John Wilson

John Wilson
CEO, WilsonHCG

Headquarters: Tampa, Florida
Education: Grand Valley State University
What I’m Reading: Emotional Intelligence 2.0 by Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves
My Philosophy: Hire the best people, not the best performers. You can train people to be better at their job, but not to be better people.

Continually engaging

Diversity and collaboration are two key ingredients to an organization’s success. Without them, growth opportunities are left on the table. The people who make WilsonHCG what it is today are constantly encouraged to voice their opinions to help grow our organization. We have many initiatives and projects in place to stimulate these ideas and facilitate the sharing process.

During training, new hires are encouraged to join at least one of our many committees—or suggest an idea for a new initiative—that could not only encourage diversity internally but also within our clients’ organizations. We have formed committees to include diversity recruitment, university recruitment, and veteran recruitment, as well as employee engagement, brand ambassador, blogging program, and alternative sourcing, among others.

From our veteran recruitment committee came Operation Transition, an initiative that focuses on assisting veterans transitioning their career from military service into the civilian workforce. WilsonHCG is not only passionate about hiring veterans, but also sharing our employment expertise with them. Operation Transition provides monthly group trainings that cover resume writing, LinkedIn profile creation, interviewing tips, and marketing advice. These complimentary services provide more than a way to give back; they keep our employees engaged by allowing them to be part of something they’re passionate about.

While these initiatives and committees have been effective, there are still challenges that arise when managing a diverse workforce. It’s imperative, as a growing organization, to gather our employees’ ideas and implement them to continually innovate— but it can be challenging to strategize how all of these different ideas work to help WilsonHCG as a whole. I try to overcome this issue by holding monthly open-forum calls in which the entire company participates. I ask employees to submit questions for me to address while on the call, and also give them the opportunity to bring up anything else they’re thinking about. In informal weekly emails, I let the company know about major updates and solicit feedback for anything we can improve.

It’s important that our leaders foster a diverse corporate community and encourage their teams to reach their highest potential. Mentoring is essential for growth and development, which is why I launched an internal mentorship program this past year to match employees with mentors in leadership positions that can help guide them. We’ve also established regularly scheduled one-on-one meetings with managers and each of their direct reports to make sure ideas are heard and growth occurs.