To Attract Top Talent, You Must Become an Employer of Choice

Chapter 5: Becoming an Employer of Choice

People who work there want to keep working there.

“At Chick-fil-A, leaders SERVE, which means they do five things: See and shape the future; Engage and develop others; Reinvent continuously; Value results and relationships; Embody the company values.” ~ Dee Ann Turner, Chick-fil-A VP Talent (Ret.)

Note: This series started with Chapter 1: The Cost of Culture.

To ensure our cultural vision remains aligned at this critical stage, let me clarify.

Becoming an employer of choice means: The people who are currently working in your organization have a very strong desire to continue working there because they’re excited about their future within the organization, there are frequent growth and development opportunities, they are consistently challenged to get better in positive ways, they feel valued by their leaders and their team, they have meaningful relationships with their co-workers, they feel good while on the job, and equally as important, they feel good about themselves and their leaders at the end of each day.

As I've mentioned in previous chapters, the cultural transformation mountain is tall, steep, and challenging at times. If you’re serious about developing a high impact culture, you may likely feel challenged. If you don’t feel challenged by paragraph above, you’re either already there and trying to get better, or you have no real intentions of going there.

I assume you’re reading this because you already know you want to climb the cultural transformation mountain, or you’re curious about climbing the mountain. Either way, don’t let the challenge you may be feeling at this moment overwhelm you. You won’t have to learn to climb alone. I’m here with you, and my mission is to help others climb.

My intention in the first six chapters of Blue-Collar Leadership & Culture: The 5 Components for Building High Performance Teams is to help you understand why you should consider climbing the cultural transformation mountain. The remaining 24 chapters are intended to help you understand what you must do in order to climb the mountain. Not only will I describe what must be done, I’ll also provide resources to aid you and your team as you begin your climb and offer a few key examples of how to climb.

Keep reading, thinking, reflecting, and making notes as you continue. Consider Blue-Collar Leadership & Culture: The 5 Components for Building High Performance Teams a guide, a road map, as I take you on a mental climb up the mountain before you strap your boots on and do it within your organization.

Blue-Collar Leadership & Culture: The 5 Components for Building High Performance Teams is intended to be a tool for high impact leaders who want to build a high performance team capable of creating a high impact culture.

“When current or would-be leaders realize you are investing in their growth, it’s more important to them than money.” ~ Jim Blanchard

To become highly effective at competing with those who want to steal your people, you must become an employer of choice. Otherwise, you’ll find yourself on the losing end of the labor war, especially relative to attracting great people. The result: endless frustration.

Read the opening paragraph of this chapter again. Imagine the type of word of mouth advertisement someone with those feelings working at an employer of choice will provide. It will be off the charts. That type of word of mouth advertisement will cause any organization to become a sought after employer.

But, you can’t buy that kind of advertisement. You must earn it. Here’s an example of the impact.

Chick-fil-A was our client for three years straight and is a great example of a sought after employer of choice. They’ve been climbing the mountain for over 50 years. They understand they don’t have to be sick to get better and are striving relentlessly to improve.

I remember one store owner in a town of 30,000 saying to me, “When I have an entry-level job opening, I typically have 250 applicants.” Wow! Without a doubt, there are always great people applying. That’s what it means to be a sought after employer of choice.

To become a sought after blue-collar employer of choice, you must become innovative. Culture is all about the people, not your products and services. So, when I say innovative, I mean innovative relative to the growth and development of all people at all levels.

Why is growth and development of people innovative? It’s not in the white-collar world, because they’ve been doing it for many, many decades. But, it is in the blue-collar world because very few blue-collar leaders value doing it, even if they’re considered successful within their industry.

Ria and I had the privilege of speaking at Yale University’s School of Management on “Blue-Collar Leadership?: Innovation in Talent Development.” You can watch the entire one hour video of our session near the bottom of our home page at BlueCollarLeadership.com

“It can be far more difficult to overcome success than adversity...There’s a tendency for many in successful companies to rest on their laurels and become complacent, self-protective, and less innovative. In such bureaucratic cultures, employees can survive only by running with the herd. Decline sets in.” ~ Charles G. Koch, CEO Koch Industries

Continue reading Chapter 6: The Transformation Equation

Get a FREE download (no email required) of the first 5 chapters of Blue-Collar Leadership & Culture and those below here.

More details about Mack's newest book, Blue-Collar Leadership & Culture: The 5 Components for Building High Performance Teams, released 7/13/19:

“We just can’t find any good people,” is a phrase Mack Story hears far too often as he speaks to and interacts with leaders all across the USA. If you or a member of your leadership team has ever spoken these words, this book was written specifically for you. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Blue-Collar Leadership? & Culture will help you understand why culture is the key to becoming a sought after employer of choice within your industry. Culture matters because those who work there will determine who wants to work there.

Becoming a sought after employer means, “People who don’t work at your organization have a strong desire to work there.”

Becoming an employer of choice means, “People who already work at your organization have a strong desire to continue working there.”

Mack wrote Blue-Collar Leadership? & Culture specifically for leaders who want to become THE sought after employer of choice within their industry and in their area of operations. Sought after employers of choice attract great people and don’t spend their time and resources constantly searching for good people.

Mack has logged over 11,000 hours leading leaders and their blue-collar teams through hundreds of kaizen events, process improvement, organizational change, and cultural transformation and speaks with his wife, Ria Story, on personal growth and leadership development throughout the USA as they help leaders transform their cultures and develop high performance teams.

Although leaders in all industries at all levels will benefit greatly from this book, Mack structured the content specifically for the top leader who has never led a cultural transformation but is curious to find out what will be required. He’ll help you not only discover why you should transform your culture, but also what to do and how to do it. Therefore, Mack includes many references and links to additional resources throughout the book that will support and accelerate your cultural transformation.

Blue-Collar Leadership? & Culture is intended to not only teach, but also to serve as a tool, a guide, and a transformational road map for leaders who want to create a high impact culture that will become their greatest competitive advantage. It’s a starting point for those who don’t know how to start or those who want to become more intentional and methodicalas they take their team to the next level and beyond.

In Blue-Collar Leadership? & Culture, you’ll also discover how to leverage the components of The Transformation Equation to create a culture that will support, attract, and retain high performance team members. To learn more about The Transformation Equation, visit GetTheTransformationEquation.com

“My first words are, GET SIGNED UP! This training is not, and I stress, not your everyday leadership seminar! I have never been a part of anything like it. After 30 years in technology and two years in Concrete Construction, I have attended dozens and sent hundreds to the so-called ‘Leadership-Training’…while all of the courses, classes, webinars, and seminars, had good intentions, nothing can touch what Mack and Ria Story provide…100% of the team that attended said that they were ‘blown-away.’” ~ Sam McLamb, VP/COO