June 30, 2023
By: Caurie Putnam
Collaboration with peers, consultation with advisors strengthens small businesses
John Loury
At Cause + Effect Strategy, a Rochester-based business intelligence firm, creativity and agility in staffing have been critical in navigating a complicated tech labor market that has seen aggressive hiring markets flip-flop and the change to the traditional definition of “workplace.”
Flexible Work Model
“COVID really forced us into a very flexible work model,” said John Loury, Cause + Effect Strategy president, who admits he was originally uncertain about a work-from-home approach. “Finding and retaining talent in a very nomadic employee landscape has been a key to our success. We’ve turned something uncomfortable into an advantage.”
While a core group of the firm’s twenty employees is based in downtown Rochester, the rest are sprinkled throughout the country and overseas. The firm, established in 2015, is growing and hopes to add three or four more employees in the next couple of months.
“In uncertain times the more agile companies can be the better,” said Loury, who noted the firm deliberately moved downtown last year into the Chapin Building in the historic St. Paul Quarter. Their new space was designed to appeal to in-person staff and includes a kitchen that makes up 25% of the office space.
“Business models are changing, and the way employees work is changing. We continue to make things more comfortable for us and for those we hope to attract.”
Collaboration
Loury also credits collaboration as being key to the firm’s health over the past few years. He is a member of a 13-person CEO group from a myriad of different industries that convenes monthly to talk about challenges and successes.
“Every owner of a small- and medium-sized business should be a part of a group like this,” said Loury, who explained such groups promote collaboration and help not only the business owners, but the entire region. “The way Rochester rounds the corner is not through one single development. Small and medium-sized businesses are what’s going to bring Rochester back up.”