At The Vision Council 2023 Executive Summit this month, EB had the opportunity to check in with the charismatic and critically on-point Johnny C. Taylor Jr., president and CEO of the Society for Human Resource Management (that has over 300,000 members in 165 countries) for an exclusive livestream conversation. Here, Taylor shares four of-the-moment concepts for more successful staff hiring, training, and retention.

Tip #1: Change is Here to Stay.

EB: When does the workforce normalize from all the upheaval? When will we reach a new normal?

JT: The new normal is going to be full of change forever. We used to do a five-year strategic plan in a business. Then we went to three-year because the world was changing so much. But now we are doing one-year plans because we are experiencing game-shifting changes in short periods of time. People are going to have to get comfortable with change…and that’s creating a level of stress in the workplace.

Tip #2: Stay Calm and Carry On.

EB: What do you suggest to workers and business owners in terms of how we succeed in this new normal?

JT: This will sound trite, but you have to remain calm. Seriously, that’s what we’re telling people. You can’t react to everything…Everywhere you turn, there’s change occurring, it’s impacting the workplace, and you can’t help it…this is the new normal.

Tip #3: Muscle Up on Empathy.

JT: [Another strategy is for] managers to really build their empathy muscle, [especially if it] has atrophied over time. It’s easy to say, “Well, that’s their problem. I just come here and do my work, and I don’t care about what’s happening in your life.” But that doesn’t work anymore. Employees don’t want to work in environments like that, and frankly, it’s not good for you either because, one day, you may be impacted personally with what’s happening in your life.

A big thing to focus on now is empathetic leadership. But here’s the catch: Employees also have to be empathetic.

In the workplace, we’ve got to be kinder. Everyone’s going through seismic shifts, and the culture, the way that we’ve operated historically—your work life is in one place and your personal life is in another—that’s not the world anymore. The pandemic brought work to your home. And in the reemergence, the separation that once existed merged forever.

We advocate for culture and empathy training. Historically, those were soft words, but the world needs them right now. In times past, we focused on physical health. Now, we are seeing a focus on mental health as a result of the pandemic.

Tip #4: Focus on Culture.

JT: We talk about culture, again a formerly soft word, but the reality is, it’s a really hard concept to get right. The number-one thing that you can do as [a business] owner is sit down and decide with intentionality, “What is the culture that I want? What does it mean to work here? What’s going to be the experience?”

Write it down and then identify behaviors so you can show people [the culture you want to create]. Then infuse that practice into your organization from recruitment. When you bring people in, say: “This is the job, and this the culture,” and only hire people who can do the job and are aligned with the culture.

More likely than not, people are leaving because they don’t feel that cultural connection, and we as leaders of any type of business—especially small or medium-sized businesses—you’ve got to create a distinctive, unique culture because that will keep your employees from going to the big companies.