Rob Dubin of RD Creative On The Labor Shortage & The 5 Things We Must Do To Attract & Retain Great Talent

An Interview with Phil La Duke

Employers need to realize it’s a new world. Old strategies of compensation and benefits will not work. If compensation and benefits were the answer to the Great Resignation you would have solved it by now. Engagement or making employees happier at work is a small part of the solution. The real solution is making people engaged and happy in life.

The pandemic has allowed people to reevaluate what they want from work. This “Great Reevaluation” has led to the “Great Resignation” which has left the US with a great big labor shortage and a supply chain crisis. What can we do to reverse this trend? What can be done to attract great talent to companies looking to hire? What must companies do to retain their great talent? If not just a paycheck, what else are employees looking for? In this interview series called “The Labor Shortage & The 5 Things We Must Do To Attract & Retain Great Talent” we are talking to successful business leaders who can share stories and ideas from their experience that can address these questions.

As a part of this interview series we had the pleasure to interview Rob Dubin.

Rob Dubin was a filmmaker who by his mid 20’s owned his own film production company and was traveling the world making films and TV commercials for Fortune 500 companies. After a near death survival experience that was national news and resulted in a call from the President of the United States Rob and his wife started asking questions about their purpose in life, similar to what many others are asking now in the pandemic. As a result they sold their home bought a sailboat and at age 42 took off to spend the next 17 years sailing around the world studying human happiness and fulfillment. Rob shared his life with both billionaires and barefoot villagers in 100 countries. Today he teaches people a recipe for happiness. For individuals this translates to more fulfilling careers and a happier home life and for corporations it stems resignations and transforms workplaces resulting in increases in bottom lines. Rob can be reached at www.robdubin.com

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Our readers would like to get an idea of who you are and where you came from. Can you tell us a bit about your background? Where do you come from? What are the life experiences that most shaped your current self?

I was lucky that in high school I knew that I wanted to make movies and I followed that passion to film school and then starting my own film production company directly out of film school at age 22. I was directing films and often times large film crews. Every member on a film crew is a freelancer and they show up every day ready to give 110%. A project may last a day or a week but at the end of that period the crew all go off to work for someone else. Since they only worked for me periodically I never gave a thought to keeping them happy or motivated.

A few years later when we spun off our film business into a new entrepreneurial venture I had a full time staff and used the same management approach. I failed miserably. I was a terrible boss and our office was a revolving door.

Eventually I had enough pain to switch tactics and I transformed to being a pretty good boss and our turnover went to zero. What made the difference is we focused not on making people happy at work- but making people happy in life. That distinction made all the difference. Even though we were a small organization with limited advancement possibilities, employees shared each others career wins as well as personal victories, creating a culture of support and progress. People loved their work, felt appreciated and bought totally into our mission. My wife and I were partners and often traveled 10–12 days a month filming. Our company ran equally well whether we were in the office or not- a testament to our people. I am a serial entrepreneur who built multiple seven figure businesses then I retired at the age of 42. I now speak to corporations and train their people in the skills of happiness.

I was lucky enough to be mentored by Tony Robbins in my 30’s and his lessons have helped me throughout my life. Much of my film work was documenting the exploits of some of the greatest athletes in the world and some of their attitudes and insights certainly rubbed off. I spent my 20’s and 30’s learning and honing my business skills, making films and making some money.

Then I spent my 40’s and 50’s sailing around the world on my own sailboat learning about what made people happy and fulfilled.. The result of those years was creating a blissful 40 year marriage where my wife and I spend every day in love and living in gratitude. Thanks to what I learned about happiness the emotions of anger, sadness, overthinking, anxiety, boredom, lethargy, procrastination are rarely a part of my life. Contribution is important to us and we started a scholarship in Indonesia that has sent 29 kids through college so far.

There are thousands of leaders who understand and can teach business. Those who understand and can teach happiness are in shorter supply and I want to share what I know. This is not rainbows and unicorns happiness- it is a deep seated contentment that you are living the life you want to live. That you spend your days experiencing emotional states that fulfill you. When I am not speaking and coaching my time is spent mountain biking, skiing, kayaking, flying my gyroplane and a new passion, pickleball.

Let’s jump right in. Some experts have warned of the “Great Resignation” as early as the 1980s and yet so many companies seem to have been completely unprepared when it finally happened. What do you think caused this disconnect? Why do you think the business world was caught by surprise?

While every HR department is dealing with the fallout of the GR few have identified its real causes and thus few have adopted successful strategies- if they had the GR would be over by now — clearly it is not.

The pandemic created three significant paradigm shifts that resulted in the Great Resignation.

Pre-pandemic common wisdom was that if you graduated high school, went to college, got a job, married, had a family, received periodic promotions and salary increases, then at some point when you ticked all the boxes, happiness and fulfillment would happen to you- sort of by osmosis or like a lightning strike.

Common wisdom also subscribed to the completely failed concept of work/life balance as if it was a giant see-saw and the goal was to balance the two.

Pre pandemic the questions being asked about happiness and engagement were on employer engagement surveys and the question was some version of, “how can we make you happier at work.” And based on the above common wisdom employees answered, “more compensation, more benefits, etc.” Some are still answering this way as that is the only framework they know.

I am not directly in HR so my first exposure to the term Great Resignation was in the news media. When I really listened to what people were giving as reasons they left work, 75% of their reasons were life related not job related.

HR is data driven but we only get answers to the questions we ask. Those outside of work, life related reasons I heard people gave in news interviews do not show up in engagement surveys or exit interviews so many in HR are still struggling to focus on the real cause of the GR.

Paradigm shift #1

In the pandemic millions of people started asking questions about their lives they had never considered before. The questions they were asking were not, “how can I be happier at work”, the questions they were asking were, “how can I be happier in life,” “is my life going as I planned?” And “if not, why not?”

Paradigm shift #2
If compensation was not the answer, what is the answer? Neither employees nor employers really knew.

Few people know the answer to their question of “how can I be happier in life” because few people actually know how to make themselves happy- we just assumed it happened when you ticked all the boxes.

Paradigm shift #3

The work/life “balance” concept has always been flawed. You cannot do something for half your waking hours and call it “work” as if it is independent of your “life.” It is all life and it needs to be integrated and whole and in balance. The failure of this concept became abundantly clear when the physical location and hours of work blended completely into the physical location and hours of life. Working from home blended the two into just life and if life was out of balance it was painfully clear. And with remote work continuing to blur those lines we have to abandon the notion of work life balance and we have to create happy balanced humans.

What do you think employers have to do to adapt to this new reality?

Employers have to expand their definition of engagement and wellness. Employees need to be fully engaged in life and that means successful home lives as well as work lives. Likewise the definition of wellness needs to be refined- it is not just physical health of course it is mental health which is equally or more important. More than that, employers need to focus not just on mental health when it is poor, but rather be proactive and teach people how to be mentally well- which can be stated simply as happiness.

The approach we take to physical wellness makes sense- we take people of every level of wellness and fitness and encourage them with gym memberships to get even more fit. But on the mental side we tend to only focus on it when they are unwell. We should be proactive in this area and teach moderately happy people to be much happier and more fulfilled in all aspects of life. In short — we need to teach happiness.

The experience of our lives is our emotions- I feel happy or sad or angry or worried. Let’s address that. No one ever said my wellness is only a 2 today I think I will quit my job- they say I feel miserable and I think I will quit my job.

Happiness studies are a fairly new but exploding field. Harvard University’s happiness course only started in 2006 and has already gone down in history as the most popular course at Harvard.

Based on your opinion and experience, what do you think were the main pain points that caused the great resignation? Why is so much of the workforce unhappy?

The pandemic caused people to ask questions about their lives they had never asked before- Am I happy? Many people answered no. The challenge is that few people know how to make themselves happy- we all just assumed if you got married, had kids and got regular promotions somewhere along the line you would “be happy.”

But just like learning to ski or play tennis or play a musical instrument happiness needs to be taught- there is a recipe for it. Teaching employees the skills and habits of happiness is the solution to the Great Resignation. Happy employees transform the workplace experience for themselves and those around them and it shows up on the bottom line.

Many employers extoll the advantages of the entrepreneurial spirit and the possibilities of an expanded “gig economy”. But this does come with the cost of a lack of loyalty of gig workers. Is there a way to balance this? Can an employer look for single use sources of services and expect long-term loyalty? Is there a way to hire a freelancer and expect dependability and loyalty? Can you please explain what you mean?

I think the answer is yes. I owned my own film production company for 20 years and it is a completely freelance business. Nearly every job is competitively bid and like all freelance businesses month to month income is erratic. Repeat business was our lifeblood and what led us to be one of the most successful in our region. We were fiercely loyal and motivated for our best clients.

What is different now is that millions of people are testing out the gig waters. Entrepreneurship is hard and many are not suited for it. The ones who are natural entrepreneurs will demonstrate loyalty to clients and will survive and become the kind of gig workers companies can count on. The ones who lack that entrepreneurial drive will go back to being salaried workers. It will shake out the ranks of gig workers and most workers will end up where they are best suited be that salaried or gig employment.

It has been said that “people don’t quit jobs, they quit bosses”. How do you think this has been true during the Great Resignation? Can you explain what you mean?

There are certain deal breakers for employees. For some remote work will now be a deal breaker. Really bad bosses are often a deal breaker. But most bosses are not terrible — they just become a focal point. If an employee is unhappy and unfulfilled in life and also has a mediocre boss, since they don’t know how to make themselves happier or more fulfilled they focus on what is more tangible — their boss, and they quit. On the exit interview they don’t say I’m quitting because I am generally unhappy in life- they say “bad boss” or “unappreciated.” On the other hand if an employee is generally happy and fulfilled in life, enjoys their work and has a minor thorn of a bad boss they may be more inclined to stay.

My happiness workshop teaches specific skills that help ameliorate ”bad boss” as a reason to resign. Happier bosses treat their teams better and show more appreciation and happier employees have skills to deal with bad bosses without themselves spiraling into resentment.

My personal success has often been because I realize in every problem is the seed of an opportunity. If bosses are integral to the process of creating happy employees and invested in their team’s happiness it will buy them much grace that can help overcome other deficiencies.

I am fond of saying, “If it’s fun they charge admission. But you get a paycheck for working here.” Obviously I am being facetious, but not entirely. Every job has its frustrations and there will be times when every job will aggravate employees. How important is it that employees enjoy their jobs?

Clearly the pendulum has swung far over in the worker’s favor at the moment and employers are making many concessions. I think the pendulum will swing back a bit but we are never going back to where we were pre-pandemic and I think that is a good thing. Savvy employers will be more flexible and do what they can to work with employees to redefine jobs so each worker can do more of what they like and less of what they don’t like in their jobs.

However the biggest ROI in making employees enjoy their jobs is teaching employees skills for happiness. You might leave the same employee in the same job but teach them the skills of happiness and he/she suddenly enjoys that job much more and then productivity soars and bottom lines show the result. It is a fact that happy people are more creative, resilient, flexible, sell better, improve communications, improve relationships produce more and actually live longer.

If your personal relationships are great, your home life happy, you spend many hours of every day experiencing happiness and gratitude and have love and connection in your life then it becomes much easier to live with a job (or boss) that is less than perfect.

How do you think an unhappy workforce will impact a) company productivity b) company profitability c) and employee health and wellbeing?

There is ample data from SHRM, Gallup and others to show the huge differences in productivity and profitability of happy employees and happy workplaces. Here are a few samples: Companies with highly engaged workforces were 21% more profitable, 17% more productive and had 41% lower rates of absenteeism. 74% of younger employees would take a pay cut to get their ideal job. An 11 year study showed companies with the best corporate cultures increased revenue 682% vs 166% for companies without a thriving corporate culture. (All data from this report:
https://blog.smarp.com/employee-engagement-8-statistics-you-need-to-know)

The GR is having a disastrous effect on employee health and well being for those left behind who have to pick up the slack. This results in a domino effect of resignations as burnout spreads. SHRM says it costs 6–9 months of an employees salary to replace them, but there is actually a much bigger and more costly problem waiting in the wings. The other shoe waiting to drop.

If employers take too much longer in stemming the Great Resignation they could lose enough employees to cause a catastrophic loss of institutional knowledge. The combination of experiences, processes, data, and expertise of employees if lost will decimate corporate bottom lines. Even losing institutional knowledge in a single department will have ripple effects company wide.

The solution is to take immediate action towards creating a happy workforce.

What are a few things that employers, managers and executives can do to ensure that workers enjoy their jobs?

My answer would be that employers need to ensure their employees enjoy not just their jobs but as much as possible enjoy their lives. It comes back to creating happier human beings. Engagement surveys only show answers to the questions asked so employers need to adapt engagement surveys to focus on the whole person not just the work person. And equally important employers need to followup on deficiencies. If an employee has the chance to air grievances in an engagement survey and then nothing is done to address their concerns they feel unheard and less motivated than before they took the survey.

Can you share a few things that employers, managers and executives should be doing to improve their company work culture?

As one part of my happiness workshop I teach a process I call Dream Harvesting, where people create a list of life dreams and goals. Some are career goals and some personal and then we work though strategies to make the goals real in your mind and create an action plan and break through fear and start working to achieve these goals. When an entire team does this together and can share and support each others’ deepest held dreams the transformation in culture is profound.

Okay, wonderful. Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “5 things employers should do to attract and retain top talent during the labor shortage?” (Please share a story or example for each.)

1. Employers need to realize it’s a new world. Old strategies of compensation and benefits will not work. If compensation and benefits were the answer to the Great Resignation you would have solved it by now. Engagement or making employees happier at work is a small part of the solution. The real solution is making people engaged and happy in life.
   Resignations today are often the result of the straw that broke the camel’s back or just an endless piling up of disappointments and frustrations in life. Since many of the frustrations of life exist outside of work, solving them changes how the employee does at work.
2. Wellness is a buzzword for HR but its definition is incomplete. If you only think of wellness as physical health you miss a more important element. Mental wellness. If you only think of mental health when it is a problem, as in mentally unwell, you are missing an opportunity. In fact THE opportunity.
   It is fairly simple — people want happy fulfilling lives- not just at work- in all aspects of their life. Help them achieve that and they will be motivated and loyal. Happiness needs to be taught- and can be taught by experts who understand the sources of happiness.
3. Work life balance has always been a terrible concept. You cannot do something for half of your waking hours and put it in a box and call it work and have it be separate from your life. We all know a good or bad day at work goes home with you and problems or victories at home go to work with you. We need to treat work as part of life and all of our life needs to be in balance. Remote work where life and work both happen at home makes this even more critical.
4. Transforming someone who is unhappy in life into someone who has learned how to make themselves happy is an unbelievable gift to be able to give someone. I’ve experienced the gratitude of people I’ve helped make that transformation. Imagine the loyalty and dedication people will feel towards the company that gives them that gift! The Great Resignation is a huge opportunity for C-Suite and HR people alike to create a happier and more engaged workforce and positive culture than ever before with the attendant benefits to the bottom line.
5. When you give a large number of your employees the gift of helping them become happy fulfilled human beings you can expect two significant changes. Just a few really happy people can change not only their work experience but that of those around them. As that multiplies it changes corporate culture from the bottom up which makes for a sea change in everyone’s work experience. Employees in that sort of fulfilling environment want to share their good fortune with others and become your very best recruitment tool.

We are very blessed that 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 breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.

I would love to meet Mark Cuban. As an entrepreneur I enjoy watching Shark Tank. As impressive as all the sharks are, most figured out a process that worked in their initial businesses and they look for similar products and replicate what they already know. In nearly every instance Mark Cuban sees things that are not there and understands how to create a new reality.

Our readers often like to follow our interview subjects’ careers. How can they further follow your work online?

www.robdubin.com or https://www.linkedin.com/in/robdubin/

Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this. We wish you continued success and good health.