Now more than ever, employees have the upper hand when it comes to working remotely. JW Michaels managing partner Jason Wachtel joined Fox 26 Houston news to discuss what’s being termed the Great Resignation and to share his insight into the need for more flexible hybrid schedules for companies.

Our managing partner Jason Wachtel recently joined Fox 32 Chicago, where he discussed the steps businesses are taking to retain their workforce, in addition to how work may look different for good.

As a recruitment expert, Jason shared his expertise about the current workforce as well as the way businesses are accommodating the for the future.

He often shares his knowledge on the workforce, including most recently weighing in on the need for companies nationwide adapting and offering new incentives in order to keep and attract employees.

“If employers don’t shift their mindset in regard to investing in employees’ hybrid work schedules, technology, they’re gonna be at a tremendous disadvantage in not only maintaining the staff that they have, but adding and attracting great talent to join their organization,” Wachtel said.

As co-founder and managing partner, Jason heads up all business development, operations, and strategic growth initiatives for JW Michaels.

In a recent interview titled Jason Wachtel of JW Michaels & Co: How Diversity Can Increase a Company’s Bottom Line by Fotis Georgiadis of Authority Magazine, JW Michaels & Company Managing Partner, Jason Wachtel, weighed in on how diversity can increase a company’s bottom line.

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[Authority Magazine] Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive into the main part of our interview, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit more. Can you share a bit of your “backstory” with us?

[Jason Wachtel] I grew up in a suburb of New York City and come from a family of entrepreneurs. My grandfather was the co-founder of the Members Only clothing brand, and I always knew I wanted to go into business for myself.

Ten years after graduating from Syracuse, I fell into recruiting and discovered I was good at it. It was 2008, and the financial collapse made starting a business risky. But I decided to focus my attention on recruiting compliance and legal talent in the asset management space, and it paid off. After many years of hard work, JW Michaels & Co has grown to a team of 160 people with 14 offices and is an industry-leading executive search firm placing professionals in the right positions.

Can you share the funniest or most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career? Can you tell us the lesson or take away you took out of that story?

None of us imagined that when we closed our offices for two weeks when the pandemic first started that we’d still be working remotely a year and a half later! The pandemic has been a struggle for businesses and the country as a whole. Personally, I learned through perseverance, hard work and creativity, anything is possible. As a company, our team learned we can thrive under any circumstance and even in the most challenging times if we hire the most amazing people and support them.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you tell us a story about how that was relevant in your own life?

I always say, “You have to work harder and smarter than your competition.” I started JW Michaels 11 years ago in a closet with no windows, and I was competing against other entrepreneurs who graduated from Harvard. It was pure determination and grit that helped me build my business. If my competition was in the office at 9 a.m., I was there at 6:30 a.m.. If the other guys left at 6 p.m., I stayed until 9 p.m.. I worked harder and made more calls. In order to succeed, I realized that I wasn’t just competing with other people, I was competing with myself too.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are?

My grandfather is a big role model for me. He started from nothing and became extremely successful, co-creating a global clothing brand. His perseverance and determination have set an example for me for a long time, and I admire him greatly

What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?

The caliber of people we hire at JW Michaels makes us stand out. We prioritize high ethics and morals, team players and great schooling. We support and encourage the entrepreneurial spirit, and our employees feel like they’re running their own business. As the company’s Managing Partner, my job is to coach and guide them. I’m proud to say that no one has left our business to go to another firm during the pandemic, and not many companies can say that.

Are you working on any new or exciting projects now? How do you think that might help people?

We are continuing to expand our footprint and create an even better work environment for our employees. We thrive for the best work/life balance that people can have by creating a culture where we work hard but don’t sacrifice time away from our families.
How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?

Giving back is very important to me, and I’m proud to serve on the board of Cohen’s Children’s Hospital in Long Island. I also believe in paying it forward by providing people with an opportunity to make more money than they ever thought was possible. Helping people create wealth for themselves is inspiring. Most importantly, being a good mentor to my kids is what keeps me going.

Ok. Thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the main part of our interview. This may be obvious to you, but it is not intuitive to many people. Can you articulate to our readers five ways that increased diversity can help a company’s bottom line. (Please share a story or example for each.)

1. Meet Customer/Clientele Expectations

Customers and clients want to work with companies that have diverse talent because a diverse workforce not only gives businesses better insight into their customers/clients, it also helps them connect with them in a more empathetic way. Without it, consumers will choose to go elsewhere.

2. Foster Innovation

Diversity allows for different thoughts, ideas and a wide variety of opinions. A person or team may come up with a brilliant idea simply because of the experience and perspective they bring to the table.

3. Attract Investors

Investors care about diversity-owned businesses because they know it matters. In particular, studies show there’s a correlation between how diverse a company is and its success — the more diverse, the more successful. Having a high-performing diverse team can attract the right investors.

4. Attract a Broader Talent Pool

Companies that embrace diversity broaden their talent pool. They attract a wider range of eligible candidates — and thus, a wider range of talents and ideas. At JW Michaels, we work to make sure 50 percent of the candidate pool we send to our partners is diverse. We know one of the keys to a successful company is seeing value in diversity and how it completely transforms an institution. We deliver, and companies are better because of it.

5. Attract the Best Talent

Candidates joining firms want to know those firms care about diversity. If a business wants to attract the most exceptional candidates who bring value and revenue to their firm, they have to have a diverse workforce.

What advice would you give to other business leaders to help their employees to thrive?
Empowering your people is important. Bottom line, you should hire for ethics, morality and hard work. You can teach people just about anything, but no matter how smart people are, you can’t have success without ethics and hard work. Never sacrifice ethics for intelligence.
What advice would you give to other business leaders about how to manage a large team?
Try to be even-keeled and don’t be too emotional. It’s good to have emotional intelligence, but we must try to balance our emotions in order to have clarity and make the right decisions.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this.
I would love to sit down with basketball legend Michael Jordan, who I’ve met twice before on the golf course. He got cut by his high school varsity team, and look at him now. He worked harder and smarter than his competition, always — no matter the setbacks or losses. His work ethic is amazing, and no one could outwork him. That’s inspiring.

In a recent news story titled Workers have upper hand in reopening economy by Ahtra Elnashar of Sinclair Broadcast Group, JW Michaels & Company Managing Partner, Jason Wachtel, weighed in on the need for companies nationwide adapt and offer new incentives in order to keep and attract employees.

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WASHINGTON (SBG) — It’s a good time to be searching for a job in the United States.

The June jobs report beat expectations with 850,000 jobs added last month. Unemployment ticked up slightly to 5.9%, from 5.8% last month. Before the pandemic, in February 2020, the unemployment rate was 3.5%.

On Friday, President Joe Biden explained how this is playing out nationwide.

“Instead of workers competing with each other for jobs that are scarce, employers are competing with each other to attract workers,” Biden said during remarks from the White House about the economic news.

Recruitment expert Jason Wachtel helps employers navigate this new dynamic at his firm JW Michaels in New York City. He said there’s no denying the new realities of an employer looking to hire. “It’s definitely turned to an employee-driven market to the likes that I’ve never seen before,” Wachtel said.

He said the pandemic showed workers how convenient it is to work from home. Many believe that should be an acceptable practice even after the pandemic.

According to a January survey by PwC, 83% of employers said remote work has been a success. “We’ve all been working for years and years and you leave the house at 6 a.m., you don’t get home until 7 o’clock at night and I don’t think anybody enjoyed that,” Wachtel said.

Wachtel said when it comes to attracting and retaining talent, offering a flexible schedule is equally important as salary.

“If employers don’t shift their mindset in regard to investing in employees’ hybrid work schedules, technology, they’re gonna be at a tremendous disadvantage in not only maintaining the staff that they have, but adding and attracting great talent to join their organization,” Wachtel said.

Like Hetrick, Wachtel doesn’t see this trend ending any time soon. “There is such a crunch for great talent in this country right now and it’s only gonna continue to get tougher,” Wachtel said.

If employers can’t find enough American workers, outsourcing may be tricky too, as many pandemic travel restrictions remain in place and poor countries struggle to get vaccines.

Turning to countries that do have vaccines isn’t much of an option either, as countries like Germany and Italy have also experienced a dramatic population decline.

Click to read the full article here >>

 

 

The JW Michaels team continues growing together with the launch of an exciting Lunch & Learn professional enrichment series. This week we zoomed in for the first workshop titled Attracting Candidates in any Market hosted by the incomparable Greg Doersching.

As motivated professionals with a wide range of industry experience, we recognize the invaluable role training and development plays in our continued success. Our Lunch & Learn series, focuses on enhancing our expertise in recruitment, perfecting skills and communication and honing new tools and proficiencies to propel us forward in the ever-changing landscape of the new normal.

ABOUT GREG DOERSCHING

Greg Doersching is the award-winning President of Next Level Coaching – one of the most comprehensive Recruiting Training/Owner Consulting programs in the country. He is also a Senior Network Advisor with Sanford Rose Associates, one of the Top 10 Executive Search Firms in the country.

For over 28 years Greg has been recognized as one of the most innovative voices in the recruiting industry. He is an International Trainer and has presented hundreds of workshops and Keynote Addresses for the National Association of Personnel Services, American Staffing Association and the Association of Canadian Search, Employment and Staffing Services, Fordyce Forum and numerous Regional, State, and Local groups. He is consistently rated as one of the top presenters for each conference and is the recipient of the NAPS Lifetime Achievement Award for his contributions to the Recruiting Industry.
Click here to learn more and connect with Greg in LinkedIn.

The JW Michaels team had the pleasure of participating in an organizational workshop hosted by Laurie Palau, organizational guru and founder of Simply B Organized. This workshop set the stage for upcoming events geared towards empowering the team to grow together with tools to be more productive, organized, and connected as we navigate the new normal of working from home.

During the workshop, Laurie shared invaluable advice to help us continue to navigate this new remote work landscape. Among the topics discussed were Work From Home Best Practices such as dressing professionally on video calls, maintaining an organized work space and many more productive tips to set us up for success. We finished the call feeling energized and motivated to finish Q4 strong.

Ironically, Laurie began her career in the recruiting industry. She now has a successful weekly podcast called “This ORGANIZED Life” where she welcomes guests and talks about decluttering and how to create the perfect work space while being at home.
Learn more about Laurie and Simply B Organized: https://simplyborganized.com/

The coronavirus has significantly impacted the economy, causing millions of employers to restructure their workforce to keep their companies in business.

As corporations temporarily shut down due to shelter in place orders to stop the spread of the virus, there’s no money coming in to pay their employees. As a result, widespread furloughs and layoffs have taken place. If this hasn’t directly happened to you, chances are it has affected someone you know.

Since this is all new territory for most of us, there’s a lot of ambiguity out there surrounding terms like furlough and layoff. Sure, we’ve heard these words many times before, but as they hit closer to home it’s important to get crystal clear about what they mean.

Furlough

The guidelines for furloughed workers will vary by company, but the bottom line is an employee who is furloughed is still employed. To cut costs for the company, employees are not paid during the duration of being furloughed but they are kept on the payroll.

Furloughed employees are expected to return to their positions, although their job is not guaranteed. They could also face being asked to work in a different position than before and take a pay cut. When employees are furloughed the hours, weeks, or months they work are reduced or stop completely for a finite period of time.

Most states offer furloughed employees unemployment, in addition to eligibility to collect an extra $600 per week through July 2020, due to a Coronavirus relief law called the CARES Act. Generally, they will retain their benefits such as health insurance. They keep their rights as an employee, meaning they’re protected by discrimination laws and can’t get fired while on furlough.

As for 401k plans, furloughed employees likely won’t contribute to it with no income but they can continue to add to it once they return to work.

Layoff

Layoffs are permanent, meaning employees are let go from their jobs. While same layoffs can be temporary, the term layoff refers to an employee no longer working for their company and being taken off the payroll.

As a result, laid off employees are eligible to apply for unemployment. On top of state unemployment benefits, laid off employees can collect the extra $600 per week from the federal government. In some states, laid off employees are required to show they are actively looking for employment to receive the money, however, the COVID-19 outbreak might loosen those regulations.

Severance packages are sometimes offered to laid off employees, but they aren’t required. Severance payments can be made in a lump sum or paid in several installments. Any unused PTO is rolled into employees’ final paychecks, if state law permits.

As for health insurance benefits, laid off workers are ineligible to retain their benefits. Under COBRA, workers can opt to pay for any healthcare benefits previously covered by the employer.

 

Furloughs and layoffs are similar in that employees are no longer getting paid. The termination is a choice based on circumstances surrounding the employer, not job performance. However, there are stark differences in each term. Laid off workers are dismissed from their companies and no longer receive benefits or protections, while furloughed workers are still on the payroll and commonly retain their benefits.

 

JW Michaels & Co. is an executive search firm dedicated to serving the specialized recruiting needs of top-tier financial services, legal, technology and business institutions. Contact us about our Executive Search and Flexible Staffing Solutions today.

First and foremost, our hearts go out to all impacted by the virus, either directly or indirectly. You are not alone in this crisis. We encourage you to reach out with any questions or concerns you might have.

The Bowery Mission welcomed the JW Michals NYC team to lend a hand prepping and preparing food at their Tribeca campus. This amazing organization has served homeless and hungry New Yorkers since 1879.

Each year, The Bowery Mission provides more than 558,726 warm meals, 140,658 nights of shelter and distributes 100,334 articles of clothing. It was an honor to help. Can’t wait to do it again!

Celebrating another outstanding year, over 30 people earned a spot at the 9th annual JW Michaels & Co Atlantic City Incentive Trip, to enjoy a weekend filled with great times with great people, and tons of sweet A.C. perks. Jason Wachtel, Managing Partner of JW Michaels & Co. kicked off the casino fun with a heartfelt congratulations to the team and a toast to continued success in 2020.