Entrepreneurial Culture by Design with Casey Oware

“If you continue to always look at it like a start-up, you are always growing to be better.”
-Casey Oware

How entrepreneurial is your organization?  And what do entrepreneurial behaviours actually look like in different company cultures?  In today’s episode, we explore this theme in an organization that still thinks of itself as a start-up - by design -  10 years in.

My guest is Casey Oware who is Vice President of Human Resources of Encompass where she oversees compliance, payroll, benefits, safety, equipment, and IT. Casey is a SHRM Senior Certified Human Resources Professional with 15 years of energy industry experience on a national scale. She has been with Encompass since inception and has been pivotal to the development and implementation of systems, processes and procedures that increase business proficiency. 

Prior to Encompass, Casey was a third-party HR consultant for large EPCs in the energy industry which has enabled her to service stake holders, but also remain client focused. Casey graduated from Oklahoma State University with a B.S. in International Business and obtained her Juris Doctorate from Purdue University. 

In this episode of Talent Management Truths, you’ll discover:

• An example of how to sustain a start-up culture longer-term - by design
• Insight on how to support people who are not naturally entrepreneurial
• A discussion around approaches to hiring large cohorts at peak times

Links

• Casey Oware on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/casey-oware-0937a814/ 

Looking for a Team Coach or dynamic Keynote Speaker/Facilitator?

Book a call with me to explore how we might partner (serious inquiries only please):

https://calendly.com/lisa-mitchell-greenapple/clarity-call

Share the Show

Like what you’ve heard? Pretty please with an apple on top - kindly leave me a 5* review so that others can find the show and elevate their impact too! Here are the simple instructions:

• Launch Apple's Podcast app on your iPhone or iPad.
• Tap the Search icon (on the botton) and search for the show name.
• Tap the show's cover art.
• On the podcast page, tap the Reviews tab.
• Tap "Write a Review" at the bottom of this page.

Follow me

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisa-mitchell-acc-ctdp-7437636/

Instagram: @greenappleconsulting

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greenappleconsulting.ca

Transcript

LM Ep 116

 [00:00:00] How entrepreneurial is your organization and what do entrepreneurial behaviors actually look like in different company cultures? In today's episode, we explore this theme in an organization that still thinks of itself as a startup by design. [00:01:00] 10 years in. My guest is Casey Oi, who is Vice President of Human Resources of Encompass, where she oversees compliance, payroll, benefits, safety equipment, and it, Casey is a senior certified hr, professional with 15 years of energy experience.

And prior to Encompass, she was a third party HR consultant. She holds a BSS in international business and obtained her Juris doctorate from Purdue. In this episode of Talent Management Truths, you'll discover an example of how to sustain a startup culture long-term by design insight on how to support people who are not naturally entrepreneurial, and a discussion around approaches to hiring large cohorts at peak times.

Please enjoy. 

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate1: Hello and welcome back to Talent Management Truth. I'm your host, Lisa Mitchell, and today I am joined by Casey oi. Casey is the Vice President of Human [00:02:00] Resources for Encompass Energy Services. Welcome to the show, Casey.

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate2: Thank you, Lisa.

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate1: So let's dig in. Tell us a little bit about who you are, Casey, and what you do at Encompass.

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate2: So at Encompass, I am hr, but I am, I'm also just the jack of all trades wear many hats, and I have been there since inception, so I am a decade in. And I'm hoping that I'm as supportive as I can be with that many hats. But yeah, HR is my wheelhouse and my passion.

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate1: Love it. So, so tell us a little bit about how, you know, leading up to 10 years ago when you joining Compass. What was your career journey? Where did you start?

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate2: Oddly enough, I. I got into HR on accident, which now that I've been in it so long, it sounds like we all do. I was a third party recruiter. I got recruited to be a recruiter. It, it was nothing I had ever imagined or [00:03:00] had a, you know, a bullseye on. And I fell in love with the pace of it. And then once you.

Become a successful third party recruiter. You've got teams under you or or clients that would like your services and, and then there's just a natural progression from there.

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate1: Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. I've, I've I've done the. Recruitment talent acquisition stuff a few times in my career. Either doing it early on or then, then leading it and, and that pace thing. I, I smiled when you said you fell in love with the pace. There is something, you know about the adrenaline rushes and there's this high pressure yeah.

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate2: High pressure, cutthroat, but it, it is, if you've got an entrepreneurial spirit at all, it's, it's very satisfying.

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate1: Yes, indeed. Indeed. Okay. So, so at Encompass, so you're a jack of all trades, Jane of all trades, however we wanna call it. So do you have a team? Tell us a little bit about the company and, and what that looks like.

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate2: Yeah. So we are a. Civil survey firm.[00:04:00] And, and that's got a, a lot of interesting dynamic to it in and itself of the business, right? So we aren't widgets, we're services. So we are in itself providing people. And then we're, we're doing it across multiple industries. We, we got our start in our bread and butter and oil and gas, but we've since diversified heavily into other industries that are still.

Energy touching in terms of renewables and land development. We've got a lot of interesting pushes there, but yeah, so we are providing services, which I, I do think is so much more HR interesting than, than a, a widget, right? I mean, you've got to have the right set of people and teams in place to get your client what they need, and that makes it to where, you know.

As an HR and the team that we have here, our stakeholders aren't just our current employees or our [00:05:00] previous employees, we're we're doing client interaction as well. So yeah, my current team is, we've got an in-house recruiter. We've got an HR manager myself, and then we also do the safety and equipment side of things.

So we've got coordinating there. We've also just got what we would call corporate administration staff, right. Of. Let's call 'em all Janes of all trades at this point. And they're not necessarily HR focused, but they are so supportive in that endeavor. Because their main goal is the success of the business unit of which they work.

So we, we lean heavily on each other. I.

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate1: Makes sense. Makes sense. Okay. And you're, you're out of the, the US so I know you're in Denver, Colorado is, is Encompass head office there.

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate2: We have an office here, but we are remote in every sense of the word. So the field guy is going to be standing in many times in the middle of a [00:06:00] field. And then our office staff is spread all over the country. We work in all 50 states, which makes it fun.

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate1: Yes, yes. You literally have a really dispersed workforce. I mean, I mean, virtually people can work anywhere, but yeah. So you're navigating a variety of, of, I guess, laws, you know, different, you know, they would vary from state to state. And so on For sure. So it's interesting to hear remote in every sense.

Most of the folks that I interview for the show, or, or even clients that I work with are hybrid since the pandemic that they're two days a week in the office or, you know, there's a lot of angst right now for a lot of companies where they're moving to three days a week. Some companies have, as you know, have gone as far as to mandate.

Every day and, and have upset a lot of employees. So, so it's interesting. So tell me a little bit about, about, you know, how like was Encompass always remote, even pre pandemic?

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate2: What Encompass has always [00:07:00] been is flexible. So there, even before the pandemic, I worked a hundred percent remote. But that is due to the fact that when there's offices all over the United States, which 1:00 AM I going to be in? How am I going to be most successful? I travel a tremendous amount for work.

I'm. Usually gone weekly and I'm, I will go to these either sites or project kickoffs or even just our office staff to meet with them and, and get a pulse on the morale and how we're doing and what we can do better. But that's asking them to come meet me in a brick and mortar that we have. We're on teams.

That's, I, I honestly can't remember life without it, but that's very helpful. We used to have a lot of. Teams that preferred to be together every day then you take that option away in Covid, they can't be, they have to learn how to do it another way and be successful, and then they learned to [00:08:00] like it.

After the pandemic, we have brick and mortar. If you want to be at it, we're here to support you. If you enjoy being at home, we're here to support you and we just let it. Be as organic as it as it should be, and the the, will you be there two days or will you be there three days? I think is, is counterproductive.

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate1: So, so I

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate2: all grownups. Pick what you want.

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate1: Yeah. Well, and I do appreciate, you know, we like your quote here was we let it be as organic as it should be. So, so funny when we're efforting through and we're pushing upstream and, you know, like it's, it's, we're going against the tide as always. Harder, right? And, and we create resistance.

So it sort of sounds like go with the flow a little bit. The one thing though that came up for me when you said that is, I think for a lot of companies, real estate comes down to it. Are we paying for, for brick and mortar, but people are not using, and so you, you mentioned, so because you said you're [00:09:00] remote in every sense, but it does sound like you've got brick and mortar locations other than projects like for office staff for instance.

Can you, can you share a little bit more on that?

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate2: Yeah, that's honestly just a constant evaluation, right? So before Covid, we had really large brick and mortar spaces that could accommodate 50, 60, a hundred people. And. When you're thinking of the, the machinery inside of it and the, not just the cost associated per square foot. Yeah, you're right. Real estate and the cost of money makes this not a good investment.

But then when you get to see what people will just choose as their own path without being mandated to do it, then you downsize the space. So the brick and mortar that we have now isn't what it always has been. Right? We, we are constantly adjusting on labor size, space size, cloud-based storage, things like that, that we hadn't [00:10:00] really thought of before.

That now, oh, okay. We need to change that. We need to up that, we need to down this just to make it work.

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate1: Right, so it's really this, this. It, it, it strikes me that you as a company and you personally kind of embrace I always talk about embrace iteration. Just that, you know, go with the, like, be flexible, be agile. Expect that there's going to be a need to adjust as you go along. You actually, when we first met, shared a great analogy for that.

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate2: Yeah, and I still, when I travel the country and meet with every single employee, which we do once a year, I call it the Rubik's Cube, and I, I just visually let them see me tweaking my hands in very small tweaks, right of nobody here. Thinks they're gonna get it right a hundred percent of the time, right?

If you can be as [00:11:00] flexible as we can be and you're not change adverse, we will get there. We're, you know, we're not gonna throw a bullseye every time. So we are constantly tweaking and spinning and trying to get these colors to line up perfectly. But when you're in either high growth mode or, or what we call startup mentality. Something is always changing and we are trying to accommodate that change, whether it's a pandemic or the market or the labor force or even real estate, right? There's, there's something changing all the time, and if, if you're preparing your culture to be willing to change with it and be adaptable, it makes all the pressure go away.

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate1: Yes, I agree. It's, it's I'm actually really smiling here because yesterday I was prepping 'cause I'm, I'm facilitating a workshop on Thursday about leading change. It's actually for, for a large group of lawyers. And but it is interesting, right? Because you know, one of the things that always [00:12:00] strikes me is that as a species, if you think about human beings, we're highly adaptable, right?

And yet, change is still hard. At the same time, it's this paradox,

So, so I, you know, this Rubik's cube analogy is so, apropos, I think, and it also this idea of constant change and being able to, to expect it. So we take the pressure off. How does that kind of impact your culture? Because you described to me when we first met that it's kind of a startup culture.

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate5: I think part of that is that we are all champions of change in some aspect and that even when. You get your groove in a startup, something changes, right? So either you've done what you needed to do, which is double in size, and you, you take a moment to think, oh, well, if I would've known now what I know then, or vice versa, I, I probably would've done it differently.

Right? So [00:13:00] then you're, you're taking the moment to when you're not in a building mode, you're in a fixing mode of. you you have a moment to make it better than it was before, and we're always striving to make it what I call better, faster, stronger, cheaper, right? I don't always think I got it right the first time. So this startup mentality goes 10 years in so that I. Something new is happening, right? We're either going into a new industry or we're going into a new project, or we've got a new HRIS system. There's something new all the time that if you're continue to look at it like a startup, you're always growing to be better.

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate1: Okay, so that's kind of, you know, you had characterized it as we're started by design, you know. And is that, so is that something that you talk about? Is that language that you use with employees?

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate5: I don't think we use startup. It was, it's definitely more entrepreneurial by design and [00:14:00] high growth by design. So we give them the empowerment and the autonomy. I. To build it how they would see fit, but with a tremendous amount of support. So when that is the company culture, then we're all in startup mode all the time because each employee is at a different level of growth and building it how they would've done it.

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate1: Got it. Okay. Okay. So interesting. So, so is that language that you bring in the entrepreneurial piece

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate5: Yes, absolutely.

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate1: and how does it show up? How do you communicate that?

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate5: A lot in onboarding and recruitment. Right. And it's, it's one of those things where, at any level of this company, whatever you would like to be doing, we're here to support it. And we, we definitely just are cards on the table of the best people that are here. Have an entrepreneurial spirit, and we'll just tell them that of culturally, if you love to, to build [00:15:00] things and create things and, and push the envelope into something new, we're right there in the trenches with you. If your answer is, well, I do it this way because it's how it's always been done it, we might scare you right.

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate1: I love that. I love that If you do things the way it's always been done, we might scare you. Okay, so what happens? So you, you really embrace this in, in entrepreneurial spirit, help people understand that's kind of the way the culture operates. It's, it's, it sounds like a value, frankly. So what about folks that.

We all need people that keep the lights on. There are roles that are, you know, the people that really enjoy the attention to detail, that enjoy structure and routine. And we need them to enjoy those things because it helps everybody else have the big ideas and move really quickly. So how do you kinda, Embrace that particular part of the workforce.

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate5: That makes the HR perspective [00:16:00] a little bit more difficult, but in my point of view, more fun. Right? So when you look at it that, what I call the visionaries, right? The entrepreneurs, the the quick paced move management system, you're building a team to support that. So you need a doer, you need a processor, you need somebody detail oriented to, to reign them in.

So. From the talent acquisition perspective, it's not just about do they have the skillset to do the job, but how are they going to fit in the team and what do we need? Do we already have enough visionaries in this one area or do we need to add more doers and processors to help ground what's going on and make sure. At the end of the day, the client is what we're here for. So if they are not getting the deliverables at the scope, schedule and budget of which they ordered, we don't have any lights to keep on. So the team building is the most important part.

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate1: Okay. [00:17:00] So, have you ever had anybody who's kind of, you know, that, that, you know, amongst the group, that, that grounds the visionaries that kind of says, okay, hey, you know, let's look at this from all angles and not just go, go running headlong. You know, is there a way that you help them kind of step more into the entrepreneurial spirit while still supporting who they are and how they are, how they be?

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate5: Yeah, we have a lot of great support here where a lot of us have been here for 10 years or more, so we've, we've been able to see the, the different. Challenges associated with such tremendous growth and people just naturally and organically fall into being a support mechanism like that. I am one of those.

While I think I might be a visionary, I am not. I'm an extremely analytical data-driven support mechanism and. I thrive in that, and that's helpful [00:18:00] for others. It's not always about the best idea. Sometimes it's the best ex execution.

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate1: Mm. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I appreciate that. What's interesting though is that you have a great energy when you talk about the entrepreneurial spirit and, and, and kind of that startup culture. So while you may not sort of come to that as naturally, clearly it, it see, it appears to do something to energize you in your job.

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate5: Yeah, I, I think. It's not a natural thing, but like everything with our culture, once you start to embrace the change and you, and you stop being scared of it and you realize that it's, it's just helpful instead of hurtful, there's the energy and once you assume positive intent of the people around you, it becomes a, a little bit easier.

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate1: I agree. And, and actually, you know what that makes me think of is it's, it's, it's really. Really tapping into everybody's potential, right? Because while we all have our kind of [00:19:00] default preferences about the way we work, you know, if you've done any kind of work style or personality assessment, right? We know that there's, you know, we try to put people in into boxes and so on, but there's, it's very nuanced and I think Some of them do a better job of others than, than, you know, pointing the way. Like, here's how you can become more authentically, you, not less like you while you're adapting or flexing like a Rubik's cube, contextually, or to the situation, right? In a way that still honors who you are and makes, makes the interaction better, makes the results better.

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate5: I actually had a mentor mention something like that where it was the authentically you personality wasn't crafted at the current place of employment. It's over a course of time in multiple people adding to the recipe, and when you allow people to see that in themselves, you get a different solution than you were expecting.

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate1: Yeah. Oh yeah. I love it when you allow [00:20:00] people to see that in themselves to get a different solution. Yeah. Beautifully put. Okay, so, so we're covering a whole bunch of stuff here. So we've talked about. You know, touched on this, on this recruitment and, and you know, the onboarding piece and really making sure that people know kind of what's the culture, what are, what, what's it like to be working here?

So let's dig a little further into the recruitment piece because you've got that dynamic that many, many pe listeners do, where you've got people both in the field. So, so you know, professionals in, in. Different areas, and then you've got office supports staff, and in your case you've got people across 50 states in a, in a, in a very large country.

So how, what are your approaches for those two distinct groupings?

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate5: The, the number one approach I teach is relationship building. At the end of the day, we, we are a place of employment, but we are also a family. You spend more hours with us than you likely do with your [00:21:00] own. And so if you're building the relationship and they realize that we will take care of you if you take care of us. Even in just the recruiting aspect, it's very, very helpful, right? So if you're, if you're relationship focused from the beginning, it's going to help tremendously on, on how to get people in the door. Now the differences in, are you doing field or office or sometimes drastically different and, and sometimes they're just nuanced. But if you're staying on the relationship aspect, if they. you, and you give them a call of, can you help me find, do you know anybody? They will help. Right. It's, it's, it's just human nature. When you're getting into the, the double and triple digits of people, obviously that's much harder. But yeah, I, I think as long as you're. Constantly building a relationship with [00:22:00] somebody of now might not be the time that they can join you for whatever's going on in their, in their personal life, but eventually they can, and they wanna think of you first.

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate1: Okay. Okay, so, so the other thing that's, that's unique. About recruitment, where you are is that you have to deal with some really large peaks, which I would assume when you're like, as you were just saying, you know, asking your own employees or candidates for help in finding more people would be useful.

So what's, what's an example of a peak hiring period that, that, that you deal with?

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate5: We call those masks. Mobilizations over here,

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate1: Oh, mass mobilizations. Okay. I love 

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate5: we we just did one this summer and what we needed was 70 crews, which they work in two person crews, which the quick math, right? We need 140 people. Now, we both know in recruiting, that doesn't mean that [00:23:00] you only need 140 people.

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate1: Oh yes. No, it doesn't.

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate5: What, what we actually needed was 200 for 140 to have boots on the ground. And that's one of the things that you can have all the data analytics in the world and, and trends, and you can know all the people that are qualified to do the job, but if, if they can't get there or the timing isn't right or. All of the things that make working with people fun and challenging at the same time, you just need so many more people than you thought.

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate1: Say a bit more 'cause some listeners may not have as much experience with talent acquisition and with, with, with mass mobilizations.

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate5: Yeah, so even if, even if you think of it as you've got one requisition, how many people did you have to talk to to get somebody that was qualified to interview for that requisition? Right? So if you need 140 people, you might, what we needed was 200 [00:24:00] that actually onboarded. Did 200 pass the drug test and the background check and make it to this pipeline out in the, not in the state that they're in.

Right? What are the odds that you're gonna find the 200 that are sitting right there where you need them to be? So there's a lot of people that even if they're perfect, they don't make it all the way through the process or. They stepped one day on the project and then they walked away. But there's a lot of things that even if we just had one requisition and we needed one person, there's a lot more people involved in that.

It, it's not as easy as picking up the phone and calling the one person, and they make it through the onboarding process. Start that day.

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate1: Is it? Yeah. And it's such an important theme that, it's funny 'cause I've talked with a lot of people over the last 200 episodes or so. You know, it's recruitment's come up quite frequently and, and we've never sort of touched on this piece completely. And it's, it's it's like in sales, I used to teach sales and you [00:25:00] know, you need a certain number of conversations.

Like leads that turn into conversations. Then out of those, there's, we talk about conversion. There's only so many that will convert, which, which is sort of like a very, I don't love it, like, it's not a great word, but convert to paying customer. Right. Somebody who's actually gonna buy. And so this is the same idea, right?

They're not buying from us, but like there's only so many people that will get through a full hiring process. But you might have to interview. I've seen recruits where, you know, 50 people for one hire. Right. Depending on, oh yeah. On the level. Right. So it depends on the level of the, the role that might be for an executive, right.

Where just, you know, they're looking for a bit of a unicorn. Who knows? I. But in this case, to your point, I used to do these we called them peak hires twice a year I was in, oh my God, this is sort of near the start of my HR career. And we had to bring in about 180 to 200 people every [00:26:00] August and every December for these peak periods because it was to dis it was for one of the big banks to disperse in Canada, disperse student loans.

So we needed to ramp up the call center and ramp up the behind the scenes operations people. So we had to train a lot of people. And it was interesting and I, I learned so much through this. We worked with agency at the time. I remember partnering with Manpower and doing a lot with them because we were having issues where we would put people, we would hire them and think we've got our, in your case, 140 people.

We bring them to, we called it Double Jack. Like they would listen in with a CSR as part of the training and some of them would just not come back. 'cause they're like, oh my God, I don't wanna be attached to the end of a phone for the entire day. Is this really what this is? Or, or they were in processing and they're like, oh my God.

It's quite repetitive. Right? I can't handle this. So we realized that we had to bring more people into that front end of [00:27:00] the process, but we also had to do a better job at helping people self-select out by helping them see and feel the job to understand what it entailed. So, so I think it's interesting, right?

So we would bring, like we had different stages much earlier before we actually had them sign on the dotted line. So I appreciate what, what you're talking about here. So with these, how often do these waves, these mass mobilizations come up for you in your business?

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate5: Frequently. If we're growing at the rate that we want to be growing at, right? So

whereas yours was, was very scheduled, ours is based on project award.

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate1: Right. 

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate5: So we want to get as many of those big projects as we can because we are always trying to grow. But it's also, If, if we could time it, and it would be wonderful if the next big project award was right at the end of this one and we could just move everyone seamlessly. That [00:28:00] would be the, the best thing. But we both know that doesn't happen. So, I, I would say taking Covid outside of all discussion because we can never plan for that. We get at least one of those a year.

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate1: Okay.

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate5: the really interesting years are when you get more than one in the same year.

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate1: Oh, I can imagine. Yeah. You might must just sort of be sitting there going, oh my God, here we go again. So what? You know, like when I, I, I shared that one experience for me and I knew, I know what I. What worked, for instance, which we learned by doing right, by having people leave prematurely, was we needed to help people come over and have a tour.

So I had worked with man parents and we need people to come see it, first of all, and observe briefly before we ever offer the job. And, and yes, they're not getting paid for that, but we're gonna. Sell it to them on, you know, this is, this is your opportunity to know if this is a fit for you. And right there it was a bit of a tell.

If they agreed to it, then they were more [00:29:00] likely to continue on if they, if they said no. And that's, you know, 'cause it was literally across the street where they had to come kind of thing. So, so we set that up and we realized that that works really, really well. It turns out. I found out years later, Disney does this kind of thing as well, right?

For people that gotta wear the big costumes in the parks, you gotta know what it feels like right before you decide that you wanna do it. So that worked. What have you found works and doesn't work for these large hiring lasts?

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate5: What I have found that works is. Again, tapping into the relationships, right? So when we get a large project, award award, the first thing I do is run the list of anyone who's ever worked for us, right? I want, I wanna repeat employee. That's the first thing to do because they know us. They know that we will take care of you, or they've seen it, they, and in this project energy industry, right?

The, that list is tremendous and that list is very valuable. [00:30:00] I start there. I think normally it's in a recruiter's nature to go look at who's applied the most recently. I don't. I wanna know the people that have worked for us, and I wanna start there now. If I can filter that list by who has a home base near where this project award is, that's more than gold because these field employees that work all over the United States, their number one priority is to be as close to home as possible. So I know if my project is closer to home than what they're already on, I've got a really good shot at getting them back. I wish I had a circumstance that we could do like a tour, right? But I mean, most of these people cross many states to get to a project. But I do often look for people that were either born and raised in that part of the United States. Or I, they did a project for us in that part of the United States. [00:31:00] Those are all really, really helpful. And then I work my way outside of that with, okay, I know you can't do it, but who do you know that can.

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate1: Right. Yeah. And so. I just wanna highlight for listeners too, what I'm loving here is this is, you know, don't look, don't just look at the most recent applicants. That's often not your best pool is what I'm hearing. Right? So, and I think it might be the easiest pool and yet. We have to kind of decide to step back and look at things from all angles and look at non traditional sources, right?

Or ones that might be a little feel a little trickier, but pulling that list of past app past employees, past applicants is interesting.

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate5: Yeah, the most recent applicants are likely the ones that are gonna say yes, but in our world of now, I'm gonna have to hire two or three more because that one didn't work out. it it makes us less efficient.

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate1: Yeah. Fascinating. Okay, well thank you for sharing that with us because I think there's a, [00:32:00] a lot. A food for thought here for how people can kinda say, you know, look at their own processes, especially if you deal with large hires once in a while, you know, annually or twice a year. Could be very, very helpful to think how can we look at this from an efficiency standpoint, knowing that.

And also looking at your numbers, like if we need to get this number in the door and who actually stay with us throughout training, throughout onboarding, how many do we actually need? That's kind of the number to start with, right? Because I think we've both learned by experience. You need more than you thought, right?

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate5: Every time you need more than you thought.

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate1: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, thank you. Well, we've really, you know, covered a lot of ground here, Casey. It's been really, really enjoyable. I So before we, we wrap up, I'm just wondering if you would share with us what's been the biggest learning for you over your 10 years? I. At Encompass.

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate5: I would say that my biggest learning is that[00:33:00] in every circumstance there is something I could have done better. I think when you know people are our business, it's very easy to say, you know, that didn't work out because of that guy, or this circumstance, or this and the introspection that is available that, well, if I had a just paused and listened to what that person was really saying, or if I would've, if I would've, there, there's a different outcome possible. Once I started again, turning that mirror on myself instead of outwardly there was a lot more professional growth and I, I think I became a more valuable asset to the company knowing that there is always something I could have done differently to have a better outcome. Even if the outcome was wonderful.

There's still room for growth in that.

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate1: So, which connects us directly to two core themes that we've [00:34:00] talked about today, right? Like if there's something I could have done, even if it went beautifully. There's always room for continuous improvement and we see that is a true belief held in entrepreneurial. I. Companies, right? That startup culture.

So I think that's really interesting. And then also back to, you know, the whole piece around you know, your professional growth and we've been talking about growth of the company. You're a very growth oriented organization, right? So, so it's really it makes sense for people to, to kind of. Decide, I'm going to be open and curious not only about what others could do or could have done, but what about me?

Right. So being more inter inter looking as well as outer.

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate5: I think if you have a couple key members that think that way, any department can go anywhere.

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate1: Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful. Well, thank you so much, Casey. This has been a really great conversation. I've really, really enjoyed discussing with you all of the different themes from recruitment to [00:35:00] Rubik's Cubes and, and startup culture. Thank you very much for coming on the show.

Casey Oware GMT20231205-171339_Recording_separate5: Thank you, Lisa. It was an absolute pleasure.