Insights from Pet Industry Leadership Summit
This year’s Pet Industry Leadership Summit, held by the Pet Industry Distributors Association, hosted great speakers on topics impacting our businesses, today — and into the future. I attended this event and want to share my takeaways on a few of these insightful presentations. The following summarizes my notes on two critical topics: Managing a Changing Workforce, and The Current Business Environment and Outlook for the Pet Industry.
Navigating What’s Next: Insights for Shaping the Future and Driving Performance in a New World of Work – Seth Mattison
Seth Mattison, an international thought leader on workforce change and innovation, discussed Navigating What’s Next: Insights on the Future of Work. In this presentation, Seth defined three workforce trend changes and offered three recommendations on how to build your future workforce.
The three major trend changes in our workforce are What Matters Now, How Work/Life Changed, and Who Holds Power.
The first macro-shift in the workforce is What Matters Now. People of all seniority levels have reevaluated their priorities and are making career decisions based on their new work environments. Masses are leaving the traditional workforce to work from home and young people are reevaluating a college degree. To deal with this shift, employers must engage recruits much earlier, communicate the big picture and discuss the possibilities of their contributions to the organization. We must look beyond money and benefits to attract new talent and consider the attributes of the person and how they match our culture.
The second macro-shift is How Work/Life Changed. A mix of home and office is now normal. As a result, tight connections grew tighter, and lose connections further weakened. A mindset change has been difficult to manage. Our personal lives now interact with our work lives.
The third macro-shift is Who Holds Power. Technology has empowered the individual to play a bigger role in all aspects of business. Individuals now play a critical role in the development of ideas, products, services, and operations.
Insights Seth provided included: “Chill out, no one knows”; “Change the COVID channel”; and “Attune the culture ether.”
Everybody seems to have a plan for going back to the office but no two plans are the same. Seth says your back-to-office plan must be your plan and you should consider each job and task, employee preference, projects and workflows, and inclusion and fairness when deciding for your organization.
Change the COVID channel means moving forward, not going back. This requires change enablers within your teams. Consider the questions: Do they understand the change? Are they capable of change? Are they aligned with change? Are there barriers to change?
Attune the culture ether tells us to put culture first. Can we form deep bonds amongst our team if limited to a virtual existence or combination? Culture is not defined by four walls.
Navigating Shifts: Business Cycle – Inflation – Labor – Brian Beaulieu
Brian Beaulieu, CEO of ITR Economics, presented the indicators and measures they use to evaluate and forecast the economic environment. Using this information, Brian offered insights addressing business investment, labor practices, and inflation management.
While there is concern with inflation, supply chain issues, the deficit, and interest rising rates, the overall economy is strong and will be through 2026. The following indicators point to this conclusion.
COVID is less disruptive in 2021 than it was in 2019-2020.
GDP indicators are all positive for the immediate future forecast.
Disposable income continues to rise at the long-term growth rate of the historic trend.
Household debt is low at 9.2%.
Housing market will continue to rise due to strong consumer balance sheets, high levels of liquidity, Millennial trends, and slow-rising interest rates.
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The pet industry is in good shape and has a positive outlook through 2026.
Pet expenditures for the past 12 months are positive 14.3% over prior 12 months.
The pet industry does not follow downward trends of the overall U.S. economy.
E-Commerce is normalizing as we come out of COVID shut downs — good news for brick and mortar retail.
Annual household pet expenditure average $1,480 for dogs and $902 for cats — both positive trending.
Veterinary and services were hurt during COVID but are back on track according to expenditure measures.
The pet industry will continue topline growth but there will be pressure on the bottom line.
Supply chain issues will continue through 2022 and level off in 2023.
Labor shortages will continue in the short term.
Consumer Price Index is +2.4% while Producer Price Index is +7.6%.
Brian offered the following recommendations based on economic outlook:
Plan for price increases now. Inflation will moderate in 2023 but price levels will stay higher than today.
From a hiring perspective, use your culture to recruit. What differentiates you from other retailers will help attract the younger generation employee. The labor shortage will remain in the short term as individuals realize the difficulty of working on their own ventures. Brian points to the high failure rate of new businesses.
Invest in your business today and prepare for the next economic downturn after 2026.
Transforming Multi-Generational Teams in a Post COVID World – Meagan Johnson
Meagan Johnson, generational studies expert and author, presented on multi-generational characteristics and how to be inclusive and build better teams.
We have used the same description of other generations throughout history. Meagan asked the baby boomer audience to describe millennial characteristics and then she showed how baby boomers were described when they were entering the workforce. The lists were similar.
We view other generations based on our generational sign posts: how events, technology, and the economy shape our group. The following are the different generational groups in the workforce and how we should address them to be inclusive to our organizations.
Baby Boomers, born 1946 to 1964. There are 72 million in this group. Baby Boomers are resistant to technology and value face-to-face interactions. They want to be trained in a one-on-one fashion.
Generation X, born 1965 to 1980. They are 13% of the population. They grew up with both parents working and are the most independent generation. They want you to tell them what needs to be done and then leave them alone to get it done.
Millennials, born 1981 to 1996. 80 million in this group. They value quality time with their kids. They care about the environment and want to work for companies who value sustainability. Collaboration is important and they have a high desire for feedback.
Generation Z, born 1997 to 2012. They are technology focused and stream content constantly. They value companies with a strong social media presence. They are reevaluating the value of going to college. They chose a city before a job. They want to make contributions and solve problems. The application process must be easy and should address what problem they want to solve.
Similar to the workforce presentation by Seth Mattison, Meagan describes recruiting younger generation people earlier and communicating beyond pay. Use your businesses characteristics that differentiate you from the competition and, if quality, safety, or service cannot be hurt, use their ideas of change.
