Cut Turnover 40% in Year One with Clark Ingram, Founder & President of People Profits, ex-CHRO
Clark Ingram served as Chief Human Resources Officer for four companies across four different industries — publicly traded and privately held — over a 30-year career that began in finance, not HR. That finance lens is the foundation of his core operating philosophy: people and profits are co-equals, held together rather than ranked against each other, and every workforce decision carries a number. Clark Ingram is the Founder and President of People Profits LLC, a financially focused human capital management consulting firm built around three chronic problems: employee turnover, chronically open positions, and skills gaps. His standard engagement target is to cut a client's turnover by 40 to 50 percent in the first year.
The operational problem Clark Ingram unpacks in this episode quietly breaks mid-sized companies: the assumption that more recruiting solves a retention problem. At the 100–1,500 headcount stage, people teams often run hard on the recruiting treadmill — hiring fast, watching attrition eat the gains, and never diagnosing why the exits keep happening. Clark Ingram's argument is that the root cause is almost always organizationally specific, that compensation programs built on tenure rather than value accelerate the problem, and that most HR teams have handed leadership a scapegoat — "turnover is a leadership issue" — instead of owning the fixes within their control.
The operational problem Clark Ingram unpacks in this episode quietly breaks mid-sized companies: the assumption that more recruiting solves a retention problem. At the 100–1,500 headcount stage, people teams often run hard on the recruiting treadmill — hiring fast, watching attrition eat the gains, and never diagnosing why the exits keep happening. Clark Ingram's argument is that the root cause is almost always organizationally specific, that compensation programs built on tenure rather than value accelerate the problem, and that most HR teams have handed leadership a scapegoat — "turnover is a leadership issue" — instead of owning the fixes within their control.
Challenges Addressed
- The recruiting treadmill: Clark Ingram describes the pattern he encounters in nearly every engagement — teams hiring as fast as possible, believing the next cohort will fix retention. His position: putting new people into the same environment everyone before them left produces the same result, every time.
- Compensation built on time served, not value: Most compensation programs reward tenure with incremental raises unrelated to the value an employee adds. Clark Ingram calls the fix "value pathing." At his first company, senior technicians left because their compensation lagged the value they generated as they completed training modules — a gap competitors exploited by poaching them.
- Not knowing who you are as an employer: Clark Ingram argues employer brand is not a list of values but an accurate picture of who genuinely fits. In a consulting engagement with a community hospital, every employee he interviewed used the word "community" unprompted. That identity signal drives both retention and candidate self-selection.
Actionable Takeaways
- Set a 40–50% turnover reduction target for year one, then find the single organizationally specific cause driving most of it. Clark Ingram's experience across four industries is that most exits trace back to one dominant issue. Identify it and fix it rather than waiting for a comprehensive program before acting.
- Replace time-served compensation with value pathing. Map the value an employee produces as they gain skills, then align pay to that curve rather than tenure. Clark Ingram's first company reached zero turnover among senior technicians by matching pay increases to the training modules that triggered higher client billing — closing the gap competitors used to poach talent.
- Ask employees the five reasons they work there, then use their answers to write your hiring criteria. Clark Ingram uses this question to surface the real employer identity — the lived experience, not the stated values. That identity then becomes the filter that keeps poor-fit hires out of the pipeline.
Questions This Episode Answers
- Why does increasing our recruiting budget never fix our turnover rate? Clark Ingram's answer is direct: recruiting puts new people into the same conditions that caused previous employees to leave, so the outcome repeats. The only fix is identifying the organizationally specific reason people exit — different for every company — and removing it before adding headcount.
- How do I build compensation that retains high performers instead of losing them when they're most valuable? Clark Ingram's value pathing framework ties compensation increases to the skill milestones that raise an employee's output and market value, not to tenure intervals. At his first company, a portion of the incremental client billing triggered by each completed training module went to the employee — shutting down competitor poaching at exactly the point it previously succeeded.
- Is my turnover a leadership issue or something HR can actually fix? Clark Ingram rejects the framing that turnover is primarily a leadership problem outside HR's scope. In his experience, the majority of turnover he has eliminated had no leadership involvement as a root cause — it came from selection, compensation design, and employer identity gaps within the people team's control. His test: fix what HR can change this quarter first, then measure the result.
Links & Resources Mentioned:
- Clark Ingram's websites: ClarkIngram.com
Daria Rudnik (00:06.679)
No, that's something's really
Daria Rudnik (00:14.735)
Something is really wrong with this new update 'cause it doesn't see my camera now.
Daria Rudnik (00:33.793)
Welcome to Built by People Leaders. I'm your host, Daria Rudnik, and this show is for HR and L&D leaders, those building real impact from within and shaping AI ready organizations. Each episode, I sit down with people leaders to talk about how they build strong cultures and shape organizations around them. It's about HR being seen as true business partners by leaders and by HR themselves. And I'm so happy to introduce our special guest today, Clark Ingram.
Who is the founder and the president of People Profit LLC, a financially focused human capital management consultant firm specializing in employee turnover, chronically open positions, and skills gaps. Over the past thirty years, he has served as chief human resources officer for four companies across four different industries, ranging from publicly traded to privately held organizations. Welcome, Clark.
Clark Ingram (01:26.99)
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Daria Rudnik (01:30.413)
Well, it's it's a great pleasure. I have so many questions for you, but let's start with your experience and your path to HR. I know you didn't start with HR. Tell us about it.
Clark Ingram (01:41.934)
So I'm actually a finance guy and I graduated from the University of Texas and I like the numbers because one plus one equals two every time. people are not that way. And I ended up working for an industrial service company in Houston. I'd done a couple of projects for the CEO, he was happy. and honestly, some of those projects I was not an expert in. I I basically had to learn
And so one day he asked me to come in his office for a cup of coffee. And I thought at that time that that that's all we were doing, we were drinking coffee and chatting. And he asked me, what were the three biggest problems we've had in our company? And I said, number one, we're losing our senior technicians like they're going out of style, and they're the backbone of our company. They're the people that make us money. Secondly, we can't recruit because everybody knows we have a turnover problem. And nobody wants to work for a company that has turnover.
And lastly, our skills gap was going through the roof. And he said, Well, what do you think we need to do about it? We were not getting good responses from our HR people. And I said, I think we need to bring in another HR executive and all that. He said, I don't think we have that much time. And he said, I want you to go in there and see what you can find, see what you can do. And I said, Well, I'm not an HR person. I don't know anything about HR, I don't want to know.
And he said, Yeah, well do me this favor and we'll make it up to you. I said, Okay. So the next thing I know, I go in. And what I did not know at that time was I didn't have all the HR dogma that everybody else knew. Okay. I was just doing what I thought needed to be done to get the results that I was looking for. I'd be in a finance person. Okay. And so what happened was we figured out that there was one major thing that was
creating a lot of our turnover and we fixed it. And we fixed it rather quickly. and the next thing you know, a lot of our turnover went away. And it was just a matter of of me figuring. But what I tell people is now that you have to figure out what are your organizationally specific reasons why your turnover is happening. And so the next thing I know I end up
Clark Ingram (04:09.729)
You know, staying there for a few years and we did really well. We ended up having zero turnover in our senior technicians the last five years I was there. And then I started just working for different companies and different industries and finding what their again, their organizationally specific problems. We moved on from there.
Daria Rudnik (04:31.407)
I know like you know a lot about turnover and I have so many questions about that. But since you mentioned like you didn't have this HR dogma and you have some things you don't agree with HR about, tell us about those things.
Clark Ingram (04:45.515)
Yeah. Well, there's there's a couple of different things. And we can start off with a really basic thing. If you everybody looks at my my logo, I have people and profits being held together by an infinity sign. Okay. And one of the questions you always hear is what comes first, people or profits? And part of HR dogma is that people come before profits, and everybody knows the right answer. Well
I reject that. I reject the question because it's a false question. It's forcing you to pick one or the other. Okay. And which and here's what I have found over the years. Again, thirty years now I've been in HR, ended up falling in love with the most complicated organism on the planet. That's why I never went back. Was that I found out that if you put either one on top, you end up with this, with conflict. And you don't want that, obviously.
So if you make them co equals and you say people and profits working together to benefit both, all of a sudden you have this. And there's lots of strategies on how you can do that and how you can foster this idea that we're working together. I I just finished a consulting gig with a hospital and they they need to buy a machine that's literally millions of dollars for one machine.
Okay, that's not unusual in all kinds of industries, right? But where's that money coming from? You know, and so therefore and the employees understand that. They don't have a problem with that. They're looking at it going, yeah, we need that machine. We need to buy that machine. So we've got to, but we gotta make some money to be able to buy that machine. And so I reject that that people versus profits thing. And then I believe that
Cutting your turnover has to be job-done. You've got to figure out what is it that's driving people away. And that your your the best thing you can do for your culture is to figure out what's causing your turnover.
Clark Ingram (07:00.373)
You want me to continue on? I mean I'm got I'm gonna totally.
Daria Rudnik (07:02.905)
I mean, you i if if you have more, you can just briefly tell us like what are the things you disagree. Because you said nine things you disagree. I'm like curious to hear all nine.
Clark Ingram (07:11.325)
Okay, so I'll give it I'll give them all to you. most people what they do is they try to recruit their way out of a turnover problem. Every single time I walk into an organization, it's always the same thing. They're working really, really hard. They're on that recruiting treadmill and they're hiring people as fast as they can, with the mindset that somehow this next group of people, we're gonna put them out there and they're gonna fix our turnover problem. And it never works.
You know, all they do is they throw the same people into the same situation that everybody else left from, logically they're gonna leave too. So, and then compensation i is our most compensation programs are based on time servers. In other words, you've been here for six months, we're gonna give you a small raise, and et cetera. It has nothing to do with value. I I'm
I had a whole section in my book about what I call value pathing. And that was actually the problem, the number one problem of those technicians were leaving. Is the fact that we were training them up and they were gr increasing their value to the company every day. And what was happening, their compensation was doing this. Okay. And what this this this gap here was turnover. You know, because our competition would hire our guys away.
And before we could get them to that point. And here's how stupid this was. But if our biggest client was Exxon. And Exxon would pay us based on the training. So if they if they finished module one, then they paid us more money. All of a sudden, what we did, we plotted it out is okay, if we took X amount of that money and gave it to the employee, guess what would happen?
And over a period of time, as they're going through this development program, they would get to that point where normally that's when the competition would call them and pull them away, but they are now already making more money than they were off being offered all of a sudden. We've completely shut it down. That's why we ended up with zero turnover. These guys, what they had what they had to learn was stay on that path and they would end up in a very good place where they were making really good money.
Daria Rudnik (09:04.302)
Mm-hmm.
Daria Rudnik (09:32.784)
Pause it right here because I we'll listen to that because I do have a question like about what you're saying. It's I mean, it's very from what I hear, it's very important to understand not only like the the HR part, but also like the revenue, how much the client pays you, so that you can manage the compensation accordingly. If you don't know that, if you're not interested in in the revenue and how cu how company is earning money, you will not be able to create those compensation schemes that will reflect the reality.
Clark Ingram (09:37.101)
Yeah.
Daria Rudnik (10:03.309)
But you mentioned one thing. You mentioned zero turnover. My question to you, is it a good thing?
Clark Ingram (10:11.915)
I'm sorry.
Daria Rudnik (10:13.475)
Zero turnover. Is this a good thing?
Clark Ingram (10:17.765)
you're gonna end up with some turnover. But the way I look at it is it's our fault. Okay, we're selecting the wrong people. Okay, one of the other things we're gonna get to here in a minute is most companies do not do a good job of knowing who they are. Okay. Who are you as an employer? What makes you special? Why should I come work for you? Okay. And I got a story for you.
I'm talking to a CEO one time and he said, Clark, I need you to come work for me and all that kind of thing, and I'll I'll give you X number of dollars, I'll give you a quarter office, and I'll do all this stuff, the usual. Okay, okay. So fine. And I said, Okay, but everybody's willing to do that for me. Okay. And you know, if you're a if you're a certified welder and all that, everybody knows what the going rate is, okay, and all that kind of thing. So
Daria Rudnik (10:46.274)
Okay, good.
Clark Ingram (11:15.339)
That in and of itself doesn't tell you anything. But one CEO came back with the right answer for Clark. Okay, how to get Clark. And that was, he said, Clark, I need you to come in here and stabilize my workforce because they're not stable right now. I've got all kinds of turnover, blah, blah, blah. I can't get good people, blah, blah, blah, the usual. And he said, and here's why I need you to stabilize. Because I've got fourteen
Other things that I could go do and make money and increase the size of my business and make my business even better. But I can't even trust my workforce with what I have now. Okay, for Clark, yeah, I'm hooked now. Okay, forget about the money. Forget about the corner office. Yeah, now we're gonna, I'm gonna help him build his business and he's gonna be successful. Okay, and I'm sitting there going, I know I can stabilize his workforce.
I'd already done it so many times by then that that was a wasn't an issue for me. But that's one of the one of the thing getting back to what we touched on is this idea of knowing who you are. My last consulting gig I was on, I one of the things that I do is I go out and I ask people, What are the five reasons you work here? And it was interesting. Every single person
There was one word that every single person mentioned, and that was community. This was a community hospital that started over a hundred years ago in a small town in New England. Now they were a regional hospital. But at the very same time, everybody saw themselves, we're helping our community. We're helping our neighbors. We're helping our family. We're helping our people we go to church with, et cetera, et cetera. And that was that was
They're I that was their number one identity of who they were. If you if you're coming here and all you're looking for is the money, then you're not really gonna fit in here. You know, people don't accidentally fit in. They fit in because they know that they I would never go work for Exxon. Exxon is the largest bureaucracy in the world. I would never fit in there. I'm too entrepreneurial. Okay. But I have a friend of mine.
Clark Ingram (13:35.297)
He worked there for 40 years. He was his one and only job. He left Texas AM with an engineering degree and he stayed at Exxon for 40 years until he retired. Okay. And he was perfectly happy. Okay. So again, it that's how you tell, you got to get your employee the candidates to know who you are. So that they can sit there and go, yeah, I can buy into that, or no, I can't buy.
Daria Rudnik (13:59.568)
Absolutely. And like to all our listeners, I want you to like really hear that out and and remember that, like know your employee value proposition. And we had an episode with Daniela a few episodes before exactly about how to build the employer value proposition. So check it out. And Clark, well again, I'll get back to this zero turnover. Well, I was working with a team with organization and they had a problem that they have a very low turnover.
People kind of didn't wanna leave because it was comfortable. It was okay. But they were not up to speed with what the company wanted. And they didn't have the reasons to fire them because they were good employees, very loyal. But it was hard for them to find new people because all the places are occupied by the old folks and and they don't just don't wanna move.
Clark Ingram (14:59.329)
Yeah. You see, I will I I run into those situations too. Their their turnover is not 30, 40% like a lot of times I run into. Okay. And just so you'll know, is that my sta my standard is I'm looking to cut their turnover by 40 to 50% in the first year. Okay. But if you've got low turnover, but what here's what you you said was that the other thing I always run into
Daria Rudnik (15:00.163)
What do you say about that?
Clark Ingram (15:27.133)
that CEOs say to me is, Clark, I can't find good people. The kind of people that are just like my relationship with that one CEO, those people who are going to come to me with ideas and they're not just coming in turning the crank and doing their job, but they're coming in going, you know, we could do this different. And we could do it easier and more efficient and get better results and all that kind of thing.
Those are the people that I can't find. And those people and I have a whole another whole section in my book about this topic is that you know you don't want just mediocre people. Nobody says nobody's sitting there going, I want mediocre people. No, they all want those great people that that are on fire, that are into the journey, they're into the they're into the fight and all that. But what I what the number one thing that I tell people about really good people.
They don't talk about money. They talk about opportunity. What are we going to do? Where what's the journey that we're going on? Back to that CEO. One of the things I told him was: go on and tell every single employee what you just told me that this company is going somewhere. You've got all kinds of ideas on what we're going to do and where we could go right now if we just had our workforce right and all that. Because I got news for you. You know, that's the kind of thing that.
Really good employees want to hear. We're not just I I had a client one time, they did two million dollars in revenue. And I I'll guarantee you that right now they're doing 2.1. Okay. They were happy with what they had, they were not going anywhere, they were not slaying any dragons, etc. etc. And the problem with that is your really good employees, they like to slay dragons.
They like to be able to give be given permission to come in and go, We can do this better. We can do this more efficient, more productively, blah, blah, blah. Those are but if you're sitting there, if you're giving them the clues that you're not going to give them that permission, those people are not going to come work for you.
Daria Rudnik (17:41.25)
Yeah. So we've talked about that people at profit, I mean there's no comparison, they need to be together. That turnover is like the biggest the main the most important thing you need to address, that you cannot recruit yourself out of turnover, that compensations need to be based on value, not on the type served in the organization. That about the importance of employee value proposition. What else is traditional HR doing wrong?
Clark Ingram (18:10.923)
I I think that a lot of times HR like and one of the one of my things I see on LinkedIn all the time now is well turnover is created by leadership. And so we're we can't do anything about it. And so therefore we're off the hook. And I totally disagree with that because just about I I would say the majority of the turnover that I have gotten rid of
Had been that leadership had no involvement. It was I mean, one of the things we did, I I I I just hate this story because it just it just grinds my gears. But I worked for a company and what they would do is they'd hire the first 12 people online. So they're hi they're they were staffing up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like the look on your face right now. You're confused. Exactly. They're they're literally hiring the first 12 people in line.
And they're they're on the books now. Now they have to do the drug test and they have to do this and they have to do that and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they're wasting all their time. Now they only need ten people. But the reason they were hiring twelve is because they found out that generally only ten people, nine or ten of those people would show up for orientation three days from.
Okay, because for whatever reason they couldn't get out of bed or they got arrested or whatever. And you know, but so they would end up hiring twelve. And and I thought, well, you know, what if we put a little bit of selection process in line here? And instead of just hiring the first twelve in line, we're gonna actually talk to these people some and all that. And I put a real relatively rudimentary level of selection process in place.
And the next thing you know, yeah, okay, we're we're not hiring twelve, but guess what? The ten that we hired showed up. And they passed the drug test and they passed the other tests that we had for them to do and all that kind of thing. And we would end up actually terminating one or two during the training process because we we could tell they weren't gonna make it. They were not gonna get to the level we wanted them to be at. And
Clark Ingram (20:30.049)
So what what what what happened next? We sent a message to the candidate pool. We the people that were looking for jobs, that if you go apply to that company, you better have your A game on. You better know what you're doing. You better, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And if you are on drugs, or if you are can't get out of bed and all that, there's no reason to go apply there because they're not going to hire you anyways. Next thing you know, their turnover goes down by forty two percent.
And it was almost most of the turnover that we got rid of was that one issue. and just so you'll know, the next thing that we did was we had a lot of people that were applying over and over again. We started putting notes into our system. Okay, we interviewed this guy, here's why we said no, etc. And so all we would do if the guy applied again, we would just ask a simple question, okay, this is why you got rejected last time, what has changed?
Daria Rudnik (21:12.435)
Mm-hmm.
Clark Ingram (21:29.397)
And most of the time they didn't have a good answer, so we didn't bother to talk to them. Okay. So all of a sudden, the amount of time that we were spending get staffing up, and all of a sudden we were staffed up too, because we were bringing in good people. And all of a sudden we were going to to them. This is my number running recruiting source. I go to my good employees and say, I need more like people like you. You know, go talk to your, you know, go talk to your fishing buddy or all
I got one more one more story for you. Is that I had a guy one time come in my office and he said, Clark, I've got a a guy just applied, his name is such and so. He's a very good friend of mine. You need to hire him. Don't even interview him, just hire him. Trust me. Okay, I'll take it. Okay, we're good. And so we just hired him. He turned out to be a great employee. A few months go by, the same guy walks in my office, he closes the door and he says, Clark
I got a guy, his name is so and so, he's a friend of mine. Do not hire him. Under no circumstances, hire this guy. He's a good friend of mine. I like him as a buddy, but I don't want to work with this guy. If you can get that attitude in your employees, they will turn into your best recruiters.
Daria Rudnik (22:35.225)
Yeah.
Daria Rudnik (22:50.095)
That's interesting because w usually we kind of want employees to like refer somebody to join the company, but it's also very important for them to notify the company. I mean that's a that's a great person, but not a great fit for our organization. That's that's really rare. And I don't think many HR folks focus on that, but that's important.
Clark Ingram (23:06.55)
yeah.
Clark Ingram (23:12.397)
Well, just like in one of the other things I do in that same kind of category is that same guy, I'm gonna go to him offline, you know, and say, Hey, you just suck you just had somebody lose your leave your apartment. You know why he left. Why did he what's the real reason he left? I'm not gonna do it. I I'm not a believer in exit interview because I know what I've done in every ever exit interview I've ever done. Okay. I believe that the
Everybody in that department knows where that person lives. And the other thing I will tell you is your question a while back is a is a really big one. And that is, what is turnover good in some situations? Yes, it is. And here's and here I can give you several really good examples that I will help that person pack. And that is if they figure out that they truly are not a good fit. We had an employee recently at the hospital.
She tried to train herself into another job. And when she got into that job, she realized it was not for her. Okay. And she wanted to just go back to her old job. Okay. We figured that out. But you know, if if you're if someone's mother, mom has a stroke and you need to go home, and that means you have to leave your job here to go help your mom.
At at that age of her life and everything, I'll help you pack. Okay. If you're going back to school and you are you're going to be better off in the long run by going back to school, I'll help you pack. Okay. If you have got a really an actual job that's better for you and your family, I'll help you pack. Now, at the very same time, if you're going to come into my office and try to convince me that you
got this really good deal, but it's not a good deal. And I can tell just by what you're telling me. And you I I you're gonna have to give me permission to try and talk you out of it. Because I see a lot of employees do that. They don't do their homework when they're leaving and they're leaving for really bad reasons. I did that one. In one in my career I made a bad decision.
Daria Rudnik (25:29.103)
I mean, I did that as well. Like I just left the toxic culture for another toxic culture because I just wanted to get out of that place and that that is a mistake I will never repeat. But I like what you're saying. Like what I'm hearing, it's it's not about the number. I mean, yes, you can have turnover five, ten, okay, twenty maybe is too much, but you can have a certain number for turnover, but it's not the the number that you're aiming for. You're aiming for understanding the reason behind that number. What is the reason people leave?
And I'm curious, you said you don't do exit interviews and you don't you don't believe in exit interviews. Why? 'Cause that's one of the ways to understand the reasons for turnover.
Clark Ingram (26:08.855)
Right, right. And and the the thing that I run into, a lot of people will I I get back and they're asking the question, why what's the number one reason that you see people leave? Okay. Well, that's not the right thing. That's not the qu the real the good the best question. The best question is for your organization, what's the number one reason why people are leaving? Okay.
Because it's different for each one of them. And the actual and the other thing is the trigger issues of why. It may be the same reason as this other company, but what's actually triggering it? for instance, I I had a situation one time, a lot of people say, Well, we just don't pay enough, we we we we can't do that. I have very s I have never found compensation, the actual money could be the issue.
And I I know of a a nurse one time where a doctor said something to her in a surgical tech that he shouldn't have said. Okay. For one thing, it wasn't true. Okay, that's the first problem. And then the second problem was when he said that to her, it wasn't the first time. And as he was saying that to her, he felt her phone vibrate in her scrubs. And after
the surgery was over and all that, she pulled out her phone and on her phone was one of her friends telling her about a job doing the exact same thing just down the street, making three dollars more an hour and with a sign on those. And it's the same job. And she d and chances are, guess what? There she's gonna go down there and she's gonna find another doctor that also has a loose mouth, right? And it but
Why did she actually leave? Was she leaving for the three dollars and the sign on bones? No, that was a cheery on top. She was leaving because that doctor on more than one occasion said things to her that he shouldn't have said.
Daria Rudnik (28:17.433)
That's a very important point to actually looking for, like the reason for turnover in specifically in your organization. Well, Clark, that was a great conversation. I learned so much about turnover and like what to measure, what not to measure. How I know you wrote a book about that. How people can find out more about you, your work and your book?
Clark Ingram (28:37.429)
Okay. Well, what I ended up doing was I I I started off a book pre COVID and it ended up publ being published at the exact wrong moment. I timed it exactly wrong. Okay. And then I got to a certain point in my career where I decided that I'd kind of had enough of the nine to five. And so I don't consult anyone. And so this is not a marketing thing to me. This is an education.
I'm trying to help out both sides. Right now I see a lot of friction between and I think everybody knows, a lot of friction between HR and the C suite, and they're and they're doing this. Okay, and I'm trying to get them to do this. And so I beat up on both sides and I and and all that. But I say good things about both sides too. But I feel like I'm kind of in that s in unusual situation because I'm a finance guy, okay? And
the CEO and the CFO originally finance guys be too and that's just the way they are. but the issue is that getting people to understand that HR it's it's not there's a there's things that HR is running into but they've put obstacles in their own way. And they're they're creating problems for themselves Okay.
by saying that well that's a leadership is issue. Turnover is caused by leadership. So leadership has to take no, we can take care of that. and so what ended up happening was I decided, okay, I'm gonna go to speaker route. I as you can imagine I've I've done a lot of speaking. I've now over the last six months I've done a lot of podcasts. So I I enjoy this. This is this is really cool. and
The the issue about the book was that I sent it in and they they looked at it and they said two things. Number one, we love a lot of the stuff you're saying. We're not seeing this anywhere else. It makes it makes logical sense. That's one of the major things. The second thing about the book was they said there's more in your brain than you've got on paper. So I ended up redoing my book and completely re-redid my book.
Clark Ingram (30:54.693)
and I got a lot of help with it. And I ended up retitling it churn because the C-suite hates that word. And then but also I'm saying that you know, right now workforce management is not working. And here's why I think it's not working. and understand where I'm coming from. I believe that my opinion and a dollar will buy your coke, okay.
So everybody has an opinion about everything, you know, et cetera, et cetera. It's more a matter of does this make sense? Does it make sense that we take people and profits and do this? Does it make sense for us to maybe take a look at what turnover are can we as HR impact immediate? What are we doing? What what how do we think outside the box? And that's what the book is all about. It's really, it's not a theory book, it's a how to book.
Daria Rudnik (31:45.358)
Mm-hmm.
Clark Ingram (31:54.156)
And in the long run, what I wanna do is I wanna have some workbooks where literally in regard to turnover, step by step, this is what I do. And what's gonna happen is there are gonna be a lot of HR people to read my book and look at those workbooks and go, Well, okay, wait a minute, there's some changes here. This is this is different than what we're doing. And that's my whole point. That's my whole bullet.
Daria Rudnik (32:18.575)
Great. I mean I love I love the practic like practical books 'cause there's a lot of inspirational books and they are great. But when you have something that you can okay, read the chapter, go try something out, go do something about it. That's that's when real change happens. Love that. I'll be I'll be waiting for your workbook when it's ready. how people can find you, how people can reach out to you.
Clark Ingram (32:30.902)
Right.
Clark Ingram (32:39.861)
I've got a website, People Profits. I also have ClarkIngram.com both of those will take you to the same place. Again, my website is more about my speaking and my book, and then I have a lot of putting up my the podcast and all that. Again, it's all educational from the standpoint of getting people to see it a little differently than they're doing. But I I guess I need to say the other thing.
And that is what they're also going to see is that a lot of the things that I'm telling them that they that they need to think about doing is things they're doing now, but they're going to be doing it from a little bit different angle, from a little bit different thought process. here's why we're really doing this. you know, again, coming up with your employer brand is not just a list of values, it's who you are as an organization.
Daria Rudnik (33:36.121)
Yeah, and what kind of people you want to to invite to join the organization. Exactly. Well, thank you so much, Clark. It was a great conversation. I learned so much from you and I hope your audience also learned so much from you as well. the links to your websites are in the notes to this episode. And to all the listeners, thank you for staying with us till the end. If you like this episode, please give us five gives give us five stars on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Subscribe to our YouTube channel and stay tuned for the next episodes.
Clark Ingram (33:38.017)
Right.
Daria Rudnik (34:06.169)
Bye.
No, that's something's really
Daria Rudnik (00:14.735)
Something is really wrong with this new update 'cause it doesn't see my camera now.
Daria Rudnik (00:33.793)
Welcome to Built by People Leaders. I'm your host, Daria Rudnik, and this show is for HR and L&D leaders, those building real impact from within and shaping AI ready organizations. Each episode, I sit down with people leaders to talk about how they build strong cultures and shape organizations around them. It's about HR being seen as true business partners by leaders and by HR themselves. And I'm so happy to introduce our special guest today, Clark Ingram.
Who is the founder and the president of People Profit LLC, a financially focused human capital management consultant firm specializing in employee turnover, chronically open positions, and skills gaps. Over the past thirty years, he has served as chief human resources officer for four companies across four different industries, ranging from publicly traded to privately held organizations. Welcome, Clark.
Clark Ingram (01:26.99)
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Daria Rudnik (01:30.413)
Well, it's it's a great pleasure. I have so many questions for you, but let's start with your experience and your path to HR. I know you didn't start with HR. Tell us about it.
Clark Ingram (01:41.934)
So I'm actually a finance guy and I graduated from the University of Texas and I like the numbers because one plus one equals two every time. people are not that way. And I ended up working for an industrial service company in Houston. I'd done a couple of projects for the CEO, he was happy. and honestly, some of those projects I was not an expert in. I I basically had to learn
And so one day he asked me to come in his office for a cup of coffee. And I thought at that time that that that's all we were doing, we were drinking coffee and chatting. And he asked me, what were the three biggest problems we've had in our company? And I said, number one, we're losing our senior technicians like they're going out of style, and they're the backbone of our company. They're the people that make us money. Secondly, we can't recruit because everybody knows we have a turnover problem. And nobody wants to work for a company that has turnover.
And lastly, our skills gap was going through the roof. And he said, Well, what do you think we need to do about it? We were not getting good responses from our HR people. And I said, I think we need to bring in another HR executive and all that. He said, I don't think we have that much time. And he said, I want you to go in there and see what you can find, see what you can do. And I said, Well, I'm not an HR person. I don't know anything about HR, I don't want to know.
And he said, Yeah, well do me this favor and we'll make it up to you. I said, Okay. So the next thing I know, I go in. And what I did not know at that time was I didn't have all the HR dogma that everybody else knew. Okay. I was just doing what I thought needed to be done to get the results that I was looking for. I'd be in a finance person. Okay. And so what happened was we figured out that there was one major thing that was
creating a lot of our turnover and we fixed it. And we fixed it rather quickly. and the next thing you know, a lot of our turnover went away. And it was just a matter of of me figuring. But what I tell people is now that you have to figure out what are your organizationally specific reasons why your turnover is happening. And so the next thing I know I end up
Clark Ingram (04:09.729)
You know, staying there for a few years and we did really well. We ended up having zero turnover in our senior technicians the last five years I was there. And then I started just working for different companies and different industries and finding what their again, their organizationally specific problems. We moved on from there.
Daria Rudnik (04:31.407)
I know like you know a lot about turnover and I have so many questions about that. But since you mentioned like you didn't have this HR dogma and you have some things you don't agree with HR about, tell us about those things.
Clark Ingram (04:45.515)
Yeah. Well, there's there's a couple of different things. And we can start off with a really basic thing. If you everybody looks at my my logo, I have people and profits being held together by an infinity sign. Okay. And one of the questions you always hear is what comes first, people or profits? And part of HR dogma is that people come before profits, and everybody knows the right answer. Well
I reject that. I reject the question because it's a false question. It's forcing you to pick one or the other. Okay. And which and here's what I have found over the years. Again, thirty years now I've been in HR, ended up falling in love with the most complicated organism on the planet. That's why I never went back. Was that I found out that if you put either one on top, you end up with this, with conflict. And you don't want that, obviously.
So if you make them co equals and you say people and profits working together to benefit both, all of a sudden you have this. And there's lots of strategies on how you can do that and how you can foster this idea that we're working together. I I just finished a consulting gig with a hospital and they they need to buy a machine that's literally millions of dollars for one machine.
Okay, that's not unusual in all kinds of industries, right? But where's that money coming from? You know, and so therefore and the employees understand that. They don't have a problem with that. They're looking at it going, yeah, we need that machine. We need to buy that machine. So we've got to, but we gotta make some money to be able to buy that machine. And so I reject that that people versus profits thing. And then I believe that
Cutting your turnover has to be job-done. You've got to figure out what is it that's driving people away. And that your your the best thing you can do for your culture is to figure out what's causing your turnover.
Clark Ingram (07:00.373)
You want me to continue on? I mean I'm got I'm gonna totally.
Daria Rudnik (07:02.905)
I mean, you i if if you have more, you can just briefly tell us like what are the things you disagree. Because you said nine things you disagree. I'm like curious to hear all nine.
Clark Ingram (07:11.325)
Okay, so I'll give it I'll give them all to you. most people what they do is they try to recruit their way out of a turnover problem. Every single time I walk into an organization, it's always the same thing. They're working really, really hard. They're on that recruiting treadmill and they're hiring people as fast as they can, with the mindset that somehow this next group of people, we're gonna put them out there and they're gonna fix our turnover problem. And it never works.
You know, all they do is they throw the same people into the same situation that everybody else left from, logically they're gonna leave too. So, and then compensation i is our most compensation programs are based on time servers. In other words, you've been here for six months, we're gonna give you a small raise, and et cetera. It has nothing to do with value. I I'm
I had a whole section in my book about what I call value pathing. And that was actually the problem, the number one problem of those technicians were leaving. Is the fact that we were training them up and they were gr increasing their value to the company every day. And what was happening, their compensation was doing this. Okay. And what this this this gap here was turnover. You know, because our competition would hire our guys away.
And before we could get them to that point. And here's how stupid this was. But if our biggest client was Exxon. And Exxon would pay us based on the training. So if they if they finished module one, then they paid us more money. All of a sudden, what we did, we plotted it out is okay, if we took X amount of that money and gave it to the employee, guess what would happen?
And over a period of time, as they're going through this development program, they would get to that point where normally that's when the competition would call them and pull them away, but they are now already making more money than they were off being offered all of a sudden. We've completely shut it down. That's why we ended up with zero turnover. These guys, what they had what they had to learn was stay on that path and they would end up in a very good place where they were making really good money.
Daria Rudnik (09:04.302)
Mm-hmm.
Daria Rudnik (09:32.784)
Pause it right here because I we'll listen to that because I do have a question like about what you're saying. It's I mean, it's very from what I hear, it's very important to understand not only like the the HR part, but also like the revenue, how much the client pays you, so that you can manage the compensation accordingly. If you don't know that, if you're not interested in in the revenue and how cu how company is earning money, you will not be able to create those compensation schemes that will reflect the reality.
Clark Ingram (09:37.101)
Yeah.
Daria Rudnik (10:03.309)
But you mentioned one thing. You mentioned zero turnover. My question to you, is it a good thing?
Clark Ingram (10:11.915)
I'm sorry.
Daria Rudnik (10:13.475)
Zero turnover. Is this a good thing?
Clark Ingram (10:17.765)
you're gonna end up with some turnover. But the way I look at it is it's our fault. Okay, we're selecting the wrong people. Okay, one of the other things we're gonna get to here in a minute is most companies do not do a good job of knowing who they are. Okay. Who are you as an employer? What makes you special? Why should I come work for you? Okay. And I got a story for you.
I'm talking to a CEO one time and he said, Clark, I need you to come work for me and all that kind of thing, and I'll I'll give you X number of dollars, I'll give you a quarter office, and I'll do all this stuff, the usual. Okay, okay. So fine. And I said, Okay, but everybody's willing to do that for me. Okay. And you know, if you're a if you're a certified welder and all that, everybody knows what the going rate is, okay, and all that kind of thing. So
Daria Rudnik (10:46.274)
Okay, good.
Clark Ingram (11:15.339)
That in and of itself doesn't tell you anything. But one CEO came back with the right answer for Clark. Okay, how to get Clark. And that was, he said, Clark, I need you to come in here and stabilize my workforce because they're not stable right now. I've got all kinds of turnover, blah, blah, blah. I can't get good people, blah, blah, blah, the usual. And he said, and here's why I need you to stabilize. Because I've got fourteen
Other things that I could go do and make money and increase the size of my business and make my business even better. But I can't even trust my workforce with what I have now. Okay, for Clark, yeah, I'm hooked now. Okay, forget about the money. Forget about the corner office. Yeah, now we're gonna, I'm gonna help him build his business and he's gonna be successful. Okay, and I'm sitting there going, I know I can stabilize his workforce.
I'd already done it so many times by then that that was a wasn't an issue for me. But that's one of the one of the thing getting back to what we touched on is this idea of knowing who you are. My last consulting gig I was on, I one of the things that I do is I go out and I ask people, What are the five reasons you work here? And it was interesting. Every single person
There was one word that every single person mentioned, and that was community. This was a community hospital that started over a hundred years ago in a small town in New England. Now they were a regional hospital. But at the very same time, everybody saw themselves, we're helping our community. We're helping our neighbors. We're helping our family. We're helping our people we go to church with, et cetera, et cetera. And that was that was
They're I that was their number one identity of who they were. If you if you're coming here and all you're looking for is the money, then you're not really gonna fit in here. You know, people don't accidentally fit in. They fit in because they know that they I would never go work for Exxon. Exxon is the largest bureaucracy in the world. I would never fit in there. I'm too entrepreneurial. Okay. But I have a friend of mine.
Clark Ingram (13:35.297)
He worked there for 40 years. He was his one and only job. He left Texas AM with an engineering degree and he stayed at Exxon for 40 years until he retired. Okay. And he was perfectly happy. Okay. So again, it that's how you tell, you got to get your employee the candidates to know who you are. So that they can sit there and go, yeah, I can buy into that, or no, I can't buy.
Daria Rudnik (13:59.568)
Absolutely. And like to all our listeners, I want you to like really hear that out and and remember that, like know your employee value proposition. And we had an episode with Daniela a few episodes before exactly about how to build the employer value proposition. So check it out. And Clark, well again, I'll get back to this zero turnover. Well, I was working with a team with organization and they had a problem that they have a very low turnover.
People kind of didn't wanna leave because it was comfortable. It was okay. But they were not up to speed with what the company wanted. And they didn't have the reasons to fire them because they were good employees, very loyal. But it was hard for them to find new people because all the places are occupied by the old folks and and they don't just don't wanna move.
Clark Ingram (14:59.329)
Yeah. You see, I will I I run into those situations too. Their their turnover is not 30, 40% like a lot of times I run into. Okay. And just so you'll know, is that my sta my standard is I'm looking to cut their turnover by 40 to 50% in the first year. Okay. But if you've got low turnover, but what here's what you you said was that the other thing I always run into
Daria Rudnik (15:00.163)
What do you say about that?
Clark Ingram (15:27.133)
that CEOs say to me is, Clark, I can't find good people. The kind of people that are just like my relationship with that one CEO, those people who are going to come to me with ideas and they're not just coming in turning the crank and doing their job, but they're coming in going, you know, we could do this different. And we could do it easier and more efficient and get better results and all that kind of thing.
Those are the people that I can't find. And those people and I have a whole another whole section in my book about this topic is that you know you don't want just mediocre people. Nobody says nobody's sitting there going, I want mediocre people. No, they all want those great people that that are on fire, that are into the journey, they're into the they're into the fight and all that. But what I what the number one thing that I tell people about really good people.
They don't talk about money. They talk about opportunity. What are we going to do? Where what's the journey that we're going on? Back to that CEO. One of the things I told him was: go on and tell every single employee what you just told me that this company is going somewhere. You've got all kinds of ideas on what we're going to do and where we could go right now if we just had our workforce right and all that. Because I got news for you. You know, that's the kind of thing that.
Really good employees want to hear. We're not just I I had a client one time, they did two million dollars in revenue. And I I'll guarantee you that right now they're doing 2.1. Okay. They were happy with what they had, they were not going anywhere, they were not slaying any dragons, etc. etc. And the problem with that is your really good employees, they like to slay dragons.
They like to be able to give be given permission to come in and go, We can do this better. We can do this more efficient, more productively, blah, blah, blah. Those are but if you're sitting there, if you're giving them the clues that you're not going to give them that permission, those people are not going to come work for you.
Daria Rudnik (17:41.25)
Yeah. So we've talked about that people at profit, I mean there's no comparison, they need to be together. That turnover is like the biggest the main the most important thing you need to address, that you cannot recruit yourself out of turnover, that compensations need to be based on value, not on the type served in the organization. That about the importance of employee value proposition. What else is traditional HR doing wrong?
Clark Ingram (18:10.923)
I I think that a lot of times HR like and one of the one of my things I see on LinkedIn all the time now is well turnover is created by leadership. And so we're we can't do anything about it. And so therefore we're off the hook. And I totally disagree with that because just about I I would say the majority of the turnover that I have gotten rid of
Had been that leadership had no involvement. It was I mean, one of the things we did, I I I I just hate this story because it just it just grinds my gears. But I worked for a company and what they would do is they'd hire the first 12 people online. So they're hi they're they were staffing up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like the look on your face right now. You're confused. Exactly. They're they're literally hiring the first 12 people in line.
And they're they're on the books now. Now they have to do the drug test and they have to do this and they have to do that and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they're wasting all their time. Now they only need ten people. But the reason they were hiring twelve is because they found out that generally only ten people, nine or ten of those people would show up for orientation three days from.
Okay, because for whatever reason they couldn't get out of bed or they got arrested or whatever. And you know, but so they would end up hiring twelve. And and I thought, well, you know, what if we put a little bit of selection process in line here? And instead of just hiring the first twelve in line, we're gonna actually talk to these people some and all that. And I put a real relatively rudimentary level of selection process in place.
And the next thing you know, yeah, okay, we're we're not hiring twelve, but guess what? The ten that we hired showed up. And they passed the drug test and they passed the other tests that we had for them to do and all that kind of thing. And we would end up actually terminating one or two during the training process because we we could tell they weren't gonna make it. They were not gonna get to the level we wanted them to be at. And
Clark Ingram (20:30.049)
So what what what what happened next? We sent a message to the candidate pool. We the people that were looking for jobs, that if you go apply to that company, you better have your A game on. You better know what you're doing. You better, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And if you are on drugs, or if you are can't get out of bed and all that, there's no reason to go apply there because they're not going to hire you anyways. Next thing you know, their turnover goes down by forty two percent.
And it was almost most of the turnover that we got rid of was that one issue. and just so you'll know, the next thing that we did was we had a lot of people that were applying over and over again. We started putting notes into our system. Okay, we interviewed this guy, here's why we said no, etc. And so all we would do if the guy applied again, we would just ask a simple question, okay, this is why you got rejected last time, what has changed?
Daria Rudnik (21:12.435)
Mm-hmm.
Clark Ingram (21:29.397)
And most of the time they didn't have a good answer, so we didn't bother to talk to them. Okay. So all of a sudden, the amount of time that we were spending get staffing up, and all of a sudden we were staffed up too, because we were bringing in good people. And all of a sudden we were going to to them. This is my number running recruiting source. I go to my good employees and say, I need more like people like you. You know, go talk to your, you know, go talk to your fishing buddy or all
I got one more one more story for you. Is that I had a guy one time come in my office and he said, Clark, I've got a a guy just applied, his name is such and so. He's a very good friend of mine. You need to hire him. Don't even interview him, just hire him. Trust me. Okay, I'll take it. Okay, we're good. And so we just hired him. He turned out to be a great employee. A few months go by, the same guy walks in my office, he closes the door and he says, Clark
I got a guy, his name is so and so, he's a friend of mine. Do not hire him. Under no circumstances, hire this guy. He's a good friend of mine. I like him as a buddy, but I don't want to work with this guy. If you can get that attitude in your employees, they will turn into your best recruiters.
Daria Rudnik (22:35.225)
Yeah.
Daria Rudnik (22:50.095)
That's interesting because w usually we kind of want employees to like refer somebody to join the company, but it's also very important for them to notify the company. I mean that's a that's a great person, but not a great fit for our organization. That's that's really rare. And I don't think many HR folks focus on that, but that's important.
Clark Ingram (23:06.55)
yeah.
Clark Ingram (23:12.397)
Well, just like in one of the other things I do in that same kind of category is that same guy, I'm gonna go to him offline, you know, and say, Hey, you just suck you just had somebody lose your leave your apartment. You know why he left. Why did he what's the real reason he left? I'm not gonna do it. I I'm not a believer in exit interview because I know what I've done in every ever exit interview I've ever done. Okay. I believe that the
Everybody in that department knows where that person lives. And the other thing I will tell you is your question a while back is a is a really big one. And that is, what is turnover good in some situations? Yes, it is. And here's and here I can give you several really good examples that I will help that person pack. And that is if they figure out that they truly are not a good fit. We had an employee recently at the hospital.
She tried to train herself into another job. And when she got into that job, she realized it was not for her. Okay. And she wanted to just go back to her old job. Okay. We figured that out. But you know, if if you're if someone's mother, mom has a stroke and you need to go home, and that means you have to leave your job here to go help your mom.
At at that age of her life and everything, I'll help you pack. Okay. If you're going back to school and you are you're going to be better off in the long run by going back to school, I'll help you pack. Okay. If you have got a really an actual job that's better for you and your family, I'll help you pack. Now, at the very same time, if you're going to come into my office and try to convince me that you
got this really good deal, but it's not a good deal. And I can tell just by what you're telling me. And you I I you're gonna have to give me permission to try and talk you out of it. Because I see a lot of employees do that. They don't do their homework when they're leaving and they're leaving for really bad reasons. I did that one. In one in my career I made a bad decision.
Daria Rudnik (25:29.103)
I mean, I did that as well. Like I just left the toxic culture for another toxic culture because I just wanted to get out of that place and that that is a mistake I will never repeat. But I like what you're saying. Like what I'm hearing, it's it's not about the number. I mean, yes, you can have turnover five, ten, okay, twenty maybe is too much, but you can have a certain number for turnover, but it's not the the number that you're aiming for. You're aiming for understanding the reason behind that number. What is the reason people leave?
And I'm curious, you said you don't do exit interviews and you don't you don't believe in exit interviews. Why? 'Cause that's one of the ways to understand the reasons for turnover.
Clark Ingram (26:08.855)
Right, right. And and the the thing that I run into, a lot of people will I I get back and they're asking the question, why what's the number one reason that you see people leave? Okay. Well, that's not the right thing. That's not the qu the real the good the best question. The best question is for your organization, what's the number one reason why people are leaving? Okay.
Because it's different for each one of them. And the actual and the other thing is the trigger issues of why. It may be the same reason as this other company, but what's actually triggering it? for instance, I I had a situation one time, a lot of people say, Well, we just don't pay enough, we we we we can't do that. I have very s I have never found compensation, the actual money could be the issue.
And I I know of a a nurse one time where a doctor said something to her in a surgical tech that he shouldn't have said. Okay. For one thing, it wasn't true. Okay, that's the first problem. And then the second problem was when he said that to her, it wasn't the first time. And as he was saying that to her, he felt her phone vibrate in her scrubs. And after
the surgery was over and all that, she pulled out her phone and on her phone was one of her friends telling her about a job doing the exact same thing just down the street, making three dollars more an hour and with a sign on those. And it's the same job. And she d and chances are, guess what? There she's gonna go down there and she's gonna find another doctor that also has a loose mouth, right? And it but
Why did she actually leave? Was she leaving for the three dollars and the sign on bones? No, that was a cheery on top. She was leaving because that doctor on more than one occasion said things to her that he shouldn't have said.
Daria Rudnik (28:17.433)
That's a very important point to actually looking for, like the reason for turnover in specifically in your organization. Well, Clark, that was a great conversation. I learned so much about turnover and like what to measure, what not to measure. How I know you wrote a book about that. How people can find out more about you, your work and your book?
Clark Ingram (28:37.429)
Okay. Well, what I ended up doing was I I I started off a book pre COVID and it ended up publ being published at the exact wrong moment. I timed it exactly wrong. Okay. And then I got to a certain point in my career where I decided that I'd kind of had enough of the nine to five. And so I don't consult anyone. And so this is not a marketing thing to me. This is an education.
I'm trying to help out both sides. Right now I see a lot of friction between and I think everybody knows, a lot of friction between HR and the C suite, and they're and they're doing this. Okay, and I'm trying to get them to do this. And so I beat up on both sides and I and and all that. But I say good things about both sides too. But I feel like I'm kind of in that s in unusual situation because I'm a finance guy, okay? And
the CEO and the CFO originally finance guys be too and that's just the way they are. but the issue is that getting people to understand that HR it's it's not there's a there's things that HR is running into but they've put obstacles in their own way. And they're they're creating problems for themselves Okay.
by saying that well that's a leadership is issue. Turnover is caused by leadership. So leadership has to take no, we can take care of that. and so what ended up happening was I decided, okay, I'm gonna go to speaker route. I as you can imagine I've I've done a lot of speaking. I've now over the last six months I've done a lot of podcasts. So I I enjoy this. This is this is really cool. and
The the issue about the book was that I sent it in and they they looked at it and they said two things. Number one, we love a lot of the stuff you're saying. We're not seeing this anywhere else. It makes it makes logical sense. That's one of the major things. The second thing about the book was they said there's more in your brain than you've got on paper. So I ended up redoing my book and completely re-redid my book.
Clark Ingram (30:54.693)
and I got a lot of help with it. And I ended up retitling it churn because the C-suite hates that word. And then but also I'm saying that you know, right now workforce management is not working. And here's why I think it's not working. and understand where I'm coming from. I believe that my opinion and a dollar will buy your coke, okay.
So everybody has an opinion about everything, you know, et cetera, et cetera. It's more a matter of does this make sense? Does it make sense that we take people and profits and do this? Does it make sense for us to maybe take a look at what turnover are can we as HR impact immediate? What are we doing? What what how do we think outside the box? And that's what the book is all about. It's really, it's not a theory book, it's a how to book.
Daria Rudnik (31:45.358)
Mm-hmm.
Clark Ingram (31:54.156)
And in the long run, what I wanna do is I wanna have some workbooks where literally in regard to turnover, step by step, this is what I do. And what's gonna happen is there are gonna be a lot of HR people to read my book and look at those workbooks and go, Well, okay, wait a minute, there's some changes here. This is this is different than what we're doing. And that's my whole point. That's my whole bullet.
Daria Rudnik (32:18.575)
Great. I mean I love I love the practic like practical books 'cause there's a lot of inspirational books and they are great. But when you have something that you can okay, read the chapter, go try something out, go do something about it. That's that's when real change happens. Love that. I'll be I'll be waiting for your workbook when it's ready. how people can find you, how people can reach out to you.
Clark Ingram (32:30.902)
Right.
Clark Ingram (32:39.861)
I've got a website, People Profits. I also have ClarkIngram.com both of those will take you to the same place. Again, my website is more about my speaking and my book, and then I have a lot of putting up my the podcast and all that. Again, it's all educational from the standpoint of getting people to see it a little differently than they're doing. But I I guess I need to say the other thing.
And that is what they're also going to see is that a lot of the things that I'm telling them that they that they need to think about doing is things they're doing now, but they're going to be doing it from a little bit different angle, from a little bit different thought process. here's why we're really doing this. you know, again, coming up with your employer brand is not just a list of values, it's who you are as an organization.
Daria Rudnik (33:36.121)
Yeah, and what kind of people you want to to invite to join the organization. Exactly. Well, thank you so much, Clark. It was a great conversation. I learned so much from you and I hope your audience also learned so much from you as well. the links to your websites are in the notes to this episode. And to all the listeners, thank you for staying with us till the end. If you like this episode, please give us five gives give us five stars on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Subscribe to our YouTube channel and stay tuned for the next episodes.
Clark Ingram (33:38.017)
Right.
Daria Rudnik (34:06.169)
Bye.