Craig Goodliffe remembers how his grandfather had the same job, with the same company, for his entire career. It was a simpler time, when companies would build relationships with their employees, where they took care of each other, and where the employee retired with a celebratory dinner and a gold watch.
“My grandpa had the same job with his company,” says Goodliffe. “It’s where he started and where he ended. In those days, if it was said that if you took care of the company, they would take care of you. More recently, although, many American companies just started seeing their people as a number.”
This shift in company culture began in the American workplace in the mid-1970s, when the U.S. economy experienced enormous shocks that exposed fundamental weaknesses that had been building for decades—some as early as World War Two. It was a trend that began in the 1970s; companies scrambled, resorting to downsizing that has yet to reverse itself. The cost of this downsizing was the loss of long-term relationships with loyal employees.
This long slide in the U.S. workplace leads us to where we are today, a time in which businesses are having a difficult time finding and retaining quality workers.
“A business can find good workers, but keeping them is a whole different thing,” Goodliffe clarifies. “If companies could do more to take care of their people, making it their mission to help employees live their best life possible, retention in the workplace can happen.
In 2022, the country faces the Great Resignation, which refers to approximately 33 million Americans who have quit their jobs since the spring of 2021.
The 2022 Randstad Workmonitor report polled 35,000 employees across 34 markets on their attitudes about work and the workplace. Fifty-six percent of employees ages 18 to 24, otherwise known as Gen Z workers, say they would quit a job if it prevented them from enjoying their lives. Forty-one percent of Gen Z workers said they would “rather be unemployed than unhappy working in a job they didn’t like.”
Goodliffe, the founder and CEO of Cyberbacker, is out to change all of this, and he’s doing it one employee at a time. He has hired over 2,700 employees since Cyberbacker began in 2018, established 31 franchises, and has set in place incredible employee benefit programs such as a profit share of over $800,000 and a CyberCapital loan assistance program which loaned around $260,000 to employees in The Philippines when a hurricane hit their coast.
“The more I got to know the people I work with and understand their goals, I had this epiphany; if they can’t achieve everything that they want to achieve in my company, at some point, they’re going to say, ‘It’s been a joy working with you, but I can’t hit my goals here.’”
Goodliffe had employees that loved working for Cyberbacker, but wanted to build something for their futures. “People came to me and asked for a retirement plan. They wanted to retire financially. That took a while to build, and many heartaches and circumstances just lined up to where we have a profit share program with a five-year vesting period.”
Goodliffe, however, didn’t simply stop at retirement accounts. “I had people say, ‘I wanna buy a house and a car,’ and the challenges with this line of work is that banks sometimes have a harder time financing you when most of your work is done in a foreign country.”
After some careful consideration and brainstorming, Goodliffe created Cyber Capital — his company’s own lending institution — to lend money to employees, empowering them to buy homes and cars, with the profits funneling back to the profit-sharing component for retirement.
“Last year, we only loaned out a little over $200,000 from the start,” says Goodliffe, “but this year, we’ll do more than double that. Last year, we profit shared $647,000. This year, we will profit share over a million, and the goal is to keep making those bigger, but you have to start somewhere.”
Building relationships with his employees may be an innovative business, but for Goodliffe, it’s just the right thing to do.
“When we were building this company, I looked at just my values and came up with four principles on how I choose to live my life and kind of how I wanted to run the company.”
Craig Goodliffe’s Four Principles
1. Relationships
Everything starts with relationships: yourself, your higher power, your family, and your co-workers. When a relationship is good, everything is wonderful. When they suffer, everything suffers.
2. Growth
Healthy things grow. You are constantly learning and growing, including doing things that push you out of your comfort zone.
3. Fun
“I want to go to work and have fun,” Goodliffe says. “It doesn’t mean being unprofessional, but experiencing joy in what you do.”
4. Money, wealth, abundance
These are grouped, and are essential, but they never come before relationships.
Creating Connections
“Just over 2,700 people have private access to me. Every associate in Cyberbacker has Craig Goodliffe’s number. I’ll get messages like this one; someone bought their first car and sent me a picture. They’re excited, holding their giant key. They said they wanted to share this and thank me. I was honored and proud.”
When you walk into Goodliffe’s office, you will see a photo of every employee and their family members on the wall in his office. “I’ve got pictures of every person in my company on the wall in my office here.”
“When company leaders lose access and a connection with workers,” Goodliffe tells us, “I think they’re doing themselves a disservice. Everything changes when you can connect with your people and have a relationship with them.”
Goodliffe mentions how he didn’t learn these business practices at a seminar or business school. Instead, he learned them from his grandfather, Dennis Goodliffe.
“My grandpa was their friend who cared about them. He was the first one there to make the coffee for everybody, and he was there to sit and talk. He would talk to people in his company for hours after work. I saw him bringing joy to someone’s life by talking to them.”
As a constant source of inspiration, hanging in Goodliffe’s office is his grandpa Dennis’s bomber jacket. “It smells like coffee and cigarettes, and I’ve got it hanging in my closet in my office. It inspires me to think about and care about my people as he did his.”
“I want people to know that it’s important to invest in your people. If you don’t invest in your retention — and if you don’t build relationships with your employees — you’re going to be in trouble when a company comes along that will.”
