Eric Chester The go-to expert on finding, engaging & keeping great employees.

Description: The biggest threat facing today’s business owners and managers is not how they can get new customers and improve sales, but rather how they can find, develop, and keep qualified employees to do the vital work that keeps them in business. The kinds of jobs you rely on to keep the wheels of your business moving. They’re also the kinds of jobs where employee turnover is rampant. Employers need to find and retain competent employees, but those employees are hard to find—hard to train—and even harder to keep.

In this high-stakes hiring environment, employee engagement expert Eric Chester has gone behind the curtain to interview thousands of owners, managers, and leaders of small companies, organizations, and franchises in order to uncover the best practices for attracting, developing—and yes, even retaining—amazing employees at all levels, often for jobs that aren’t considered sexy by today’s standards.

Discover how savvy employers have made bold moves, implemented guerrilla-recruiting tactics, and transformed the way the hiring and retention game is played. Eric’s presentation – live and virtual -- will delight, surprise, and get you thinking—and the strategies and methodologies he illustrates will inspire you to change the way you recruit, hire, and lead your employees so you, too, can proudly say you’re FULLY STAFFED.

Take-Aways: Participants will discover the secrets and proven strategies to:

• Why good employees are so much harder to find.
• Why you must stop fishing for employees…and start hunting.
• How to be the best place to work in your community.
• Creating, developing, and reinforcing the “7 pillars of an On Fire workplace culture” i.e., Compensation, Alignment, Atmosphere, Growth, Acknowledgment, Autonomy, and Communication to improve productivity and ignite performance.
• Get your top-performing employees recruiting for you.
• Recruit from high schools, colleges, trade schools, ex-military, retirees, etc.
• Stabilize application flow even when compensation is less than what is offered elsewhere.
• How to determine ‘better fits’ to ensure those workers that are hired are safe bets for long-term employment.
• Incorporate onboarding tactics guaranteed to slash costly turnover.

After interviewing highly acclaimed C-level leaders across all industries, Eric Chester has uncovered the practices and principles that Best Places to Work award-winning companies and great leaders are using to go beyond merely engaging today’s rapidly changing workforce, but to ignite what he terms “On Fire performance.”  Through a highly entertaining multi-media presentation, audience members discover the best practice ideas, tactics, and strategies these esteemed employers use to consistently attract and retain top talent, encourage innovation and collaborative thinking, and inculcate the desire to out-perform yesterday’s best.  Based upon the groundbreaking research in his fifth leadership book, On Fire at Work: How Great Companies Ignite Passion in Their People without Burning Them Out (Sound Wisdom, Oct. 2015), leaders, managers, and supervisors walk away with actionable ideas for building an invincible army of entrepreneurs who take pride and ownership in their work.

Uplifting, inspiring, and content-rich, it’s impossible to experience “On Fire” without catching fire and igniting the passion for achieving excellence in those around you.

Take-Aways: Participants will discover the secrets and proven strategies that renowned companies and legendary leaders are using to:

• consistently attract top talent with minimal recruiting.
• on board new employees to make a lasting impression and cement their commitment from day one.
• eliminate employee burn out, significantly reducing costly turnover.
• remain relevant with the emerging workforce as they develop young talent into future leaders.
• become the ‘employer-of-choice’ in their respective industry.
• create a pipeline of talent by establishing 4 essential relationship connections in each community served.
• inspire friendly, smiling, knowledgeable service to every customer in every interaction.
• stabilize application flow even when compensation is less than what is offered elsewhere.
• determine ‘better fits’ to ensure those team members that are hired are safe bets for long-term employment.
• create, develop, and reinforce the “7 pillars of an On Fire workplace culture”, i.e. Compensation, Alignment, Atmosphere, Growth, Acknowledgment, Autonomy, and Communication to improve productivity, ignite performance, and reduce employee turnover, i.e. ‘churn’.

Eric’s inspiring program for leaders, employers, contractors, etc. in skilled trade industries shows them what it takes to break through to the mindset of the emerging workforce. In this high-energy, dynamic, content-rich presentation, he reveals today’s best practices for recruiting, training, managing, and motivating the under-30 demographic to jobs many young people don’t consider ‘sexy’, and how to get them to perform up to their remarkable potential.

Throughout his program he integrates best practice examples that have been successful in increasing interest, building application flow, and developing an enigmatic generation of workers from the inside out. 

Take-Aways: Participants will discover the secrets and proven strategies that renowned companies and legendary leaders are using to:

• consistently attract top talent with minimal recruiting.
• on board new employees to make a lasting impression and cement their commitment from day one.
• create, develop, and reinforce the “7 pillars of an On Fire workplace culture” i.e., Compensation, Alignment, Atmosphere, Growth, Acknowledgment, Autonomy, and Communication.
• eliminate employee burn out, significantly reducing costly turnover.
• remain relevant with the emerging workforce as they develop young talent into future leaders.
• become the ‘employer-of-choice’ in their respective industry.

The Golden Rule instructs us to treat others the way we want to be treated.  But what if the other person doesn’t want the same things we do? What if treating others the way we want to be treated only creates friction between us?

In a perfect world, business leaders would employ a workforce that’s engaged, enthused, and ethically unassailable.  The reality, of course, is that the new emerging workforce is streetwise and techno-savvy, but they’ve not been taught how to succeed in the workplace, at home, or at school. 

Eric Chester is the leading authority on developing work ethic in young adults and leading Gen Y employees to achieve at their remarkable potential.  His presentation will illustrate why the work ethic in America has declined, and he’ll provide solid, actionable ideas and tools for developing the young worker and restoring the pride of a job well done, instilling within them the work ethic they should have received at home and in school – but didn’t.

 Some of the key topics areas covered and learning objectives include:

• Discover the 7 Indisputable Core Values that every employer demands from every worker, and why they are getting harder to find but are essential to develop.
• Find out how to promote a workplace culture rooted in reliability, professionalism, integrity, and respect.
• Learn how to be an 'up and over' leader, moving employees from “Idle,” “Lucky,” and “Cheating” behaviors into the “Valued” Quadrant.
• Improve customer service in your business to break free from a “vending machine mentality” by learning how to instill an attitude of gratitude across your front line.

Research proves that most business leaders are not satisfied with the performance, productivity, and the service they are getting from their emerging workforce (a combination of generations, ethnicities, cultural differences, etc.). The problem is not so much a skills gap as it is a values gap, which is apparent when analyzing the core work ethic values a growing number of employees are bringing to the job. This is the cause--and the effect--of Eric Chester's compelling presentation based on his breakthrough leadership book, Reviving Work Ethic – A Leader’s Guide to Ending Entitlement and Restoring Pride in the Emerging Workforce. With his hilarious and unconventional style of delivery, Chester will help you build the seven essential work ethic values within your people to ensure their success, and the success and sustainability of your business. The key take-aways from Eric’s presentation include:

• An understanding of work ethic, how it has diminished and eroded over the past 100 years, and why.
• Identifying the attitudes, beliefs and behaviors today’s emerging workforce carry toward employment, careers, and work-life balance.
• A methodology for how to instill, develop, and reinforce the 7 essential work ethic values that business leaders see as “non-negotiables.”
• Seven proven strategies for increasing productivity and performance while decreasing costly absenteeism and turnover.