Kyle Rhodes on Ken’s Think Tank Season 5, Episode 6

Kyle and I were discussing his philosophies on how people should be treated.

“You try to hire the best you can, and then you intentionally try to develop them both professionally and personally.”

Right.

“I had a couple of guys come up to my office.  They were foremen in the shop.  I felt like I knew them pretty well – felt like we had a good relationship that they could talk to me about stuff.  They came up about a week apart, and they both said – we’re having some major marital problems.  One of them said his wife had left him.”

“I thought – what are we NOT doing at PESCO that’s keeping these guys from being more successful in their personal lives?  I contacted a friend of mine who was our pastor here in Farmington for nine years.  He was here from 2001 to 2010.  I emailed him and laid all this out to him.  I said – do you want to impact people where they are?  I said – this is the situation.  Do you want to minister and impact people where they are, and this is what this would look like.  Help me vision and help me dream about what this could look like in developing people professionally and personally so that they can have a positive impact on their families – on everything they’re connected to – their community and everything.”

“So Craig came to work for us full time in June of last year.  So he’s in charge of what we all Employee Success.  He’s over our HR department, but it’s Employee Success.  There are other pieces he’s connected to that answer to him like Training and Safety and things like that.”

“That’s our goal.  Develop people.  Help make them better.”

A happy employee is a productive employee.

“Exactly.  And it’s the right thing to do.”

It is – yeah.

“The lagging indicator is profits, but the leading indicator is how do we treat people.”

See the Full Episode Below