ON THE RECORD
EXECUTIVE ANSWERS As the workforce struggle continues, many employers are finding it difficult to hire and keep their employees. What are the steps your business or company has taken to maintain talent retention?
KYLE AUD GERMAN AMERICAN BANK
In today’s post-Covid work environment, we’ve found that quality of life for our employees is taking priority over just earning a paycheck. That’s not to say it hasn’t always been priority, but this may be the first time the individual employee has held this much leverage, which was overdue in my opinion.
BRIAN GREENWELL
TOBY HALL
GREENWELL CHISHOLM
MPD, INC.
At Greenwell Chisholm we strive to provide a family-like atmosphere for our employees placing an emphasis on work life balance. I want my employees to know that I value them just as much as an individual as a I do an employee. To that effect we offer the ability for our employees to take off early on Fridays through out the year, as well as flex schedule their hours when needed. I have found this to be particularly beneficial to our employees with young families. We are a community focused business that sponsors a lot of local events, and we encourage our employees to take part in community activities by providing free tickets to many events, concerts and shows in the area.
There are several items tugging on talent in today’s market and there is no doubt that the current rate of inflation will push some employees to make tough choices about their jobs. At MPD, we believe that people who are treated well will want to be around other people who treat others well, also. Retaining talent starts with recruiting talented employees. We invest in providing our employees the training they need to be successful in their job whether that is on-the-job, certificate courses, or continued formal education. Being successful in your job leads to a feeling of satisfaction that we believe all our employees share. MPD is a 100% Employee Owned Company with each and every employee contributing to, and benefiting from, the success of the business that we collectively own. We continue to monitor the current economic situation and make adjustments where and when needed.
We offer all of the standard employee benefits everyone has grown accustomed to such as Health Insurance, Dental, Vision, 401k with match and paid vacation and sick leave, but we also offer several additional benefits surrounding mental health such as paid counseling sessions and bereavement days for all employees. I have found that bringing attention to my employees personal needs has allowed us to maintain a closeknit feel while continuing to grow and maintain our current talented workforce.
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GO CHAMBER . SUMMER 2022
German American adapted quickly by creating initiatives for flex hours for many positions and more relaxed dress codes in others. With an increased focus on family quality of life, we’ve also created family bonding leave to help with many life situations that may happen with an employee. With regards to career development, we’re creating an Emerging Leaders program to highlight employees earlier in their career so they get recognized much sooner. There are many others, but these few are some of the more important that come to mind. Specifically in Owensboro, with us acting as an operations hub for the bank and creating close to 50 local jobs, we have stepped up efforts to make sure our teams feel valued while they are in the office. Either through Friday donuts, creating contests/ themes around periodic events (Derby, Halloween, Cinco de Mayo, etc…) and most importantly, increasing our communication on how much we value them as an employee. It’s required our leaders to be much better communicators and have an increased level of empathy for our employees and what they may have going on in their personal lives. So, while the workforce shortage has definitely created its challenges, it would be hard to view an increased quality of life for our employees as anything but positive.
