Creating Healthy Workplace Culture, with William Vanderbloemen – Episode 235 of The Action Catalyst Podcast

Entrepreneur, author, and Founder / CEO of Vanderbloemen Search Group, William Vanderbloemen, explains the dynamics of creating an irresistible workplace, the 3 main reasons people leave their jobs (4 for millennials), what Saturday morning cartoons have to do with job retention, why most cultural problems boil down to hiring problems, the difference between culture and core values, how to assess the 8 key areas of workplace health or toxicity, and gives several quick exercises for pinpointing what your culture is.

About William:

William Vanderbloemen has been able to combine over 15 years of ministry experience as a Senior Pastor with the best practices of Executive Search to provide churches with a unique offering: a deep understanding of local church work with the very best knowledge and practices of professional executive search.

Prior to his founding the Vanderbloemen Search Group, William studied executive search under a mentor with over 25 years of executive search at the highest level. His learning taught him the very best corporate practices, including the search strategies used by one of the largest and most reputable search firms in the world.

William also has experience as a Manager in Human Resources in a Fortune 200 company, where he focused on the integration of corporate culture and succession planning.

All of these experiences have come together with his pastoral work to form a unique gift for helping churches and ministries connect with the right key people.

Prior to executive search, William led growth and innovation in churches in North Carolina, Alabama, and Houston. During his time in Alabama, William had the chance to help rebuild and relocate an ailing congregation, and lead them to new levels of growth. At 31, he was elected Senior Pastor for the First Presbyterian Church of Houston, a church of about 5,000 adults and 1,500 children strong. It is Houston’s oldest congregation.

William is regularly invited to speak across the country in both church services and as a resource to churches and conferences on leadership. He has released the books Search: The Pastoral Search Committee Handbook, Culture Wins: The Roadmap To An Irresistible Workplace , and Next: Pastoral Succession That Works, as well as an Updated & Expanded version of Next.

William holds degrees from Wake Forest University and Princeton Theological Seminary.

Besides helping connect churches with key staff and preaching, William spends a whole lot of time with family and connecting with people.

William, his wife Adrienne, their seven children, and their poodle, Pearl live in Houston. In his free time, William enjoys running, working out, and caddying for his kids, who are now better golfers than he is.

For more, visit Vanderbloemen.com.

Get the book: Culturewins.org

Culture test: TheCultureTool.com

The Action Catalyst is presented by the Southwestern Family of Companies. With each episode, the podcast features some of the nation’s top thought leaders and experts, sharing meaningful tips and advice. Learn more at TheActionCatalyst.com, subscribe below or wherever you listen to podcasts, and be sure to leave a rating and review!

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(Transcribed using A.I. / May include errors):

Host
My guest that we have for you today I’m super excited about William Vanderbloemen. His company Vanderbloemen Search Group wins all these crazy awards. They were like number 23 best search firm in the country number three best. Third Best Place to Work in Houston. He writes for Forbes has a weekly column there. He’s got a couple books that are out. He’s also got degrees from Wake Forest at Princeton from Theological Seminary. I mean, just a total awesome guy mover and shaker. And his new book is called Culture Wins: The Roadmap to an Irresistible Workplace. So William, welcome to the show.

William Vanderbloemen
Wow, that I hope people don’t believe everything you just said. That was awesome. Great to be with you, man.

Host
Yeah. So in terms of creating an irresistible workplace, why do people leave? Like if you have to boil it down? What causes people to leave?

William Vanderbloemen
Sure, sure. Well, so we did a whole lot of research for this book we did, we took time to say, Hey, we’ve won a lot of awards for a great place to work. And that led people to say, Can you write about this Forbes asked us to write about this. And then we said, well, we can tell our story about how we built a culture, we actually had to reverse engineer, we were like, how did we do that? So we stepped back. And he said, I guess we did this and this and this. And we sort of intuitively fell into what we’ve got. But we said, You know what other books are out there. But let’s not just tell our story. Let’s get up underneath the hood of all the great cultures we can find. So I took a stack of magazines that were award winning lists of award winning companies for culture, handed them to a young employee at our firm, and said, Go find the email addresses of all the CEOs and get me at least 100 phone appointments so that we can study and it did and what we’ve been covered with some best practices. So getting back to your question, what we also uncovered, there are lots of studies on the internet, which are all true if they’re on the internet, right? And the baseline like the most common answer to how many people in America like their job, the most common answer is two out of three Americans hate their job, not modestly dislike not Oh, I can’t wait till hump day is over, or I need some more time off, I hate their job. And so like what in the world is causing that? And we found a few common answers. First of all, people don’t leave jobs, they leave managers. turnover is usually a problem with management and not a problem with we don’t have enough ping pong tables, or whatever the thing is for culture. The second thing we found was, people leave the job because they don’t know what their job is. If people say, I don’t know what I’m supposed to get done. And then the third thing we found is people leave a job is because once they do know what they’re supposed to get done, they aren’t equipped with the tools or resources to actually go get it done. So you know, people sit around, like, I don’t know what success is. And then it finally gets defined. I can’t get there. And I don’t like my manager. So I hate my job. Now, a fourth reason you’re, you’re, I think, still a millennial, and what I’m learning about millennials, because I’m not one is if there’s no why behind the what I’m out, there’s got to be a cause. Behind the what we’re doing, you know, the Simon Sinek talk that’s been seen 18 bajillion times. Now, I should start with why that whole why behind the what is a big deal? And I think, well, that’s the fourth place answer right now. I bet in 10 years, it’s number one, because that millennial generation is starting to dominate the workforce just by sheer numbers. So I think you’re gonna see an even bigger shift. So the answer your question is people leave managers, not jobs. But I think within 10 years, it’s gonna be people will leave if you don’t have a cause for what you’re doing.

Host
Are people job hopping more?

William Vanderbloemen
Totally. And not just job hopping, career hopping? And you’re talking about a generation and you can blame me and say those millennials? Or you can drop back and say, Well, why is that? So you know, the generation before where you do 35 years at Ford, and you retire with the gold watch and all that. That’s the generation that grew up with radio, and then by later in their career, they had three TV stations to choose from. Now, think about your life, think about somebody 10 years younger than their life. You know, when I talk to older groups, I often say I’m old enough, I’m mid 40s. That for me, my favorite part of the week when I was a kid was Saturday morning. And the younger part of the room looks at me like what in the world are you talking about? The older brother room just nods and it you know why? And all the old people say the cartoons were on right you look at a millennial and say what are the cartoons on? What are you talking about? I just watch what I want. Again, an on demand. I watch it on YouTube. I watch it we’re so you, you’ve got a generation that’s grown up in a world of infinite options. So why wouldn’t they see their career as a span of years full of infinite options? It’s just natural. So I think you will see not just job hopping but career hopping and that’s Where I found, you know, as we studied what makes a great culture? And who’s sinking money into it, and why are they spending money on it? When I interviewed CEOs, I got a lot of different answers about why I spend money on culture. But the number one answer that every one of them answered was retention. The money I spend on culture always pays for itself because people stay longer than they would have otherwise, maybe that means they stay eight years instead of four, not 35 with a gold watch, but but when you start running the numbers of what it cost to replace people in the end of this loss, retention is the ball game for the future of the American workplace.

Host
What are some of the numbers like, what’s the cost?

William Vanderbloemen
Well, yeah, I mean, you can justify anything you want, you can find a study on the Internet that will give you any number you want. But but we try to read a whole lot and then boil it down to a transferable principle. And what what we found is just for round numbers sake, $100,000 employee, which is a high level employee, should they leave and will not will not even factor in Is it a good leave, or a bad leave? Is it $100,000 employee leaving will probably cost you a quarter million dollars. And that’s how I did soft costs all wrapped together. And so it’s and it’s gonna happen, I mean, turnover happens in turnover, and always bad, you’re gonna fast growing organization, you probably got people that were great when you had 40 employees. But when we got to 100, they couldn’t, couldn’t hang. And that’s not their fault. It’s just different. It’s a different company. But if you can mitigate the amount and frequency of turnover, especially unnecessary turnover, then your ROI goes up. I talked to one CEO of a software company, he’s up in New York City, and they have a very particular software solution that they sell. They’re three companies that all sell the same type of solution, right? And all three of them sell it at the same price. They sell to the same market, there’s no product differentiation, and he’s a $20 million company. And he said last year, he spent roughly $2 million on culture. I’m like, what, why in the world? He said, well, because my EBIT da was 60 some percent higher than his competitors. I said, What do you mean your earnings is, is better than your competitor? You got the same price point, same solution said, Did you do more sales? Nope. Same revenue. He said, In our industry, we’re notorious for churning through people, the average churn rate is about 38%. And I’ve got my churn rate down to one and a half percent. So if you think he’s got 200 People 38% means 76. People would leave me normally every year and my other two competitors, they lose 76 people every year. What are you going to charge me? Well, you have to do 76 searches, what have I got to do to train 76 new employees? How much momentum do I lose, and morale that drops when these people are walking out the door? I spent $2 million people love working here I fly my whole team to a big retreat, I spend money on things, not competitors don’t, my people stay. And the fact that they stay makes us more profitable, even though we’re not charging one penny more and not selling one widget more.

Host
So what really makes them stay? I mean, is it just the inverse of why they leave? Is that why they stay?

William Vanderbloemen
I think a lot of it is inverse, you get people who actually want to be at work. I think when you say you know the culture doesn’t belong to a corporate entity, it belongs to a person, the companies that I studied that got serious about defining what their cultural values were started hiring around those cultural values. So that up, put it this way, you know, everybody’s crazy. And if you haven’t figured that out, then you know, you will. So it’s not finding people who aren’t crazy to work for you. It’s finding people who are the same kind of crazy as you. And when you start hiring, where you’ve got a tribe of people that are similar, well, then you’re gonna have personality clashes because people are broken. And that’s just the way the world is. But at least you’re in the same tribe. And the manager is not insufferable. So frankly, most cultural problems are really a hiring problem. And I think that companies that have gotten it, right, the ones that have gotten it, right, frankly, are mostly newer companies, because they’ve been able to build from the ground up, you know, a company two, three generations deep or a couple 100 years old. The culture is pretty hard to turn on a dime. And if you’ve got a real problem, it takes a long, long time. But the other the other interesting thing about why people stay, you talked about millennials, job hopping Barna, you know, this group, they’re a polling and surveying group pretty well known and they asked a question of people born in different decades. Here’s the question, pretend your young adult 22 years old, what do you want to have accomplished by the time? You’re 35? Great question. Right. So every group that answered except Millennials had almost identical, the same top five answers. Here’s what they want to get done. They wanted to by the time that 35 We want to get married, start a family, owned a home, be on a secure job track and have some financial peace. Millennials? Have those top five answers, how many of them hit their top five? Just one, financial peace. So what does that mean for the workplace and for culture, what that means is you’re hiring people who probably aren’t near their family probably don’t have a family to go home to probably haven’t locked into a career yet, and probably see their workplace as the closest thing they’re gonna have to a family. And so if you find a workplace, that’s just, frankly, hell bent on building a culture where that family can feel like they’re more connected than just their work and connected through a cause, and connected to the cultural code, well, then people are gonna stay, and they’ll put up with highs and lows economically a lot better. And they’ll put up with rising health care costs, and all those things a lot better. If this is my family, I don’t have a wife and kids to go, this is it. And it’s a cause I believe in and a well defined culture. And the people here are somewhat like me in terms of belief and how we function and the companies that I studied that got that right, have very few turnover issues.

Host
So getting into the practical, how do we actually keep people? How do we create retention?

William Vanderbloemen
I think it all depends on what’s the old advice of I forget which Greek philosopher it was that his his best advice was know yourself. And I think if a company will take time to drop back and know themselves, and then build all those bells and whistles around that, then that that will make a difference in here. So I’m guessing that a lot of your listeners have businesses that already have what they call core values. But are they cultural values? And when you say cultural, you know, you think what, what is a culture, and lots of different definitions are out there. But it’s the traditions and symbols and behaviors that are passed along from one generation to the next without thinking about it. And and if a company can can get a hold of those customs and traditions and behaviors? And what is it that that we do that’s good, and then build the ping pong table in the vending machine in the Yogen. Stir all that around that well, then that is a win. And here’s a really practical question to ask if you’re saying we do have core values, but they’re not cultural values. They don’t describe how we behave. They don’t describe our customs. They just say things like, excellence. I’m so tired of excellence being a core value, I want to find the company that says, you know, mediocrity is really what we’re after. But, but like, a cultural value is more how do we behave? It’s the how we get our work done. And the question that a company can ask all of its employees to start the conversation is this, you can say, Look, when we are functioning at our very, very best. What do we do as a team that’s common to us, but uncommon to other teams we see around us. Because there’s some quirkiness that you guys share when you do your best for us. It’s like responding with almost dysfunctional speed. Like, don’t you have a life form getting back to me so fast? But you know, that’s, that’s our deal. And it’s been a signature for us. And we didn’t even realize that we went through this exercise. When we’re functioning at our best, what do we do as a team that’s common to us? That’s uncommon to others. And long story short, through the process of building cultural values. We named it as ridiculous responsiveness. That’s our deal. And, you know, we interview for it, we, we do sneaky bad stuff, during interviews to see if somebody’s got the same dysfunction we do. If they’re really ridiculously responsive. If they are, they’re gonna fit if they’re not, they’re probably a great employee for somebody else.

Host
Yeah, before we go, where should people go? If if they want to kind of learn about Culture Wins? And where would you point people?

William Vanderbloemen
You can go to culturewins.org And find the book there. If you’re really interested in other things about us, you can go to vanderbloemen.com and it just spell it just like that.

Host
It’s clear and obvious and easy to spell, and there’s a lot of vowels.

William Vanderbloemen
You know, we bought probably 300 domain names when we started. And we hired an SEO consultant and said, which one of these I don’t want to name it after me, don’t be my name on the door. And he came back and he said, I got good news and bad news. I got the great website for you. You’re not going to like it. So bad news. He said, We need to use your last name. Your last name is so screwed up that you can misspell it 200 different ways into Google and it’ll feed back to you so we just went with that. So misspell it however you want Vanderbloemen you’ll you’ll find your way or there or culturewins.org.

Host
Smart. Alright, William. So what’s the first thing? The first step?

William Vanderbloemen
That’s a great question. We tried to answer that while we were writing the book. There’s really two layers to culture. The first thing you have to ask yourself is is this a healthy place to work? It is toxic. That’s a whole different conversation. And then defining values. So to help people know, are we functioning? Well, we did some research, we found eight key areas of health or toxicity. And we built online assessment. So if people go to the culture tool.com, they’ll find a free online assessment. They can have their whole team, take the test, we’ll send you back a report that shows you how you measure up, what’s your median score, where you work, what’s better, what’s worse, and how do you measure up against all the other businesses that have come and taken this test? So that’s the culturetool.com.

Host
I love it. Thank you for sharing this this as interesting perspective to have from somebody who has a full time living of talking to people that are coming and going in and out of companies.

William Vanderbloemen
Thanks so much. I appreciate you having me on.