you’d think I had too many beers when I was filling it out, because it’s not going well at all. I think three of my Final Four teams have already been eliminated, including my National Champion. So been a tough couple days of college basketball.

 

Bridget Harper:

Yeah, I don’t think you’re alone in that. I’m right now second in our… We have a work bracket, and I’m second. And I think it’s just because I had about five minutes that I filled it out with zero thought. So I think, if you actually care…

 

Jon Barbato:

It’s harder.

 

Bridget Harper:

A lot of brackets got busted pretty quickly. Yeah, it’s a good time. All right, well, I have to tell you, you have to come up to Portland. We have a great craft beer scene here. One of my favorites is Baerlic, and they have this cream ale, is delicious. So you come up here, Jon.

 

Jon Barbato:

Sounds right in my alley. I’ll let you know for sure.

 

Bridget Harper:

And I’ll buy you a beer, or a couple. And we can talk about March Madness and our really busted brackets.

 

Jon Barbato:

Our failed strategy of picking teams.

 

Bridget Harper:

Yeah. We’re not here to give advice about March Madness. Nope, we won’t, we won’t give any of that, but we will talk about Synergis and all the really cool things that you’re doing there and get some great insights. So I’m excited to kick this off. So with that in mind, one thing that kind of stands out to me about Synergis is really I get this theme of this white glove approach to how you kind of operate your business, both internally and externally. So when looking at internally, how do you use this approach in your day to day in your strategy? Talk to us, Jon.

 

Jon Barbato:

Yeah, good question, and I appreciate that. Because I think it’s one for us that starts with really defining our strategy and who we are strategically and who we want to be, how we want to be viewed in and by the market. So really, when we think about who we are and the intentions we have for our clients, we really sit at the intersection of user experience, customer experience, and employee experience, which, when you sum it all up, it creates what we call your total experience workforce solution partner. And so, for our customers, especially in today’s age of digital transformation, it’s really created a big competitive advantage for us in the marketplace. And to explain that a little more clearly, if the work is impacting our customers’ employees, their users or their customers, that’s right where we want to operate and make a meaningful impact. So we don’t want to be all things to all people.

And you’ve probably heard the saying before, “Jack of all trades, master of none.” There’s a lot of those types of firms in our industry, and let’s face it, some that do very, very well and they grow year after year. And that’s great, but that’s never who we’ve really aspired to be. We’ve been able to create a growth trajectory for ourselves by creating value for our clients through our focused approach. And we’re very strong in our dedicated areas of focus, which are, it’s two part, we have an IT line of business and we have a creative line of business. So on our IT side, it’s really anything that falls on the software development life cycle, as well as the infrastructure that would support it. So network systems, server storage, database, cloud, et cetera. And then, on the creative side, your marketing, your branding, your user experience, user interface, content development, learning and development, to name a few.

So we’ve aligned our recruiters in skill buckets, and they’re skill set aligned, and they’re specialized. And again, I’ve seen this to varying degrees of success throughout my career, but it’s really core to how we operate and serve our clientele. So with all that being said, we don’t take on business just to take on business. And I know that can kind of seem counterintuitive. If somebody wants to give you business, the answer should be “yes.” But we don’t take on anything. We take on business for our clients, that’s meaningful to how they operate their business. And so, our level of focus in those areas sort of creates that white glove approach just almost by default. And again, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the individuals on our team. We hire character above any and everything else. So it’s our belief that, when you have the right people and you align them with the right strategy, they’re going to do right by our clients and consultants, day in and day out. And that’s really been kind of our mantra, and that’s what’s really working for us.

 

Bridget Harper:

Oh no, that’s huge. And as you’re starting to align those three core areas, if you are getting in recruiters that know their job, know their clients, and are, as you said, specialized, you’re just going to continue to build this depth of knowledge and care, to where they’re consultative to your clients in such a more meaningful way, instead of trying to, you’re right, boil the ocean.

 

Jon Barbato:

That’s our sales pitch to a T really. If they know their customers, if they know what they’re working towards, and they’re building those relationships, everything else really takes care of itself. And that’s really what we’re trying to do.

 

Bridget Harper:

No, you can tell. You can tell when you’re interacting with anybody from Synergis, not only do you all care, you care about each other, you care about the experience that you’re having, and you can’t fake that. The wrinkles will start to show themselves, if you’re talking the talk, not walking the walk.

 

Jon Barbato:

Absolutely.

 

Bridget Harper:

It’s pretty impressive. So knowing that you’ve said “no” to business, how are you able to get your recruiters on board with that? Because that’s a tough one to be like, “no, no, no, we’re not taking that one.”

 

Bridget Harper:

Yeah, that’s a partnership. This isn’t just “You give us money. We do X, and we deliver Y and away we go.” No, you’re building something, a relationship for longer term. That’s amazing. So when you’re looking at that customer relationship, can you give me a broad strategy of how you create that hands-on approach with your customers? And how do you then do that at scale? It’s easy to do that with five clients.

 

Jon Barbato:

Right, yeah, good question. And it kind of builds on what we were just talking about, but I’ve always preached to my team “chase the relationship, not the transaction.” And again, let’s face it, our industry can be one that’s viewed as individuals chasing the dollar, and relationships don’t matter. That’s not us. I’m a firm believer, always have been, that, if we’re building the right type of strategic relationships with our consultants and our clients, the placements will happen and the numbers will take care of themselves. And quite frankly, at Synergis, that starts internally with our president and founder, Doug Ross. He’s often said that he believes, if he takes care of his people, they will take great care of the clients and consultants and the bottom line will take care of itself. So our industry is one in which all we have are our relationships and our reputation. We don’t have a shiny new product to sell, that’s going to change the world. All we have is our word, our relationships, and our reputation. So we take it very, very seriously, both internally and externally with our clients, prospects, and our consultants.

 

Bridget Harper:

Yes, it all starts at the top. I’m so glad that you mentioned… Leadership, if at the leadership, CEO, owner level, if you are not directly caring about who you’ve employed, how are they going to care about the clients that are going to be working with you? If no one cares…

 

Jon Barbato:

Yeah, it doesn’t matter. “What are we doing?”

 

Bridget Harper:

“What are we doing here?”

 

Jon Barbato:

And I alluded to it a little bit earlier, but we’re attempting to chase business that provides value creation for our clients. So if it’s important to them, it’s important to us, and we want to be in a position that, when they do have needs, from a relationship standpoint, the first thing they think of is “I have to call Synergis.” And if we’re focusing on that, again, everything else is going to take care of itself, downstream. It makes a big difference that our customers do call us. We call them. We’re calling to check in, “Hey, let’s grab lunch, let’s grab a drink, let’s go to dinner. How’s this going? How are your kids?” Et cetera, et cetera. But it helps when they call us too. And if we don’t have the relationships in place, we’re never going to be on the receiving end of those calls.

It’s always going to be outbound. So we focus really big on building the relationships, so it comes back to us. And again, given that our recruiters are skillset focused and specialized, time is critical, now maybe more than ever. When a customer has a need, they need it filled immediately. And oftentimes, we’ve had conversations with the clients, “well, when do you need it filled?” “Yesterday.” “Okay, that’s physically impossible, but how about next Monday?” We can’t do that if we don’t have the pipeline of candidates with the relationships, knowing skillsets, geographies, salary ranges, and salary bands, et cetera.

If we have to start and engage every search from square one, we’re behind the eight ball. We can’t provide that value to our customers, because we’re late to the game. They needed it before we were able to deliver it. So again, that’s critical for us. And again, shameless plug for you guys here, this is why our ClearlyRated survey is so important to us, because we like to think we have our thumb on the pulse of how everyone views us. But those surveys, and in particular, the results, allow us to put that to the test and then, iterate on what we’re doing, to make sure that we’re meeting the demands of our clients and our consultants.

 

Bridget Harper:

Oh yeah, no, getting some sort of third party validation to remove any bias of how you’re… Because if you’re going to ask yourself, “how do I think I’m doing?” “I think all my clients love me. They haven’t told me they’re unhappy, they haven’t left.” So how can I give them an opportunity to give me some feedback that isn’t biased, that I can really take some actionable steps off of? It is helping prove out exactly what you have set out to do. If you were telling your clients and your consultants, “here’s what we’re going to deliver,” and now you follow up with the survey to say, “have we delivered on what we said?” Well, basically your scores have shown for years now you’re doing exactly that.

It’s working. You have created a process. You have operationalized this, to where you get feedback, you’ve got happy clients, you have happy consultants, and you have happy internal employees. If all of those things are working together, it becomes a really fun place to work. You just didn’t throw gasoline on it. Let’s keep repeating it. How do we continue to communicate about this? Was there any point of the feedback that you received that you had any aha moments off of or anything that you uncovered something that you weren’t aware of?

 

Jon Barbato:

Yeah, I think, every year when we get these, there’s always something that it’s like, “huh,” I maybe thought or I kind of had a premonition that that might be some of the feedback, but you never know for sure until you see it. And we take a look at everything good and constructive, I’ll call it. Because again, I think the survey results give us the opportunity to reflect and reaffirm what we think we know about how our clients and consultants view us and their relationship with us. But again, this gives us the opportunity to act upon making those improvements to our service levels based on the feedback. So yeah, I think, every year, both on the positive and the not so positive side, there’s some surprises, but again, the core feedback that we get on the positive side is really what we’ve talked about, that “the service is great, they care, they’re available, they’re responsive,” which again is it seems to be human nature, specifically in an industry such as ours, but you do get a lot of folks that they just don’t do that.

So we do, and again, we look at it really line by line, every piece of feedback. The folks that are getting named for the positive stuff, we call that out and say, “keep doing that. That’s great. So-and-so is recognizing you for whatever it is that you’ve done. That’s excellent.” On the flip side, we do the same with some of the constructive feedback. “Hey, listen, we’ve seen some of this feedback. Maybe it’s a bigger problem, maybe it’s not, but it’s something for you to keep an eye on.” Because we want to ensure that, if an individual’s getting the same feedback over and over and over again, my job, as the leader of the region, is ensure they know it. They can’t fix it if they don’t know it. And so, we want to implement it, the two way feedback, to ensure that both good and bad, we’re doing what we need to do to continue to score very highly.

And I’m proud of the fact, we’re very proud of the fact, that ninth year in a row, or ninth year being recognized, in both the client and the talent satisfaction surveys. We’re very proud of that, because again, if you’re getting all of the good ones on the client side and nothing good on the consultant side, what does that tell you? Tells you your clients like you, but your consultants don’t. And what does that do? Makes your job harder, because you can’t get consultants to fill the open orders. Conversely, if you’re getting great scores on the consultant side, but not so much on the client side, we have all the consultants in the world. We have no home for them, because clients don’t like us. So we’re very happy with the fact that our scores, both on the talent side and on the client side, are very, very high.

 

Bridget Harper:

Oh, they’re very high. And they work together. That is one thing. If you’ve got, again, a client relationship that’s incredibly important to you and you are placing consultants there, you want both sides to be coming out of here with a great experience, not only with you, but at the client that you’re placing. And the fact that you can go back to a lot of these consultants and go, “Hey, look it. The last five people that we’ve placed here have all loved it. They love this place. You’re going to love it too, based on our experience.” Or “hey, this consultant, can we put them on five different jobs? Everyone that we’ve put them with loved them. They’re going to be able to deliver just…” Again, you’re walking the walk, which is just more proof on why you continue. Yeah, ninth consecutive year is really hard to do. It’s, when you’ve got a dumpster fire, you can easily fix that and start to make improvements.

When you reach a level, it is challenging to continue and maintain without continuing to make sure your internal employees are happy, your clients are happy, that you’re building these relationships, and that it all starts from the top, and everyone knows, everyone cares. Your marketing communications are on point. You are targeting the right clients, you are bringing back the right consultants. You’re giving that two-way feedback, celebrating your successes, which is huge. Everyone needs a minute to look back and go, “wow, wow. Look at how well we’ve done, and here’s some places to improve.” It is not looking at it as negative feedback, but constructive. This is great.

 

Jon Barbato:

And just really opportunities for us to improve our service levels, and it’s paramount to us. We do take it very, very seriously. In today’s world, we all know it’s impossible to exceed a hundred percent of our partner satisfaction. But with that said though, it doesn’t stop us from trying, and we want to do whatever we can to take the feedback, to analyze it, to make sure we understand it, and then, to strategize how to fix it. So next year, that becomes something that improves our MPS score in both of those categories, as opposed to maybe detracting from it or just leaving it the same. We are really focused on continuous improvement, really.

 

Bridget Harper:

Yeah, and this level of transparency that you have happening at Synergis too, the fact that this feedback or anything that you’re working on isn’t just stuck in a silo. It’s not just you reading it for your region going, “awesome. Way to go, me. I did it. And now, we can move to the next,” that you are giving this feedback to everybody, that everyone is aware of your entire strategy, your vision, where you’re going, because when you’re all aligned, you’re able to move much quicker than if you’re all operating independently. If you’re just like, “we need to close X amount, I’m not going to tell you why. We need these job orders filled. This is it. Move along,” and work on your own. You are in a silo. You can make it or break it for the company, which is not where you want to be. You want to work together.

 

Jon Barbato:

And I think too, over the years, I’ve learned there’s the art and the science. The science is “just go hit the numbers.” But when you get to the art and why it’s important to us and how do we do it, that’s when we see the best improvements, when people really understand collectively what we’re trying to do, why we’re trying to do it, how we’re going to do it, not just “do it.” It’s one thing to just throw numbers out in front of them and say, “Hey, go hit those, and I’ll see you at the end of the quarter.” But if they don’t understand why or how or what it means to us, it’s irrelevant. So again, we do spend a lot of emphasis and a lot of focus on making sure that our team understands the hows and the whys and what it means to us. “And why do we do things a certain way?” “Well, because this is why.” So making sure that they understand that, again, has been a big differentiator for us.

 

Bridget Harper:

That’s great. Well, and you can just tell you care, and the passion is there. And with those two things, you can train a lot of skills, but you can’t train really someone to care. And you can have this environment, where you all really do care about each other, and that just fosters just great relationships internally and externally. I love it. It really makes me believe that you’re running this extra mile, so you’re doing this extra mile for your clients, for your consultants, for your coworkers, and I think that’s just really special about Synergis. So one of the things I know that you have is this consultant advocacy program. I don’t want you to divulge all of your secrets, but could you share a little bit about that program?

 

Jon Barbato:

Yeah, absolutely. And I think two things to note, before even getting into the program, really, one, I’ve shared it earlier, but it comes back that we hire for character first. So in all aspects of our business, whether it’s the CA, the consultant advocate program that I’ll talk a little bit about, or our sales team or our recruiters or any other position in the organization, we’re hiring in the character, believing that we can train the skill. And that really starts and ends with our consultant advocate program, and just the name of the program itself, consultant advocate program. It’s not just a check the box to say we did it program. We have an internal team that literally 100% of their job is truly dedicated to being advocates for our consultants. And without getting into specifics to divulge all of our trade secrets and what makes our CA team so great, a good starting point is our benefit package that we offer to consultants.

I’ve been in the industry nearly 20 years. This is one of the best that I’ve seen, and that makes a difference. If we’re going to lose out on top quality candidates, because they need benefits for themselves or their family, and we can’t place them at our customers, it matters to us. So without our consultant population, I’ve alluded to it, but they’re paramount to our success. We’re nothing without our consultant population. So to see that we’re taking care of them in the benefit category is a really good thing. But more to the program itself, and not just the offerings of benefits or time off or whatever, on paper, it’s not an industry outlier. The firms I’ve been in the past, most, if not all, of them have some sort of relationship management program with their consultants.

However, what I’ve seen here, and I’ve been at Synergis a little over a year and a half, but what I’ve seen here is that it’s not implemented here just as a KPI or a metric driven program. It’s truly about building the relationship and being an advocate for the consultant. “What needs do they have? How are we doing on meeting those needs? What else do they need? What about redeployments at the end of assignment?” All of that stuff is, again, it’s critical to our relationship. And when we come back to the ClearlyRated, our NPS score on the ClearlyRated talent side is 4x higher than the industry industry average. And we take great pride in it, because again, without happy consultants, we don’t have happy clients. Because we can’t deliver the talent they need. So the program is one where there’s regularly scheduled calls that aren’t, again, just check the box calls. But “how are you doing?

How is the team? How do you like the work?” If they’re commuting to the office, “how are you? How’s your commute? How’s the office environment? Do you enjoy it? How’s your work from home set up? Is that okay for you?” As opposed to just, “Hey, it’s Jon from Synergy calling because it was 30 days since I called last. How you doing? Okay, cool, have a good day.” They’re really having meaningful conversations. And quite frankly, our consultants notice it, based on the, not only what we think we know, but the results of the surveys that we’re getting back. They do notice it. And a lot of the feedback in the actual surveys that I’ve seen related to our CAs is naming people by name. “So and so specifically went the extra mile for me.” And I can’t tell you how many times I saw that throughout all the results that I was reading.

So again, that’s critical, because again, we have the right people with the right character, with the right strategy. And that’s kind of common theme for me in my mind is, if we have the right people doing the right things with the right strategy, we’re going to win. So just as important as all of the good is, again, the number of detractors is important too, because we want to address those concerns and challenges and make good on those. Again, happy to say that our detractor percentage is 4x less than industry average. So it’s very, very good. But there’s still some detractors for specific reasons that they have that we need to look to address. And that all starts and ends with our consultant advocate program. They really truly are advocates for our consultants. So I don’t think the name of the program is accidental. It’s designed intentionally to be advocating for our consultants to make sure that they have what they need to.

 

Bridget Harper:

Yeah. Well, and the fact that you’re not just making these all check boxes of, “all right, yep. 30 days, give a call.” When you are really trying to learn about your consultants and “do you work remote? Do you have to commute? How is that?” We’ve some seen so many changes in the last three years to the shift in remote work to… It’s wild. It’s a wild world we’re living in and having to react to in the middle of it. You didn’t have a heads up, “Hey, in six months, we’re going to go through a pandemic, and a lot of people are going to start working remotely.”

 

Jon Barbato:

It would have been nice to know that, right?

 

Bridget Harper:

Be really nice. I would’ve really would’ve changed some of my bets on where to invest some money.

 

Jon Barbato:

Yeah, right.

 

Bridget Harper:

It’s in the middle of it as change is happening, and when you’re impacting someone’s career, their paycheck, as you mentioned, benefits, just having dental is a huge game changer when you don’t have it and you need something done. Now, your scores are incredible. It’s been really fun to watch. It’s fun to watch your growth and how you’ve all continued to maintain this white glove extra mile. Like, “we’re here, and these are the things that we’re really, really good at. And this is the area of expertise we are going to own and have confidence in that.” It’s pretty impressive. It’s an impressive program that you’ve all pulled together and fun to watch. It’s fun to watch.

 

Jon Barbato:

Thank you. Yeah, much appreciated. Yeah, and I think all of this ties back to our vision as an organization, which is really threefold. And one is to be the best place to work in the staffing industry, because again, if we can’t attract the people here, we can’t do what we need to do for our consultants and our clients. So again, Doug’s set out to be the best place to work inside of our industry, so he could attract the best and the brightest, and not only get them in the doors, but keep them and retain them. And then, secondly, it comes back to the client satisfaction, as being the number one supplier at each client we serve. Again, we can’t do that if our clients don’t like us, trust us, respect us. And same with the consultants. If they don’t want to work for us or work with us at a client site, we can’t achieve that kind of component of our vision.

And then, the last piece, which we haven’t touched on specifically, and that’s okay, but I think it’s important to note that it’s being good stewards to the communities we operate in. And that’s everything that we do and how we kind of carry ourselves as a brand in the markets that we operate in. We’re involved with Habitat for Humanity and March for Dimes and March for Babies. And again, these aren’t check the box type things. There’s active engagement year over year with these organizations. So when you hear that, if I were to just talk to you for 45 seconds, say, “well, here’s our vision, one, two, and three,” and then, off the record, “well talk to me about all of it,” it’s all encompassing. It all kind of flows together, and that’s kind of how we operate, who we like to see ourselves, and hopefully, what our clients and our consultants and our internal employee population are seeing from us as well.

 

Bridget Harper:

Yeah. No, it’s proof, not only within just the scores that I’ve seen from Synergis, but when you go to your website, it is all very consistent of a theme of caring. And you’re right. When you’re able to also give back to your community, in which you live in, it’s not just a box you’re checking. It feels like the right… It’s now, again, keeping all of this together. If you care, you’re going to be doing these things for each other and your community too. It is giving back. It’s gotten a lot harder with COVID.

You’re like, “Can I volunteer?” They’re like “No.” Everything, it’s a new challenge. It’s a new opportunity to find another way to solve it, and you guys are solving it, which is pretty impressive. I really appreciate you even just coming in, giving us some insights on how you all have been so successful in just building, not only a really strong internal team that is tackling all sorts of new challenges, day in and day out, but then, you’ve got happy clients, you’ve got happy consultants, and you’re happy, leadership is happy. It all comes full circle. It all works together.

 

Jon Barbato:

It does. And that’s what matters, right? We want people to enjoy what they’re doing and enjoy why they’re doing it, and when they are, good things happen. And I think we’re proof of that. It’s been a good run so far, but we really have a great opportunity in front of us to do even more. So we’re looking forward to it, and that’s what our focus is on.

 

Bridget Harper:

Oh, here we go. It’s March, 2023. Other than your bracket being busted, the month is going well, right?

 

Jon Barbato:

Yeah. All is well. We’ll take the bracket out of it and forget that I ever entered into a couple different pools. But yeah, other than that, it’s good. It’s, as with any year or month, there’s ups and downs, but on the whole, the ups are outweighing the downs. And we’ll take that any day of the week.

 

Bridget Harper:

Oh yeah. That’s a scenario I will gladly sign up for any day. More positives. When you’ve got two kids at home, so we also talked a little bit before this, we both have girls that keep us on our toes, and it’s never a dull moment with children.

 

Jon Barbato:

I don’t know if we have enough time for all of this, but you’re totally right. You hit the nail on the head. Never a dull moment.

 

Bridget Harper:

Never a dull moment. That’s our next podcast. Jon and I will give some great parenting tips, or you’ll just really learn what not to do with your children. Either way, either way. Well, Jon, thank you so much for joining me today. It’s just always a joy to sit and talk to a client that is doing all of the right things and learning from opportunities of where to improve. It’s really exciting, and I definitely have appreciated the partnership we’ve had with Synergis and can’t wait to see what y’all do next, when you’re back on the podcast.

 

Jon Barbato:

Yeah, much appreciated. I enjoyed it and look forward to doing it again, whether kids are the topic or more business stuff is the topic. We’ll figure that part out. But I look forward to it, and I appreciate it.

 

Bridget Harper:

We’ll have a beer too. All right, so at the end of each episode, one of the things that we really like to do is shout out someone on our team. And today, since she couldn’t make the podcast, I get to call out Ryan Salo, my usual co-host on the Survey Says podcast. So anyway, Ryan is probably one of my favorite humans in the entire world. She is smart, she is kind. She’s probably the nicest person I have ever met, which is bonkers. She’s a real person, who is incredibly sweet, very kind, and really kind of the heart of ClearlyRated. And she just does so much for all of us, internally and externally. She cares. And this was her idea, was the Survey Says podcast. So look it, I even steal her great ideas and take them for my own. That’s what being a boss is all about.

But collaborating with Ryan on any project, you’re going to come out happy. She’s fantastic, and I hope you all have a Ryan Salo in your life. If you have any further questions related to this episode or if you have any podcast topics you would like to suggest, simply email us at surveysays@clearlyrated.com. We encourage you to listen in more. We air new episodes every other Thursday on all of your favorite podcast platforms, and new episodes will come up on our social media channels. So make sure to track them all down. So until next time, Survey Says, well, in this case asks, “how can you create a white glove approach to your business, just like Synergis?” More to come. Cheers. Bye everyone.