverage.

We don't necessarily have to hire because we know it's a combination of PTO and absenteeism and that, okay, they're going to fall off or at the end of, 60 days or at the end of the summer that temporary assignment is going to be over. A customer has, let's say, a, A time period where they tell us they're going to ramp up for a period of time, but it's only going to be this period of time.

those are what I call like a [: 00:13:00

[00:13:20] Dr. Jim: Yeah I like your emphasis on using it as a stop gap or as a supplementary or special projects approach. And really when I tie it into some of the things that happened over the last couple of years, especially in the big tech space where they overhired, They probably should have taken the approach of temporary staff, which would have temporary it staff, which would have probably saved their reputations a little bit more than than what they typically did.

ou're doing mass layoffs. So [: 00:14:00

So I want to I want to bring this forward a little bit. So this was the S. O. P. For a while. You just go through this constant binge cycle of bringing people in and then you're churning through them just as quickly because, as you mentioned, we're just going to hope for the best. So what was the story that you told leadership and it?

What did you do to have them shift perspective into a different way of doing things so that you weren't dealing with this constant pile of burning money, which is. Basically what you were doing.

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And Arlington is an area where it is hard to find people. There's a lot of competition. We were challenged there. We were not paying. We were, that was the time where, you know that fast food restaurants were just, okay, we're going to pay 12. 15 because you're competing with all the subsets subsidies too and it was more profitable for people to stay home than going to work.

You're facing all of these challenges to try to. Get people to come in. We had to go the double duty there. We had to use the temporary staffing companies, but then we had hired an intern essentially just to focus on direct labor in Arlington, just call and get people in and do job fairs.

one. The people that she was [: 00:16:00

And. Then the difference did equate to quite a savings because we weren't paying that markup fee on the ones that that she was bringing in. And in fact, if if she was an intern and we did end up hiring her full time, but you equate that salary to the savings of, the markup of a temp, Temporary staffing company.

s is why we want to start to [: 00:17:00

[00:17:01] Dr. Jim: that's really good perspective. I think one of the things that I'm curious about when you're making that pivot, you're probably dealing with a lot of the operation or shop floor people that are screaming at you about, we don't have anybody to put on the line. How did you navigate that conversation and put out that fire? Because you're not going to be able to convert from a temp driven hiring strategy to a direct hire driven hiring strategy overnight. And that's before we start looking at the changes that you need to make from an onboarding perspective.

So walk us through how you got the shop floor leaders from going off the rails because they don't have any people. Yeah.

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Which, if you think about that, doing that in 2020, 2021, it would have been impossible. We would have had our entire, salary team running the line. There would have been no way we would have been able to do that. We, we called in our staffing agency partners and we were able to get enough people in the door to start to do that on the back end.

We were then doing the job fairs and getting the direct labor in and they were asking for it because, they've seen the differences now. As then we, we got the people in that we needed to stand it, stand up the second shift. But then as the attrition happened, we were oriented, we had orientations of our direct tire and then we were backfilling them with the direct tires.

lot those in and we're still [: 00:19:00

The team was able to do it and the operations team and the HR team work together because we've over the last three or four years, we've worked together to say, we are going to get you your people. We were not saying we're not going to use the temporary staffing companies.

We will. But we're going to do it this way as well. And they're now seeing the data in another plant where we're going to do we're starting a third shift in September. We're starting the direct hiring now in june or yeah in june We started job fairs and we're bringing them on Second shift and we're training them.

of materials handler partner [: 00:20:00

Every other week we're doing a job fair, you were, we're training on other shifts. And so the plan is this is our first one to see, can we do this mostly with direct tires?

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Versus what you just described where you have lead time. I would think a lot of these [00:21:00] problems could be solved with better forecasting that's coming from the functional leaders that are saying, Hey, this is what we need. And then that way that allows for better planning and better hiring.

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Hindsight is 2020 for them. I think they, they're seeing the challenges on their side and our side and probably would do it differently, but again, hindsight's 20, 20 in our Arlington situation, nobody could have predicted what happened in, in the midst of COVID, right? We were prepped.

ch. That but it all crumbled [: 00:22:00

So it was boom, which is fast, but. That's, it's the way it goes when they offer you a contract and we're like, yep, we're ready to go. We'll take it. And what are you going to do? Turn it down. So they just did not, at that point have the staffing infrastructure to, to be able to withstand that.

Could we do it now? Yeah, probably.

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So how did that level of churn influence what you're doing through the talent attraction phase and also the onboarding phase? What were the things that you focused on to get better outcomes from a retention perspective?

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Once they get past that 30 day, it, halves or more. And once you get them past the 90 day it drops [00:24:00] significantly. So we really want to focus on that 30 day that 30 day turnover. I was like, okay, you have to listen to your team. I I have a very data driven team.

Very opposite of sometimes what you think of HR people. They love to dig into the data. the details of the data and that's what they did. We are, doing things like putting out surveys to our direct labor, even going to the floor to say, okay, you've been here this many months, and asking them some very pointed questions so that we can, figure out what was it that, that they were interested in.

ere, you never see him again.[: 00:25:00

You're not going to get anything from the people that leave. You really have to go back to the people that stayed and try to figure out what kept them here. So we're approaching it many different ways.

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[00:25:23] Jennifer Akoma: Sure. We have a very clean environment. There are a lot of our a lot of plants are, very clean. They can be dirty, it can be very, hard work. There are some stations that are a little bit more difficult than others, but our, ours tends to be very ergo friendly.

d to OSHA standards RIR year [: 00:26:00

So people that have worked in plant over plant, they see, Those things as a positive and they know a good environment when they see one. And they appreciate that. So we try to focus on those things, areas that we can get better. We. We do, we got probably off the way we used to train and do orientation with people we, when we were trying to just get them in the door faster and get the lines filled.

team leaders and production [: 00:27:00

That's a very hard place to be when you're shoulder to somebody, your friends, you've been working next to them for years, and then you're in a leadership position, right? It If you, if we don't give them the tools and the training to do that that's when, people on the line notice favoritism, they're buddies with this person and they get more breaks, they get the easier line, and then you start to get those battles, on the floor, on the line, and the complaints start coming.

We're spending more time. providing that training before we're putting people in like a team leader or production supervisor type of role.

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I'm sure there are other people leaders that are out there in high volume environments that are probably facing the same thing where they're in a high churn environment. So when you think about that, what are the key lessons that you learned? That would be useful for those folks that are facing the same thing that will help them get over the hump and transform their culture from one that's high churn to something that's a little bit more stable.

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No, do it this way. It's, trying to align and say, Hey, let's do this together. It will it'll make it a better, it'll make it a better story in the end. Sometimes [00:29:00] it's impossible, but if there was a way to do that, find a partner somewhere that speaks that language . Don't be afraid to pivot. Sometimes you go down a path and it's not, it's not working. Then, pivot and try something else because just don't get stuck on something because you said it. It might not work in all areas of the country or for all jobs.

Sometimes you have to, pivot into something else and you don't want to get stuck in something just because that's what you thought at first. And then it ends up not working.

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[00:29:36] Jennifer Akoma: Sure. I am available on LinkedIn. They can definitely reach out to me via an in mail. And I can share my My Android email address.

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In any organization, if you are looking at stop gap measures to fix whatever the problem that is at the surface you're It's going to solve that surface level problem and it's probably going to lead to about six other longer deep seated problems that you need to deal with. So when you're looking at an environment that is challenged with a lot of turnover, what I gathered from this conversation is that you need to have deliberate focus on two different areas.

One is your talent attractions process and specifically the talent profile that you're hiring for and especially your alignment at the late stage hiring phase. So you need to find out Is this person going to be here to fill a gap, or is this person going to be somebody that we're looking at to be here for the long term?

you're going to have another [: 00:31:00

So when you're looking at driving retention outcomes, one of the most critical Stages of the employee life cycle is your onboarding process. Most people who are in your organization Will make a decision to stay or leave based on the strength or weakness of your onboarding program . So if you haven't structured your onboarding program in a way that is designed to put your people in positions to succeed, you're going to have problems. It's got to be more than just let's throw him in and see what happens. That is where you get a 50 percent churn rate within your organization. So if the goal for your organization is to Much more profitable from a talent retention and development perspective.

You've got to get away from short term thinking and you need to be much more disciplined in your hiring and onboarding process because that's, what's going to pay off in longterm retention outcomes. So Jennifer, I appreciate you hanging out and sharing with us your experience. For those of you who have been listening to this conversation, we appreciate you listening to.

If you liked what you heard, [: 00:32:00