Crystal Williams, Chief Human Resources Officer at Corpay, shares how companies can attract and retain top talent in a multi-generational workforce.
In this episode of Smarter Payments by Corpay, Brennan Robison interviews Crystal Williams, Corpay’s Chief Human Resources Officer, about strategies for attracting and retaining top talent in today's post-COVID landscape. Crystal, with her extensive experience at Corpay, discusses the evolving nature of the hiring market, which has transitioned from the upheaval of the Great Resignation to a more stable phase. She highlights that companies now face the challenge of balancing flexibility, particularly around remote and hybrid work, with the evolving expectations of a multi-generational workforce.
Crystal explains that different generations (Baby Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, Gen Z) have varying expectations of their employers, from stability to work-life balance to autonomy in how and where they work. Companies need to adapt their employee value propositions to meet these diverse needs. She emphasizes the importance of personal development opportunities, especially for younger generations, who value growth and a company’s purpose.
The conversation also touches on how companies can offer recognition and professional development, including Corpay's virtual Global Leader Program designed to teach leadership in a hybrid work environment. Crystal further shares Corpay’s success with a platform for employee recognition, where employees can give and receive "Gratitudes," fostering a positive work culture.
Finally, Crystal outlines three key strategies for attracting and retaining talent: adopting skill-based hiring, improving onboarding processes to reduce early turnover, and digitizing learning and development programs to engage younger employees. These strategies, alongside the lessons learned during the pandemic, are essential for building a productive and engaged workforce.
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Williams tease bite: Each company is going to have to decide what's best for them and their culture when it comes to trying to meet the needs of each of the generations that appear in their particular workforce.
Robison intro: With the hiring market in the U.S. returning to a state of normalcy, companies are combining proven and new strategies to attract and retain world-class talent. But it’s still more difficult to hire and keep top talent today than it was prior to Covid. This is Brennan Robison, Director of Corporate Communications for Corpay. On this episode of Smarter Payments by Corpay, we speak with Crystal Williams, Corpay’s Chief Human Resources Officer as she recounts the practices developed during the pandemic that companies can use to strengthen their teams moving forward. Here’s our conversation.
Robison: Well, hey, Crystal, welcome to the show. We appreciate your time.
Williams: Thank you so much, glad to be here.
Robison: Well, so we're here to talk about how companies can attract and retain top talent. And we typically start the show by asking our guests about their career journey. That's especially relevant with you because you were with Corpay, then FLEETCOR, almost from the beginning, correct?
Williams: Not quite the beginning. Then FleetCor Technologies was founded in the year 2000, and I joined in the year 2003. And so that was the year that we first broke even. Before that we had been losing money and weren't sure we were going to be an ongoing business at the time. But the year I came, all because of me, we broke even that year and we've been on a growth trajectory ever since then.
Robison: All because of you. And I've heard you say before that you weren't always sure you could make payroll.
Williams: Yes, that is true in those early days. That is absolutely true.
Robison: And all these years later, you went through an IPO and now you're a chief human resources officer at Corpay, $3.8 billion in revenue last year, more than 9 ,000 employees. That's a lot to manage.
Williams: More than 10 ,000 employees now. We have about 10 ,500 employees now and yes, it is a lot to manage. Not just because of the sheer number of employees, but because of the complexity of the geographies that we have. We're certainly a global company. At one point, we were international and we are now truly global.
Robison: Well, thank you for that correction. So, on our topic, we've all heard terms in recent years like Great Resignation, then Boomerang, then the Great Stay. So, maybe we can start by having you set the stage on where companies currently stand when it comes to hiring and retaining talent and how we got here.
Williams: I would say we are in a steady state now as much as we ever have been in a steady state. Obviously, the Great Resignation was prompted a lot by COVID -19. We are now past that. People figured out that the grass was not always greener on the other side. So, they said, let me boomerang back to what I know worked well for me pre-COVID. And now I'd say we're steady state. Most companies have attrition levels that they experience at some stable amount as long as there's not some sort of macroeconomic hit. There's some level of turnover at companies. And some level of voluntary turnover is very healthy. It brings in new ideas, it brings in fresh ideas, it brings in perspectives that you might not have in your current company. And that level of turnover has stabilized over the past, I call it, ‘23 and ’24 post-Covid. That's kind of where we are now. Back to steady state recruiting, the sources that do well for us, particularly here at Corpay, we have a strong referral network of where we hire people. And then we use such tools as LinkedIn to hire a lot of our professional roles. So, we are stable as we were pre -COVID at this point as our most companies.
Robison: So, we have several generations of employees working in the office. Working backwards, we have Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, that's me, Baby Boomers, even the Traditionalists before them. That would be five generations. And of course, you can't paint them all with a broad brush when you're trying to attract and retain them. If you would, walk through some of the distinctions between those groups in terms of their expectations and how companies can manage them.
Williams: Yes, that is a very, very true statement. The expectations of the employer-employee relationship varies widely by generation. And obviously, when we talk about generations, we're talking in generalities. And there always are going to be people who don't fit the stereotypical mold of that generation, but allow me to speak in generalities, you know, Baby Boomers kind of want something stable, which pays the bills and that's what they want out of their employer. The Gen Xers are more interested in, I want to make sure I have some sort of work-life balance. The Gen Yers are more of, well, I'm just not sure what I want. And the Gen Zers are much more, when they look at work, they want to work on their own terms. And in recent months, many companies are struggling with the employee value proposition they are offering their employees. Part of the employee value proposition that has come to be in the past several years since COVID is the flexibility to work either remotely or hybrid or some companies even have work from anywhere. We did have that here at Corpay for a bit. We still have a few people who are working from anywhere. We are mostly hybrid now, but each company is going to have to determine what is best for their culture. As you know in the news, Amazon has asked that all of their employees return to the office full-time starting in January, and their population is mostly the Gen Y, Gen Z who are looking for that flexibility as part of the employee value proposition. Therefore, there's been some backlash on that that you've seen all over social media. So, again, each company is going to have to decide what's best for them and their culture when it comes to trying to meet the needs of each of the generations that appear in their particular workforce.
Robison: So, if companies are going to have mandatory return to office, or RTO, they're going to need to offer more than salary and benefits. What are some other things they can offer such as personal development?
Williams: Yes, personal development is key, especially with your younger generations. They do want to understand, learn, grow. They also want to work for companies that have a good purpose and good values. What is the company doing for the community in which they operate? What does the company stand for? What are the values? So, in addition to or as a substitute for some of that flexibility, having some of those value driven initiatives at a company can be very, very attractive to what will be the majority of the workforce in the next several years, the Gen-Y, the Gen-Z.
Robison: So, offering that professional development has always been a thing. The nature of it has changed since COVID. If you could describe that a little bit.
Williams: Yes, again, each company had to determine what was best for them to continue their learning efforts during a time where people couldn't be together physically. And here at Corpay, we launched during COVID one of our premier offerings, which is called the Global Leader Program, and it's to teach managers how to be leaders in today's world with today's different generations in the workforce in a hybrid environment, etc. And so, we offer it to executives on down to frontline managers and it's completely virtual, but there are pods that are assigned to each cohort so each cohort is about 20 people, and then there's a pod of about four people that get together virtually to do homework, to ideate, to talk about the concepts they're learning, to give feedback to one another, to give what opportunities could be had to one another. And so, it's been a really, really, really big hit for us. We also supplement that with, again, using LinkedIn as one of our learning platforms, there's lots and lots of great content on there that we're able to supplement our facilitated courses with. And I'm certain that every other company is revamping their learning and development to be more virtual, more digital, and more self-paced, because frankly, we've gone to more self-paced learning as well.
Robison: And speaking again about the various generations, especially the younger ones, they're well known, and I don't want to get too stereotypical here, but they're known for enjoying compliments and enjoying a good pat on the back when they do a good job. What can companies do to address that need?
Williams: Yes, recognition is key. You know, with the more mature generations, the Boomers and before, what was important was moving up the corporate ladder. And that was what was considered to be recognition. Recognition comes in all flavors. You mentioned a couple, a pat on the back, an opportunity for learning, an opportunity to go to a conference, an opportunity for a rotational assignment. Any and all of those things should be used by a company to try to retain the best and the brightest from any generation that's in their workforce. And recently, about a year ago now, we launched an actual platform that's globally used by all of our leaders and associates to recognize one another for sorts of things. Thank you for helping me, my computer died, and thank you for helping me with that. Thank you for leading this project and getting us X amount in new revenue. Thank you for living one of the values such as collaboration. Without you I could not have accomplished this task. So, it's for all kinds of things and the employees earn points, and those points can be used to redeem merchandise of their choosing from any of the sites. And we probably have about a 60% adoption rate after one year. We're striving for 75% adoption rate.
Robison: And again, these Gratitudes are essentially public within the company. Others see the compliment and can even respond to them, correct?
Williams: That's exactly right. Others can see the compliments, respond. And you can also give a compliment or a Gratitude, if you will, without any points associated with it. So, it's multifaceted. And the employees are really, really liking it since we implemented it a little over a year ago.
Robison: Very good. Well, no one can predict the future, but what would you suggest companies like Corpay can do to take full advantage of both traditional and post-COVID strategies to build a productive and happy employee community moving forward?
Williams: Yep, I just want to remind everyone that one size does not fit all. And whatever your employee value proposition is, it has to be flexible in order to attract and retain from all generations. Again, what's important for one generation or one person is not necessarily important to another. And so, allowing for that flexibility and in and yank if you will in your employee value proposition is quite, quite, quite important.
Robison: So, can you cite any methods of attracting and retaining talent that came out of COVID and that stuck around because they continue to be effective?
Williams: Yes, the most common one that we employed during COVID was this flexibility of where you work. So, previously, prior to COVID, if we were hiring someone in a leadership position, we asked that you move. If you were not located here at headquarters or in one of our large hubs in the US, we asked that you move to one of those large hubs. We found during COVID, people were not willing to uproot their families and change their lifestyles to come to a different location than where they currently were. We are still employing that methodology, not as commonly as during COVID, but we are still allowing if a leader lives in a different place and cannot or will not move for various personal reasons, we will allow them to stay where they are assuming that they will do all of the things that a virtual employee should do to be engaged, such as when you're on a virtual meeting, you're on camera, such as traveling in when you need to be, such as having your team meetings and your one-on-ones on schedule just as if you were in person. So, that is the biggest change that still sticks around since COVID first started.
Robison: And just to put a period on the discussion, what would you say the top three things companies should consider moving forward so that they can attract and retain top talent?
Williams: Great question. Attracting talent is a little different in the past several years. Companies are finding that experience, while great, is necessary but not sufficient. So, the first thing I would say companies should consider is skill-based hiring. What skills or potential does the candidate bring to the table that will be additive to the company, and they can learn the rest? So as an example, if I were applying for a CHRO role and I only have five years of experience, and they really want 10 years of experience, if they look at the other things I have done, look at my potential, look at my skill set, then they might be able to get over the extra five years of experience that I do not have, that I could be a great and successful asset to the company. That kind of describes skill -based hiring. Second, especially if you're using skill -based hiring, you need a great onboarding program. Unfortunately, many companies, including Corpay, have early attrition, meaning the candidates that we hire, especially at the more entry levels, do not make it a year with us. Obviously, we want to have people who are engaged and productive working with us, and we want them to stick around for more than a year. And so, onboarding is one of the biggest contributors to early turnover being lower than it would be without a good onboarding program. Onboarding means helping employees understand the written rules and the unwritten rules. What's the culture like? Are you a walk-in culture or do you always need an appointment? Are you a face-to-face culture or do you mostly use email? Just the things that are in the culture that one wouldn't think you need to train people on, but obviously you do. The other thing that comes with onboarding is obviously the skills needed to do the job effectively, the systems that are unique to any particular company, the cadence of the management meetings within the company, I'm expected to show up at the town hall, I'm expected as a manager to lead a monthly staff meeting, those things that way, those all need to be part of the onboarding cadence of new employees when you bring them on board. The last thing I would say is a really good thing to think about is your L&D program. And again, digitizing it, making it fun, putting some gamification in there for the younger generations would all be great ideas to help retain your great high-potential employees once you've gotten them on board.
Robison: Very good. Well, we appreciate your insights and sound advice. Crystal Williams, Chief Human Resources Officer at Corpay. Crystal, we appreciate it.
Williams: Thank you so much.
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Robison outro: That's it for this episode of Smarter Payments. Thank you for listening. Be sure to follow the show wherever you get your podcasts, so you don't miss an episode. Smarter Payments is a production of Corpay Incorporated, copyright 2024. I'm Brennan Robison. And we'll see you next time.