The world of work is being reshaped in real time, and the companies that are winning are the ones rethinking not just who they hire, but how, when, and why. With over 15 years of experience across staffing, HR technology, and workforce solutions, James Terry, Head of U.S. Revenue for Indeed Flex, works at the intersection of technology and workforce innovation, helping organizations across hospitality, retail, light industrial, and customer service build more agile, responsive staffing strategies.
By flexible work, we’re talking about temporary, shift-based, and on-demand work, and also more general agile workforce strategies that meet qualified workers where they are, and why it’s becoming a genuinely strategic path to growth for everyone involved.
James breaks down three big shifts changing how companies hire, schedule, and manage workers, and AI is a significant one. We talk about what businesses consistently misunderstand about temporary workers, why their intentions and outcomes are so rarely aligned, and why they need a partner who understands best practices to help them adapt. We also get into how companies can use technology to make the staffing process faster and more efficient without making it feel cold or transactional, and how to create a genuine sense of team even for workers who may not be there long.
If you lead people, manage workforce strategy, or care about the future of work, this conversation will change how you think about flexibility, agility, and the very definition of a great hire.
To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.
Listen in for…
- Insights into the current labor market.
- Job seeker etiquette and what to do if you’re being interviewed by AI (and why it may actually be a good thing).
- What flexible or adaptive staffing can do for your organization.
- Maintaining the human touch during hiring and after the fact.
“Someone is going to crack the code, and it will become the standard for everyone. The question is: Is it going to be you, or is it going to be someone else?” — James Terry
About James Terry, Head of U.S. Revenue, Indeed Flex:
James Terry is the Head of U.S. Revenue at Indeed Flex, a flexible staffing platform that connects businesses with qualified workers for temporary and shift-based roles. With more than 15 years of experience across staffing, HR technology, sales, and workforce solutions, James helps organizations respond to labor shortages, changing worker expectations, and evolving operational demands.
Working at the intersection of technology and workforce innovation, James has helped companies build more agile staffing strategies across industries including hospitality, retail, light industrial, and customer service. He is a frequent commentator on the future of work, AI-powered staffing, workforce flexibility, and the role technology can play in creating faster, more accessible paths to employment.
Connect with James:
IndeedFlex: indeedflex.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/james-terry-33023717
Connect with Maria:
Get Maria’s books: Red-Slice.com/books
Hire Maria to speak: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross
Take the LinkedIn Learning Courses! Leading with Empathy and Balancing Empathy, Accountability, and Results as a Leader
LinkedIn: Maria Ross
Instagram: @redslicemaria
Facebook: Red Slice
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Maria Ross 00:04
Welcome to the Empathy Edge podcast, the show that proves why cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive. I’m your host Maria Ross. I’m a speaker, author, mom, facilitator, and empathy advocate, and here you’ll meet trailblazing leaders and executives, authors and experts who embrace empathy to achieve radical success. We discuss all facets of empathy, from trends and research to the future of work to how to heal societal divisions and collaborate more effectively. Our goal is to redefine success and prove that empathy isn’t just good for society. It’s great for business. The world of work is being reshaped in real time, and the companies that are winning are the ones rethinking not just who they hire, but how, when, and why. My guest today is James Terry, head of U.S. revenue at Indeed Flex, a flexible staffing platform connecting businesses with qualified workers for temporary and shift-based roles, with over 15 years of experience across staffing, HR technology, and workforce solutions. Jane’s works at the intersection of technology and workforce innovation, helping organizations across hospitality, retail, light industrial, and customer service build more agile, responsive staffing strategies. Now, when we say flexible work, we’re talking about temporary, shift-based, and on-demand work, and also more general agile workforce strategies that meet qualified workers where they are, and why it’s becoming a genuinely strategic path to growth for everyone involved. Today, James breaks down three big shifts changing how companies hire, schedule, and manage workers. And yes, AI is a significant one. We dive deep into how AI interviewing is actually creating more opportunities for job seekers by removing the bias of rapport and other unconscious biases that creep into traditional hiring, we talk about what businesses consistently misunderstand about temporary workers, why their intentions and outcomes are so rarely aligned, and why they need a partner who understands best practices to help them adapt. We also get into how companies can use technology to make the staffing process faster and more efficient without making it feel cold or transactional, and how to create a genuine sense of team, even for workers who may not be there for long. If you lead people, manage workforce strategy, or care about the future of work, this conversation will change how you think about flexibility, agility, and the very definition of a great hire. Take a listen. Welcome, James Terry, to the Empathy Edge podcast. I am so excited to talk to you about reshaping the labor market and what AI is doing, what flexible staffing is doing, challenging worker expectations, all of it, and the role that empathy can play in helping us understand a flexible workforce a little bit better. So, welcome to the show.
James Terry 03:16
Thanks so much for having me, Maria. I’m excited to chat.
Maria Ross 03:19
Awesome, awesome. So, before we start, we’re gonna we’re gonna start with the question we always ask, which is, “What’s your story? How did you get here doing this work for Indeed Flex? And what are you so passionate about?
James Terry 03:31
Well, I’ll start with the second question first, which is an easy one for me because the motto we have at Indeed Flex, kind of our north star, is we help people get jobs instantly, and that’s that’s really what got me here to Indeed Flex. So I started. I actually started in my career out of college, working in the nonprofit sector in Washington D.C. I was like writing grants and and and trying to get money for nonprofits so that they could go and change the world. And I realized like that’s great, but it’s actually really hard to change the world from inside the Beltway, and so I started thinking about like what else could I do that help can help make a positive impact. And I know this might sound weird, but I figured, well, in sales, if you sell something to a customer, you’re hopefully making their life better off. And so that started my my career, and worked for a really large HR outsourcing company, a great training program, great leadership development program, and then was given the opportunity. Moved to Romania with them, and then when my assignment was over there, moved over to Indeed Flex because I saw the vision and the mission of what they were doing. Essentially, making it, you know, using technology to make it the fastest place to get work, democratizing the way that people find jobs. I mean, giving ultimately both businesses as well as workers control and choice over the types of roles that they’re picking up, and so that’s where I found myself about six years ago, and here I am now talking to you.
Maria Ross 04:55
Awesome, awesome. So lots in there, and what a great journey to. Where you are now, and I, I empathize with the need to have a job where you’re giving back and you’re making the world a better place, because there’s a lot of different ways we can choose to take our careers. And isn’t it great when you can have both and right have a great career, make good money, but also leave the world a better place? So I really admire that, and I want to talk a little bit based on your background and the work that you’re doing at Indeed Flex. Tell us a little bit about the way that hiring and scheduling and managing workers is changing right now. Give us some sense of, I mean, we know there’s there’s seismic change happening in all kinds of areas, but why specifically? Let’s drill down into workforce planning and hiring and shift working, how is that changing?
James Terry 05:47
Yep. So there’s, I’d say there’s the the answer is probably more complex and nuanced than a lot of people think. There’s really three big things that have happened in the course of last call it five to 10 years. Number one is COVID. COVID changed the way that people work and the expectations they have of work. The second one is generational changes. You know, you have baby boomers beginning to exit the workforce. Gen Z is starting to enter the workforce. Millennials and Gen X kind of right in the middle, and millennials even are starting to evolve, like kind of what they want in a work life and that balance. And I think that’s probably because of what they’ve seen from the younger generations coming up. And then the third part of it is AI, which is a little bit the flavor of the week for everyone right now, and how much that is changing the world and the economy. Those three, I’d say, main aspects that are kind of the driving forces behind it. The overarching theme that we’re noticing is that on one side, because of COVID and a little bit the generational changes that we’re noticing, there’s more of a demand for flexibility. When COVID happened, a lot of people were working from home. A lot of people had to change industries. People that were doing bartending, serving, waiters, any kind of hospitality role, they were they were shut in for a long time, and so they had to change industries. Along with that, they realized, wow, I don’t necessarily need to work until two a.m. every day. This is great. I can work in a different industry, and so there’s been changes in that regards. In addition to that, like on the generational side that I mentioned, you know, you have a number of of a large portion of workers in Gen Z that they’re not even electing to use their degrees if they have them in in their jobs right now, and that’s because they’re willing to make a trade off that probably a lot of earlier generations, myself, I’m a millennial included, weren’t didn’t feel comfortable with, so they’re willing to say, you know what, like I will forego potentially a higher paid, more cushy title and and whatnot to be able to have more flexibility in my work life. And they’re seeing that, and they’re seeing those opportunities because as consumers, you have to keep in mind these job seekers they’re also consumers as well. They now can order just about anything that’s ever existed in humanity to be delivered to their door in two hours. Yeah, they can order food to be delivered to their door, you know, in 30 minutes, and and and so you’re you’re noticing that people are electing to whether it is their primary form of employment or a secondary form of employment, pick up these other types of kind of you could call it gig work opportunities to be able to supplement their income, and that means that they can have a little bit more control over when, where, how they want to work. Right, and then the third part is AI. I mean, AI is changing everything. I’d say that you know a lot of the work that we do is more on the front line side. So you know, AI is I’d say is like has a knock on impact. It’s not really direct. The people that we hire are not usually directly using AI, but a lot of the decision makers, a lot of the HR leaders, operational leaders, like it’s becoming such a critical way that they’re running their business. And I’m noticing there’s becoming a bit of a chasm where you’re starting to see the the adopters and the laggards, and that plays out. It’s not even that someone necessarily needs to say, “Oh, I’m I’m using AI. You can just tell in the conversations that you’re having when someone is taking multiple data sources and being able to aggregate them in a way and get really insightful viewpoints that can help drive change in the business, and others are not. I mean, so I think that those like kind of those three things amalgamated are really driving change in the way that people are interacting with their work, and then also businesses are thinking about the talent that they’re bringing on board.
Maria Ross 09:29
Exactly, and so much to unpack with what you just said. But you know, to your point, we are going through a workplace culture shift. We’re going through a leadership paradigm shift as well. And what I always like to say is, it wasn’t that it wasn’t coming; it’s just the pandemic accelerated it. Right, that was already the trajectory to where things were going based on all the fights and the the demands that millennials were making. Right, and then right after them, Gen Z and all good demands, by the way, all. Things that people wanted that are good for everyone in the workplace. So there’s just been this disconnect between people that are like, “Well, this is the way we’ve always done it, and people that are willing to break the system and come up with a system that works better for people. And I want to click into your point about AI. Like, how is it changing in a positive way? Because we’ve heard some negative stories too, right? In terms of bias in AI or or really good candidates being missed because of AI. But how are you seeing HR leaders and recruiters and hiring managers, especially when we talk about flexible scheduling and shift work? How are they using AI to hire and to manage those kinds of workforces, yeah. Give us some examples.
James Terry 10:44
Yeah, there’s probably two parts to this. So, and and I’ll kind of frame it as the candidate experience, and then also like the employer experience. On the candidate experience, when it comes to using AI, you know what I see and what I notice. I mean, you know, you see it on LinkedIn and talking to a lot of a lot of our customers because of the advent of AI, they’re noticing a significant increase in the number of applications they’re getting. It’s easier. Yeah, they’re overwhelmed. And so, what are they doing? Well, we just bought this AI system, and so now we can run all of our resumes through AI. Well, let’s not forget Maria that most more likely than not, the resume that you’re looking at was probably also written by AI, and so you’ve got AI writing the resume and AI reviewing the resume, and then you know a bunch of you know probably more people than previously are getting rejection emails and they’re not even talking to anyone.
Maria Ross 11:38
And then where’s the human in the process, right?
James Terry 11:40
Exactly, but it’s a real problem, right? Like, like we don’t say we want to slow down the use of AI. I mean, it’s it’s it’s going to have major gains for us as a society as a whole. And so, one of the things that we’ve done at Indeed Flex is we’ve actually built an AI interview system. So, what that means is that allows us to be able to put all of our candidates through an AI interview. Now, that doesn’t mean that we’re only using AI to interview them. What it does mean is you’re actually giving people an opportunity to show up. You’re giving them a shot to actually make make a case for themselves. So rather than you know an AI bot scraping an AI generated resume and then a bunch of people getting you know, based not just on your skill set, but also who is able to craft
Maria Ross 12:28
the the best sounding, yeah, the best sounding resume. Exactly,
James Terry 12:31
exactly. Now you have an opportunity to get on an interview because because you have so many candidates applying now. You know, call it. I used to have 30 people apply for role. Now I have 300 people apply for role. It’s just not realistic for every single person to get in a human interview. Right. What this does, this gives us an opportunity to be able to allow for those workers to be able to have an AI interview, and it will, based on the role that that specific candidate is being vetted for, it will ask questions, first and second level questions that will dig in and ask follow-ups, and and then it will be situational, behavioral, motivational fit questions to be able to identify if a candidate may or may not be good for this role. And so you’re giving the the candidate an opportunity to show up. And then what happens is it it you know our system’s able to essentially rank the candidates and give them a score, and you can say, okay, well, like the next maybe 20 candidates are the ones we the top 20 are the ones we want to hire, or the ones that maybe you’ll pass on to a second level interview that might be with a person.
Maria Ross 13:31
Right.
James Terry 13:32
So that’s that’s sort of one side of it on the AI interview. The other part of it is, you know, if we kind of click back to this first question you asked around the the flexibility, you know, candidates are demanding more flexibility now, and that sounds great. And to your point, like it is the right thing to do. But the reason people haven’t done it before is because it’s not the easy thing to do. It’s easy to say I have a Monday through Friday nine to five shift pattern, and you need to work every single day. And if you can’t, then you’re not a good candidate for it.
Maria Ross 14:00
Right.
James Terry 14:00
That, from an operational perspective, is much more simple. But now, with the advent of AI and technology, you’re able to build a world where, you know, Maria, maybe I can work Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, but I can’t work Wednesday because I have to take grandma to the doctors every Wednesday afternoon.
Maria Ross 14:15
Right.
James Terry 14:15
Well, does that mean I’m a bad worker? No. Does that mean I’m not going to be good? No. That just means that I don’t fit the really rigid schedule that you provided, and so what you’re able to do now with technology is build a world where you know I can still pick up that role, and then Maria, hey, you you’re only able to work on Wednesdays, and so you can actually slot in for that Wednesday shift, right? If you really boil it down, and this isn’t like every job isn’t going to work like this, but for a lot of roles out there, you know, an organization they care about having someone who is consistent, who knows how to do the job, who knows how to show up and be good at it. It doesn’t matter if it’s James or Maria. I just need it to be James or Maria, right? And that’s a big seed change that’s happening in the market, or cust, or businesses are starting to realize that these are the. Types of things they need to do because now you’re able to attract Maria and James, who previously weren’t even in the job market for you particularly because they couldn’t work that schedule.
Maria Ross 15:08
Right, you already like cross them off the list. I want to just go back a second because this I’ve heard various experiences with with friends who have college students or college graduates who have been interviewed by AI, do we need to now teach job seekers the etiquette of interviewing with an AI interviewer? Because where do you get the the magic? Where do you get the rapport that sometimes happens when you have two humans meeting in an interview? Do we have to help them understand that you have to show up in the same way you would show up with a human being to the AI, so that you are you are rated accurately, right? Or or is there the tendency to phone it in because you’re being interviewed by an AI bot? Like, talk to me about that whole shift in job seeker etiquette and and the skills they need to have an interview with an AI bot.
James Terry 16:08
Yes, to give you the short answer, we probably do need to teach people. But I would say even more than that is you should treat every interview like is an interview. If you show up and you don’t have your shirt on to the interview because you know it’s an AI interview, like or you’re sitting in your car. I mean, you know, you wouldn’t. It’s kind of the old. It’s kind of the old saying of like, you know, how would your mom feel about it if she saw that you were showing up this way? Well, I’m like,
Maria Ross 16:34
yeah, and I’m talking more. I’m talking less about the obvious stuff like that, which maybe you still need to reiterate for people, and I’m talking more about the, you know, if you bring humor to the interview, if you have a rapport with someone, and you’re able to crack a joke or you’re able to say something, does that translate when you’re interviewing with an AI bot?
James Terry 16:53
So, Maria, probably you and I are similar in that we have the gift of gab. We love to do this. We we love to talk and and have conversations, and not everyone is like that. And so I think that it’s a great point you’re bringing up. But I’m gonna I’m going to just for the sake of argument, I’m actually going to take the counter to what you’re saying.
Maria Ross 17:13
Please,
James Terry 17:13
yeah. Could you argue that too often people are judged in a very in a very subjective manner by a recruiter based on how well they get along with someone, or they just seem nice,
Maria Ross 17:25
right?
James Terry 17:26
Or they, you know, we hit it off on the interview, and we just kind of, you know, I saw that
Maria Ross 17:31
they’re not qualified for the role, but I really like that guy, right?
James Terry 17:33
Yeah, we get we get on the interview. The recruiter has a baseball team, and I relate to them on that, and right, like all of a sudden we don’t get into any questions, and they pass me along. Like in reality, like you’re you’re potentially if I only have a certain number of slots that I can send through to a hiring manager, you’re potentially actually qualifying in the wrong person. But even more than that, you’re you’re qualifying out the right person of that job out of that job. And so one of the things that AI can do, and I think there’s a lot of work that needs to be done. I’ll tell you that like with all the AI interviews we do of our hires at Indeed Flex, we still have a human review every single one of them,
Maria Ross 18:06
right?
James Terry 18:06
Because it is not there yet. Now, like in 10 years, are we going to need to do that? Probably not. But like, yeah, right now it’s still so early doors and early days. Like we are still reviewing them. Yeah, it allows. Side note: it allows our recruiters to actually like scroll through to like really the most critical parts of the interview to like check those. So interview capacity has has grown drastically. Yeah, but essentially what this does is it kind of you know it kind of takes the bias out of the interview. Yeah, you know it’s it’s. I was gonna say it takes out.
Maria Ross 18:35
I I wrote this down. It takes out the bias of rapport.
James Terry 18:39
Yep,
Maria Ross 18:40
because to exactly what you’re you’re pointing to, which is, we just get a feel good feeling about somebody because maybe they’re like us, right? And so we pass them on, even if they’re not necessarily the most qualified candidate that we’re talking to that day. So I kind of love that. Yeah, yeah.
James Terry 18:57
Also, if you think about it, is let’s just say that AI is where AI interview is worse than the average recruiter. Let’s just make that argument. AI interview is is from a quality standpoint worse than the average recruiter. Well, do you know what? It’s consistent because you’re going to have recruiters that are good, and you’re going to have recruiters that are bad. You’re going to have recruiters that do ask secondary follow up questions. You’re going to have recruiters that don’t. At the very least, you know what you’re getting with with an AI interview. Like you have consistency in it,
Maria Ross 19:27
right?
James Terry 19:27
And so, you know, you’re not going to hire a CEO for a Fortune 500 company with just an AI interview. Of course not. You’re probably, you know,
Maria Ross 19:34
yeah,
James Terry 19:35
not going to hire a lot of roles just in AI interview. But what it does is it gives someone like this. This is where I I get really frustrated when people kind of give it a bad name because it’s not that this is necessarily replacing anything. What this is doing is it’s actually giving people, if you really think about another shot, it’s giving them another opportunity that previously they would not have had. Because if it weren’t for this interview, I would have just gotten a you know a two line rejection email from the company.
Maria Ross 20:00
Yeah. Completely, I love that. I love that perspective, and I probably should have asked this at the top of our interview. But because I am human and not a bot, I’m not always perfect. Can you explain to us what you mean by flexible staffing or short-term staffing? Because you mentioned a few times, you know, this might not be the right fit for every job or every company. What’s the definition from Indeed Flex on the types of roles we’re talking about, and what industries are those in? So, give us some examples.
James Terry 20:29
Yep, most of the industries that we work in are light industrial, so that’s like warehouse, distribution, logistics, light manufacturing, hospitality. So that would be like people that do everything from you know serving at the banquet dinner for a wedding reception at the local hotel, all the way to pouring beer at the baseball game. Facilities management call center work. So it tends to be more like high volume work is really where where we focus most of our most of our efforts.
Maria Ross 21:00
Is it also seasonal work?
James Terry 21:02
Yeah. So when I say when you say flexible schedule, flexible, there’s there’s the the idea here is that flexible is different for every single person. A lot of the times, people think of flexible as oh this is gig work. I mean yeah, gig work is a component of flexible work, but flexible work could also be hey I want the flexibility to work every single day, and then also on Saturdays pulling pouring beer at the at the local baseball game. So it doesn’t need to be one or the other. So we have a lot of a lot of workers that are out there that have been working for Indeed Flex on very long term assignments with the same exact client for three years, and we have some workers that only work, you know, a day or two every couple of weeks because that’s when they need to fill their schedule. Flexibility is really in in the eyes of of the beholder, and really where so so kind of to your question about like the types of of organizations that are looking for this type of work, it’s it’s contingent labor, which means you’re thinking about really two use cases. Number one is, well, I know I need to hire a high volume of labor, and I don’t, I don’t have the resources or the skill set or the capacity to, or or the want to have a team of recruiters that are doing this. We can just have, you know, third party staffing agencies can do a lot of the recruiting. So you’re outsourcing your recruitment efforts. And the other side of it, to your point, is if you’ve got peaks or troughs in demand, if you have, you know, for that wedding, I need 40 people on one or two days a month. Like I don’t, you know, I don’t want to hire a bunch of people just for that. I can bring in contingent labor, or if I’m scaling up, as a lot of companies are starting to think about right now, or in the the preparing for their peak period around the holiday season, you know, I I need people for two months, and that’s all, right? And that’s where people are usually using this type of type of labor.
Maria Ross 22:45
Got it, got it. And so, you know, you’re talking a lot about flexibility from the from the job seeker perspective or the applicant perspective, but you also talk about adaptability as some of the most important traits of the future labor market in terms of organizations. Can you share a little bit about your perspective on that? When you talk about adaptability from the employer side, what does that mean? What does that look like?
James Terry 23:13
So to keep it simple, I’ll use the same example as I was doing before, where James can only work certain days and Marie can only work certain days.
Maria Ross 23:19
Right.
James Terry 23:19
From a candidate standpoint, it makes sense, right? Like if I’m now able to work for you, that is a net positive for me. Well, the difficulty of it is you now need to convince an employer to to actually change the way that they operate their business to to accommodate for this. And quite often, organizations are thinking to themselves, well, you know, a we’ve already always done it this way. It’s a little bit more difficult, and why would I make this change? What we found is really helpful, and this is where a lot of the really really transformational HR leaders that we work with on a day to day basis are thinking: is you know how can I take you know previously dispersed data systems, a warehouse management system, a staffing system, or HRIS, and then like a finance and billing system, like you know any type of net suite or whatever it might be. And how can we take all this data that previously was really hard to understand, and how can we bring it together and get insights out of it? And that’s where a lot of people are starting to move. So what they’re able to do now is say, I’ll give you an example. This is actually something that we noticed that happened last year, and we’re in the in the process of planning for peak with a lot of our clients. Is we looked at a bunch of data and found a lot of our a lot of our clients will ask us to ramp up really close to Thanksgiving because they know that Black Friday is when when it’s just all hands on deck, like you’re not, you know, we literally have clients that like general managers who are like sleeping on an air mattress in in the in in their office of the warehouse, like on Black Friday. Right, it gets that intense, and and so what we’re able to do is take this information, and previously people would say, well, well, I know. That my demand isn’t actually going to hit until right right of Black Friday, and so I want to bring on people a couple of days before that because that lowers my cost. Right, that makes sense. Well, when you actually look at the data and you you look at all the information across all these systems, it turns out that when you’re onboarding people for these warehouse roles in this example on the week before Thanksgiving, the turnover rate is massive because you know they’ve only worked there for a couple of days. They don’t have that connection to the organization. By the way, they when they started, it was all they could tell like this place is turning into a madhouse because things are about to go crazy. Yeah, and so we started working with clients about hey, how can we think about progressive hiring? Because we noticed that the people that started in early November or late October, they actually stayed. Well, from face value, an operations manager says that’s crazy. That’s extra labor cost, right?
Maria Ross 25:50
I’m not going to pay for that until I need it. Yeah,
James Terry 25:51
right. But if you actually think about well, what is the cost of you know what is the productivity level of a worker on day one versus week you know versus day two versus week two versus week three, and by the way, you know, so we got to ramp people up,
Maria Ross 26:05
right?
James Terry 26:06
Also, what is the cost of turnover for you? Because for every 10 people I need to hire, if I know three or four are going to be leaving because I’m hiring them so close to this peak period, that’s also going to drive up my costs, and I could have you know packages that I can’t clear out through my warehouse, and so you actually start looking at and say, if you bring people in earlier, you don’t need to hire as many overall because they’ll stay. They’re going to stay, and you’re not going to have the turnover. And B, they’re going to be more productive, and that productivity means you only need one person who’s productive for every two people that aren’t as productive and are going to turn over anyways. Right, and so those are the kind of conversations you start having. But you need to lead with data, and you need to, you know, with us as a vendor, a lot of the times, you need to be able to have an HR partner that’s able to help you to navigate a lot of those waters because it is fundamentally a change you’re asking organizations to make, and it’s a risk on their side that that needs to play out. You need to be able to show them the benefits of it.
Maria Ross 27:02
Absolutely, absolutely, and you know, just that kind of creating that kind of relationship and easing the burden for HR and operations during those times. It’s it sounds so good in practice to just be like, well, you know, let’s let’s have a flexible workforce. Let’s just do it. But there’s there’s systems and there’s structures and even just how you lead a workforce that is only there temporarily, versus a consistent team that’s together that has time to gel, that has time to get to know each other, do all the things I talk about in terms of empathetic leadership. You almost have to fast track that for flexible workers. So you given given
James Terry 27:43
if I could add to that, I think the other side of it is that you have to be willing to have a relationship with the customer that is healthy, and there’s a certain amount of radical candor in it. And what I mean by that is you need to be willing to go and have a tough conversation, and the answer shouldn’t always. If you’re a vendor, shouldn’t always be yes, because you fundamentally you do this for your living, right? You do this as your job. Like this is just a small part of the overall organization that you’re serving. You’re the specialist, and so you should have the confidence to say, “Look, when you do it this way, this is why it’s not going to work out with the outcomes that you’re desiring. And too often, what happens is they say, “Well, we have so much turnover in November, and so what we want to do is we want to make sure we really bring in the right people. So now we’re going to ask everyone to come in for an interview a day before or a week before, and all of a sudden, like especially in high volume hiring, you’re doing things with the right intention. It’s not that they’re doing things for the wrong reason; they’re doing it for the right reason. But the outcome that ends up happening is well, now I have an even higher conversion rate. The turnover is not happening on week one or week two. It’s happening that they’re just not showing up for their first day because they said, “You know what? This is crazy. I’m having to interview for this job.
Maria Ross 28:59
Right.
James Terry 29:00
And so it’s really important to have the the the confidence as a as a supplier, as a vendor, as a business partner to be able to go to an organization say, look, like this is not going to work out for you, and here are the reasons why, and we can show you the data.
Maria Ross 29:14
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, it’s that’s you pick a partner based on best practices they can share with you, of course. And I’m talking more about on the employer side of leaders on the employer operational side, who have to learn how to manage a workforce like this in a different way, right? And like I said, they can’t always draw on the fact that they’ve had time to coalesce as a team. They’ve had time to get to know these workers and how they’re best motivated, and and what lights them up. Again, all the things that I teach around empathetic leadership. So, with that question, and also going back to the interviewing question, how do you help your customers keep the personal touch, keep the humanity, keep the human connection within? Both the hiring process for roles like this, and with the after they’re hired, making sure that they they stay and they’re retained, and you’re creating a good work environment that maybe they’ll want to come back again, right? Because it’s easy to believe like, oh, it doesn’t matter how I treat them because I can just get a new body to fill the role later, right? Which I’ve heard before from from people that work with organizations that have seasonal workers, for example, and they don’t invest the same time and energy into those people. So I’m asking kind of two questions: How do you help your customers keep the personal touch within the interview process, especially if it’s using AI, and keep the humanity? And then after those workers are hired, how do you help your customers maintain a good employee experience, even though those people might not be there for the long term?
James Terry 30:51
Yes, with with the interview process, I think as we were talking about before, it’s really about helping them understand this is just one, this is just an additive step to the process. Like this should not it’s not replacing it. Yeah, yeah, it’s super critical to still have a really good hiring process. I mean, here’s here’s a couple of the interesting things that I found as we have surveyed a lot of the workers that do these AI interviews is that they actually will rate the AI interview as good as, if not a better experience than an in-person interview, why? Probably because of a little bit of like the you know unconscious bias stuff that we talked about before.
Maria Ross 31:28
Yeah,
James Terry 31:29
but the other side of it is that you know if I’m working a job full time right now and I I want to interview for another role, I have to take time off work, you know, and then no, I take time off work, and then the interview gets moved to an hour later, or whatever it might be, and now it’s you know, or the next day, and it gets difficult with an AI interview. I can apply for the job at 7p.m. at night after I get home, put the kid to bed, and then you can be on the interview at 730 that night doing the interview. So you’re you’re at kind of meeting people where they are, which is really nice, and they’re not feeling that pressure of having to relate to the baseball hat in the background or whatever the flag is or whatever whatever that might be. That’s one side of it. But then, on from the point of how we help clients and businesses understand this, you know, one of the things you have to be cautious of, I’ve noticed, is especially with operational leaders, because those are the people that, at the end of the day, are making the decisions. It’s not HR. HR can be an advocate in your corner, but it’s the ops team,
Maria Ross 32:28
right?
James Terry 32:28
And with them, you have to lead with data. You can’t just go to them and say, “Well, like you know, if you do this, people will like it. You need to actually show them some of the data, like the examples that I just walked you through about how they’re opening up the aperture of the job market to be able to access candidates they previously couldn’t have have gotten in in the past, you’re driving better retention and higher productivity. Like that part is really critical. But then the other side of it is honestly, yeah, I mean, like bringing in pizza and all that type of stuff and giving everyone a branded T-shirt. Like that all feels good, but you know what, Maria is the most important thing. Just walk up to them and have a conversation. Connect to the people. Yeah, tell them on their first day we’re so happy to have you. When you have your 20 new starts, just make sure that you touch base with every single one of them and you shake their hand and you thank them for being there. Like I can guarantee you, there are not enough organizations that are doing that type of stuff,
Maria Ross 33:22
absolutely
James Terry 33:23
one, and that is setting you apart. You think about whenever you see whenever you see this type of stuff happen on the news. I’ll tell you actually a quick story. We were lucky enough to be one of the suppliers of labor for the recent opening of the Obama Presidential Library in in Chicago, and one of my colleagues was there, and he said that about an hour or two before the event, you know, there’s there’s like where the big event happens and the big beautiful you know form, but then there’s also like the the offices and changing rooms and whatnot upstairs where all the staff are.
Maria Ross 33:56
Right,
James Terry 33:57
they were up there with a lot of the staff doing a like a welcome meeting and walking everyone through what what was going to happen,
Maria Ross 34:02
right?
James Terry 34:02
And President Obama and Michelle Obama walk in, and they took time. President Obama took time to look into every single person’s eyes and thank them for being there. That is something that he will never forget for the rest of his life, and every single worker that is there will never forget. And it doesn’t have to be the president doing that, right? It just has to be the manager, but but that impacts people when you make that personal connection with someone. That is something that you can’t put a price on, and and outlasts a lot of the bad that can happen in any type of job because you know, hey, they care about me,
Maria Ross 34:37
right? Exactly, exactly, and you know, you know, you mentioned the other stuff about the T-shirts and the and the pizza. You know, that’s just fun generating. That’s not empathetic leadership. Like that’s trappings. What you’re talking about, and and having that mindset of it doesn’t matter how long they’re here for, we need to make their experience a great one. So not. Maybe they come back. Maybe they refer other people to us in the future. But also, we want them engaged and productive while they’re here. And you become engaged and productive when you are seen, heard, and valued for however long you are working for an organization. And so, I love that you’re you’re talking to your customers about this aspect and not just like we’re done with them once they hire, right? It’s no. What else can you do to make this employee experience
James Terry 35:30
the best it can be? And how can you bring those empathetic leadership principles into that maybe temporary assignment or seasonal assignment or short-term flexible assignment. So I love what you’re saying. As we wrap up, what is kind of a final nugget about you want to share with people about the current labor market, and how would you invite them to experiment with a flexible workforce? What I would say is that there is no right or wrong answer, and and I will actually I will actually bundle this answer into how a lot of people I think are are are thinking about AI as well. So you can bundle these these this applies to both of them. No one has figured it out. This is new for everyone. It’s a little bit scary, but you know what? Someone is going to figure it out. Someone is going to crack the code, and it will become the standard for everyone. The question is: Is it going to be you, or is it going to be someone else? Are you going to get a head start and play with table money for a while, or are you going to be a laggard and you’re going to have to catch up? Whether it’s flexible staffing or whether it’s using AI, those are both things that it like the train is coming, ladies and gentlemen. The question is, are you going to be are you going to be the conductor? Are you going to be in the caboose?
Maria Ross 36:50
Love it, love it so much, James. Thank you so much for your insights and for sharing a little bit about this really unique angle on managing a workforce and and learning how to do this in a new way, plus your observations on the current labor market, been really, really valuable. We’re going to have all your links in the show notes. But for anyone who’s on the go right now, where’s the best place they can find out more about this work?
James Terry 37:14
Yeah, Maria, you can connect with me on LinkedIn and also go to IndeedFlex.com. It’s easy. If you’re a job seeker and you’re looking for work, you can click on the job seeker tab. If you’re an employer and you’re looking to find out more, you can click on the employers tab. But yeah, go to Indeedflex.com and we’d be happy to have a chat with you. And we’re also right now running a labor AI labor audit right now for organizations. So we’re actually going in and helping them understand how they’re using AI and how they might be able to use AI more effectively and efficiently in their labor planning. So we’d be happy to do that as well.
Maria Ross 37:46
Love it! Thank you so much for being here today.
James Terry 37:50
Thanks for having me, Maria.
Maria Ross 37:51
And thank you everyone for listening to another episode of the Empathy Edge podcast. If you like what you heard, you know what to do. Please rate and review and share it with a friend or a colleague, and until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy, visit theempathyedge.com. There, you can listen to past episodes, access show notes, and free resources. Book me for a keynote or workshop, and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news, and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red Slice Maria. Never forget, empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.
