Managing Rapid Team Growth for Sustainable Business Success

Full Transcript

Note: the following transcript was generated by AI and therefore may contain some errors and omissions.

People want training, people want flexibility. It’s not always about money. If you’re just gonna go ahead and offer, you know, 50 cents or a dollar more than the award, Nextor can do the same. So why would an employer come to you? Why are our employees coming to you instead of your competitor? That’s your point of difference.

G’day and welcome back to the Coast and Commerce podcast. I’m Ben Amos from Innovate Media and on this show, we bring inspirational business leaders from the Sunshine Coast to you so that we can share some inspiration and some insight to help you do better in whatever you do in business on the Sunshine Coast. And one of those inspirational business leaders we brought here is Melitta McDonald, Chief People Officer at Country Chef. Now Country Chef is a pretty cool business that I think flies under the radar a little bit here on the coast. So I’m excited to dive in and Melitta, maybe we can start by, can you tell us a little bit about…

about what you do at Country Chef? Sure. So I look after our people and culture team at Country Chef. We’re a team of four at the moment. So I look after everything HR, like traditional HR related, as well as training and development. And yeah, we’re a large, very large company out in the back of Bells Creek. I think not as well known as I’d like us to be, but that’s what…

I’m trying to do in my first six months there so far. We’ve been based on the sunny coast for 70 years. So 70 years. Yeah. 1950 quite an institution. Yeah, absolutely. Started off making, you know, crumpets in a shed and the family have built it to what it is today, which is a brand new facility, nine Olympic swimming pools. So.

It’s massive shed. Yeah. Which opened what last year? Yeah, April. Yeah. Brand new build, massive manufacture, food manufacturing facility. Yeah. So we – What do you do there? Not crumpets? Not crumpets anymore. Where our flagship products we’re known for is our pavlovas, meringues, banana bread, cupcakes, muffins, but predominantly pavlovas. So if you’ve ever eaten a pav since around the nineties in Australia.

You’ve probably eaten a Country Chef pavlova. Unless you made it yourself. Unless you made it yourself, which if you remember those little eggs that you used to get, my mum never had any luck with those. But those, those, those supermarket bought pavs, which are Country Chef pavs, right? They’re so fluffy. I know. They got the right balance of like crisp and anyway, we’re not here to talk about food, but so that’s, that’s all you guys all around Australia. Absolutely. So we supply to the likes of Coles, Woolies, IGA, 7 -Eleven.

We’ve had products with McDonald’s, Qantas, you know, like big, big Australian household names. Our products have been with those guys over the years. And it’s, it’s interesting because people don’t usually know that because we’re privately branded to some of those companies. So you wouldn’t know that they’re Country Chef. Yeah. You don’t see the Country Chef brand on the packet. Yeah. Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. Okay. Well, very cool. So tell us about the scale of the company now. So not just about the…

distribution that you’ve kind of touched on there. But so tell us about the team. What have you got here on the Sunshine Coast? Right. So last year we moved into this fantastic new facility out on the sunny coast. We used to have four factories. So we’ve combined all four into the one, which is great because now we have all the brains trust under one roof. We create all of our products. Now the last one was our factory in New South Wales, which we brought in in February.

So our team is now all together, which I think for a Met food manufacturer is great because you have that element of being able to discuss things with everybody and how best to work. And, you know, you bring everybody’s product knowledge together. Our team is very seasonal because of Pavlova. Pavlova is a traditional Christy product that doesn’t, unfortunately doesn’t go all year round. So,

In our off season, we have about 140 employees right now. We’re in our peak. So we actually started our ramp up for Christmas in April. I know it sounds weird. So the peak now for Christmas. Yeah. I know it sounds weird, but we’ve got over 20, 20 million serves of meringues and Pavlova to make to meet Australian demand. Okay. That takes some time. Absolutely. so we’re sitting at around 300 ish employees at the moment. Yeah. Huge ramp up in the last 10 weeks.

165 people we’ve onboarded. You mentioned that stat before we hit record here. 165 people recruited in the last 10 weeks in the business. So, you know, I think anyone in business understands that’s a massive undertaking. So as the Chief People Officer, kind of at the head of that recruitment process there, what are some of the challenges you’ve had, you’ve come across and maybe lead into that? What are some of the learnings you’ve had off the back of those challenges? Absolutely. I think…

Interesting for myself because I only started at Country Chef in January. So I literally had a three month period to figure out who we are, what we do, what makes us tick, hit the ground running, start recruitment and build my team so that we’re all working together. So it was quite expedited. And because like I said, the Country Chef brand isn’t well known. So…

If you’re an employee, you usually do a bit of research or a bit of stalking to figure out who people are. So a big thing for me has been hitting the pavement, getting to know the local Sunshine Coast community now that we’re here and fully based here to get our name out there. Because if you think Country Chef, you might think it’s just a small bakery in an industrial estate in the country. Yeah, exactly. But really, when you get it, it’s not until you get out there and you go out to the factory, you’re like.

Wow, this is massive. Yeah. Yeah. So that, I guess brand awareness from a recruitment perspective is really critical, right? It’s like about how you position the company as an, as an employer of choice so that you can get the employees of choice, I guess is the way to think about it. Absolutely. Absolutely. Building the employee brand.

is something I’ve done before, I think successfully in other companies. So it’s a strength that I brought here and being able to figure out what makes us tick. Like I said, usually you get a bit longer than I got, but I came in, figured out what it is that we offer, what it is that we can offer our employees, why they would want to work here. And really it’s getting that into our seek ads, getting that into the…

all the marketing material that we give to any of our business partners on the coast so that people start talking and then they start applying and then they tell their friends and their family to start applying. And that’s why our recruitment drive has been so successful this year. We rely on recruitment or labour hire as well, but it’s important for me to have direct employees because they generally have a better buy -in to what we’re trying to achieve.

and they have a better commitment to the country brand name and the Pavlovas that we’re trying to get on every household table, you know? Yeah. So it’s not just about recruiting people, it’s also about keeping them, right? Yeah. So tell us about that because obviously you mentioned that you’re a seasonal kind of workforce as well. So how does that work for you guys when you’re talking about recruiting people and retaining people in a seasonal type of industry?

Yeah, it’s an interesting one because I’ve worked in seasonal businesses before that are more dictated by weather elements. This you can plan for, but it’s not for everybody. So we have a base, employee base who we have all year round. And then we employ a huge casual portion of people for that Christmas ramp up. So it’s a nine, nine month type ramp up at the moment.

It appeals to a lot of people. I mean, in a time when people are wanting security, there’s still a lot of people who are liking that seasonal nature and actually some people who come back. They take that break and they go and do something else and then they come back when they know that we’re ramping up again. The flexibility, the five days a week, three shifts a day is something that appeals to people who are studying or people who are travelling, people on visas, we’re able to offer that.

So we’ve really just tried to look at who do we appeal to and how do we tap into that market? Yeah. So when you, when you get clear on that, that messaging that you want to get out there to, to the base of recruitment, where do you put that? You mentioned in CCATS, you mentioned in marketing material out with your business partners, but is it just about the words that you craft in the CCAT? Like the story you tell? Yeah, I think so. And I mean,

This all comes down to your employee value proposition, your EVP. I know it’s a hot topic. You see it a lot in HR type forums, I guess, but it’s really understanding what it is you have to give and why someone would come to Country Chef and not to a competitor next door. It’s important to know what your differentiation is. Every business has that. Every business has a point of difference.

Often it’s, you know, underlying and you might not have focused on it as much, but once you dig deeper and you start talking to your employees and people who have been there for a long time or have seen a couple of the seasons, what keeps you coming back? What makes you tick? What do you love about Country Chef? That becomes the wording that you use in your seek ads. You know, that’s why people are, that’s your point of difference. That’s why people are coming to you. And you got to use that because it’s real.

You can put anything you want in a C -CAD. You can put, you know, we look after our staff, we have the best rewards program, we pay you more than the award. But if you’re not actually following through with that, or that’s not true, you lose the trust and then your people won’t be retained. So you’ve got to be real. I’ve also found with our C -CADs is appealing to when we’re trying to appeal to people is having a media. So a video.

You know, we’ve, I’ve attached a video to the bottom of our, so people can actually see what we do because they feel a buy -in before they even walk through the door. They feel a connection. Yeah. I think that’s super important. Well, we know the power of video here. Yeah, I know. Right. Look, I think, you know what you’re really touching on there, which I think is super valuable for any size of business who’s going through recruitment of any sort is that it can’t, it can’t be like a top -down sort of approach. You can’t be like, well, what do we want to say?

that makes us sound good. It needs to be, well, what is this business actually, what’s happening in this business? What are our employees actually saying about why they love being here? Put that into your ad. Yeah, you have to be genuine. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. You have to be genuine. And you know, in writing these seek ads too, or not just seek ads, or in coming up with what your EVP is, it does unearth things that can be points that you need to improve on. Hey, maybe we need to look at.

developing a reward and recognition program. Maybe we need to be better at offering more flexibility or what do people want? What do people out in the market want? I mean, obviously after the big C word COVID, everybody wanted flexibility. If you’re able to offer that, that’s a point of difference because that appeals to a wider market and you’re going to get a wider group of talent who can come through the door.

A big one for us at Country Chef too is our diversity and inclusion model because we’re able to offer roles to people with little to no skill set who may have language barriers. We have a huge melting pot out on our production floor, which is fantastic because there’s a huge multicultural element here on the Sunshine Coast, especially here in Aura.

And that’s almost an untapped resource, you know. Not all businesses can do that. It depends on the skillset that you need to perform the role, but that’s been a great point of difference for Country Chef. Yeah, we employ people from over 25 countries out on the floor. I’m very proud of that. I think it’s amazing. I know not all employers can do that, but if you can, that’s a huge cohort of people that you can tap into. Yeah, I love that.

I mean, I guess that filters through as well, right? You know, those, those people potentially, you know, have friends and family as well who are in a similar situation to them. And they’re like, you know, this is a great employer who, you know, takes people for all diversities and skill sets and so on. Exactly right. And here we go into, into becoming employer of choice. So it’s all about being employer of choice. I mean, everybody can say that they want to be an employer of choice, but it’s about your actions.

So if you then get to a point where your employees are telling their friends and family to come and work here, you must be doing something right. You must be treating them well. They must be enjoying what they’re doing. Your offering appeals to more people. They then become almost your recruitment strategy. They’re the ones who are then going, pushing you their CV saying, can I have a job here too? Because my friend works here, which…

makes the pounding the pavement a little less and makes our lives a lot easier. And especially if they’re in referred by an already internal employee, it’s usually a big, you know, you don’t have to go through such a large screening process because they’ve already talked you up. They’ve already told you what it’s like. They’re already ticking a lot of our boxes. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. So you’ve kind of got these three things of like attraction, you know, employee attraction. Yeah.

then the retention piece, which is keeping them, then also that advocacy thing where it’s the employees actively going out and telling others about their employer and recruiting new people for you, which becomes like a beautiful cycle. Yeah. The seasonal nature of Country Chef, I haven’t been through the other side of it yet, having only been here for six months. All of our employees know that it’s seasonal. So we’re very, we communicate that.

All up front, they are fully aware that it’s seasonal. However, towards the end of the year, we’ll figure out what our production’s like and see if we can keep people on, which would be ideal. But instead of using that as something that’s bad, that could affect our recruitment strategy, we’re actually figuring out what’s good about that. And what’s good about that is people who are transient students.

who need, you know, that Christmas period off because they’re having a break from their studies or, or, people who are just here on a working visa. So that’s actually using it as a strength rather than thinking of it as a weakness. Yeah. Yeah. And I imagine from a recruitment perspective, next season, you kind of bring back a bunch of the same people. So you’re not going to need to hire as many. Absolutely. Well, not new hire.

as many new faces to the company, right? And hoping too that using the community connections that I’ve been making, like Brady from Chamber or Andy from Turbine, Nicole from Fan, using those connections that I’ve been making on the Sunshine Coast, they become an advocate as well. And keeping…

If I may, if we have to lose some people at the end of the year, working with them to go, hey, would you have something to help fill these gaps for people in the meantime, so then they can come back or they’ve become advocates as well. Everybody wants to help. That’s something I’ve really learnt in my short time here at Country Chef is making these connections. Everybody wants to help Country Chef succeed and all businesses succeed, but it’s such a beautiful community, the Sunny Coast. Very lucky. Yeah.

It is. So, you know, when you think about that idea of being based on the Sunshine Coast, obviously, you know, you’re not in the executive team there of like making those big decisions about where to build big warehouses or big manufacturing facilities. But from your perspective, Melitta, why do you think being based on the Sunshine Coast is actually a benefit? Like you could be manufacturing this stuff anywhere, I imagine. Yeah, I mean, I think it’s history. It’s part of the Country Chef history.

But in general, not just about Country Chef, in general, I think the Sunshine Coast has so much to offer. I grew up on the Sunny Coast, almost born and bred here. And I remember back in the day, you finished school and went to uni and felt you had to go to Brisbane or the Big Smoke somewhere to get a job. But the growth on Sunshine Coast has been so phenomenal in recent years that you don’t have to. And…

There’s so many things right here on our doorstep that can offer that career progression without having to uproot yourself and move away from friends and family. And it’s so great to see, because I have young kids and I would love for them not to move away when they’re finished school. There’s so many great things happening. There’s a lot of investment happening. It’s a melting pot, like I said. There’s…

so many new communities that are popping up and adding value to the Sunshine Coast. And obviously not always the weather, but the sunny coast weather. I prefer to live here than live in a city. Yeah. And how much of that do you think comes plays into that employee retention and attraction as well, I guess, you know, where the company’s based, how much do you think that plays into, you know, the recruitment?

Yeah. Process at Country Chef. Look, I think where we are now is quite central. It’s been, it was strategic. It was a strategic move, obviously. We needed a huge space for the building. We needed proximity to highways. And I think that that Bells Creek kind of area is so central. We have people who come up and down the highway to get to work. It’s…

Not too bad of a commute. If you’ve ever had to travel to Brissy, it’s nothing. but having that, that location has made us a lot more central. transportation is something that we really need out that way. which we’re working on, which would, I think, bring more people to us. And eventually this connection through to Aura will be amazing as well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we talked about attracting, retaining and.

advocacy there. If you think about the small business maybe or just the business owners out there listening or watching this and they’re saying that thing to themselves, which I’ve heard countless times of like, just so hard to find good people or it’s so hard to keep people or you know, that kind of thing, right? And obviously there are a lot of factors at play, right? Depending on the industry you’re in. But what would you say to that person who’s saying that to themselves and they’re based here on the Sunshine Coast?

You really need to map out, get a piece of paper, or whatever, and map out what your fit, what your fit is. Who are you looking for? What is it that you, where do you, where’s your vision? And what people are gonna take you there? What type of people are gonna take you there? And that, like you said, that’s different for any company. A sales company, you need people who are sales focused, go get them.

You know, the people who enter the room and your attention goes straight to them. If it’s, you know, Country Chef, you’re needing people who are happy to, you know, work on a production line on their feet all day. It’s about figuring out who you are and it needs to align with your values. It all needs to align with what you’re looking to achieve. Also, are you going through a growth period or are you just looking to maintain your current?

your current size, that can have a big factor in it as well. Talking to your people inside who are your advocates, like you said before, is huge because they’re going to give you so much insight into what we can offer and if we are living up to our values and our morals. And even things like exit interviews. I know a lot of employers kind of don’t do them, but I find a lot of value in them.

because you find a lot of truth in them and room for improvement. So if you’re taking all of that feedback on board and listening to your employees, and if there’s easy things that you can do, and they don’t have to cost a lot of money, you know, you can put in an employee assistance program, you can put in a reward and recognition program, which is something that a lot of businesses aren’t great at.

And they admit that’s not isolated to any one company. A pat on the back, a thank you, you know. It’s training. People want training. People want flexibility. It’s not always about money. If you’re just going to go ahead and offer, you know, 50 cents or a dollar more than the award, Nextor can do the same. So why would an employer come to you? Why are our employees coming to you instead of your competitor? That’s your point of difference. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think, regardless of whatever the kind of employment rate cycle we’re in at any given time here on the Sunshine Coast, whether there’s lots of people looking for work or whether there’s, you know, lots of people in work and it’s harder to find work or find new employees. It’s not just about like getting people hired. Right. It’s not just about like, you know, who can we say yes to and throw a pay packet at them or a salary at them to get them to do some work because.

that’s where I think you would have that retention issue. And they wouldn’t become advocates if you just like, they’re just like people that you’re just getting in the door. You’re right. You’re so right. I mean, I’ve worked with employers in the past where you come in and you do a bit of an overview and you can see that hiring has been done out of desperation, out of reactively rather than proactively out of a need. You can see that because you can tell that they’re just not the right fit.

They’re the person that everyone’s talking about, like, they’re so annoying or why they’re here or they get paid more because you’ve employed out of desperation rather than, you know, strategically. It does involve a cleanup. It’s often like just figuring out what your point of like what you want to achieve going forward. And if those people are the right fit to keep the train going. But it’s about…

It’s about developing like who you are, like I said, what your values are. And it often does come from the owner, especially small business. It’s usually built around the owner. You’ll find that they’ve usually employed friends and family while they’ve got up off their feet, but they might not necessarily be the right fit for the business anymore because they need to go through a growth period. So using resources around you that, you know, tapping into your local business networks.

doesn’t have to be expensive to reevaluate what, where you see your company and what you need to implement to move forward for sure. Yeah, I love it. Yeah. I love it. It’s really just that whole focus of being strategic about your recruitment and thoughtful and, and, you know, putting some planning behind it, not just, just going out and doing it. Yeah. Don’t just throw a C -Cad up and you’re going to get a great.

Yeah, I mean, it’s easy to say, obviously. Yeah, exactly. But it’s easy to say, look, we would love to plan and we’ve got six months to fill this role. And often you do find that you’ve put the wrong person in and then you’ve got to clean that up. But if you have time and you allow yourself time and a bit more planning, strategic planning, to be able to get the right people in, it’s going to pay in spades because getting the wrong person in…

cleaning up any mess that they leave behind, which could be internal tensions, toxicity, and just cost training, recruitment, you know, cost money. So. Well, I think one thing I think that we could almost challenge our viewers and listeners to do, even if they’re not currently looking at recruiting, is to try and get, put some time aside to get clear on that employee value proposition. Absolutely. You know, I think you can do that now.

at any time in a business, if you haven’t got that clear and you haven’t got that documented or written down somewhere, because then when you do need to recruit, even if you need to recruit quickly because you’ve just lost a key staff or something, you have that clarity on what your offer is, what your positioning is to that job place, that marketplace. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I mean, that could be, like I said, on a piece of paper, you sit with your ELT team, job descriptions.

it can, it can and having that clarity written down and you need to check it all the time because if you’re, if the environment’s changing, if the work environment’s changing, if the business is changing, that needs to evolve because people are wanting different things. So testing the market, talking to your network, hey, what’s working for you? Have you tried this or, you know, some positions are a C -Cad but others are word of mouth.

Especially roles in trades, for example. I mean, I used to work in a construction company. So a lot of the trades were word of mouth. They don’t have CVs. They usually get taken from job site to job site and follow their team. So using the right resources for the right role is also really important. Yeah. Yeah. So good. You know, I think we could, we could go in a whole different bunch of directions here, but.

We will wrap this episode up, but I want to ask you one last question about Country Chef specifically. So massive growth, great new facility here on the Sunshine Coast. You know, planting your roots very firmly on the Sunshine Coast. I mean, they’ve been planted here for 70 years, as you said, but I guess consolidating the back heat of the Sunshine Coast. What’s the future for Country Chef? Where are you heading? Heading the business? I know we would love, we’ve built that facility for growth.

So there’s room to add more products. There’s room to become less seasonal. So not having so many products that are just Christmas based and potentially, you know, going overseas. We have that opportunity now in this big facility and that’s something that we want our employees to know and get excited about as well. There’s so much opportunity.

And we have so much local coast support who want to see us achieve that as well. So that’s, it’s exciting. I’m really excited, to do that and look forward to where we can take it for the next 70 years. Yeah. I might not be around that long. We’re talking before you hit record about the, maybe the vision of like Australian pubs in America, in the U S and sorry, in the UK. Let’s do it. Yeah. All from Country Chef. All.

manufactured here on the Sunny Coast. Absolutely. Melitta, this has been great and hopefully it’s been super valuable for our viewers and listeners here today. if you’ve enjoyed today’s episode, then please share it with someone in business on the Sunshine coast. And, and we’d really love that. Appreciate getting the word out about the Coast and Commerce Podcast and, Melitta, I want to thank you for joining me here today and sharing a bit of the Country Chef story and really love what you guys are doing out there at Bells, Bells Creek, or is that where it is? Yeah.

Thank you so much, Ben. Pleasure. It’s been so much fun. Hit subscribe, hit follow and we’ll see you in the next episode of the Coast and Commerce podcast. See you.