How to Revolutionize Employee Experience and Boost Business Growth with Ryan Englin

Finding the right employees is every owner’s top priority. But not everyone knows how to make that happen. That’s where our guest comes in.

Meet Ryan Englin. Ryan is the CEO of Core Matters, a company helping field service companies attract, hire, and retain top talent. He’s also a published book author, podcast host, keynote speaker, and long-time entrepreneur himself. His passion for supporting small businesses in blue-collar industries started very early on. Back when he was still a child, Ryan’s father instilled strong values in him, such as patience, determination, and hard work. Fast forward many years, and he realized the critical role of these three principles in hiring the right people for your business. And the rest was history.

Ryan is now committed to helping growing companies hire better people faster all while maintaining their integrity and values intact.

In this episode of the Think Business with Tyler podcast, we talk about why employee experience is as important as the customer journey, how to attract talent instead of chasing them, the importance of small gestures in recruitment, and why having a strong company culture makes a world of difference when you’re hiring people.

If you want to learn how to optimize your hiring process, don’t miss this insightful conversation with Ryan.

Guest-At-A-Glance

💡 Name: Ryan Englin

💡 What he does: Ryan is the CEO of Core Matters, book author, and podcast host.

💡 Noteworthy: Ryan’s latest book is called ‘Hire Better People Faster,’ and it’s a must-read for everyone looking to hire top performers who share their values.

💡 Key Quote: “I think the biggest thing that you need to think about when you’re creating this employee experience is to understand you need to do it from the job seeker’s perspective. What’s in it for them? Why do they care?”

💡 Where to find Ryan: LinkedIn

Key Insights

Your employee experience is just as essential as your customer experience. One of the biggest mistakes that companies make is that they neglect their employee experiences. But interestingly enough, your people are just as important as your customers. When your people feel satisfied and valued, they naturally provide better service, ultimately making your customers happy.

Ryan explains the link between customer and employee experience. He says, “You’ve got to have a process. You’ve got to have something so that when someone applies, they go through the same process, and that process creates an experience for them. We all talk about customer experience. But for some reason, no one’s ever thought, well, who creates the customer experience? Oh, yeah, it’s our employees. Maybe we should have an employee experience. And so that’s what that process is about. How do you create a great experience so people go, ‘Wow, that was the best recruiting process I’ve ever been through. I’m going to go tell my friends how awesome it was to get a job here.’”

Don’t chase employees; attract them. Finding the right people for your business is ultimately about attracting them by building a strong company culture, putting smart marketing strategies in place, creating promo videos, etc. So, instead of chasing new employees, you will start attracting them to your company.

Ryan explains, “These people have to learn how to fish for people. […] So what we had to do was realize that the real problem when it comes to fishing is we have to stop looking for people and start thinking about attracting people. Just like a fish, you don’t go hunting for fish. You attract them with bait. You go to the right place, the right kind of gear, all that. And when you make this shift, and you think that recruiting is really a marketing activity, not an HR activity, it’s marketing, and you approach it as such all of a sudden, it becomes so much easier for you to stand out, get people to notice you, get people to raise their hand and say, I want to be a part of your team. And once someone knows how to catch fish, you feed themselves for life.”

Little things matter. Never underestimate the power of small things in life. And the same goes for recruitment. Sometimes, just listening carefully and being there for your people can go a long way. Ryan shares a few examples of how small details make big changes.

He explains, “You’ve heard it before. People don’t leave jobs. They leave people. And if we know that they leave people, and we know that this is one of life’s most stressful events, we can create an experience for them that says, Hey, we want to make this easy for you, and we want to make sure that we’re completely transparent on who it is you’re going to work for. […] So little teeny things that you can do to really stand out in the job seeker’s mind and create that amazing experience.”

Be clear about your company culture and everything else will fall into place. Creating and maintaining a strong company culture is beneficial for countless reasons. But one of the most overlooked ones is the impact on recruitment. When you’re extra clear with your culture, you attract like-minded people who share your values and vision.

Ryan says, “We need to understand that it’s not just, we’ve got to hire more people. It’s not just we’ve got to onboard more people. We have to do all of it. And all of it is really focused around the core of your organization, which is this idea that people don’t leave jobs, they leave people so we can get really clear on company culture and really clear on what it is we have to offer them. All those other things become so much easier.”

Top Quotes

“That was one of my dad’s traps because he was 12 hours a day, six, seven days a week. That was just normal for him. And as I spent more time with him and I grew up and got older, I realized it wasn’t because nobody wanted to work for him. He just didn’t know how, he didn’t have the skills. He was in manufacturing. That’s what he did. He knew how to get that plant running, get production done, but no one ever taught him the softer side of business.”

“I remember my sales coach at the time says, ‘Ryan, why do you do this? Why are you so passionate about this?’ He goes, ‘I see this side of you that you’re just always excited to help these people with recruiting.’ And we started digging into it and just, I shared the story with my dad. And I was like, that’s why I do this. I had no idea. So it came full circle, but it wasn’t just directly. It wasn’t like I just went from point A to point B.”

“Studies have shown that looking for work is one of life’s most stressful events. It’s right up there with divorce, health diagnosis, loss of a loved one, seriously stressful stuff. Looking for a job is one of those. So, if you go into it knowing that you can create experiences along the way to relieve that stress. Like getting back to him in a timely manner.”

“Let’s talk about that. I want you here. Let’s talk about that. How can we make that make sense for you? And you get to go through this checklist and go through all these little annoying things. Just put it all out there and be transparent and be authentic and set proper expectations. I believe that if in the first 90 days employment doesn’t work out, it’s because people weren’t authentic and they didn’t set proper expectations on both sides.”

“Job seekers realize they have options. They don’t have to be beholden to one employer. There are other things they can do. And a lot of people have made the decision, ‘I don’t need this crazy career path where I’m going to retire rich. I just need to enjoy life along the way.’ And as employers, we haven’t shifted. We haven’t made that shift. The job seekers have made that shift, especially the younger generation. Employers haven’t. And so what’s ended up happening is we’ve got somebody that’s got one expectation, somebody who’s got a different one, and they’re just not lining up.”

“How many people think that turnover doesn’t cost a lot of money blows my mind. Turnover is the most expensive thing that your business deals with. More than anything else, turnover is incredibly expensive, and if you would just invest in your people, the return on investment is huge.”

Links

Hire Better People Faster by Ryan Englin

Core Matters Website

Access the FREE tools at https://corematters.com/think-tyler/