Nobody Wants to Work for You, Part 2: Reduce Employee Turnover

— right? Exactly. And hopefully it's not broken. Right. Um but you know, how do I get from being an apprentice to a lead person to a foreman to a project manager, right? Is it written out? Are there uh pay uh scales? Right? if I do X, Y, and Z, I'm going to do this because, you know, without one, a promotion seems like it's favoritism. You know, why did this person get promoted beside in front of me when I can dance circles around people? I've never heard somebody that they were horrible at their job, right? And and they're always saying, "Well, I'm the best. I'm better than this person." Right? So, why did they get promoted ahead of me? And in this case, when there's no real criteria or ladder to go to, the ambitious ones are going to leave first, right? It's the ones that aren't going to push that are going to stay because they they're the ones that are complacent. And I think the other thing is is that when the owner is the is the company, everybody knows it, right? And they want to leave their their their business to their kid and the kid's a whiny brat. So why do I want to stick around and do that, right? Well, I what if I want to run the show one day? Where's my path to that? And I think that's the that's the problem is that a lot of these places don't have a career path that's clearly defined for their employees. Cindy, you must have seen this a lot. How how does an owner solve this?

— Well, I think there's the two dual edge thing. Um, and you guys said it had a really good conversation on this one about, you know, hiring or firing family members, right? is you you can't assume your your child, your cousin, your whoever even wants the business that you're trying to build to them, right?

— So, part of that is being honest with yourself up front. And then the second part is holding your family members to the same standard you're holding all your employees to, right? So, it's conveying that either by action that they're seeing you're holding Joe Joe Jr. accountable to treat people the same way you're treating them. Hopefully that's a positive thing. Um or that they're themselves, you know, the first in, the last out, you know, leading by example. But to get back to even just why people lead with no progression, right? I mean, part of it, you're always going to be limited by the size of the organization in some level. You know, the person that you know, I have I know two or three different people in my lifetime who perfectly happy to never get to management. They want to be the best, you know, whatever electrician, the best data enter, whatever it is. They have no, and I don't mean negative in a way when I say this, they have no ambition to get to management. They just want to do the their job the best way they can do it. It's their comfort level. Um, they want to continue to learn. They want to still be really good at the software they're using. They still want to be the person people come to with how to actually run that report, but they don't want the, and this is where you start to get those burnout issues, they don't want the responsibility of supervising and managing employees or managing the project or being the one that's held accountable for the overall success of the program, right? So you have to build a system that one people actually want to advance to that or two they're acknowledging they don't and so they don't get to be upset when Joemo who they can do all the they have all the experience um but none of the management skills you know you've got to have both you've got to be able to do the job but you also have to be able to manage the people and then for the manager they have to understand that sometimes that means you're no longer doing the work you really like to do you're just keeping the ship afloat keeping the airplane in the air as they say. Um, and that can get discouraging. So, it's not it's not always what you think your aspirations are may not actually be what they end up being. Um, it's not actually work you thought you wanted. Maybe I really didn't want to be in charge. You find that out too late. Or or you imagine, especially when you're young and you're paying off all those student loans and um living check to check, you know, you can imagine, all right, well, if I just get to this level, I'm going to get this salary. and they're not taking into consideration the total value of life, right? You know, what is really going to be important to them at 40 versus what was important to them at 30 versus 50 and and so on. So, yeah, you want to have a clear program that's accessible to everybody. So, yep, if if it's a management training program, here are the criteria. Here are the steps you need to go to. And I'm one that's never going to say you have to have something like a bachelor's to even qualify, right? because I'm sorry, life experience can mean a heck of a lot more than that bachelor's degree. And I say that with, you know, multiple degrees behind me. Those things qualified me for things for, you know, from a technical point of view, but there are people out there that understand things I will never understand just because I happen to have a couple letters at the end of my name that somebody else doesn't. So, you have to be able to factor that into any program you're building. Again, it has to be transparent, but yeah, the person who's been working for the company for 20 years, that knows the books better than anybody, that knows the line better than anybody that everybody goes to to solve the problem, that's your most valuable resource in the company right there. So, you want to look at how do you keep that person engaged because at the end of the day, that ripples out to everybody. If people know who to go to, you know, that's that brings some stability to your culture and your climate. If people aren't upset and constantly complaining or finding it a negative environment to work in, right, they want to stay regardless of maybe where they're going to get to grow in the organization because they invested in the success. So, you have to approach it from both a here's a line if you are somebody that's aspirational or needs goals or wants to get to a certain point or maybe you are grooming them to become go out on their own and build their own competitive business against yours. As much as that can stink, um it's you have to look at the grander. Am I contributing to the profession? You know, sometimes that's the way you have to approach things. Am I helping my profession be better by helping these people grow even if it means they're going to leave me? Um or they're going to leave me because I am planning to give the business to my family member and I can't hold that against them. Or lastly, you invest in a way that makes sure that person and whoever it is you think is going to inherit your business are are tied together in a way that they both want to see each other succeed um and have an equal investment in the organization. Um, but at the end of the day, you just want your culture to be such that people want to stay there regardless sometimes of where they may get to because they can they'd rather be there with all of you proud of the work they're doing than take the chance of going somewhere else just because of a title or or some other reason that they think they need to leave to to make some sort of milestone in their professional journey.

— You touched on so many great things. I can't even remember them all. Yeah. Oh, yeah. No, no, I I've got to mention Oh, that that's That's bang on. Like I thought that about six times dur during uh during your description there. And I think there's so many important things. I think people being on the treadmill, we've talked about that, not having the time to dedicate to um to get off it themselves and actually create a structured organization where roles have the right responsibilities. Um I I think um we talked to David um in one of our previous guest chats about how to enable the organization. And then there's so many learnings about what how he took his team and and he took them from just team members to actually being contributing and building business units out because he's empowered them. And I think all those things kind of ladder up to that ladder, right? And um having a structure. I think it's really difficult for some smaller organizations to kind of have that structure. Um Ryan, you're a great proponent of building onboarding steps and certifications and and um having video sessions about how to educate team members to to make sure it's all sort of consistent application of standards across the organization. I think all of those everything that you just said kind of is in that are in all of those different components. So I think that's so important. I think I would probably encourage people to pause and go relisten to what you just said about how they how they structure their organization to make it um make it better, right? And and make it a destination for people. Um and I think it comes down to what you said earlier as well. It's it's a people thing. It's communication, right? Like you know what, you get somebody coming in, they're working really hard, they're a good person, and they're an asset to the organization. They might not fit that role precisely and maybe they should be in another role. And so that's a conversation to say, hey, have you ever thought about kind of pivoting over here? I could use you in this role and and that may be a different map out of their career path. And light bulbs might go off at that point. So um so many great things uh that you just shared

— and that's that's the beauty of a small organization too, right? Is that you can you and that's something you could highlight. You're not going to be limited in your role here because we're going to need you to learn so many different things. Like somebody in your organization needs to get good at AI. it's coming. You may not think it's going to apply to your organization, but on some level somewhere it's going to, right?

— You know, or if somebody shows an interest in in learning about, you know, pick pick this. I know nothing about electricians, but there's some new thing coming down the pipe and they show an interest, let them go learn it and bring it back. You know, there's nothing better to convey new learning than somebody who's excited about it as opposed to someone, you know, being told they have to take this just because they have to take it. Um and then you know the other thing that just to follow up on that is teach people in small segments. The days of dayong in service trainings they they've proven that nobody remembers that two hours down the road or the first time a crisis hits. So you want to be hitting people with small chunks that they can actually learn and implement sooner and use and do and then you give them another one. So you know that all plays into it for sure.

— Awesome. Awesome. Great stuff. Okay. Um, let's cycle back to the owner um owner issues, right? And um this is the last one and honest answer, Ryan. What's the reason that that we feel? Obviously, you lose somebody good, you have the exit interview. What is the one reason that never really shows up in an exit interview?

— The owner's mood, right? That's that's the weather. How the how's the day going to be? They come in, they check whose truck or car is in the parking lot and okay, it's going to be this kind of a day, right? And it comes from a lot of different things. Tech, you know, owners, do you do you reverse your decisions all the time? Is praise private and rare? Criticism is public and constant. Right? At that point, your people are not managing the job. They're managing you.

— Right? And I think the other one is that I've asked this to a lot of owners when they're looking for people is well how's your reputation out there amongst employee potential employees? That's great. Really? Really? Cuz you know it already exists out there. There's 200 300 tradesmen out there and they all know each other. So let's go down that list again, right? Can they get a predictable paycheck guaranteed 40 hours? Can they do they are they being trained by somebody who hates them or isn't very good trainer, right? Are they stuck with old equipment, old trucks, somebody else's trash? Their onboarding session was a was 20 minutes and go figure it out, you know? Do their Mondays change? Do they have a career path that they can go to? Are they stuck as being a lead for 25 years? All that stuff goes right into the reputation of the company. So, it's not about if you can deliver for the general contractor or deliver the product for your customer. It's about how you treat your employees and how you're seeing out there. And I think that's something that people need to take a big look at.

— Yeah. Yeah. So many different facets of that, Cindy. How do you fix it? Especially if somebody if that reputation is out there in any of those components and especially if the owner's in a bad mood all the time and it contributes. I mean, that that's difficult to fix, isn't it?

— Yeah. I mean, part of what they'll, you know, they'll say about leadership is if you're surrounding yourself by a bunch of people that always agree with you, you haven't set yourself up for success, right? You want to be hiring people or partnering with people that are going to be honest with you. That, and I don't mean that that just means they're going to challenge everything you say or be a negative Nancy every time, you know, propose something new, but it's going to be somebody that holds that mirror up to you and says, "Hey, you can't keep pushing on Ryan. he cannot take another, you know, one more project right now or hey, you know, I know you love this checklist and we've been doing this checklist for your TW since you began in this profession, but it's kind of not even relevant anymore. It's it's something we don't need to be doing. You need something that can hold that up. Secondarily, you need to Google yourself. You know, there are so many rate your employer type sites out there, right, that people don't even realize people are out there commenting on what it was like to work for you. Now, does it apply in every industry? No. But it's definitely out there. So, you want to be out there, you know, seeing what's on Facebook, what's on front porch forums or whatever, you know, your local your local chat is, you know, they're out there. They're talking about what it's like to work for you. And you want to be talking to, you know, talk to your former employees. You know, are they all going to the same competitor? Are they all leaving about the same time frame? Like, are they all leaving once you get them to that next level? Because if they stay with you, you'll pay for their education. And now they can go across town and make $10,000 more because now because they've got that credential that the other guy didn't have to pay for, you paid for it, and now they're out the door. So, it's looking at those kind of things. Why are people leaving? Is it cultural? Is it it doesn't matter what you paid them, they wouldn't stay. You know, they they're only there to get what they need to get to get out, right? There's definitely that mentality. Um and then there's the burnout situation, right? Is are you asking too much of the good people? You we're so good at seeing how good somebody is at something that we get ask them to do more and more and more. And if they're the people we think they are, they take it and they take it and they take it. And meanwhile, the resentment builds, right? And I think I think you mentioned this in I don't know if it was last week's podcast, but the one about losing your number two, right? When they go silent is when you should be scared to die, right? Or when they're just saying they're almost complacent now. They're just like, "Yeah, okay, whatever." Yeah. They just don't care. That's your signal. They don't care anymore. And the other I think the other thing that people trap that people fall in is especially with small business is we're a family. You know, we're a family. You can't rely on that. No, you're not. You're a business.

— You're a business.

— And you have to Yes, it's great that you're going to be known to support everyone and be, you know, be chums with everybody, but at the end of the day, you also have to make it feel professional and make them proud of the work, not just that they can say they're part of the family.

— Yeah. That's not always. You can love your family, but do you want to spend eight hours a day with them?

— No.

— Most of the time.

— No. Exactly. Awesome. What again, what a great segment. Thank you so much for all your expertise. We're going to move on to something from my perspective, a little bit less exciting, but you know, I think it's still essential. Okay, so we're going to jump in and this is stuff that's slightly less exciting for me for a more creative guy, but I think just as essential. Ryan, I think you're going to kick us off the compliance side.

— So, Sydney, you take you take the compliance side on this one. Where do small businesses quietly expose themselves?

— Um, you know, the biggest thing is not knowing what you don't know and unintentionally getting contracts that you didn't realize you created with your employees. Um, and not following your own rules, right? Um, especially in a small environment where you you where exceptions become the rule, right? So, um, that those are the big things. So, you know, handbooks, offer letters, benefit programs, if you're you're big enough that you're dealing with those. Um, anywhere where you consistency is key, that's those are your biggest problematic areas. Um, you know, there's obviously the thresholds of, you know, 15 or more employees, 50 or more employees over 100 employees. that gets you into whole different compliance issues. But staying with a smaller population, it's going to be what you communicate to employees and whether you're following through on what you say your rules are and are you holding everybody to the same rules.

— Okay. So So things like putting those pieces together, handbooks, um like that that's actually a a policy that you're creating with your employee team.

— Correct. It's a it's almost a contract, right? So if you say that everyone's going to get paid on the 1st and the 15th of the month except it's a holiday blah blah blah but you start suddenly paying everybody on the 20 the 19th and the 31st, right? That seems small. It seems like not a big idea, big problem, but you've got something that says you do it this way and your practice doesn't match it. And that's always going to be a pitfall. you're better, you may be better off saying you get paid every two weeks or you get paid by monthly and the schedule gets published on, you know, annually. It's those kind of traps that people build themselves. The good news is you don't have to recreate the wheel. It's so easy now to find a handbook writing service. This is where AI can actually help you. Um, but you don't ever ever ever want to just adopt somebody else's handbook, right? because that's where you're going to get into trouble because if you don't know what's in that handbook, you can't address it. The other way to do it is to be have just the bare minimum in that handbook that you're actually absolutely required to have so that you don't have to worry as much about contradicting that and then issuing memos or posting things on your website or via whatever your communication tool is for your employees, bullet board, whatever. Um signing off on a notice that says, "Hey, this came to our attention. we didn't have this address before. So, just know going forward this is the rule. And the same applies if you want to make a change, right? You could say, "Hey, look, I know we've always said time sheets are due on Friday at noon, but because of X, Y, and Z, they are now due on Thursday before you go home, right? It's those kind of things that comes back down to communications, right? But the things that's going to get you in trouble are when you say you're doing it one way and you don't do it that way and it's a writing and the attorney can come in and say, "Hey, you said nope, this is what you said you'd do." No, I don't care that you've always done it this way. This is what you said you'd do. That's where you're going to get in trouble.

— Okay. Exposure, right? So is that is that

— and the other thing I tell people too, you know, especially as you're navigating new law, you know, the everchanging workers comp and FMLA and PFMLA and whatever it's called wherever you are, is, you know, it's so easy to get so hung up on the minimum that's set out there that if you look at your workforce, if you're more generous than the law requires, you're not going to get trouble. where you get in trouble is where you try to be so exact that you put yourself in a corner and run the risk of being found to be not in compliance. So, you're better off to air on the side where you may be slightly more generous. Um, and and it also helps you if you're especially if you're a single HR shop that hey, this is the rule for all our employees. No matter which this X, Y, and Z match, we're not going to stop and count it. If you work 30 hours a week, you get health insurance for you. We don't care. We're not we're not creating levels. We're just simplifying it. You qualify for FMLA here in this company once you've worked your 12 months period. You know, it's those kind of things and you should work obviously with with your attorney or other industry supports to determine what those might be and what's right for your industry. But that's another thing, you know, that gives you that reassurance that okay, if I'm this much more generous, I won't get in trouble. And so that's things I encourage employees to do, employers to do as well, is it's okay to be more generous.

— Awesome. So for owners whose HR is an absolute mess, is that where they start? And and if if yes, where do they go next? If no, where do they start?

— Yeah. Um so there's a couple ways you can go. Um there are you can buy an HR audit toolkit. Um very lots of different sources. Um but I would start with your highest, you know, start with your risk assessment. What's what's going to have you most at risk? So, anything that's going to get you in front of the Department of Labor or in trouble with the IRS or Social Security, which generally means your payroll administration and your leave administration, right? How you're classifying employees in terms of FLSA, uh, Fair Standards Act, or any other of those kind of issues that are statutes. If it if there's a poster on the wall or you're supposed to have a poster on the wall about it, those are going to be your higher risk areas. And then your second is going to be behavior on in the workplace, right? So sexual harassment, racial discrimination, those those issues and making sure that there's a clear process for people to report and make complaints or about feeling safe, whether it's a occupational safety hazard issue or a behavioral safety issue. Those those are the areas I would focus on first. Um and then once you you feel good about those, then you can start to add on the other areas. um benefit administration in terms of health and dental and in those areas. There's a cost to not doing that correctly, but it is fixable most of the time. So again, you know, that might be that next that next level down is are we are we using our resources efficiently? Are we getting people off? Are we getting Cobra notices out? And especially for a small organization, part of that costbenefit analysis should be is hey, what what of these functions can we outsource? who can be our thirdparty administrator on this. I think at most of the organizations I've worked at ranging from you 75 employees to 2,000 employees, we outsourced Cobra. It is just such a specialized nuance field with such a high risk um and such high penalties. Same would apply if the Affordable Care Act applies to you and and having to do the look back periods for calculating the health insurance rules and how you're supposed to be offering and did you offer affordable insurance. Another area where it's so specialized and so nuanced that it's an area you might want to consider outsourcing. Um, and that's where you do that. how much is it going to cost us to outsource this versus how much it's going to cost to hire an HR person or a payroll person and keep them up to date and have them feel confident that they know the rules. Um, so that's the other way I attack it is not just the handbook pieces, but what are your resources to support you as an organization? Can you hire the expertise from somewhere or is it necessary to have it in house?

— So that's a really great question. Um when do we need to start looking at bringing somebody in house like an employee level 50 employees 100 employees something like that multiple states what what's your recommendation as to you know a bigger employee and a smaller employer

— so the metric has generally been one HR professional for every hundred employees right so in your smaller organizations that means the HR has typically been assigned either to the owner because there's no one else for them to give it to or to their admin assistant or executive assistant by default or the business manager or the CFO or controller whoever you know whoever is working with the numbers hey you're paying the bills so you can administer health insurance too right so I think for those smaller organizations it's about knowing what resources to give people until you are large enough that it is more efficient to bring it in so it's really going to come down to an efficiency and you I think education has been one area where you can see how this has happened. You know, when I started in education, there were four HR directors in the entire state of Vermont working at the school administration, although otherwise it was assigned to the school business manager or the superintendent. And now, if you looked at Vermont, every single one of them, I think, now has at least an HR manager, if not a director level position, because it has changed so much in 25 years. The regulations are much more intense. the requirements are more intense. The administration costs are more put you at risk faster and there's just been more litigation around all these different issues and people's rights and benefits around discrimination or non-discrimination or benefit administration or family leave or workers comp and injuries. So, it's it's part of the same analysis you would do in terms of are you outsourcing payroll or you doing it in house? I do outsourcing or fi finding fractional employees to do some of your work because it makes more sense than to do it in house. So it's a hard thing. I probably to me around 50 employees you probably want to at least have somebody who who specializes on in some level on the HR. Um but HR itself is I we could have a whole podcast on what HR means. Um because it is so broad and depending where you work, payroll is one example I can point to immediately. payroll, sometimes it's finance, sometimes it's HR, sometimes it's this own amorphous place all by itself. Um, so you know, it really depends on how you're structuring your organization. Um, but at the end of the day, if you stop and look at all the functions, get away from what people's titles are and here's the work we have to get done and assess all right, is this something we have the skill set, the knowledge, the time to stay compliant on or is this something we clearly want to have outsourced? And like I said, that's a just a costbenefit analysis you need to be doing during budget every year. If you're now sending $100,000 out the door for outsourcing, then maybe you should be bringing in someone prof, you know, a professional on team on the team instead of sending that money out the door. But there's going to always be certain things that you might regardless of the expertise on the team that you want to outsource. Again, like I said with Cobra or ACA where it just somebody is already an expert in this and it makes a lot more sense to let them stay the expert the expert on it.

— So yeah, grab the expertise. Stay stay in your wheelhouse, right? And

— grab the expertise in the areas that you need most. Yeah, I I think there have been a number of businesses that we work with that have reached out in certain circumstances like we get into challenging situations and they need outside help like because you're just at risk and if you don't pull it in then you could be on the hook for some severe sort of penalties or challenges, right? Legal cases in some instances. So, I think that's great advice.

— Okay. Awesome.

— And sometimes just making sure that person in house even has someone else to call. Right. Right. because one, the owner does not have all the answers on these issues. They may need to be kept in the loop, but at the end of the day, the owner is still going to have to call somebody else, too.

— Yeah. Especially with legal issues, like Yeah, that's the biggest challenge. Awesome. Thank you. Okay, we're going to jump into my favorite segment of every single podcast, Jon's Two Cents.

— It's 2 cents Canadian, so it's only 1.4 cents American. the marketing tip of the week and it is that your careers page is a marketing asset. It is something that I mentioned earlier and really it's about marketing to future employees like you market to your customers. Your careers page is an asset and most are an afterthought. Your best potential hires look you up before they apply. They're checking out your careers page and if it's a stale list of duties and generic we're a family here like you just said, the good ones bounce right away. So show them the real team, the real work and why and the brand and the reality really have to kind of match up or you've just marketed people into disappointment. So the one step for me this week, rewrite your careers page so that 80% of it is about the person you want, the work, and the growth and 20% is about duties and responsibilities. Add three real photos of real people and uh that one page quietly raises the quality of everybody who then applies to your organization. Thumbs up from you, Cindy, on that one.

— 100%. Awesome. Okay. And second ad spot. Let's mess it up, Ryan.

— And we'll mess it up. Good. One more from CKW Advantage, Cindy's firm, which she is still not allowed to narrate.

— And the thing I'll add is that CKW isn't just compliance defense. It's a strategy where strategy meets execution. Mine is the point. They'll help you build the people side on purpose, not in a panic. Outsourced HR leadership for the company that can't justify a full-time CHRO yet classification handbook compliance hiring retention the whole life cycle treated as a connected system instead of a stack of fires. And as a Canadian, I'll note our employment laws its own beautiful nightmare. So I have enormous respect for anyone who does this for a living and still smiles. That is my one.

— That's your one. CKW advantage. ckwadvantage.com.

— You want to speak now, Cindy?

— Only if you're allowed.

— No. On to the next segment.

— Yeah.

— Yeah.

— Perfect. Yeah. Awesome. Ryan, start running the number. You're the numbers guy. Start running the numbers. Let's let you two kind of go back and forth on it.

— Yeah. So, right now it's personnel budget season. So, let's put the real numbers on the table. What's the real cost between an open seat versus a bad hire cost, Cindy?

— I mean, let's So, let's start from the open seat, right? So, the the obvious cost is the wear and tear on the on the staff that's still there, right? So, what's the impact going to that is that going to have? So, it's the real impact is going to be are you going to have to pay overtime? Are you going to have to pay bonuses? You know, right? The those pieces. Then there's the loss productivity because they're not going to sustain that pace. And sometimes you don't even know the work somebody was doing until they're gone, right? Because they've just automatically done it for how depending on how long they've been organization. A bad hire though, the risk there is the morale plummets. Everybody knows they're carrying this person. If they bring in the additional fun of negativity and just dis discord in the team that you know you've successfully built, it takes far longer than the time they were there to rebuild that trust within the organization to get people back to feeling like we're cohesive again. But not acting and letting that person stay in that role will have a bigger cost than either the other two because it just will make people leave. It will just um cost you people will not be willing to work longer hours to support the team to get through the current hiccup and like we said the morale just continues to plummet the longer they're there. So I would always be an advocate for you know if you can't get them in the right spot they need to exit and that can be there can be lots of reasons behind that and obviously it's not as simplistic as that but keeping a bad hire on is never a good idea. Awesome. Sage advice again and obviously that impacts the budget and spending, but you know, being in budget season, how should an owner start thinking about comp? What's kind of the focus point when it comes to comp?

— I mean, right now everybody's facing the same challenge, right? Health insurance is predicted to go up another 10, 20, 30% again this year. And the way people keep getting around it is raising those high deductibles amounts and making them higher and higher to keep the premiums affordable. Um, you know, so you've got that piece of it. Then you've got inflation, whatever is or isn't, whatever, you know, however you want to compute that. It costs more to get gas right now, no matter how you look at it, costs more to buy whatever, than it did, you know, a week ago, 6 weeks ago, whatever. Pick your time frame. And especially for the people living paycheck to paycheck. That's a real thing, right? So, they're looking for their wages to at least keep pace with the inflation. And then if you're trying to buy a home now, the mortgage and interest rates are high are higher than they've been in years past. So there's just a lot of pressure on everybody, including the owner who still would like to make a profit on some level, right? So being as transparent as you can about how those decisions are getting made. I'm not saying you got to open the books up for inspection by all your employees, but you know, maybe you you don't send five people to the annual conference in Denver that year um that nobody sees the value in. Or maybe it's, you know, you don't you do you evaluate, do you have the holiday party or do you take that same money and give people bonuses this year? you know,

— do you have a smaller lunch um that says, "Hey, we care about you, recognize you, but we're making this decision because we think everybody could use the money in their pocket as opposed to the DJ and a really nice dinner." Again, that's going to depend on the culture and climate of your own organization. Um because money does not solve everything for employees. And it's important to remember that, too. People don't stay just for the money, and people don't come just for the money. It's a factor and it's a real factor especially right now when people are feeling it in their pockets and especially after there was so much money around quote unquote if you were lucky to still be employed during COVID and the immediately thereafter when there was all the extra money people were being paid doubled because they were still working. That's the other reality we're dealing with, right? Is for a while their employers were having to fight for people. Um, and it was this weird juxtiposition of it wasn't an employer market or an employee market, but if you were lucky enough to be employed, you were getting paid a lot more and that growth had slowed down considerably while costs have gone up. So, it's just a really weird point we're in for everybody. Um, because to be, you know, to be fair to the owners, the owners are paying more too, right? They're paying more for the premium. So even if I'm still only paying 20% of my premium, that 22% increase, you know, for the employer, that's 80% that's real money. And one way to start communicating that sometimes is, you know, the strategy I've seen people use is total comp letters, letting people understand how much we actually are paying for everything for you, what benefits we are providing, and then looking at the value you're actually getting for some of those benefits. Like if you provide a benefit that nobody's accessing anymore, there's no value to it. So, and I'm trying to think of one off top of my head, but like, and this isn't a good one because I think people should have EAP programs, employee assistance programs, but if nobody's accessing that and you're paying $50 an employee a year for that benefit, maybe in small math, it doesn't come up to a whole heck of a lot of money. But if there's a way to take that same amount and put it somewhere that's more visible to the employees, even if it is, you know, five more cents an hour or whatever it converts to be, that's another way to approach it as well. But just being, you know, really evaluating what you're offering and what that what that benefit actually provides to the employee and how much they really value it. That that's another trend people are watching in particular this year is that look at your total package and what you're offering. And then as we've said throughout this, making sure that it's still a place people want to be because, you know, they'll go through the hiccups with you. They'll go through the ups and downs if it's a place they feel valued and know that you're giving them what you can give them and that you're not just talking the talk. You actually mean you mean it when you say you value them, but there's only so much we can do this year because we're getting crunched, too. Yeah, I think you bring up some good points and I've always made the thought is that the retention is cheaper than replacement, right? For a variety of reasons. The reason being is the known is better than the unknown. The devil you know is better than the than devil you don't, right? And if you're retaining good people, culture, right? There's a big placement on culture here. And you know, if and it helps with our employer reputation later on, right? that we have good people who do good work and people want to work with those folks. But also economically, even if we're giving a market-based raise, right, or paying our folks above rate, it's far cheaper than replacing them for so many reasons. And we did this in the last episode or two where we talked about that cost. And that's real dollars there, right? So it's 9 months, 12 months lost productivity like you said. And so I think a couple ways to approach this is we budget in the race and we make sure that it's a market raise so that it's you know to the employer it's a rounding error when you put everything into perspective. Right? The thing is that we're raising before the employee brings it up to our attention. So it's not an insult anymore. Right? It's an actual we appreciate you. Here's here's for doing a great job. And I also think that one of the measures that owners need to look at and will justify the retention over replacement is revenue per employee, right? Are we getting better at our jobs? Are we getting more efficient? Can we do those things? And that number is really going to to say something that we've kept these people around for 5 years and now we're not doing $100,000 per employee. We're doing 150,000 in sales. Right? That's what we want to do is that is getting more efficiency so that more is coming to the bottom line and that we're just not adding heads. Sydney, what do you think about that?

— I agree and I think you know they're your greatest resource. I mean when we talked earlier about people seeing a path, one of the paths they see is you if you walk in the door and yeah, you're the newbie and the next newest person has been there for 10 years. That tells you that if I'm successful here, I'm going to get to stay if I want to stay and I'm going to have the opportunity to grow with this group, amazing group of knowledgeable people and learn from them. Right. You also have, like you said, that cost and efficiency thing. Ask your team. They know where you won't even think about just looking at the numbers purely, you know, in front of you. Yeah, you can say, "Okay, we're going to cut 10% across every budget and that's how we're going to get to our goal." Well, great. But 10% from this line item isn't actually going to save you anything. It may cost you more than if you took 50% off of this one. And that's again where you look at how much of how much of that budget's actually being used every year, right? Have you been inflating that number for years? And that's just budgeting practices, right? Or do you go to the source, somebody that's on the floor, somebody who's out on in the field that says, "Hey, you know, we really don't need this. We really need this." or if we stop doing this step, it would save us this amount of time and like you said, increase that ratio, that cosmetic ratio.

— Awesome. Fabulous segment. Again, I think you're nailing things here for people. This I think is the last question. I'm sure we'll have some back and forth on it, but for the owner who feels like they can't afford any of this, that it's too complex, it's too much, it's too hard to get involved with, like what do you tell them? How do you how do they start? How do they how do you help them?

— I think you know that's we all get overwhelmed by too much at once, right? So I would say pick one thing.

— Pick one thing you want to do better whether it's this week, this month, this year, one change you're going to make that you know you can say to people look this is this isn't going to change overnight, right? So when people had to stop start off offering health care or as employers absorbed the cost of family medical leave and people's expectations around you know spending time with you know the me the men in the office right taking paternity leave right that wasn't always socially acceptable you know as you evolve around those areas you can't you're not going to address everything at once it just isn't going to happen if you've been below market for 20 years you're not going to catch up to the market in a year but you want to show people the steps you're to get there. So the first step may be saying okay we're going to make a decision that we are going to be competitive at this level and it can be that you're going to be competitive regionally you're going to be competitive at a county level state level or are you going to be if you especially if you have a largely remote population are you going to be competitive at a national level those that's that first step. So don't you know don't see don't find where you're going where you have to get break it up into doable chunks. see what you know, are you really that far off, right? Are you off by dollars or are you off by pennies? And yes, pennies add up fast, but if you're, you know, you can find pennies easier than you can find dollars sometimes. Or is it to your earlier point, are we better off taking that position, not filling it, and spreading that those dollars into increasing the existing employees? Because as you said, I I can't remember which podcast it is now, but the biggest insult is to hire someone and pay them more than somebody who already works for you,

— right? Nothing will break loyalty faster than knowing that somebody who hasn't given an hour to the company is already starting higher than I currently make.

— And your point, you can't replace me for what you just hired that person for. So that's part of the analysis too is can you do more with what you already have to get those those wages up or you know add another holiday can you know can you add a holiday so you know they get one more day home you know you might lose you know eight hours theoretically of productivity but does that mean more the employee and so yeah maybe they're not getting $12 an hour they're getting $11 an hour but they get one more day off than than the competitor there's other ways to reconfigure things sometimes that don't cost you more in the long run,

— improving their quality of life. Awesome. So, start at the beginning, just do one thing. We're eating elephants here, right? Just one bite at a time.

— Here, I'll piggy back on Jon. If you do nothing more than make your career section of your website better so that great candidates are finding you, you're a step ahead, too. See, Brian, people do listen to me and my points are of value.

— She had to.

— Yeah, she's sitting right here. She has

— a sponsorship agreement. Just got to pay attention.

— There's no choice. You're sitting right there. Awesome. Cindy, thank you so much. We're going to thank you officially after the takeaway. This is Ryan's recap of the of the episode. So, over to you for the takeaway, Ryan. Nobody wants to work for you is a very different sentence than nobody wants to work. The data points at the first one. Manager burnout is real and it is a retention crisis. A fried manager is running a sloppy horrible hiring process that you believe the candidates aren't applying for. You need to be predict. You need to look at your brand has it as an employee would and see where you actually stand right. We need to get the expensive boring stuff done right classification handbook you actually follow documentation that survives the dispute because an unfollowed policy is worse than none. And in budget season run the real math. An open seat and a bad hire are both far more expensive than retaining the good people you have already. So, budget retention first. Build the raise before they ask. People aren't the soft part of the business. They're the part that most quietly makes or loses the money.

— All righty, that is a wrap. Cindy, thank you so much. You were awesome.

— Thank you guys for having me. It was fun.

— Thank you. I'm glad I tricked you into doing this. Yeah, you suckered me on that family thing, didn't

— That's right.

— How How much do we have to pay her, Ryan?

— You know, I have to pay her with the I don't know, Christmas gifts and visits and kisses to the to my

— the same amount I paid for my ad reads.

— That's right. Uh there you go. Awesome, Cindy. Thank you so much. We will if you're putting up with my tech uh my tech fun.

— No, no problem. If you're open to it, we'll have you on for a later episode cuz this was so informative. We'd love a followup.

— Sounds great. Have you That'd be fun.

— Okay. Thank you so much again.

— Thank you so much. Excellent.

— Yeah. Thanks. You too, people.

— Peace out.

— That's it for this episode of From Burnt Out to Bought Out. If something we said today hit home, don't just nod in agreement. Pick one thing. The number you've been avoiding, the process that only lives in your head, the conversation you've been putting off for 6 months. Do that one thing this week. That's how it starts. And if you're not sure which one thing to pick, drop us a line. We'll happily point you in the right direction. New episodes drop every week. Until next time, stop running the treadmill and start building something you can actually sell.