Welding & Gas CFO Club Recap February 2026

We reached a milestone!  Last week marked our 20^th CFO Club!  Thanks again for everyone’s participation for the past few years.

Meeting Notes

Recruiting

• Internal vs recruiters
• Biggest struggle is outside sales, followed by purchasing
  • Mixed bag on use of outside recruiters – those that are using recruiters tend to get a more qualified candidate pool to pick from vs taking the best of the bunch
  • The cost to pay the recruiters has been justified by a better pool and more longevity
  • When using recruiters, the more specialized ones (focusing on accounting, industrial, sales, IT, HR) seem to work better than the generic ones
    • Also important to have recruiter understand your culture and what you’re looking for, if they don’t spend the time doing that, not as effective
• Other strategies – Place an ad, LinkedIn, zip recruiter – many of the applicants aren’t even qualified
  • Word of mouth networking seems to work the best to self-source
• Many finding success from majors (their employees don’t like it) or independents who were just acquired by the majors
• For warehouse – temp to hire and hire them within 90 days so they don’t have to pay the conversion
• HR person that can fill most of our seats outside of outside sales
• The driver pain point in the past has now gotten better
• Try to hire for culture
  • Honesty, accountability, reliability and teamwork
• Hired internally for HR Manager
  • Did Indeed – went through first round, didn’t like the candidates, had 2 good ones, but no one was great
  • Went with a recruiter, cost more money, wouldn’t have found this person, but is so far ahead of what we had
  • Really enjoyed specialty recruiters for the position
• WARN notices in the area are another place to look for waves of people who might be looking – who’s being laid off, sold, etc.

Employee incentive ideas and experiences

• Discount to the YMCA (WS)
• None for some
  • Tried an employee meeting only 30% of the people showed up
  • Potluck for the team – celebrate birthdays, years of service – food days
  • Personal notes from CEO to spouse when an employee has to put in extra time, thanking him for the ee’s time and after hour work
• Sales people like their commissions
• Companywide events once a quarter
  • Sporting event, cookout
  • Open half day Saturday, but they get a free PTO day later in the year
• Attendance incentive plan – quarterly bonus, have to be at work and do a good job (if they’re not doing a good job, just fire them) – reason – had a lot of same day call ins, reduced 35-40% of same day call ins after the first year
• Just caring about people
• Hard to have a blanket incentive that works for all – so it’s all about specialization and tailor to that individual
• Benefits statements
  • 401k, health insurance, other incentives
    • Show match against what could have got – what you left on the table – if every year, it’s just background noise
  • Some do them every few years
• Other ideas

• Company swag
• Gift cards
• Drawings for stuff
• Bonuses, profit sharing (some direct into their retirement account)
  • Christmas, mid year bonus
• What can make a big difference, but isn’t a big money drain
  • Extra day of PTO if someone did something exceptional
  • Recognition – through newsletter
  • New employee welcome
  • Holidays off, early before a holiday, day after off

Next potential topics

• Internal accounting controls
• Ownership wanting to do more with less, what do you compromise on
• What are the key KPI’s that anyone at the company level would understand

Upcoming Date

• CFO Club 4/15

As always, please don’t hesitate to send ideas for future discussions over to me.  I really appreciate it.  Have a great weekend!