Episode Overview

Ultra-Staff EDGE brings to you the Staffing Buzz Network, where host Bob Pettke chats with Cathi Canfield, VP of Enterprise Transformation at Employbridge, the largest light industrial staffing company in North America. They discuss Cathi’s recognition in the 2023 Global Power 150 Women in Staffing list, her insights on workforce trends, and Employbridge’s “Voice of the American Worker” survey, which sheds light on evolving worker priorities, including flexibility, transparency, and the future of staffing.

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Episode Transcript:

Bob Pettke: [00:00:00] Coming to you from the Ultra-Staff Studios in Chicago, welcome to the Staffing Buzz Network with your host, Bob Petke.

Hello, Staffing World, and welcome to the Staffing Buzz Network. I am Bob Petke, the Chief Sales Officer here for Ultra-Staff EDGE. We are a full-service front office and back office ATS CRM solution for staffing companies, just like many of the ones that you work at. With this podcast, it continues to be our intent to add value to the staffing community by having subject matter experts on the Staffing Buzz Network, like the one we have today.

And I’m going to go ahead and introduce Cathi. How are you, Cathi?

Cathi Canfield: Hi, good to see you, Bob. Thanks for having me. Cathi, I’m so [00:01:00] glad you’re here.

Bob Pettke: So today’s guest is Cathi Canfield. I’m going to give you some information. It’s going to. I’ve said this now three times in a row. It’s going to be like, this is your life in staffing, Cathi. Our guest is Cathi Canfield. She is the vice president of enterprise transformation at Employbridge, which is, I believe, the largest light industrial staffing company in North America.

Cathi Canfield: That’s right. That’s right. Okay.

Bob Pettke: And at Employbridge, Cathi, you are focusing on innovative solutions for digital transformation to benefit companies and workers. Additionally, Cathi, again, this is your life. You actively pursue new ways to perform work to positively impact client, associate and colleague experience. Cathi, you have a deep, deeply invested interest in the development of Employbridge throughout leadership and insights, including, and I’m going to put quotes here, the voice of the American Workforce [00:02:00] Survey also Employbridge’s Better Work Life Academy and the Life Skills Studio.

How am I doing so far?

Cathi Canfield: Awesome. I love it.

Bob Pettke: Okay. So through these efforts, what you’re doing is you’re seeking to improve the associates’ work lives through empathy, understanding, education, and stability, which leads to higher engagement and longevity with customers. So again, I just laid it all on the line for you.

Cathi, welcome. We’re so glad to have you here on the Staffing Buzz Network.

Cathi Canfield: Awesome. So excited to be here.

Bob Pettke: Cathi, as I dive in, one of the things that I like to do is we bring in subject matter experts is this is my opportunity for you and to put our money where our mouth is, as far as having a quality caliber person on.

So Cathi, in 2023, you were named to the global power, 150 Women in Staffing list. [00:03:00] For 2023. That was in November. So, first off, congratulations.

Cathi Canfield: Ah, thank you so much. Huge honor.

Bob Pettke: Tell me or tell the audience something about this list. Tell us about this list, what it really is, comprised of what’s its what’s the root of this and secondly.

What does this mean for you?

Cathi Canfield: Yeah, great. For those who maybe don’t know, women in staffing, we drive a lot of the staffing industry, throughout certainly the United States and North America, but also globally. And I think it’s a great opportunity for SIA, the organization who announces and recognizes these women, to say, “Hey, we have some movers and shakers out there who are.”

Imagining the future of staffing labor is a big part of our world, right? And if we don’t have the right people in the right seats, it can definitely affect how productive we are, whether we’re in the logistics space or the clerical space or transportation. And the list is meant to identify women [00:04:00] who are leading, and that can be certainly an innovation or transformation, but also you know, CEOs, folks who are rethinking diversity and equity in the workplace.

Just really amazing things. Folks who’ve ultimately gone out and grown through MNA and now are leading huge parts of their organizations in safety and risk and legal, and so just a huge honor and a really neat thing that the SIA does to spotlight some leaders in the industry.

Bob Pettke: No. And. I appreciate it, right? I appreciate the explanation and coast-to-coast. I’ve been in this industry on the staffing side of things for many years. And I know a lot of very smart men and women. And in this particular case, we’re talking about women like yourself. What a tremendous honor and privilege.

And again, kudos and congratulations on that once again.

Cathi Canfield: Thank you so much.

Bob Pettke: Tell me, Cathi, now, as part of this group, what does this mean for you?

Cathi Canfield: Yeah, it’s my [00:05:00] first year being named to this to this awesome group of women. And, for me, it was just an opportunity. I, to your point, I’ve been in the staffing space for a while and know a lot of these folks, whether personally or from afar, have just respected how folks have come up in the organizations that they’re a part of or have made moves that have allowed them to become, leaders in their organizations. And for me, being with Employbridge now, I’ve had the huge opportunity and just been blessed really to be allowed to Gabble in a lot of different things over the years and giving me a huge opportunity for growth and for learning.

And for me, it’s just a confirmation of, yes, like you have done these things, and they’re able to be recognized in a larger forum outside the company, just a huge honor and really cool to be able to represent Employbridge as well on that stage. So super excited.

Bob Pettke: No. And Cathi and I, former colleagues, and from the time that I’ve known you from several years back, [00:06:00] you’re an out-of-the-box thinker. You have always been on the cutting edge of innovation, which is part of what we talked about when I first introduced you. And I think that congratulations on your first of many years on that list.

So well done. Cathi, I’m going to switch gears just a little bit. And you talked about being in staffing, and I’m asking this of everybody that comes on. How did you end up or get into staffing in the first place? Cause I don’t think you probably studied it in school. Tell me about that.

Cathi Canfield: Yeah, I think we all would agree. No one planned to go into the staffing industry. And I am not alone or unique. My early years were spent in economic development and small business development and, think to yourself, business plans and SBA loans and boards of directors and just developing of teams and businesses and choosing sites for awesome, huge manufacturing facilities and those types of things. And when I got the opportunity to meet with a small, we would consider [00:07:00] small compared to Employbridge today, a small staffing company in Indiana, and they were looking for just a leader locally and it was family-owned, and it was one of these conversations like, You don’t know anything about staffing yet, but you have all this small business development and all this know-how.

And so together, this could be something really cool. Will you come in and learn the ropes and then help us grow? When I joined the company, then we had seven offices, maybe 26 million in revenue annually. But we would consider it relatively small in the staffing space.

And when we got acquired by Employbridge, 10 years later, we had 125 offices and over 400 million in sales. And just a huge opportunity, what I would consider a bunch of young people in staffing, having a total blast really hard to compete in the space and, to your point, to think about staffing differently.

And when you work in a smaller environment like that with a lot of people who [00:08:00] really enjoy. You’re able to imagine, and create a new vision for how things may be. And once I caught the staffing bug, I just still today love it. I love the variety of the work I’ve been able to do, of course, over the years.

I think that’s part of the key of staying fresh. But yeah, I just can’t imagine a better place where. We get to help so many workers, of course, who are looking for work and helping them excel, but also clients have this need for quality labor. And we get to make those matches every day and work with a lot of amazing people side by side.

And so that’s just an awesome job.

Bob Pettke: So, when you first got into staffing, I’m going to double-click on this one. Did you find that company, or did they find you?

Cathi Canfield: Great question. I found them. It’s a college town here in Indiana, home of the Indiana Hoosiers. So, in Bloomington. And so I had reached out to them just [00:09:00] to see what I was in a transition myself coming out of this small business development scenario, and then, actually, the person who I was speaking to said, “Your background is really interesting.”

We have an opening that I think you may be interested in. And again, you find the right recruiter, as we all know, and staffing who asks the right questions. The right questions and the rest is money. And I’m still friends with her today. Like she’s a super close friend. And so she made to ask the right questions, and it was history.

Bob Pettke: So, did you go in looking for a job in general? “Hey, I’m looking for a career. Can you put me on an assignment or find me a job?”

Cathi Canfield: Yeah, so I had done some temporary work when I was in college. And, of course, that didn’t bother me at all. And I always thought it was a super unique concept. And so, in that case, yeah, I was just looking for stuff in between.

I just relocated. And so I wasn’t really in a spot where I had to find a job right away. And, we all know going through an interview process and all those things is can [00:10:00] take a while. And yeah, I didn’t interview with anyone else. That was it.

Bob Pettke: And the streak is alive, Cathi, because one of the things that I’ve said for years is that we don’t necessarily choose staffing to be in the actual industry.

That’s right. But somehow, staffing shows us just like your recruiter did, and more importantly. It takes a unique person. There is a brethren or a fraternity in what we do. Very much like-minded, all have similar stories, and if we can’t do it, the staffing will let us know we can’t do it for sure. So it takes a unique person and those transferrable skills, and that’s usually the story. Somebody’s got transferable skills, and here they are, finding themselves and really building a career in something that they might not have. Ever otherwise considered. So again, thanks for sharing that with me.

But we’re gonna switch gears into something that we talked about a little bit. You mentioned it, I mentioned it when I introduced you. You’ve been heavily involved in the voice of the American [00:11:00] worker. And to be more specific, wage worker. Can you tell us a little about the work you’ve done, of the things that you do, that you’ve acquired through that process?

Cathi Canfield: One of the things that Employbridge att em pts to do is to be a thought leader to your largest light industrial company in the country.

And so, because of that, we have all these amazing access to tens of thousands of clients. I think we W- 2, over 450,000 hourly workers last year, amazing colleagues. And so that allows us to talk to a lot of people. And years ago. We’re coming up, I think, on 18 years of doing this survey.

We had a team of folks who said, Hey, instead of talking to customers about things that we think are happening in an anecdotal manner, [00:12:00] why don’t we take advantage of all these folks who do amazing things for us and really ask them exactly what they think about work and what they’d like to do and what they’d like to see.

And so that’s started again, years ago now. And now we’re in a spot to say, 17 years, 18 years, largest survey of its kind. Last year, we hit around 29,000 responses. In the world of surveys, 600, 2000 is big. So when we say we’re talking to almost 30,000 hourly workers and taking their voice and sharing their voice, people listen.

It’s, “Do tell! What do we know?” And so we talked to them about several things. Certainly, their impressions of pay and what’s important to them from a retention perspective. But we also talked to them about learning and upskilling and what they would like to do, and their plans to be in the industry or not.

And you can imagine we [00:13:00] break that data out Generationally, to take a look at what could be different from an age group perspective or gender, is there something that the male worker looks for versus a female and then within the industries, right? Does a logistics worker look at something differently than a manufacturing worker or someone in transportation?

And so it’s been a labor of love for sure. You can imagine a lot of work, but, really, the, what we’ve noticed certainly post cove it is that workers have a different view of their relationship with work; I think that’s been one of the biggest, just larger overarching things for us to think about is.

Before COVID, and it was changing before COVID, but after COVID, many folks just had a realignment of what’s important. And, as my daughter, who’s 12, would say in the olden days, pre-COVID, we would say work maybe came first, but a little too often in our lives, and [00:14:00] certainly for the hourly worker, it’s They recognize that they, of course, need to work to create stability, but how they’re willing to do that and what they’re willing to do during those hours has changed.

And so they won’t take any more whatever is being offered. They want choice, they want to be treated well, and they’ll work really hard, and they will be incredibly loyal in those jobs. But if the employer isn’t meeting them, where they are more apt to move and take another opportunity.

And, of course, they’re out there, right? We still have almost two jobs for every working person. And maybe previously a worker would not take the opportunity to move as quickly as we see today. They just won’t take on an environment where they’re not comfortable.

Bob Pettke: No, great. And I want to talk more about the 40-hour work week in just a moment, but I wanted to ask you, when you’re surveying these [00:15:00] associates and you said upwards to 30,000, if I’m not mistaken, are you getting feedback from them just by going through that exercise at all?

Cathi Canfield: Yeah, a few things there. That group of folks is split almost evenly; a third of folks who are looking for work. So we have a view of a job seeker. We have our client’s full-time hourly workers included in that survey. So a person who’s receiving benefits and, or at least has access to them and has, the stability of a job and then our temporary workers who are working and, likely, working what we would refer to as right long-term temporary assignments.

And so those views start to morph a little bit. We do pull them out and take a look and see, but. I think many people would be surprised that all three of those groups actually think very similarly about work. There isn’t because of their circumstance. Their circumstance isn’t necessarily [00:16:00] changing their view around, “Hey, I want an opportunity to advance here. I want an opportunity to learn a new skill here. I’m, I’m interested in staying in the industry.” I think if you watch national news, you may hear things like, “Oh, manufacturing is dying. No one wants to work in manufacturing.” We see otherwise; folks who are working in manufacturing are like, I like this, and I plan to stay here.,

So then it’s not really the worker attitude there. It’s now up to our corporations, our companies to identify those folks who want to be here. And then how do we welcome them in? How do we make sure that they know that they have a place here and that they have a career path here with us? And so it’s a really unique opportunity now.

To allow the companies who are the most creative and who are willing to extend that olive branch to their current [00:17:00] workers in their facilities, I think, are going to be pleasantly surprised by how open and willing those workers are to stay and be solid workers.

Bob Pettke: No, I couldn’t agree with you more. And one of the things I would think, and you can guide me through this as I make a statement just from observation when you actually take the time and give the associates, they might be walk-up-and-do-work, might be temp-to-hire. The fact you’re really asking some pointed questions really shows that you care.

And I would think maybe and somewhat as a result, it might even help with employee retention longevity and things like that nature. How am I on that one?

Cathi Canfield: I think that’s right. We even try after we do our survey, we actually reach back out to associates to say, “Hey, [00:18:00] this is what you told us. Thank you.” because they don’t have to participate, right?

It’s 100 percent voluntary. And so I think you’re right. I think workers, and I would say any worker, likes the opportunity to be heard and to share their view. And we, I’ve definitely met associates who were like, Oh, you’re that survey lady, like I get that every year, and I’m like, yeah, Thank you, even that we are known as a company who is reaching out and asking, for their feedback is incredibly important.

And certainly, I think we offer that opportunity for our clients to take up that information and also affect change in their organizations. And I think you need both, though, which is a slippery slope at times, but you need to be able to ask and take in and then do something with that information, right?

And I think workers are always looking for like I told them. Now, what am I going to do with that? And sometimes the answer can be, we heard you, and we’re [00:19:00] not in a spot to do anything about this, but we are in a spot to do something about this. But that open dialogue and that sort of need and expectation for transparency is only growing.

This most recent survey focused on the economy. You can imagine everyone was worried. That was a theme throughout was I want to be told the truth. I want transparency as much as, obviously, a company can tell me what’s happening, but I’m an adult, and I would like an adult-to-adult relationship to keep me in the know so that I can better perform for you.

Bob Pettke: No. And you hit on something right there that resonated with me, and it’s just in life. People want to be heard, and I don’t know if there’s a better way than first asking the questions but then having a vehicle to be able to deliver what were the results from something like I want to talk about, I guess your daughter, her name is a Kalia.

Cathi Canfield: Kalia. That’s [00:20:00] right. Kalia.

Bob Pettke: Yeah. She might say in the olden days. That’s right. But I’m gonna go back even further. So my generation grew up and took it for granted that most people were gonna work a 40-hour work week. And you talked about this a little bit. You’re seeing a change, but maybe talk a little bit about gig work.

Maybe these are some of the things that you’re seeing in your survey. I’d like to talk to you about that first, but I’m going to prepare you for the follow-up on that. In that, I’m interested to know that when you’re sharing this with prospects and clients across the country, what are some of the things that they’re seeing, appreciating, and learning?

And, maybe even have an example of somebody who changed their whole outlook and approach. I just downloaded a bunch of information on you, but again, let’s start with the gig work in the flex work, as opposed to that traditional 40-hour work week, and you hit that a little [00:21:00] bit earlier, but talk me through a little bit more about what you’re saying.

Cathi Canfield: Yeah. The majority of workers for sure are looking for a 40-hour work week. They want the stability. They’re at a point in their lives when they need to count on those funds, right? To live. And so we all understand that, right? But as we think, especially generationally, the younger the generation, the more interested we are finding out that they are interested in flexibility and variety, and choice. And so it doesn’t necessarily mean that they don’t want to work 40 or more hours a week, but they would like to do that on their terms. And so what does that mean? And so what that means is, I think rethinking shifts and rethinking how we get work done in our facilities. And we’ve been spending a lot of time in two spaces, one flex work, which we define at Employbridge as the same shift schedule.

So if you have a six to three-schedule today, instead of that being filled by one [00:22:00] person, you could have two people who effectively are the full-time equivalent, right? So maybe one person works Monday and Tuesday, the other person works Wednesday through Friday, but that is their schedule. And that’s every week.

They show up consistently on time, do their work, but no more, no less. That’s the schedule they’ve committed to, but the company is still getting their full commitment of their 40 hours. The other piece of this is gig work. Two and a half years or so ago, I was involved in an innovation project around the hypothesis that we could attract a traditional gig worker into a logistics or manufacturing space. We didn’t know; we didn’t know if it was cool enough in an industrial space to do something like that. And so we went out and did a lot of research on gig workers and gig workers, we found, are very different than a flex or a 40-hour workweek person.

They’re incredibly entrepreneurial. [00:23:00] They’re a little bit younger. They’re very much—the majority are female. They have family obligations. So whether it’s elder care or how they have children, they’re very focused on their performance. Many of them are used to being rated immediately on their service, and so they are high performers. And are very interested in doing their work well and moving on to the next thing. No drama, very little social; they just want to get in, do it, be told they’ve done a great job and Move on to the next thing, right? And so we started a new product, at Employbridge to see if we could, we knew we now what the worker wanted.

Could we convince, to your point, a client a company to imagine? A place in which we could do this because a gig worker wants 4-hour blocks of time. They don’t want to [00:24:00] work an 8-hour day or a 10-hour day. And you can imagine walking into a manufacturing facility or logistics facility. I got a lot of interesting looks as I was sharing these comments.

But there was also a lot of intrigue around if we could attract. This is the first time someone’s come to me and said they could bring me a brand new worker. Like, I wasn’t going to go recruit who everyone else is recruiting, but maybe I could find someone who doesn’t show up. In any stat, because they’re not even part-time, maybe, right?

And I think customers and what I tell folks as I’m talking to, large groups of manufacturing folks or logistics folks is if you’re not having the conversation about flex and gig work and figuring out a way to incorporate that into your work schedule, you are behind. It doesn’t mean that you’ve got to go change your entire facility next week, but it means you need to be thinking about that.

If you plan to have [00:25:00] your labor needs fulfilled consistently, what we have found is both on the flex and the gig side today. Primarily, they’re being used to cover attendance issues of our client’s full-time workers, right? Temporary staffing associates are not the only ones who have attendance issues, right?

So, we’re covering the client’s attendance scenarios where the need for project work can now be handled in a totally different way. If you’re including a flex or a gig-type opportunity and the same for overtime. We’re really putting a dent in overtime spend. This past year, in 2023, we saved one customer at one location 2 million dollars in pay that they had traditionally paid in overtime because we provided a gig solution that allowed them to keep their workers really, or current workers, very happy. No [00:26:00] mandatory overtime, which is what we hear in our survey. A lot of folks don’t and aren’t interested in it anymore. And our gig workers came in, did their work, got out.

Handshake, let’s go make it happen. And so I think we have some customers who were like, please say it isn’t so. Come back to me next year. And I think that’s okay. And we have some facilities, let’s say they’re 24, seven facilities. Like, how would I possibly fit this in?

And so we spend a lot of time working with them on where it could be. Gig work especially has to be that you can train them within a four-hour period. They’re not coming in for three days of orientation, right? So it certainly isn’t for everyone, but for the right facility and the right job.

It’s been a huge win for folks who are open to figuring out how to do it.

Bob Pettke: Cathi, you just answered the question before I could really ask it, and I alluded to it before, so maybe that’s where you went. I was going to ask you for an example [00:27:00] of where you’ve been able to share this data, implement something, and two million dollars through the process. There were some heroes made through that process, right?

And people, I think people want to be heroes, they, they might not want to, pound their chest and say, look at what I did, but they want it. They want to make a difference. They want to be heard. And these are all the things that I know that you and the organization have been doing for quite some time.

My hats off to you on that and on your continued success. I’m going to thank you for being here today. I hope that Cathi, we can get you back on here at another time because you have a lot of information that we can tap into. And if you’re okay with that, we’ll do that somewhere down the road.

Cathi Canfield: Yeah, I would love to. Thanks so much. Appreciate it. Cathi, thanks so much. Awesome. Have a great one. You too.

Bob Pettke: There you have it. That’s Cathi Canfield from [00:28:00] Employbridge. Just one of the top women in the industry, as we talked about earlier, just an absolute gem, a wealth of knowledge. And we’re just, we were fortunate to have her on today. That being said, I want to make sure that I share the news with you, and ask you to subscribe, and tell your staffing pals to join us on their favorite podcast platform.

And also, if you have any questions or you want to learn more about the organization I work for, which is Ultra-Staff EDGE, that ATS CRM Software Solution, by all means, email me or give me a phone call. We’re going to pull up that list here on the screen as we end this session. So, until next time, everybody, thank you for being with us on the staffing buzz [00:29:00] network.