- [Narrator] Production and distribution of "City Club Forums" on Ideastream Public Media are made possible by PNC and the United Black Fund of Greater Cleveland Incorporated.

(energetic music) - Good afternoon and welcome to The City Club of Cleveland, where we are devoted to conversations of consequence that help democracy thrive.

It's Friday, October 13th, and I'm Andrea Lyons, a member of the Deaconess Foundation Board.

I'm pleased to introduce today's forum, which is in partnership with the Deaconess Foundation in honor of the third annual Deborah Vesy Systems Change Champion Award.

Deborah Vesy was a longtime president and CEO of the foundation.

She retired in 2020 after 18 years helping to transform local workforce development systems.

And in honor of her leadership, this award is given annually to a highly impactful systems change initiative and workforce.

Earlier today, Deaconess Foundation announced this year's award winner, NewBridge.

Congratulations.

(audience applauding) Systems change and workforce development is the result of the collective efforts of employers, educators, nonprofit service providers and other stakeholders to improve both how people are able to build careers and how people fill the talent needs of our companies.

From the foundation's view, we often see how educators and nonprofits innovate and collaborate to impact change.

Less often do we have the chance to hear from employers who are innovating and making their workplaces better, particularly for hourly employees.

Today we welcome Sam Falletta as one of those employers.

Sam is the CEO of Incept, a Canton-based multi-channel contact center serving some of the world's best known companies such as Microsoft and Ford.

Under his leadership, Incept has grown consistently in the last decade, receiving many awards for its innovative business practices, positive work culture.

Sam himself has been recognized as top CEO of a mid-size company by Workplace Dynamics.

He's won a Spirit of Entrepreneurship Award from Smart Business, and other awards.

We will first hear from Sam, then move into a coffee table conversation between Sam and fellow entrepreneur CEO, James Vaughan.

James Vaughan is the president and CEO of Kleen Tech and Concierge Building Services, which provides janitorial services for commercial and municipal buildings.

James is a member of the local OhioMeansJobs Cleveland Cuyahoga County Board, and is in his third year as President of Young Presidents' Organization or YPO.

If you have a question for our speaker, you can text it to 330-541-5794.

Again, that number is 330-541-5794.

And City Club staff will try to work it into the Q and A portion of the program.

Members and friends of the City Club of Cleveland, please join me in welcoming Sam Falletta.

(audience applauding) - Thanks.

So I had this thought on the way up before we get going.

I'll share it with you.

Which was, you know how most of the really cool things in your life you end up not noticing that they're really cool while they're happening?

You end up noticing right afterwards so you don't get to fully experience it while it's going on.

You just kind of have this memory that you hold onto.

So the question that I was wondering is, my guess is there's a German word for the opposite of that, which is something really cool is happening and you're totally aware of it, which is exactly where I'm at today.

(audience laughing) So the number of times I've sat in that audience or that audience looking up at whoever was speaking or telling a story or inspiring the audience is too many to count.

So just wanted to say thanks to the Deaconess Foundation and The City Club for giving the opportunity to speak to everybody today.

I hope you have a fraction of the value that I will get in joy over the next hour.

And just super happy to be here.

So we'll start with some crowd participation.

So by a show of hands, who remembers, it was probably third or fourth grade of grade school, when you went through career day.

Okay, most.

For those of you who don't, the short summary is, it was one of two times before high school graduation where you talked about what you wanted to be in life.

You typically came in, they said, what do you want to do?

And then the two or three parents who were like, most likely to be able to get the day off work came in and spoke about their profession.

And then you waited until high school where you did an assessment with your counselor and they told you like, what job you were most qualified to have.

So I've thought about this a lot, and career day falls into like, three or four categories of answers.

So for those of you who remember what this is, if you can go back to third or fourth grade and try to picture how you answered the question.

So the first, and raise your hand when I name it.

So the first is like the famous category.

So this is singer, songwriter, professional athlete, movie star.

Do we have any of those?

Okay, a couple.

The second was like the professional category that looked like lawyer, doctor, nurse, pilot.

Required a certification or you had to take a test to complete that.

Great.

The third is kind of the hero category that ended up looking like police officer, firefighter, EMT, military, you know, first responders.

So we've got some of those.

And the fourth, the best that I can tell is every class had one kid that sat in the back that wanted to be a marine biologist because somebody had told them once that you got to swim with the dolphins all the time.

(audience laughing) I don't know why, but every time I've told that story, somebody's like, yeah, we had that kid who was just always talking about the beach.

So this is a guess, but I'll throw it out there.

Does anybody recall in any of those classroom discussions either saying themselves or hearing somebody say, if everything goes really well, like if my life works out perfectly, I will end up working in a contact center and be a telemarketer when I grow up?

(audience laughing) No?

Okay, not terribly surprising.

I've probably asked that question of 3000 people.

I don't recall anybody ever having said that was their answer.

Which is somewhat surprising 'cause I'm gonna stand here and tell you that it's the only profession that I've ever worked in, almost 25 years outta college.

I wouldn't trade it for anything.

And the way that that happens is somewhat beyond belief, which we'll get into in a second.

But first I wanted to give you an alternative to the what do you wanna be grow up story.

So this came originally from a guy named Jaime Casap, who was the global educational evangelist for Google.

And Jaime's job at the time, this was maybe 12 or 15 years ago.

And his job was to go around to communities and talk to parents and students about how the workforce was gonna change so dramatically over the next 10 or 15 years that we needed to prepare for jobs that we couldn't quite define yet.

And his statement was, we shouldn't ask kids what they want to be when they grow up.

What we should do is ask 'em what kind of problems they wanna solve.

And the logic was really sound, which was like, when you ask somebody what they want to be when they grow up, you attach those goals to the status they have of the role, right?

How will this be reflected upon?

It's not about the work.

And probably more specifically Jaime would go on to say, when you ask somebody what problems do you wanna solve, what you're really saying is, what are you willing to suffer for?

What are you willing to sacrifice for?

The first version is what do you want to do on your best days?

The second question is, what will get you through your worst days?

And I thought that was just a really unique and insightful way to kind of think about it.

So that's been something that sat in the back of my head for maybe the last 10 or 15 years.

As I think back to that third or fourth grader, you probably could have asked me either question and my answer would've been the same.

So I knew at that time I just wanted to do what my dad did.

So he was born in northeast Ohio, son of two Italian immigrants.

Went to John Carroll, eventually went to Northwestern Law School.

While his classmates were doing things like buying the Chicago Bulls and running Oak Associates or a giant financial institution, what he decided to do was his dream job, which was to become a labor attorney.

And I didn't have these kind of words to ask him the question, like what type of problems do you wanna solve when you grow up?

But if somebody had asked him, I think he would've kind of given his summary in three different ways.

So the first was, some of this came through law school, but he believed that the power of a great question was far more influential than the qualities of good answer, which is a really kind of interesting way to phrase it.

The second was that underdogs need advocates.

And if you ever have kind of a debate of like, who do you want to win, pick the side that's least likely 'cause that can do the most good.

And the third was around what we're talking about today, which is systems.

Which is if you really want to create impactful change, it's not about doing it at the individual level, it's about modifying the systems that take place.

So I saw those things and didn't have the comprehension of any of that level of depth at the time, but I saw how happy he was with the work that he did and how fulfilled he was for the people that he supported.

And when he would come back from meeting with a union steward, you know, how much joy he had, or the employees that he represented and the success that he gave 'em.

And I was like, I just want to care about my job that much.

So I thought that I wanted to be a lawyer.

And all of that was well and good until the first major roadblock, which was probably senior year of high school, where I was confronted with the reality that I was deathly afraid to speak in public, a fairly significant quality for attorneys.

And I don't mean like nervous and sweat or stutter, I mean like miss the week of school that you had a two week speech.

So as I would often do, I go ask for advice.

As my dad would frustratingly do more often than not, instead of giving me an answer, he would ask me a question.

Which was, okay, it sounds too big as a whole, but what's the first step you can take to kind of solving that problem?

Again, good frustrating advice.

So in my mind there was kind of two parts of being a lawyer.

There was like the thinking on your feet and the communication and the persuasion, really listening and asking good questions.

And there was the part where you had to be seen and see other people while you did it.

So the only thing I could come up with at the time is that I could tackle them in order.

And the first version, meaning can I learn all the communication skills that it takes, and then I can deal with the second part later.

And at the time, the only job that I could think of that actually did those kind of things was in a call center, right?

You get to sit with a headphone on, nobody sees you, you don't see them.

Somebody's gonna teach me how to figure all this stuff out.

So while all my friends are out, like tending bar or mowing lawns in college or serving people at restaurants, making far more money than I am, I go to train to become a call center agent.

And it goes exactly as bad as you would expect.

I'm nervous sick the whole first week.

But through a couple loving people, they commit to helping me through this process.

And I ended up kind of figuring it out.

Even more surprising, throughout the time working in that role through college and up towards graduation, I learned that I really loved what the work was.

And that seems odd, but it had psychology involved and there was communication skills and there was persuasion and there was teamwork and there was a leadership hierarchy.

And it was full of underdogs and misfits and people that I wanted to become and also help.

So I switched my major to marketing.

I realized I didn't want to be a lawyer after all, I thought I wanted to be a marketer.

So against all reasonable logic, at graduation, instead of taking the pharmaceutical sales job that most kids did when they finished their marketing degree that would've started in Chicago, I was recommended to go meet with one of the supervisors that I had worked for in college.

He had started a small consulting company and I was gonna be the fifth employee.

So that story's a good one.

Maybe we'll get into if we have time.

And for the first six or seven years, I just had an unbelievable experience.

We heard some of the names I got to work with, Microsoft and Ford and Honda and eBay, some of the most interesting, smartest people in the world getting far more responsibility somebody my age ever should have had.

And we had some ups and some downs and we could never quite get stable.

And before I got to become 30, I was offered the chance to become the president of the organization.

Shocking, completely underqualified.

But the one thing that I understood at that time was that about 75% of our total cost was based on labor.

So the theory was if we could figure out how to create employee engagement, how to really get the passion of our employees unlocked, we could kind of figure the rest of that owl.

And that created the journey that has been about the last 15 years of me standing in front of you.

So where we started was kind of capturing all the literature about how to activate a workforce.

So that was like Simon Sinek's golden circle and how to start with why, especially around kind of how do you make a call center job sound like it's gonna be exciting?

And Marcus Buckingham and Gallup had done millions of surveys of the 12 questions that are gonna be most likely to predict whether your workforce is engaged or not.

Fortune had the top 100 workplace list.

And so we started implementing these things.

probably far more time committed to it than was rational.

And we started seeing some results for it.

We ended up receiving the Top Workplace award.

That was the first of 13 we've received now.

We started growing and started receiving growth awards.

And that all felt like it was good until we started digging into the metrics and we realized all of the business things looked right and we weren't dramatically impacting turnover the way we would expect correlated.

So we had some theories and we worked backwards from a couple different things, and ultimately I just could not kind of figure out why that was the case.

So I brought it to the group that I bring most of my problems to, which is a group of Vistage leaders.

And said, somebody needs to explain this to me.

We have all of these business metrics that make me feel fantastic about the success, but this turnover number makes me feel like we're failing the people that we have here.

Somebody tell me what I'm missing.

A series of great observations, but the one that shifted us at that point was the observation that came back and said, it sounds like you guys are doing some wonderful work around the top of Maslow's hierarchy, right?

You're telling people that you want them to be the best version of themselves and you want them to aspire to all of these goals, but you're ignoring the fact that all of your employees are at the base of Maslow's hierarchy.

Like, why are you not thinking about the things that are the most relevant to your people?

So it wasn't just us, that's the literature.

Like, the literature presumes that everybody's in the Maslow's hierarchy.

So everything that we had digested, we had to throw out, we had to go to the people that understood more about this question than we did.

And we changed everything about the way we engaged with our employees.

So one example is like, we had a longstanding award that said over two years, if you accomplish these goals, like, we'll pay for a vacation for you and your family.

And that came from public recognition and how important it was to show your people status.

And then one day we had an employee who said, I'd really appreciate you sending my kids and I to Kalahari, and we would have a blast, but what I need is a mattress.

Right?

If I promise not to spend more than the trip to Kalahari, can you just give me a mattress?

We're like, geez.

So what looked like steak dinners became gas cards, what looked like an HR department became a group of social workers.

We just changed everything about the way that we operate.

Again, we performed well, business metrics went up, turnover didn't change.

So this, I'm going through about 25 years probably in three minutes.

So about three years ago we asked the question a different way, which is why is turnover the goal, right?

So what we proclaim to have is our vision is that we wanna help you be the best version of yourself, but the way we're measuring it is a metric that is important to me.

And that's fundamentally misaligned.

So dig back into the research, right?

Where is there a model that celebrates progression, not retention?

And there's a few, but the one that we've adopted and kind of came the closest to is a community college, right?

You'd never hear somebody at a community college suggest that the best outcome for them would be somebody to be there 10 years.

Best outcome for a community college is to give somebody the skills necessary for them to graduate and for them to continue on with the life that they want to live.

So we started asking this question, like, what does graduation look like?

And in 2024, we're finally launching that project.

So basically the commitment we're making to our employees is, if you give us two years and you stick and you voluntarily commit to our curriculum, which includes, you know, some life course, study series of other things, at the end of the two years, we're not only gonna not be sad to see you leave, but we're gonna celebrate your graduation.

So we're gonna work with other community leaders, we're gonna find other community partners, and we are going to assist you in moving on to the next job with two hopes, right?

One, the way anybody works their alumni network, if you're successful, you're gonna refer somebody to us in the future.

And if somebody told me tomorrow I could hire 10 people that stayed for two years, I would love it.

The second is that whoever those community partners that we work with are, when they have somebody that doesn't quite meet their standards, they may refer us to go through their associate's degree of business professions and kind of move along.

Have a lot of work to do, but that's the current thought.

So again, we've been doing a lot of these things kind of at the individual level and we've shifted now to thinking about the systems that are in play.

And one of 'em, really the educational system.

What are some of the other systems and how do they influence companies like ours?

And probably some of the work that you've done, and maybe this will be some of the conversations we talk about a little bit later.

But one is just the fundamental difference between public business and private businesses.

So whether it makes it easy for us or not, when you run a public business, you have an obligation to provide the greatest value to the shareholders, almost always in 90 day cycles.

Doesn't mean the programs like this can't happen, but it does make it difficult to launch programs like that in a way that can be meaningful enough.

Because more often than not, cost cuts happen quickly.

Degradation happens months or weeks or years down the line.

And whoever's making those decisions may not be the individuals making the decisions later.

So if I gotta hit my quarterly number, why don't I do it?

We can worry about some of those things later.

Private businesses have a really unique scenario where they have the opportunity to play that segment out as far or as long as they want.

But the pressures are infinitely different.

Like, the best way for me to be a great employer is to exist three years from now.

And that's the the question that I wake up worried about every day.

Do I wanna pay everybody infinitely more?

Absolutely.

But to the detriment of the business that I run, that is the paranoia that I have as I wake up.

So kind of the dynamic of how the business is organized is one part of the systemic challenge.

The other part is as simple as the metrics we use to define success, right?

If somebody externally looked at our business, the questions they would ask about success would be, you know, growth rate and size and profitability.

But if somebody asked me, what's the most significant contribution we've made?

I would say it's the $180 million of wages that we've paid out to our employees that led to tens of thousands of soccer balls or baseballs or family vacations or college degrees.

So if we change the way we measured and set our goals, how different would that be?

And the one example we're toying with now is if we said, next year's goal is the percentage of times our employees eat together as a family, like, how dramatic would the difference be in the way we operate, right?

We would change our hours of operation, we would think about vacation times, we would create backups.

So just the metrics are a system that influenced the way private businesses run today.

The language we use and when we talk about our employees influences the way we behave today.

So the literature would report on kind of our group of employees as low wage earners, which may be the least aspirational language you could use to classify anybody in the world.

But if you called 'em future middle class and make the assumption that that is where they're gonna end up, how much do you change the behavior that sits within that system?

So why doesn't all of this stuff happen?

And this room probably knows better than any room I've been in front of.

It's because it's hard work, it is exhausting.

And the negatives outnumber the positives like 10 times and no good deeded goes unpunished for most of us, right?

You try to kind of make an exception and that becomes the rule.

And then you get punished when you can't do it for anybody.

And we carry this burden so tightly that we don't want to complain about it, but it's hard to find relief.

It's just hard work and it creates burnout, but it's really noble work and it really matters.

And 25 years into it, I don't know that I'd change much about it.

So if you go back I guess to the beginning of the conversation, which is the third or fourth grader in career day, and you say, okay, knowing everything, you know, you know you want to be a contact center worker?

I think my answer would probably still be no, because that sounds awful and there's no status associated.

And I still want to be the short stop for the Cleveland Indians or Guardians, depending on when you asked me.

But if you ask Jaime Casap's question, which is what problems do you wanna solve?

And you say, do you wanna learn how to ask really good questions?

Because that's what creates influence.

Or do you want to be an advocate for the underdogs?

Or do you want to think about the way the systems can be changed to influence the way power moves?

I think I wouldn't trade my career for just about anything.

So as a nod to my dad, I won't offer any advice.

But as a little bit of compliment to Jaime Casap, I'll also leave you with not only what questions and what problems do you wanna solve, but what troubles are you willing to deal with to get to 'em?

Thanks so much.

(audience applauding) - I thought we'd start at just the highest level.

You're a busy CEO, you've got a lot on your plate day in and day out.

And I'm sure you've got a great HR team, a COO, all those folks that could really, most CEOs allow their staff to take care of their employees, day in and day out.

But you are heavily engaged, day in and day out.

Why?

- That's a good question.

I think some of it is, the economic reason is because that's what makes it a good business.

I think the personal reason is 'cause it's what I'm good at.

Like that's just, I care more about that side of our business than I do the work that we do or the clients that we serve.

Like, I love all of that stuff too.

And hopefully none of them are listening to this.

(audience laughing) But like, some of it is just knowing yourself, right?

Like as a CEO you try to find, where are my highest leverage activities?

And typically those are things that are natural.

And so I skewed towards the things that I'm most naturally inclined to do.

- You mentioned your dad at the beginning.

And I know when we talked you said he was a mentor for you.

Are there other mentors that you've had, or is there a great story you'd like to tell us about your dad and how he became your mentor and why it's so important?

- Yeah, yeah, there's a couple I'll get to in a second.

But if I can take one second to tell my favorite dad story?

- [James] Please, we'd love to hear it.

- This is awesome.

So you guys have a little bit of a flavor of like, who this is.

So my favorite one that kind of sums them up in one story is it was probably about the same age.

Like whenever you first start getting real letter grades in your report cards, when it changes from like, letters to A, B, C, D. And education was always super important in our family.

And I had a really good quarter and I was like, super excited to present this report card to him.

So I'm waiting until he gets home from work and he comes in and I'm like, dad, dad, you know, we've got the report card.

And he's like, I'm busy, let me change, I'll get to it afterwards.

Okay.

So he goes and changes.

Dad, here's the report card.

And he says, you know, let's have dinner first, I'll look at it afterwards.

So finally this goes on a couple times and I finally get him to pay attention and accept the report card.

And he says, okay, before I open this, I just need to be sure.

Have you done your best work this quarter?

I'm like, yep.

And he's like, well, of course you're gonna say yeah.

Like no, I need to know.

Have you done your best work this quarter?

I'm like, yeah I did, I really did my best work.

And he hands the report card back unopened and says, then it doesn't matter what's inside, you did great.

And did that for 12 consecutive years.

It was like, the coolest lesson I've ever seen anybody provide.

Now I have two kids who are eight and 10, I open it the second they show up, right?

(audience laughing) So it's like, what a miserable application of such a beautiful lesson.

But that covered so much of the idea of like, just do your best and it'll work out.

Later he would add like, with good intention, but the do your best was great.

The other mentors, which is a fantastic part, I mentioned the Vistage group.

And a lot of them come from that.

A few of 'em are here, so thank you guys for being here.

But the thing that I've learned to admire more than what I thought about becoming a CEO, like you think of how hard that job is professionally, but watching how hard these people work to be a total person, right?

Good parent, good father, good husband, good wife, a good mother, whatever it is.

Those are really the things that have been super impactful to me, and that is not an easy challenge.

- I also struggle, my workforce, you know, making in large part $12, $15, $18 an hour.

I'm spread out across a number of states.

What would you tell someone like me who can't touch and feel their employees every day, what advice would you give me in order to, you know, help bring them into the fold the way that you have?

- Yeah, it's a great, great question.

We really fundamentally changed as a business through COVID.

So we had completely optimized the business to be in a physical presence.

For a lot of our employees that was the place that they could feel the most powerful, right?

There was nobody nagging at 'em.

The problems of the world weren't there.

It may be the only time they got a compliment that week.

So the physical presence in any location is more important to me than the way we've been divided out.

Now we're totally remote, which is a big struggle.

So it's probably oversimplified, but it's like, make their time in between the four walls of your office the time that they feel the most powerful.

What is happening outside of that workday, like however bad their workday is, more often than not, what's happening outside is more stressful or more tenuous or at least more serious than whatever it is that they're trying to knock out for eight hours a day for you.

- Digging into that a little bit more, I mean, you went through, you were in the office, now remote.

What kind of lessons, what kind of pivots have you had to make in order to make sure people are engaged in a remote environment?

- We've really struggled with this one.

I think probably the simplest one that we observed early and have been trying to execute on as well as possible is in a physical environment, you know, so a lot of the kind of stories say somebody's satisfaction with a job is a direct reflection of the relationship they have with their individual supervisor.

And so in a physical environment, the model that we use typically looked like an athletic coach, right?

You wanted somebody super high energy, you know, could give you kind of coaches, but could rally the team.

In a remote environment, exclusively it almost looks identical to a counselor, right?

Your ability is how do you listen and how do you kind of meet somebody where they're at, and you're not playing to a large group anymore.

So we had a lot of turnover at our middle management level.

Some kind of natural and some very intentional to say, this is a different relationship we have with our employees.

And how do you shift from having essentially a team coach to a counselor?

- You know, when we talked before, we talked about that relationship aspect and getting to know people and how important that is.

It's, I think, something we all struggle with, day in and day out.

How do you teach that?

How do you help your middle managers to know the importance of getting to know people and caring about their kids' soccer games?

And you know, you mentioned family dinner.

Family dinner is the one thing that in my mind helps change the world.

How do you instill that in your people?

- I think so much of that burden is on us in our role, that you know, your employees will look for so many hints about what's important to you.

And if you say that what's important is the way you treat your people, but all you talk to them about is what your financial metrics are, like, they're smart enough that they will get that.

But if you align your activities and rewards and promotions and your metrics around the people who are fulfilling their employees' goals the best, there's almost no way that doesn't translate into business success.

Again, it's why it's a little easier being kind of a private business 'cause maybe you can absorb some of the ebbs and flows of that.

But it's really about helping people understand that your goal isn't to change someone, your goal is to just see them.

And if somebody can feel seen, they will figure out the next few steps.

- I think that's incredibly powerful.

It's incredibly powerful to know people and understand who they are.

So appreciate that and your thoughts on it.

How do you go about recruiting people, bringing them into the fold to your university program that you're setting up?

- Yeah, so we, with this first kind of cohort that we're gonna launch into this community college concept, we are just openly asking people.

So we're saying, here's the conditions of the program.

We're gonna help build out a career counseling.

Some of that is skills based, some of that is program readiness based.

Some of that is trying to figure out kind of what career you want.

And we are saying here are the conditions.

Like what we want you to opt in to do is to be willing to provide your transcripts to the future employer, right?

We think that benefits both of us if somebody can hire somebody two years from now and see their supervisor reviews all of their performance, their attendance data, you know, how much more qualified is of an employee is that, that they're walking in on day one?

The second version is it gives them a very practical reason to start making those incremental changes for us on day one, right?

It's hard to think about, well if, you know, a lot of our employees think about attendance policy is based on what's bad enough to get fired.

And it's like, but this is a grade that you're gonna use to apply for your next job.

All of a sudden that's meaningful.

So our suspicion is that's gonna work for us.

So the internal version, as simple as that is, we're gonna explain the program and ask for volunteers.

At this point we expect just kind of unscientific side conversations.

We think there'll be 16 to 20 in this first cohort.

And then our hope will be kind of July 1st we launch cohort two and learn from whatever we screw up in the first six months and kick them off a little bit smoother.

- It always feels counterintuitive to say, well, you're gonna graduate and you're gonna have this next step in your career.

I think it's an incredible concept that you've come up with.

And you're gonna experiment with it.

Do you have plans to share that to the broader community?

Share your metrics, share with your outcomes?

- Yeah, so we're working on exactly how we're going to kind of publish the information, but the intent is to open source the project, right?

There's so many people in this room that either would have insight or tell us where we're wrong if we were to provide data that was anonymized or at least not disclosing things that we shouldn't.

So our intent is to at least create a forum or a online community that says, here's where we're at in the process.

Here's the step that we're at, here's what we think we're gonna do next.

If anybody thinks that's a big mistake like, let us know now 'cause we're not sure what the next step's supposed to look like.

So that the model, right?

And maybe this isn't terribly practical, but the median income in the United States is $37,000, right?

So there's 80 million people that are making less than $37,000 a year.

So the theory is, can we move a million people in 10 years to $40,000?

And so I intend to hire nowhere near that number.

So what we are trying to do is create a playbook that others can then steal and apply and we will be the guinea pig.

But our hope is regardless of what your intentions are, right?

Whether you are the most altruistic leader in the world, or you just have to hit a financial metric, if the program is built right, it will accomplish either task.

So that's at least the end result of what we're trying to go for.

- I'm excited to read it when it's ready.

There's a lot of people in the room doing amazing things with workforce.

But I know the challenge is constantly trying to find the right employers to connect with.

What advice would you give everyone in the room who is looking for employers to connect the folks that they're helping, day in and day out?

- That's a really good question.

I guess the first input I would give you is that my experience, at least with business leaders, is that those who are not interested in this isn't because they don't believe it, it's because they don't know how to prioritize it.

So the first is well-intentioned, but maybe not looking in the right place.

That said, the second thing I would say is you are not going to change someone's mind.

So instead of spending a lot of time trying to convince people, I would put all of my time and energy in participating in the places where they already exist.

So it's events like this, it's NorthCoast 99, it's Smart Business Culture Awards.

It's, you know, go to the place where the leaders are asking these questions themselves and just don't have the answers, as opposed to working with the people that you have now and trying to convince them that you're onto something.

There is a whole slew of people who are asking these questions who are in need of the real answers.

And we also don't know where to find most of you who are sitting on the answers and saying, I just needed somebody to be willing to experiment.

So I think as a community, the other step is we need to figure out how to be in the same room more frequently.

'Cause as often as you're asking the questions, so are we, we just don't know how to get to each other.

So I think it's about being in the room together more frequently.

- Yeah, we talked about that, you know, making those connections.

And I think there's lots of opportunity for there to be, you know, joint employer workforce combinations that we seem to be missing day in and day out.

And I think we're gonna be running outta time shortly, but wanted to kind of think about one last question for you.

You made a lot of changes, a lot of improvements, you know, we didn't really talk about metrics, but I think those are less important right now.

What else is it that you feel like you've missed?

Is there something else that you wanna do to take it to the next step, take it to the next level?

- Yeah, probably the most is I referred to kind of a series of these changes we undertook.

The thing that I most commonly did was get really clear on the what and get really vague on the how.

And that answer would come from our internal employees, right?

They're like, yeah, that's a great idea.

Do you realize how much work you just created for all of us?

And do you realize that we have no basis to believe that that's even gonna be successful?

Sure, I'll just change everything we've done overnight 'cause you read a book.

(audience laughing) So I think like, getting a little more, so this program, eh, if I think of the people that are working on it, they would admit that I haven't like, completely listened to them.

But I've done a better job of saying like, here's where we're going and I want your input so that I understand where to push.

I haven't quite said, and if you disagree, we'll stop, which sometimes may be a better approach.

But it is such an organizational shift.

And what I've lost sight of too many times is that I haven't communicated as clearly who we want to be as I need to.

So that what I feel like is continuing to further the mission can look to a lot of our employees like it's bouncing around aimlessly.

So each step I've learned a little bit more like, okay, wait, let's go back to our mission and our purpose and why we exist and why I think the last iteration of who we were didn't completely fulfill that and why this one may get a little bit closer.

And we're probably gonna be wrong this time again, but at least we're gonna get better questions.

And then the final revision can be a little bit closer at that point.

- It's a never ending journey.

- Yeah.

(audience applauding) - If you're curious, by the way, Sam had just one note.

It just says career day, that's all.

(audience laughing) Did the whole rest of it.

We're about to begin the audience Q and A.

My name's Dan Moulthrop, I'm the chief executive here at The City Club.

I'm feeling really grateful to our speaker today, Sam Falletta, CEO of Incept, just talking about how to bring systems change needed to help workers advance in their career.

Also with us moderating our conversation is James Vaughan, president and CEO of Kleen Tech.

We welcome questions from everyone, City Club members, guests, those of you joining us via our live stream or our live radio broadcast on 89.7 WKSU Ideastream Public Media.

If you'd like to text a question, you can text it to 330-541-5794.

The number again is 330-541-5794 and we will work it into the program.

May we have our first question please?

- Hello, yes.

First question.

It's a text question.

The labor movement is clearly having a moment.

Public support for unions have reached significant levels.

What impact do you see this growth and support having on workforce development systems?

- Man, really good question.

So I am not an expert on these things.

I will offer my opinion as a business operator.

To me it feels like we are getting further apart, not closer together.

And I'm the son of a labor attorney, right?

I am as supportive of unions as you can possibly be.

And I also am confronted daily with the realities of the financial restrictions of running a business.

And those are creating conflict, right?

And some businesses have to accomplish those goals and could in the future become weaker because they're trying to make concessions in the present.

So I think both of the institutions are the best setup in the world and I think both of them create change, and I think we have some really difficult conflict where the end goal isn't as important as the short term goal.

- To me it feels like there's a lot of business leaders that don't have the understanding of what a union can actually, how it can actually make their lives easier.

And I think there's an educational component that is also missing there.

You know, I've had a large union workforce, now I have a portion of my workforce union.

And frankly there's a lot of advantages to having a union if you can really understand the positive that it brings.

- My question is around, are your employees required to be able to read or function mathematically to do their job or even to engage in the curriculum that you're gonna be implementing?

And if that is the case, have you come across instances where maybe they didn't have the requisite level of reading and math?

And if that is the case, how have you dealt with it?

- A really good question.

So today, typical technical requirement is high school diploma or GED.

The way most of our work is delivered is in a written format that requires them to kind of read and react in the moment.

We've started, and there's several people in our industry that are much further along with kind of AI and the transcription tools that are now able to take live conversations and turn that into all of the written data that requires so much of the burden for our employees.

So in that scenario, you'd still have to figure out the way to do the training and to deliver the information and all the knowledge at the same time.

But they're actually a lot closer.

There's a specific employer that I know of who has a aging population around them.

They're consistent and dependable and articulate and hard workers, but they aren't very computer savvy.

And what they've done is kind of applied this technology so that they can primarily use that aging population as their workforce.

So I think there's probably some parallels between those.

- My name is Vince Lombardo.

I'm a retired attorney and I knew your father, Sal Falletta.

He was a great guy and he was a great lawyer.

My question is, does the current tight labor market provide any kind of a disincentive to employers to have a workforce that's well trained but to keep the workforce satisfied?

Because to provide so much investment and then know that an employee could very well leave for another job, sometimes I think, well, maybe that's a disincentive for employers to even try to create a well-trained workforce and to keep employees satisfied.

Thank you.

- Yeah, super good question.

So most of the people in our industry accept it as a cost of doing business, right?

So a typical metric would be, I need to hire new employees.

I'm gonna hire a training class of 10, five of them will graduate, three will quit in the first 90 days, one will quit over the next 90 days.

But if I get somebody to six months, they'll stay with me for three years.

Because it's always been embedded in the way they've operated the business, it is a tremendous cost.

They just don't think of it that way because it was on last year's books and it was on the year before's books.

So if you said, how much could you save if that class of 10 made it to six months, let alone two years?

We've run the numbers.

It is dramatic, right?

I make the example, like if you told me that I could hire 10 people tomorrow and nine of them would stay two years and on day two year and one they would all leave, that would be the highest ROI training class I would've had in the history of our business.

So I think there are people who will say, yeah, but that's too expensive.

You're already spending it, you are just spending it in the same way you're used to.

So it looks like the budget you've always had.

So when I say I don't know that it will work, I mean that, but I know that we also can't operate in the environment we have today, so why would I not try something else?

- I think that there's a lot of employers doubling down and, you know, going even deeper than they were before when it comes to training their workforce and ensuring that people want to be around, knowing that they feel like they're known and they're cared about.

I think it's become more prolific, not less so.

- My name is Joe Brady.

Hello Sam.

- I don't trust what's about to happen here.

(laughing) I know Joe well.

- On those occasions when Incept loses an employee, do you conduct exit interviews?

And if so, what have you learned from that process?

- We do, we do, great question.

We have identified in retrospect that we've done a bad job of classifying somebody who says, I'm not dissatisfied, I just want to go work in a higher paying or a different job.

And that's the thing that's a really significant piece, right?

We had concluded that turnover was negative and that that was somewhat our fault in ways.

So the exit interview, so historically when we did exit interviews, it would kind of culminate in the, is there anything that could be done different?

And we largely absolved ourselves if they said no.

Now the question we're asking is like, is this a better opportunity?

Why?

Did any of the training that we provided help you get this opportunity?

Do you think somebody else who is going for that same opportunity would benefit from what we just taught you?

So I think it was kind of this whole turnover is bad perception that caused the way we captured information, which was almost like, okay, which person screwed up?

Not like, was the experience good enough that we have a future referral or we should take credit for the work that we did getting somebody to the next spot?

- I'm sorry, this question is a text question.

It's for both of you all.

So this question is, what have you guys heard the most from workers as to the challenges or barriers they face to being successful at their jobs?

- I think a lot of it is the stuff Sam talked about earlier.

We've got people day in and day out that are having to work two and three jobs to survive.

And to me, I wish that wasn't the case.

I wish that I could do more.

But it's difficult to be competitive and also pay a competitive wage and ensure people are working full time.

That's when I go back to that union question.

There's value there.

There's value in being able to ensure people have health insurance, ensure their families are taken care of and sure they can be home for dinner and they don't have to go to that second or third job.

That, to me, is a huge challenge.

- I agree 100%.

The only thing I would add is we have seen flexibility and the need for flexibility rise significantly through the COVID experience.

Like so many of these people are caretaking for a parent or a child or managing a separate job or dealing with some other thing that you can't perceive.

And most businesses had been built around an attendance policy that says, you know, our customers require this much output at this much time, and if you can't do it, you can't be employed.

And that doesn't work, right?

It doesn't do either of us any good to take somebody who's struggling, to say, well, you missed four days in three months.

Now with your unpredictable schedule, add loss of income to your problems.

And my problem is even worse 'cause somebody that used to come in 40% of the time is now coming in 0% of the time.

So we've done a lot of work on the attendance side of our policies where we still do have business requirements, right?

We have just in time inventory and management.

So we have taken the attendance rules out of the disciplinary process and just rewarded it on the raise side.

Which essentially says if your scheduling can't accommodate it, we won't take the job.

We just can't afford to pay you the same amount that somebody who we can predict and depend on and is helping our customer need.

And we also can't guarantee that when you say you are available, we can give you that exact slot back.

But at least we're not gonna take away the chance for you to have something.

And that has been kind of a post COVID thing that we've really seen the spike in that.

- Hi, Adaora Schmiedl with Towards Employment.

I think you have given us so many questions to take home.

And I'm interested, I want more.

One of the questions that I'm sort of dwelling on and thinking through, and James just mentioned it, is measuring growth as a percentage of employees who eat dinner with their family.

I mean, how simple.

And in my mind it's just going, boom.

How many more questions like that do you have?

Can you share any with us?

(audience laughing) - Oh, you don't want to know, right?

Like, I didn't even know if we're allowed to ask that question, right?

Like, it feels like it's a fantastic metric.

And if our HR person was here, they would be like, no!

Yeah, the whole, so I guess I can give you the root of where a couple of these things came from because I probably can't answer all of 'em.

But, so one of the people who used to work for us was a friend that I grew up with.

He was a supervisor, wonderful guy, as charismatic as anybody I've ever met, but probably would never have been an executive in our organization.

And as close as we were, it was a challenge to see him decide to move on, and he ended up in an inside sales role.

And today he is like, the third ranking cardiac sales rep for Medtronic, and conducting all of their training.

And we just would've captured all of that in a way that he never would've given his family or the world any of that value.

So we have him speak, like he's an alumni, right?

He tells his story of what it was like to work for us and what that alumni progress looked like.

And although it's not much, there's parts of what he does today that led to his success that started and were rooted in ours.

So probably kind of the alumni network, like how do you activate the alumni network of people who had a wonderful experience and it just wasn't like, they were with you for this period of their life.

And that's great.

And there's tens of thousands of those out there for some businesses.

But none of us think about how to use 'em.

So that's probably the one I'm giving the most thought now.

Simple answer is I would love to talk about it, right?

Like, this is what I do in my free time.

So it isn't that bad of a thing to, you know, come up afterwards, I would love to talk more.

- I like that alumni network idea.

- Hi Sam, my name is Danielle, I'm the CEO of Spice Hospitality Group.

I think you mentioned that some of your managers and supervisors have been informed to meet employees where they are and act as a counselor to them.

And how do you skill those managers and supervisors up to show up for employees in that way?

- Really, when I abandoned my note cards, I left out one of the critical pieces in our progress.

So we had, another idea we stole from Vistage when we were trying to move from kind of individual to group is this concept of an accountability group where we would assign people into groups of four and they would meet twice a month and talk about personal and professional goals.

And the year that we launched it, we ended up getting together at the end of the year and we celebrated like, the thousands of cigarettes that didn't get smoked that year and the hundreds of pounds that were lost and the dozens of vacations that happened.

And so we decided we wanted to ask people for longer term goals.

And so the next year, the group that I was in was meeting in January to talk about their annual goals.

And the person that I was in the group with said, this year my goal is to get me and my kids out of the house because I want 'em to know that they're safe from their dad.

And we were like, you know, it was like the mattress story.

So we were like this, we're in way over our heads.

So we actually went to a behavioral health organization, Coleman, and said, we need help.

Like, we need a way to abandon these conversations when we are over our skis and we need to bring in reinforcements.

So we actually employed a counselor through them to be on site.

And then we skilled everybody just to say, below here are the tools, above here, get outta the way.

So they essentially have anonymous access.

We still do it remotely, but the adoption isn't nearly as well.

But our approach has been elected not to try to train them, just to understand where the line that they shouldn't cross is.

- [James] Awesome, thank you, Sam.

(audience applauding) - Sam Falletta and James Vaughan, thank you so much.

It was outstanding.

Today's forum is presented in partnership with the Deaconess Foundation as part of its third annual Deborah Vesy Systems Change Champion Award, which was presented to NewBridge earlier this morning.

Again, congratulations to NewBridge.

We'd like to extend a special welcome to guest hosts at the tables hosted by Deaconess Foundation, the Greater Cleveland Partnership Magnet, and Towards Employment.

Thank you all for being here today.

Next up at the City Club on Tuesday, October 17th, Johns Hopkins University Professor Yascha Mounk will join us for a discussion about his latest book, "The Identity Trap, the Story of Ideas and Power in our Time".

He'll be discussing the origins and consequences of so-called wokeness.

The City Club has officially, this is more of a note for our radio audience, that we've moved to Playhouse Square.

You all know that here in the room.

(audience laughing) And our grand opening is at our annual meeting on Friday, October 27th.

Craig Hassall, president and CEO at Playhouse Square will be here to join me in conversation about the intersection of free speech and the art of the spoken word.

Immediately following the forum, we've got a grand open house with music, food, and drinks from 1:00 to 4:00 PM, You can learn more at our website, cityclub.org.

Thank you once again to Sam and James.

Thank you members and friends of the City Club.

Thank you all for listening on the radio and watching on television.

I'm Dan Moulthrop.

Our forum is now adjourned.

(audience applauding) (bell dinging) - [Narrator] For information on upcoming speakers or for podcasts of The City Club, go to cityclub.org.

(bright music) - [Narrator] Production and distribution of "City Club Forums" on Ideastream Public Media are made possible by PNC and the United Black Fund of Greater Cleveland Incorporated.