Triode Media Group is the first PERG member to hire an employee under the Equitable Workforce Initiative (EWI) and implement the program. Their experiences give a real-world example of how the program can work.
I sat down with Peter and Evan Scudner, owner and Executive Producer respectively, to ask them about their experience so far. They described how they implemented the EWI training and the actual time required to administer the program. They related what they learned by looking for new employees in new places and reflected on the challenge or retaining employees once they are trained. Triode Media Group, based in Lancaster, PA provides trucks, stages, grip, lighting, cameras, and lenses across Pennsylvania as well as in New York City and the DC metro area.
EWI Training Curriculum
Peter open the conversation by responding to a recent Zoom meeting in which Program Coordinator, Andrew Rodriguez, and I answered member questions about program administration. He feels, the program is not as involved as it may first appear. “I can understand why people may feel it is a little complicated, because obviously there have to be programmatic requirements, but as we [at Triode] broke that down into manageable steps.”
Evan agrees “It is a matter of how you onboard a new employee. At Triode we think it is important for people to cross train. We think that everyone that works here should have an idea of what the mission of the company is, what the customers are like, all of the things that go into providing a good customer experience. If someone joins us who is not already in the industry, I think it is helpful for them to understand how the industry works and what our role is. We did not find the EWI curriculum to be burdensome. We just found it to be a nice pathway to follow with a new employee. I’m sure we are going to maintain that curriculum as something that other new employees will experience in the future.”
Peter reflected that “The EWI curriculum says, introduce people to the general business, what happens on set, what the different departments are, and what the different tools are. The business part of rental: you have a customer, you get a contract, you’ve got the quote, you do the bill, you collect the money, you’ve got to protect against fraud—those are basic things you’re going to teach somebody in this business. You start there. They have to understand the transaction. That’s teaching them retail.”
Evan continues, “Then you’ve got to teach them the product. It is really helpful if our people understand the context in which our equipment is being used in the field. That’s necessary for them in their current job [pulling orders] but also helpful to them in their interaction with customers. If they understand how the item is used on set, and they are pulling and order, it might be obvious to them that something is missing from the order—maybe there aren’t enough sandbags or maybe the item on the order is the wrong size. The more they know about accessories etc., the better they are going to be able to respond to a customer in a situation like that and check with them that they really have everything they need, which is a different customer experience than saying ‘Well, that’s what you ordered. Here’s your order. Have a good day.’”
Reporting to EWI
EWI requires the Mentor to report what learning activities, outside their normal job responsibilities, the trainee was exposed to each week. At Triode Evan arranged it so that the person collecting the hours for payroll also collected the training activities. Peter describes the conversation as “Here was your assignment for the week. How’d it go?” Evan serves as Mentor and assigns activities, but the office manager collected the results and reports them to EWI. Other companies could arrange the process their own way. The time taken by these activities is minimal. “It is a few more minutes of conversation and a few more minutes to send the report to PERG,” relates Peter. “Tracking the employees progress each week is very helpful to us as employer to understand how this new employee is doing in learning their role. We should be doing it anyway – the fact that we share it with PERG is no additional burden.”
Finding Employees
As the EWI program matures, it will make finding diverse qualified employees easier by performing outreach, collecting resumes, and delivering prospects to participating rental companies. Those resources will take time to build. However, Triode hired their employee before that process was really even started.
Creating new talent pipelines is challenge, says Peter. “I hear employers saying ‘It’s terrible. You can’t find anybody.’ I felt that way too until I tried something different.” When Peter was first thinking about finding eligible EWI candidates to hire, he was stuck at first. “I wasn’t sure how to ask, where to ask. I asked around but didn’t really feel like I was making progress. The breakthrough came about when I said, wait a minute, why don’t I talk to groups that might have an existing relationship with someone who falls into one of these diversity categories. I went to a community group in our city that has a number of programs for people who might be coming from a disadvantaged situation. They looked at my job application and said, ‘well let’s circulate this to some other community groups.’ The job posting was posted on several social media platforms, where the people looking at those platforms tended to be a much more diverse population than I was talking to. It was just a different network. By getting the job posted among people who were more likely to meet the criteria, I found candidates.”
“Now here’s an important thing about that” says Evan. “We didn’t do the posting. By reaching out to the community and having them post it, that gave us, I think, some credibility.” “That’s right,” says Peter, “It is kind of a soft endorsement when somebody posts your stuff. After I had this experience I thought about it a bit—I didn't figure this all out ahead of time—but afterward I talked to a couple people about it, including a woman who is DEI consultant, and she kind of smiled at me and said “See, now you are starting to get it.” And the other thing it did for us is that it put our job listing by itself, away from other job listings. They didn’t necessarily go there looking for a job, it was just in their feed. For us, that’s what worked. I’m saving that idea for the future as another way to look for employees.”
Evan adds “The EWI job offer is naturally appealing: it’s entry level, it’s got training, and it's the film industry. So, if you’ve got someone out there who is interested in film, and they don’t necessarily have the experience today to get a job in film, here’s an opportunity.”
It is easy for people to mistake EWI for an internship program, which is something companies are more accustomed to. But Peter says “I did not perceive it that way. I perceived an opportunity to be reimbursed for the cost of the employee in the first few months while that employee is coming up to speed. After six months with the program, they are going to be a more experienced. So, I look it as an opportunity to hire someone with experience and training.”
Keeping Employees
The rental company is undoubtedly a training ground for people wanting to get into the industry. Some rental companies accept it as inevitable and embrace the idea that people will work for them for a couple years and then go out into the production world and become loyal customers. This is a blessing and a curse because rental companies would like to retain the people that they spend energy training. Peter looks at it this way. “We recognize that the workforce is mobile and there’s always a chance that people are going to move on after a couple of years. If someone comes in with no experience and I train someone for two years, they are going to be in a position to look for other opportunities. So, I start with the idea that everybody we hire is on a relatively short time period in terms of the job they are in at that moment, but that doesn’t mean they have to have a short time period with our company. As we are training them, we can be thinking, what else can this person do so that two years from now I am recruiting them for my own job versus having someone recruit them away from me. If you want to have a long-term relationship with an employee, you’ve got to be continuously providing them with opportunities to grow and advance in their role. If our employees are doing a good job then our company is going to be growing and there are probably going to be new opportunities, and I would rather be advancing people internally than looking externally.”
When you have a position that turns over regularly, you have to find ways to protect yourself against being short staffed and work not being done when a person leaves. Peter served as treasurer for a nonprofit for a number of years that experienced turnover because people were hired away into better-paying corporate jobs. “We intentionally overstaffed by one person to absorb that turnover that you could anticipate—it was just reality.” The non-profit would hire someone in a junior role who would be cross trained so they could be promoted into the higher position when someone inevitably got recruited away. After a few years of that, the person being hired as a new employee had a sense that there was going to be greater opportunity there. Applying that idea at Triode, Peter says “I need to be prepared that at some point an employee who has gained experience is probably going to be ready for other things. In my case, I hope to grow enough that I would have a role for that person, and I would be finding their replacement.”
Next
The EWI program has been funded to support eight grants in the 2022-2023 cycle. One of be benefits of having eight companies participating in the program will be the opportunity to share experiences and generate new ideas. PERG will support its members with virtual training content.
Please reach out to Andrew Rodriguez with any questions you have about the program.
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