Scaling With People
Tired of spinning your startup wheels but never gaining traction? Buckle up, founders and CEOs, because this podcast is your rocket fuel to profitability! Every week, we ignite explosive conversations with bold-faced founders, brainy experts, and even a few out-of-this-world vendors. Get ready to crack the code on growth, master employee engagement, and blast through your scaling goals. We’re talking real-world strategies, actionable tips, and perspectives that’ll make your business do a cosmic dance. So, strap in and prepare for lift-off!
Scaling With People
Building Flexibility at Scale: The New Survival Strategy for Modern Business with James Terry
Workforce flexibility isn't what you think it is. While most businesses scramble to plug staffing gaps when demand spikes, true flexibility comes from strategic planning that anticipates shifts before they happen.
James Terry, a workforce transformation leader at Indeed Flex, reveals how businesses can build resilience through data-driven labor planning. "Flexibility actually starts with being able to do effective labor planning," Terry explains. "Understanding operationally what's happening on the ground level, how many orders you're getting from customers, and how demand increases or decreases over time." This approach creates a powerful flywheel effect, where each adjustment provides insights that improve future staffing decisions.
The podcast dives deep into how employee expectations have fundamentally changed. Today's workers expect the same convenience and options in their employment that they experience as consumers. Just as we can order products online and have them delivered within hours, employees want flexibility in when, where, and how they work. Smart companies are adapting by rethinking traditional scheduling patterns and exploring more responsive approaches to workforce management.
Perhaps most eye-opening is Terry's perspective on Employer Value Propositions. "Your EVP doesn't start after someone's been there for a year," he emphasizes. "It starts the first time they put eyeballs on your job posting." With nearly half of applicants abandoning the process if they don't hear back within a week, companies must recognize that every touchpoint shapes their ability to attract talent. The discussion also tackles AI's role in recruiting (hint: it's not about getting more applications), the importance of rating systems over resumes, and practical strategies for future-proofing against labor shortages.
Ready to stop playing defense and start dominating your market through workforce innovation? Listen now and discover how flexibility at scale becomes your competitive advantage in chaotic times. As Terry advises: "Fail often and fall forward." Your workforce strategy depends on it.
Welcome to Scaling with People, your weekly playbook for turning chaos into compounding growth. Each week, we go under the hood with battle-tested experts in all areas of business, from marketing to sales, operation, finance and people, plus product and leadership to unpack the plays, numbers and systems that turn chaos into compounding growth. Learn straight from founders and experts who've done it and continue to do it successfully. There's zero fluff, just moves that you can still immediately. This podcast is brought to you by Guide to HR. Human expertise, ai-powered impact.
Speaker 1:Welcome everyone to today's Scaling with People podcast. I'm Guinevere Curry, your host and founder and CEO to Guide to HR. All right, so what happens when your workforce is agile, your tech bridges the talent gap and your leadership actually thrives? Because of volatility, you stop playing defense and you start dominating the field. On today's episode, we're joined by James Terry, a powerhouse in workforce transformation, and we're going to be unpacking how companies can build flexibility at scale, future proof against labor shortages and lead like warriors in chaotic markets. This one part strategy, part survival kit. So buckle up everyone. You're not going to want to miss it. Welcome, james. I'm so excited to have you on today's call. Tell the audience a little bit about yourself.
Speaker 2:Hey, gwendover, thank you so much for having me. So I have worked for the last 15 or so years in the HR tech space and there's a lot there and lots of different organizations, value propositions, types of companies you can kind of look at within that. But over the past five or six years I've been working for Indeed Flex, which is really exciting because the motto of Indeed is we help people get jobs and Indeed Flex we help people get jobs instantly, and so being so tied into such a noble mission is really what gets me passionate. I'm lucky enough to have the opportunity to lead the revenue team here at Indeed Flex, which is really responsible for identifying the right types of clients, implementing building solutions that are going to help them scale their workforce and ensure the operational stability and consistency that they need when they're trying to get their product out the door or deliver a product or a service to their customers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all right, cool. Well, that's fun. I'll have to definitely check that out. So let's talk about workforce flexibility. What does true workforce flexibility actually look like in the real world, and why do so many companies get it wrong?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think, actually, flexibility. Everyone thinks about flexibility from the business standpoint of being able to make last minute changes, and there's a component of that. But in reality, if you think about it, actually being flexible and being strongly flexible in a positive way means you're planning effectively. So flexibility actually starts with being able to do effective labor planning. Understanding, hey, operationally, what's happening on the ground level, how many orders am I getting from my customers, or what's the demand that I specifically have and how that increases or decreases over a certain timeframe. Being able to have the data and the insights to then be able to say, okay, when this happens in the economy, that means that I'm going to have an increase or decrease in demand for my product or service, and then that, how is that going to impact my ability to be able to deliver that to my customers? And so being able to have that type of strategic planning actually allows you to have the flexibility. And here's why Guinevere because if you're just trying to plug holes when, like that, huge influx of demand comes in unexpectedly, if you're just plugging holes, you're not being flexible, You're just trying to keep the doors open. Right, being flexible is if we have a really strong way of understanding what our demand is and what the needs are going to be.
Speaker 2:Then you have the ability to kind of make those little tweaks and changes throughout your labor planning process when you get closer to kind of like that, that like final day of okay, it's all, it's all coming in right now and gives you the ability to start making little changes.
Speaker 2:And the really nice part about it is as you start to do that, as you start to be thoughtful about your labor planning, it becomes a flywheel. And what I mean by that is you start to make changes. You're able to have and I know you have a quant background, but you're able to have the dependent and independent variables and say, okay, what were the things that we changed? And, based on those changes, what were the outcomes that came out of that? And it's really interesting to see that a lot of customers say, well, just increase the pay rate and we'll get more people if they're running a big warehouse or some type of fulfillment center, when in reality, like that's not all that there is. There's a lot of other things that the workforce is looking for to be able to drive the type of attendance that you might need or the type of outcome that you're looking for when you're doing your labor planning.
Speaker 1:Yeah, totally. I mean benefits, flexibility of when I come in and when I leave right, or my schedule right. Those are a couple of things that pop in my head.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean you're 100% right. I mean we find, as an example, that the retention rate goes up when you there's a sweet spot, like if you're scheduling people for like, less than five hours, low retention rate. When you're scheduling people for more than 10 hours, lower retention rate, higher turnover rate, higher no-show rate. And so there's like this really interesting sweet spot that you have.
Speaker 2:And so, while a lot of people say, well, the workforce which is true demands more flexibility right now, which is 100% accurate, that's why you see people being willing to drive for car sharing companies or delivering groceries or whatever it might be, that's true, but they want flexibility. But they also kind of want flexibility on their terms and they don't want to have to drive an hour each way, to work for three hours, right so, but they do want to be able to choose their schedule. They do want to be able to choose when they're working. They do want to be able to choose, potentially, the location they're working in in certain circumstances. And so the more you can kind of think outside the box. Actually, what you're doing is you're building your EVP, your employer value proposition. You can differentiate yourself in the marketplace by offering something a little bit different and outside the box different ideas about how to position yourself and those different types of benefits that are actually going to allow you to attract and retain a better workforce overall.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. I love that because that also goes into one of the things that I keep us up to talk about, which is future proofing against labor shortages. You know, if you are able to be a standout, you have a really good EVP, then you're likely to get more people coming towards you. Even if there's not a lot of people looking, you are going to get more of that pie because you have that value prop that the people are looking for.
Speaker 2:I mean you're totally right more of that pie, because you have that value prop that people are looking for. I mean, you're totally right. And your EVP doesn't start after someone's been there for a year. An EVP isn't what you do when you're career pathing. An EVP starts the first time that they put their eyeballs on your job, when they're applying.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's your employer brand.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and a lot of it has to do, like we talked about, with the flexibility.
Speaker 2:A lot of it has to do with, like, quite honestly, did you know that almost 50% of applicants will pull out of a job application process that they haven't heard back in a week?
Speaker 2:So your employer value proposition, your brand, is predicated on how strong, how fast, how agile are your recruiters at getting back in touch with people, even if you've already filled the position.
Speaker 2:That person might not have an opportunity for you right now, but, goodness, down the road, in a couple of years there might be another opportunity. And so it's so critical to make sure that you're maintaining that and you're always thinking about those people and whether you're only hiring a couple like really technical engineers every year, that you're maintaining that and you're always thinking about those people. And whether it's whether you're only hiring a couple like really technical engineers every year or you're hiring significant amounts of, like high volume labor either way, like the word travels, as you know, like if you go to a bad restaurant, you're going to tell 10 people about it, and we want to make sure that those 10 people are actually hearing positive reviews and not just the negative things that happen because, hey, you might be making every effort that you can, but one person drops the ball and all of a sudden, now you might have a bad you know a bad brand in the marketplace.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's not just on places like Glassdoor either, right Like there are a bunch of tech communities out there that talk about their experience. You got Reddit. There's probably other communities that I'm not even aware of. So even if you tried to stay completely attached and plugged into all social media, you're probably not seeing everything that's being talked about from your, about your company and your brand and the people not just your customer experience, but your employee experience and the employee experience can have an impact One to drive in higher caliber candidates that become employees. And also your clients often see this, too right, and there are a lot of people out there that don't want to work with a business, don't want to have that be their vendor, don't want to do business with that vendor because of how they hear they're treating their employees.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're, you're totally right and I think that at the end of the day, you know, we at Indeed Flex, like we provide labor as a service, right, so we're in the service industry.
Speaker 2:And in the service industry there's one thing that I think you can be pretty sure of that you're going to make a mistake, right, like things never are perfect and so. But that's not what it's about. It's not about batting 1,000. It's about, when you do make a mistake, how quickly and how effectively can you actually fix it and improve it and make sure that it doesn't happen again in the future? And really like the people a lot of the times, that the vision of the organization and people that ultimately are acting like owners and are willing to step up and kind of help solve these problems. It's so critical and I think that when people are doing labor, planning and thinking about how they're staffing their organization, a lot of the time there's not enough thought, effort, energy put into like are we actually building the type of environment that we want that's going to get us the outcomes, ultimately, that we're looking for?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is so true. I love that. So let's back up a minute because I think if we hear the audience, if we talk a little bit more about EVP and what it means and what it looks like, and if they haven't thought about building their EVP, what would be?
Speaker 2:a couple like maybe the yeah, I mean, I would say so. I'm not a brand marketing professional so.
Speaker 2:I can't speak too much to that. But from the standpoint of like employer value proposition, from looking at it as an employee or as kind of the candidates that we typically work with, I would say the number one thing that our candidates are looking for right now is a connection. Our candidates are looking for right now is a connection. They want a connection to an organization. They want an organization that kind of meets them in the middle and we've used the term flexibility a little bit.
Speaker 2:But I think one thing that people forget is that the products, the services, the things that a lot of companies are coming out with and building right now, the people that are working for you are also the consumers of those services. And so here's what I mean by that is that 25, 30 years ago, if you wanted to go and buy something a book as an example you had to go to the bookstore and go through the shelves right and look it up and probably ask someone at the counter and say, okay, where is it? And then go find it and maybe it wasn't in stock and they'd have to order it right. You know where I'm going with this.
Speaker 1:Whereas now you go online and literally that's a true Apple phrase, right.
Speaker 2:Literally, it will be at your house in like two hours. And so people have the demand for that type of speed and that type of the ability to be able to interact, first of all from their phone, with these types of organizations, and they want to be able to have speed, have the agility, have the ability to be more flexible, because they can also now go online and it's not just whatever I have in the store. I can actually choose exactly what it is that I want. And you know what I can do, guinevere, I can order three of them and then I can return two of them because I can try them on at home now, whereas previously you couldn't do that. And so what I'm getting with that, where I'm getting with that is that people are demanding that same type of thing in their work life as well. These are not just your consumers, they're also your employees, and so it's really important to be thinking about how can we try to offer that type of flexibility to our workforce as well.
Speaker 2:So, as an example, a lot of the times you might say well, you know you have to work Monday through Friday, nine to five, or eight to six, or whatever those times might be, and why? Well, just because that's the way it's always been, or because our operations team says that that's going to be the best for them and I'm not arguing with that, I'm sure that it is but at the end of the day, is that actually going to be what's going to drive the workforce towards the best outcomes? Now? Are you going to be able to fill all of the work demand that you have, with people working eight to six? Yeah, probably. Like, if you work hard enough, if you have good recruiters, like, you'll be able to do it.
Speaker 2:But what's going to happen is you're probably going to have higher turnover rate, you're going to have lower retention, you're going to have people quitting more quickly and you're going to have people who say you know what, every Wednesday at three o'clock, I have to drop grandma off at the doctors. Does that mean they're a bad worker? Probably not.
Speaker 1:They're probably a harder worker right, because they'll probably sign on earlier to make account for the fact that they have to be gone. Then they probably sign back on work even more hours. You're probably getting more out of those types of people, honestly.
Speaker 2:Right. So we should actually be judging people by the quality of the output, not their ability to maintain the schedule that your operations team put together.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right, and so that's a huge part of it is like are we able to or like what's important to us? Is what's important to us just keeping our operations team happy, or is what's important to us our value proposition? And in reality, the reason you have an EVP is it's not just a feel good thing. The reason you're doing it is you want to get better talent, you want to retain your talent, and so by having an EVP where you say, hey, we can be flexible, we can provide you with different opportunities and different shift patterns or whatever it might be it gives you the ability to attract a worker that potentially, a wouldn't be able to work there and B do you know what? None of your competitors are doing it. So all of a sudden, you're now attracting a worker that is probably really good, that's not able to find a job elsewhere because the other opportunities are out, there are way too rigid for them, and so you're attracting someone who's a much better candidate potentially.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, well, I love this. So there's so many areas I want to go down and focus on, but we only have so much time, so let me ask a question. I'm thinking about this like as a listener. You know we're talking about labor shortage, chaotic markets. How do I structure my business, the EVP? What would be the best practice that you've seen businesses do in regards to getting their head wrapped around their labor needs in order to do an assessment on how to actually fulfill that, not just immediately, but long term?
Speaker 2:Yep, it goes back to one of the first things I said, which is don't be a business that's just sitting there. We only have two hands right, like I can only do so many things at once, so don't just sit there plugging holes. You really have to look at the data and you have to understand, like, what is working and what is not working within the organization that we're building, and why are people leaving and why are people coming, and why, every time we get a huge spike in demand or there's a huge increase in our need for labor, what's the reason it always takes us a week and a half to be able to like right size? Why do we have so much overtime that we're having to pay out when this happens? Because we can't bring people in?
Speaker 2:Like, ultimately, you have to look at the data, like look at the reasons. Like look at you know two or three levels deeper. Is it because, hey, maybe the shift patterns that you have are not friendly? Maybe it's because it's difficult to you don't have the ability to go out to market and find the right candidates. Maybe you are being way too rigid with your skill sets?
Speaker 2:Maybe you're saying, hey, I'm looking for a needle in a haystack, when in reality, like, maybe you can bring people in and train them up hey, by the way, maybe you can promote some people from within and staff more entry-level positions and start having more of an internal career path. And so really, I think it's about like how can we look at the data and then try like, say, let's look at the data and let's come up with 10 hypotheses and over the course of the next month we're going to try three of them and see if they work, and if they work, great. If they don't work, that's fine, we'll can them and we'll try three different things, but always being aggressive about evolution and improvement and always trying, just as a product designer or an engineer would try to continue to improve and build on the product, you should always be building and improving on the labor force that you have and the way that you're labor planning and the way that you're bringing people in the door.
Speaker 1:I love that. Okay, so I got a question for you because we're in the AI landscape today. I'm a tech girl, I love AI, and one thing I've noticed is that a lot of founders, a lot of leaders are throwing AI at the talent gap. But where does the tech actually help? Because I think they think it's solved sourcing, it's solved this, it's solved that, but I have not seen it and I'd love to get your insights into where you're seeing AI actually help in the recruiting front.
Speaker 2:Okay, so this is a great question in front. Okay, so, this is a great question. And here's where, if you don't use AI effectively, what ends up happening is. Let me actually back up Just as they're using AI to recruit, everyone is also using AI to apply.
Speaker 2:I think it's like 70 something percent of people lie on their resumes. I would assume that with AI, that number's probably not going down right. So, like three out of every four people that you're talking to probably aren't being 100% truthful with what's on their resume. The other side of it is that what happens a lot of the times when you use AI is you just get more right, like I'm just going to get a higher volume. Well, that doesn't help me if I'm trying to recruit five positions and before I got a hundred resumes and now I'm getting 500 resumes, like, ultimately, how am I going to be able to sift through all that and find the right people?
Speaker 2:And so I think, really, where AI can come into place and something I think that's really interesting, that Indeed and Indeed Flex are doing is it's not about quality, it's about quantity. So rather than saying, hey, I need 20 people to do a certain job or we have a big class for a call center or something. Instead of having 20 people or just saying, hey, we're going to get 500 resumes and start sifting through them, it's what about using AI to be able to go through some of those resumes and help you pick out the best 30 people? So, rather than having to go through all of them, you're able to use AI to be able to identify who are the best. And then, hey, by the way, what if you can use AI to actually have some initial outreach to the candidate and say can you fill out a questionnaire, can you do a quiz? Can we actually use, potentially do an initial screening through AI?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I feel like we'll come to the market for that.
Speaker 2:Right. So rather than having to sift through 500 resumes, send out a bunch of emails and have all this back and forth, how can we take it from 500 resumes to in reality? What if I could give you 20 people, and they're the 20 people you want to hire? That's where you use. Ai is like allow me to have more time, allow me to force multiply by telling you I have a need and I can be so specific with what my requirements are that you're just sending me back the 20 best people. We need to make it as easy as pushing a button for you to find a really good candidate.
Speaker 1:That's, I think, where the beauty can come in AI. Yeah, absolutely. I think what is the challenging part is changing the narrative of a hiring manager, because I cannot tell you how many hiring managers I work with, who if I say I can give you the top quality 20 to 25 resumes, you're only looking for 15 people to fill. These 25 are going to do it for you. They're still asking for 100, 200 people to review and I'm just like okay, hold on. That is time that you are wasting, that you should be doing your job instead of allowing me to bring you these quality candidates to reduce how much time you're spending and be able to hire faster. So I'd love for you like have you had that same experience?
Speaker 2:And if so, how have you bridged that gap, okay, so, so I'll let the cat out of the bag a little bit here. So our goal at Indeed Flex is actually to completely remove the resume. Like, get rid of it, kill. The Three quarters of them aren't even accurate. Okay, so that's part one. The other side of it is, within our ecosystem, our clients are able to rate workers, and they're able to rate them on a five-star scale.
Speaker 2:Think about it Like when I order a ride share, I get a rating, but yet like where we spend a huge percentage of our life and we're getting people that like literally the revenue of our company is dependent on these people. We don't have a rating outside of like this one piece of paper that 70-something percent of people are lying on anyways. And so what we're actually doing at Indeed Flex is we're allowing our clients to rate the workers and then, vice versa, the workers can actually rate the clients right. And so the beautiful part about it is that, think about it if I'm now hiring someone, there's one thing to say hey, just trust me and trust AI that we're going to get it right. There's another thing to say hey, this person has worked for four or five, three other companies, and they have a 4.8 star rating.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And, by the way, two of these other four companies are direct competitors of yours, so why would you not hire them? It's not even about seeing more candidates. It's like you're now going to be. You now aren't going to say, hey, I'm going to send you less candidates. It's your questions. Do you even really need to do an interview?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So the people that like in the flex area? I'm just curious for myself, but maybe also for the listeners. When I think about flexible workforce, a lot of times what comes up is part-time and contractor work. Are you also talking about full-time as well?
Speaker 2:Yes, a huge percentage of what we do is actually full-time work and especially, like when you're looking at the I'd say, like the call it like $18 to $25 an hour pay rate, a significant percentage of those people actually have more than one job. So, whether they're working on the weekends at a family business or they're delivering food or whatever that might be, or they're working in a retail environment like they have other jobs or whatever that might be, or they're working in a retail environment like they have other jobs, and so what our goal is is you're going to have a significant number of people that are going to have consistent nine to five jobs, but how can we build an ecosystem where they have a one-stop shop where they can go to be able to find employment? So I'm sure, like when you look at a lot of these people, they'll actually have in their phones, they'll have folders for Uber and Lyft and DoorDash and all in one little folder because, like, okay, what am I going to do today? But what we're doing is we're saying, hey, how can we make it? So you go to one place I can work my nine to five job on Indeed Flex system and then, you know what, I can also pour beer at the local stadium on Sundays or on Saturdays or whatever it might be, or I can also go and work at the event scanning tickets, or I can go and serve and do catering at a local at a wedding or something like that.
Speaker 2:And so we want to be able to create that ecosystem where people can decide hey, I want to be able to work just in one place. I want to be able to work in one place and add on. Or hey, maybe I only want to work every couple of weeks for a few hours. But just as there's so many different companies out there, there's so many different people, and each person has their own desires of what they're looking for in their work, and we want to give them the control and choice to be able to decide what it is that they want to do and be able to build their own schedule based on that, while matching it with the clients that are going to be the best fit for them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. Well, James, as we wrap up today, any last thoughts, tidbits, tricks, tools you want to share with the audience.
Speaker 2:I would say, like, whether it's AI, whether it's labor planning, whether it's flexibility, it's just try it. You know, and one of my favorite quotes is fail often and fall forward, like, try things, make mistakes, learn from them and move forward. And I think that's really important, especially in this day and age, and what we're doing, and really lean into all the technology that's coming out.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, yeah. Well, thank you, james. Really appreciate the insight and, for the audience, definitely go check out, indeed Flex James, any other ways that they can get a hold of you that we can put into the bio.
Speaker 2:Yeah, head over to IndeedFlexcom and we're happy to have a chat.
Speaker 1:Great. Well, thanks, james. Thanks everyone for joining us. We'll see you on the next podcast. Have a good one. That's a wrap for today's episode of Scaling with People. If you got value from this conversation, do me a favor, share it with someone building something big. And, hey, I'd love to hear your take. Drop a comment, shoot me a message or start a conversation, and don't forget to subscribe so you never miss the bold, unfiltered strategies we drop every week. I'm Gwenda Raquiri, founder and CEO of Guide to HR, where we help high-growth companies scale smart with people-first strategies and AI-powered systems that don't just keep up, they lead. If you're building fast and want your HR to move faster, head to guide to HRcom and let's talk and remember scale isn't just about speed, it's about people. Until next time, have a great one.
