How to stop the Great Resignation with Workplace Culture | Steve Edwards | TEDxBocaRaton

[Music] thank you America we have a problem we do we have lots of them but the great resignation is here but how do we solve the great resignation how do we get employees to not quit culture is very easy to sense but you know what it's hard to measure how do you measure culture here are some stats that when I saw these are just crazy it's

360 or 330 million people United States 160 million in the workforce before I give you this next answer I want you to put a number into your head for me how many people quit their jobs in 2022 think about that for a second how many people quit their jobs in 2022 over 50 million people quit their jobs who thought it was going to be that high

probably not a lot of people almost a third of America quit their jobs and the year before we had 47 million people quit their jobs we talked about the great resignation happened in 2020 but guess what it happened in 2022 oh people that quit their jobs in 2020 that thought the grass was greener on the other side we're gonna go we're getting our life back we're

gonna go remote we're getting all these things back guess what they realized the grass wasn't Greener do you know where the grass is greenest where you water it so a lot of these people are making these decisions to come back now why is culture so important Richard Branson talks about it and he's been talking about it for years it was a couple quotes up here by

Richard Francis but my favorite one is your customers don't come first your employees come first take care of your employees and they'll take care of your customers so think about that right how do I build this culture how do I impact on this culture within my organization so that people want to come to work that people want to be excited right he talks about how when

you build that culture that's there and people want to come to work you're going to get better Talent right we can talk about all the things that positive workplace culture helps with better retention better recruiting better morale those are all things that are important right there's a Harvard Business review and there's so many articles so many studies out there about culture one of my favorite ones

is Denise leoth she talked about workplace culture is everybody's job now I like to call it the old school versus the new school of employer culture it used to be the CEO would go down to the HR department say hey we want to get a pulse on what's going on we want to know what's going on within the company so what do they do the HR

company sends out a survey now before that survey what happens at a lot of larger companies in some smaller companies they have company trips right oh we're gonna have a company trip it's so exciting we're gonna go to Hawaii wherever we're gonna go but who gets to go to those the top sales people the the top Executives what about that secretary what about that warehouse worker

they don't get to go on these trips so they may not love the culture but you know what the top level exactly like man I go to Hawaii every year I go to Fiji I go to the Bahamas yes they love it so they look at this you know uh survey at the end and they say oh okay we got a little bit on our on

our plate here what I like to say is they can create a a culture team right and what is a culture team a culture team is taking a diverse group of individuals within your organization some low level some medium level different races different religions single married kids not kids you know when I when I first graduated college I always wanted the happy hours the party and

that was what I thought was the company that I wanted now with a wife and two kids I'd rather have a weekend barbecue right it's it's cultures change but having this culture team and being able to put this together so they can say what can we do within the organization can I really have your pulse on it instead of going top down which the old school

method was let's go bottom up let's get the people in the bottom to say what can we do to help who remembers a big wheel when they were a kid we had a lot of it right you might think I'm crazy here a lot of people do wouldn't be the first one won't be the last time but I look at business like a big wheel you

take that center console and that seat that base of that big wheel that's your operations team that's your I.T your Finance your accounting your your HR your customer service that's the base of your company that big front wheel that's your sales team right that's what's generating the revenue for your company it's there those pedals that's your marketing team that's your branding that's what's helping get your

company forward they're working together right sales and marketing and working together to really get your brand out to get your organization out those handlebars that's your that's your leadership that's a steering the company that's the one that comes in and and helps pivot your organization where they need to go now those back wheels those back wheels are your employee experience your workplace culture and to me

that's one of the biggest impacts on your organization now if I take any of the other things away the handlebars the tire that base that big wheel is going to fall apart and so is the business it's not going to want smoothie now I could take those tires off I can take that workplace culture and make it crap and your business is still going to go

forward but it's going to go slow there's going to be friction it's not going to be a smooth process out there you put those back on your company gets back smooth so think of this every time now you see a big wheel you're gonna picture each one of these things and say that is like a business you know right now there's a lot of talk about

Ai and who's scared of AI right AI is here it's come to it's it's coming to fruition right and if you think about AI really is if you look at Ai and the worker shortage it's going to come over the next few years AI can play a role in a positive thing there's challenges to it but there's also a lot of positive things that can come

out of here so when you're thinking that that AI is going to be a threat it's not it's going to help the workers shortage and help other things now you can't be scared of AI and I'll tell you a little story about me being scared in 1995 I was standing a thousand feet in the air looking out the door of a C-130 I was 18 years

old I was in Airborne school I was about to be the first jump out of an airplane now I'm scared of heights I hate heights but I believe sometimes you got to do things that you don't want to do so I'm standing in the door I got my parachute on my back and I had I was the door guy so I'm standing there jump Master looks

at me probably knew where I was at because I was scared I was shaking I was sweating he goes are you scared I go hell yeah I'm scared jump master and he goes look at the ground tell you ain't scared I go I'm not scared of you quick glance he goes I told you to look at the ground he's screaming at me and I'm like I'm

not scared of you shaking sweating next thing you hear is green light go green light go I step out into nothing hoping my parachute would open now it did obviously because I'm here but I stepped out I wasn't scared I did something that I wasn't comfortable with and I jumped out into nothing and that's how we have to look at AI don't be scared of it

embrace it because guess what it's here to stay it is it is here here here now I want to talk about a human factor but before I do that I want to tell a story about 2015. I got recruited from one of my clients the Pinnacle of my career I got offered a job 250 000 base salary I made eight thousand dollars a year when I

was in the Army so the math I was I was pretty happy I was going to be number two in the company under the president I was running the training recruiting sales team it was my ideal dream job my dream salary company full benefits company car company credit card they were a 30 million dollar company wanted to go to 100 million dollar company and I was

going to get a bonus on that I was set I was excited take the job I get up there the first weekend owner of the company who I'd never met before comes in and he goes first thing he says is you mother efforts I'm gonna fire you if you don't do this I was like oh that was an interesting way to uh enter a sales meeting

I've never heard so many f-bombs and again I was in the 82nd Airborne Division so I jumped out airplanes and I never heard so many f-bombs in a sales meeting so I think all right this is interesting right different different things but after a couple months my morals my ethics the way that they had this toxic culture just was not me it wasn't who I was

so I then I went home on weekend and I told my wife I don't think this is going to be good I think I'm Gonna Leave she's like the money you know the this is your your dream like you got everything you want I go I don't have happiness that's not who I am I can't do it I win it that Monday I parted ways but

I always said I will never build a toxic culture like that and I I said when I build my organization it will never be like that and I believe the human culture right the human touch is being able to sit down with my employees on a monthly basis and talk about life and I actually had one of my employees bring that to me and we had

a good culture and he said why don't you do this and and I it was a game changer because now they get to see me as a human and I get to see them as a human so what I'm going to tell you here is my action item build a culture team build it be involved know who your teams are every single person in here can

impact it by creating your culture are you just going to live it or are you going to talk about it make an impact live it don't just talk about it [Applause] oh [Music]