Summary: Jim Weaver, Vice President of Business Development and Operations for Onin Staffing, joins Dr. Jim on the HR Impact Show to discuss the importance of building a people strategy around honesty and realistic expectations. Jim shares his background and the growth of Onin Staffing, emphasizing the company's commitment to creating opportunities and empowering people. He explains how Onin Staffing has made its core purpose a reality by providing entry-level workers with access to life-changing benefits and helping clients improve their businesses. Jim also discusses the company's moonshot goals and its focus on becoming a leadership development organization. The conversation highlights the importance of incremental growth, transparency, and building a winning culture.

Key Takeaways:

Stop building your people strategy around lies and unrealistic expectations.

Onin Staffing has built a team that is committed to creating opportunities and empowering people.

The company provides entry-level workers with access to life-changing benefits.

Onin Staffing helps clients improve their businesses through innovative solutions and resources.

The company's moonshot goal is to become a soulful billion-dollar company and a leadership development organization.

Onin Staffing focuses on incremental growth and encourages employees to think three to five years ahead in their careers.

The company uses the tour of duty framework to align employee goals with organizational goals.

Transparency and ongoing feedback are essential for building a high-performance culture.

Performance and culture are not mutually exclusive; a great culture can drive business performance.

Building clock builders and systems that reinforce desired behaviors is crucial for long-term success.

Chapters:

00:05:00 Making benefits accessible and impactful for entry-level workers

00:08:00 Operationalizing career development with a tour of duty framework

00:10:00 Commitment to maintaining a culture of growth and opportunity

00:12:00 Building a people strategy around honesty and realistic expectations.

00:15:00 The importance of clarity and mutual understanding in building high-performance teams.

00:18:00 Equipping leaders to think about the next role while in the current role.

00:20:00 Red flags to watch out for: lifelong employment mindset and lack of long-term thinking.

00:24:00 Having a great culture doesn't mean sacrificing business performance.

00:27:00 Embedding development mindset throughout the employee life cycle is key.

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Our featured guest today, let me give you a little bit of his background. He's been with own and staffing since 2001. He's contributed to the organization's growth from a 10 million organization to roughly an 800 million organization.

That's a lot. I guess this is a long way of saying we, you're a big deal. So Jim Weaver, welcome to the show.

Jim Weaver: Oh, thanks. I appreciate you having me.

Dr. Jim: I have to restrain myself because I've spent quite a bit of time, not as much as you, but I've spent some time in the agency side as well.

So I have to restrain myself from digging too deep. Into the inside baseball staffing conversation that I can get into. But before we move to the big topics that we're going to cover, and I'm really looking forward to digging in to stop lying to people as a big theme, it should be a no brainer, but we'll tie it together

Jim Weaver: The thing that would add a little bit of color to that is I did not expect to get into staffing and did not go to school to get into staffing.

I was a music performance major and I've just learned. Over the years, just getting a little better every day. And the message would be if I could be part of growing something like this, pretty much anybody can.

Dr. Jim: I like your point about focusing on growing better a little bit every day.

If you can be a half a percent better or 1 percent better every single day over a lifetime, you're going to be pretty damn good. And I think that's an important lesson, especially when you look at the typical employee and you have all sorts of initiatives that you're trying to tackle.

And sometimes it can be overwhelming because they're so big. Your point about taking it, breaking it down in a small incremental bits and pieces.

Jim Weaver: What's the next thing? What's the next thing? The next thing.

Dr. Jim: I want to throw some rapid fire stuff at you.

Jim Weaver: This is easy for me to answer. It's we have built a team that is truly locked into our core purpose of creating opportunity and empowering people. And we, we're in the people, businesses, staffing.

So it's particularly important. And our people know Onanites as we call them, they know when we put someone to work, we're going to treat them better than anybody else, and we're going to give the contingent work and the entry level contingent worker teammates, we call them access to life changing benefits that nobody else in our industry will provide.

And they also know on the other side with our client relationships. When we partner with the client, the tools, the resources, the the innovation, the the want to that we bring to the right, we make them better. So there's a sense of a moral mandate. To grow the business because of how locked in we are on this purpose.

I think it's really valuable for the audience to learn and understand how you've actually made that real at the ground level for employees because anybody can say it. Give me some examples of how you've actually made that real from an operational perspective?

Jim Weaver: The objective thing that I can give you, you have to walk into a branch to experience the love, but an objective measurement, it is our benefit plan and staffing companies will all say, Oh, we have.

Oh, yeah, we have benefits to my question to them is what is your enrollment rate? Ours is over 70 percent and these are entry level. Largely, workers that work at companies that make, move, and process things, these are people that don't have access to benefits, typically. The emergency room is their doctor, typically, and we're giving them access to that dental, vision, medical.

We call it went up 20 percent boom immediately when we rolled out that the medical portion of what we're doing today.

Dr. Jim: So I'm glad that you spelled that out because knowing what I know. from my time in staffing. I know that staffing benefits. Yeah, a lot of companies will offer them. A lot of organizations will offer them.

That's a really great point And it's just one good example of how you build an integrated culture.

You've been in the organization for a while, and you've seen it grow. What's the next moonshot that you have on your radar in terms of what you want to get accomplished in the next 12 to 18 months?

Jim Weaver: We have a B hag that we are in the final innings on to be a, we call it a soulful billion dollar company.

We don't want to borrow our way to a billion dollars. We want to be able to wake up in the mirror, look at ourselves and what we see, but we're, we. And we've been on that track now for 12 years. So the finish line is next year for that. So that's out there long term, the looking beyond that 10 years out, I, my legacy goal is for owning to be an organization that is truly a leadership development organization.

It's focused on our branch managers becoming business leaders. That's the goal of that framework. And we've got to have it locked up by next September for a launch. So that's going to be a big project in the next year, if we're talking 12 months.

Dr. Jim: You mentioned legacy and the legacy that you want to be known for.

Is somebody else who's seeing a resume and sees somebody that who's been at Onin, you want that hiring manager to be able to say, oh, I have to talk to this person because I know that they've been developed well during their time here. It's it's similar to the impact of people that have come out of enterprise Renta car.

Yes. Where immediately you know that there's a level of wiring there. Now that doesn't happen overnight. So how have you already been building to that legacy during your time here?

Is on a three to five year development plan, and it's built on a mutual understanding we understand when somebody comes in, when we're in the interview process when we're career planning, we understand what's next for them and where they're headed. And if they don't know that we help them explore that.

And and then they understand where we're headed as a company and the expectations around. How they're there to impact that. And just getting folks, everybody in the organization to think 3 to 5 years ahead of where they're headed, where our organization is headed that we believe that if we're a company full of people heading somewhere, we're going to be a company heading somewhere.

Dr. Jim: The really interesting aspect about that, and [00:09:00] we'll get into more details about it a little bit later, is that I haven't quite heard of any other firm, and that doesn't mean that this doesn't exist, that actually operationalizes it and puts it in writing and builds an actual.

Set of milestones to co collaborate on career development. That's a really interesting thing that we're going to tackle in a second. What's the most fun aspect about your job?

Jim Weaver: I love it when people get it, man. They see the potential. They see the opportunity here. They see the way, senior leadership is rooting for them. They see our resources. They utilize our resources. They run and there's so many stories. Our CIO started as a staffing assistant with us 18 years ago.

That is just that's a thrill.

Dr. Jim: It's interesting that you mentioned that because that's a little bit of a throwback. You hear about stories of, oh, I started in the mail room and now I'm CEO and it sounds like you've seeded the entire organization with stories like that. How likely is it that's going to remain part of your culture as you continue to grow beyond a billion dollars at some

Jim Weaver: point? I

don't see how we go beyond a billion without carrying that forward.

Honestly, we have a mantra, growth and culture, growth feeds culture feeds growth. I don't know. And it's not that everybody sticks around. I think we've got about a 70 percent annual retention rate. The door is open. And if we're a lily pad to something better for somebody.

aNd that you talked about shareholder shareholder demands. We just announced an ESOP two weeks ago. Our shareholders now have become own a night. We're taking the win to the next level.

Dr. Jim: I want to highlight something that you said in terms of your retention rate, because I think it's important to note in context of staffing.

So you mentioned that roughly in your ballparking at your retention is at 70%. That might not register as any big deal to the average person that's listening to our show, but in the context of staffing, and I'm a retention and turnover guy, my, my research study was on why people join and leave organizations. And I did a lot of research within the staffing industry.

And generally speaking, when you're talking about internal employees in staffing, 40, 50 percent retention rate for internal employees. So if you're at 70, that is a significant. Step up, especially when you start getting into the details of how much it costs for you to replace a single employee that leaves the organization.

Jim Weaver: Prospective employees, when you come in and you're interviewing, you're like yeah, I want to retire here. I'm looking for a home. And the reality is most employees spend their entire time one foot out the door looking for the next upgrade. And then on the employer side of the desk, we're saying, oh, we're a family here and then we hand them paperwork that says we can fire you at any time.

It's just not good basis for a relationship. And, yeah, as we scaled out our company, I was growing increasingly frustrated with turnover and lack of engagement at the edges of our organization. Like our core was strong because it was close enough. Our partners here, Hugh and Keith, they're extremely committed to this win idea.

I had seen that the win with employee manager like That's the best relationship, an honest win. And he gives a great framework around that. And we adapted this tour of duty framework from his book. we've modified it and made it our own, but that's a fantastic book would recommend it to any HR person.

We started with honesty about where somebody's headed where they want to go. What's next for them? What do you want to do when you leave here? People are like, huh? When you open that door, they're actually more apt to stick around and be loyal.

Dr. Jim: I want to highlight a couple of things one You know you talked about how the impact on culture how you build a culture and i'm going to paraphrase it Differently, but one of the people in my network steve watt who's the director Of marketing at seismic.

He often says culture is defined at the edges of the enterprise. So for those who are listening. Executives can talk about culture all day long. Your culture shows up at the lowest level of the organization, at the individuals that are closest to your customer. So if you really want to get a view into what kind of culture do you have, watch, observe and learn from the people that are The furthest away from the C suite and then you'll know what work needs to be done.

And you referenced. The tour of duty for a framework. So talk a little bit about how you took that concept of culture being defined at the edges and tied it to how you hire and grow people to come into your organization.

Jim Weaver: It starts with this mutual understanding and I touched on this in the last answer, but a mutual understanding of where do you really want to go with your career?

What's next for you? And we explore that we work through it and then we talk about where own is going and where this branch is going that you're interviewing with and how we expect them to contribute to that. And then we, if there's enough of an overlap there between where they're headed and where we're headed, that's a great foundation for a relationship.

And then the deal is. You help us grow and prosper. We'll help you grow and prosper. And we formalize that in this tour of duty. If we hire a a recruiter in a light industrial branch, and a lot of times recruiters in a light industrial staffing branch, that's a job you're moving through to something else.

So we hire somebody the bachelor's degree in hr and they want to get into corporate recruiting. Okay, give us 18 months or two years as a recruiter and you're going to learn this, and this, and you know what? You can't get that job right now because you don't have experience, but you will have the resume to be able to go get that that corporate recruiter gig or whatever it is.

And the cool thing is, because Everybody's heading somewhere in the organization is heading somewhere. A lot of times we have opportunity internally and we say, hey, if you, if your next opportunity is outside, then that's fine. But many times we have the opportunity. We've grown so much. There's opportunity for that next step right there.

Dr. Jim: I want to dig a little bit deeper. You have a ton of mail room to boardroom sort of stories within the organization. And what I want to understand is when we take that tour of duty concept. And apply it and operationalize it for into, let's say, a quarter by quarter or a year by year framework.

You've mapped this out. How are you equipping your leaders to think of the next role while the person is in the current role and moving through that initial 3 or 5 year plan?

Jim Weaver: Got to be a little creative on that. And sometimes there isn't clarity.

Hey, we're going to have you work as an onsite supervisor for 18 months. Let's see how that goes. See what resonates, what doesn't resonate. Maybe you'd want to try recruiting. Let's put you in recruiting and we look for. So if there's not that sense of progression, but we have a dream sheet actually.

That we give people when they onboard where we ask them we literally ask them to, what would you do if money were no option to you, what would you do with your time? What'd you want to do? If money were no option and you couldn't fail, what would you do? We try to just take the lid off in the conversation like, Oh, I'd really love to start a food truck or whatever.

Hey, we can show you a lot of mechanics of running a successful business in order to work to that. There is a framework around dreaming and there is also an experimentation concept with the rotational tours.

Dr. Jim: What I like most about what you described is that it seems to me. That you've embedded the concept of developmental conversations throughout. Your entire operating rhythm, it sounds like it's pretty natural that and it sounds cliche. Everybody talks about, you got to find the right person, put them in the right seat on the right bus, go in the right direction. But that's an ongoing part of what you're describing.

And that's if people are looking for operational insight of how you take. Something that's almost a cliche and put it into action. This is how you do it where you that's a Normal part of your operating rhythm where you're having these conversations

This is year 5 or whatever. The original tour is the yardstick. We adjust our plan, but we always reference back to what do we start out to do? What were the expectations? What did you want? So that all feeds back to it as well.

Dr. Jim: If an organization wants to be. Applying what you're talking about. What are the big red flags that they need to watch out for when they're trying to execute at the level that you're executing currently,

Jim Weaver: Helping management, get out of the lifelong employment mindset. They feel like, Oh, if I tell people it's okay, if they leave, then they're going to leave. Guess what? People are leaving all the time. So we gotta, you gotta help them get past that.

So they're on the receiving end of it and they can feel that so but that's tough to get over and then the other thing is Helping people think three to five years out is not that's not the norm with most folks most people are thinking next week maybe next month so those are some of the barriers you really have to it's not a set it and forget it thing the quality of our tours.

We're on a real push right now to to monitor the quality of our tours and not in a gotcha way, but hey, we missed it here. On this one or hey, this isn't this is not a job description. We're putting here. We're dreaming with this person. So doing things like that, you have to constantly go back and it's not something that managers are going to get good at.

Admittedly, it's a little, it's a little piecemeal. It's me going to a branch and, What's next for you? And those conversations, we've got the tours housed centrally as well, but there's just not enough transparency. So I would say transparency would be a it's been a sticking point for us.

Like having that is is important.

Dr. Jim: One of the things that stands out to me when you were describing how, what people should be watching out for I think if you want to execute at the level that you have. You've mentioned it yourself, your leaders have to be transparent and be honest about, hey.

This is the world as it is, let's approach it together and figure out a plan. But I really like how it ties back to that dream sheet that happens at the onboarding phase where you're co collaborating a career path with the new hire and then you're building a plan. That's 35 years out and reviewing it on an ongoing basis.

Jim we could probably sit here and talk about this stuff for about an hour and a half.

I think there's a lot of context and texture that you've brought into the conversation. I appreciate you sharing your insights, but I want you to close the loop here. We talked about a lot of stuff. There's a lot of things that people can watch out for, but when you look at, okay, how do you put this into play in the real world?

What are the big things that other people leaders need to think about when they're trying to model what's worked for owning?

Jim Weaver: First thing is whatever we do, we've got to root it in reality. The second thing I would say is performance and culture. Those are not, you don't have one or the other.

And, he says some pretty hyperbolic stuff, but I think what he was saying was, we're focused on winning. He has a winning culture. If you want to win and you want to have a great culture. Then build a winning, winning culture. And then finally I would say, we need to be clock builders.

So we need to build systems and language around these things that we want to reinforce. So it can run without us being present, us having our hands

Dr. Jim: on it.

If people want to have a continue the conversation, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you?

So I'd say message me on LinkedIn, though, and we can connect, take it to the, take it to the email front from there.

Dr. Jim: Thanks for hanging out with us. We appreciate the insights that you brought to the table. When I think about the conversation that we had, there's a couple things that I want to pull out. I think for those who have listened to this conversation, the critical thing. That this stood out to me Is that when you're trying to build a culture you have to have line of sight in terms of how that culture shows up At the edges of your organization jim and I talked about this earlier in the conversation But that's the real test You can say what you want about the culture that you are building and all that sort of stuff within the boardroom.

It's something that's referenced throughout the employee life cycle. And what's interesting about that is for a lot of organizations who want to do this sort of stuff, they talk about it, but they never operationalize it. And if they operationalize it, they don't embed it into their day to day operating rhythm.