At Eastridge, we’ve invested heavily in our company culture. As a 100% employee-owned company, everyone who works at Eastridge literally has a stake in its success. That’s why we have built a team culture that is proactive, accountable, and truly engaged in the success of our clients, associates, and our company. Our employee satisfaction score (NPS) has dramatically increased over the last two years largely due to efforts to promote a spirit of ownership that starts with being employee owned.
What does this mean for our clients? After all, this is a service business and customer satisfaction is critical, right? Interestingly, our customer satisfaction score has doubled in the same period, and we’ve achieved record-breaking growth by investing in our client relationships.
That’s no coincidence.
It turns out, in staffing and in any other workforce solutions services, culture counts. Here’s why: when you’re working closely with a company supplying workforce recruitment, management, and technology solutions, you are participating as part of your client’s team. It requires not just expertise, but work ethic, urgency, and resilience. We’re in the people business and people respond to integrity, creativity, and commitment. In other words, culture.
When our team works with our client's team, that strong culture comes through. We become more than just a vendor; we are truly an engaged partner. Many clients also have strong company cultures and it is special to have teams both equally committed and passionate about success. That magic combination occurs within our most successful client relationships.
This ownership edge provides a powerful advantage. For example, when challenges arise, a cultural touchstone of being engaged and proactive can help spot upstream trends and present solutions before they become insurmountable. A strong culture of ownership means that compliance and safety will be carefully scrutinized. Empathy for individual working styles helps us better understand what a client needs and strengthens our delivery of recruitment and other workforce services.
Too often, company culture is only communicated to recruit potential employees. But in the workforce business, it counts for so much more. An ownership mentality has the power to transform how our industry grows and thrives in the future. Today, many companies have invested heavily in their culture. Finding a workforce solutions provider with the same commitment to culture will be essential in fully realizing a return on that investment.
Seth Stein is the CEO of Eastridge Workforce Solutions. He is speaking at a panel during Staffing World 2022 on building culture.