S2E7: The Real Reason Your Hires Aren't Working Out

Speaker A: Welcome to People on Purpose, where each episode we explore how founders can navigate building businesses where people and profits can coexist on purpose. So we all know the performance of our employees is dependent on our leadership. And if you don't know that, then this might be the first episode of People on Purpose you're listening to. But we talk a lot about the balance of leadership, accountability and employee performance, which is clearly directly related to your business's profitability. This episode is primarily tackling that from a strategic lens because one of the things that comes up nonstop and it's not the first thing we talk about, it's not the second thing we talk about, but it's within the first five topics of our approach to a tactical organizational strategy for your people and culture. And that is the importance of onboarding. We know that as founders that the way that we onboard our clients or the, the, the customer experience that our clients have while working with us is critical to the success of our brand, our reputation and our business. There's no way around it. So whether you're a founder that's passionate about the experience that your customer is having or, or it's something that you have decided to hire experts within your business to handle most of the time, you likely care more about the experience of your customer than most any other topics that come up while you are growing and building your business. Whether it's a direct to consumer e commerce brand, whether you're in wholesale, whether you're a founder of a business that has more to do with technology and sort of that internal software type function. If you're an AI founder, whatever type of founder you identify as, every single experience that your customer has while they interact with your product or your brand is critical to the development and growth of your business overall. This is not news to you. We didn't acknowledge this, but service based businesses are. It's critical to align the way that we are treating our clients and customers from the minute that they interact with our business. There has to be movement in regards to uh, the flexibility in which we can serve people and meet them where they are. Even if we have the m most perfect systems and the best process like we do here at Paradigm, there are still a lot of opportunities for you to create touch points with your consumers that are going to continue to keep them coming back for more. And not only that, maybe you have a one off product like us. We really pride ourselves in being able to serve our client from start to finish finish within the first 90 days of our interaction and through our paradigm Solution Register a trademark, um, that brings your business up to snuff when it comes to your compliance and HR for preparing to scale. That 90 day process is translatable no matter what size your business is. That's all very important to me. But the way that we interact with our customers and the way that they show up for our business as a result, referrals, long term engagements, good reputations, great connections, all of those things come as a result of the experience they have while interacting with your brand. But today we want to try to take that energy and put it towards the interactions that our new team members are having with our brand. Not only from an external facing perspective, meaning the way that your brand serves its purpose in the world, what you're selling, how you're showing up, your brand, your culture, your brand ideals, your colors, all of that. But actually taking it one step further and having an onboarding process that fully embraces the type of culture that you are creating within your business, the opportunities that are afforded to your team members, and basically trying to treat that initial onboarding in with the same care and attention as you treat your customers. First interactions with your brand, and that is the biggest thing that has been shown in studies over and over and over again that dictates the success of your team member in their role. Which translates, translate exact translates exactly to making you more money and getting an ROI for the investment that you are making in your team. So just to take a quick pause here, because tying the customer experience to the initial employee, employee experience is a great ratio. It's a great uh, analogy. I'm a genius, honestly for coming up with it. But what I think is really important and what we want to take away from this scenario is not necessarily about trying to take the CX of our brand and how it shows up in the world to our people that are paying us and understanding the key differentiating factors between that power struggle. Because when people are paying us, they're paying for a specific experience. But so then it kind of tempts us to devalue the fact that our employees are being paid by us. So their experience sometimes gets shoved aside as a result. And I think there's a lot that can be said about the way that we are choosing to approach onboarding with our team. And I also want to acknowledge that depending on what type of leader you are, what phase of business you're at as a founder, or if you are a C suite executive or uh, HR leader, whatever way that you show up in your business, your passion for the way that the people that you lead are treated is going to be a major differentiating factor in the profitability of your business. And so we can go back and forth about, well, we pay them, so they should do their job or, well, you know, they're entitled. Why are they acting that way? Trust me, I hear all those stories and sometimes I'm the one saying it, sometimes I'm the one that's like, that's employee. That employee is way too entitled to things that they have not yet begun to deserve. And I hate to be the one to admit it, because realistically, I really want everyone to think I'm nice and I can always find the best and everything, blah, blah, blah. But the reality of the situation is the. That's a recipe for getting run over. And people are going to be the most impactful part of your business, but it doesn't mean that they're always going to be perfect. What we need to do is understand, as founders, as leaders, as organizational development leaders, as people that are responsible for another individual's career, we need to be able to understand at a clinical level what it takes to make them as successful as possible. And it is my opinion that, that one of the key things that can probably be improved on in your business, no matter what level that you're at, is their onboarding experience. And that's really what we're going to talk about today. Because on paper, when we talk about HR consulting, it really doesn't encompass the work that paradigm does. We do have our offerings that tackle compliance to a T. We do make sure that you can sleep well at night knowing things are handled. We are a sounding board and an advisor for you as you move and groove through the development of your business, business structures. We care about your customer experience too. We help you staff the people that are going to make that come to life. We want, uh, to make sure that we're infusing your external brand with your internal culture. And one of the ways that we do that is by generating a very thoughtful and beautifully written culture guide, which is going to be able to expound on the mission and vision that you have internally while also weaving in the purpose of the business overall. But one thing that we need to start with in onboarding is realizing that our employer brand, the thing that got the person to apply for the job in the first place, likely has a lot more to do with what they see you putting out for your customer than it does for what they heard about your experience of your employees. And we only get one chance to kick it off. Right? So while we are talking about all these external factors that are indicating the experience of our employees, we actually can start by identifying the ways that we can be proactive instead of reactive. We can understand the inputs that our employees are getting from the world when they join our business. We can understand that they've seen our website, they've tried, maybe they've tried our product, maybe they've heard about experiences that other employees have had through Glassdoor and other things like that. Maybe they know somebody that referred them to the job and thought they might be a good fit. Maybe they know you, they follow you as a founder. They're interested in your story, your success, your achievements. All of those things can really come to play when you, when we start to really consider that there is a lot of control we have over all of the information that we are acknowledging upon somebody's first interaction with their first day of work at our brand. And we can talk all about employer brand and all of those cultural elements that come with essentially the recruiting process, the interviewing process, the hiring process, and all the inputs that our people are seeing out there as they're going through that process, including the role that we can play in generating those inputs for them too. So taking intentional approaches through recruiting. But what we're going to focus on today is really just more about understanding that you have to have the same passion for the way that you onboard and the experience of your employees as you do the customer experience that's paying you. And because there is a power struggle there of, uh, where the money is going, it automatically implies a different approach and a different feel. So what I would like for you to take away from this episode is that you are already well equipped as a passionate founder that cares about the way that people interact with your business from a marketing standpoint. So you can take that information and understand the differentiators that make that could potentially highlight and catapult the way that you bring employees into your company, which will have several different implications. First, a better onboarding is a immediate predictor of long term retention in the company. So the basically m the first 90 days you've got about a 30% chance that you're not going to be able to keep the employee engaged. There's lots of reasons for this, but the main one is that they were likely looking for jobs elsewhere. There's lots of they're in a headspace of being a job seeker. There's lots of opportunities competing for their attention, especially if they're a talented individual and their onboarding is Your responsibility. So. So we want to actually create an ease and a joy that comes with bringing people on board, that helps them to settle in, feel comfortable and start to really picture a long term commitment to you. That is your responsibility to create that experience for them. So no matter which way you shake it out, you have to take full control over the way that people are showing up for your company in the first 90 days. And that does not mean micromanagement. That means creating a space where people can feel free to exceed and excel the expectations that you're giving them so that they can succeed in their job, feel fulfilled, and it's not just a paycheck anymore. And we're going to talk more about that on next week's episode. So please make sure that you tune back in for that. But in this particular instance, I just want to empower you. You are the expert in the experience that your customers are having. Unless you're a senior leader, that doesn't necessarily work directly with the customer experience. And even then you're probably sitting in on meetings and understanding how the customer experience is impacting the overall success of the company. So you have what it takes to be able to translate that passion into the way that you are onboarding your people. And I think there are several elements that come with making an onboarding successful. Number one is going to be making sure that there is a structure in lined with what they can expect on their very first day of work. It's something as simple as ensuring they know essentially where to show up. If you have an in person business, this is fairly easy. You have somebody meet them at the door, walk them through, make sure that they're not left to their own devices for very long. Can be very uncomfortable to show up to a new place. They're probably nervous. What would you want to do to make someone feel comfortable enough to be able to show up for you in the best way that they can? Oftentimes that's just making sure that there's somebody there to guide them and give them the resources they need. The second thing that you can do is make sure that there is a set of expectations that are laid out for them so that they can start to imagine themselves behaving in the way that is going to make them successful. That's going to be a twofold kind of thing. Number one, we have the generalized expectations of the company, the policies that they'll follow, an introduction to the way that the internal structure of the company is run, preferably an introduction to a neutral third party that they're safe to go to. Like an HR representative that has absolutely no real indicator over the success of their job. Somebody that they can go to to ask questions, a person they can lean on when something comes up, somebody that's warm and kind and is available while somebody is starting something new and nervous, likely they will be meeting this person for the very first time on their first day of work. So being able to equip your team, your representatives, if it's not going to be you as the founder, being able to equip your people with the right resources out the gate that are specifically built to ensure that expectations are met and laid out and that they feel comfortable asking questions to somebody that doesn't have any type of skin in the game regarding their performance is going to be critical to ensuring that people feel that they are arriving in a safe place where they can fully show up as themselves. We hire people because of who they are and what they can bring to the company. And in an onboarding process that acknowledges both sides of that is going to be the way that you're able to create a space for people to actually bring a ton of value and make your company more money faster. Another element to this is our culture. So while we may be laying out expectations and things like that in regards to what their day to day is going to look like, the company policies, all of that, which I'll also get back to in a couple minutes, we also want to make sure that they understand the culture and the behaviors that are going to be celebrated and rewarded versus the ones that won't. So it can be something as simple as a conversation around context and using some examples of behaviors that you really hope that they, that you see within this new employee. It can be simple, it could be direct, it could be, you know, basically expounding on boundaries, um, and also giving them space to let them know who you are. So in this particular case, one thing that I will always add to my onboarding process at company companies that I work for fractionally or, um, even my own company, is I will usually tell people, listen, I care a lot about you as an employee. Like, uh, you'll find out whatever. I hope you get that feeling. Now also, I have a little benefit because, like, this is my whole job. So they probably will believe me since I built a business on that literal premise. But at the end of the day, I want people to know I care about them. And what that looks like to me is that they need to know that if I get an email from them or a slack from them that says, I need to talk to you about something. Can you talk tomorrow at 5 o'? Clock? I'm going to be worried about that. Until tomorrow at 5 o', clock, I'm going to be worried about them. I'm going to be worried about what the implication is for my company. I'm going to be worried about if I did something wrong. I'm going to be worried if their feelings were hurt. I'm going to be worried that it involves someone else. I'm going to be worried it's sexual harassment. My brain's going to go all over the place. That is who I am as a founder. I am going to worry about it. So at the end of the day, what I. What this looks like when I start to connect with new employees is I will tell them that out the gate. Thank you for being here. I'm so honored that you've chosen to work for my teeny tiny little company. Um, I want to give some insight onto some of our policies because one of the things that I would just request, and this isn't a policy, is that generally speaking, there may be times when you need to have some extra communication in your first few months of working here. Maybe you're not even reporting to me, but that doesn't mean that I'm not available. My one request is, please. If you send me an email that's asking for a meeting, I would appreciate it greatly if you would include some context and let me know. Hey Kira, I'd love to meet with you tomorrow at 5. I don't 100% want to talk about it right now. It has nothing to do with work. I'm not quitting. But something's going on that I need to share with you and that really makes a big difference. If it does have something to do with work, I would actually appreciate a heads up. Hey Kira, I need to meet with you tomorrow at 5 o' clock and that's the only time that fits on both of our calendars. I. It's fairly urgent and it is going to require some of your support. So basically just letting you know, like this is going to be a serious conversation. This makes a really big difference to me because it helps me to prepare emotionally so that I can fully be there for you. So if there's something going on that's serious, it's not that I don't want you to ask me to meet with you, it's just that I want to make sure that I'm sufficiently prepared most of the time when my team Members ask to me and it's something serious, we will want to meet within the same day. So just giving in that same context as well, of like, if you need to meet with me and it's something really serious, I know you saw that my calendar is completely booked, but because you said it's serious, I'm going to cancel and we can meet in 25 minutes. That's going to be something that I'm actually going to outline to them on their first day. Because I, as a founder, operate and function much better with open communication and time to process. That doesn't necessarily mean that everybody has to fall in line and, you know, talk to me whenever I'm ready. But if you want to have a successful copacetic relationship with me as your boss, it works better for you to adapt your communication style to get the best result. So if I'm stressed out for 24 hours and then you walk in and you say, I want a pay raise, I'm going to be so keyed up thinking something terrible happened to you or that there's something serious going on, I'm not going to be in the right headspace to talk to you about your compensation. It's actually going to work against you. So really I'm trying to give an example here of how you can not just take policies that you've created, but also acknowledge behaviors within the initial 90 day period of working with somebody so that you can help them understand how best to communicate within the culture that you've created. You're giving them a playbook of how they can be successful in their interpersonal relationships with people on your team. So at the end of the day, I think that we have talked a lot about culture and how it impacts everything in your business. We also need to talk about the actual physical things that you need to do in order to ensure success for new team members. And doing these things is absolutely going to put you in a position to have more success with your team as well as long term relationships. Nobody's ever going to be perfect in their job. However, if we know what the expectations are and we find out that we just can't meet them as a collective, as a unit, the two of us here, you interacting with my team, whatever the case may be, the separation is actually much smoother as well. Because really it's about finding a good fit and finding it in the best timing. It's just like making sure that you know, it doesn't even actually have anything to do with your company. Really, your people's decisions to work for you should have something to do with it, but we should be able to guide them into the mission, vision and values and have them be able to be bought in. And that does take a specific type of personality and culture fit. But the people that make a decision to work for your company, they should be making that decision because of things that you are fulfilling for them. The same exact reason that we care about our customers experience, we are solving a problem. We are also solving our employees problem by providing them with a safe, comfortable, comfortable, happy and fulfilling place to work. So the initial onboarding period, while it really sounds a little bit woo woo and whatever is going to be not only the key in ensuring that you are going to be able to get your people to stick around, be committed and give a shit about your company, but it's also 100% your responsibility. Your team member is required to bring their skills and experience to the table based on that you hired them, but you need to give them a framework in which to be successful. When people leave companies voluntarily on in the first 90 days, a lot of times that has nothing to do with us, but there are things we can do to reduce that number. When people leave involuntarily in the first 90 days, it is likely not their fault. And I know that's hard to hear, but the reason that we often are able to terminate people in the first 90 days is usually because they're not showing up as expected. And that is not always going to be something that we can fully put on them. That doesn't mean that it's not, you know, totally valid to be letting somebody go. Um, it is a, it is a two sided relationship, of course, but at the end of the day our goal is to make sure that the investment, the thousands of dollars likely, the time that you have spent, the time that other people have spent into putting this person into this seat in your business. The only way that it's going to work is if you take 100% accountability for their performance in the first 90 days. If you have vetted them correctly, that is 100% your responsibility to know that they have the skills to come in if sometimes people do slip through the cracks. So I'm not saying that there isn't exceptions, but that should not be something that is happening all the time. One thing I just want to point out is that in small business we often hear founders chatting with each other about like, oh, I had another one of those employees that I had to let go, whatever the case may be. And it creates kind of an enabler enablement environment where I would argue that probably half of those experiences were actually the fault of the company itself. But because it is so common, because small businesses do onboarding so wrong that small business owners feel like they just relate to each other on this level. And I mean, I hate to say it, but it's just kind of enabling mediocrity in the onboarding process. Because at the end of the day, I truly believe that if you do everything you can in the hiring process, you give people the space to show up and then you show up fully for them in the initial 90 days, you are going to be able to say I did everything I could and they still didn't get there. And it is going to be a mutual decision between you and the employee at that point. And this happens fairly often. It's bumpy and it's shaky and it kind of sucks. But at the end of the day, we're not here to bend, to bend our will to the people that we hire. So realistically, that onboarding period is, if you are taking 100% accountability for it, the alternative is that it's not that your people are not showing up a hundred percent, you're just getting more out of them sooner. And realistically, if we could do anything, it would be making it a shorter timeline between hiring and the, the functionality of the position. So let's say you're hiring a, uh, director of operations and they're coming into your business and you know that it's going to be an extensive training process because they're footing the bill or they're basically handling the entire operations department. We know that there's interpersonal things to consider, change management systems and processes, all of that good stuff. Let's say that hypothetically they've been vetted correctly, they've done assessments, they've shown their skills, they have marketable, um, or they've marketed their experience. You've proven that you've been that. It's been proven to you that this is proven resources and proven experience. They're bringing to the table all of that stuff. Anything we can control, you're like 100. We're moving forward. You get them onboarded and then you just let them go figure it out by themselves. Nine times out of 10, that employee is going to not only be an absolute waste of money, but they're also going to be really unhappy because high talented people want to be able to perform. And if you're not giving them the framework in which to do that, there's no point in you going through a hiring process in the first place. I would argue that having a solid and structured hiring process is very, very important. But it's not as important as onboarding because onboarding can make or break a good hire. You could have somebody that was 80% your best option and they can come in, have a killer onboarding and start, um, you know, turning over their tasks within a few weeks, if not faster. And you can start seeing a real ROI from that position after 90 days, whether it's time or money, depending on the nature of the role. However, and this is something to consider is that you could hire the best person in the bunch and then it actually lowers the effort that you're putting into their onboarding and lowers the way that you are showing up for them because they are bringing so much to the table and it's a self fulfilling prophecy that they're not given the structure that they need in order to succeed. The m more talented the person is, the more time you should be putting into their onboarding. And that is an inverse of what we see in practice in small business. So I hate to call you out for it. And I've been there too. I mean, I'm doing it right now. I'm messing this up. So at the end of the day, I think it's very important to make sure that we're not only spelling out the importance of this, but we're also measuring the risk that we're taking if we're not doing it right. So just like anything else, if we know, well, there's a lot of risk to me not sending over my tax documents, um, I'm not going to get my taxes done in time. You know, yada yada yada, we know what that risk is. But it can be really easy to have things kind of get away from you a little bit, especially if you're just hiring help for the first time. And we can give ourselves a little bit of grace when it comes to not being a hundred percent perfect in onboarding. But there are likely things that you can do right now to increase the chances and increase the profitability markers of your team members by just addressing certain issues during the onboarding process. And I hate to tell you this, but this is not something you can make a loom video about and systematize. You need to show up face to face and do what you can to improve that person's experience. And yes, it's time consuming and yes, it's difficult. But if I were to ask you right now, what's the biggest expense in your business, you're probably going to say your people. So it's worth your time and it's worth your energy and it's worth your investment. That is all to say that we always want to make everything that we can systemized in the best way possible so that we can remove any of those external variables. So one way that we've been able to do that is if you have a teeny tiny business and you're just hiring for the first time, or you have a couple of employees and you feel like you're doing a pretty good job, but compliance is still an issue for you and that guidance of those team members is still an issue for you. Um, we have actually created a generalized guide which I call our like mini employee handbook that is not only going to protect you in all 50 states. These are state agnostic type of policies. But essentially these six policies are the ones that you need to start setting the standard for how you want your team to behave moving forward. Forward in a really straightforward way. So if you don't have time or resources to purchase the op, um, to basically have somebody help you create a strategic employee handbook, we're not talking about just a bunch of laws and leave rules and blah blah, blah. We're talking about a handbook that actually helps you drive your culture forward and get better results from your team and the processes that go along with that. Then you need to start somewhere. And our six must have policy bundle, which is essentially the way that we want to make sure everybody is onboarded in an appropriate way. It's setting the standard for the way that your policies are going to frame their behaviors. It's the very first step of building a foundation that is going to sustain a team that is going to help you create a profitable business. This is just to say it doesn't have to be complicated. It can be. I need to get something to get me to square one. And in this particular case, this, this product is a digital product that you can use to identify the policies that you need within your company. And all of these are the ones that I refer back to the most when I have to make difficult termination decisions or even disciplinary decisions within the team. Because frankly, if people haven't agreed to any policies, then you're not really holding them to any type of standard when they mess up. And that's where you get into trouble. And that's when I go from being your people and culture advisor to your HR compliance officer. Because if they haven't signed off on it, it there is no reason that somebody's going to be following those rules. And if you are the type of business that is looking for a little bit of structure, but you're not necessarily ready to admit that you need HR support altogether, this is where I would start, because it's going to tackle some of those big issues, but you're also going to take a look at each of those policies and it's going to be very educational because it's going to start to show you the areas in which you need to be more aware when it comes to onboarding team members. So after we have kind of talked through some of the elements that are critical to this, this phase of employment and this phase of your business that you have to provide, onboarding, we can all agree, is extremely important. Challenging you to go back and look at your passion for your customers experience and flipping that upside down for your team, making sure you're prioritizing it. And also I'm giving you that permission because the ROI is going to be big. Yes, of course, Customer experience roi, there's an easy line to follow there. But when it comes to the people on your team, the ROI for being able to show up in this way is going to make the biggest difference of all. And I think that it could be something that many of you just need a little tiny push in that direction to make a massive difference in your profitability. So if you are, uh, a larger company, you already have company policies established, then my challenge for you this week is to take a look at your employee experience the same way that you look at your, that, uh, your customer experience. It's to change the way that you are viewing the approach that you may have taken with employees in the past. To acknowledge the differentiation in power between a customer paying you and you paying an employee, and to really wrap your head around how your leadership really shapes the success of your employees in their first weeks of working with you. By simply making the commitment to realize that 100% of the accountability of your employees, success is on you, that is going to change everything in regards to the way that your people show up for you. And you're going to get so much more out of them and you're going to get it a lot quicker. I, uh, promise. So at the end of the day, there's always outliers. Don't get wrapped up in that. At the end of the day, there's other small business owners that just say, oh, people suck. We can never get the good ones. Um, you know, employees suck, uh, blah, blah, blah. There's always going to be stuff like that out there, and I'm just challenging you to kind of reject that. Stop living in the echo chamber of excuses and actually take accountability for the way that this shows up in your business. We can give you the tools to do that, but at the end of the day, it really does have to come down to you making sure you're arming yourself with the right advice, the right support and the right mindset. You're immediately going to see results from your team that is going to create an exponentially happier place to work that's more warm and welcoming and inviting for new people coming in and is going to increase the time that your team is going to spend with you. Next week, I want to talk a little bit more about why I think your business should have a community feel within it that is going to feel almost like they're in a cult. Creating a cult like community culture for your business can be one of the most rewarding and valued types of places to work work. It increases engagement and fulfillment and it creates spaces for people to show up fully as themselves. So while it feels like we are doing all of this to make more money because people are sticking with us longer, blah blah, blah, blah blah, I would actually turn that right back around and say that creating an environment where people are committed to the cause and committed to the mission and that you are working hard to deserve their attention, their care, their fulfillment and their commitment is going to yield such high level results for you. And I'm so excited to chat more about that next week. So if you enjoyed this episode, of course, leave a review if you're feeling a little lost when it comes to the cultural elements, go back and listen to the episode from last week because we really unpacked what it actually means to build a company culture and how it evolves under your leadership and what role you should play there. That's a really great place to start, especially if you listen to this episode and you feel motivated to kind of grab this project by the horns and make sure that when you are bringing people into your company, their onboarding is just as seamless as when you have them sign off on these six policies and send them on their way. Um, and they always know what's expected of them and they're excited to work for you and be your biggest mouthpiece out in the world. There is going to be so many times when employees do things wrong and there's really nothing we could do about it. Not everybody shows up and is perfect. But I believe that if you show up with a positive mindset and you believe that people say are who they say they are and they want to do what they say they want to do. Most people just want the structure and the, the area in which they can succeed to be right there, laid out in front of them so that they can do their best. Nobody actually shows up and wants to do a bad job. And so I think that if we're able to kind of take that perspective and understand that we can help shape their experience within our company by just simple tweaks and tricks to their onboarding to make sure that they're having a good customer experience. That's a great way for you to infuse any culture and leadership that you already have on the table. If you have an employee that has been working for you for less than 90 days, take this as a call to arms to make sure and get in front of them, have some real conversations and just kind of see where things go. If you've never been a leader in this environment before, it can be really, really valuable, especially at that two month mark to not only just like every, you know, it's kind of business as usual at that point with new employees. So it's a great idea to sit down with them and like really scratch the surface and see where you can go deeper. That's where your profitability lives. That is where it's going to actually start to show up and not just be a time for money exchange. And actually you're going to start to see exponential results from the engagement that you get with your team. So I hope you enjoyed today's lecture. Please leave a comment and a review and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Um, and next week I'm super excited to talk to you more about creating a cult like community within your team. So make sure you come back here for that.