Admond Fong of Senior Providers Network: “Five Ways To Identify And Retain Fantastic Talent”
I believe people’s actions have a rippling effect. So by doing the little things like saying thank you, be kind/respectful, have empathy towards others goes a long way and can have lasting imprint on others especially if it is received by a person of influence.
As a part of my HR Strategy Series, I’m talking to top experts in the field about their five ways to identify and retain fantastic talent. Today I had the pleasure of interviewing Admond Fong.
Admond is a co-Founder of Senior Providers Network, a start-up focused on helping family caregivers with their eldercare issues. U.S. companies are losing over $30B a year in productivity because of this issue and in many cases results in employees retiring earlier in their career to take care of a loved one. Senior Providers Network aims to help caregivers navigate the complex eldercare maze while providing best options to help mitigate stress and prevent employees from leaving their jobs.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
The eldercare problem was something I first encountered during high school as I was a caregiver for my grandparents. Because of my grandparents’ limited English, I attended many of their doctors’ appointments to serve as a translator and report back to the rest of the family to make elder care decisions. Professionally, I’ve spent most of my career in the healthcare / senior care arena so I have a unique perspective of eldercare coming at this from both a consumer and provider side. It is with Senior Providers Network that I am now also entrenched in the employee benefits space. Employee benefits is an evolving industry and I’m happy to be with a company that is addressing a real problem that many companies are not addressing. It’s sad to say, but more companies are more inclined to have a pet insurance offering rather than an eldercare benefit. Now don’t get me wrong, I love animals but I would personally put my parents’ needs first. It’s one of those things unfortunately that our parents are not top of mind until something happens. When something does happen families are scrambling to figure out what to do and often times making brash decisions.
Can you share the most interesting or funny story that happened to you since you started this career? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
One day at BLR Conference, a HR Director we met with loved our product but she said that most of her employees were millennials so there was no need for a product like ours. The next day in the morning right before breakfast she came back to our booth with a scowl face. We asked if she was ok, and she hands me a piece a paper. It was a resignation email from someone at her company. That employee, who was 25 at the time, lived in a multigenerational household and because both parents were working they came to the conclusion that it was best for the family economically to have the granddaughter quit her job to become a full time caregiver for the grandmother. That HR director then finally understood that eldercare has an impact on all employees. Eldercare is not a matter of “IF” your company needs an eldercare benefit, but more of an issue of “WHEN” you will need eldercare assistance.
Are you working on any exciting new projects at your company? How is this helping people?
YES! YES! YES! Originally we created our eldercare platform as an employee benefit to help address the $30B lost in workplace productivity. Now with one of our partners, we have created a unique Family Care Plan that is available to the general public. Not only does it include our platform but also include services such as talking to a doctor/counselor, legal discounts and much more. It’s a great offering especially since it is only $60/year!
Our platform has already been proven to help people. We have shown countless hours of time saved but most importantly our services give people peace of mind so they can go back and focus on their job. Our new product, The Family Care Plan makes it available to more people and hopefully provides other cost effective options that were not considered before.
Ok fantastic. Let’s now jump to the main focus of our series. Hiring can be very time consuming and difficult. Can you share 5 techniques that you use to identify the talent that would be best suited for the job you want to fill? Please share an example for each idea.
As I stated earlier, I’m not coming from the HR side but more from the employee benefits spectrum. What we are seeing is an increase of services like ours as well as better family leave policies for both men and women.
From identifying talent perspective, I think it is more important to retain talent because replacing good talent takes time and money. If you create a work environment that makes people not want to leave addresses some of the hiring needs.
With so much noise and competition out there, what are the top 3 ways to attract and engage the best talent in an industry when they haven’t already reached out to you?
- Share the story of your company and how it not only benefits society at large but how you treat it employees
- Show that your company is growing and there are new challenges that brings with it opportunities for individual growth
- Host an annual hack-a-thon that is open to the public to solve a company problem.
What are the 3 most effective strategies used to retain employees?
Having better employee benefits that addresses all the different life stages. People are not machines, we are all impacted from various life cycles from birth to death. If employers can provide different services that meet these different “life needs” then people will be happier and have a better work/life balance which equates to higher retention.
And it’s just not the benefits, but better leave policies that is fully adopted by the company’s culture. You can have the best benefits and company policies in the planet, but if the corporate culture paints a black eye for using those benefits than it is pointless.
In your experience, is it important for HR to keep up with the latest trends? Can you give some examples of what this looks like?
Yes it is definitely important to keep up with the latest trends, but that doesn’t mean to implement changes right away. I think new mindsets and approaches to problems are great, but they should be tested first before a company wide roll out.
Can you give an example of a creative way to increase the value provided to employees without breaking the bank?
Health care is the biggest employee benefit but there are lots of other great employee benefits that does not break the bank and can help with both recruiting and retention. You just need to understand your employees’ needs (through surveys) and work with a benefits broker that has a good pulse of the benefits industry and up to date with new products in the marketplace.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
If I was in a position of great influence the best way I could generate the most amount of good is through my actions. I believe people’s actions have a rippling effect. So by doing the little things like saying thank you, be kind/respectful, have empathy towards others goes a long way and can have lasting imprint on others especially if it is received by a person of influence.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” — Wayne Gretzky To me this quote means two things 1) Have the courage to try new things or don’t be afraid of risk because you may never know how it pans out unless you try. 2) Perseverance — even if you fail, you can’t just lie on the ground forever and give up. You have to get back on your feet and shoot the next shot because it might result in a goal.
Some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this :-)
I would love to meet Maria Shriver. I find her to be a fascinating and accomplished woman who is influential in entertainment, business and politics. But most importantly her advocacy in Alzheimer is something I share a passion in as well being in the elder care industry. Being a caregiver myself in the past and entrenched in this professionally, I think more resources need to be made available to care for our elderly. Eldercare doesn’t just affect our parents, it impacts everyone and the sooner we realize this the sooner we can have real solutions both from a political front and the private sector.
Thank you so much for these fantastic insights!
