How AI is Deciding Who Gets Hired
Sean Behr, CEO of Fountain, discusses the unique challenges of hiring and retaining frontline workers. He explores the transformative role of AI in recruitment, the importance of speed and candidate experience, and strategies for maintaining a competitive edge in a tight labor market. Sean also shares insights on the future of work and evolving workforce needs.
In today's episode of the HR Leaders Podcast, Sean Behr, CEO of Fountain, shares his tech industry journey and insights on managing and retaining frontline workers.
He discusses the post-pandemic challenges, the impact of AI on HR processes, and the importance of gaining a competitive hiring advantage. Sean also highlights how technology can better serve frontline workers.
🎓 In this episode, Sean discusses:
How AI is revolutionizing the recruitment process
The future of work and the evolving needs of the global workforce
Strategies for retaining frontline workers in a competitive labor market
The critical role of speed and candidate experience in hiring frontline workers
DISCOVER WHAT EMOTIONAL SALARY MEANS – AND HOW YOU CAN MOTIVATE EMPLOYEES BEYOND PAY.
Great recognition is more than just a thank you program. By leveraging frequent and meaningful recognition, Achievers drives business results that matter to organizations like retention, productivity, and engagement. Our platform makes it easy for employees to recognize each other anywhere, whether in-office, remote, or on-the-go.
The Achievers Workforce Institute reveals that two-thirds of employees have one foot out the door in 2024. The top reason for job hunting? Better compensation. But money isn’t the whole story. Employees are seeking not only monetary salary, but emotional salary too.
Sean Behr 0:00
In order to be focused on sort of the acquisition, management and retention of this frontline workforce, you know, we are deeply interested in skills and skill development of our workers. So we make lots of partnership or really ought to do is create an environment for that worker where they see the future for themselves within the organization. And so I think you'll see us continue to evolve in this way of helping helping our customers retain those workers by offer opening opportunities for that global workforce, that frontline workforce around the world.
Chris Rainey 0:37
Should work Welcome to the show. How are you my friend?
Sean Behr 0:39
Chris, great, great day to be here.
Chris Rainey 0:42
Nice to see where you where you joining us from in the world? Because you're often traveling in lovely
Sean Behr 0:45
San Francisco, California, which is a city city on the on the way back? I know it's been tough. Some
Chris Rainey 0:54
people say no, because it used to be on the high flying. And now it's like it's on the way back.
Sean Behr 0:59
Yeah, we had high flying, we went down a little bit. And now we're, we're on the way back.
Chris Rainey 1:05
Nice to hear it. Before we jump in, tell everyone a little bit more about yourself personally, and the journey to where we are now with the business.
Sean Behr 1:13
Yeah, I look, I've been very fortunate to sort of have my career match the rise of sort of the global use of the Internet. And when it came out of university, sort of that was what you did, you know, it was the new thing was to kind of seems sort of antiquated at this point. But there was a time before this. But it sort of coincided with the rise of E commerce, which was when where I spent the bulk of the early part of my career was building an E commerce company called shopping.com, built that to a very big business, took it public sold it, and then spent the second part of my career on advertising technology. So those little 15 second commercials that you can't skip along the targeting and optimization those. Yes, you're you're very welcome Chris and to your listeners, every time you see one of those you can, you can thank me or hate me, but built back into a big business. So that business, I built an automotive technology company to coincide with self driving cars and sort of the use of mobility and ride sharing and car sharing that that into a good business sold that. And then during that time, I actually invested in Fountain I was the first angel investor in Fountain one of his very, very small company. And like the team wound up helping out and I joined the board about three years ago became the CEO, the founder and I, he said look a very brilliant founder who said look, I think you'd be better at running this, I'm better at starting things. You're better at running them. And so he asked me to step in and the company has been on a on a great trajectory since then. And you know, along the way, I've helped lots and lots of startups by investing and advising in them and just just love building companies love that.
Chris Rainey 2:59
Well, firstly, I kind of want to do a whole nother show of how you timed each of those career moves perfectly. Because you kind of felt you got in at the early inception of each of those market trends and and capitalize on them, which were like, is there a secret sauce that you're hiding from everyone? Because that's kind of like the law of averages of that happening naturally. Does three for three? Yeah, you
Sean Behr 3:24
got certainly found will be four for four.
Chris Rainey 3:26
Nice. Okay. Well, given your track record is. So what what is it for found in? Give us a little bit more insight? What was it about the organization that originally made you say, Hey, I'm going to invest in his personally. Now does notice led you to being the CEO as well?
Sean Behr 3:40
Yeah, I mean, I think looking from the earliest days from our origin story, we've always been focused on the frontline workforce, which was something that was really, really interesting. You know, I'd spent my career working primarily with knowledge workers, you know, people who sit on Zoom calls and people who work in Excel, and people who use Google Sheets and Slides and answer emails and sit in meetings. Those are all people that I've worked with. And yet I had this like drive to think about where most of the other people, roughly 3 billion people on our planet, never get on Zoom. Now, maybe they're happier than then some of us who spend more time on Zoom. But I've always been focused on this population, this large group of people who generally are doing things that are really mission critical on our economy, they're stocking shelves, they're driving cabs, they're driving lorries, they're you know, they're working in restaurants and retail stores, they're answering our customer service things they, they work in our hospitals and our medical clinics and take care of our aging seniors. And so our focus as a company has always been on opening opportunities for that workforce. We believe that workforce has been traditionally underserved by technology, and so founders out to sort of We'll write that and make that hole for that population of workers around the world. One we think it's a mission or doing, we think the world would be a better place, when you really serve this frontline workforce better. The second thing is we think it's a really great business. You know, as I mentioned, 3 billion people, there are far more people on our economy working on the front lines, than sitting on Zoom calls, or going to teams meetings. And so our focus is the company's been on that workforce, what we actually do is help companies acquire, manage and retain that workforce at scale. So that's kind of what we focus on every day, we find companies that need that frontline workforce to power their business, and we just give them a competitive advantage in this labor market.
Chris Rainey 5:48
I think you are right, by the way, I think the audience has been massively, or that employee population under served, right. But we saw, I think, during the pandemic, how important like it kind of all of a sudden the spotlight was was shone on, you know, they didn't they were still going to work every day, they were still making sure our food was delivered. The world, they kept the world going. Right. During that time. Exactly. Yeah,
Sean Behr 6:14
I think I think the pandemic opened our eyes to how important the supply chain and how important human beings are to that supply chain. So I think your point spot on, I think it's been a big eye opener. And frankly, it's been a been an accelerator of fountains business.
Chris Rainey 6:32
I don't think maybe most people realize that that population, the vast majority don't even have an email. Yes. Right. Yes, they're still getting updates for bulletin boards, in the manufacturing sites, or like, you know, really, you know, that's, even in this day and age, which is crazy to think of that is, in many cases, even some of the most biggest companies that you all know, they're still operating. That way, they have no connection, no real connection between communication between those those those employees.
Sean Behr 7:04
Yeah, you'll go to the favorite places to go find out where the time clock is where the people sort of punch in and punch out. And you will see flyers, flying all around the time clock, trying to communicate trying to engage trying to help this workforce. And if we can bring technology to bear in that area, it's, it can be very powerful for that workforce,
Chris Rainey 7:28
what you're seeing when you work with organizations is a key challenge that they face. When it comes to my work.
Sean Behr 7:36
It's, the reality is it's never been more competitive on the frontline workforce. And there's a few things that are happening. So one, post pandemic, post COVID, you have some group of population who have decided not to return to the workforce. These are people who are maybe aging out and have just decided, I don't need to work right now I'm going to cut my hours, I'm going to do something else with my life. So you have a small number of people who have actually withdrawn from the workforce, you also have an aging population, in many places where you know, the aging of people is not being replaced by enough younger workers, that leads to an overall talent shortage on the front lines. What's also happening is that technology has enabled it and made it so easy for workers to apply for jobs, that the competitive market has made it that it's just difficult to even hire within that shortened talent pool. So you have a small town hall with more people trying to hire them. And it's very easy to switch jobs or apply for new jobs. Well we see in our data is a worker may apply for 789 10 1214 jobs simultaneously. And they're doing it all on their mobile device. So they're doing it exclusively on their phone. Imagine that you're applying for 10 jobs, right typing in on your phone, maybe you're on the bus home, maybe you're on the train home, maybe you're at your house, maybe you're on a break, at the current job you have and you're applying for another one. If you're if you've applied for 10 jobs, that means all else being equal, each of those 10 companies has just a 10% chance. What we know is some of those companies do a better job and some don't. But the biggest change has been you have a smaller labor pool with a lot more competition. And what it leads to is I thought I could get enough people with my old tactics. It's been working for 10 years. You knows we've been doing this for 20 years this way. All of a sudden those same tactics stop work. And that's where you have this opportunity for companies like fountain and both by weigh internal innovation at some of these companies to kind of rethink how they're doing things to thrive in this market. It's
Chris Rainey 10:07
really interesting. I never thought about how the fact in the past it was a lot more challenging to find another job. But now with technology, the ease of access, you can remove, remove that barrier, right? You just didn't know about our jobs? Or even if you did, how do you apply right now, even on LinkedIn is like a click of a button, literally, to submit CV to be able to do that. So you
Sean Behr 10:33
can see things like you've applied for this job. Oh,
Chris Rainey 10:36
yeah. Why don't you apply for those
Sean Behr 10:39
other ones just like it? By the way, it's great for the worker. Yeah. As you pointed out, the worker is getting new opportunities, which is great. That's our mission. Right? I love that. But it's created a compounding challenge for the customer, in that they're saying, wait a second. These people aren't engaging with us. They're not coming to the interview. They're not showing up for the first day of work. What's happening? Well, they're also talking to a lot of other companies, and maybe one of those other companies has done a better job. Yeah.
Chris Rainey 11:10
Talk us through like some of the larger high volume companies that you work with, what are some of the specific things that they're doing that also helps empower their recruiters, as well? Yeah,
Sean Behr 11:21
yeah. So just to kind of give your audience some scale here, that way, the data kinda will will matter, right? Small data is very easy to manipulate and make it seem like you can make a big difference. Last year found hired roughly 3 million people or software helped our customers hire 3 million of these workers, we did that in a couple of dozen different languages and a couple of dozen different countries. So this is really a global phenomenon when I'm when I'm talking about these things, but one of the things you'll see is, customers need to move much more quickly. So in a world where a worker is applying for 10 jobs, the single best thing you can do to improve your opportunity, and your chance at getting that worker to join your team is to move quickly. If you move slowly, that worker will invariably accept a job from one of your competitors. And by the way, now, your competitors from a customer, you know, not not another restaurant, it could be an another professional services company, it could be another retail store could be a delivery service, those are all your competitors. So you're not only competing against your direct competitors for labor, competing, it's everybody who needs frontline workers. So speed is one of the biggest things that that a company can do. If you can be the first person to engage with that worker meaningfully engage with that worker, and let them know, Hey, this is a good fit for you. And we want to get a couple of questions out of the way quickly. And then we actually want to come in, we want you to interview with us, we want you to come to an orientation, we want to do a video interview right now, all of a sudden, if I'm a worker, instead of going and applying for the next job. I'm scheduling an interview with you. Right, I've got that word, that company that does that has got the pole position. That's kind of one big thing. The second one I'll point out, and I'll talk about a little bit about the benefits of these things. But kind of one would be speed to his candidate experience. You've got in a competitive labor market, by the way, this would be for anything, but specifically in labor, you want to make your first impression, really good. So if I'm applying for workers applying to 10 jobs, and you deliver a poor experience, even before they work for you, that does not give that worker a lot of confidence that you're a great place to work. And so doing things like requiring them to, you know, put in an email and a password and the password has to have an uppercase letter and a lowercase letter and especially
Chris Rainey 14:05
symbol. Yeah, symbols.
Sean Behr 14:08
Yeah, all of a sudden, if I'm a worker, I'm like, wait a second. You're not even paying me and I already don't like it here. Why would I want to work here? Right? Take the flip side, a company that says, Look, we know you're on your mobile device. So this application is built, knowing that you're on your mobile phone. Right? Really easy to type in, just give us your cell phone number, give us your mobile, give us your you know your name. And then by the way we can we're gonna text message you. All of a sudden I'm like, Okay, you understand where I'm at. And I'm doing those two things candidate experience and speed will make a profound difference. So you go from 100 people applying for your job and only to joining the company to 100 people applying and 10 joining the company. I
Chris Rainey 14:59
can already See the stuff? That's just a fact that you did mobile? I could already see like, why would you go to a frontline worker who's on the move, literally doing that and expect them to communicate via email with you? Wouldn't you ever exist in their text messages? Where you know, you're gonna get a response? And they're also going to be like, Oh, this is very convenient. For me. That's something even I'm doing now with our own audience. I'm trying to get into text to inboxes of Chr. Sadly, yeah, sorry, to text messages. Yeah, text messages and not in their inbox, because everyone's trying to compete. Everyone's in the inbox. It was in the inbox on like, text message or push notifications on on a mobile. Yeah, it's interesting. Why? What's different about your approach and versus other? ATS? Yeah. Because they're all claiming that they give a great user experience. What's what's different?
Sean Behr 15:55
Look, I think the core difference for us is the frontline worker versus the knowledge worker this facility? Yeah, I mean, if you're hiring, and by the way, I know a lot of your audience hires knowledge workers we hire, we hire knowledge workers. So do you write with knowledge, workers, speed is less of an important because with a knowledge worker, you are trying to hire one, or maybe two, or three or four few. And you're trying to make a very, very high quality hire where you're going to interview them several times, you might ask them to do a presentation. You know, speed is somewhat important, but you're really trying to be much more thoughtful and careful in your hiring process. That's different if you're hiring 5000 warehouse workers. When you're in 5000, warehouse workers, you can interview each one three times, you can't ask them to put a presentation together about how good they would do at, you know, warehouse working, you know, lifting boxes or something like that. So the difference for us is there's a time and a place for the ATS is that are focused on knowledge work, we use one here at fountain, because we hire mostly knowledge
Chris Rainey 17:07
work. That's hilarious.
Sean Behr 17:10
Well, we would never recommend using that kind of piece of software for frontline to hire frontline workers. You it's just the wrong tool for the wrong population. Give me one perfect example. Like when usually start with an ATS, one of the first things they ask you to do upload a resume or a CV. Right? Most warehouse workers and people who work in fast food restaurants, they don't have their resume polished on their mobile
Chris Rainey 17:40
device, a knowledge worker would Yeah, it just don't. It by
Sean Behr 17:44
the way, we can also have another whole podcast episode on how important resumes should be writ large. Because maybe they're a good predictor of future success. And maybe they're not there's obviously inherent challenges in the world of resumes to begin with. But specifically for frontline workers, we think it's a poor indicator of potential and, and performance.
Chris Rainey 18:07
What's the what's your approach to that, then?
Sean Behr 18:10
Yeah, so when you want to quickly do is understand, are they capable of doing the job? And very quickly, how, what kind of experience do they have? So rather than having them put a PDF together, where they list out bullet points, what I want to know is, have you ever worked in another retail store? If so, which one? Right? How many years of experience do you have? Can you lift 50 pounds? Because the job we have requires you to lift a lot of boxes? Right? Do you have a truck driver's license that enables you to drive trucks in the UK? Right? Whether or not your CV is perfect or not, if you don't have that truck driver's license, can't do this job, no matter how good your CV is, right? That's the difference between sort of this frontline and knowledge worker universe. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 19:01
you specifically designed it for that audience. But also to your point, if you're doing this on scale for 10,000 people and millions in your case, you can't look at every CV and if you wanted to similar as well. So you need to be able to scale through that process very quickly in an agile and in a very good cause with regard very good customer experience along along on employee experience. Along the way soup do you do do things like video interviews, or you just kind of stay away from stuff like that, like, interviews are
Sean Behr 19:31
important, especially in customer facing roles. So if you're hiring for retail, if you're hiring for food services, grocery, but for truck drivers, interviews are not important, because most truck drivers work on their own most of the day. So what we try to do is make the interviews as convenient as possible. So I'll give you two examples that are great. One is can you do a V Do interviewer because if you can do a video interview, you're showing that candidate Hey, I'm willing to meet you where you are you have you have 30 minutes later today, give 15 minutes later today, how about tomorrow and letting that work or schedule themselves? Right? And say, okay, I can come tomorrow, I can do a video interview tomorrow at 9am. Great. The second thing we do is we give lots of availability. So one of the things you'll see is customers will say, I want to interview candidates between 10am and 2pm. You know? That's great. I'm glad it's convenient for
Chris Rainey 20:41
you. Yes. When the person is at work, correct? Yeah, it's an hour interview
Sean Behr 20:45
from four to seven. Yeah, I or from 7am, to 9am. Because what you do is, all of a sudden, you can say to that worker, hey, we've got slots in the morning or the evening, the worker says, Great, I'd like to come at 7am. Perfect. That's, that's what we're seeing in the interview space that's really, really working for workers. Do
Chris Rainey 21:08
you have like in the platform, like, templates for like, this is a template for trucker, this is a template for a customer service. And each of them have a different process for each to your
Sean Behr 21:21
plan. So what we tried to do is work with our customers, we give them our best practices, and say, here's the best template for this, right. And also using things like AI, right, which is really interest. I know, that's a buzzword now in the in the HR circles, I'm sure a lot of your listeners are either thinking about it, tired of thinking about it, or are experimenting with it, right using AI to say things like, wow, when we send text messages between 2pm and 4pm. Nobody replies to them. But when we send them from 6pm to 9pm, we get a 75% response rate. All of a sudden, the AI will start sending text messages at a better time, it
Chris Rainey 22:03
automatically adjusts. It's almost like an A B test. Autumn, it's on autopilot. You can do that for your
Sean Behr 22:10
whole pile, and even things like what's the what should the text message say? Right? Because, you know, some people will respond to a sense of urgency, like, hey, slots are running out, interview slots are running out book yours right now, that may work that might work for people. Other people will say, Wait a second, maybe we should go a little softer, and say, Hey, we haven't forgotten about you, I hope you haven't forgotten about us. We'd love to have you come in and interview, be able to use AI to write those messages dynamically change them? Right, engage with applicants, and then use the data to reinforce which models are working best. All opportunities for AI to make a difference in the way we hire workers. Yeah.
Chris Rainey 22:57
Especially when you're thinking about global, right? Because communication in Asia versus North America, very different. Very, you wouldn't say you probably wouldn't give the agency story in different cultures right? To be able to do it. So do you have the ability to adjust it for different countries? Also languages went away something translates in different languages don't mean a thing, if that makes sense. Yeah,
Sean Behr 23:25
I mean, one of the you know, look in the knowledge worker universe, another critical difference, right? In knowledge work, especially across Western Europe. You could probably operate your when you're recruiting on the frontlines of the economy, right? We have a big business in India, I'll give you an example. If you try to recruit frontline workers in India, in English, you will get zero applicants, zero. Nobody, nobody will understand what you're talking about, or what the job is about. You need to be you need to be in the English you need to be in that language, as I said, and language that's appropriate for that places. The other place you'll see it is here in the States. In the States, you have places where you have almost as many English speakers as you have Spanish speakers. Yeah. Especially in the frontline workforce. You want to be able to recruit and communicate both in Spanish and English. Because there's, if you just look, if you're just recruiting and hiring in English, you're probably missing out on great people who could help out your business.
Chris Rainey 24:30
What does this mean for recruiters now? In organizations?
Sean Behr 24:36
Yeah, recruiters, I look, I think recruiters, recruiting is going to change pretty dramatically. I think it already is, I think it's going to change pretty dramatically, especially in the frontline workforce recruiting world, right? The days of, you know, using manual processes and doing repetitive work to sort of like okay, I've got to send this email and then I'm going to call call this person and then I'm going to email this person, I'm going to call this person on email this person and call this person that used to be the lay of the land. And you would just do it as until you filled the job. Right? Now most of that can be automated. And what you're really turning recruiters into is less of this busy body kind of administrative work, to allowing them to focus on more strategic things like, hey, rather than worrying about all this admin work, I want to focus on these higher value roles that are really behind and think about new strategies that we can use to hire this kind of worker. And so I think you're gonna see recruiting shift from a world of sort of more admin, where it's kind of, you know, maybe in the front lines, 50 and 50%, admin and 50%, sort of strategic, I think it's gonna be 10%, admin 90%. Strategic,
Chris Rainey 25:56
we're seeing the same thing with CHR OHS, HR executives, right? It's the same thing, AI and technology is empowering them to focus on the strategic side, and being really more business partners. And then exactly Vann audit takers, I suppose, is the best way of saying it. Absolutely, as well. How do you see the evolution of AI in this? Obviously, you're just like everyone starting to play around with it. And you mentioned some use cases, how are you seeing AI is impacting the future?
Sean Behr 26:28
I think it's gonna be demonstrative and extremely impactful. So I'm probably further along the scale of CEOs who think about this, in terms of its impact, I think it's gonna have a massive impact. I think you're gonna see dramatic changes in the way that we work. As a result of, of AI, I think you'll see whole classes of jobs get transformed by this. So thinking about places like customer support, and customer service, like, those are places where I think you'll see dramatic changes. Were tier one support may change, and then tier two support may become the place where real we really need humans. One place I don't think it will move is hiring decisions. The
Chris Rainey 27:22
decision right, it's still gonna be Indecision
Sean Behr 27:24
is still a human to human thing on both sides. Yeah, on both sides, both people have got to kind of turn their keys and say I want to join this no algorithm, know generative AI large language model is going to be able to to do a better job of understanding whether you're going to be a good part of this team than the team members themselves. Yeah, they're going to be way better at that than any large language model for the next period of time. Maybe in the future, that computers will even be better than at us than that don't
Chris Rainey 27:58
know more about ourselves than we do. Right. And that's already the case in some examples, right? It's interesting, you say that, because literally on Easter Sunday, because I'm very sad. And I was still working. I had a call with with with a company I came across to building AI, kind of customer support slash layoff slash recruiting. And I, they gave me a demo, and I had a full blown conversation back and forth with this AI avatar, superhuman like, and it was two way dialogue. Yeah. And it's asking me questions, I was replying. And I was like, Oh, my God, this was like, This is crazy. And the first thing I thought was that what you said is, this is the first tier of customer support the people that people will hit. And then once they get through that, then maybe they'll speak to a human. Next. Yeah. And I was like, imagine how many jobs you're talking about millions and millions and millions. And it was and it was really good. Like, I was literally blown away. Because I was far away, I was spraying random questions that I never thought they would have answers to. And obviously, it has access to the internet, too, right? Yeah. So that's the other thing, even if it doesn't have an answer, if it's, it'd be what it was before. And as a web pilot,
Sean Behr 29:11
go find it, do whatever it needs to do. Exactly. Yeah, within
Chris Rainey 29:15
within reason and within parameters, but I was like, wow, like, this is gonna be a game changer. Yeah, we'll just say like, the biggest mistakes that companies make when it comes to frontline workers.
Sean Behr 29:26
Yeah, I would say the biggest mistake to I'd say, one is a macro one. One is, is a micro one coming back to the micro part is, you know, using the right tool set for that workforce. So thinking about even after they work for you, right, hey, we needed to communicate to them so we sent an email you might have that's like checking the box. Who knows if they even read that email? Probably not even got that email or even have an email address, right? So kind of this kind of like using the right tool would be the kind of the, the micro one, the macro one I would say is look for a long time we have been focused on Well, frontline workers always quit. So we can just replace them. And so I'd say the biggest mistake is getting stuck in that old thinking of like, this is a problem that cannot be solved. So we're just going to deal with it, we're just gonna like grin and bear it to say that to us a turn of phrase. And I think companies that are saying, wait a second, with new technology, with AI with all kinds of opportunities in front of us. Some of these old problems are not going to be problems in the future. How can we sort of rethink how we approach the frontline workforce with creativity with strategy in a way that really moves the needle for our business? So there's to be one small one and one big one?
Chris Rainey 30:59
I think they did. I think that both you just to be honest, because in the past, we never had the ability to, to do this at scale, and to create a personalized experience. And that's what that's where technology came in, has been a game changer. The ability to reach a large population at scale, whilst creating a personalized experience for them is just huge. And you could do it in the past, it was very expensive. It was very expensive and very time consuming. And I know because I've spoken to those poor HR leaders and teams and recruiting teams that were doing this manually, and it was tiring. Yeah, they wouldn't. They don't, they won't tell me that they're really excited about doing a lot of the admin work, as well. One of the interesting things that popped in my mind while you're saying those things is there's a lot of conversation that we're having now around skills based organizations moving to a skills based organization, how does what you're doing link with that? If it was?
Sean Behr 31:59
Absolutely, in order to be focused on sort of the acquisition, management and retention of this frontline workforce, you know, we are deeply interested in skills and skill development of our workers. So we make lots of partnerships will really ought to do is create an environment for that worker, where they see the future for themselves within the organization. And so I think you'll see us continue to evolve in this way of helping helping our customers retain those workers, they are opening opportunities for that global workforce, that frontline workforce around the world.
Chris Rainey 32:36
Do you have the ability to do skill mapping based on the information that you grab from that on that process to skill maps into their internal systems? We've been
Sean Behr 32:45
really interesting things like, Hey, would you be interested in doing this kind of role in the future? Right, based on your background, all of a sudden, you could communicate with that workforce and say, I want to I want to send a text message to all the workers who said they were interested in learning this other skill. Let's see if they want to take court take part in the course.
Chris Rainey 33:06
Yeah. Because a lot of times we miss that opportunity to another department. I love that, because a lot of times we missed missed that opportunity. Or, or that may not be something they mentioned in their CV. Right? So yes, completely missed all these skills. They exist in your business, you have no idea or even the interest and, and growth mindset that they want. Okay, maybe they don't, but they're also some people that are excited to be on that training course. Yeah. to that as well. So love that. Would you say is that when you speak to CHR OHS? You know, working with some great global companies, what would you say is one thing that they're not focusing on or talking about enough? But they really should be?
Sean Behr 33:48
Yeah, what are they talking about? What are they not talking about? One? One, I would say is that the the probably two things I'd say that are interesting. One is realizing that there is this shift in the frontline workforce. So one thing we talked about earlier was sort of these workers have more options. Okay, they have more options they've ever had before. So they're just a couple of clicks away from applying for another job. You know, they have a tough day at your location. It used to be they would have to drive across somewhere and go into another place and ask for an application. Now they can just have a bad day at work and say, All right, although by applying for another job, right. So kind of one thing we talked about is this competitive nature. The second thing is I would I would believe that there is a also a fundamental change in their desire. So it used to be sort of a foregone conclusion that workers wanted as many hours as they could get. They wanted to maximize their earnings. So you and hire the person. And you would say, okay, here are 35 or 40 hours of work, or 29 hours, or 32, or whatever the number is. And we, if you want more you can have them. What we're starting to see what I think CHR OHS are going to start to see is some of those workers are actually going the other way. Really, they're saying, I'll come work for you. But I don't want to work 32 hours a week, I only want to work 28. Because I do something else on Thursdays and Fridays. You know, maybe I deliver food, or I drive for ride sharing company, or I help my family member out with their business, or I have my own little business on the side that I'm trying to do. All of a sudden, as a company, if 20% of your workers decide they want to work 10 hours less, you now need to go hire more people to fill in that gap. Right. And so I think one of the things that teachers are not talking enough about is, there's there is definitely a fundamental change. I think maybe it's maybe because it's post COVID. And we all had an opportunity to kind of rethink how our lives are going, maybe somebody Alright, people
Chris Rainey 36:19
realized during that time, they picked up other jobs. And they're like, the gig gig economy really took off, right? And they're like, Oh, well, I don't have, I don't have to just be stuck to one job for my whole career, or for the whole month. So your point there already is to pursue. And that was another eye opening moment or the pandemic as people realized that they could get their job done, and also maybe set up a side project that they want to do. And the other point is maybe they also just want work life balance
Sean Behr 36:51
their family, friends, they want to go for the they want to exercise wherever they want to do. So I think that's that's unfortunately, or fortunately, I don't think that's changing, I don't think we're going back to a world where everybody is going to be in the same place for 47 hours a week or whatever, I think we're all just as fundamentally changed. It's our job as leaders to adapt to that change and drive business results. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 37:16
one of the challenges I've been hearing a lot recently, just, I would love to get your thoughts on. So this is specifically from CEOs from large companies with frontline workers, huge populations that are saying to me, it's getting harder and harder to attract young talent to work in the industry to do these type of jobs. And they sit there saying it becomes more and more difficult thoughts on that. You're not already. So
Sean Behr 37:39
it is it is it's incredibly, incredibly difficult. First thing you need to do is to these, there's a part of the job, I can't change. So if your job requires the worker to make french fries, or, you know, work in a very cold freezer, I can't make the freezer warmer, and I can't I can't help them make french fries. And better like that is the job. Okay, so there's not much I can do about the physical job that's there. But I can change everything around that job. One of the mistakes that the people are making is they'll say, Well, if we just pay people more money, all of a sudden, they want to sit in our very cold warehouse, or they'll want to make more French fries. Maybe, yeah, maybe, maybe there are things you can do that will make that job better for that worker, regardless of how much you paid them. Of course, if you pay them more money, that's wonderful. But a lot of these businesses can pay them more money. Because if you pay them more money, all of a sudden we start losing money as a company, right? And so what can you do to make the job better, it starts with, like, let's make it easy to work here. Let's make it easy to apply for this job. Let's make it easy to schedule an interview that works with the cus with the worker schedule. Let's take care of them during the onboarding process so that they they know exactly what they have to do before they show up for day one to work. You know, then let's survey them on their first day of work and find out how was day one. Right? Was it good? Was it bad? Oh is bad? Interesting. Why? Because you didn't feel like you understood how the cash register worked. Great. I can fix that. Again. I can't fix the fact that the warehouse is cold. And I can't fix that the French fries gets you know made and whatever they moil or whatever they like, do anything about that? Yeah, absolutely. Those are things I'm seeing in sort of attracting this. This younger population of worker. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 39:51
I'm seeing companies be really creative about this. There's a large transport logistics company that was speaking to recently that and they were doing some cool things for their truck driver. I was because it's quite lonely, a lonely job, you know, out on the road, hours and hours. And they created an app where they could connect with other drivers, and just have like social groups and channels where the children's and they say, as part of the app, they did like, specific wellbeing videos and stuff. Like it could be like, there was one that was like stretches for truck drivers, because they were sitting all day. So when they get out and do a certain stretch,
Sean Behr 40:27
the truck driver has to drive the truck, like until the computers and AI drive the truck, that the worker is going to be driving that truck for a while
Chris Rainey 40:35
even they found that by doing a buddy system, they had a 50% retention when retention went up by 50%. If they gave someone a buddy in the first few weeks, or a tactic, you know to do so. And a lot of these things don't cost a lot of money as well, by the way that people cost more thought than they do movie. Yeah, to lend money. What about one of the other challenges that you're just making me think about all the conversations I'm having with theater or big large frontline is they are struggling with the knowledge transfer. So you've got these highly skilled jobs, right? Because to be someone who looks after a specific machine, in a manufacturing environment, dislike works a certain way, as this probably has its quirks, but then that person leaves how what are you seeing around a knowledge transfer amongst frontline? Yeah,
Sean Behr 41:26
it's a huge challenge. huge challenge, right? So one is you've got to meet that, that technology accessible to the new worker, right? The good news is, almost all of these workers are carrying a computer in their pocket. Almost all of them. And this computer is more powerful than you know, the computer I had at university. It's an incredible device, right? It's equipped with a camera, it can play videos, it can download documents, it can do How to tutorials, can you leverage that technology to enhance and provide or provide and enhance that knowledge transfer? It's definitely doable. Yeah.
Chris Rainey 42:07
Before I let you go, going back to the sort of the numbers, what are you seeing in terms of impact for clients that you're working with? Give us some numbers of what you're seeing.
Sean Behr 42:16
Yeah, I mean, it's not uncommon for a customer of ours to go from being understaffed to fully staffed within 30 days of work equals meaning every hourly job they have is filled. How
Chris Rainey 42:29
are you doing that? Are you are you scanning that across job boards as well, like?
Sean Behr 42:35
One of these things, sometimes it's job boards, right? Okay. Sometimes they actually have enough people coming in. Oh,
Chris Rainey 42:42
just not doing a good job at converting? Yeah.
Sean Behr 42:45
Okay, what we'll see is customer who says, Look, from the day someone applies to the Daily Show for first day of work, two and a half weeks. So what is that 17 days. With found that's like five days. Now, if you go back to that competitive advantage, or that competitive market, if I'm applying to 10 jobs, I have a great experience with this one company. They scheduled the interview when it was convenient for me, they text message me and I can ask them questions and engage with them. And they tell me that I can start next Monday.
Chris Rainey 43:26
Verbruggen dandy,
Sean Behr 43:27
no brainer. Not applying anybody else. I'm going all in on this company. Yeah, those are things we do. But you'll see kind of a big shrink in time to hire, you'll see a big drop in job board spend, you know, they'll say, Look, I just don't need to add.
Chris Rainey 43:44
Of course, they're saving money by doing that, that needs money. You
Sean Behr 43:48
know, so those are, those are the kinds of differences we make. Last one, I'd say you know, I hinted at a little bit, but if you've got 100 great people coming in, apply for your job, and you're only getting one or two of them. That number can be 10. You just got to have the right piece of technology. Obviously, shameless plug for fountain you can learn more about us@founded.com.
Chris Rainey 44:11
Sorry, Chris. I had no no, I was gonna ask you later anyway. So it's fine. Like it
Sean Behr 44:17
can be 10. And if you get 10 of those great people to show up for your business, all of a sudden you're hiring problem goes away.
Chris Rainey 44:24
Yeah. Listen, man, I'm glad we're having this conversation. Because, strangely enough, you don't think we talk about frontline workers enough? You know, I do these shows every single like most days of the week. And it's very rare that we're actually having conversations around our frontline worker, which is crazy to me, because as we mentioned earlier in the conversation, they literally keep the world going. You know? 100% so I'm not surprised why you attracted on this new journey to join the business. So before I let you go, did founding.com What about yourself personally, where where can people connect with you? LinkedIn? You
Sean Behr 45:00
can find me on on LinkedIn, Shawn Baer and obviously you can find found net found.com. Amazing
Chris Rainey 45:06
man. Any parting advice before I let you go?
Sean Behr 45:10
Take care of those frontline worker, frontline workers. Yeah, the number one thing you can do both before you hire them, and especially after you hire, take care of that workforce and they'll take care of
Chris Rainey 45:22
your business. Amazing. Appreciate you coming on the show. Thanks so much.
Sean Behr 45:25
Thanks so much for having me, Chris. Great to talk to you.
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Richard Letzelter, CHRO at Acino.