The Right Moves: Culture is queen in workforce recruiting, retention

Fewer local business owners were looking to increase the size of their workforce this year, although more than three quarters of them admitted attracting and maintaining workers is a struggle.

According to Springfield Business Journal’s Economic Growth Series survey of area business leaders, only 38% of businesses planned to increase their employee count in 2025, down from 54% the previous year. At the same time, a negligibly small number – 3%, below the survey’s 5.7% margin of error – were looking to reduce employees without replacing them, similar to previous years.

That means on the whole, businesses planned to respond to the tight labor market by holding on to the workers they had. To do so, 59% said they were slotting pay increases for their workers – however, nearly half of survey respondents cited better wages or benefits as their company’s top barrier to employees accepting or keeping jobs with them.

The survey asked business leaders to indicate the top five most important issues for their business over the coming years, and attracting new customers topped the list, cited by 62% of respondents. Notably, the next three concerns at the top of the list also were workforce-related, including talent acquisition/retention, selected by 49%; availability of skilled workforce, 46%; and increasing wages to attract more workforce, 33%.

In short, business leaders are concerned about workforce, and their strategies for addressing the problem range from flexible schedules to enhanced benefits to professional development. Nearly a quarter, 23%, said they planned to invest in automation, up a couple of percentage points since last year’s tally.

Two local employers believe they have chosen the right gambit to win the workforce game, and for them, it all comes down to culture.

When asked for the secrets of their hiring and retention success, Ron Bogart, CEO of employee-owned mechanical contracting company Gold Mechanical Inc., and Phil Melugin, president and founder of home health agency Phoenix Home Care LLC, both joke that they shouldn’t be spilling their secrets.

“Half of me doesn’t want to give up my goodies,” Bogart says, “but a lot of it has to do with culture, and you can’t steal somebody else’s culture.”

It’s a similar thought for Melugin, who faces workforce competition in the health care market. However, Melugin says if his strategies can help others, why not share them?

Acknowledging expertise
For Bogart, the secret to retention is a surprising one: It’s putting his employees – not his customers – first. It’s a strategy he put in place with deliberation when workforce challenges presented themselves three years ago.

“In the world of business, your client’s number one and talent acquisition is number two,” Bogart says.

But in 2022, Bogart says he called his top clients to tell them he was adopting a different model.

“I told them we’re going to reverse that, and I don’t want you to think we don’t care about you guys as much,” he says.

Bogart told his clients that Gold’s plan was to elevate its team – Bogart calls them craftsmen – as its primary focus.

“Our website in 2022 said we were the leading mechanical contractor in southwest Missouri; click here for a quote,” he says. “We changed that to say, ‘We’re the leading mechanical employer in southwest Missouri; click here to apply.’”

Bogart says Gold wanted to create an environment for experts to practice their craft – something they could do with any company. One part of that was to give its people regular raises – something that would also require price increases.

“If you’ve got to pay more, you’ve got to charge more,” he says.

But, Bogart says, it all works.

“It’s Economics 101,” he says, noting that customers are willing to pay more for a superior product or service.

As an employee-owned company, Bogart says, Gold’s workers know they are part of a team and have a stake in the outcome.

“Once they come on and get onboarded with Gold, they understand they’re part of something more than just a paycheck,” he says.

The results have been pretty profound for the company, according to Bogart.

“In an industry where everyone says it’s super difficult to hire people, we actually stopped hiring last August,” he says.

Gold has hired over 200 people since its 2022 decision to put craftsmen first, and Bogart says the company kept about half of them.

“Not everyone’s Gold material, and we’re not everybody’s cup of tea,” he says.

In that time, the company’s workforce has grown from 130 to 210, with only a couple of spots open.

“We’ve got all the people we need,” he says.

Bogart admits his strategy sounds risky.

“It takes guts to say we’re not putting our clients first – that sounds like the road to disaster,” he says. “But we have the manpower, and that means we have the market. If a client really needs something, they call us.”

One question that arises when hearing Bogart share his strategy is why he offered his unusually high level of transparency. There was no real need to tell clients about the mindset shift – wasn’t there a risk in doing so?

Bogart says he wanted to be open with his clients, but he also saw a marketing advantage in the move.

“Our clients are having a hard time finding people, too,” he says. “They thought more of us for having the strength of will to do this – almost to the point of seeming envious.”

Bogart admits he’s in a good position, but he notes the company has worked hard to get there.

“It’s not like Gold got lucky,” he says. “We dug in, and we’ve got a great team out there.”

Culture of belonging
At Phoenix, Melugin says, business is going well, and a lot of that has to do with the company’s team.

“We have seen our margins constrict some, but we’ve made up for it very substantially with our volume,” he says. “We’re paying what we need to attract employees so we can continue to grow.”

Growth has been 15% year over year, according to Melugin, who says Phoenix is annualizing just under $210 million.

“We’re doing well, but the only way to keep growing like that is to find employees,” he says.

For both Melugin and Bogart, workforce is queen – the most powerful operator on the board. But that’s only possible because all the pieces are in place.

“Half of our recruits on any given week come to us by word of mouth of our existing employees,” Melugin says. “That might be one of our X-factors, if you will, that has allowed us to have the success we’re having.”

Melugin credits Phoenix’s intentional culture and what he calls its touchpoint system.

“Once we get them in the door, we don’t leave them alone for the first three months,” he says. “Consequently, I think that there is a response to that that says, ‘Hey, this is something completely new here.’”

Within the first three months, he says, his new employees share what they’ve experienced with the people they used to work with, and many of them are also looking to find something better. Sometimes they, too, find it in Phoenix.

“They turn around and tell their friends that were waiting to see how all that turned out that Phoenix is a great place to work,” he says. “Oftentimes, it’s not that they’re running from something – they’re running to a better opportunity.”

Melugin says a lot of employees work their way up from entry level, with many furthering their education and joining the nursing profession.

Meanwhile, he says, the people Phoenix serve experience stability, with a familiar face sticking around, rather than someone new showing up each week.

“We do have excellent retention,” he says. “When the actual recipient of care is happy, the person providing the care learns to be happy, too. They become very fulfilled in their work.”

A strong workforce allows that kind of stability, according to Melugin, and it better allows Phoenix to provide the right caregiver for each situation.

“We’re not approaching hiring from a standpoint of desperation,” Melugin says. “That does separate us, both from a client/patient experience and a new employee experience.”