PHOTO CREDIT: www.studio3087.com

Know your values, hire to them and once you build a great engaged workforce, “do something crazy: Get out of their way.”

That was the message that has kept Southwest Airlines soaring since its founding in 1971. And that’s the message Julie Weber, vice president of people for Southwest, brought to the opening session of EntreCon at Pensacola Little Theatre.

“We start with people,” Weber told the crowd of 350 people. “We have clear values, we hire to our expectations and we tie them to performance. We hire for job motivation, not for people trying to get their foot in door.”

EntreCon is a two-day business and entrepreneurship conference hosted by Studer Community Institute on Nov. 3-4.

EntreCon 2016 features 40 speakers and panelists, including seven keynote speakers and 12 breakout sessions.The speakers and panelists will share strategies, offer advice and provide information on starting and growing a business.

Weber shared the startup story of Southwest, born on a cocktail napkin as an idea for an intra-state airline connecting Dallas, San Antonio and Houston. Now among the largest domestic airlines carriers, Southwest hires 2 percent of the people who apply, and uses behavior-based interview questions to help gauge how a candidate will fit in with the team.

“We hire for attitude and we train for skill,” Weber said. “We hire tough to our expectations.”

Julie Weber, vice president of people for Southwest Airlines, with Entrepreneur Award winners Jennifer Grove and Bentina Terry of Gulf Power. Credit: Ron Stallcup.

What does that get them?

Weber shared a video called “Reecie’s Story,” of a Southwest employee who was also a 30-year veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps. When a passenger who was part of a relay team lost her luggage, Reecie not only promised to find the bag, but drove three hours “into the middle of a muddy field,” the customer says, to deliver the bag so that her customer’s team could complete their relay.

“She told us, ‘All I ask is that you run fast,’ so we ran like hell,” the customer says.

Reecie notes in the video that had she not delivered the client’s bag, her entire relay team would have had to make up the lost time. But she views her commitment to service at Southwest in the same way she views her commitment to the Marine Corps.

“I was raised in the environment that you don’t leave someone behind,” she says.

When the video ended, Weber said: “I don’t think you can train that.”

As the generational change in the workforce rolls through Southwest, Weber said the airline is using strategies internally and externally to ensure that the Baby Boomers who are leaving the workforce are replaced with workers from other generations that share the same commitment to team and service that is Southwest’s hallmark.

That’s included leadership development programs for managers in training, highlighting career pathways for new employees and emerging leadership development tracks, even summer camps and internships for high school and college students to spark an interest in aviation. These strategies boost employee engagement and also address a key need among the millennial workforce for development, coaching and investment.

In hard times, Weber notes, Southwest has never furloughed an employee. Their voluntary turnover rate is 2.6 percent.

When it comes to your business, Weber says, the key is finding your North Star — knowing what the key values are that you have to have, having the courage to hire to them, evaluating employees to them, because “better to leave that seat open than fill it with the wrong person, especially the wrong leader.”

“Those happy employees are making happy customers,” Weber said.