Wendy Sellers - How to Attract and Retain Amazing Employees

[00:00:00] The world of business is more complex than ever. The world of human resources and compensation is also getting more complex. Welcome to the HR Data Labs podcast, your direct source for the latest trends from experts inside and outside the world of human resources. Listen as we explore the impact that compensation strategy, data, and people analytics can have on your organization.

[00:00:25] This podcast is sponsored by salary.com, your source for data, technology, and consulting for compensation and beyond. Now, here are your hosts, David Turetsky and Dwight Brown.

[00:00:38] Hello and welcome to the HR Data Labs podcast. I'm your host, David Turetsky, alongside my trusted friend, co-host, partner in crime, Dwight Brown from salary.com. Dwight Brown, how are you?

[00:00:48] I'm good, David. How are you doing today?

[00:00:50] I'm okay. It's really freaking hot here in Massachusetts.

[00:00:54] Is it?

[00:00:55] Yeah, but I guess I shouldn't complain because we're not, we don't have a hurricane bearing down on us.

[00:00:59] Yeah, that's true. Could always be worse, right?

[00:01:02] Could be. It could be. I hope not, but it could be. But today, Dwight, we have a treat. Today, in the past, just her context, we've had the not the HR lady, Tara, but today we actually have the HR lady, trademarked actually, Wendy Sellers.

[00:01:21] Wendy, how are you?

[00:01:22] Fantastic. How are you?

[00:01:24] I'm okay. Just a little warm, but good.

[00:01:26] Yes, it's a little warm everywhere, and I'm glad I'm not in Texas right now.

[00:01:30] Yes, yes.

[00:01:32] Which is where Tara is, and she's in Texas, I'm in Florida.

[00:01:36] Yes, yes. I have lots of friends in Texas, and right now I'm thinking about them, and this has been a bad weather event, so I hope it goes by quickly. But today, we wanted to talk to you and get to know you a little bit more. So give us a little bit about your background.

[00:01:53] Sure. So I'm currently known as the HR lady, that's saying in my business, and yes, I do have two trademarks on that. I've been in HR longer than I care to admit.

[00:02:05] I think if you've been in HR for more than five years, you already are clinically insane, right?

[00:02:11] I've been saying about seven times over, so that makes total sense right now.

[00:02:14] Yep. So I've been doing HR for closer to three decades now, and about, I don't know, maybe 11, 12 years ago, I went out on my own, decided I wanted to help many people, and that's why I became an HR consultant.

[00:02:30] My primary focus as an HR consultant is with small businesses. They usually just don't have HR, so they're winging it, and they're not always winging it well. So my goal is to help them in an affordable way, and then I do a lot of management training for any size business.

[00:02:47] Oh, that's really cool. So are you a coach, a certified coach?

[00:02:50] I do not do coaching. The only time I do coaching is when I'm dealing with maybe performance improvement plans, but I don't do coaching. I do more consulting to the business owner, the managers who are acting as HR, and then training those managers and those business owners what the heck the laws are, how to do things like performance improvement plans, you name it.

[00:03:14] Usually, if you could train people in a way that they can just understand in their terminology, they get it. It's a miracle, right?

[00:03:22] Right, but understanding and staying on top of all those things is just a job in and of itself, so kudos for that.

[00:03:29] Thank you.

[00:03:29] Especially a small business owner.

[00:03:31] Oh, yeah.

[00:03:32] So, Wendy, what's one fun thing that no one knows about you?

[00:03:39] You know, I'm kind of an open book, so most people know a little bit of everything, but one fun thing that some of our listeners may not know is that I live in my RV.

[00:03:47] So that's where I'm calling in from right now. I live in my RV in St. Pete, Florida, and I've been living in it for, geez, eight, eight and a half years, and I love it.

[00:03:58] I don't think I'm ever going back to traditional housing.

[00:04:01] Well, I mean, you started, you were starting the trend of tiny houses, so, I mean.

[00:04:07] Yeah, the funny thing is I used to always want a tiny house, but there's not always places to put them, you know.

[00:04:13] The communities don't always have tiny house communities.

[00:04:17] I think post-pandemic, there's probably more of them, and they're not that cheap either.

[00:04:21] They're very expensive.

[00:04:24] Yeah, but RVs, we've seen RVs that are extreme amounts of money as well.

[00:04:29] It kind of depends on the size and the capabilities you're looking for.

[00:04:33] Yeah, absolutely.

[00:04:34] I used to have a motor home that I drove across the country on a 69-day trip by myself,

[00:04:40] and last year I switched that out, and I have a travel trailer that you pull.

[00:04:45] Oh, cool. Nice.

[00:04:47] Yeah.

[00:04:48] So do you still tour around a lot?

[00:04:49] I haven't since I got this new one.

[00:04:52] I'm living in a really fun city blocks away from downtown, so I'm like, eh, I'll jump on a plane if I want to go somewhere.

[00:05:01] But you could.

[00:05:03] You could.

[00:05:04] Right.

[00:05:04] Especially if there's a weather event that comes toward your area.

[00:05:08] Oh, yes.

[00:05:08] I've escaped one too many times in my RV because of hurricanes, because, again, I am in Florida, so hurricanes are everywhere.

[00:05:16] I'm saying, I absolutely can.

[00:05:17] I'm just currently choosing not to.

[00:05:20] Yeah.

[00:05:21] Nothing wrong with that.

[00:05:22] Not unless you're forced.

[00:05:23] Yeah.

[00:05:24] Totally get it.

[00:05:25] Yep.

[00:05:26] Yeah.

[00:05:26] Well, hopefully we won't hear of anything, you know, that forces you to do it.

[00:05:29] So, yeah, exactly.

[00:05:30] We're going to keep our fingers crossed.

[00:05:31] Yeah.

[00:05:31] So, the topic for today is one that we've talked about a few times, and I think it comes very close to the hearts of all HR people, no matter what function you're part of, which is how to attract and retain amazing employees.

[00:05:55] So, the first question for you, Wendy, what is the top concern of employers?

[00:06:00] These days, it's finding employees, you know, that have the knowledge, skills, and abilities that is needed for the job at hand, and then keeping them is the next one.

[00:06:10] Right.

[00:06:11] Well, you talked about in the topic, we talk about amazing employees, and there's a gigantic differential between average employee and amazing, I hope, right?

[00:06:20] Yeah.

[00:06:21] There really is, you know, people want to hire somebody and be like, oh, yeah, they're going to start the first day, and they're just going to be awesome and knock it out of the ballpark.

[00:06:30] But, you know, there's so much that's required to make that happen.

[00:06:33] So, the first thing is finding the amazing employee, which the manager needs to be involved in, and we have to get it, you know, I can go down how to do that if you want, or shall I wait?

[00:06:47] Well, and I think one of the bigger problems is that you could hire an employee in one company, and they're amazing.

[00:06:53] Hire another employee, different culture, different background of the company, and they're not amazing.

[00:07:00] We've seen that happen time and time again.

[00:07:02] Right.

[00:07:03] And you'll get, you know, former employers or teammates, coworkers to do the testimonials and the reviews of the new candidate.

[00:07:12] And, of course, you know, you would think that nobody would put on their job application, oh, call this employer because they're going to give me, you know, bad information.

[00:07:22] But you'd be surprised how many people do put as a reference somebody who does not give them a good reference.

[00:07:29] So, that's a whole other conversation about figuring out how to properly recruit.

[00:07:34] But finding people alone, never mind amazing people, is very difficult, and it's expensive.

[00:07:41] It's very expensive since the pandemic.

[00:07:44] Didn't we used to talk about the word referral as being kind of the best source of hire?

[00:07:48] At least I remember that, you know, we always used to ask people, you know, we want to hire good people.

[00:07:55] So, you know, go back into your, you know, history.

[00:07:59] Find people you think would fit in this culture and let them know that we have a job opening.

[00:08:04] Is that not the case anymore?

[00:08:06] No, it is.

[00:08:07] But the thing is, it's so competitive out there that if you, so let me back up here a minute.

[00:08:14] If you have an amazing culture and that's what you're bragging about to the candidates and your employees truly do believe you have an amazing culture, you don't even have to ask them to refer.

[00:08:26] They're trying to get their friends in anyways.

[00:08:28] You know, their friends already know, oh, I work for an amazing company and I want in.

[00:08:32] Let me know when there's an opening.

[00:08:34] But if you had to basically pry it out of your employees' hands to say, please, please refer somebody to me, please.

[00:08:42] Then you probably have some cultural issues or management issues or something is going on that the employees aren't already bragging about you and getting people in there.

[00:08:52] There's also the possibility of paying your employees, like a bonus or something.

[00:08:57] Right.

[00:08:58] As I say, hey, if you refer somebody, we'll give you a bonus or whatever you, whatever kind of, you know, money it is.

[00:09:04] You know, there's two sides to that coin because they may just refer somebody and then split the money with that candidate or something like that.

[00:09:12] And then they're there 90 days and they walk out.

[00:09:15] And so, you know, there's never like an easy solution when you're trying to get your current employees to refer.

[00:09:22] My one big concern is, like, yes, if you have a great company, let them brag, let them send people in, reward your employees for sending in their friends, their neighbors, their cousins, whoever it is.

[00:09:33] Make sure it's legit.

[00:09:34] You still got to interview them.

[00:09:35] But be careful that you're not getting the same type of employees over and over again.

[00:09:40] And by the same type, I mean gender, gender orientation, you know, race, disability, ability.

[00:09:46] We tend to hang out with people that are like us.

[00:09:49] So it kind of can hurt with your, you know, if you're having any kind of initiative to get some diverse people in there.

[00:09:58] Yeah.

[00:09:58] Especially if you start with the nepotism channel.

[00:10:01] Yep.

[00:10:02] Right.

[00:10:03] Not only do they look like them, they really do.

[00:10:06] But they're all related.

[00:10:08] So when one person leaves, you know, or one person has a problem, then basically that entire group has a problem.

[00:10:16] Yeah, it's hard.

[00:10:17] So there's a catch 22.

[00:10:19] I'm through it.

[00:10:20] You know, I'm definitely for hiring friends and even family.

[00:10:23] But you got to have your rules set up.

[00:10:25] You have to have your handbook set up.

[00:10:26] You have your managers trained.

[00:10:28] You still have to interview.

[00:10:29] And you still have to pick the best of the best, even if they're related to the owner or the manager or whoever it might be.

[00:10:35] As difficult as that might be.

[00:10:37] It's not, you know, very challenging.

[00:10:40] Especially if the owner is referring somebody.

[00:10:42] It's hard to say.

[00:10:44] Sorry.

[00:10:45] You know.

[00:10:45] Well, if the owner respected the HR person and the managers, then they should be able to say, they should say, OK, here's a candidate.

[00:10:57] Pick, you know, you guys pick whoever is the best for the job.

[00:11:00] But we know that doesn't always work out.

[00:11:02] That's not the reality of the situation.

[00:11:05] Yeah.

[00:11:05] We all like our jobs.

[00:11:06] And we figure we probably got better job security if we don't go against what the owner says.

[00:11:12] Yeah.

[00:11:13] Unfortunately, that is.

[00:11:14] I mean, it's the reality of the situation.

[00:11:16] I'm a very realistic person.

[00:11:17] So you just may have to change the job ad or something like that or the job description so that it's 100 percent clear that we need these candidates to have X, Y, Z.

[00:11:27] And when the owner hands you them said they don't have that skill or have the capability of getting that skill, that's why I'm turning it down.

[00:11:35] You know, your candidate referral.

[00:11:37] Yeah.

[00:11:37] Which you have to do very carefully, by the way.

[00:11:39] Yes.

[00:11:40] Yes.

[00:11:41] But I want to ask you one other question.

[00:11:43] You had mentioned as part of the first question answer that it's still a hard market to try and find good people in.

[00:11:51] Right.

[00:11:51] The market is still really tough.

[00:11:55] What's going to change for that?

[00:11:56] I mean, because the demographics aren't going to change dramatically any day soon.

[00:12:00] Although, you know, the graying of the workforce still is happening right now.

[00:12:04] There's still a lot of us like me who are getting near retirement age, even though I'm never going to be able to retire.

[00:12:12] Thank you to my children.

[00:12:14] But I mean, how do we deal with the fact that our demographics and our immigration policies are really not being very favorable to, you know, helping win that talent war?

[00:12:53] Yeah.

[00:12:55] And they're the longest or because, you know, they're willing to take the job.

[00:12:58] If we have good managers, then the employees who are struggling will be able to get helped by the managers and, you know, trained up, upskilled.

[00:13:08] And if we have good managers, less people will be walking out the door because they had a bad day.

[00:13:14] And then that's how we retain people.

[00:13:16] So we have to really learn how to treat employees like they're valued, even if they're not the your number one choice.

[00:13:23] It's your only choice.

[00:13:25] You know, it's your only choice.

[00:13:26] We're not being able to hire anybody else for whatever reason it might be.

[00:13:31] These are your choices here.

[00:13:32] So let's work with what we have, including upskilling our employees and making sure that the managers are trained to be managers and not just shoved in there because they're the only one that took the job.

[00:13:43] Right.

[00:13:44] I'm curious.

[00:13:45] You know, we for the longest time, we were talking about the great resignation.

[00:13:50] And, you know, now, matter of fact, we have many episodes where we talked about the great resignation.

[00:13:55] And now the the tide's kind of shifting.

[00:13:58] Have you seen that shift in the clients that you're working with and their ability to be able to attract and retain amazing people?

[00:14:06] I would say I've definitely seen it slow down of the employees being voluntarily leaving, but it's still happening.

[00:14:15] Even people like just in my group of friends who are working in decent jobs, every single one of them has an updated resume.

[00:14:24] Every single one of them is still looking at the job ads that are coming through their email.

[00:14:27] They haven't unsubscribed from those job ads yet.

[00:14:30] So people are still looking.

[00:14:31] They're just kind of going to wait and see, like, OK, let's see what's going to happen.

[00:14:36] You know, since of this news channel over here, the, you know, things are going on in the economy.

[00:14:41] And listen to this one over here.

[00:14:42] And then, of course, we have a presidential election year.

[00:14:45] So I think people are saying, OK, let me just hold on right now.

[00:14:48] They haven't fired me.

[00:14:49] I haven't quit.

[00:14:50] I'm still looking for another job, but I'm not as active about it.

[00:14:54] But if something falls into their lap, I think most people will be more than willing, especially if it's the pay and the benefits are there, are more than willing to jump ship and go somewhere else.

[00:15:04] So, you know, for the employers that are listening, don't get too comfortable thinking, oh, you know, we're back in charge.

[00:15:11] The employees and candidates aren't in charge anymore because they still really are.

[00:15:16] And how did you, you know, really assess that in your company?

[00:15:20] If you if one person leaves, I don't care if you have 25 employees or twenty five hundred employees.

[00:15:26] But if one person leaves a team and it kind of destroys the week of the entire team, then that's how you know that the employees are still in charge.

[00:15:35] You know, if you if you're saying I don't have somebody just lying around to put in their position or I can't go and put an ad out and have somebody fill the position by the end of the week.

[00:15:46] That's to me how I know, OK, well, we're still not in charge.

[00:15:49] Then the employees are still in charge right now.

[00:15:52] Interesting. Right. Right.

[00:15:54] Yeah.

[00:15:56] Like what you hear so far?

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[00:16:01] This podcast is made possible by salary dot com.

[00:16:04] Now back to the show.

[00:16:06] One of the things I wanted to ask you before we move on is there's a there's a sentiment that we feel a lot about quiet quitting,

[00:16:15] which is, you know, less engagement.

[00:16:17] And it kind of goes along with the whole problem that Dwight was talking about, about people, you know, disengaging and leaving and feeling empowered.

[00:16:25] And you kind of talked about this a little bit.

[00:16:28] But there's always been a rainbow.

[00:16:30] There's always been a kind of a large range between someone who's actively engaged and someone who's actively disengaged and causing harm.

[00:16:38] There's also the good performers and bad performers and a range as well, including the people who are pretty average.

[00:16:46] And when we're looking at the people, especially in hard economic times and we're looking at people to cut, we first go to those people who are disengaged and bad performers.

[00:16:56] And we start looking at them and saying, well, we've got to let them go.

[00:16:59] But when we come out of these hard times, we're going to find it.

[00:17:03] It's really hard to try and replace them.

[00:17:04] Right.

[00:17:05] I mean, from what you're saying, it's not like there are a ton of people out there that we're going to be able to get back into those positions and backfill.

[00:17:12] So, yeah, I might I might get rid of the people who are actively disengaged, the people who are causing harm to the company, but not necessarily terrible performer, not necessarily average to semi bad performers.

[00:17:23] I might want to coach them and be able to train them into something else.

[00:17:26] Right.

[00:17:26] Right.

[00:17:26] Yeah, absolutely.

[00:17:28] I really just wrote a training this morning on performance improvement plans and the fact that, you know, we should stop only putting people on PIPs performance improvement plans because you want to get them out the door.

[00:17:42] Right.

[00:17:42] We should be treating everybody at all the time of saying we want to make sure your performance and your behavior is as good as it possibly can be.

[00:17:52] And always have our every single one of our employees on some kind of development program.

[00:17:58] Doesn't mean that they're an intense coaching or PIPs or even training, but there should be ongoing feedback year round.

[00:18:06] We wait too long.

[00:18:07] I mean, it blows my mind when people say we only do one review a year.

[00:18:12] I'm like, so you wait 364 days to talk to your employee who's not doing that great.

[00:18:17] Or on the other hand, it is doing great to let them know officially that, hey, good job or not good job.

[00:18:25] Like we should be the once a year reviews.

[00:18:28] They drive me crazy.

[00:18:29] We should just get rid of them.

[00:18:30] Now, I understand some organizations, especially public organizations, you know, it's written into their bylaws or something like that.

[00:18:38] That's fine.

[00:18:39] Then recap the 12 months worth of feedback sessions.

[00:18:42] But it's all about feedback and making sure your employees have a job description and that it's right year round, not once a year.

[00:18:50] Once every five years when you're looking to replace them.

[00:18:53] We should be doing compensation analysis, making sure that we're paying our employees what the market is asking for.

[00:19:01] And then even surveying the employees and saying, what benefits do you want?

[00:19:05] Maybe they don't want, you know, X amount of sick days, but they want more PTO or they want, you know, whatever it might be.

[00:19:12] Bringing their pet into the office.

[00:19:13] You know, get creative.

[00:19:16] But ask your employees what they want.

[00:19:19] But if you just say, hey, what do you want?

[00:19:21] That's, you're not going to get an answer.

[00:19:23] You have to definitely, you know, have a lot more specifics because employees aren't us.

[00:19:28] They're not managers or not HR.

[00:19:30] They don't really know the answer that you're looking for.

[00:19:32] So, going a little bit all over the board here, but everybody that should be listening is, first thing I would say is job descriptions.

[00:19:40] Let's look at the job descriptions.

[00:19:42] Are they right?

[00:19:43] And then let's build smart goals and career plans out of the job descriptions.

[00:19:47] And then also for, if you are interviewing, build the appropriately and the right interview questions from that job description.

[00:19:56] And then the same thing with the reviews, too.

[00:19:58] Using the job description for a review.

[00:20:00] It doesn't have to be this complicated review form.

[00:20:03] You could literally just be printing out your job description and then sitting down with the employee line by line saying, okay, how are things going?

[00:20:12] What's going on?

[00:20:14] What can I help you with?

[00:20:16] Good old passion conversations.

[00:20:17] Good old passion conversations.

[00:20:19] But that's what's gotten lost, I think, in the entire world of performance management.

[00:20:25] Because managers now say, well, you screwed up last week, so I'm going to keep belting you with that.

[00:20:30] Or you haven't made your numbers in a couple of months, even though you're a star performer for the first, you know, however many months.

[00:20:37] And so what I think I hear you saying is that we need a lot more manager training, right?

[00:20:45] We need to be able to help managers understand how to be managers.

[00:20:50] Yeah, we really do.

[00:20:52] Managers in today's workforce, not managers in 20 years ago.

[00:20:55] We really do.

[00:20:56] And, you know, managers shouldn't feel bad about going to training because the world has changed.

[00:21:05] That's the end of the story is the world has changed.

[00:21:08] And we need to keep those managers, you know, understanding, hey, this is what's going on in the workplace now.

[00:21:15] Here's, you know, terminology, laws.

[00:21:17] Oh, my goodness.

[00:21:18] So many laws have changed the past few years in HR land.

[00:21:22] And managers need that training.

[00:21:24] It could be as simple as just sitting down with three or four managers in a conference room and then, hey, what's your number one problem?

[00:21:32] And then everybody talking it out together so they can learn from each other and they can lean on each other.

[00:21:37] But often they're afraid to ask because they think it's going to be egg on their face because they're asking for the training or asking for more time with a director.

[00:21:47] It's just it's just insane.

[00:21:48] Well, and it's easy.

[00:21:49] It's easy for managers to say, well, I got management training 25 years ago, so I've got all that I need.

[00:21:56] And it's easy to forget that you things change.

[00:22:00] Your work environment changes.

[00:22:02] I mean, going back to the demographic discussion, the demographic has severely changed from, I think, of my management classes, which were 20, 25 years ago.

[00:22:16] And I think of what it would be to manage the new demographic coming in fresh out of college.

[00:22:23] I'd need refresher.

[00:22:24] I'd need updating.

[00:22:26] Yeah, absolutely.

[00:22:27] And not even that's right.

[00:22:28] How about fresh out of high school?

[00:22:30] Because not everybody's going to college, you know, so they don't even get that experience, that college experience of, you know, dealing with other diverse people that are not like them and things like that.

[00:22:42] They're coming right out of high school.

[00:22:44] And many of them coming out of high school are, you know, they're super, super smart, but they don't have the business sense.

[00:22:50] So we have to teach them that.

[00:22:53] And we expect miracles of a 17-year-old or an 18-year-old.

[00:22:57] Heck, we expect miracles of a 30-year-old.

[00:22:59] And it's like, you know, we have to put ourselves in those new, those young people's shoes to say, well, did I know this stuff when I was that age?

[00:23:10] No.

[00:23:11] We forget.

[00:23:11] We think we did, but we did not.

[00:23:14] We're now managing people whose brains are literally still developing.

[00:23:18] Yeah.

[00:23:18] But the problem is also everything has evolved so much.

[00:23:23] I mean, forget about the laws.

[00:23:25] Forget about the regulations.

[00:23:26] The world has evolved.

[00:23:28] It is not the same world that when I came into the world of work.

[00:23:33] It's not the same.

[00:23:34] The people are different.

[00:23:36] The people, the cultures are different.

[00:23:38] And, you know, and then introduce all the laws where what you can say and what you can't say, what you can do and what you can't do, what, you know, who you can promote and what you can do about that.

[00:23:50] It's all different.

[00:23:51] And I'm not saying it's bad or it's good.

[00:23:54] It's just different.

[00:23:55] It's just different.

[00:23:55] Yeah, trying to, you know, rely on stuff that I learned over the last 35 years is stupid.

[00:24:01] I need to learn, too.

[00:24:03] I need to get training.

[00:24:04] Right.

[00:24:05] Everybody does.

[00:24:06] Yeah, it really does.

[00:24:07] Like I said, I was doing creating a performance improvement plan training for managers this morning, and I'm like looking at the form.

[00:24:14] I'm like, OK, we need to update these forms because they're so outdated and nobody even uses a form.

[00:24:23] They're usually going to use, you know, their cell phone or some, you know, something that can be written on a smart device.

[00:24:30] But even those forms on the smart devices, all they are is basically just taking the document that you have and putting it in a form.

[00:24:39] I mean, all it is is a now web-based form.

[00:24:41] Still the same thing.

[00:24:42] I don't know if you ever dealt with the manila envelopes with the really secure red string on them.

[00:24:47] It's basically our mascot.

[00:24:49] And, you know, that's how I used to send increased recommendations to managers, you know, making sure it had that red string attached because if it didn't, then it wasn't secure.

[00:25:01] It just blows my mind.

[00:25:03] That just sounds insane right now.

[00:25:06] But many large organizations still use that, too.

[00:25:10] A lot of colleges still use it.

[00:25:12] Yeah, but then again, those HRASs, they were built or designed with taking that form and making it routine.

[00:25:20] So all of the forms that we see, you know, the workflows may be more variable and they could have conditional logic in them.

[00:25:28] Well, you could get that from the mailroom.

[00:25:29] All you do is put the conditional logic as the next person who is going to get that manila envelope.

[00:25:35] Kind of like your form 1040 every April 15th.

[00:25:39] Oh, you know, that's so painful to talk about, even think about.

[00:25:43] But no, but you're right, though, right?

[00:25:45] I mean, but if you're, are you a tax professional, Dwight?

[00:25:50] You're not, right?

[00:25:51] Yeah, exactly.

[00:25:52] But you still have to fill out that form.

[00:25:54] Right.

[00:25:55] And it's the same thing with HR, right?

[00:25:57] Where, I mean, even HR professionals have to relearn things every year.

[00:26:02] That's where I was going with that, Dwight.

[00:26:03] But we have to...

[00:26:05] I wonder where you're going with that.

[00:26:07] Yeah, even the experts need to learn what's changing.

[00:26:09] Like the new laws that come out, the new pay transparency laws.

[00:26:13] You know, we have to know in that state, what is the minimum requirement for satisfactory compliance with that law?

[00:26:20] Well, not everybody's going to know that.

[00:26:22] And Wendy, in your world, when you deal with small businesses, you know, how do you train them to be able to understand how these requirements uniquely, because it's a small business world, how do they understand how to actually comply with those regulations?

[00:26:39] Yeah, so I do it like an audit when I get a new client.

[00:26:44] And it's literally just a spreadsheet.

[00:26:46] And it's like, okay, let's start here.

[00:26:47] Let's just start answering these basic questions for me so I can figure out, are you compliant with just the necessities?

[00:26:56] And then if you're not, we got to get you there.

[00:26:58] And then the second thing is, if you are, okay, now let's move on to the functionality.

[00:27:03] You know, what HR really is.

[00:27:05] HR in the past used to be forms and paperwork and even payroll, which never made sense to me.

[00:27:11] Payroll should not be in HR, but that's a whole other conversation.

[00:27:14] Separation of duties is what's really needed.

[00:27:17] But, you know, let's get the functional part of the compliance part taken care of.

[00:27:23] But the rest is, okay, what do you do when there's violence in the workplace?

[00:27:27] What do you do when somebody just yelled at somebody or threw a book at somebody or stomped out of here and are in the, you know, in the parking garage or parking lot yelling at the top of their lungs or crying?

[00:27:39] Like, what do you do?

[00:27:40] So most managers are not prepared for that because they're like, whoa, I was supposed to manage if you got, you know, 50 pieces of this widget in a box.

[00:27:49] I didn't know I was going to have to manage your emotions.

[00:27:51] Right.

[00:27:52] Well, all generations definitely have emotions, but the younger generations and this goes for no matter if we're doing this in 50 years from now, I'm going to have the same conversation.

[00:28:03] The younger generations, right?

[00:28:05] They still have to learn how to be professional and everything.

[00:28:08] But they're, we need them, so they're in charge.

[00:28:11] So we have to realize as managers and as business owners that, yeah, people's emotions do matter.

[00:28:17] And you can't just tell them to suck it up, buttercup, which is the name of my book.

[00:28:22] You know, you can't just tell them to suck it up.

[00:28:24] You have to say, okay, we're going to suck it up together and this is what I'm going to do to help you manage your emotions.

[00:28:31] But I'm still going to hold you accountable, but then I'm going to help you.

[00:28:35] And if it happens again, you know, you're out the door.

[00:28:40] Hey, are you listening to this and thinking to yourself, man, I wish I could talk to David about this.

[00:28:45] Well, you're in luck.

[00:28:46] We have a special offer for listeners of the HR Data Labs podcast.

[00:28:50] A free half hour call with me about any of the topics we cover on the podcast or whatever is on your mind.

[00:28:57] Go to salary.com forward slash HRDLConsulting to schedule your free 30 minute call today.

[00:29:06] But we also have to worry about them getting violent.

[00:29:08] Yeah, absolutely.

[00:29:09] And all too often it's happening, you know, not in just small businesses, even in large businesses, but specifically in small businesses.

[00:29:15] We may not hear about it a lot because it doesn't make us, you know, the big headlines that the large businesses do.

[00:29:22] It's unfortunate.

[00:29:23] It just, there's a lot of mental health issues that aren't getting dealt with.

[00:29:27] And that's what, a lot of times, that's what leads to that, right?

[00:29:30] Yeah, it really is.

[00:29:31] Because there's a, the one thing that I love about the two youngest generations, Gen Y and Gen Z, is that they are, for the most part, I'm generalizing, obviously.

[00:29:43] But they're open to saying, hey, I have this condition and I need help.

[00:29:48] Where the other generations, we were kind of taught to hide it.

[00:29:52] You know, it was like an embarrassment or something like that.

[00:29:55] Where now they're like, nope, I have this issue.

[00:29:57] I have this issue.

[00:29:58] Some still don't, depending on how they were raised and their family.

[00:30:01] And managers are just sitting there freezing going, you have a mental health condition.

[00:30:05] I'm not prepared for that.

[00:30:06] I don't know what to do.

[00:30:08] You know, help.

[00:30:09] And then they don't know what to do.

[00:30:10] So they ignore them or they avoid them.

[00:30:12] Well, that's not going to help the employee.

[00:30:14] And it's certainly not going to help your customer.

[00:30:16] No.

[00:30:16] All right.

[00:30:17] It's this lingering fear of something that we don't understand as managers and understand how we deal with it.

[00:30:25] Which goes back to what you were talking about before.

[00:30:27] There's ongoing education that needs to happen.

[00:30:29] And, you know, it's kind of a constant thing.

[00:30:33] It really is.

[00:30:34] I mean, I'm the HR lady.

[00:30:36] I do management training all day, every day.

[00:30:38] That's a majority of my business these days since the pandemic.

[00:30:41] Because a lot of companies said, oh, we need to train our managers because we have turnover and we need to keep people.

[00:30:47] And I learn stuff every single day from employment attorneys, from consultants, from you, you know, every single day.

[00:30:55] So we have to realize, like, the world is continuing to change.

[00:30:59] It's not going to stop anytime soon.

[00:31:00] And we need to allow our managers the time to learn and then the time to implement.

[00:31:07] And so that's the other thing.

[00:31:09] It's costly to run a business these days because you might have had a working manager before.

[00:31:16] And, you know, maybe 10% of their work was managing humans.

[00:31:21] Well, now it's probably more 50% of their time is managing humans where 50% is doing some, you know, project work or something like that.

[00:31:31] And that's a hard pill for employers to swallow.

[00:31:35] They're like, well, I just lost an employee because I promoted them to management.

[00:31:40] I'm like, yeah, but if you don't promote them to management and get them trained, you're going to lose a lot more employees.

[00:31:45] Right.

[00:31:45] Do you see there being a big difference in the size of the company and how much training managers need?

[00:31:53] Yes and no.

[00:31:55] So here's the thing.

[00:31:56] In small businesses, which is a majority of American businesses, they don't have HR.

[00:32:02] You know, they probably don't have a CFO.

[00:32:04] If they do, it's a consultant.

[00:32:06] They don't have the expertise in-house.

[00:32:09] So the managers are picking that up.

[00:32:12] They might be a little bit of accounting, a little bit of payroll, a little bit of HR.

[00:32:16] And so they need to be trained more on the laws and the, you know, the day-to-day behind the scenes.

[00:32:24] Where in bigger companies, maybe you have a full-blown HR department and you don't need to know about the ADA in detail.

[00:32:34] But you do need to know about it a little bit because you're going to need to hear things and spot things and say, you know that, I think my employee has a disability.

[00:32:43] Let me run to HR.

[00:32:44] They can tell me what to do and then I'll run back.

[00:32:47] So you still need to know a little bit of something in a big company and then be an expert on how to communicate and give reviews and hire and things like that.

[00:32:57] So, you know, the answer is yes and no.

[00:33:00] They need to know something about everything, no matter what size company they are.

[00:33:05] Hopefully the smaller companies will have some kind of consultant like myself that they can say, you don't need to be an expert, John Manager over here, but you need to know this.

[00:33:14] And when this happens, call Andy.

[00:33:17] Right, exactly.

[00:33:18] And I think that the companies that fail typically are the ones that say, nah, these people have it.

[00:33:26] John knows what to do.

[00:33:27] Don't worry about it.

[00:33:29] Yeah.

[00:33:29] And John doesn't really know what to do.

[00:33:32] And John's struggling.

[00:33:33] And John leaves because he's like, I can't deal with this anymore.

[00:33:36] I don't know how to deal with people.

[00:33:38] I don't.

[00:33:39] There are too many issues.

[00:33:40] Right.

[00:33:41] Well, John was trained by his manager 20 years ago to just yell at people and they'll do what you want them to do.

[00:33:49] Right.

[00:33:49] Exactly.

[00:33:51] Yeah.

[00:33:51] Hit them with a stick.

[00:33:53] Yeah.

[00:33:54] Right.

[00:33:54] Just, you know, threaten them or whatever it is.

[00:33:57] And it's like back then you just fell in line and you were like, okay, no problem.

[00:34:01] You were still mad as an employee, but you were like, no problem.

[00:34:04] And now you're like, I'm out of here, John, because I have 20 other companies that have been begging me to work for them.

[00:34:09] And even if it's less money, I'm going because I don't want to deal with you.

[00:34:13] Like we were talking about before, they still have the power of using their feet.

[00:34:16] Yeah.

[00:34:17] To be able to find another job.

[00:34:18] And the other thing is, even if they don't walk out the door, they can just quit and stay.

[00:34:23] Right.

[00:34:23] Right.

[00:34:23] They can just say, I'll do the bare minimum because you're not a great manager and you won't realize it anyways.

[00:34:29] So I'll do the bare minimum and I'll collect my paycheck, but I'm not going above and beyond not one iota.

[00:34:35] And again, because you're not a good manager, it's not going to make a difference to me.

[00:34:39] I'm just going to be miserable to be around and then I'm going to bring everybody else down.

[00:34:44] Right.

[00:34:44] Right.

[00:34:45] Again, that manager now causes a huge crisis inside the company that the owners don't know about until it actually hurts them real bad.

[00:34:53] And it's usually something like this that I get a lot is, yeah, but that manager has this one technical certification that we need in order to keep it.

[00:35:02] Oh, yeah.

[00:35:03] And it's like, oh, my goodness.

[00:35:05] No, go pay double of its salary somewhere else.

[00:35:09] Make that person an employee.

[00:35:11] And trust me, when your employees are doing cartwheels in the parking lot because you got rid of, you know, a bad manager or a bad employee, there's your clue that you should have done this a long time ago.

[00:35:23] Yeah.

[00:35:23] Workplace toxicity is just awful.

[00:35:26] It makes everybody's jobs so much harder and it just makes our lives unlivable.

[00:35:32] It really does.

[00:35:33] And then if they have if they're on your health insurance plan, it makes your health insurance claims go up, too.

[00:35:38] Well, yeah, why is everybody on all kinds of downstreet?

[00:35:42] Yeah, exactly.

[00:35:44] Blood pressure medication and anti-anxiety medication.

[00:35:49] It's a great mix.

[00:35:52] Well, and HIPAA does not allow us to talk about that more.

[00:35:56] No.

[00:35:57] So we're going to walk away from that one.

[00:36:07] Wendy, it was a pleasure having you.

[00:36:09] This was an amazing discussion.

[00:36:11] I feel so much better about, you know, knowing the fact that training is such a key component for all size businesses, but most specifically in different ways.

[00:36:22] And so thank you very much for being here.

[00:36:24] Yeah.

[00:36:25] Thank you for having me.

[00:36:26] I'm here.

[00:36:26] I'm here to help.

[00:36:27] And in the show notes, we're going to put a link to your book.

[00:36:30] And what was that again?

[00:36:32] Suck it up.

[00:36:33] Suck it up.

[00:36:33] Suck it up.

[00:36:34] Buttercup.

[00:36:37] There you go.

[00:36:38] Perfect.

[00:36:38] Well, people, you can't see it on the audio, but Wendy just put up the Suck it up Buttercup cover of her book.

[00:36:45] Please go take a look at it and then call Wendy if you need any help and you're a small business and you don't actually have to be in Florida.

[00:36:53] Yeah, absolutely.

[00:36:54] I help people all over the country and I'll be rolling out a subscription based service soon as well.

[00:37:01] And it'll be very affordable.

[00:37:03] There you go.

[00:37:04] Great job.

[00:37:05] Well, again, thank you very much.

[00:37:06] And Dwight, thank you as well.

[00:37:08] Thank you.

[00:37:08] Thanks for being with us today, Wendy.

[00:37:09] This is great.

[00:37:10] Thank you.

[00:37:11] Thank you all for listening.

[00:37:13] Take care and stay safe.

[00:37:15] That was the HR Data Labs podcast.

[00:37:18] If you like the episode, please subscribe.

[00:37:21] And if you know anyone that might like to hear it, please send it their way.

[00:37:25] Thank you for joining us this week and stay tuned for our next episode.

[00:37:28] Stay safe.