DH: First off, Tobias, congratulations on your promotion to Vice President of Labor.  

TP: Thank you.

DH: It’s well-deserved, especially because of the growth of the division over the past few years. What’s your secret? 

TP: One of our core functions is to make our clients’ vision a reality. We help these businesses adapt, especially when they see an opportunity in a market they’re not in. They ideate, create, and find the location for that. We then send folks out to execute that idea. By the way, that's one of the big strengths of Tinc’s labor division: we're able to send skilled technicians to any of those locations nationwide – and even abroad.

DH: Why do you think companies go with Tinc as opposed to trying to do everything in-house? What's the advantage of going with your team?

TP: A lot of clients go with us because they don't have the skill sets or the talent in-house. They may have their fabricators in the shop, but they don’t have enough people, if any, to install the work once it leaves the building. Tinc does, augmented by our sheer number of workers and their professional experience. In other words, we supplement and increase the resources that our clients have on any given project and partner with them in executing it.

DH: Tinc is headquartered in New York City, with regional offices in the Southeast and Southwest United States. As you said, Tinc does work all across the country. With that comes an added cost of the travel for our labor. Why do companies not in our regional areas still find that extra cost to be of value compared to going with a local labor team?

TP: It comes down to Tinc’s reputation and the skill sets that we bring to the table. Wherever a client is located, they get the industry’s best when they go with our team. 

A great example of that is Level 99, which operates out of Natick, Massachusetts. They've got an exciting installation that just opened in Providence, Rhode Island we have employees from three different states out there working on it. 

In all of our negotiations with Level 99, we were very clear up front that we don't have local labor in Providence. They didn't balk at it. Level 99 holds themselves to a high standard. They want their work to be the best it possibly can be, so they hired us. 

In many markets like Providence, this type of talent doesn't exist. This type of labor doesn't exist. And that’s not even counting the fact then clients have to manage them.

DH: Manage them?

TP: If you’re a company that has an installation or activation and you are able to find your needs in town, you can obviously hire them in-house. But, then, you have increased payroll, increased overhead, increased insurance, and you have a responsibility to manage these people. That means; you must find, recruit, vet, hire, and train them. It’s an incredibly expensive and time-consuming process. These hires haven’t even shown up to the site yet. When they get there, you have no idea what you’re going to get. 

When the same company hires us, even with the travel costs, you save money because we’ve done all that management leg work. You don’t have to pay for; the hiring, training, or anything like that, because we’ve done it before the contract is signed. It’s built into our business model, independent of the client or project. Even more importantly, the end result is going to be of a higher quality and achieved in a more efficient manner because of the talent we bring in. 

DH: You know, weighing the different costs and the products they produce is something that comes up in a lot of RFPs. I know that Tinc monitors market rates in different areas so that the company always remain competitive. 

A trend I am noticing on some of these RFPs – especially for things like school auditorium renovations and suburban summer concert events in small areas – is that they state the decision-makers are going to go with the lowest bidder. I've seen this happen on a few projects. These local governments end up selecting vendors that offer something too good to be true. Of course, when the event or install happens, it's very clear that the least expensive company is not delivering anything near what the client is actually asking for. 

For the people deciding on awarding a contract during the bidding process, what are some of the things that they should be looking out for so that so they don’t receive a poor experience or inferior work? It’s important for all companies to be fiscally responsible, but any money spent seems to be a waste when you see the work these insanely below-market-rate organizations produce.

TP: Contextually it makes sense to me that they would go with the lowest bidder. These states, these public entities have a fiduciary responsibility to the taxpayer to pay as little as possible for the services that they're asking for. It makes 100% sense to me. 

One of the things that comes to mind is the concept of military grade. Anything that's military grade is made to the specifications of the US Army.  When a manufacturing company bids on a military contract, as long as they hit these specifications, they can charge whatever they want. Of course the lowest bidder who can meet the threshold is going to win. 

The problem is that the event industry does not have such black-and-white minimum requirements when an RFP goes out.

DH: Right. The event and installation landscape feels like the Wild West at times.

TP: You know, another way to look at it is that it's very similar to when we buy a car. We can buy a brand-new model, but we can also get the same model, just a few years older and with a ton of miles on it, at a used car lot for $15,000 less.

If we go with the used car, we have met a financial responsibility by spending as little as possible, but we’re not getting the quality. The used car is going to have mechanical and maintenance problems sooner than later that may cost more to fix than what we saved buying used. 

Look, sometimes we do get an incredible value for the money by going with the cheaper car, but those instances are rarer than we’d like to admit. It’s the same in our industry.

DH: You get what you pay for.

TP: Exactly, Tinc pays our employees above the market-rate. We do that on purpose in order to get the highest quality technicians we can. We are still able to offer competitive market rates despite this, but yes, like anything else, clients get what they pay for.

DH: Earlier on you shared some of what Tinc’s clients get when they partner with us. Can you give us more details?

TP: It certainly depends on the job, all of our work stems out of what the client needs. We listen in our initial conversations with a potential business so that we can precisely meet what they are looking for.

Let’s say, among other roles, the client needs someone to operate a non-standard piece of equipment. Out of our 247 employees, we are able to narrow it down to the 60 using that criteria. As we continue our conversations with the client, let’s say we find out that the person in this role needs to be able to solder low-voltage connections. That brings the 60 down to five. Oh, and we also need someone who can complete work in a culturally specific place, so that five goes down to one. There you go! 

We do a similar process for each role, no matter how specific or broad a project’s demands. 

DH: Are there any roles that are on every job, no matter the scope?

TP: Every shift, no matter what, has a crew head on it. We take a lot of time to develop these crew heads so that they work as effective and empowered supervisors. Professionalism is expected from anyone working on a given project, and these crew heads exemplify this approach to a tee.

DH: We’ve talked a lot about what Tinc does for the client. What does Tinc do for the employees?

TP: As I mentioned earlier, we pay our technicians above market-rate. Our employees do fantastic work and deserve to be compensated for it. But we go beyond that.

My management style is to focus not just on what is good for Tinc and our clients, but what is good for our employees. We want to make sure that they are valued as people and supported in their work. One way we do this is by assembling teams of technicians with skills and abilities that complement each other. In my experience, a lot of times the scope of a project grows as it goes along. Many of our jobs aren't just one or two people, as a result. It's teams of five to 10 to 20. We try to cover our bases outside of scope. We want our employees to find a meaningful challenge in their work, but we don’t want them to do work outside of their capabilities. Team composition helps with that immensely.

DH: I love that idea of “meaningful challenge.” I’m sure that attracts the type of employees who are invested in their work while always striving to improve.

TP: Oh, yeah. A lot of our technicians are continually cross-training, as a result. Everyone wins in this scenario: the client wins because they get even more experience on the job, Tinc wins because our roster is constantly being strengthened, and the employees win because they get more work.

We have electricians, for instance, that can also understand audio signal. If we have a team being sent to upgrade a theater’s A/V system, we’ll have audio techs on the job, but we can also have these electricians who know about audio onsite, too. These electricians may be doing work in a wide variety of areas, but if an audio issue presents itself, these team members can back up the audio team. It’s more rewarding for them and better for the client because the client doesn’t lose time, as such doesn’t lose money..

DH: Which goes back to saving the client money.

TP: Exactly my point. When we support our employees, they end up doing better work. That, in turn, results in a better product and less time lost when the scope inevitably creeps up. 

At the beginning of the interview, you asked what my “secret” was. I talked about listening to the client’s precise needs and delivering on what they are looking for. We are able to do that because we are so focused on our employees’ needs. The more we support our employees, the more these employees support our clients. Our reputation backs us up. I’m proud of that.