90-day rule to keep workers long term, Differentiation in a commodity market & Is your culture really aligned with your core values?

3 July 2022 Newsletter

“Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship… the act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth” – Peter Drucker

Hope you’re Thriving!

It’s been a good week, where I’ve been able to catch up on a few things, including a few health goals. One of these goals was to get a 50,000km checkup. Like a car, I feel it’s good practice to regularly head to the doctor and ensure everything’s operating well. For one of the tests, I had to pop in for a heart test for an ultrasound of the heart. As I sat down for the test, the clinician informed me that the previous patient had been taken away on a stretcher to an ambulance and sent straight to open-heart surgery, such was his diagnosis.
He couldn’t believe the person was able to walk; his situation was that bad. Fortunately, I walked out with a clean bill of health.

Differentiation in a commodity market

Health, especially health insurance, is one of those highly commoditised markets, and it’s hard to differentiate. Not counting the USA, which has a unique health care system, it can be challenging to be different, to undertake activities that are different from the competitors where you can use that differentiation to meet the customer’s needs better than anyone else and scale. Therefore insurers have two levers to pull to try and grow—price and dumb adverts.

This week I came across an interesting strategy from a health insurer in a commodity market that we can all learn from.

AIA Vitality has found a way to gamify health insurance members to live healthier, which means they’re more engaged and likely to renew, and they’re likely to be more healthy and have less need to use their health insurance.

Here are a few benefits for members:

• Each week members earn points, and when they hit the desired points for that week, they get $5 per week to spend at a range of partners.
• If members buy an Apple watch from a partner and consistently hit their goals, the watch will be paid for during the months they hit the goals.
• Members get large discounts from related partners – such as 50% off gym membership.
• Members earn points by taking a health review, a nutrition assessment, a dental check or a health check, or by completing more than 7,500 steps per day, going to the gym, taking mindfulness app time, or nutrition tracking.

From the website:

“AIA Vitality is a personalised, science-backed health and wellbeing program that supports you every day to make healthier lifestyle choices. The program incentivises you to move more, eat well and complete regular health checks.”

Here’s the thing – all of that meets the need of the customer! If the prices are similar, why wouldn’t you want to be healthier!

I’m not affiliated with them and have no commercial arrangement; I just thought it was an interesting way to differentiate in a commoditised market.

Check out the website here  AIA Vitality

Bosses swear by the 90-Day rule to keep workers long term

My book on Onboarding is closer than it’s ever been. The audiobook is recorded, the text is locked away, and the final touches are being put on the design. As one of the testimonials said, “This book could not have been better timed. This is a must-read for all leaders right now!”.

So this week, an article from the WSJ caught my eye – speaking about the virtues of onboarding. And the outcomes and data are similar to those in my book.
Unfortunately, the article is for subscribers only – but here’s an interesting excerpt:

“Patrick Whalen, director of human resources and organisational development at the aerospace manufacturing company TAT Limco in Tulsa, Okla., watched late last year as a number of the company’s welders, assemblers and others left for jobs that, in some cases, paid only a dollar or two more an hour. Some workers, he said, barely stuck around for a month.

Frustrated, Mr. Whalen began making a case inside the company that it needed to rethink its approach to bringing on new employees. He wanted a 90-day plan. “It seems to be a magic window,” he said. After he explained that every new hire who left early cost the company thousands of dollars in training expenses, time and lost revenue, Mr. Whalen said managers agreed to a change.

In January, the company instituted a new 90-day onboarding process. TAT Limco hired an onboarding coordinator to oversee every new employee’s entry into the company. Managers now contact employees before their first day, part of an effort to provide more contact points with new hires so they don’t get lured to a rival. Supervisors set weekly expectations for new employees to guide them in their first three months, giving staffers structured goals and time to get up to speed.

Turnover, at 37% in January, has fallen by more than half, to 16% today, Mr. Whalen said. Newer employees are also sticking around. In the first three months of the year, the company lost one of 45 employees it hired. “If we lose somebody within the first month or two months or three months, it’s very rare,” Mr. Whalen said. “

Here’s the article Bosses Swear by the 90-Day Rule to Keep Workers Long Term

 

Turn any process into a step-by-step guide, instantly

This week I also came across an interesting tool that helps document your firm’s processes, including onboarding. Scribe, also known as Scribehow, is a cloud-based tool that allows you to create tutorials in minutes. The main thing that makes Scribe stand out from competitors is that it has only one feature, and it’s very easy to use. That feature records your screen, allowing you to share with others, thereby walking them through processes.

Check it out here: Scribe

This week on The Growth Whisperers podcast

Is your culture really aligned with your core values?

Is your culture really aligned with your core values? Sometimes there can be a difference between what your core values state, and what is really happening in the culture. And this can make the leaders of a business look like they don’t know, don’t understand or worse are incompetent to team members.

Therefore the core values of the business must align with the culture that people observe and live every day. In this episode, we talk about seven things you can do to ensure that your culture is aligned with your core values.

Episode 116 – The Growth Whisperers

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Keep Thriving!
Brad Giles