Katie Ellis [00:00:01]:
This is Business Inspires, the podcast of the Tri Village Chamber Partnership. To run a successful business, you need resources, valuable connections, and community recognition. Business Inspires will provide you with the tools, resources, and examples to inspire you to create the business you're envisioning. This episode is brought to you by the Tri Village Chamber Our innovative and active chamber is successful because of our smart and engaged members who cultivate our strong business community. With more than sixty years as an integral part of the Grand View, Upper Arlington, and Marble Cliff communities, the Tri Village Chamber partnership is dedicated to a single purpose: the success of the business community. And Grand View Heights. Grand View Heights seamlessly combines timeless charm with a modern vision. Immerse yourself in the captivating blend of tradition and innovation that defines them.
Brett Johnson [00:01:08]:
Welcome to Business Inspires, where our goal is to inspire you to create the business you envision. I'm Brett Johnson, Tri Village Chamber Partnership board member and the owner of Circle two seventy Media Podcast Consultants. Thank you for following and subscribing to the podcast. With me is Katie Ellis, president and CEO of the Tri Village Chamber Partnership and the cohost of the podcast. Great to be here with you, Katie.
Katie Ellis [00:01:29]:
So good to be back as always. And today, our guest is Jake Harter, the founder of Bellevue HRM. Thank you so much for joining us, Jake.
Jake Harter [00:01:37]:
Thank Thank you so much for having me. It's great to see you both.
Katie Ellis [00:01:40]:
Yeah. So, Jake, you have your master's in HR management and have spent your career supporting future I'm sorry, Fortune one hundred talent management initiatives. You provide bespoke talent solutions for organizations that are interested in increasing employee engagement, retention, and productivity. What inspired you to establish your business?
Jake Harter [00:02:05]:
Yeah. Thank you very much, Katie. Yeah. As you mentioned, I was, you know, very fortunate to begin my career, and, have my education really tied in that marriage between business and psychology, and was fortunate to to take those that experience and skills and work for some some larger organizations in in town and and otherwise. And, throughout that entire, you know, time working in that corporate space, I always found myself, you know, operating with a pretty entrepreneurial mindset. The more that I could try and find, new avenues to support, grow, you know, gain additional, additional ideas, that's really what kind of ignited you know, that's that's what got me out of bed every morning. Even working for large organizations, you could still find those opportunities to to be very entrepreneurial. But, the more I started looking outside of my own kind of backyard or my own world, it was just starting to see that, there were so many, you know, folks and, individuals that didn't necessarily have the same experience that I I had and and, being able to kind of feel engaged and motivated and excited to to work and, get some fairly, you know, sobering statistics about, you know, how just according to, you know, recent Gallup poll that there's about only 33% of US employees are actually actively engaged in their work and in their in their job.
Jake Harter [00:03:24]:
And then the other end of the spectrum is about 17% that are actively disengaged. So that's where we hear the stories of the the quiet quitters or, you know, the the people that are just, you know, not necessarily, you know, you know, numb to their, you know, the nature of their role, but they might actually be undermining the their employer just because they are not, you know, not not you'd be feeling that their their needs are immediately met. And so, I just I it's kinda stemmed from the a lot of those those ideas and just feeling like that that how can we raise those, you know, those levels of engagement across organizations. And, I've always enjoyed having a hand in in solving workplace problems and and building out programs that can out kind of outlast, you know, my efforts or my work and let them kind of take on their own own legs. And so, it really subsets the idea of business leaders, they have countless external threats, and opportunities that they need to consider every day, things that, you know, different industries that might be competing in on their work and competitors, new kind of greener pastures to try and make you take advantage of as an organization. And so there's so many of those external threats that, you really, you know, you can end up being undermined by, internal threats. You you should you know, and so part of my work is to eliminate as many of those, internal threats as possible, and create environments where organizations where employees or organizations can be better positioned to take advantage of those opportunities that that may come about. And so that's really been the kind of my general, you know, focus as a, independent consultant is creating those environments for, yeah, the reduction of internal threats, but also the, the the benefit of, creating more dynamic and, change ready organizations.
Brett Johnson [00:05:13]:
So, you're emphasizing employee engagement, organizational effectiveness, and change management. How do these pillars interconnect to drive a, you know, a much higher performing workforce?
Jake Harter [00:05:25]:
Yeah. I see them as kind of three pillars of a stool. You know, each one is is critical to, building out a successful, workforce strategy. You wanna make sure that and it's these are all tied to direct business outcomes. There it shows that engaged organizations have, around 21% higher levels of profitability than those that are are disengaged. And it's not too hard to, to kinda wrap your mind around because it's you that you wanna create environments where individuals feel like they can, you know, they're not just being told to do all the work that's and it's not all funneling through kind of a a bureaucratic kinda micromanagement system. It really should be designed so that people can make decisions outside themselves and grow the organization, fairly organically without, you know, moving through there. And so, specifically engagements, you're looking at, creating autonomy for your employees, comfortability in their role and in their the the part that they have to play in the organization.
Jake Harter [00:06:25]:
And then, you know, frankly, it's, creating psychological safety in the environment as well. The more that you can create in, situations where someone feels like they can, bring up new ideas or an alternate way of thinking, that's where innovation really, really comes. And so, it's in my opinion, engagement is not from, you know, pizza parties and ping pong tables. It's it's primarily it comes from creating environments where, you know, someone can can feel proud of what they or what they do and, proud to work for organization that they are they are a part of. And that definitely feeds into the other ends of org effectiveness and and change management as well. But, yeah, happy to talk more about about those legs as well.
Katie Ellis [00:07:08]:
Could you walk us through a success story or maybe two where the strategies that you, initiated led to measurable improvements for a client?
Jake Harter [00:07:20]:
Yeah. Yeah. It was, one of my earlier clients, and and so kinda supporting a smaller, family owned business that, that it was a call center environment was the the primary population. It's about a hundred employees, so fairly, you know, large organization. And, what what some of the work that I typically do to start off a project when there isn't a very clear kind of, definition, or or, you know, clear, you know, need or cause or or whatever we need to to, attach or or start focusing on, I I conduct what what we we call is, organizational excellence assessments. We go through and review based on two ends of a of a spectrum. So, the the first half are the HR essentials. That's what, I'd say if you were unfamiliar with the world of of human resources, that that's typically what you assume is all of HR.
Jake Harter [00:08:15]:
The the the more, systematized and administrative end of human resources that is more, focused on the essentials. Those things that need a business to operate your payroll, onboarding, recruiting, benefits, things like that. And so part of the assessment is to evaluate those those aspects of the organization. But then the the other, half of the assessment is focused on HR excellence. And so that's an area that's a little bit more of an art than a science, certainly. And so working through and reviewing with clients understands, what are some of the more, proactive or dynamic ways to navigate a workforce or support a workforce? And and that's certainly start looking at your leadership development, creating succession plans, starting to look at your your workforce needs. So if you if you start to look down the, you know, down the into your future needs of an organization, start to say, hey. Alright.
Jake Harter [00:09:10]:
We're gonna need this level of, you know, stack development at at at our in our IT department, and, we don't currently have that. And so what is the I might need it, you know, three years from now, but, rather than, you know, just waiting for that day to come, how can we either, you know, develop internally, hire, reorganize the organization to to meet some of those needs? So anyways, those those, that assessment's really helpful to work with a client that really maybe doesn't know what they don't know or they have a good idea about what their, you know, some of their problems are and and how we can kind of dive into those. And so specifically, with this client, it was it was very firmly a, HR essentials, project, working on, creating a bit more of a reporting structure for this call center. They were we found through the assessment that they were dealing about 65%, turnover year over year for their call center staff, which is, it's not unheard of for that that industry or that that that type of, of role, but it's it is it is quite high. And that's, it's so what we typically do is and when we're looking at kind of under the hood of what what we could do to support that in an organization like that, we're able to see that there was very minimal, employee, you know, status tracking or reporting. So, we this this client, they you know, people were interested in knowing how well they were doing to the point that they were writing on their, their, you know, little, you know, notepads on their desk, how how many, you know, appointments they schedule or or, you know, sales that they they they they coordinated. And so, you know, they were, you know, itching to kind of get the more of this information, but, you know, we're not actually distributing it more broadly. And so it was all available in on the back end of things, but just was not making it to to the to the, call center floor.
Jake Harter [00:10:57]:
And so and that's kinda what led to a lot of the things where, you know, the the team members either had, you know, six to eight months of tenure to twelve to fifteen years of tenure. There was really no in between, with that, with that, makeup. And so a couple of things that we did to support this client kind of based on what we gathered from the, excellence assessments was, building out a, you know, specific measurable goals. They were daily goals, weekly, monthly. We had individual goals and and team goals, and so we're able to start building towards a a certain, you know, monthly metric. And so not only did we see just a an increase in productivity over the over that time, it just it also led to a little bit of healthy competition and, and showing kind of who are our our top performers. And so, that led into another level of intervention where we started building in weekly team meetings where we pulled, you know, certain portions of the team at different times off of the floor, the ones that were kinda work more more closely together and started talking about, you know, what were some interesting, you know, objections that came up on on the phone, what, conversations that, you know, that led to an additional, you know, appointment sign up or whatever, you know, KPI that we had had identified. And so that led to a lot more ahas instead of just sitting at your desk all day and kind of, you know, beating your head against the wall.
Jake Harter [00:12:16]:
You're able to start to hear what the the high performers were doing. And so that that led some really, really cool insights as as well. And so that was really, you know, nice having that that level of intervention. There were a few other areas that we build into, but, at at the end of that that six month project, we found there was a 25% reduction in turnover, and a a significant increase in employee engagement. So that was a little bit more, tangential and, you know, we didn't have much of a kinda pretest, posttest for for that group, but, that it was just, you know, you could it was very palpable in the room that people were able to, you know, feel very, you know, supported and engaged. And, these are things that I you know, a project like this, I would consider pretty kinda low hanging fruit, but it was it was great because it it just, in other organizations, it's we've seen it, you know, those similar, benefits may not be as clear as, oh, let's continue to have more, you know, specific goal setting, but, the the main thing is creating visibility and autonomy and, some potential leadership, opportunities as well. And so, just it was great kinda seeing the fruits of that. And so, the last thing I'll say on this, you know, project was it was great that we had the, we started working with where the client themselves were, a little bit more on the traditional side with their, opinions about workforce management or, you know, and, you know, kind of those those strategies.
Jake Harter [00:13:38]:
It was nice to hear that as we were seeing this this, you know, growth and benefit, we have started having a conversation with the owner, and they were saying, oh, well, now how can we start talking about our mission, vision, values, and, you know, start, you know, giving people some stretch assignments or it was just it was nice being able to see, alright. You know, they were kind of used to one way of doing things, but seeing the the fruits of of that benefit was, was huge. So it was a it was a really, really exciting project.
Brett Johnson [00:14:04]:
Yeah. That sounds good. So, how do you measure you talked about return on investment quite a bit. How do you measure that ROI of employee engagement initiatives? And and it sounds as though a lot of it is just building up communication lines, from what you were describing in your success stories is people just have to talk.
Jake Harter [00:14:23]:
Yeah. I would I would say so. It's, it's so often where there are just problems that start in this very kind of microcosm or it's it's one of those kind of death by a thousand cuts of you gets just these little, you know, procedural, you know, annoyances over time that that leads to a pretty significant disengagement. And so the the more that you you can open up those lines of communication are are significant. The thing I I always say and say to say to leaders is that the people that are the ones that are most, you know, closely able to identify the problems in your organization, those internal threats are your frontline employees. They're the ones that are able to see, oh, or this, you know, this part of Salesforce is a bit clunky or, you know, we are this this process that we're managing, you know, it'd be so much simpler if we just added this widget to, you know, whatever it might be. Right? But so often there are those you know, there's plenty of communication from the top down, but, you know, the more that you can kinda create communication from the bottom up really opens up a lot of those doors. The more kind of, x and o's end of of my role where you're starting to look at ROI is, yeah, definitely employee turnover.
Jake Harter [00:15:28]:
Broadly speaking, it costs about 1.5, percent to replace an employee sorry, 150% to, to replace an employee salary. And again, that's across the board. It could be someone that's, you know, making, you know, $17 an hour up to, you know, people that make, you know, dollars 300 an hour. It's still that same kind of that stands stands pretty, pretty strong. And then, yeah, if you have a good way of tracking the employee productivity, which with that client, we worked pretty hard to determine what, Kate you know, what what, metrics were most important. But, and then, looking at engagement as well is also a nice way to to get a good sense of that too. So the more that you can say, hey. We assessed what our level of engagement was here.
Jake Harter [00:16:13]:
You know, yearly assessments are great. You can always, you know, do it more frequently than that, but you can, you know, show, once we started this project, this is where our engagement scores were in some key areas. You have oftentimes, you know, more detailed engagement, surveys can be 60 to 70 questions. You can do, you know, 10 to 15 little, you know, spot poll surveys. I I worked with a a partner in the past that does it via email where they send just two questions in your email, and that might come, you know, a handful of times over, you know, six month period, but then that is an easy way to get a little bit more, you know, long term engagement data. But, but, yeah, those are typically some really, you know, just kinda simple ways to to track what, you know, the success of a of a more intimate project like that. Yeah.
Katie Ellis [00:16:58]:
And so with all of the things that we've experienced going through COVID, people working from home, then doing the hybrid, that's just, you know, the biggest example that pops in my head, but work seems to be ever evolving in the nature of it. Do you see any trends that are going to be shaping the future of human resources?
Jake Harter [00:17:23]:
Yeah. And thinking, you know, even beyond just specifically human resources, I think, you know, businesses in general are going through some pretty tectonic shifts over over time where, you might see, yeah, specifically looking at, like, you know, artificial intelligence, you know, changes and and and trying to create, you know, more diverse workforces, multiple generations in the workplace. As you mentioned, you know, remote work, there are significant changes that have already started to, to impact the way that we, the average person does work, but it's only going to get that much more significant. And so I think the biggest driving factor is the the ability to handle change. The the rate of change, the rate of innovation is a exponential growth. And so we're only getting more and more efficient or more and more technologically advanced over time. And so the the previous way of saying, alright. We have this person that we hire for this one skill set.
Jake Harter [00:18:26]:
As soon as that skill set is no longer needed, we'll move them on and then bring somebody in to, to fill in that that new need. The rate of innovation is happening far, far quicker, than it ever has in the past. I don't I this this I don't have this statistic off the top of my head, but, the the there's a large percentage. I believe it's over 50% of, students that are in high school right now. Over 50% of their roles do not currently exist, whatever they start with when they start school. And so, anyways, that's all to say that you can no longer just kinda rinse and repeat and just sit on a over 50% turnover year over year. It's it's that much more critical to secure the individuals that that seem to fit most closely with your, organizational culture and put them on a track to be, you know, kinda lifelong or or develop them far enough to be, to be long term successes across the organization. And so, it it because it it's just again, you're wasting so many, you know, so many development dollars, so many recruitment dollars, otherwise.
Jake Harter [00:19:28]:
And so, specifically, HR's role in this is I I see it as more of an accelerator of business processes, you know, innovation rather than in the past where they they typically been seen as more of a, like, custodians of, like, policy and the status quo where it was more of the, you know, warden or principal type of mentality where, oh, you didn't wanna go into HR. That was the suite. You get scolding. Right? And so, yeah, the the more that you can take a, you know, proactive approach and a development approach to human resources, and, obviously, you still wanna create you know, this is all tied to creating a hospitable and and a effective workforce. And so there obviously are, you know, levels of, you know, policy that needs to be to be met and maintained. But, at the end of the day, they should be seen as just as much of a business partner as your your marketing lead or your your, you know, accounting team, sales, any of those. They they have earned that kind of business partner role because, you know, there's there's so much of a business's expenses. Obviously, it goes to their, you know, head counts and, payroll benefits, all those things.
Jake Harter [00:20:33]:
And so if you're, you know, if you're so focused on these, you know, 10% savings that are just to to, you know, make smaller kind of operational changes, but ignoring that 80% of your cost is coming from your headcount, then it it just it feels a little bit, a little bit backwards to me. But, so that's all to say that, you know, when you're looking at the future of of human resources, it it really need to be seen as that strategic partner, in almost every, you know, critical business decision.
Brett Johnson [00:21:01]:
Yeah. So over your career, and what what lessons have been most impactful?
Jake Harter [00:21:07]:
Yeah. That's a that's a great question. I think one thing that's that's come up frequently throughout my life is, you know, when I was getting kind of building up, you know, learning more about this world and kinda learning how to help out our organizations and, just these things come come up when when I'm asked this question and when I've asked, you know, questions to to peers and partners and and people that I I know and respect in this in this field. But, the real kind of through line is, you know, no matter what the case, it's it it depends. You know? It it there are so many sides to how an organization operates and how a culture works that as an external consultant, I can see some some larger trends or kind of be that outside perspective of showing this is kind of what I've seen successful be successfully done elsewhere, but it really requires that, the the drive and the internal push from a, from the leadership team, from, you know, all aspects of the organization to to make these programs work. And so when you say, oh, well, when anyone says, hey. You know, we want to roll out this program. How would you go about doing it? You know, we you know, I could probably figure out steps.
Jake Harter [00:22:14]:
You know, if there's 10 steps, I could probably figure out, you know, six of those 10 steps, but the the most critical that are, you know, littered throughout that process are so critical. And so and they're so unique to the individual organizations that, it's it's how comfortable they would change, what is the, you know, current, converse communication lines of communication? What do those look like, as you mentioned, Brett? And what what can we really look at, you know, across that, that spectrum? And so, yeah, focusing on you know, we have we have a good idea of where things go, but it really depends on how we how we execute it. And then just one more quick quote that I think ties into a lot of the things that we've we've mentioned, but, it's that I kinda hold on to is is this is from Richard Branson. He he says, you wanna train people well enough so that they could leave. They would have the ability to be attractive elsewhere to another employer, but you wanna treat them well enough so they don't have to. You know? Mhmm. I think that's a much braver stance to take, a much more confident of, you know, they could go work for any employer that they want to because we've created this, you know, culture and we're well known and our our company looks great on their resume, but and they are that all star player that could go anywhere, but they chose us because of all the hard work and the internal support that we need. And and that's also the case for you know, it doesn't necessarily be only for your your large Fortune 500, Fortune 100 companies.
Jake Harter [00:23:37]:
It it can be, in any pocket of of the country. You can still be a quote, unquote employer of choice as soon, depending on how, how you present yourself and and the the systems that you have in place. You can be that much more attractive in your subset of employees, and and really be kind of that that leader, in the in the market.
Katie Ellis [00:23:59]:
Yeah. So you cover so many different aspects of HR and helping organizations, and we have the majority of our membership are small business owners and entrepreneurs, that maybe just have a couple of employees, but we wear so many hats, our bandwidth is so thin. How do we even know what we might have issues with or, you know, need to need help and support with?
Jake Harter [00:24:32]:
Mhmm. Yeah. And one of the ways you can really dive into that is, by by, you know, working with someone like myself or or whomever to kinda get a sense of, understanding where those artificial barriers are to growth in your organization. You might have, you know, sitting with, you know, four to five employees, but if you said, you know, a a, you know, large client were to kinda fall on our desk tomorrow, I don't know if we'd be able to to deliver because we haven't, you know, met met you know, have they'll have some of those behind the scenes things sorted out. And so I'd say, you know, especially if you're still in, you know, those under 10 employee mark, there's so many things you can set yourself up for success for early on that helps facilitate larger growth. You know, there's different HR systems you can lean on to, that are the right fit for for those types of organizations that are, you know, scalable to a point, but then knowing how to, you know, either work with a different provider or work with someone else that then you kinda graduate up as you continue to grow. And so, I I mentioned it earlier, but, the org health assessment, org excellence assessment rather is a is a nice way to look at the, the internal essentials of your organization and say, okay. It's pretty, you know, soup to nuts of, hey.
Jake Harter [00:25:43]:
Let's look at your benefits, onboarding, payroll. Let's make sure those systems are in place. And then as you start really building up that traction and and support, that's where you can start looking at, okay. How does our, you know, hiring strategy tie into our mission, vision, and values? We we wanna that that's really, you know, makes it so much, you know, clearer to be able to let decisions be made outside of yourself because that's I felt this on my own as being an independent consultant is, you know, as you kinda work to grow, I as the more and more people you add on, the how close you are to, you know, what what's inside your head or whatever, you know, however you see the right way of doing things gets that much more and more diluted. And so, I it's just so important to really create, mission and, expertise and and just, known, known, perspectives or just kind of know what the, you know, quote, unquote culture is across the board so that decisions can then be be made in your behalf. So, the the work health assessment is a really a really good start for that, though.
Brett Johnson [00:26:43]:
Nice. Yeah. And, we've got a lunch and learn coming up with you as well too. We probably need the spotlight. I mean, Katie might give can give a little bit more detail to that, but, that's a great opportunity to hear more from you about this.
Katie Ellis [00:26:55]:
Yeah. We're gonna be doing that on June 11, and it's gonna be an 11:30 to 1PM chat lunch. Get to learn a lot more from Jake. In the meantime, before that event, where can people find you, Jake? How can they get a hold of you?
Jake Harter [00:27:13]:
Yeah. Thanks, Katie. Yeah. Definitely feel free to reach me. There's a contact us section on the Bellevue HRM website. Also available via LinkedIn. Always happy to have quick, you know, conversations and just I always love kind of looking out and tackling some of those little low hanging fruit, you know, problems or questions that that come across people's desks. So feel free to reach out.
Jake Harter [00:27:35]:
Happy to happy to chat.
Brett Johnson [00:27:37]:
Super. Listeners, thank you for joining us. And don't forget to check out our podcast page on the Tri Village Chamber website. Look for the podcast tab that's at the top of the home page, and tell us what you think about this or any of our other episodes at [email protected].
Katie Ellis [00:27:54]:
Business Inspires is a production of the Tri Village Chamber Partnership and Circle two seventy media podcast consultants.