Unlock the secrets to a thriving business with our latest episode, where we sit down with workforce wizard Gary Makredes of Simms & Associates. With a career spanning over two decades in workforce management, Gary shares his invaluable insights into the transformative shift from customer-centric to employee-focused strategies across industries. We delve into the real-world benefits of prioritizing employee experience, and Gary highlights how this focus not only boosts immediate financial performance but also fosters lasting staff retention and customer satisfaction
Unlock the secrets to a thriving business with our latest episode, where we sit down with workforce wizard Gary Makredes of Simms & Associates. With a career spanning over two decades in workforce management, Gary shares his invaluable insights into the transformative shift from customer-centric to employee-focused strategies across industries. We delve into the real-world benefits of prioritizing employee experience, and Gary highlights how this focus not only boosts immediate financial performance but also fosters lasting staff retention and customer satisfaction
Welcome to the Productivity Podcast. This is the second in a series of three podcasts with our friends at Sims Associates, and today I'm delighted to be joined by Gary MacReedis, practice Manager at Sims Associates. Hi Gary, hi Simon, how are you? Yeah, good, thanks, you All right. Good, and that's an American accent. So you're based in the States, is that correct?
Speaker 2:
That's right American accent. So you're based in the States, is that correct? That's right in.
Speaker 1:
Boston In.
Speaker 2:
Boston good.
Speaker 1:
I suspect you get substantially better weather than we get in the UK, Although at the time of recording I'm looking out the window and it's blue sky, so fingers crossed.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, and here it's raining. They call this section of the States New England for a reason.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, it's raining in grey. You're not a million miles away. So, gary, tell us a bit about your kind of career then, and what you've done and how you ended up at Sims Associates.
Speaker 2:
Sure. So you know I've been in workforce management for just over 25 years. Over 25 years. Most of that experience, about 17 years of that experience, has been with workforce management solution, kronos and UKG, working in retail, manufacturing, healthcare, from a scheduling perspective, time and attendance perspective.
Speaker 1:
Then I went on to an employee engagement, digital workplace solution, work jam, and was there for a number of years and uh recently joined about uh eight months ago, coming on to a year actually with simpson associates as a practice manager, and simpson associates is conveniently enough a uh a partner with ukg and work jam so, so, but back home, back home, almost that's right, tying it all together good, good, so, um, a journey of, clearly, I'm sure, like myself, seeing that the solutions certainly the chronish ukg, so the ukg solution change, uh, evolve over time into kind of what it is today, and I think the crux of our conversation is around return on investment.
Speaker 1:
So, yeah, you know, like you, you'll see lots of organizations that start off with this amazing plan and this panacea of it's going to solve all our problems. We're going to match people against demand, the right people, the right place, right time. Um, we're going to j, we're going to generate a bunch load more revenue off the back of this and our people are all going to be high-fiving each other on the way in and out of work every day.
Speaker 1:
Um, maybe at times that works out I've yet yet to see it all come together, but I might just be in the wrong place. Um, maybe, maybe more than often, or not, it doesn't.
Speaker 2:
Um, yeah, so that's definitely, that's definitely the expectations, right, that's definitely what's what customers aspire to be. Uh, and you know, part and parcel to to meet that customer demand. You know, over the, you know, past first half of my career, it was definitely focused on customer satisfaction, meeting that customer demand, that customer opportunity. And you know, as they, you know, the whole forecasting and scheduling portion of that was to meet that expectation concisely right. So there's been some evolution there. That's been interesting to see, not only as the solution grows and expands and perfects their initial purpose of meeting that customer demand, it's also meeting the employee's demand.
Speaker 2:
Way back in the day it was just customer focused and what can we do to better that customer experience? And it was kind of assumed that the employees were always going to be there. And I don't know if I'm jumping too far ahead in our conversation here, but now it's sort of turned a bit where the employers are really concerned about that employee experience, that other half of the equation, and the employers are currently seeing that the employee experience is also the customer experience.
Speaker 1:
So if you've implemented a solution, so let's, let's in our kind of fictitious retailer. We've put in wfm. It doesn't really matter who we put in and we're thinking about. So we've. We've ticked some of the boxes. Maybe we've not ticked others. It doesn't mean just because you've implemented you should stop, does it? Because there's always an opportunity post-implementation particularly as you talked about there from an employee experience to maximize or even increase that return on investment that you've thought about right, I mean the.
Speaker 2:
The projects are such that, especially in the sas world right, you're looking as you're looking as someone who buys software, no matter what the industry is.
Speaker 2:
If you've purchased a workforce management solution, you're interested in getting return on investment as quickly as possible, so you want the major pieces in as quickly as possible. So, getting your rules in for time and attendance, getting your rules in for scheduling, making sure your demand estimations are correct, whether that's heads and beds or footfall or, whatever the case might be, your production plans. Once that's in place, you've got 80% of what you need in order to start driving that ROI. In order to start driving that ROI, the next way to look at that is taking a look at the employee experience, or what's left in terms of possibilities. So it's identifying where you are across the employee lifecycle. Wfm typically works in the retained portion of that lifecycle, but typically and even more finer point, on developing your employee, improving the onboarding experience, maybe improving the ability to attract talent, and that all feeds into better outcomes from an employee perspective, from a retention perspective and, as I said earlier, that flows into the customer experience, because a happy workforce typically equates to a happy customer.
Speaker 1:
And, it would seem from a market point of view, that's where all the vendors are making their big investments, whether it's joining with ecosystem partners, like you've talked about, workjam, or developing their own functionality. That seems to be where the big investment, and even innovation, is occurring.
Speaker 2:
Exactly, yeah, as I mentioned earlier on, back in my earlier years in workforce management, it was let's just address the customer need and we have the employees. They'll always be applying, we'll always have enough employees to fit our demands. But now that's sort of changed and that was even more. That was changing before COVID the catering to employee expectations but it was even more pronounced after COVID, right? So, you know, covid came and every employer realized we don't have a relationship with our workforce.
Speaker 2:
There's no way that, from an HQ perspective, I can reach my, my hourly associates, and so in many situations employees were not able to contact their employers. They didn't have that relationship and that, you know, may have caused some some turnover, and that, you know, may have caused some turnover. No-transcript, there's more opportunities for them, right? Some of them were reluctant to get back to work. Some of them chose different employers. The ones that really had an easier time and were more successful at getting their employees engaged and back on track were the ones that already had a plan in place to, you know, cater to that employee experience and maintain that relationship you know, cater to that employee experience and maintain that relationship.
Speaker 1:
So it's bizarre, isn't it, to think four years ago, lots of big organizations and you, you kind of you're in the states, sure, sure, similar there didn't have the ability to communicate directly with most of their frontline teams. It kind of feels like it's a given, but you, you know, we're not that far away from a point when that wasn't possible and still isn't in some Right.
Speaker 2:
That's right. I mean, the tide went out fast on COVID and a lot of people were left swimming naked, as it were, right, and so a lot of that has improved. You know you have employers engaging the employees with some sort of solution in place, whether it's taking a look at what their WFM provider offers within their solution set or having it deployed, something that fits into the solution as part of that ecosystem. So, again, it's taking a look at what you know in your employee's life cycle, and every industry is going to be specific. Every employer is going to have a different set of needs, right, Even though they might all be frontline employers, or maybe they're all head office employees, most of your employees head office depending. You know, irrespective of what sort of where the largest portion of your workforce is, there's going to be different requirements or different needs of that workforce and there's typically a lot of opportunity within that workforce management suite or, again, the ecosystem.
Speaker 2:
So what do I mean by that? It's learning or communications, or it could be DEI initiatives, it could be expansion of benefits right, or wage access solutions Could be as simple as or as basic as analytic reporting to understand what's exactly happening at the front line in terms of staffing and customer conversion, football conversion, or it could be employee well-being. There's a number, and those are just a handful of the examples. Right, there's a number of other areas in the employee's perspective, what they're seeking from their employer. So there's just a lot of solutions out there that can help address one of those areas or another.
Speaker 1:
And that's why it's probably important to review the business case, because you may not have had those in your original thinking.
Speaker 2:
So this is about that incremental benefit to build on top of what you've already achieved, right exactly, exactly, and it's uh, and leading employers are, you know, are now sort of leading with, with the, now leading with the employee in mind, right, so you know the first. They've already have the customer covered. Uh, you know, the workforce management solutions have evolved to a point where, you know, forecasting is pretty much a solid solution now across all vendors, right. Automated scheduling very, very solid solution, workforce management as a whole and time tracking very solid solution. The next step is your customers solution. The next step is your customer is now covered. The next step is okay, what do we do for that employee? What is the employee looking for in?
Speaker 2:
their employer and one of the keys there is the ability to grow within that organization, right within that organization right. So making that hourly job into a salary job might be an expectation for an employee, or being able to contribute more and do more just beyond customers facing work, and maybe get into more of management, a management track, or get into some other sort of track within the organization supply chain, or some other sort of track within the organization supply chain or some other avenue that maybe they hadn't considered, or whatever it might be. You're helping the employee sort of roadmap themselves as to how they see themselves growing in that organization and you're making it easier for them to be a long-term employee through tools like communications or learning, and we've got ShiftBid, haven't we?
Speaker 1:
and OpenShift, shiftswap and all those things that make it easier.
Speaker 2:
For sure. So the whole making it flexible, right. So it's not necessarily making it a gig economy, although that is an element that some employees like, but it's work-life balance. It's not working to live, not living to work, because that's the other way around.
Speaker 2:
But the whole idea is making that employee, giving them the tools so that they can cover your opportunity when they're available, when it best fits their situation, Whether it's taking their kids to sporting events or school or whatever their home requirements are. Being able to have that fit in their lifestyle is more and more of a base requirement for employees.
Speaker 1:
There's more and more of a base requirement for employees, so I think that the key then is to make sure that you've not just ticked the box on your business case and assumed it's done. Chat with your vendor, see what functionality you didn't necessarily implement in phase one first time around. See what's new and, from your experience working across multiple vendors now, where do you see kind of roadmaps going? What are the? Where are the vendors investing their resource in new functionality and new ideas? Is it still around?
Speaker 2:
employee or are we on the whole AI, machine learning thing, like everybody else? Well, I think that, uh, you know, ai is certainly something that has captured the imagination of everyone, and a lot of solution providers are weaving in ai or machine learning, into the solutions they, they, they provide's. You know, some providers have offered something in some way, shape or form of AI for the past few years, so I think it's a bit of both, and I think that, from a vendor perspective, you know, I think where I've seen them invest heavily is in their success team. So you know their CSM, customer success management team and that's actually a place where a lot of employees could find value in starting their journey right, their journey right, working with their CSM and helping them roadmap and identify what's in their current solution set that they have deployed that they could augment by just engaging in professional services and leveraging something they had purchased that maybe they had left on the table. So what I mean by that is there might be some abilities or capabilities within the mobile app that they decided not to turn on for a phase one approach or even a phase two. They may have tabled it, they may have forgotten it, um, but if you're working with your CSM, you can understand where the solution may have been since you last considered it and where it's going and what the benefits are.
Speaker 2:
How many other employers similar to yourselves have had success with feature A, b or C? Are there any additional solutions that the vendor has developed or maybe the vendor has within its suite that you hadn't considered? That employees can go on and take one course or another and pick a career not career path, but a learning path where they can help upskill themselves and maybe that feeds into a career path for them. But it also can inform the core solution how the employees progressed, what skills have they picked up, what certifications have they picked up, and that can help inform the employer from a local level or regional level understand who they have. That knows the additional skills that they're seeking internally.
Speaker 1:
Just as an example, and it's a good example, isn't it? Because, like, probably like me, you don't necessarily go. You agree a contract and that contract's got a length one, two, three, four, one probably not long enough, but two, three, four, five years. You have your roll, that approach, and this is how we're going to configure and turn on. But yeah, it's, um, it's a valid point of getting yourself out of the detail at times and just having that more strategic approach with your account manager, your customer success manager, of what, what's new, what's on the horizon, almost challenging them to. You know, what have we missed? Where could we be getting more value out of our relationship?
Speaker 2:
exactly, exactly, and they're going to help, you know, be be considerable help, because they, they understand your business uh, you know to to a great detail, right?
Speaker 2:
So, and it's not, they're not. They're there to make sure you're extracting the most value out of the solution and, you know, have more, I guess, have a vision of where you should be that's probably more aligned, where you want to be right. They're not there just to sell you something is what I'm trying to say. They're there to help you get the most value for your organization. And that could be also, too, just partner solutions that they might have right, because another advent in the workforce management space is that every vendor has a marketplace of one way, shape or form right, and so these are partners that provide a solution that complements what they do. And these solutions are typically vetted by the WFM vendor, the HCM vendor, so that they know that they're a good fit or logical extension of what they currently offer, and that can be anywhere in between benefits or advanced wage earning or task management. Something that sort of helps augment the core WFM solution in a way that the WFM provider doesn't car Amazing.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, good insight, gary. So if people want to reach out to you to find out more, or Sims and Associates, where's the best place to find you Right?
Speaker 2:
So well, I'm on LinkedIn. You can find me there, but Sims and Associates website is probably the best place to start, and that's sims-associatescom.
Speaker 1:
Excellent. Gary really enjoyed our chat. It's made me think, probably, of some missed opportunities over the years where I've assumed that we've ticked the box and probably didn't circle back around and get more value. So hopefully for those that are listening it's prompted to get in touch with your contact at your WFM provider and see what's new in their world, see what's new on their roadmap, as Gary said, see what's new in their ecosystem, because I've not seen somebody yet who's really really nailed that value 100% plus. So there must be opportunity for everybody.
Speaker 2:
Yep, indeed, thank you, Simon. It's been great speaking with you.
