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Eric Chester

Eric Chester

Attract, develop and retain top talent; Improve performance and retention

Topic Categories:

Fee Range: 10000-19999
  • Award-winning speaker/Best-selling author of 5 Leadership books on work ethic, employee engagement, workplace culture
  • Employee Engagement Expert
  • Renowned expert on Finding, Developing, Keeping Great Employees and creating outstanding workplace cultures
  • Over 3000 speaking engagements on 3 different continents
  • Member of the National Speakers Hall-of-Fame

*Fee ranges are presented as a guideline only. Speaker fees are subject to change without notice. For an exact quote, please contact your Speaker Exchange Agency representative.

Eric Chester is an acclaimed in-the-trenches workforce researcher and thought leader who’s been studying, analyzing, speaking and writing about attracting, managing, motivating and retaining top talent since 2001.

He is frequently mentioned or quoted in the national and international media such as Good Morning America, ABC 20/20, Fox News, NPR, and CNBC and in publications like Forbes, USA Today, and the Huffington Post.

He is a bestselling author of 5 published leadership books, several of which have become national bestsellers. Eric Chester has delivered more than 3000 paid keynote speeches on three continents. He is a Certified Speaking Professional and was inducted into into the National Speakers Association’s acclaimed Hall of Fame in 2004.

Eric lives in Golden, CO with his wife and family.

Eric’s Published Books:

  • Employing Generation Why: Understanding, Managing, and Motivating Your New Workforce (2001 TuckerHouse Press)
  • Getting Them to Give a Damn: Getting Your Front Line to Care About Your Bottom Line (Kaplan, 2005)
  • Reviving Work Ethic: A Leader’s Guide to Ending Entitlement and Restoring Pride in the Emerging Workforce (Greenleaf, 2012)
  • On Fire at Work: How Great Companies Ignite Passion in Their People without Burning Them Out (SoundWisdom 2015)
  • Fully Staffed: The Definitive Guide To Finding and Keeping Great Employees in the Worst Labor Market Ever (SoundWisdom 2020)

Eric has keynoted more than 2500 Conferences for national and international companies, including:

McDonald’s
Verizon
Allstate
NADA
Wells Fargo
7-Eleven
Great Clips

On Fire at Work: How Great Companies Ignite Passion in Their People Without Burning Them Out

After interviewing highly acclaimed C-level leaders across all industries, Eric Chester has uncovered the practices and principles that Best Places to Work award-winning companies and great leaders are using to go beyond merely engaging today’s rapidly changing workforce, but to ignite what he terms “On Fire performance.” Through a highly entertaining multi-media presentation, audience members discover the best practice ideas, tactics, and strategies these esteemed employers use to consistently attract and retain top talent, encourage innovation and collaborative thinking, and inculcate the desire to out-perform yesterday’s best. Based upon the groundbreaking research in his fifth leadership book, On Fire at Work: How Great Companies Ignite Passion in Their People without Burning Them Out (Sound Wisdom, Oct. 2015), leaders, managers, and supervisors walk away with actionable ideas for building an invincible army of entrepreneurs who take pride and ownership in their work.

Uplifting, inspiring, and content-rich, it’s impossible to experience “On Fire” without catching fire and igniting the passion for achieving excellence in those around you.

Take-Aways: Participants will discover the secrets and proven strategies that renowned companies and legendary leaders are using to:

  • consistently attract top talent with minimal recruiting.
  • on board new employees to make a lasting impression and cement their commitment from day one.
  • eliminate employee burn out, significantly reducing costly turnover.
  • remain relevant with the emerging workforce as they develop young talent into future leaders.
  • become the ‘employer-of-choice’ in their respective industry.
  • create a pipeline of talent by establishing 4 essential relationship connections in each community served.
  • inspire friendly, smiling, knowledgeable service to every customer in every interaction.
  • stabilize application flow even when compensation is less than what is offered elsewhere.
  • determine ‘better fits’ to ensure those team members that are hired are safe bets for long-term employment.
  • create, develop, and reinforce the “7 pillars of an On Fire workplace culture”, i.e. Compensation, Alignment, Atmosphere, Growth, Acknowledgment, Autonomy, and Communication to improve productivity, ignite performance, and reduce employee turnover, i.e. ‘churn’.
FULLY STAFFED: How To Find and Keep Great Employees in the Worst Labor Market Ever

The biggest threat facing today’s business owners and managers is not how they can get new customers and improve sales, but rather how they can find, develop, and keep qualified employees to do the tough, vital work that keeps them in business.

(Short-order cook. Drywall installer. Call center service rep. Bus driver. HVAC technician.) These are the kinds of jobs you rely on to keep the wheels of your business moving. They’re also the kinds of jobs where employee turnover is pandemic. The (name of client/industry/etc.) needs to find and retain competent workers, but those workers are hard to find—hard to train—and even harder to keep.

In this high-stakes hiring environment, employee engagement expert Eric Chester has gone behind the curtain to interview thousands of owners, managers, and leaders of small companies and franchises in order to uncover the best practices for attracting, developing—and yes, even retaining—amazing employees at all levels, often for jobs that aren’t considered sexy by today’s standards.

Discover how savvy employers have made bold moves, implemented guerrilla-recruiting tactics, and transformed the way the hiring and retention game is played. Eric’s presentation will delight, surprise, and get you thinking—and the strategies and methodologies he illustrates will inspire you to change the way you recruit, hire, and lead your employees so you, too, can proudly say you’re FULLY STAFFED.

Take-Aways: Among the tremendous information that will be shared with participants are these topics:

  • Why good employees are so much harder to find.
  • Why you must stop fishing…and start hunting.
  • How to be the best place to work in your community.
  • How to create, develop, and reinforce the “7 pillars of an On Fire workplace culture” i.e., Compensation, Alignment, Atmosphere, Growth, Acknowledgment, Autonomy, and Communication to improve productivity and ignite performance.
  • How to get your top-performing employees recruiting for you.
  • How to recruit from high schools, colleges, trade schools, ex-military, retirees, etc.
  • How to stabilize application flow even when compensation is less than what is offered elsewhere.
  • How to determine ‘better fits’ to ensure those workers that are hired are safe bets for long-term employment.
  • How to incorporate onboarding tactics guaranteed to slash costly turnover.
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