LaSalle Network: Optimas Gold Winner for Business Impact

LaSalle Network’s CEO Tom Gimbel was clearly blessed with the gift of foresight. When he founded the Chicago-based company in 1998, he understood that employee job satisfaction was key to a company’s success. Recognizing that employees want to be happy at work is one thing; knowing how to make them happy is quite another. And in that arena, LaSalle Network has excelled.

Each part of the company’s workforce management initiative was designed with engagement and retention in mind. For employee development alone, Gimbel allocates more than $100,000 annually to bring in outside resources and trainers as well as offer classes, webinars and conferences to develop employees’ industry knowledge.

Separate from that is the company’s employee engagement and retention initiative, a multifaceted approach that offers quarterly all-expenses-paid incentive trips when staff meet their goals. Most recently when LaSalle hit a fourth-quarter goal, Gimbel took the entire company to San Francisco and Napa Valley, Califonia, for an all-expenses-paid weekend.

The strategy also involves a mentoring program that pairs all new employees and managers with tenured workers for a four-month period that involves personal and professional development as well as assimilation into company culture.

Though some of these methods may seem flashy, the results speak for themselves, According to the American Staffing Association, turnover within the staffing and recruiting space currently sits at 300 percent annually. Turnover at LaSalle is reportedly less than 4 percent.

“I believe it’s important for businesses to acknowledge that their people make the process,” Gimbel said. “Without great people, even the best practices will fail. At LaSalle Network, our goal is to always make employees feel appreciated. Our people invest in the business, and we invest in them to drive our success.”

For its commitment to employee training and retention, LaSalle Network is the gold Optimas Award winner for Business Impact.