Employee Branding: How Your Manufacturing Team Impacts Company Value
Originally published on December 16, 2025
“The company sold a year earlier than anticipated and the acquirers made a point of saying to them, ‘Hey, everybody looked and sounded really together. Your team looked really sharp.” – Alyssa Gelbard
Hiring the right people and providing great training are only the beginning. To build a truly successful workforce, your employees must connect with your company’s mission, values and brand. In this episode of Moore on Manufacturing, Mike Sibley and Kevin Golden sit down with Alyssa Gelbard, founder and CEO of Point Road Group, to discuss how employee branding drives business growth, improves customer retention and increases company valuation for manufacturing businesses.
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Full Episode Transcript
[00:03] Mike Sibley: Hi, I’m Mike Sibley, leader of the James Moore manufacturing team. I’m here with Kevin Golden, one of my partners and also a member of the James Moore manufacturing team. Today we are joined by Alyssa Gelbard, the founder and CEO of Point Road Group. Point Road Group is an employee and executive branding firm that helps companies accelerate growth through their people. Alyssa advises CEOs, leadership teams and board of directors on brand strategy, employee branding and human capital, so aligning these elements with business strategy to drive credibility, trust and revenue growth.
[00:36] Mike Sibley: And along with that, Kevin and I, at all of our shows we want to talk about how do we build value in a business. And this is something that is a little different take on that but is extremely valuable. So when we talk about people, people are extremely valuable assets but sometimes we don’t know how to maximize that value. Whether, you know, when we talk about employees, their drive, their values, aligning them with the company’s values and purpose, it’s sometimes overlooked.
[01:08] Mike Sibley: And we want to talk about that alignment and so how does this bring value to your company. So Alyssa is going to help us understand what this means, how employee branding is important and how it can increase value of your company. So Alyssa, welcome to the show.
Alyssa Gelbard: Thanks Mike and Kevin, appreciate it. Good to be here.
[01:36] Kevin Golden: Yeah, you know, as we were talking about before, I really thought this is an interesting take and I really hadn’t seen it before. But it was so interesting. I think everything I’ve read and seen says this is just an extremely valuable way to look at things. But before we get into that, maybe you could give us a little bit about your background and what led you to starting Point Road Group.
Alyssa Gelbard: Sure, thank you. Well, the quick and dirty is that I’m an accidental entrepreneur, so never meant to start my own business. My background is marketing and branding, so worked in a number of industries but always in marketing and it was always focused on building brands, creating value. And people were always asking me for help and guidance if they were hiring, if they were doing business development, communications, things like that. And it was never part of my job but it was always really fun and I really enjoyed helping the people part of the business. I wasn’t in HR, I was in marketing.
[02:08] Alyssa Gelbard: And when it got to people who I didn’t know reaching out asking for help, “Oh I got your name from so and so,” I said let me hang up a shingle. And so started my business as a side hustle and then it grew and grew because it was obviously a different take on things. And then I kind of said I have to make a decision and then jumped into it full time and that was a little over 10 years ago.
Mike Sibley: Wow.
Kevin Golden: Wow, yeah.
[02:35] Alyssa Gelbard: And we’ve expanded and morphed over time. When I first started the business it was exclusively focused on the individual, so an executive brand. And then out of that grew our corporate business, which is our focus today, although we still work with individuals and executives from time to time. But really helping teams and entire companies with their people part of their business.
Kevin Golden: Yeah, awesome. That’s pretty awesome, especially from being a side hustle to what you are today. That’s amazing.
[03:03] Alyssa Gelbard: I made lots of mistakes along the way as an entrepreneur. That’s a whole other conversation.
Mike Sibley: Who doesn’t? That’s every business.
Kevin Golden: And I can tell you we’ve got clients, whether they’re manufacturing or other industries, a lot of times they start out as this little side thing that turned into something big. We love seeing that. I mean that entrepreneurial spirit is always amazing. What drives somebody to be able to do something, start something and then build it because you saw a very unique approach to something, because people were asking for it and said wait, there’s something to this. So hey, why don’t I run with this and see what happens. So it’s an interesting way to go.
[04:01] Kevin Golden: Well, and Alyssa, you know, the term, we spoke a little bit about this, let’s take a deeper dive. The term you use is employee branding. You even mentioned, I think just a couple times there, employee executive branding and so forth. So maybe for those who haven’t heard that term before or maybe heard it but don’t really understand its true meaning of what all goes into that or what you mean by that. What is employee branding first of all, and then how does that play kind of into maybe, you know, we work in the manufacturing community, into that brand, into their values and missions and purpose as a manufacturer?
[04:29] Alyssa Gelbard: Sure. And I will say Kevin that probably the vast majority of people haven’t heard employee branding. They hear branding maybe, personal branding, but what really is it? So I’m here to make it clear. So essentially, how your people represent and promote your company, your company brand to stakeholders in everything they do all day long, whether it’s online, whether it’s in person. It’s things like how they introduce themselves and talk about the company and make sure that they’re doing it in a current and relevant way. Their LinkedIn presence and other social media if it’s relevant to business. Their communication habits, things like response time to email, their presentation skills, executive presence, how they show up on video, how they show up in person.
[05:03] Alyssa Gelbard: All of those things make up what someone thinks about you and then they draw that right to what they think about your business. So when you consider all these things and tying it now to your company brand, do all these actions and behaviors that people have every single day, do they align with your mission, with your values, or are they completely contrary?
Mike Sibley: Right, right.
[05:35] Mike Sibley: You know, one thing you said there is how you portray yourself. As an accountant growing up as a young staff accountant, times have changed a lot. I used to come in a suit and a tie until I think one of my managers told me, “If you come in a suit and tie again I’m going to cut your tie off,” because the times, not everyone’s coming in that anymore. So eventually got more relaxed and that’s just dress, that’s just one example. But times have changed a lot, much less in the last few years during and since COVID and things like that. So how have you seen that, this idea of employee branding and making sure people are exercising I guess those norms, which are a lot different today than what they used to be, but at the same time still representing their company or their mission, their purpose appropriately. How have you seen that change?
[06:35] Alyssa Gelbard: I think the biggest thing that we’ve seen change is the virtual presence. So here we are right, we’re talking from screen to screen where that has become the norm because it doesn’t matter what type of business you’re in, manufacturing or otherwise. Even if you are physically in an office, you’re still doing business virtually in some way. So that screen presence really matters. And not just what you’re wearing, but what’s behind you. If you are the type of person, and we all know this and we’ve all seen it, when you’re like this talking to somebody but someone’s got their head turned or looking down. You know, when you think about how you’re engaging, it could be a customer, could be a prospect, could be a vendor, anybody. What tone that sets. And when you think about as a leader of a business, do you want your people doing that? Absolutely not.
[07:06] Alyssa Gelbard: So things like that. But even when you say dress, if you are, let’s say it’s a day when you’re working from home and you’re certainly not wearing a suit and tie, but how casually are you dressed? And what impression is that putting, the best foot forward for the business every day? But then even kind of on the flip side, okay so you’re in the office and you have a meeting, are you overly casual where you’re pushing it too much the other way and again not a good representation of the brand?
[08:08] Mike Sibley: Yeah, it’s really funny. And dress like you said is just one aspect of it. I remember years ago I was probably only a couple years into my career and I walked into a manufacturing prospect meeting wearing a suit and tie and the owner comes in wearing a polo shirt and jeans and goes, “If I ever see you dress like that again we won’t be working together.” I said fair enough. And so it’s one of the things I love about the manufacturing groups is it’s that piece, a little bit more laid back even though they’re intense on wanting their business really right.
[08:39] Mike Sibley: So you know, as you’re talking I’m hearing things like almost like customer experience, their perception of you and things like that. I guess the first thing that comes to mind is I see that on the sales side of things. I see the sales people because they’re kind of the face of this. But you did mention it, what about kind of how does that relate outside of sales for a manufacturing company? And how is that kind of bringing value to the company? As we think about maybe on the sales side because I think we all see that sales people kind of have a way, but what about outside of that?
[09:11] Alyssa Gelbard: Well it’s everybody, right? It’s anybody who, I think it’s anybody really who’s public facing if you will. You don’t have to be in sales to be touching customers. And so, and regardless of the department you’re in. So how you come across and communicate really has an impact. It could be a customer’s interest in staying with you. Let’s say they are constantly reaching out and you take three days to get back to an email or you take a long time to get back to them. It doesn’t matter what area of the business you’re in if you are doing things that can hurt the reputation of the business without even realizing it, that can decrease value.
[09:42] Alyssa Gelbard: So you don’t have to be in sales. But I would say the most important are people at the executive team or your leadership, salespeople of course, business development, engineering. Think about all the times when engineers are brought in as a subject matter expert to a sales call or meeting with a customer. Those are really important things. That’s one of the things we hear often is that those are groups that they don’t pay enough attention to. And so we do, as a company, we certainly do training and coaching and all of that to help groups like that put a better foot forward because you can’t blame them, they don’t realize.
[10:13] Alyssa Gelbard: Very often so much of this is people don’t realize it’s happening. And I think that’s one of the things I say to business leaders all the time: Do you realize how many opportunities you’ve lost because you didn’t pay attention to employee branding? Because you didn’t know, right? You didn’t realize the impact or maybe knew a little bit and it wasn’t a priority because every interaction someone has with any stakeholder can influence business. It could be communicating with a vendor and the vendors kind of, they love you because of all of the positive things that you do, or they’re a little frustrated with you.
[10:44] Alyssa Gelbard: And then when someone comes to a vendor with a request or they’re looking for a new firm to work with and maybe they’re not going to refer you because you’ve been frustrated to work with as a vendor. Why? Because of some of the habits of your people. At the end of the day, you don’t have to be just because you’re not in a services firm doesn’t mean that people don’t play a really big part in the success of your business. Because it’s also things like any interaction really with a stakeholder, and it could be any kind of stakeholder, influences someone’s interest in learning more about your firm or doing business with you or referring a customer to you or remaining a customer. And then even from a potential employee side, working at your company. All of those things. So you don’t have to just be in sales to have an impact on all of those things.
Mike Sibley: Right, right.
[12:14] Kevin Golden: Do you have any sort of, and I’m going to put you on the spot here, do you have any sort of example of a scenario where somebody was doing X and you helped them and that helped with the brand, helped with an interaction or something, just to help really solidify that? Because I’m presenting weird or because of whatever, it was turning off this customer relationship, something like that. Maybe some sort of success story kind of?
Alyssa Gelbard: Yeah, yeah, kind of like that. Sure.
[12:50] Alyssa Gelbard: I was thinking, well I’ve got a very specific example I’ll give you. But you know, overall, there was a company we were working with because they knew they had a good reputation in the business, in the industry, but revenue was okay, it wasn’t exactly where they wanted to be. They were super efficient with their operations and they turned out high quality, they were always focused on quality, they lowered their cost. So kind of internally things were kind of moving well but they weren’t growing in the way they wanted to. And the larger picture is that the founder of the business knew he wanted to sell in a couple years. Really was saying, okay, as we’re starting to optimize every area of the business, our revenue isn’t where it needs to be. So what can we do?
[13:22] Alyssa Gelbard: We started looking at the people side. So first thing I said was, well when anybody looks anybody up from your company they don’t get a very good picture of them on LinkedIn. And people do that, especially leadership teams. And when you’re, it’s not just when a prospect is looking at who’s part of the business, it could also be when talent’s looking, but also kind of thinking longer term, oh when we’re going to be thinking about selling the business, they’re always going to be looking at the leadership team of course, but engineering and sales too.
[13:54] Alyssa Gelbard: So we said all right, let’s start with, let’s get everybody looking and sounding great on LinkedIn because they were kind of embarrassing. Even the founder of the business, because oh you know, they created their profiles a long time ago. So we got everybody looking and sounding great there. We also by the way said, okay if you’re thinking about selling in a few years, your corporate bios, the things that are on your website of leadership team, those also have to sound a lot better so you look and sound great and show the value that you actually bring to the business.
[14:19] Alyssa Gelbard: Then we said okay, we got a few, a handful of people from different areas of the business and we said okay, describe the company. And they all described it a little bit differently and in a way that where if they were talking to people outside they could miss opportunities because they were missing something there. So we said okay, let’s make sure everybody’s on the right message here. And we actually looked at the company’s description and said it’s a little outdated. When was the last time you looked at this? And so we got that current so then people would talk about the business in a sharper way.
[14:51] Alyssa Gelbard: And then the last piece we said is let’s look at everybody’s communications habits because we know that you’ve told us, even just from our communications before it led up to them becoming a client, you guys aren’t so great with response time. That’s not so good. You know, when you have the big customer you’re always going to drop everything and pick up a phone, respond to an email. What about everybody else? And so we did some training on communications habits for everybody and said this is important no matter who you are in the business.
[15:19] Alyssa Gelbard: And so after all of those things, everybody looked and sounded better and they started to, there was an uptick in new business. And as well, the company sold a year earlier than anticipated and the acquirers made a point of saying to them, “Hey, everybody looked and sounded really together. Your team looked really sharp.” And so, you know, of course that wasn’t the reason why the business sold, but it helped them from a customer perspective but also helped them when they were selling too.
Mike Sibley: Yeah.
[16:21] Mike Sibley: You know, we always talk about value drivers and what are value drivers and some of that. And a big piece of that is people and the leadership. And yeah, I think we’ve helped lots of businesses sell, we’ve helped lots of businesses buy businesses. And when a buyer’s coming in there’s a level of confidence that they can get or not get by having a discussion with the leadership team. And if they’re all over the place, their communication isn’t very good, you may still get a deal done but it may take longer, it may not be the value, they may not put the multiples on it that you want in order to get that.
[16:56] Mike Sibley: So yeah, that makes a lot of sense in terms of where you can drive value through that consistency. But also, I mean one of the things I still kind of keep coming back to, it feels like there’s a customer experience piece that you’re enhancing by improving communications, response times and things of that nature. Am I on the right track with that?
Alyssa Gelbard: Oh absolutely, absolutely. We’ve done, actually we’re about to do a couple workshops with companies for their offsites just on that. Because of that importance of it’s not just for the new business and the prospects but it’s about retaining your customers. And they’re also, at the end of the day you want them to be your advocates and refer business and stay loyal and refer business too.
[17:28] Mike Sibley: Right. And that’s one of the things is we talk about sticky customers. So customers that are going to be there. And again, when we come back to value, if you’ve got a long-term customer and they’re going to continue to be a customer, that’s a great value for a business.
[17:57] Kevin Golden: Well I could take this one step further as y’all are talking about all that and my brain’s just going, saying well also, I mean relationships are everything. It doesn’t matter what business you’re in, relationships are internal relationships, external relationships, all important. Well as you have, all of us at some point want to either transition out, whether that’s a sale like you’re talking about Mike or maybe that’s transition to other key folks we’ve identified, they’ve trained underneath us, they know the manufacturing side but it’s now running a business. Well they’ve never done that.
[18:26] Kevin Golden: So I could see this also coming into play with helping transition and getting them up to speed at a point where, oh we didn’t hire, we didn’t hire Jeff at ABC company, we hired ABC company and we know we’re getting consistent, whether it’s from Jeff himself or who the next person is behind him. We’re getting consistent service, we’re getting consistent product, we’re getting consistent experience. And so I could see how, because a lot of times when you have that, it’s like, oh well it’s not the way it used to be when Jeff or whoever that is was there. So I can see that’s areas for improvement as well, especially as you have those, as we like to call them at our firm, those up and coming folks who are doing really well, very ambitious, doing great in a career. Well helping bring that along as well could help transition into those relationships then help you to grow, help you to take that same client on for maybe generation after generation. So it goes back to retention as well.
[19:21] Alyssa Gelbard: Absolutely. And I think one of the important things here too is that leaders model behavior for their teams. So what we see in so many companies is the people leading the business, they’re leading the business, they’ve got a priority list a mile long to do. And so sometimes they don’t focus on their employee brand and then everybody, those up and coming, they look and see, well the leaders aren’t doing it so why should I? You don’t want that. So often when we work with companies we start with the leadership team and say hey, you guys have to get your act together. And then because then everybody’s going to want it. You’re a model for everybody else.
[19:51] Alyssa Gelbard: And everybody will see that. And especially to your point Kevin, for those up and coming, when you’re doing those good things people see that. And it doesn’t have to be even just seeing a behavior, it could be just even the way someone responds to an email or their body language sitting in a meeting or lots of other things too. Or how they present, presentation skills is a big thing. How you’re leading a meeting, whether you’re standing up and giving a formal presentation or you’re sitting casually and leading a meeting, all of those things are behaviors that you want that next gen to observe so then they can take those behaviors into action.
[20:22] Alyssa Gelbard: And even for those who are, in some companies certain departments are remote, not every manufacturing firm is a single person’s in the office or on site. So making an effort to observe and make sure you’re setting the right example for those folks.
Kevin Golden: Right, right.
[20:50] Kevin Golden: And so another question. So okay, so now firm’s hired you, right? We talked a little bit about in that kind of success story about what all you helped them with and so forth. But okay, so you get in there day one, I’m assuming you’re doing some sort of level of interviewing and talking, but kind of walk us through like all right, what is that roadmap at a high level? I know there’s a lot you do and focus on depending on the nature, but kind of at a high level, how’s that look? You come in and then what happens? Maybe in the first time, in the next bit and so forth that leads us to a lifecycle if you will, working on improving employee branding.
[21:19] Alyssa Gelbard: Sure. So coming into it we already kind of know some of the key areas that we’re going to work on. We’ve kind of gone into it that way. But the first step that we do is really do an overall brand audit. So we are looking, we are talking to, like you said, we’re talking to leaders, we’re talking to people in other departments to really understand the brand and the company and the business. But also where’s the business going strategically? What’s your growth plan? Because we want to make sure that all the things that we’re doing are in line with that. So we want to understand really the DNA of the brand and of the company and of the culture. And so we do that first.
[21:51] Alyssa Gelbard: And then we say okay, we usually start with some foundational work which is a little more classic branding if you will, which is company message. Because if you’re going to amplify, if everybody, you’re going to put kind of light on your people, you want to make sure when you look under the hood that that basic message, that foundation of the company is current. And I mentioned it before, you want to make sure that, hey, that way you describe the business, when was the last time you looked at that? So we will rewrite company messaging if it’s necessary.
[22:17] Alyssa Gelbard: We will then also look at the company’s LinkedIn strategy. That’s another big piece because even if all the individuals, employees aren’t incredibly active on let’s say LinkedIn, but we’re looking them up there and then they’re going to click over to the company. How’s that? If it’s online, if it’s a “we manufacture blah blah blah since 1904,” that doesn’t tell you enough about the business. Maybe talks a little bit about heritage but hey, let’s talk more about that. So we make sure the company has a good LinkedIn presence and posting strategy and then we start focusing on the people.
[22:46] Alyssa Gelbard: We will start like I mentioned with the executive team or leadership team, whoever it is, because they’re setting the example. And then we will do, depending on kind of what we’re focusing on first, it might be LinkedIn. So we will do trainings for teams and sometimes we’ll do it for a company together but very often we will break it out into different groups so this way the engineers can feel comfortable around each other and not worry about, oh you know, executive team is looking and you know, now I can’t ask questions that I’d like to ask. Or a sales team, business development, you know, or quality. So we try to do that to make them feel comfortable and meet them where they are.
[23:16] Alyssa Gelbard: One thing that’s also important to note, just sort of pause for a second, is that in so many businesses these days, but particularly in manufacturing, you have four generations working together. And so we very much believe you have to meet people where they are. You can push a little, especially for the older generation who might, we find that often where they’re kind of digging their heels in, do we really have to do this? And I don’t, you know, this is not the way we’ve always done it for the last however many years, you know. But it can really help the business. So we really try to meet people where they are.
[23:45] Alyssa Gelbard: So then we’ll focus on usually LinkedIn is one of the early things because it’s easy and people understand that. Another thing also that I didn’t mention that’s I think important, regardless of all this, is once you start to have a focus on this, make sure you communicate it to people so they understand why you’re doing it, that it’s going to help them as an individual and it’s going to help the business at the same time. Because I think that’s a really important message, not just we’re doing this, you know, explaining why gets the buy-in. Like that. And people really buy into it because they understand, hey my company is investing in me as well as, you know, continuing to help the business as well.
[24:10] Alyssa Gelbard: So we will do LinkedIn often first. We will then do communications training and the types of communications training will vary depending on the company. But we will often do like I mentioned kind of the habits and communication, response time and the way they construct and converse with people, both verbally and in writing. We do, and then we’ll do presentation skills workshop. And that will depend on who’s involved. So it’s not just for sales or sales will sometimes say, oh we don’t need this, you know, we’re good at this. And we’ll say, okay well this is the advanced version. Again we try to segment when we can depending on the size of the teams too.
[24:40] Alyssa Gelbard: Because you know, if you already have some pretty decent presentation skills, you don’t want to be with someone who’s just starting out. Maybe you don’t. Or sometimes you do because there’s a benefit. So that’s where we really look at the culture of the business and really understand how is the team and understand the interactions before we’re going in because we want it to be something really valuable and useful that people walk away with.
[25:09] Alyssa Gelbard: The one other thing to mention too is, and this is you know whether we’re doing this or you’re doing it on your own, is you don’t want to just like train someone on something, right, let’s say it’s LinkedIn as an example, and then say okay, bye, you know, good luck. And then they are going, every single person is going to go back to their desk or their space, whatever it is, and forget about everything you just talked about. So we believe in follow-up, measuring, being available for questions. We do follow-up sessions because the idea to move the needle, you want to get people to make positive changes and help them along the way, not be like here’s what you got to do or hey, here’s some stuff, go figure it out yourself.
[25:41] Alyssa Gelbard: So we very much, you know, believe in measuring and helping and continuing until they, you know, it’s kind of like the whole teach a man to fish type of thing. That’s our philosophy.
Mike Sibley: Yeah, makes sense.
[26:08] Mike Sibley: You know, one of the things, and I think those are important because you know, like you said, whether it’s you helping or whether it’s, you know, one of our manufacturers thinking about it. But I mean you talked about all sorts of things from presentation skills to, you know, LinkedIn profiles and keeping those up and the message of just going to a website and say what does a message even say there? So you know, just from a high level, if one of our companies is listening to this going, where would I even start thinking about this? Go look at those couple of things and see where, you know, are you still using the same message from 10 years ago and you’re in a different place, right? So that’s something easier for them, right?
Alyssa Gelbard: We have a like a, it’s a two-minute audit, it’s a, we call it an employee branding audit. It’s on our website on pointroadgroup.com under resources. And it takes under three minutes and it’s just a quick survey and you can just, it asks you a bunch of questions, get you to start thinking about your team, the company brand, etc. And then it’ll give you some pointers on, you know, what to start with and where you’re weakest and where you can start.
[28:37] Mike Sibley: One thing that keeps coming to my mind, you’ve mentioned it but we haven’t kind of focused a little bit on sales or customers and but a company culture. So when we start thinking about, do I want to work here? And how do I recruit some employees? This seems to play into keeping a strong workforce and getting key people to even want to work there as well. Can you take a minute to kind of dive into that piece of it?
Alyssa Gelbard: Yeah, sure. I mean think of, okay, so someone’s looking for a job. What are they going to do? They’re going to look up, they’re going to research the company and who am I going to be working with? Who am I going to be working for? Who am I going to be reporting to? And they’re going to look up all that. They’re going to look up the leaders of the business, the people who would be in their department, people they’re interviewing with.
[29:09] Alyssa Gelbard: If they look, you know, let’s say starting again, easy place to think, LinkedIn, and they see either things that are outdated, has next to nothing, they’re not going to be that excited. Now they go to your competitor and your competitor has, wow look at these people. They’re, you know, I’m not saying they have to be, you know, social media gurus and have these unbelievable influencer style, you know, profiles, but there’s something there. I think that can make a really big difference in someone just even being interested in and before, forget before they even apply to your company.
[29:37] Alyssa Gelbard: Now since they’re still on LinkedIn, they’re going to go over, look at the company. They’re going to look at posts, you know. Everybody is told in a job search at any level, if interested in a company, follow the company on LinkedIn, then you see the posts. And if they see, you know, some generic posts of a manufacturing floor in your plant that there’s, you know, or a couple, or every post is the same, you know, kind of group shot in, you know, people smiling on the floor or some community work that you’ve done, that’s great. But what else? What else about the business? Otherwise it looks like it’s the same thing over and over again. So those are types of things that actually before they’re even applying, right, before they’ve even done any of that to apply.
[30:12] Alyssa Gelbard: But then when you think about that experience, and this sort of overlaps with what you may hear is employer brand, right? The brand that you’re putting out there to attract talent is, so they apply for a job and you know, the person leading the search in HR takes a week to get back to them, doesn’t keep, they say, they say once they finally do, we are going to make the decision by next Tuesday. Tuesday comes and goes, you follow up a couple days later. You know, there’s always reasons for, you know, decisions to be delayed. But then they ghost them because maybe something, you know, hiring got put, there’s a hiring freeze or something happened, and whatever, there could be a million reasons. But you don’t communicate with that, you know, with that potential talent there.
[30:44] Alyssa Gelbard: Well then what are they thinking now? They’re going to have a negative brand association. Now maybe when the opportunity comes up again, they’re going to say, I’m going to go to a competitor because they were more responsive and they made me feel, they made me feel, you know, how they make me feel. So and the experience that I had with them was right. So those are all sort of softer side of things that can have an impact in hiring.
Mike Sibley: Yeah.
[31:12] Mike Sibley: Well and I think in there what you said, some things, one, it doesn’t have to be, like you said, you’re not a guru. Maybe you’re not someone who’s on social media all the time. We’re not talking about being this high-profile somebody who’s posting, you know, every other half an hour of the day. But it’s just, hey, what are you putting out there? Because unfortunately perception does become reality for folks who don’t know you. I used to hate that saying because I was like, no, reality is reality. But it’s the truth. Perception is reality when you put yourself out there. That’s all somebody knows of you. That is all the reality is of you.
[31:43] Mike Sibley: I could also see, you know, as you build that culture like we talked about Mike, and then as it spills over outside of work, well there’s an ancillary benefit right there. Okay, and now you’ve got employees who not only are well bought into the firm, the mission, the, you know, where are we going, why are we doing what we’re doing, things like that. Spills over in their personal life. They’re on a weekend, you know, with folks, talking about, next thing you know, well maybe someone wants to come work there. Maybe a vendor over here is, oh yeah, I was talking to them about that. Yeah, we should probably see about maybe doing business with them. So while it’s not always directly like sales and things like that, I could see a lot of ways that indirectly that just has a lot of ancillary type benefits.
[32:12] Alyssa Gelbard: Yeah, and it also can lead, you know, when you think about culture too, so my company’s investing in me, you’re having all the positive things that you’re saying. Well I’m going to want to continue my career here. I’m going to work, I want to continue my success. I’m going to stay engaged and I’m staying engaged, I’m going to be perform, maybe performing better. And I’m going to want to be here for the longer term. And we all know the cost of, you know, employee turnover. So you know, these are, those are kind of, they’re ancillary, but I think they’re really positive benefits.
Kevin Golden: Yeah, yeah, no, definitely.
[32:39] Kevin Golden: Any other kind of on that line, any other type of ancillary benefits or anything like that you can think of? Oh well, most of our clients or people we work with maybe don’t think about in addition to all the, okay, increase sales, increase public image, increase, you know, presence. What are some other, you know, kind of like that that may be very important but they probably don’t realize what they’re potentially missing out on by not focusing on their employees and their branding?
[33:13] Alyssa Gelbard: Well I think the missing out is you’re going to stand out from your competitors because in the manufacturing space, so many companies don’t do this because it’s not a priority, right? We talked about that in the beginning. So if you do some things like this, you’re already going to stand out. You’re going to be different in a really good way. There’s different, cut a different, bad. In this way, you know, you’re really, you’re standing out and differentiating very quickly. So yes, it’s with talent, but also just in the marketplace. You know, even think about if you’re at, if you’re at a conference and you have your team at a, you know, whether it’s at a trade show or a conference or thing, you know, how your whole group is presenting themselves is going to be different. Hey, we want to go talk to them. They are more together.
[33:41] Alyssa Gelbard: That doesn’t mean everybody, and when I’m saying this, I don’t mean everybody is, you know, super slick sharp and, you know, kind of sounds robotic. I don’t mean that at all. But you know, you can tell when a company has their stuff together and that their people are really on it. They’re excited to be there. They’re, you know, they’re successful and they want to be and they want to be part of the continued success.
Mike Sibley: Yeah, yeah.
[34:10] Mike Sibley: So it sounds like, you know, as we kind of get towards the end here, you know, there’s been a bunch of great takeaways. But I think one is, you know, for a company that wants to even think about, hey, where do I start? Or where I think go to your website and get that, do that two-minute, three-minute audit just to see, hey, just for the fun of it, let’s see where I kind of rank myself. Is that a fair way for somebody to say start, get you thinking about things that, oh, didn’t think about that, oh, okay.
Alyssa Gelbard: And with all of this, can’t do everything at once. Start small, start with one thing, get that done, and then go to the next thing. You know, I think it’s very often we’ll hear companies will say to us once they’ve kind of gone through, well I don’t know where to start, you know, there’s so many things we have to do, this, this, we don’t have time for that, you know, we’re so busy or we don’t have resource for that. Okay, well then let’s, let’s think about priorities. What’s priority to you and really what’s in the worse shape?
Mike Sibley: Right.
[34:41] Alyssa Gelbard: I’m sure there’s low-hanging fruit whenever you walk into a…
Mike Sibley: Always.
Alyssa Gelbard: Always. And it, you know, at the end of the day, it’s not rocket science, right? We are helping them help themselves really, right, at the end of the day. And you know, some of the nice things that you can do too is, and we’ve done this for companies, but you can also do it yourself if you’re kind of DIYing this, which is think about new employee onboarding too. So once you go through this whole exercise and everybody’s, you know, everybody’s, you know, looking better, sounding better, talking, all of that, communicating better, what about all the new people who are going to come on in the next X amount of time? What about, you want to have that advantage.
[35:14] Alyssa Gelbard: So incorporate it in some way into your new employee onboarding. I mean, easy thing to do. And whether that’s, maybe, you know, LinkedIn profile standards or maybe there’s a simple presentation training that you do, even if people are not directly right now in their current role immediately jumping in and facing the customer, but maybe give them a sense and certain things like that that can really go a long way.
Mike Sibley: Great, great.
[35:44] Mike Sibley: Well Alyssa, thank you so much for being on. This has been really informative and there’s so many different ways we talked about that affects value of a company. So this has been great. Really appreciate you being on today.
Alyssa Gelbard: Oh, my pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Mike Sibley: And for, as always, all our listeners, thank you for listening, watching on YouTube or listening to the podcast. As always, reach out with questions or comments and we hope you have a great rest of your day and week. Take care everyone. And don’t wear a tie because someone’s going to cut it off.
Kevin Golden: That’s right.
Mike Sibley: All right.
[36:16] Mike Sibley: To learn more about James Moore and Company’s manufacturing services, go to jmco.com. And don’t forget to subscribe to our Moore on Manufacturing series to receive updates when new videos and podcasts are released. If you’d like to be a guest or if there’s a topic you’d like to see covered on a future episode, contact us on our website. You can also follow us on social media for more news as the manufacturing industry continues to evolve.
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