Matthew Rieck
Chief Human Resources Officer
Inszone Insurance
Episode 228
Beyond paychecks: Simple HR moves that retain your top talent.
Current chapter: Built by People podcast features insights from world's top HR leaders
Built By PeopleApril 17, 2025 · 11:19
Thesis
“Companies often overlook simple, often free, yet highly effective HR strategies like succession planning and genuine employee appreciation, leading to high turnover and missed opportunities for fostering a strong culture and retaining top talent. Proactive personal and professional development is also key for individual career resilience.”
Show notes
Average employee tenure in the U.S. has fallen to 3.9 years. If your organization doesn't have a succession plan, you're perpetually one resignation away from an institutional knowledge crisis. Matthew Rieck, CHRO at Inszone Insurance, has built a career identifying simple, often free interventions that prevent exactly that scenario — and succession planning is where he starts every conversation.
Matt's succession framework isn't complex: identify your key roles, build a four-step pipeline for each, and make the path visible to employees who might be ready to grow into them. That transparency alone is a retention tool. People leave organizations where they can't see their future. They stay where upward mobility is explicit, achievable, and regularly reinforced. Combined with employee appreciation programs that go beyond the annual pizza party — LinkedIn shout-outs, peer recognition, small but consistent signals of being seen — the retention math shifts meaningfully. The most effective of these programs, he points out, cost organizations almost nothing.
For Inszone, a PE-backed, acquisition-driven insurance company, he's had to build this infrastructure while simultaneously integrating cultures from multiple acquired firms — a context that makes consistent practices and clear communication even more critical. His advice to HR professionals navigating similar terrain: build your network relentlessly. Not just your internal relationships, but peer connections with HR leaders at or above your level who have navigated the problems you haven't faced yet. That network is what keeps you from reinventing solutions that already exist.
- The four-step succession plan — a practical framework for creating internal mobility pipelines in any size organization
- Free and low-cost employee appreciation programs — recognition approaches that build loyalty without requiring budget
- Using LinkedIn for internal recognition — how external visibility of values reinforces culture and employer brand simultaneously
- Integrating cultures through acquisition — what Matt's learned about consistency and communication in PE-backed consolidation plays
- Building your HR network — why peer connections with more senior HR leaders are the most valuable professional development investment you can make
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What you'll take away
- 1Implement a simple 4-step succession plan for key roles to ensure upward mobility and retain top talent.
- 2Develop consistent, often free, employee appreciation programs beyond just compensation to show value and build loyalty.
- 3Leverage social media platforms like LinkedIn for employee recognition to brand the company as a great place to work and highlight internal values.
- 4HR professionals should prioritize networking with peers at or above their level to gain diverse perspectives and solutions for complex challenges.
- 5Continuously build skills, certifications, and relationships to remain marketable and adaptable in a changing job market, regardless of current company tenure.
What most organizations get wrong
- •Many impactful employee appreciation programs are actually free, contrary to the belief that they require significant financial investment.
- •Highly polished, professional videos for social media often perform worse than casual, relatable content, especially on platforms like LinkedIn.
In Matthew's words
“The biggest first mistake that companies don't have in place is they don't have succession planning in place.”
This highlights a critical oversight by many companies directly impacting talent retention.
“Most companies don't have anything in place, and most employee appreciation programs are actually free, but companies don't know how to do them.”
Challenges the notion that employee appreciation requires significant budget and points to a knowledge gap.
“What that does is it brands, Dave, it brands your company as a great place to work because you're doing employee appreciation.”
Explains a direct benefit of visible employee recognition beyond just internal morale.
“What I would say is the best skill that you can develop actually as an HR professional is to network yourself with other professionals that are either at or above your level.”
Provides a crucial, often underestimated, skill for HR career growth and problem-solving.
“The point is to always be developing yourself and trying to improve your skillset so that you're always marketable and you're always at the best edge of your field.”
Offers forward-looking advice on continuous personal and professional development for long-term career security.
The problems this episode addresses
- •Companies struggle with high employee turnover, with average tenure around 3.9 years, leading to loss of institutional knowledge and relationships.
- •Organizations fail to implement basic succession planning, leaving employees without clear paths for upward mobility and leading to boredom and attrition among top talent.
- •Many companies lack effective and consistent mechanisms for employee appreciation, beyond just compensation or infrequent events like pizza parties.
- •Integrating diverse company cultures post-acquisition is a significant challenge for PE-backed, acquisition-based businesses.
- •HR professionals often lack a robust network to learn from more experienced peers or handle complex, large-scale HR issues.
In this episode
Built by People podcast features insights from world's top HR leaders
Built by People
Dave Anderson shares a little bit more about his career journey
Describing Your Career Journey
Companies don't have succession planning in place when it comes to employee retention
The 3 Mistakes Companies Make in Retaining Talent
Your viral LinkedIn video about the job market resonated with hundreds of thousands
Why Your Viral LinkedIn Video About the Job Market Resonated With
Matt Miller has written a book on employee retention and it was recently published
Matt Walsh in The Employee Retention Bible
Matt Miller: The best skill an HR professional can develop is networking
Skills necessary for HR professionals in today's rapidly changing workplace
Matt, what parting advice would you like to share with our community
Matt Flannery on Leaving the Company
Topics covered
Organizations and entities mentioned
Full transcript
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