Hiring and Retaining Top Talent Blog

What business is your company in?

I spoke today to 300 executives for a company that services cars. Basically they do oil changes, brakes, tires, things of that nature. They have over 160 locations and by all industry metrics are the best in the industry. They are totally focused on customer experience. They are fanatics about ensuring that every customer leave their store knowing they didn’t get ripped off, they weren’t oversold and would return again.

The metric they use to measure success is car counts. How many cars come through the store in a year. That count has to increase every year. The company doesn’t worry about sales or average ticket dollars. They know that if the car count goes up sales will go up and most important of all the customer must be happy or they wouldn’t keep coming back.

When the president spoke to the group he reminded everyone “What business are we in?” That question might be answered a number of ways from the “oil change business” to “automotive repair business.” Neither is wrong, but nor are they the correct answer. The correct answer is “The People Business.” They know that when they take care of the people they come in contact with everything else takes care of itself. Notice it wasn’t customers but people. That’s because it includes both customers and employees. Taking care of the employees ensures they take care of the customer.

So what does this have to do with hiring. Understanding we are all in the people business first drives a company’s culture. That culture will drive retention, culture will drive employee referrals, the culture will attract new employees and when employees like working in a company it comes thru loud and clear to customers.

We believe culture is such an important topic we dedicated a whole chapter in our book “You’re NOT the Person I Hired” to that subject. A great culture can be used for promoting an open position, it can be seen when candidates come in to interview, it plays a key role when candidates have to decide between multiple offers and few things influence retaining your best people more.

Deciding your company is in the people business and then building a culture around that philosophy will dramatically impact your organization.

Comment on your company’s culture? Is your company in the people business? Do you think culture is important when hiring and retaining talent? Can you describe the culture in your company?

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