In this episode of Career Compass, hosts Vernon Williams and Ledia Dobi are joined by University of Cincinnati Professor and HR Scholar Tom Mobley to discuss the present labor force shortage and how students and emerging professionals can take advantage of the existing job market.
The pandemic prompted many employees to reevaluate their careers and the types of work they want. In fact, 4.35 million U.S. workers quit their jobs in February 2022. Similarly, employers across the board report challenges hiring and retaining talent, providing students and emerging professionals with some exciting opportunities as they launch their careers. In this episode of Career Compass, hosts Vernon Williams and Ledia Dobi are joined by University of Cincinnati Professor and HR scholar Tom Mobley to discuss the present labor force shortage and how students and emerging professionals can take advantage of the existing job market.
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Vernon Williams:
Welcome back to season four of Career Compass, a podcast from SHRM, the Society for Human Resource Management, and the SHRM Foundation. Career Compass prepares the future leaders today for better workplaces tomorrow.
Ledia Dobi:
As the voice of all things work, SHRM supports students and emerging professionals with advice, information, and resources for every step of your career.
Vernon Williams:
Designed for the student or emerging professional, Career Compass delivers timely, relevant, and critical conversations about work to help you succeed in your career journey. Thank you for joining us for this episode. My name is Vernon Williams, and I will be your co-host.
Ledia Dobi:
And my name is Ledia Dobi, and I will also be your co-host. During this episode, we will discuss the current labor for shortage, the background on how we ended up in this predicament, and how students and emerging professionals can take advantage of the existing job market. To help us tackle this important topic, we are going to talk with a true expert, University of Cincinnati professor and HR scholar, Tom Mobley. Also, just so you know, this episode is valid for professional development credit, or PDCs, for the SHRM CP or SHRM SCP. We will provide the code later in the episode.
Vernon Williams:
And with that, let's get started. Before we introduce Professor Mobley, Ledia, I wanted to get your perspective. You were in the job search perhaps at the start of the Great Resignation. What was that like? Did you feel like there were so many opportunities for you to take advantage of? Give us a sense of what that was for you.
Ledia Dobi:
I found the job search quite difficult. I graduated in May of 2021, but I started my job search even earlier in the beginning of April. I was applying to jobs week after week. I wasn't hearing anything back, and this was rather surprising to me considering I had good scores, good internships. I was very much a go-getter, but I think I applied to about 50 jobs before I heard back from SHRM and was eventually hired and started at the end of July. I felt like this was a very uncertain time for me. But looking back, it was very beneficial because it gave me a greater idea of what was out there and what kind of opportunities may come down the road.
But it was definitely difficult. Some things that were important and some things that I was looking for in particular was staying local to DC or to New York City where I had friends and family and being able to grow in that job. I didn't want to take a job that I felt like wasn't in alignment with my career goals in the future, so I think that narrowed my search a lot. I'm very grateful that I eventually ended up at SHRM, but it was a tough start for sure.
Vernon Williams:
I'm curious, Ledia, with March being National Internship Awareness Month and you mentioned some of the internships that you had done in the past, how were you able to find those internships and what did you gain from those experiences?
Ledia Dobi:
Most of the internships I found through LinkedIn, or I was already aware of the organization and I would just go on their website and try to find out if they had any spring or fall internships. There was a few that I was aware of in my city. I interned with the New York City Council for a summer. That was a very beneficial experience because I was more intimately aware of the struggles that my city was going through. But in general, I think all of my internships prepared me because I was able to put into practice the things that I was learning in the classroom, but also have the new experience of a professional workplace. I think that prepared me greatly for what I might experience in my career.
What about you, Vernon? You have a terminal degree, job experience, and a diverse skill set. How do you process whether to pursue new opportunities or stay put? I feel like a lot of people are changing careers or finding new jobs. What are your thoughts?
Vernon Williams:
I appreciate the question and I think it's very similar to part of what you were saying earlier about the things that were important to you, including location. I feel like oftentimes today people are sort of chasing money, which I get, gas prices are very expensive, but I think I remember reading a report that said, once you hit $75,000, the motivation surrounding the financial benefits sort of starts to decrease. For me, it's all of those other things. It's the benefits in terms of healthcare, retirement, the work-life balance or integration, depending on how you feel about those two terms, and all of the other things that are sort of intangibles to the job. Obviously the job has to be meaningful and in work that I care about. But I think for people who are switching jobs solely for the money, I really think that there could be some disappointment in that.
That's where we are today and how we make sense of the Great Resignation, the labor shortage and what that means for us as individuals. Now let's take a deeper dive into labor shortage and the workforce trends as we introduce today's special guests. Tom Mobley is an assistant professor at the University of Cincinnati teaching in their organizational leadership and human resource management program. As a human resource consultant and university professor, he has demonstrated his ability to transfer knowledge and provide others with the tools they need to succeed. In Mobley Human Resource Consulting, Tom has combined his corporate and teaching experience to create workshops and presentations that are both practical and effective. Tom's broad background includes work with Fortune 100 firms, government agencies, startups, and international companies.
His expertise has been sought out and included in articles in USA Today, CNBC, MSNBC, and Dow Jones MarketWatch. Tom earned his bachelor's degree from Miami University of Ohio and his bachelor's of arts in employment relations from the University of Cincinnati. We are excited about today's conversation. And with that, Career Compass will like to warmly welcome Tom Mobley.
Tom Mobley:
Vernon and Ledia, thank you so much for having me here. I'm looking forward to talking to you today.
Vernon Williams:
I could have taken the entire recording session reading your bio, Tom, but I tried to pull out a few of the highlights. A couple of things that I did not mention, however, first, in addition to all of the other prestigious media outlets and presentations you have done, we're excited to be able to officially announce that you'll be one of our guests for the student and emerging professionals track at SHRM 2022 taking place in June in New Orleans. The second thing, you started your HR journey as a student leader, and you've been drinking the SHRM Kool-Aid for a long, long time. Not too long though. Tell us where your passion for the field of HR comes from and where all the energy for SHRM is about.
Tom Mobley:
Thanks for that. You're too kind about that, Vernon. For me, maybe I was a little strange in that coming out of high school, I had identified personnel as the field that I wanted to study. I knew that I wanted to go into business somehow, somewhere, but personnel was the thing that interested me the most. Today, if you ask a student or a young professional, "Why do you want to go into HR," a lot of time their rookie answer is, "Well, I like working with people," and the old grizzled HR vet head spins around like, "You can't like working with people if you want to go into HR," but I'm going to say that you better like working with people if you go into HR.
If you don't like working with people, you really should find something else to do. Second thing I would throw at you is this, you'd need to really enjoy solving people problems. But listen to what I'm saying, when I say people problems, I'm not saying people's problems. There's a difference. I may have a lot of problems in my life right now.
Vernon Williams:
I hope not.
Tom Mobley:
Ledia can't solve them for me, right? She may be able to give me advice, but she might not be able to solve my problems. But in HR, one of the critical things that we are in existence to do is to help move the organization forward by solving all those intricate problems involving people. Whether that's, how do we find the right people for the job? What's the right compensation and benefit package? What's the right reward package? How do we motivate people? How do we solve problems on the shop floor? How do we improve training? All of those involve people. You need to really like people if you work in HR. It's okay, but solving problems around people to me is the exciting part of our profession.
And now is the time more than ever before where if you are breaking into the profession as a young adult, now's the time. It is a beautiful time. We could talk a little bit more about that later on, but I'm just really excited about that. The second thing you asked me was how did I get introduced to SHRM. Well, I wasn't introduced to SHRM at first. I was introduced to AASPA at first, so what SHRM used to call itself back at its beginning days, the American Association of Personnel.
Vernon Williams:
Don't date yourself too much, Tom. It will tell everybody your age.
Tom Mobley:
For me, in my college journey, I knew HR is what I wanted to study or personnel back then. The other part of it was at the time for me, you really didn't start getting into your business classes, your HR classes until your junior year. I knew that I needed to get involved starting off my junior year, and I had a professor. Maybe now that we do this podcast, maybe somebody could answer one of my unfulfilled questions is I'm still trying to track her down after all these years. We kind of lost touch. I can't find Dr. Sandra Jennings. She used to work at Miami of Ohio. She moved back to Oklahoma. Maybe someday somebody can help me find what's happened to her, but she was so passionate about working with students. That fall of 1984, the All Ohio HR Conference was going down and there was a student rate.
We, as students from Miami of Ohio, were able to go to that HR conference. I was so wide-eyed. It was just amazing to be able to be in the room with people who were doing what I saw myself doing in the future and listening to presenters and going through the exhibit hall and seeing the people who support the HR profession and having the dinners and socializing with the HR professionals. It really kind of sucked me in. I got active in our student chapter. I became president my senior year. And then after I graduated, I just kind of continued the journey on with our local chapters. Here in Ohio, we've got two of the oldest SHRM chapters between Butler Warren SHRM and the Greater Cincinnati Human Resources Association. We got I think chapter three and five.
The other thing, as a student, I was able to attend... Back then most of the meetings were dinner meetings. I would go to the dinner meetings and see the HR professions and see the leaders of the chapter. I kind of said to myself, someday it'd be really cool if I could be the president of the Greater Cincinnati Human Resources Association. And eventually that happened for me and it just kind of continued the journey. From the very earliest side of my career back in '84, SHRM has been a big part of what I do and the conferences and the friendships and the relationships that I've made in the HR profession. That's one of the things that makes my life fun is making those and developing those relationships.
Vernon Williams:
Congrats on all of the success, Tom. Just a quick follow up question, when I went into higher education, somebody said, "Think of a college or a university as sort of like a small city and there's different roles. Basically like you were part of a local community." Talk to us a little bit about... Because we often say things about career pathways and the different aspects of HR that one can go into. Obviously you're a professor and you teach at the university. Talk to us a little bit about what the students and emerging professionals listening to this podcast need to do today if they wanted to become an HR instructor tomorrow.
Tom Mobley:
The good news is you've got your traditional pathway. You go on for your masters, and you go on for the PhD. If you enjoy research and looking at problems and studying them and coming up with trending solutions, then the PhD route is a very viable route to go. You just need to realize that that alma mater of yours may not be the place where you eventually end up. You will have to go to where the job is. You may go to the Ohio State University, but you may wind up teaching at the University of Maine, right? That's one pathway. The other pathway, my journey was I had gotten my master's back in 1990. And shortly after getting my master's, I get a phone call from my university where I did my undergraduate work, Miami of Ohio. An old professor of mine called me up and said, "Hey, now that you got your master's, would you be interested in teaching a course for us?"
I said sure. That's kind of my pathway in was teaching as an adjunct one course a semester type of a deal. There are some people that make a living stringing together a bunch of adjunct jobs. That's a tough road. That's a really, really tough road because the pay is not that great for teaching one class. Next thing you know, you're teaching six to try to get by, and that becomes a lot of work for somebody. But if you are working full-time in the field and enjoy the teaching, developing a relationship with a college that has an HR program, letting them know that you're interested in speaking to classes, that you're available to mentor students, that you're available to offer internships.
That the more you as a professional acquaint yourself, tie yourself into a university, the more likely they're going to think about you as somebody to come in and teach a class for them. That was my pathway. And then eventually one thing led to another and I started teaching more classes and was able to land a full-time teaching gig. First was at Miami Ohio, and then now where I'm at right now at the University of Cincinnati. There's two pathways.
Ledia Dobi:
Awesome. That's very valuable information for our listeners. Thank you. Your work follows the book by Herman, Olivo, and Gioia titled Impending Crisis: Too Many Jobs, Too Few People, which is from 2002. We are now in 2022, but experiencing what is described in the book. Can you take the audience back to the early 2000s, what the authors were seeing, and why their predictions were delayed by over two decades?
Tom Mobley:
Yeah. I found the book fascinating. It's interesting that the upcoming National SHRM Conference will be in New Orleans because that's where I heard the speakers with this book was back in New Orleans, back in... For me, it was back in 2004 when I heard them speak, I think it was. What was happening back in 2004 was we were looking at the baby boomers back then, the oldest one was around 56, I guess. What was interesting to me is what they were forecasting was they were looking at the baby boomers starting to retire around 2010-2011 and going with the traditional retirement model of you hit 65 and that's obviously when you stop work. They saw that and they saw this pending labor shortage of about 10 million jobs we would be short. We would have 10 million fewer people than we needed to fill the jobs.
What happens? Well, we're going merely along. And then in 2007-2008, the wheels kind of fall off the wagon and we have the Great Recession. When you look at what happened there, right before the Great Recession, unemployment was around 4.9, 4.8%. And then during the Great Recession, the unemployment rate shoots up to just south of 10%. One of the things that happened to the people who were getting ready for retirement was the stock market crashes. The joke... Bad joke, right? But the joke back then was your 401(k) became 201(k). You look at what happened to the market. For some people, their retirement was cut almost in half.
Those baby boomers that were coming up on retirement, one, they couldn't afford to retire, but the other thing that we see happening is people at 65 still have a lot of gas in the tank, still have a lot to give, and they don't necessarily want to retire. We hit that 2010 and we have high unemployment. We have people still desire to work, so that labor shortage gets pushed back because of the higher unemployment and the fact that the baby boomers weren't retiring yet. To me, that's kind of like the secret of why we didn't see it when they first forecasted it. But now what happens is we're going along and it's always interesting to me how quickly we forget things. For example, right before COVID took off unemployment in this country was at 3.5%. Then with COVID, it immediately shoots up within two months to 14.8, which was higher than at any point during the Great Recession.
And then after April, we slowly see the unemployment rate coming down. Now we are south of 4%. There's all kinds of things we could talk about in terms of what's happened to the people. To me, that's kind of the fascinating part of all this is like, where have the people gone? Why is it so hard for organizations to recruit and then retain? Why are they seeing turnover so high? Because if you look back at some of the SHRM studies on employees and their interest in work and their desire to maintain, for a long time, we've heard people telling us, "You know what? If I have an opportunity, I am out of here." But not a lot of people did it and now they're doing it. Hopefully that kind of paints the picture of where we're at and why this is just so fascinating to me.
Ledia Dobi:
Yeah, for sure. I think something that you made me think about while you were speaking about this was the difference in the generations in the workforce. For example, my generation, gen Z, albeit I am an older gen Z, but I still consider myself a part of that generation, we have come to realize that we're not entering the same workforce that our parents, our grandparents, our older peers entered. We're now entering a workforce where it seems like social security is going to dry up.
Most companies aren't paying pensions. It seems like more frequently, we're finding that job hopping every two to five years is giving us better salaries and better benefits than staying consistent within one organization and building our benefits and our reputation there. Can you talk a little bit about this different generations in the workplace, maybe if this is incorrect and we have a misconception about what's happening, or if this is affecting what we're seeing today?
Tom Mobley:
One of the things that I would say is like, for me, I was really kind of intrigued when you were talking about your job search and how you had difficulties at first, because that resonated with me because it felt like me. It felt like my story back in 1986. When I came out of college, the economy was kind of sputtering then and I had a lot of trouble finding that first HR job myself. For you, you were able to kind of go online and do searches that way. For me, everything was done by mail, right? If I wanted to apply for a job in Denver, Colorado and I lived in Cincinnati, Ohio, Monday, I would go to the newspaper store, buy a copy of The Denver Post, and then search for HR jobs, right? You were able to do that instantaneously and get immediate feedback. I find that even though the methods for us looking for work, that kind of frustration of trying to find work was similar.
But then you mentioned job hopping, right? For me, in the '80s-'90s, employers would say, "If somebody hasn't been in a job for at least five years and they're moving, we don't want to touch them." Today, companies, one, they may actively be recruiting employees that have only been in a job for a little while trying to get them to come to their company to work, right? And two, I think you're spot on in terms of individuals to be able to make more money, they're making it on those job hops. Whereas if you stay with your current company in today's economy, you might see a 5% increase or something like that. But when you hop jobs from company A to company B, that increase maybe 10 or 20%. As kind of an example, our son-in-law, he was approached by... He's doing IT work.
Interesting enough, his college degree was in music of all things and he finds himself doing IT work now. He's kind of like a self-taught IT person, which kind of goes to show a lot of organizations looked for ability and then they'll train. He picked up on IT at a company. Another company came along and said, "Hey, we'd really like you to come to work for us." His current company matched part of it, so he got a big increase. But then three months later, another company came along and said, "Okay, we'll offer you 115," and he hopped. At 26, he's he's pulling down 115, which makes my head spin. It's incredible.
Vernon Williams:
Tell him, let me borrow some money, man.
Tom Mobley:
Yeah. It's nice to know that I won't be buying his dinner too much longer into the future. Ledia, you made this comment about, "Oh, well, companies have gone away from traditional pension plans and moved to 401(k) plans," and that's very true. One of the outcomes I believe of companies moving there is it makes it easier for employees to move. I mean, if I knew that if I stick with my company, here's this benefit that I'll get, I'll think twice. Honestly, I'm in that boat right now. I'm looking at a benefit that if I stay with my company for 22 more months, I will get a very substantial benefit. If I'm going to make a move tomorrow, in my mind, I'm factoring in, okay, this is the benefit that I'm going to forgo if I make the move. For me to forgo that benefit, I'm going to need to get at least this, right?
And here's the other thing that I would tell you, Ledia, here's the magic, and if you and others will just follow this magic, I think you'll be okay in terms of future retirement, and that's 15. I tell my students and young people and anybody that'll listen to me, if you can get in the habit of putting back 15% into your Roth 401(k), Roth IRA, you will be okay for retirement someday. But it's that magic 15. That's what my spouse, my wife and I have done. We are now at the point where we can, and I am personally considering... It gives me the flexibility to consider retirement. Even though I won't touch social security for at least another 12 years, I'll be okay. I'm afraid that for a lot of young people on the financial side, 65 is so far in your future and you hear people say social security will never be around, I think social security will still be around.
It'll be different. It may take you longer to receive the benefit. The benefit may be a little less, but I can't fathom our country doing away with social security entirely because we all vote. The people who are currently getting it, I don't think they're going to vote people who totally cut social security. I just can't imagine that happening. Could it? I suppose stranger things have happened, but I can't imagine us just totally going away from social security. But I would say don't count on social security. Count on what you put back, and then your social security is the icing on the cake. It helps you do those other things.
Vernon Williams:
Such a great conversation. I want to pause just for a second to take care of a couple of housekeeping items. First, those of you listening to this podcast who are seeking professional development credits or PDCs, this episode is valid for 0.75 PDCs for the SHRM CP or SHRM SCP. Please note that the code that I'm about to give you will expire on April 7th, 2023, and that code 23-HJ79U. Again, that's the number 2, the number 3, dash, H as in hotel, J as in Juliet, the number 7, the number 9, U as in uniform.
Ledia Dobi:
And speaking of PDCs, one place to earn several PDCs, 27 in fact, while networking with peers, connecting with mentors, and expanding your HR knowledge is at SHRM '22 this June. The SHRM Annual Conference & Expo, which has drawn more than 20,000 attendees in the past, is a can't miss experience for any current or emerging HR professional. It's even better for students, with a curated experience featuring career focused programming and discounted member pricing at just $425 for an in-person registration in New Orleans and $275 for virtual passes. For more information, visit shrm.co/shrm22student.
Vernon Williams:
Jumping back into the podcast, obviously we had and perhaps we're still experiencing a global pandemic, which was followed by the Great Resignation. In your opinion, Tom, what are some of the key factors that have contributed to so many workers leaving their job and many others trying to find new employment?
Tom Mobley:
Wow! Are we going to do seven parts on the podcast, or where should we go?
Vernon Williams:
I think we got that much time, man.
Tom Mobley:
Let's kind of walk through some of the major things that's happened, right? Number one, one of the outcomes of this labor shortage is, and this was happening before the pandemic, employers were starting to increase wages. Before the pandemic, you saw Walmart and Targets of the world announcing $15 was where they were taking their wage rates. This is pre-pandemic. And who doesn't want more money? I mean, I still want more money. I'm certain that you all want more money.
Vernon Williams:
Sign me up.
Tom Mobley:
Workers are seeing the opportunity to move for higher comp now more than ever before. Number one. Second thing, workers don't like to stay in jobs they don't like. If I'm not liking where I'm at, I am now motivated to look for other opportunities. A big thing that's come out of this pandemic is work from home. Pre-pandemic, if an employee said, "I would like to work from home," the employer said, "Wouldn't we all? No." And that was the end of the discussion. Well, the pandemic taught us that we can work from home. We can be effective working from home. We can be just as productive working from home as we can from work. So now workers want that flexibility. The other thing that we saw with the pandemic was childcare, and that's still an issue where the lack of affordable childcare is still out there.
The good news is schools are back in sessions, schools are back in person right now, and that is starting to allow the parent that was taking on the childcare responsibilities the chance to kind of hop back into the workforce. The other thing that's happened as part of the Great Resignation is, believe it or not, the stock market has done really well over the last six years. Despite the hiccup that we're going through right now with the global crisis in Ukraine, the market has done well. You have a lot of baby boomers that have said, "I'm done." One, remember, a lot of baby boomers kept working past 65. I think what we're seeing right now is those baby boomers who are past 65, they're now dropping out that what we would've thought they would've done back when they were 65.
That's why I say the whole baby boomer moving out that the book had predicted happening in around 2010 got slid back to 2022. You have the folks who are older saying, "Okay, we're done working." But because the market has been good to the people who are coming up on 65, they can afford to retire. To be honest with you, and then, Ledia, this is what I want you to do, give me that 15%. Because right now for me at 60, I can look at retiring. Now, will I? Maybe yes, maybe no, but I have that option and that gives me a lot of power as an employee, because I can choose where I want to go, right? That's happening. Workers are retiring and some aren't coming back. Some other parts of the Great Resignation, we still have health concerns. Vaccine hesitancy are still out there.
Over the last four years, we have tightened up on immigration and that's had an impact on the labor market. We're still seeing the skilled worker shortage in areas. It impacted me last week. I was scheduled for a procedure and the doctor's office had to cancel it because they didn't have enough nurses. This medical test I was supposed to go through had to be canceled because there are not enough nurses out there. We've got this skilled worker shortage, which is causing people to move, because I may be a skilled worker at company A. Company B is offering more money. Look at drivers right now, like truck drivers or bus drivers, and the skills to do that is at short supply. But the fact that I can pick up insurance more readily today than before the Affordable Care Act gives people the opportunity to maybe work alone and go off on their own.
I think the gig economy has had a big impact, and this will kind of delve into that political side. But when people are working in the gig economy, maybe they're reporting all the money that they're earning, or maybe they're not. And then I guess one other comment, we've gone through COVID. Workplaces have been socially distanced, masked up, meetings have been canceled. The extra events that employers were doing. All that stuff dried up during COVID. I think this company culture has suffered. And now we're going to try to build that back and organizations that can build back that culture are going to be in a better position to be able to retain workers and slow down the bleed of people hopping from company A to go to company B.
But changing culture, talk about a slow process, and making certain that your supervisory team and your management team is on board and they're doing the right things when they're short staffed. It's tough. No doubt about it. Those are some of the reasons that I see on the Great Resignation, if you will.
Ledia Dobi:
You mentioned that many workers are leaving their jobs and finding new employment due to key factors like remote work, more money childcare options. However, one study indicated that over 70% of US workers who changed jobs during the Great Resignation actually regret quitting and feel a sense of buyers remorse. Does this statistic surprise you? And what do you think are some of the reasons behind this data?
Tom Mobley:
Yes and no, right? I think one of the things that we all kind of go through at times is the old the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence perspective. And then once we get there, it might not be as green. Now let's ask the question, why am I not happy in this new job? Well, maybe I left solely for more money. I've left relationships behind from my former employer, and now I have to forge new relationships with the current employer. Does it happen? Do I build it? Does it build up? The challenge for those new employers kind of gets into that onboarding process of what are we doing with our new people to make them feel welcome, make them feel part of the organization, ensuring that they're being trained properly. Let me give you an example of something I've seen at a company that some of my students and I are doing a little mini consulting project at.
Their workforce has grown during the pandemic, so their workforce is larger at their facility today than it was pre-pandemic. They say they don't have a problem hiring. They've hired over 400 people, but yet they're still 40 some odd jobs shy of having all the positions filled. They see a lot of turnover. Somebody comes on board, maybe they last a week, maybe they last two, maybe they last a month, and they're churning. Why is that? What's busted in that system? A couple of things that I noticed is, one, what I'm hearing from some of their employees would be training. When we hire new people, we need people that... The workers would say, "We need people who have mechanical skills that can understand equipment and kind of get it theoretically on how to work on this equipment."
If you're hiring somebody that's coming out of fast food, let's say, and they're going to work in this factory and they don't have any mechanical aptitude at all, they're probably not going to be around for very long. Now, they may have answered all the questions right, may have sounded like a good person, a good worker, but because they don't have that mechanical aptitude, they're struggling, number one. Number two, they're short staffed, so the people who are training them, that employee may say, "Hey, my machine's not working right. How do I fix it," and the worker that knows how to fix it doesn't have the time to show them how to fix it because they've got their own thing to do. Now, I've got to come over and help you. I come over. I fix it for you. I kind of look at you like you're stupid like, "Here's what you do. Hey, how did you do that? Don't worry about it."
Now that person that's new to the company, they're not necessarily getting the training they need. They're not necessarily developing relationships with their coworkers, and they're like, "I'll go find another job," and they move on. They see this fast turnover. There's multiple problems in their process there. One is, are they hiring the right people, meaning should they be hiring people who are more mechanically inclined, that don't mind working on their own, that are willing to kind of figure out things before they ask for help. Who are they hiring? Two, working with the current staff, they need to be kind of make sure that they're putting the right person involved in the place to do the training. Because if you don't, that's creating your problem with people turning.
There's a lot of pieces in there. Yeah, I would agree with your statement that, do people have buyers or remorse or regret that they've moved? The stat doesn't surprise me, but those are some of the things that I think is causing that. Maybe one of the things to slow that down is when you're bringing somebody new on board, what are we going to do on the onboarding to bring them in and make them feel welcomed and to ensure that we don't lose them quickly? Those would be a couple things there.
Vernon Williams:
I really appreciate that response, Tom, and I cannot agree with you more on how important relationships in the workplace are. I absolutely love working with the team that I work with, and that's like my foundation team and folks like Ledia, who I sit close to up in the office. It makes all the difference in the world, I guess, how excited you are to come to work and accomplish the task that you do. Including this podcast is kind of like fun to me because I'm doing it with somebody who I really enjoy spending time with. You're right. Your relationships at work make a ton of difference in terms of your overall satisfaction and probably retention to the employer.
Something you just started touching on towards the end of your answer, which I think matters quite a bit, and I want to go into a little bit of the background, my first part of my question is, from an employer company side of things, why does turnover matter? And then the second part of that, because you started talking a little bit about orientation or onboarding, what can organizations and HR employees do in order to minimize the amount of turnovers in their companies?
Tom Mobley:
One of the first things that companies need to do a better job of is understanding the true cost of turnover. Example. If you have a company where if I hire somebody to come in and do a job, I'm able to train that person and get them up to speed within a matter of weeks and they are going to be as effective as a person that's been there for three years, there's not a big difference if you lose somebody, if you lose a person that's been there a year, two years, six months, the cost is relatively the same. Now, let's say that this job takes a while to get under your belt and maybe it takes six months, eight months, nine months before you are 100% proficient at it. But let's also say that this is a job where we can clearly see the productivity differences, the output differences between employees.
Employee A is a superstar, and so they're really making us money and doing a great job. Employee B is really good at what they do. They're also making us money. Employee C is okay, they're making us money, but it's not great. If we lost employee A, we're going to take nine months to get the new person up to speed, but we're also missing out on this high performer productivity results that is so much better than employee C. Do we understand the cost of turnover? Because if we understand what that cost is, then we know what do we have to spend to be able to improve that. If your turnover cost is... If you factor out and say, "Well, it's costing us a million dollars, this turnover." I worked with a company that said... They were in the transportation industry.
They were short 4,000 drivers, let's say. They knew that their inability to fill those driver roles was losing them X amount of dollars. They were able to then kind of factor in, okay, here's what this lack is costing us. What do we need to spend so that we can improve the numbers, right? We have to do a better job understanding our costs. Now, the other thing that I would say is when we're hiring people. If we could better predict who our superstars are going to be, shouldn't we go out and look for more superstars? But employers just kind of, okay, we got to hire, and so they go through that hiring process. I think that's something that we need to do a better job of.
One of the things that I would say to my students and young professionals that will help you become more effective in your role in HR is when you're able to articulate, here is my idea, here's the problem I'm going to solve, and this is the dollar value that solving this problem's going to bring to the party, you're more likely to get your leadership team to say, "Let's put that plan into place. That makes sense to spend that money because it's going to save us this." But we can't just come with ideas and say, "Well, I think it'll work really well." Leadership wants to know, what's it saving me? What's it going to do? How's this improving me? How's this going to make us better? That would be a couple things I would throw out in there in terms of how do we minimize the turnover and how do we get better.
Ledia Dobi:
Great. Well, thank you for that insight. I like to think of every challenge as an opportunity. The challenges that are facing our students and emerging professionals right now is the labor shortage or the Great Resignation. How can we, students, emerging professionals, maximize these opportunities provided from a labor shortage? And can you also break down how this would look different for a student that's just fresh out of college and how it might look different for somebody who's been in the industry for a couple of years?
Tom Mobley:
Let me kind of go back a couple steps on that. One of the things that I try to do with my students is, number one, I stress getting an internship, having some type of opportunity where you're able to work alongside an HR leader someplace. The beauty right now is there are a lot of companies out there looking for internships. That's one piece. The second thing that we do is we pair our students with mentors. Every semester we will find our students that want to be involved in the process a new HR mentor. Each semester I'm making 40 to 50 plus pairings between students and HR mentors. Those relationships in turn help the student better understand the HR profession. It helps the student see opportunities. It helps the students see people who are doing things that they may like to do, and it opens the door to those internships and job opportunities.
Even for the young professional, it's finding those more seasoned people that are willing to spend time with them. The cool thing that I'm seeing that's kind of spinning out of our mentor program at the University of Cincinnati is the relationships are now going past graduation. Where it's really cool is where I see my graduates, my alumni, still talking to their mentors and meeting them and talking to them. What wise mentors are doing is they're scouting talent for their HR teams. And even though Tabitha may be working for company X, she still has a relationship with that mentor at company Y. And maybe sometime in the future, that company Y HR person is going to say, "Hey, Tabitha, we've got this opening. Can we talk to you?" And opportunities are there.
That's one of the things I think that... Again, COVID's really thrown a wrench in these plans where being able to have these relationships and do these things, which is why like Vernon, I'm so excited to being able to be back at the conference live with my students and with the other professionals there, where we're able to mix and meet people and see those relationships kind of come out of that. But that would be another piece is like, what are you doing to get out there? And then one other thing that I would throw out there for the young professionals is looking at certification and getting that under your belt sooner rather than later. SHRM has recently changed the eligibility requirement standard. So now as a recent graduate, you're able to sit for that CPE exam.
Making certain that you're taking advantage of study courses or study groups and preparing for that exam is critical. Students can pass it. I'm pleased to report that we did a study group with five of my students last fall. Three of them went ahead and tested in the December-February window and all three passed. Can't tell you how good that makes me feel when I see my recent graduates getting that under their belt early in their career. Those will be just a couple of things that as a young professional, mentorships, relationships, and your HR certification.
Vernon Williams:
There's that word again, right, relationships and the importance of building strong relationships and really networking. I'm right there with you, Tom. Thank you so much, Tom, for taking the time to share your thoughts around the current labor shortage and how students and emerging professionals can really excel in the job market. We really appreciate it.
Tom Mobley:
My pleasure to be here, and I hope to see you in person down in New Orleans and hopefully we'll see some other people out there coming down. One other thing I would throw your way is connect with me on LinkedIn. I've got a group that I call Tom Alumni on LinkedIn, where I post job opportunities. If people who are out there looking for job opportunities, you want to go there. I'm more than happy to share the wealth and the opportunities. Connect with me on LinkedIn so I can help you on your journey.
Ledia Dobi:
And with that, we're going to bring this episode of Career Compass to a close. We'd like to thank SHRM and SHRM Foundation for providing us with this platform. But more importantly, we'd like to thank you all for joining us and hope you stay with us throughout the season as we discuss more topics like this episode.
Vernon Williams:
For more exclusive content, resources, and tools to help you succeed in your career, consider joining SHRM as a student member. You can visit us at SHRM.org/students to learn more about being a part of a community of over 300,000 HR and business leaders who impact the lives over 115 million employees worldwide.
Ledia Dobi:
If you liked what you heard, follow and subscribe to Career Compass on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Do you have a topic you think we should cover or a guest we should hear from? We'd love to hear it. Email us at careercompasspodcast@SHRM.org.
Vernon Williams:
Lastly, if you are looking for more work and career related podcasts, check out All Things Work and Honest HR at SHRM.org/podcast. Thank you again for listening and we'll catch you on the next episode of Career Compass.