The Shame Clients Feel…

It’s not uncommon that clients who call into HR Consultants feel shame or embarrassment, they feel over their head, they are shocked by what laws they are held to, everything. They are lost.

The one thing I can confidently say, though. Most business owners’ mistakes actually come from a good place. Maybe they are protecting other members of the team, or they are actively caring for their employees and the employee takes advantage, or they are even trauma-aware employers, and that awareness bites them in the butt. What I know from several conversations is that these smart business people know their business, but that doesn’t mean they can keep up with all the laws, situations, and accommodations. They built a business focused on technology, baking, or furniture sales. They did not build a business model based on recruiting.

Let’s throw in there that employees use Ai to research laws, and Ai doesn’t ask screening questions, so employees make demands to business owners based on laws that don’t apply to them. The crazy part about all this is that people really do want to work; they just don’t want to be taken advantage of. And employers really do want to pay people to work; they want to pay them for the work they are doing. At a high level, it looks like bad management or lazy people; at a close level, it’s miscommunication and assumptions about being on the same page. 

These issues and demands happen because they hire the wrong people. They also happen because they don’t eliminate surprise. 

Enter one of my clients. 

I have a few taglines, but the one you hear when I’m out and about is “Profitability starts with hiring the right people.” We all know the cost of turnover. Some studies put it as high as 60% of a person’s yearly earnings. It doesn’t matter the cost, though, the cost is compounded by utilizing what “they” say you should be doing, and when you do what “they say” you built a culture that was designed by “them” not what you envisioned. So, I got this client who had three hiring issues:

1. Summer was over, and they were losing their summer staff.
2. They didn’t properly staff prior to summer, so the summer staff was mostly made up of returning seasonal people, who reaped the joys of a lot of summer overtime and related tips. This meant the company was about to be severely understaffed.
3. For a solid month before my arrival, they had a 100% no-show rate for interviews. 

This is discouraging and frustrating, and when an employer reaches out with this issue, it really goes a lot deeper, and those three bullets are probably 15 different solutions that you build into a company process. Employers who experience these bumps feel shame, and they turn to experts. Oddly, an expert is partly responsible for how they got into this mess. But no dissing to that other person, they came from a large corporate structure with ready-made SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) and Training Programs built in. But that doesn’t apply to a homegrown business. Again, 30,000 ft view it should be the same, just smaller. But close up, it’s an entirely different animal. 

The surprises that happened and the solutions

Leading up to this, there was a requirement put in place with scheduling: even if you were part-time, you had to be able to work any shift. Now, in customer service, if you know anything about scheduling, you know this isn’t realistic. Coupled with some really stringent expectations of dress code, meant that less than 10% of applicants could work part-time with a completely open schedule.

• We changed that requirement and allowed days or shifts off, as long as the person could work 4 days a week and at least one weekend day. 
• Not surprisingly, we started getting applicants who had a true interest in the business, but also had a life outside of work: family care-taker responsibilities, college, one person who couldn’t work 2 Sundays a month to be a dungeon master, and a few other reasons. 
• It worked because it stabilized expectations, prevented surprise issues, and allowed us to address repeat issues that are squarely HR fun stuff. 

Candidates were not educated in the business, and there was no employment collateral available. After 3 weeks of interviewing people and collecting the common questions they asked, I created an employer FAQ page for candidates to read at their leisure and advertised it on open positions and interview request emails.

• It covered the dress code, shifts, unique aspects of each store, company history, and basic job expectations. 
• I could tell how far someone got on the FAQ page by the statements they made and the questions they asked. This is not a determining factor in a person’s hiring, but it certainly helps them feel less anxious and more excited about the interview. Recruiting is sales, and this is a basic sales tool that ensures everyone has access to the same information. 
• Candidates went into an interview fully armed with the issues and the challenges at the location they were interviewing at. Why? Because I’ve dealt with too many people in my career who left because “if I knew it would be like this...” Instead, saying “hey, we’re overhauling the culture, and being more on top of schedule challenges, and how we approach out customers. So you might feel that happening and be concerned, just know, were on top of it, and you can help be part of that change.” Yep! It worked.

We always talk about transparency, and people think transparency is PayScale and policy. It’s really those hidden dark corners. Shining a light on those challenges allows a candidate to say “I’m up for that” or “Nope, been through this, not interested.” Candidates in charge of making their own career decisions and not feeling “sold” is a positive thing. 

There’s more!

The above solved the major issues of turnover. In fact, out of 25+ people hired over the past 3 months, we only lost 2. One for an understandable reason, and the other because I just messed up on my recommendation. It’s bound to happen, but I learned and will do my best to not make that error again. The locations are becoming more efficient, the staff are excited to be there, and the managers are excited about their staff. That excitement creates a stable environment with less turnover.

Right now, we’re working on integrating the company values into all communications. So, more on that later. 

It means a lot if you’ve taken the time to read this. If you’d like to learn more about how to implement some of these options within your company, please schedule a half-hour appointment with me. During this time, we can discuss each other’s work styles and explore the potential benefits of collaboration.