19: Let's Talk About the Current Labor Market - with Nicole Fiene and Michele Vasapoli

Meet Nicole and Michele:Nicole has been at ADP for a little over five years and services the small business community. She helps small businesses outsource many of their administrative tasks such as payroll insurance, HR compliance, and employee benefits in a small business environment. It is usually the owner that wears all the hats. It is her goal to provide a one-stop shop service so that all small business owners can focus on the growth and development of their vision. She brings an extremely abundant and wide breadth of insights to the table and finds good client service and support to be of the most importance. Her interests are hiking and camping, camping photography, and meditating. Michele has worked for ADP for 10 years. She primarily services, the small and mid-market sectors across various industries. In her current role, she helps businesses with complex needs meet their goals and objectives by helping them attract talent, keep employees engaged, and drive productivity in a highly competitive market. Michele lives in New York with her husband and two-year-old son. Oh, she enjoys baking volleyball, and bike riding. Kris: Nicole, what is hot and what is not as far as what benefits to offer staff to encourage them to start working or continue working at their organization?Nicole: As described by the chair of the Federal Reserve, the current labor market is strong but unhealthy. And the reason that is, is because the job openings, new job opportunities per month, are at an all-time record high. So an economist would look at that and say, Great, we're in a great position, like, there's so much opportunity for growth. But on the other side, what else is at an all-time record high is the number of people quitting their jobs. So new job openings, and people quitting their jobs are at an all-time record high. And it's creating this strange phenomenon like this gap for employers, where it's creating a lot of challenges for them. And employees. At ADP, we always say these employees are your biggest liability, but they're also your biggest asset. Yeah. So, where the problem right now for employers is not revenue. For a lot of employers that revenue is actually growing like companies are doing well, like getting new clients, and keeping their current clients. That's not the issue. The issue lies within the employees and having the people do the actual work. And not just anyone but the right person. And what's going on right now is the ball is in the employees' court, they are not shy in asking what they want. And right now the employees have everything that they need to be as picky as they want to be. So an employee is not just you know when there's an interview, it's no longer the employee trying to prove to the employer why their people have reversed now it's the employer trying to prove to the carrier why they should come work for them by their company, culture is good. So all that said, that's kind of setting the stage for what the market labor market is like right now. Erin: So this is for you, Michele, in the current labor market, what strategies do you see clients putting into place to attract and retain employees?Michele: There's been a huge shift toward trying to figure out, which vendors you can partner with that will actually take on some liability, right? Have some skin in the game with you as an employer, right? So what we've seen, on our side, everyone knows ADP as a payroll company, right? That's the first thing you think of. But what a lot of people don't know is how we've kind of branched out and differentiated ourselves. So one of those areas is in our professional employer, organization, or PEO. So there has been a huge shift, as we see and come across some of these big challenges, right, attracting labor, keeping them engaged, how do we offer these great benefits? Where do