Sneak Peek – Annual Conference Speaker Previews
Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of mini-profiles of speakers slated to address TRSA’s 107th Annual Conference & Exchange this Oct. 20-23.
If you’re running a successful business, there’s no reason why you can’t apply many of the same growth strategies to address your company’s recruitment/retention challenges.
That’s the message you can expect from an upcoming talk at TRSA’s Annual Conference this Oct. 20-23 at the Westin Alexandria, in Alexandria, VA. Sherri Merbach, a consultant and certified executive coach with C-Suite Analytics, will offer a range of tips and insights based on the principle that staff at all levels need to pull together with a proactive strategy for reducing turnover – a process comparable to setting plans for growing and retaining your customer base. “One of the main things is to hold leaders accountable for turnover at all levels of the organization, including frontline supervisors,” Merbach said during a recent interview with Textile Services Weekly.
In practical terms, that means that – like customer relations – success in recruiting takes a combined effort of people at all levels pulling together in a systematic effort to screen prospects before they’re hired and to stay in touch with them after they’re onboarded.
Starting with screening, Merbach understands that supervisors must assess the basics about prospective employees, their job histories and whether they’re likely to show up on time on a consistent basis. But beyond that, she’ll suggest questions that managers can ask that will help them assess the person’s longevity prospects. “What typically gets missed is ‘What’s the likelihood they’ll stay with the organization?’” Merbach says of standard job interviews. “What recruiters typically do is look at their past job history and ask about that, but we also want to ask questions about their likelihood to leave the organization.”
To get those details, particularly for hourly staff, interviewers shouldn’t ask questions like “Where do you see yourself in five years?” That line of inquiry doesn’t work because “The workforce that textile services is hiring lives paycheck to paycheck,” Merbach says. “They don’t think that long out.” During the session, Merbach will provide examples of questions that will be more effective in ascertaining an employee’s likely longevity in a given job.
In addition to offering tips for interviewing both prospective and current employees regarding their retention prospects, Merbach will address how companies can make jobs with their organizations more appealing. Specifically, she’ll discuss how a company can present a compelling value proposition to both employees and prospects that can help improve retention. “We’ll talk about how you develop an employee-value proposition and how do you live it,” Merbach says. “It’s easy to develop one; it’s much harder to live the one you develop. Which goes back to leadership, culture and day-to-day behaviors by employers.” The heart of Merbach’s approach to recruitment/retention is encapsulated in the following question: “When we offer a job to an employee, what’s in it for them? Obviously a paycheck, but more than that.”
Merbach will highlight a range of recruitment/retention strategies for laundry operators in her talk at 10 a.m., Wednesday, Oct. 21, at the Westin Alexandria. A former frontline supervisor for Walt Disney World Textile Services, Merbach knows the laundry hiring market. For more information, click here.