There’s an entertainer’s proverb that goes a little something like:
Don’t believe your own promo.
It’s a subtle reminder to keep your head on your shoulders, and not get too carried away with the story of your character at the expense of losing who you actually are.
(Plus, if you choose to only believe the nice things people say about you, why don’t you choose to believe what all your haters say, too?)
This isn’t limited to the world of entertaining. It happens everywhere. And I get it, the neatly packaged soundbite is so much easier to handle than the (often) messy / unflattering truth. In an effort to maintain our image, we like to gloss over the parts that we don’t like, and pretend they’re not there.
Doing this will destroy your life & business.
Case in point.
Losing Employees
CEOs, C-suite executives, and managers often think excessive turnover is just the nature of the beast.
It isn’t.
Sure, the world has changed to a more gig-focused dynamic, but employees who feel like their contributions matter (and are fairly compensated for it), will be fiercely loyal.
Turnover, then, is a symptom of a bigger issue and it’s costing your business dearly. Think about the gym industry. They have a turnover rate of 160% annually.
That means hire all new people. Fire everyone. Then hire 60% more new people.
Every. Year.
And they wonder why the industry is dying…
Decreased Effectiveness
Think about your business. A solid worker walks up and hands you a typed resignation letter. (Or even better, just emails it on Saturday night.)
You know that the instant someone turns in their two weeks’ notice, their give-a-shit drops to less than zero. This means other people on your team will have to step in to take up the slack.
And when you really think about it, you’ll realize that process didn’t start on the day they handed in their resignation. Who knows how long they’ve been pulling back from their job? How long have you been losing out on their capacity to be productive?
It could be months of lost revenue due to lack of engagement.
Maybe you’ll have to reach out to a temp agency to find a replacement. That costs the staffing agency time & money in terms of their vetting process, employee costs of their own, etc. Do you think that all happens for free? Nope. They pass those costs on to you, their customer.
Further, you now have the tricky job of facilitating their transition out of your organization. Exit interviews, HR hours spent covering your legal ass, etc. That all costs a lot, too.
Sidenote: Exit interviews are less than worthless. If you’re waiting this long to care about what your employee thinks about your company, you shouldn’t be surprised they’re leaving you. Also, if you expect honest answers, you’re crazy. If you actually wanted the truth, your employee would have felt comfortable coming to you with their problem months ago. Instead, they disengaged from your company, coasted on your time, and will give you the answers they think you want to hear.
What else are you losing when that employee leaves? All that institutional knowledge and shared culture. This has a direct impact on everyone else in the team, too. If you’re a client-based dynamic, who knows how many of your clients they’ve culled from your database. Goodbye contracts!
All Important Process: Hiring
So your company is hemorrhaging value with the loss of a single employee. Now you have to stop the bleeding. You want it done as quickly as possible, but if you don’t do it right, you’ll be right back in the same situation you’re in right now.
Hiring is one of the single most important things your company will do.
A lot of companies I work with don’t have a dedicated team to handle the hiring process. Instead, they dump it on some poor soul who already has a full plate. Now they have another hat they’re not trained to wear. Their client-facing work suffers. The client relationships suffer as they’re now focused on this new responsibility.
How can you expect stellar results when you hand one of the most important responsibilities a company has to someone that the dart landed on?
Knowing how to filter qualified candidates is a fine art itself. How do you get through the fluff, and to the heart of how your candidate actually works?
(Wouldn’t it be nice to have a mind reader on your side. . .)
How many hours are spent checking references? Leaving messages? Scheduling times to call back? Actually talking to references.
Multiplied by the number of candidates.
All before knowing they’re worth the effort.
5th Gear
So you’ve finally gone through the hiring process, found the perfect fit for the job & your company’s culture. Now what?
I don’t care how amazing someone is at their job; they’ll never be up to speed on their first day.
So.
What’s your onboarding process like?
Disney’s is a multi-day process. (I know because I went through it, myself!) It’s no surprise why they consistently have the best customer service in the world. They understand the value of instilling their employees with the right understanding of how their company works, and the culture they’ve built around their brand.
Again, what’s your onboarding process like? A couple balloons at their station and a handshake?
That’s going to cost you.
Grand Total
No wonder the cost of turnover can easily surpass the annual salary of the employee you’re replacing. You’d have to keep the newly hired person onboard for more than a year to just break even.
So, what’s the solution?
Keep your employees happy in the first place. Hire smart when you absolutely must bring someone new into the company.
How do you do all that? Glad you asked, because that’s exactly what I do.
When you truly understand what motivates your employees, you can custom-fit your strategy to what they want. This is one of those mythical win-win situations that I absolutely love helping clients achieve.
Let’s talk. You’ll find my rates to help keep your employees happy will pay for itself many times over. . .
