What Do Businesses Need To Know About The Labour Market

Full Transcript Below

[ANNOUNCER]: Breaking down everyday workplace issues and diagnosing the hidden sickness not just the obvious symptom, our hosts James and Coby.

[COBY]: Did we lose a patient?

[JAMES]: No that’s just my lunch.

[COBY]: Hey thanks for joining us. I’m Coby, he’s James. Let’s get started with a question.  What do businesses need to know about the labor market?

[JAMES]: Well the most important, if there’s one thing that I really want people to get out of this conversation today it’s that you need to understand that the fundamentals of how the Labor Market operates is, there’s some really, really strong parallels with how the Consumer Market operates. They’re not that different. Inherently,  the way that we engage in the Consumer Market, you know, we spend a lot of time developing value propositions and, you know, developing our brand, and our reputation, and the way that we engage in that Arena. And the efforts and the tools that we use to prepare ourselves to engage in that Arena have very strong applications in the labor market as well. And so I want to talk about how the labor market can use all of these tools and resources and best practice from the Consumer Market to really improve the way that you attract and retain talent.

[COBY]: Yeah, because if you think about it. Both the Consumer Market, the market that customers look to buy products in, and the labor market, like you know where where potential employees look to find an employer, they’re both markets. They both operate supply and demand, they’re both heavily influenced by reputation, people look to find the best outcome for their investment, whether that’s money or time. So it really isn’t that surprising when you look at the fact that they’re so, there’s a lot of similarities, a lot of overlapping crossovers, and that they actually kind of function largely in the same way. Even though I’m sure to a lot of people it might be a a new idea. It really is something that is kind of grounded in a lot of the same core elements.

[JAMES] Well, you’re right we rarely think about the Labor Market  as a marketplace. We use the term Labor Market, or Labor Supply, or Labor Pool, and you know there’s all kinds of different language that we use. But what we are trying to do is influence somebody’s decision, right? So let’s take that fundamental idea that in the Labor Market you are trying to influence somebody’s decision of whether or not they’re going to apply and work with you. In the Consumer Market you’re trying to influence somebody’s decision and whether or not they’re going to purchase from you. So it doesn’t matter if you’re selling a good or a service you’re still trying to influence the decision-making process, right? And many of the steps that we go through in terms of awareness and consideration and conversion and all of these things that are time tested and true in the Consumer Market, you know, I talked a little bit in that little intro about value proposition. There are so many great resources out there for a business to go through and really articulate what their value proposition is. What is the value that you are delivering to your consumers, right? Being able to tell people very succinctly and very articulately about what value you provide is a essential in influencing their decision to purchase from you. The same is true for the Labor Market, right? We need to start looking at the Labor Market in terms of “What is my value proposition as an employer?” “What am I actually offering people?” “What is my Competitive Advantage as an employer?” “What do I offer my potential employees that is different from my competitors?” The same way we spend all of this time and energy talking about my Competitive Advantage in business. “How do I articulate that to my customers so that they understand why they should buy from me, instead of buying from the person down the street, or the business that operates in a similar space than me?”

[COBY]: Yeah and I think that like a lot of the conversations that we’ve been hearing really kind of as The Great Resignation started to kind of build momentum and everything like that and you know the whole world was shaken up. The Labor Market was especially shaken up,  with in 2020 everything like that. With the idea of the employer brand was never more talked about, I think than it is now. Because the idea of, we’re all familiar with our business brand, the reputation, the understanding that people have about our business, its products, our quality, that sort of thing. Some of that’s been, that’s tried and true business best practice, that’s kind of dogma of the business community. But the employer brand side is a bit newer or at least been revived in conversation around the same idea about the reputation, the quality, the experience, all that kind of stuff is as important. And it’s really important that we’re talking about it right now because, you’re right, kind of the core elements of both the business brand and your, in the Consumer Market and your employer brand in the Labor Market, is that conversion of choice. Do I choose you over someone like you, or the person down the street, or somewhere in the same field as you. Whether that’s to buy from, or to work for, and that psychological conversion of choice is kind of the anchor that holds these two markets, that kind of overlaps these two markets. And why we can take the best practice from the tried and true Consumer Market and apply a lot of the same strategies, metrics, language to have equal amount of solid business best practice in the Labor Market.

[JAMES]: So unsurprisingly I want to I want to jump on something that you said and rant about a little bit. I know shocker right? You said that employer branding in the Labor Market is kind of new or it’s kind of coming back, which isn’t quite true. Because there have been, you know, these employer of choice, and best managed companies, and all of these things that really mean nothing. If you’re talking about from a Labor Market perspective, from an employee looking at that. Very few people will look at that best managed company of 2022 sticker that you put in your window and think I want to work for that company. Because they bought their place on a top 20 list. And that’s the problem with employer branding, is that we do it so bloody poorly that these, a lot of these things just become a joke, right? It’s a “how much money can I spend to make myself look good”. And that’s shallow branding. And if you took that approach in the Consumer Market, you would be laughed out of the arena right?

[COBY]: Well that’s kind of like the spamming messages you see on social media, that’s what that looks like. “I’m great, I bought this thing that says how great we are”. Or me talking about myself kind of the same way that they often do when you’re seeing, like you know, really bad social media marketing, like terrible social media marketing is kind of what that looks like. And yes, you’re right, there’s not a lot of, there’s not always the amount of integrity that you would hope behind some of these, like you know, top employers and stuff like that, employer branding piece. And it’s more of, it’s almost like we don’t know how we’re supposed to do it, so we try and do it this way even though it’s wrong.

[JAMES]: The intent is there but we need to be more intentional with what we’re doing. And that’s really what I hope will be, some people will be able to get from our conversation, is answering the question, like not just answering the question of “What do you need to know about the Labor Market?”. But “How can I be intentional in actually improving my standing in the Labor Market?’ And employer branding is a really important aspect of that. So how do you actually create, or start to craft, your employer brand in the Labor Market? And a big part of that is going to be your existing employees. How you treat people. The culture that you have in your company. If you have high levels of disengagement, if you have people who are working for you who are having a miserable experience, that is going to work against you. In the same way that if your customers, whether it’s a storefront they walk through and they have a terrible experience, they’re going to tell other people, right? Word of mouth in the Consumer Market is a very powerful tool. It can be just as powerful for you in the Labor Market either for good or for ill.

[COBY]: Yeah no, and with the way that, and that’s a great point. Because with the way that we do try and approach some… a lot of marketing and branding is “I’m telling you we’re great, or someone I paid to tell you we’re great, is telling you we’re great” and that’s kind of how we do a lot of unintentional bad branding in the Consumer Market. But we know what really does make a difference in the Consumer Market is those testimonials. Those authentic messages, the unprompted recommendations from friends and family, the word of mouth, as you said. Because that kind of unofficial brand ambassadorship really is the most powerful way to actually get that authentic social proof that people really want to know that this is something that’s going to be a good fit for them. Because people that are not invested in converting them into a sale, is the one recommending to them. And that same thing is what you need to have in the Labor Market. That authentic unofficial reputation, like recommendations from people that you trust this is a great place to work. They’ll treat you well and that kind of stuff.

[JAMES]: And I’ll just add if you, if your business operates brick and mortar or in a geographical, not geological, geographical location. This is even more true for you. Because if you are drawing from a labor pool, in a municipality, a city, it doesn’t really matter. You’re drawing from a labor pool in a closed geographical location, people talk. And that is probably more so impactful in that environment. It’s really important everywhere, because like-minded people tend to congregate and tend to talk, whether that’s through LinkedIn, or Reddit, or other social media platforms, or you know forums or whatever, professional associations, there’s all kinds of ways that people talk. But if you are struggling in the Labor Market, and you are in a closed geographical region drawing from a confined labor pool, you really, really need to be aware of what your employer brand is in that Labor Market. Because if your brand as an employer is that you only offers the bare minimum, you know, there’s no job security, there’s no, you know, your compensation is mediocre at best, you know, the environment that you provide people is garbage, or that people can be fired or disciplined for no reason. Like there’s so many ways that this can impact your reputation.

My advice would be if that’s the situation that you’re in, in that type of Labor Market, investigate your reputation. Because anything else that you do… if that’s not solid to begin with, all of your future efforts are going to be undercut.

[COBY[: Yeah absolutely, and I think that you’ve kind of come to the heart of it. And I think that actually what you said rings true both in the Labor Market but also in the Consumer Market, and that kind of comes down to the experience. Employee experience or customer experience, how you’re treated. How fairly everything’s been allocated. How you feel the environment, the people, the conditions  all that sort of stuff. How all that plays together and the kind of, you know, like instinctual reaction you have when you’re in that store, or that business, or that workplace. That is what really crafts that, because especially, as you were saying, like you know a geographical or fixed location employers that don’t have the opportunities to do remote work. Whatever,  kind of your, a lot of your non-desk workers. Most of those jobs rely on that sense of, that local reputation to create buy-in, to be kind of what is your unofficial brand in the area. And to a lot of employers, if you don’t know what it is, odds are it’s not good.

[JAMES]: Yeah chances are. I mean we both have come from a Workforce and Economic Development background. You know, I’ve been fortunate to do a fair amount of business coaching through these different programs in the past, and I can say, you know, working with businesses. It doesn’t matter if it’s a startup, a small business, or a large corporate environment, drawing from a defined labor pool, people know in advance what your reputation is. Because people talk. You knew working, whether you were working with job seekers, or with the businesses, people knew what they were getting into. You knew which companies in the region had a really good reputation. You know those companies that paid above market wages, that treated people with a level of dignity, that provided you know some level of job security. Those businesses rarely had the job vacancy rate that other businesses did. Contrast that with, there are some very well known examples in our area of companies that did not do that. That every year they are replacing dozens or hundreds of employees because they are just churning people through. And we live in a fairly small place, well large geographic region, but a fairly small population base. And reputation man. Like no wonder they’re struggling for employees. Because they’ve burned through hundreds of potential workers by paying poorly, by treating people poorly, by keeping people as part-time or casual forever. Just so they don’t have to pay benefits or provide overtime, all of these things, right? Their reputation in the Labor Market is really, really poor. But it’s funny because this is actually a company that, in the Consumer Market is a leader. They are a big player with massive pull and brand recognition in the Consumer Market. But no, that has not translated to the other side of things.

[COBY]: Yeah it’s kind of like the… what’s funny is that, you know, this is so much more, like you know, it’s much more impactful in the home communities that all our businesses operate in. Where especially when you have local talent pools. Because I mean just like you know in your in your area, wherever your area is, the restaurants that have the good  food. Like the the well-kept secrets. Or the ones you want to avoid at all costs. The Labor Market’s the same way. The companies that you know as soon as there’s a vacancy it’s going to get filled by someone that’s excited to work there. Versus the ones that everyone is has been there and tried out and seen how bad it is. And what’s funny is the ones with the bad reputation, it’s almost like they’re banking on people not hearing the horror stories. Or not believing the horror stories and giving it a shot anyway. And then, you know, we as Workforce experts often hear statements like’ “Man no one wants to work anymore”. And we’re like “Well, no one wants to work for you anymore. I’ll tell you that much.” And this is the reality, but this is why going back to what I kind of said earlier, about the brand reputation. About this is one thing that we talk about in some of our other training, when it comes to having that good reputation of people talking about you, in a positive way, and people who work for you to have a good employee experience, recommending you to their friends and family. And people that they want their, you know, brother or their sister to have it as well as they do. And they unprompted or you know aren’t required to recommend the company that they work for to other people. We call that the Ambassador Effect. That’s the… everything experienced by the employees is so positive that they want other people to have it as good as they do, and they become The Unofficial Ambassadors recommending people. And then some companies are really smart and they go, “Wow, we have this great reputation and this unprompted referrals from our employees”. So they structure a good program around that to encourage it even more, and then that kind of momentum builds more momentum. And there are some great successes that we’ve seen, as small little mama pop shops, all the way up to big companies. And it works. And what’s not surprised, it’s not surprising that it works. But what’s surprising is that not nearly enough companies take advantage of it.

[JAMES]: Yeah and I want to jump back on the “nobody wants to work anymore” thing. I know we’ve talked about it before, and I know we kind of approach it, kind of tongue-in-cheek. But let’s look at that comment through the lens of our discussion of the parallels between the Consumer Market and the Labor Market. That comment is currently being made when approaching the Labor Market discussion. What would the response be, or what would the be the actions, if you were to make that type of comment in the Consumer Market? “Well, nobody wants to buy my product anymore”. All right what would you actually do if you as a business were encountering that problem, in the Consumer Market, of nobody’s buying my product anymore? You would investigate  why. You would go through all of those activities again. “Okay is our branding on point?” “Has something happened to our reputation?” “Has there been, you know, what’s the media coverage like?” “Is our value proposition, has our value proposition changed?” “Are we not delivering on our value proposition?” “Are we articulating our value proposition in the best way possible?” “Has our Target demographics changed?” You would dive into re-evaluating where you stand in the Consumer Market, because it’s not good enough as a business to just say nobody wants to buy my product anymore, right? Use that same logic applied to the Labor Market. We need to do the same things. If nobody wants to work for you, if you think that nobody wants to work for you, or just nobody wants to work, in general. Then you need to ask why. And it’s not simple, it’s not a simple answer, so coming up with a simple “Well people are just lazy.”, isn’t going to actually accomplish anything for you. The same way that if you’re, if you say “customers don’t want to buy from you, well customers are just lazy, they don’t want to, they just don’t want to put in the effort to find us”. Well doesn’t matter if they’re lazy or not, because you need customers. Well it doesn’t matter if they’re lazy or not because you need employees, right?

[COBY]: Absolutely and the idea of, you know, of having that contrasted view, I think does put that into perspective. Because it’s almost like, you know, well unless everyone’s independently wealthy, no one requires a paycheck, then there’s probably another motive that no one wants to work anymore. Because and I do think though that like a lot of the idea around trying to kind of mold how people view the work. view you as a company within the Labor Market is something that is, it’s really important to kind of understand that how powerful the reputation part of it is. And one thing that, and going back to your kind of intro, talking about the the value propositions, and competitive advantage, and everything else like that. I think it’s really important to even draw the really close parallels between those two things. So in the Consumer Market, competitive advantage is usually referred to in terms of like, either you’re a Price Leader, you have the lowest prices possible and you can, and your costs are low, so your prices are low. Or you’re a Product Leader, where you have the best product far and wide, people will pay more for it. Now product leadership tends to build product and brand loyalty. The product is good, I want the product so I will pay what I have to, to get the product. Where price leadership tends to be, not as good at creating the same kind of loyalty. Because they become loyal to the low price and if you’re, as long as you’re the lowest price you have them. But if someone is giving it to them at a lower price, they’re loyal to the savings, not so much to you. And the same thing works in the Labor Market but here the competitive advantages are Culture Leaders and Compensation Leaders. Culture Leaders build a culture and an employer brand loyalty. It’s the culture and the environment that creates this brand. People are willing to, like you know, are willing to necessarily not have the highest paychecks, or not necessarily have the the absolute best compensation, if the whole culture is something that kind of holds on to them, and kind of gives them more than just that. Whereas Compensation Leaders tend to be about, you know, we have the highest, we have the highest paycheck. But their loyalty is again, about the people are loyal to high paychecks. And they attract people with high paychecks. But as soon as someone is going to offer a little bit more for the same job they’re loyal to the paycheck, not necessarily loyal to you. And kind of viewing it from that perspective, I think can be a really powerful way to again rethink how we understand our labor pool. About you know, because often companies know, “We’re a Product Leader. We have the best products”. Or you know, or “We’re a Price Leader, we offer things at the best price possible”. But then thinking of it from the terms of a Culture Leader, providing the best culture possible. Versus a Compensation Leader, “We provide the best salaries possible”. And knowing what that means.

[JAMES]: And ideally you’re going to offer both, ideally you’re going to offer wages that are competitive, sufficient, and equitable and a culture that draws people to you. And I love this analogy. Because you’re absolutely right. If you are only competing on wages, like you said, and we see this a lot in non-desk work especially, in retail environments. It’s often minimum wage, or you know slightly above minimum wage, to attract people in. Well if you’re, if minimum wage is $13 an hour and you’re offering $13.50 great. You may be able to pull your, pull a labor pool away from those who are offering $13. But the moment somebody offers $14 dollars you’ve lost. So if the only thing that you are competing on is wages then the moment somebody gets a better offer, they’re out the door. But if you can offer a competitive, sufficient, and equitable compensation package, wage, salary, benefit, whatever that looks like in your industry. And provide people with an environment, the Culture Leader piece, you will fundamentally change the way that you interact in

[COBY]: Yeah and I mean it’s like, I’m trying to find a good way to describe this. It’s kind of like, if you’re holding on to a cliff. Okay you’re holding on to your employees and they have their hand grabbed on the top, but by one hand. And if you’re only offering, holding on to them by one thing, by wages. It’s like they’re holding on by one finger. And as soon as, like you know, if something else better comes along, then that  finger’s gone, and you’ll lose them, they’re gone. But you know when you have the idea of, when you have things like a culture that provides a better work environment, employee morale, job security, and career opportunities, as well as you kind  said fair wages, does something like you have all five fingers holding on. If one finger drops, you’re still holding on to it much better. It’s not really a very good analogy now that i think about it.

[JAMES]: What you’re talking about is diversification. So let’s make another analogy because apparently we’re going full-on analogies in this  episode. Let’s look at it in the same way we look at supply chain. Supply chains have been substantially disrupted over the last few years, we all know this, we’ve all experienced it, and we are still experiencing it. For businesses that relied on one supplier primarily. The moment something happens to interrupt that supply chain, your ability to compete in the Consumer Market is substantially impacted, right? You want some diversification because it protects you. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about supply chain, it doesn’t matter if you’re talking about finances, and finances and Investments, right? Investment advisors, or at least decent and ethical investment advisors, will probably encourage you to invest in diversified funds. In something that not putting, I mean there’s kind of the old, “don’t put all your eggs in one basket”. Because if you trip all your eggs are gone, right? It’s the same philosophies that we’ve heard forever, that we’ve never really tried to apply, in a real sense, into the Labor Market. We do really well applying these time tested processes and philosophies in other areas. We need to do the same and take the same care, and attention, and intention, when we’re talking about the Labor Market.

[COBY]: And I think you’re right. I think diversification actually is a really good way to think about the value of a Culture Leader over a Compensation Leader. Because you know, if you have a job that, you know, whether that job is retail, or food service, or manufacturing, or IT, or accounting, or whatever. If you have a job where, again like you know, the work environment’s enjoyable to be in, and people are kind of like,

pleasant, and you feel like you belong, and are connected, and you’ve got a fair,  and you’ve got good opportunities for career advancement, and training is taken seriously, and your given fair wages. Then if a headhunter comes to that employee and says “Hey, how would you like to make you know 20% more?”. That’s a huge increase in people’s wages. But then the pull of them leaving has got to be a lot harder. It’s like, “well I don’t know, I’ve got it really good here. I feel like I’m connected, I’ve got good options for advancement. That one thing, that one area, I don’t know if that’s enough to pull me away”. And that diversified value that the company provides, beyond just the paycheck, can become like your security to hold on to good people. And in the kind of the same way that if you only sell one product, and then the one product becomes obsolete, you know something better comes, or a better offer comes along, to the Consumer Market, then instead of your business being done, you may just have one area down, but still have four or five other other products to kind of carry you through. So I do think that diversification piece is something that is not, it’s not just about having competitive advantage, or not just about creating good ambassadors, creating great employee experience. It does give you…

[JAMES]: It’s doing all of it.

[COBY]: Yeah exactly. And gives you that stability that can really kind of  help and actually make a real difference.

[JAMES]: And I can say going back to my business coaching days, working with businesses that understand this. Like when you get this idea, when it sinks in and you start approaching the Labor Market with the same intention and care that you take when approaching the Consumer Market, it will make a difference. It will help you to secure your Talent Pipeline, right? We hear these terms a lot. You know, Talent, you know developing your Talent Pipeline, and always having a strong and healthy Talent Pipeline. And you know how to…. There are dozens of articles on, you know, websites, on LinkedIn every day talking about how can you  attract and retain the best talent. Well the way that you’re going to do that is by focusing your efforts and making sure that you understand what it is you have to offer. That you have something, that you can articulate your value. You have you have a value proposition. That you understand what your competitive advantage is. That what you offer that somebody else does not, and that you’re speaking to the right audience. That you understand your target demographic. That you understand their decision making process, you know are you going after a Target demographic that is primarily focused on accumulation or advancement? I mean there are some industries or some professions, like sales is often quoted as you know one type of job that compensation is very, very important to everybody. But oftentimes sales gets this reputation of bouncing around, always seeking the highest compensation possible. So how do you keep really good sales people? Well yeah, you have to have a really strong compensation package, but you also need to know what motivates people on an individual level. And you know there’s a few things that have come up in this conversation today that I think we need to explore in more detail.

[COBY]: Yeah I was just thinking the same thing.

[JAMES]: Yeah I could go off on that.

[COBY]: Yeah, yeah I can see this talk going really in a whole different directions so I think we should rope it back in. Maybe we’ll do our next podcast and talk a little bit more about Talent Pipelines and stuff like that. Because there’s a lot of cool stuff we can talk about with that. So let’s set this aside for a moment. One thing I want to get to before before we kind of, before we get too far and everything, is that investing and improving your brand in the Labor Market also can be a good investment in improving your brand in in the Consumer Market. Your customer, the customer service, and the customer acquisition piece can actually be a lot better for businesses to have a good employer brand. Because like happy, motivated, or respected, or trusted individuals will actually perform better. They’ll deliver higher quality work, they’ll be more willing to help people who walk in off the street, or, you know, answer the phone with more willingness, to put more effort into their work, if they’re respected, and trusted ,and engaged in their work.

[JAMES]: Yeah and this is especially true, like we often talk with service based companies about customer service training. What you want is not actually customer service training, what you want are engaged employees who care about your customers. Because when you walk into, when you walk into a store, the vibe that somebody… We are really good as human beings on picking up on inconsistencies. But when you walk into the store and you can kind of get a sense of, you know, are people waking up and dreading walking into your environment every day? Or do they actually approach it with some enthusiasm and care, right? You want people who approach your job with enthusiasm and care. And so there’s this almost natural logical argument that we can make, but I think as always, one thing that we always try to do is not just focus on “Well, this makes sense, so it must be true”. There’s actually a recent study that was done in March 2022 and we’ll throw the link to this in the description because I want to make sure that you guys have access to it. And also if I say something that’s not completely accurate you guys can call me on it. So anyways the study, it studied how improving the employee experience translates into better customers experience and better sales. And they tested this in a large Global retail brand and what they found is that when employees are better trained, better supported in their, better support, and that their wellness and well-being are actually taken care; of they yielded 50% higher revenue, and yielded an extra…. their efforts, the investment by the company yielded a 150% return on that investment. So it’s not just the logical, “Yeah it makes sense that when people are when employees are happy they’re going to do they’re going to treat your customers better and they’re going to do a better job”. It will improve your revenue and the money that you invest in doing this, you will see a return on, right? So make sure Coby, make sure that to remind me when we’re actually publishing this we need to put that in the description. Because it’s a really cool study, look, take the time to read the article and to look into it. Because the data that backs these things up is really important.

[COBY]: Right, yeah I know and yeah we’ll definitely make sure that we we cite that. Because that’s a pretty bold statement, so we want to make sure that we’re actually, that we, I mean people know it’s actually coming from somewhere, somewhere real.

[JAMES]: Yeah, I’m not just pulling it out of my head, because that’s a scary place.

[COBY]: So I think the best thing we can do, is also make this really… How can, how can the person listening to this, use this information for themselves. Well I think that a big segment of our listeners are owners and managers of businesses. And I think what’s really important for them to take away from this is to understand the consumers… so understand that the Labor Market and the Consumer Market have enough similarities that the tools that we use to understand our consumers can be translated, or repurposed to better understand our potential employees. Things like using target demographics, and value propositions, and competitive advantages, all that kind of stuff. The way that you track, and research, and prioritize consumers that are useful in customer acquisition can have the same can be the same strategies or can be or you can build on those strategies for talent acquisition. And it’s really important to realize that you know these best practices. That you already know, we don’t have to learn new stuff, you can take the stuff that you know already. It’s kind of inherent in how you think about your business and just rethink them a little bit and be able to apply those into this other massive area of your business around people, and culture, and talent. And I think it’s really important for people, for business owners the managers to really understand that everything, the customer journey it’s not that fundamentally different from the future employee journey. And if you can really understand that to appeal your potential customers… You know how you peel your customers, is a good roadmap for how you can appeal to your future employees.

[JAMES]: Yeah and I think it’s important, the other way that this can really be used and helpful. We also tend to have a lot of HR professionals working with us, and listening to our content. And if you are an HR professional and you’re struggling with talent, recruitment, and retention, and you’re trying to figure out how can best articulate that business case, or the need to the C-Suite or your Director or whomever, that authority chain is. You have something to build off of, right? Use the parallel between the Consumer Market and the Labor Market because the C-Suite, you’re executive team will understand the Consumer Market approach, right? This is something… that approach is taught, is very common and it is taught in Business Schools. And you know that’s a that’s an argument that they will, or if you can make that parallel, if we have done a good job in convincing you that there is a parallel here. Use it. Because if you can articulate the need for investment in the Labor Market, the way that… with a parallel to the way that you invest in the Consumer Market, it should make that decision-making process easier.

[COBY]: Yeah and that’s a really good point. Because we do hear a lot of, a lot we get a lot of questions and comments from people that work in talent acquisition, and in HR, wanting to know how do we get the C-Suite to really pay attention and listen and to how important a lot of these things are. And I do think that you’re right, that crafting an argument can be much easier if you kind of co-opt the language or the framework that they’re already used to. Especially around customer acquisition, and around competitive advantage, and everything else like that too. If you co-opt that and you can you speak in the terms that they’re already used to, then you can really kind of bridge the gap. And they can fundamentally get it, because, like again, if we have done a decent job at tying these elements together and showing the overlap, then I really think that there’s a lot that someone can take from this to really change how they think about their business, and also how they talk about it to others. To really make the stuff important and really drive the point home.

[JAMES]: Yeah that’s perfect. Yeah I think we’ve covered the topic for today and we’ve got a couple things that we’ve identified, that we’ll talk about in upcoming episodes. I really want to dig in, I’m looking forward now to digging into talent pipelines. So we’ll have to make sure that one’s, that topic is top of our list for next episodes.

[COBY]: Absolutely. So just to summarize this kind of whole conversation. So the overlap between the Labor Market and the Consumer Market often has to do with the conversion of choice. How you can affect how people choose you, over your peers. And that is the kind of the fundamental similarity that can allow for us to learn what we think, what we know in the well-established, proven, successful, best practice of talent… Or sorry, of customer acquisition and the Consumer Market. And apply that to the more recently relevant, and looking for new solutions of talent acquisition in the Labor Market. That we want to create ambassadors for our employer brand, that will help recommend the authentic and transparent, and you know, trusted word of their friends and their family, and word of mouth, and the Grapevine, to kind of help us build that that real brand of true success as an employer. That our competitive advantage… we often know if we want to be a Price Leader or a Product Leader in our market. We should also be using the same thinking to realize if we want to be a Culture Leader or a Compensation Leader… sorry a Compensation Leader in our Labor Market. And again for managers to understand that you know this stuff already. You just have to rethink how you want to apply this proven, this time and tested, proven technique of customer acquisition to how you think about talent acquisition. And HR professionals, this is the language that will probably resonate if you can effectively, kind of, co-opt it and find that common ground to make sure that these points of talent acquisition and new approaches can make a huge difference. All right, anything else James?

[JAMES]: No I’m good, thanks everyone.

[COBY]: All right so that about does it for us. So For a full archive of our podcasts and access to the video version hosted on our YouTube channel visit our website at roman3.ca/podcast. Thanks for joining us.

[ANNOUNCER]: For more information on topics like these don’t forget to visit us at roman3.ca. Side effects of this podcast may include improved retention, high productivity, increased market share, employees breaking out in spontaneous dance, dry mouth, aversion to the sound of James’s voice, desire to find a better podcast…

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