People Profits, LLC

10/20/2026

One of my articles has been published on LinkedIn. Companies measure their turnover rates against industry average not the best companies in their industry. Their acceptabnce of mediocre results is costing them dearly.

10/13/2026

“Don’t be number 26!”

I hear the following all the time. “Our employees do not seem to be engaged with development like we would like to see.” Or “How do we get our employees to take development seriously?”

I see this as a symptom of having a compensation structure based on time served not on value add. The vast majority of development is seen as just another check item on the job description. It should be seen as a path to greater value for both the organization and the employee.

People Profits developed the Value Path concept which combines the development and the rewards of completing each of the developmental elements. These rewards are a mix of compensation and non-compensation. This is the missing piece of most development programs. The employees are structurally motivated to complete each element as soon as possible.

The Value Path is simply acknowledging the reality of the value added by the development program. This is especially important in the first few years of an employees’ career.

Value Pathing has been used successfully in numerous industries

The path, elements and rewards will encourage employees to move forward. One of the companies I worked for had a week-long school which was a prominent destination on the path. The employees were required to complete a rather robust list of prerequisites prior to attending.

The school set the employees up to make more money. After they graduated, they would start to independently perform and manage jobs. They would no longer be a helper—they would be a revenue producer. The money was dramatically better!

There were 25 seats in the school. The first 25 employees who completed the prerequisites would attend the next school. The school program would be scheduled when there were 25 students ready to attend. Prior to Value Pathing, the organization found it difficult to motivate the employees to complete the prerequisites.

Once the Value Path was engaged, the employees were all rushing to complete the prerequisites. One day an employee called me and said he had just been informed that he was number 26 on the list. He wanted us to make an exception for him. I told him that due to certain activities we could not have more than 25. He was frantic.

What could he do? This was costing him real money. This was affecting his family. I said the only thing I could say: “Don’t be number 26.”

Time passed and life continued. One day during the next school session, I went into the class and was met with a chorus of “Don’t be number 26!” The message had been delivered. It had run through the company like wildfire.

The speed of the path had just been increased exponentially. The old hands who had completed the path were now telling all the new employees: “Don’t be number 26.”

We had a new positive element to our culture which led to the shortening of our training cycle and the generation of millions of dollars.

10/12/2026

My article: "Employee Turnover Eats Culture for Lunch" is live at US Business News

Peter Drucker is famous for the line “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” He was right. But after more than thirty years fighting turnover across dozens of organizations, I’d add a second course: employee turnover eats culture for lunch.

Clark A. Ingram explains how employee turnover eats culture for lunch and shares proven strategies to overcome failing talent management and achieve zero turnover.

10/08/2026

Focus on the truth or the source?

Facts are reported and confirmed. The facts are true as reported. The facts are inconvenient for somebody. That somebody is high in the hierarchy.
Too many times in my history, that person has immediately wanted to know who the source of the information is.

They cannot refute the truth. So they move to impugn the source. I personally do not care who the source is. I care about whether the facts are true or not. In most cases, we can get additional collaboration from other sources.

This goes to the heart of one of the key principles which creates engagement – integrity. If the truth gets buried because it came from the wrong source, we are not showing integrity to the organization. It is these times, when we cannot flinch. Everyone in the organization will hear about it.

We continue to struggle with employee engagement – see the Gallup graph below.

This is also a perfect opportunity for HR to show the employees that they can be trusted. This will set up additional opportunities for employees to come to HR with what is really going on.

10/06/2026

Hopelessness drains motivation and profits

One of the most disheartening things is to talk to good employees whom I KNEW were good employees. Employees who would do anything for the company—work late, demand quality, and help train new employees. When I spoke to them, there was a pervasive hopelessness created by the employee turnover.

HOPELESSNESS IS INFINITELY EXPENSIVE
AND EXCITEMENT IS INFINITELY PROFITABLE

The creed of the fatalist: “It is what it is” and therefore cannot be changed. This hopelessness is a cancer on your greatest asset and your culture.

Have you been around when one of those good employees leaves? The morale of everyone else plummets and the underground chatter is deafening. Everyone dusts off their résumé again.

However, hopelessness can be turned around quickly if the issue is taken straight on. If the root causes are correctly identified and strategies and plans are developed and implemented successfully, progress will be evident almost immediately. It is the good employees who are the first to jump in and help. They want it to be better.

The hopelessness starts to be dispelled when:
1. The plans are announced and they make sense to middle management and the employees.
2. The employees see the first concrete positive change.
3. The changes begin to affect the individual employee’s typical workday.

During the implementation stage, the good employees will sense the change in direction, and will see the first positive results. It will be exciting, which is the opposite of feeling hopeless. At this point, employees will start jumping on the bandwagon. They don’t want to hear the negative stuff anymore. Now the horizon is seen as a place that’s better than where they are now.

One day, I was walking down the hallway, and a coworker was walking toward me. She stopped and I could tell she wanted to say something to me. In a barely audible whisper, she said: “It is getting better.”

She was so afraid that she was going to jinx us. When that becomes the discussion around the water cooler, you are well on your way.

When you have traded hopelessness for excitement, there are certain benefits:
1. Employee turnover will go down.
2. You will gain control of your greatest asset.
3. Recruiting will become easier if managed correctly.
4. Productivity and engagement will go up. I have seen this over and over.

This is when it gets fun and exciting. You now have much more control over your greatest asset. You can use this to springboard to growth in both revenues and profits.

09/30/2026

The first step in Stabilizing your workforce is to identify and minimize your organizationly specific root causes of turnover. When you cut turnover it makes everything easier.

Rahul, thanks so very much for having me on your show!! 😀

What if your in-house recruiting team is asked to solve a problem recruiting didn't create? When someone leaves, the requirement goes to recruiting, another candidate is found, the position is filled, and everyone moves on. Until a few months later, we're filling the same position again. Organizatio...

09/29/2026

Minimizing the number one reason for employee turnover

Each company has their own reasons for employee turnover. I believe each company has to be reviewed to determine the organizationally specific causes. However, my experience and most studies point to individual managers as being the number one reason for turnover.

What kind of manager do you want in your organization?

Managers come in three types:
1. Project managers who get operational results
2. People managers who are awesome with their people and
3. A small number of managers who can do both very well.
a. They are worth their weight in gold
b. Many times they are not paid accordingly

So why do we have such a problem with managers?

1. Little to no succession planning in most organizations,
2. Ad hoc management training,
3. Generic versus organizationally specific training,
4. Need for a manager NOW!
5. Lack of mentoring by type 3 managers.

There are other problems; but, these exist in every organization I have been in.

This is clearly an organizational issue

Every organization I have been in, issues 1, 4 and 5 cannot be appropriately addressed due to the current high level of turnover. The overall turnover needs to be addressed and significantly reduced first. Issues 2 and 3 can be worked on and be ready to be implemented once we get overall turnover under control.

While we are working on turnover we can start building the policies and programs for 1, 4 and 5.

You cannot build type 3 managers while running high turnover

09/28/2026

Thank you Mickey for having on your show to spread the message. Getting control of your employee turnover is the first step in stabilizing your workforce. You can not have a stable workforce and high turnover at the same time!! 🙂

https://lnkd.in/p/gPA5wyGZ

09/24/2026

Thank you Loyalty Ops for having them on their podcast. Mickey is an awesome host!

You can not have a strong culture and have high turnover. High turnover is anything near the industry average. The top companies in an industry never have high turnover. Your standard should not be the industry average but the average of the top firms in your industry.

When Clark Ingram took over people operations at a hospital, turnov...

09/22/2026

Demand more than the bare minimum from HR

Human Resource Professional Day is September 26th. There is a growing trend with HR professionals to go beyond recruiting and administering benefits. There should be certain standards all HR departments should attain and maintain. Every department should be held to concrete financial and operational results. However, I have seen over and over again that HR is not held to these types of tangible goals.

What is the main workforce metric which gets the most attention from the executive team? Do we have enough warm bodies to get the work done? Short term, no focus on productivity or efficiency, little focus on turnover and no review of the extreme costs incurred. No plans or even discussions about what could be done to make it better.

Activity is not results and needs to change

When the CEO calls and is asking for help, they have a long list of complaints and demands which he is looking for. Every time HR confirms the demands but have little to nothing to show me in the form of concrete analysis and plans to make it better. Our conversation is long on words and deflection.

Let’s start with basic goals such as:
1. Staffing up to the mid-90s.
2. The only major recruiting issues should be hard to fill jobs.
3. Turnover goal of zero with plans on constant improvement
4. Employee turnover should be no less than the 75th percentile of industry standards
5. Responses to employee questions within 24 hours

The above goals are aimed at stabilizing the workforce first. We should be seeing positive trends within 3 to 6 months. When we start seeing these trends, we will also be hearing from the employees. They will see the results and they will be seeing positive effects in their daily lives. They won’t be working as much overtime. They will see a reduction in burnout, stress and employee dissatisfaction.

HR needs to demonstrate they can build and implement plans

At this point, Senior Leadership and Workforce leaders should agree on the next set of outcomes. HR will develop plans, review with Leadership and agree on the accomplishment metrics. Leadership will conduct additional review as required.

This is asking nothing more then what is required of other departments. This will feed into the growing trend of HR professionals demanding more responsibility and the related accountability.