Mission to Grow: A Small Business Guide to Cash, Compliance, and the War for Talent

MTG - #111 Mary Simmons
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Mike: [00:00:00] The 2024 HR Benchmark Report is in, and today we're on episode number four in our series as we unpack the report, uh, real quick. Here's what we did. We got respondents from over 1, 000 small businesses, 1, 065 respondents to the survey. Where we asked 40 questions, 5 questions in each of 8 categories from pre employment through post employment, recruiting and hiring, benefits, onboarding, development, compliance, retention, performance, and post employment.

There are yes, no questions. And then the last question at the end, we said, what best describes you last year? Was it a fast growth year? Was it a growth year or was it a zero growth year? Were you down? Were you shrinking? We then correlated revenue growth to HR questions. Did you do these areas? So today we're unpacking development and here's the spoiler alert.

Massive, massive correlation between answering yes [00:01:00] to five questions around development around developing your employees, developing your leaders, et cetera. Uh, those five questions have a 30 percentage point spread between the fast growth firms and the zero growth firms. So huge, huge impact, really excited to take you through the details.

Intro: Welcome to Mission to Grow, the small business guide to cash, compliance, and the war for talent. I'm your host, Mike Vannoy. Each week, we'll bring you experts in accounting, finance, human resources, benefits, employment law, and more. You'll learn ways to access capital through creative financing and tax strategies, tactical information you need to stay compliant with ever changing employment laws, and people strategies you need to win the war for talent.

Mission to Grow is sponsored by Asure. Asure helps more than 100, 000 businesses get access to capital. Stay compliant, and develop the talent they need to grow. Enjoy the show!

Mike: Okay, we're continuing the conversation today and we're talking about [00:02:00] development. Uh, everybody knows my guest, Mary. Mary, welcome back to the show.

Mary: Thanks, Mike. Well,

Mike: uh, uh, you got the setup of what the SMB HR Benchmark Survey is, all the different categories, all the questions, and how we're correlating the responses of those questions to actual revenue growth.

For businesses and then carving out in, in, in these sessions, we're going to, we're going to look specifically at what size companies. So how does, how do smaller firms under 25 employees differ than say the, the broader population? And so if you're following along at home, I hope you are, you download the, uh, HR benchmark report and I'm going to page 16.

Where we're unpacking development. We have like three or four pages in the book on this topic. Um, this is probably my favorite category. I like, like, I think you got, you and I earlier, this, these Venn diagrams of a lot of overlap, but areas of focus, you, you for sure are the expert and have passion around compliance.

I have passion around performance and [00:03:00] developing people. Obviously a lot, a lot of overlap here. Before we jump into the individual questions, Mary. But what's your overall take on how important development is as it relates to, uh, you know, revenue growth?

Mary: it's funny because I was thinking the same thing. You know, I, uh, basically a generalist, HR generalist my whole life, right? So I do all of these areas, provide all these services to our clients. Now, this is my, my favorite is development and training. And I think the reason is when I'm speaking with business owners, you know, they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Compliance, right. They're like, I'm going to roll the dice. Right. Um, right. Because that's a, that's sort of, well, if I do it, how do I know I would have been audited? Maybe I didn't need to do it, right? But development, they see the results that number one, [00:04:00] your employees want to be trained. It shows you care about them.

It shows you're investing in them. Number two, it makes them better employees, which helps your growth. And number three, development can mean a lot of things, right? So if you're not training them how to make the widget, then you're not going to be successful making the widget or making it faster or making it more efficiently.

So development is ROI. You have no ROI If you are not developing your employees. So favorite subject as well. So

Mike: Yeah, in, in the math bears it out. So we, we have, we have a few more, uh, sections to go and I'll just rattle them off. So we started with recruiting and went to benefits, onboarding, here we are in development. Uh, subsequent shows, we're going to talk about compliance, retention, performance, and post employment.

So we're, we're about the halfway point, but what the data would say so far. Development blows all these other categories away, right? So we, so, uh, as [00:05:00] we talked recruiting benefits, onboarding and development, if I was to just add up the scores of all the, all five questions for each of those categories and compare, uh, down near zero growth firms with fast growth firms, the aggregate difference in recruiting, I was surprised how low it was, it was only 10%.

Still meaningful. Benefits, a whopping 20%. A couple real outliers in benefits. We talked about that. I encourage everyone to watch that show. Onboarding, a 13 point spread. Again, a couple outliers were the big difference makers. This one's a whopping 30%, 30%. So, big difference. zero growth firms. So they're, they're down here.

They were shrinking. They're flat. They said yes to 50 percent of the questions in fast growth firms said, yes. To 80 percent of the questions. And when we dial that back and look at just the smaller firms, 25 or fewer employees, the spread goes to 36 percentage points. So this is a [00:06:00] massive difference.

And clearly it's an area where fast growth firms get it in a way that, you know, down year zero growth firms just simply do not, you know, again, I'm probably gonna say this too many times and wear people out. This is a big sample size. This is over a thousand, 1065 respondents. The correlation of that many, that many respondents, this is, this is massive.

This can't be a coincidence. You can have, you can be a movie theater, the best run movie theater in the world. And a pandemic can still put you out of business. You can be a terribly run video conferencing company during a pandemic and have wild success. So there's obviously lots of market factors between products and industries and competitors in demand.

But to have a 30 plus percent percentage point spread in just five HR best practices around development. is just, is just massive. So let's jump into the questions. So the first one, [00:07:00] do you use technology resources to offer on demand training for employees? We didn't, this is binary. So it's yes, we do or no, we don't.

We're not asking the, the, the topics of the training. We're not asking whether it's great training or terrible training. It's just, do you provide on demand technology training? Technology through on demand training. Zero growth firms, 54 percent fast growth firms, 75%. So a 21 point spread. And when I look at the smaller firms under 25 employees, it grows to 28 points. So it's one of the smaller ones, but it's still 28 percent spread. It's massive. What do you see when you're talking to clients every week and your team is engaging about this specific, I'd say a bit of a niche question. It's using technology resources for on demand training. Yeah,

Mary: happy you asked this question, uh, because I think a lot of organizations will say, I don't have the money. I can't afford to do, [00:08:00] uh, development and training, um, and I don't have the time or the expertise Uh, but there's so much technology. We have an amazing offering of, you know, listen, my trainers are, are stellar.

Um, so we do customize, you know, live virtual live training. But boy, the technology out there, it is, you know, cost effective. It is, well, we give it for free, so that's really cost effective. But, but it's also time effective, right? So for those small firms that are like, you know, they'll say to me, Mary, I only have five managers.

What am I going to do? Pull them out of, of business and, and give them a training all at once? I can't do that. Um, of course I've done lots of trainings on Saturdays and Sundays, but. But the technology piece makes it easy. Number one, that training can be 15 minute increments. Number two, they can do it on [00:09:00] their own time.

These are managers. They're most likely exempt employees, right? And we don't want people to work, you know, crazy hours, right? We want to have a nice, um, Culture within the organization, but there's no reason that you can't say, Hey Mike, here's a, you were telling me you have a difficult employee. Uh, let's, here's a training.

It's 20 minutes on how to deal with a difficult employee. So, so Mike can do it on his own time. It just makes sense,

Mike: something you said preceding this that I couldn't agree more with is you signal to your employees by providing it. Um, I think a lot of time, and I'm going to jump a bunch of thoughts, jump through my head. Number one is I think sometimes as leaders. We've been doing whatever it is this industry is for a while.

And it's easy for us to assume, Oh, I don't need to train them on that. That's just, that's just common sense. That's self evident. [00:10:00] It might feel that way to you now, but you've maybe been in the industry for 10, 20 or more years to somebody new out of school, they're just entering their career, or maybe they're switching careers into this industry.

Stuff that you think is common sense, isn't common sense. And there's real value in the training unit of itself. But then just how you're, how you're signaling that you're investing in them. It's like, you know what? My boss cares about me. My employer cares about me. And even if I don't even have time to take advantage of the training.

What that does for the culture by providing all these resources, all these assets available that I could use if I did have the time.

Mary: They care about my success. And I would say here, you know, I'll use Asure as an example. We, you know, I was interviewing somebody the other day and I'm like, and we give a 12 week training program and she went, wow, Mike, that had a significant, uh, [00:11:00] effect on her interest in the position. She went from. Yeah, this seems like a good job.

I mean, she actually went, wow, 12 week training, right? So, and I know all organizations can't do that. We, we're, we're a bigger organization, but with technology you can. So what we do with our clients is I'll map out 12 months of training for your managers. Let's pick what they're going to do month one, two through 12 in, you know, succession and each manager as they're hired.

Or they're promoted, that's what they do. And then we can create a continuum over years that they do. And then of course, I'm gonna interject some customized training to say, this is how we do it here. Right. So you said something interesting. A lot of times we, ah, my managers have been managers forever.

Have they been managers with you forever? Well. That individual needs a little [00:12:00] enlightenment. Here's some new ways to do it. Let me refresh you. They might be getting burned out, right? The other thing is that, um, the inexperienced people, you know, we so often have that high performer and then we go, Mike, I'm going to promote you.

You are a great salesperson. Ding! Here's my magic wand, you're a manager. It doesn't mean that that person will be able to be a great manager just because they are a great salesperson. It behooves us to train that individual. We have to train them.

Mike: Yeah. Right. Something else that I love about the on demand stuff. I'd say a great manager, they're, they have domain expertise and they're willing to take on tough conversations and, deliver, tough conversations in, on sensitive subjects. But that, but that doesn't mean it's easy to do. And as managers, you know, grow to become good managers and aspire to become [00:13:00] great managers.

There's just a reality that sometimes these on demand videos and on demand work at your own pace type curriculum courses, they can be the bad guy for you. They, they can, they can handle the politically sensitive topics. They can handle the culturally difficult. Topics, things that maybe for whatever reason you need to get some comfort in this if you're going to grow as a leader, but maybe you don't have that comfort to have that conversation yet.

Let, let, let the video, yeah, right, right. And, and to rely on the expertise. And the anonymity that makes these easier to consume as an employee. Um, and maybe I hate to say it this way, but maybe it takes the manager a little bit off the hook for having to deliver some difficult content.

Mary: possibly.

Mike: Um, all right, let's move to the next one. Do you provide regular structured training for employees to be more effective in their [00:14:00] jobs? whopping 30%, uh, 30 point spread for all companies, 35 points spread for 25 and under, so massive correlation to revenue growth, whether you regularly provide structured training for employees to be more effective at their jobs.

And since this spans all industries, you can imagine what that training may or may not look like. Uh, zero growth firms, 52%, fast growth firms, 82%. So this one feels a little kept and obvious. Of why there's the big correlation. Maybe,

Mary: Yeah.

Mike: maybe focus on why do you think it's barely half of zero growth firms?

Provide, like, it seems obvious and intuitive why there's the correlation. If you're not training your people, you know, maybe it's not a surprise why you're not growing and you're, and you're shrinking, but, but what's preventing small businesses from doing it?

Mary: I think it's time and money. I [00:15:00] think it's, you know, and, and it could be expertise. Absolutely. You know, we separate the trainings into soft skills and those soft skills could be something like team building and communications and even your anti harassment would fall under a soft skill. And then there's Hard skills, right?

So those hard skills might be, um, how to use a piece of equipment, um, how to use PowerPoint, how to use Salesforce, and things like that. So that would be your, your hard skills. And I think a lot of times employers again say, I don't have the time. I can't pull people. I'm just gonna hire people with those skills.

So. I want to go back to some of our other topics and I will tell you, if you put paid training in your ad, you will get more individuals. And I will also say that after, and I can say this after. About 35 years in HR. [00:16:00] that if you train your staff, and your managers, you will have better retention.

Look, people want to feel successful in their jobs. And sometimes there is on the job training and I would also say that would fall under development because it should be a formal on the job training. I absolutely do that with my staff. Asure does that. you know, so. That should be part of that falls under this.

Absolutely, Mike. So I want everybody to, you know, think about the different types of training that there is, but you have to make the time for this. This is all about ROI. It really is. It definitely has something to do with culture, but it's ROI.

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. Agree completely. What, what, what do you have to say about the, uh, these words are intentional in the question, regular structured training. [00:17:00] So we're not talking about one and done, uh, I'm going to train you on a topic or how to use that machine. Or some safety protocol that's, it's not one and done.

This is regular structure. That was an important component of the question.

Mary: Yeah. And I'm,

Mike: you

Mary: I'm glad and I do think, you know, hopefully the respondents saw that and I'm really glad that you added it. It's that structured piece because I want to make sure that I trained Mike and Mary the same. gave them the same, um, opportunity to be successful. And there's a point that they can go back to either a point person or something written.

So, you know, just as an example, when we talk soft skills, we will make a manager's manual, right? So we will train the managers, but we have a manual. Here's what you do when you get a worker's comp claim. Here's what you do when you get an unemployment claim, right? And they have something to go back to and refer to, right?

A [00:18:00] lot of times people don't want to ask questions or they don't have the time to answer questions, uh, answer or ask questions, right? So, That structured training means a lot. Number one, it means that you took the time to do it right, to really think about the training, hopefully, and do it right. It also gives all the individuals that are being trained someplace to go back to, right?

Whether it's something online or something, you know, we used to make like binders. Here you go, Mike, the manager. Here's what you do for each of these instances, and then train to it. So the structured part is almost, you know, the most important. If you're doing training that's not good training or it's different every time, it's not going to be effective.

Mike: know, I mean, this might sound trite, but, but I think it's still so true. It's the old adage of the, the lumberjack who didn't, [00:19:00] doesn't have time to stop and sharpen his axe because he's too busy chopping down a tree. It's like, I, I've run businesses. I know how stressful it can be and the hours you put in.

Um, but if you don't have time for training. Then you're never going to get to the next level where you can afford. I, you, you ha You just simply have to make it a priority. You, you don't have a choice. That's how you create the time is by training. Right. Um, you and I have talked on a different show. I, I, I think there, because you said two things.

They don't have the time, they don't have the money. And I think the, I think that's spot on. Um, I think the time you have to make a priority period because you're just not gonna get to the next level if you don't. Uh, and you'll probably be amazed how much time you actually have when your employees are more productive at what they do, right?

That you, you, you literally buy the time back, but money, this stuff doesn't always have to cost money, right? Like you, [00:20:00] you, you've talked about examples where bringing in. Guests. You know, we talked, you, we talked about this when we were talking about benefits on, uh, on uh, on the, on the Benchmark report.

Benchmark report, right? You could have a wellness coach come in, you could have a nutritionist come in, uh, somebody trying to sell gym memberships, and there's something in it for them. 'cause they're trying to sell gym memberships. But in the in, in the course, they're gonna give her free tutorial on how to work out,

Mary: Right.

Mike: right?

I mean, what are, what are some low cost or freeways? that businesses could implement a regular structured training plan.

Mary: Well, I think the best thing that they can do that's super cost effective is to look at their current staff and say, who's a SME, who's a subject matter expert at this, at this thing, and then help them create a structured training, right? Number one, that individual that you go to and say, Mike, I really recognize you as a subject matter expert on marketing [00:21:00] within the organization.

Could you train some of these individuals who are promoted to marketing? Let's just using you as an example. Now, Mike has, you know, you know, tasks that he feels confident in and he's growing, uh, in his career as well, because now he's a trainer. Um, but also he's. a very cost effective way to impart knowledge to other individuals within the organization.

And I, my manufacturing clients do that all the time. Sometimes in, in their best efforts, they miss that structured piece. Um, but they always have, or, or often have a go to person. When that machine breaks, you go to Joe. When that other machine breaks, you go to, you know, Sally or whatever. So, um, That that's definitely a cost effective way to do it.

I think the online training can be, uh, inexpensive and, you know, [00:22:00] even if you weren't, you know, getting the free training through Asure, there are YouTube videos. On everything, you know, you just need to vet it because, you know, I'm sure there's some, some bad ones out there, but you probably can find some free training, um, out there.

I would say I press my vendors. There is not a vendor that I pay money to that I do not make do some type of training or send me a Q and a on how to use their services.

Mike: Right. Right. I love that. You, so rely on your vendors because they have a vested interest to add value to you. Uh, they want to retain you as a client. I love, and we're kind of overlap, going to overlap to the last topic, which is stretch assignments. I love using your existing employees. People, people really thrive on the recognition.

They thrive on the. This may not be intuitive for everybody, but I think your best people will thrive on the added responsibility. Uh, oh, they entrust me to do [00:23:00] something so important.

Mary: empowering people.

Mike: Yeah. And even, even if they're not ready, there's no better way to learn a subject than have to prepare to teach it. Right?

It forces you to distill down the essence of what that topic is in a way that you can teach it. And then you end up knowing it better than you ever possibly could have if you didn't have to teach on it. So, love, love all that. Let's move to the next one. Do you provide leadership training to managers? Oh my gosh, I love this one so much.

Zero growth firms, 51%. Again, barely over half. Fast growth, 81%, a 30 point spread. That jumps to a 42 percent spread for small firms under 25 employees. Let's focus there. It seems almost, and I'll jump the shark on ya, time and money. I'm just gonna say time. When you're a small firm, you don't have lots of managers. [00:24:00] How are you going to provide them training? I mean, this can feel daunting to small firms, but my gosh, a 42 percent spread for fast growth firms versus zero growth firms for the ones that provide training for their managers. Practically speaking, what should these smaller firms especially be doing, Mary?

Mary: Well, I, you know, you said time, so I'm going to talk about time and I'm going to put costs to the side for a second. We talked about technology being a little bit more cost effective. But I think when it comes to development and you're a small firm, if you can't take all your managers off at once, there's always executive coaching, which we do a lot.

That way I'm dealing with Mike's skills specifically and talking to him about each of the points that you need for leadership, right? Talk about retention. Um, when you give that kind of time and energy to a manager, they are [00:25:00] going to excel. Don't forget, when you're in a training room, as much as I love training, when you're in a training room, you've got individuals.

And the one thing about individuals is they're all different and their skill sets are different. So some of the things you say are going to hit some, some are going to hit others. When you do executive coaching, which is a form of development, we do it all the time. Um, that is really going to accelerate.

And I would say, um, Even if I'm going to bring cost in Mike, three sessions can move the needle a lot because it's a one on one and I'm focusing on Mike skills specifically. So I would, I would definitely recommend, you know, something like that. I think, you know, I'm just going to, Throw it out there that development to me also means going to trade shows and learning from other organizations, going to networking groups, uh, and, you know, picking up some pointers.

[00:26:00] So, to me, that's development as well. And that can be, um, You know, you can go once a month, you know, to a, you know, uh, a conference, right, with nominal cost and learn more about marketing, learn more about manufacturing, etc. And that is a form of development.

Mike: Yeah, there's lots of wins there. I think sometimes go to conferences and trade shows can Unintentionally turn into a, just a boondoggle and a team building. And there's value in team building. Um, but if you structure, Hey, here's all the sessions. I'm going to go to these ones. You're going to go to those ones.

You're going to take these ones. We're going to take notes. Here's the format. I want to see notes. We're going to come back in a dinner night. We'll have a treat. We're gonna have an amazing dinner and we're going to debrief and we're going to share what we learned and what's going to change Monday morning as a result.

You can be structured about that and turn that the annual conference you attend into something that's more impactful, [00:27:00] right?

Mary: Agreed. Agreed.

Mike: Um, we didn't specify the type of training, but I just think about, we talked about this in, uh, the recruiting and hiring episode. Uh, uh, in this, in this series, but just basic things like maybe you're an engineer who started the firm because you're the technology wizard who built this new product, uh, and maybe you don't have competencies around finding great talent and interview skills. Choke on this saying this a little bit, cause you know, you should be hiring a professional like you, but you said it too. YouTube's a great source, right? I mean, if you just, if you just, you pick out the video, you go watch a bunch of them, pick out the one. Okay. Small business. I have two managers. Both of you watch this one hour video te and then report back to me in this group meeting.

Tell me what you learned. That might not be some expensive learning and [00:28:00] development curriculum, certification, blah, blah, blah. But there's still a lot of value from that. Right?

Mary: absolutely. It's better than, it's better than nothing. And again, you made it structured by saying, come back to me and debrief and give me a summary on what you learned. Right. So, you know, you're still, you know, giving it some structure. Um, and I'm sure that, you know, the business owner. having the conversation.

Oh, you tell, Oh, well, what do you think about that? Right. You have to ask some questions, uh, when they come back from training to make sure that, you know, they learned the, some of the items or all of the items you wanted them to.

Mike: Yeah. Right, right. Um, and I know I've talked about this before, but I think it bears repeating on this question alone. Do you provide leadership training to managers? These are binary questions. Yes or no, you do or you don't do it. This is not a, this is a quantitative survey. It's not a qualitative. We have no [00:29:00] idea the topics or even if the training they provided was good or not.

But when you have a 30 percent spread, 42 percent spread for small businesses under 25 employees, going to tell you the qualitative portion is, is, is taken care of by the math because there's plenty of the fast growth firms that probably provided it in the, the quality was sucky and there's probably some, some small firms that did it with sucky and some, some were probably great.

The fact that they did it. is the correlating factor. So don't let perfection be the enemy here. Just do it. It's got a massive impact. All right. Uh, question number four, Mary, do you offer reimbursement for tuition or training expenses? I feel like this is where a lot of people just, they think development, Oh, that's what they do.

And I can either afford it or I can't. Um, interestingly, the numbers didn't change that much compared to the other [00:30:00] questions. Zero growth firms, 57%. Fast growth firms, 80%. Um, it went down a little bit, uh, uh, for fast growth. It went down a bunch for zero growth for the under 25 employee companies. As you can imagine, they don't have as much money to do this sort of thing.

Uh, zero growth firms, 40%, fast growth, 76%. So a 36 percent spread. What do you say to the business owner who says, I don't have the money. I can't afford to go pay for someone to go get their MBA. I don't know if I can't afford to go send them to this training class. I can't afford to get them certified. And even if I did, why would I pay to get someone certified just so they can leave me?

Mary: Yeah, I mean, it's a good argument and I, I do understand it. You can always do a promissory note, um, a little tough to just stand up in court, but I will tell you that if you're hat. So I'll give you an example. I had an HV, uh, [00:31:00] AC organization. There was a certain certification that they needed. They could not find enough people with that certification.

As soon as they actually got the certification, they'd go to another firm. Somebody would pick them off. So we worked on how are we going to retain these people, but attract people. And I said, Stop looking for people with the certification. Give the certification. So in the ad, no certification necessary.

We will provide the certification. They got thousands of applicants. And then we had to solve too, which is, you know, a different conversation, right? Um, it would be interviewing. We had to solve to how are we going to find people that aren't just, you know, having us pay for that certification to go someplace else.

Right. So we did some salary benchmarking. We said, you got to pay, you still have to pay them, you know, a good salary, or they're just going to jump to another place. So I would [00:32:00] say that, you know, the tuition reimbursement or training, paying for the training expenses is a big retention thing. We pay for training here at Asure.

And I will tell you, Again, for my team, uh, you know, we're all SHRM certified. And when I interview somebody. In some of my lower positions, they may not have this SHRM certification yet. That's the clincher. I say, we pay for and provide you with SHRM certification. And they're like, I'm in. And I would say I can probably offer a little bit lower salary because they know they're, they're getting that.

So it is a definitely an attraction piece. It's a retention piece. And. Having better trained employees and managers makes your company more successful and productive.

Mike: Again, it might sound trite, but the old saying, uh, train your people so they can leave, treat them well, so they won't want to. Right? And [00:33:00] I think it's, I think it's Gallup does the annual employee engagement survey. And near the top for several years now, uh, has been an employee's desire for training, right?

So I love this idea of maybe you, maybe you got to place your bets a little more selectively if you have expensive tuition or certifications, but why would they leave if so, so they get that HVAC certification that you're talking about. If that's where the training stopped, And they want to keep advancing in their career.

Well, the only next level for you, your firm might be money and maybe they can get more money somewhere else. But if you gave, if you paid for the certification, but you also provided this training and you provided that training and this training, they've, they'll stay for a long time as they, as long as they feel aligned, as long as they feel what you provide in training and compensation aligns to their long term career path, they'll You know, you can retain somebody [00:34:00] for a very long time.

Eventually they may become so skilled and marketable that they can command more money somewhere else,

Mary: Agreed.

Mike: but you could have got all the productivity for that journey as they got there.

Mary: Right. Absolutely. And listen, you know, I want to add one thing to development, right? So we should, all business owners should have succession planning, right? What's going to happen. I deal with business owners all the time. They get sick. You know, something happens and they can't perform the job anymore. If they don't have succession planning in place or or a key player on their team, you know, it can significantly, I've seen businesses close over it.

Right? But part of succession planning has to be. Training and development, right? So for this position, what's the, what skills do they need? What training goes with that? What certification, et cetera? So any type of succession planning needs to be aligned with [00:35:00] development.

Mike: Okay. Um, last question, and we could spend a bunch of time on this one. You alluded to it earlier. Um, and we'll poke a little fun at this question too. Uh, do you frequently assign stretch assignments to your employees? Um, massive gap. This is, I think of all 40 questions in the entire survey. That said, the biggest gap of 46%, 35%.

So a third of zero growth firms assigned stretch assignments, 81% of fast growth firms. So again, I'm gonna probably, we're gonna probably poke fun. Do they even know what that means? And are they good assignments? Are they bad assignments? I'm going to say it doesn't matter. It's 46 percent point different, over a thousand respondents.

Reach assignments could suck. You could do a terrible job assigning and measuring and quantifying these. [00:36:00] The fact that you do them is the single, I think it's the single largest impact of all. HR best practices, all 40 of them in the entire survey. Um, what do you see businesses doing when it comes to stretch assignments or maybe more importantly not doing?

Mary: Well, let me tell you from the employee standpoint, what I hear when I'm interviewing candidates, what I hear when I talk to company employees, right? Um, so we'll do stay interviews, uh, and we've talked about this. And when I do a stay interview with an employee, a lot of times they're like, well, I want to be a manager.

Let's just use the manager example, but they say, I don't have the experience, but how am I ever going to get the experience? You get it through stretch. You know, for that particular example, you would get it through, uh, you know, a stretch assignment, right? I'm going to have you be a team lead. I'm going to have you be a mentor.

Um, I'm going to have you lead [00:37:00] just this project, right? So that you can help your employees gain skills. It's part of development, giving a stretch assignment. And I would also say that as, as leaders. Uh, business owners need to recognize they can't do it all. So there's a lot of times where you need to give a stretch assignment to somebody or, you know, let go a little bit of the control possibly, but give a stretch assignment to somebody to empower them, to help them gain skills.

Uh, but also to give yourself, self a little bit more time to grow your business, to do something else.

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. No question. Um, I remember watching a Warren Buffett interview one time in the when the recession of 08 hit. He had uh, this is the CEO of one of his holding companies, uh Uh, asked him what should I do and Warren's response says, [00:38:00] well, that's why I hired, if you have to ask me that, then you're the wrong person, right?

Wrong person for the job. I think there's just something innate about, you know, In a way, all jobs should have an element of stretch to them, right? If, and I realize there are frontline jobs that you just need somebody to perform the skill to crank out the widget. I, I get it. But for most jobs, there's an L should be an element to stretch where you're always learning, whether it's about the industry or the products or the customers or how to help others.

I mean, there's always something to learn here to, to stretch into. And I think, I think too frequently. Especially entrepreneurs and small business owners, they allow their employees to dump the tasks on them for the things their employees don't know how to do.

Mary: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Mike: And instead of flipping that, you know what?

That's great, great news. You came to me with that. That's exactly why I hired you. So I know you don't know how yet. I want you to [00:39:00] research. I want you to come up with three ideas. I want you to pitch to me, uh, what you think the best two alternatives and what is your one recommendation? And I'll give you feedback on that.

Instead of letting them dump all these things that they don't know how to do on you, you put it on them and make it a stretch assignment,

Mary: 100%. I mean, I was going to say just that, right? You, you can't be successful unless you get a diversity of, of ideas. And unless you, and look, somebody can say, I want to be a cashier forever. It's what I want to do. You know, it's the lifestyle I like. I'm fine with the cashier. I don't want to be the head of the cashiers and I don't want to be the controller.

I'm good. You can still give them a stretch assignment. Like, you know, what do you think? What's the biggest complaint about, you know, uh, customers coming through? Create a, you know, a questionnaire, uh, that you and the other cashiers answer and then let's talk about it. There's no reason that [00:40:00] individual can't get a stretch assignment by definition is usually short term.

So even for that person that's in the position for and wants to stay in that position, that's okay. We're looking for Information we're looking to, you know, add, you know, to their job, make it a little more interesting. All of those again, lead to ROI. We're getting more ideas from somebody different and it, and it might not work.

You might give a stretch assignment and say, you know, I might've done it differently. I don't feel like the, the result was successful. It is still a learning opportunity for everyone involved.

Mike: make the ideation of. Stretch assignments, a stretch assignment, right? Hey guys, we're going through a tough period. Inflation has been tough. I don't feel like I can pass yet another price increase onto our customers. Uh, we, we're going to have to continue to find [00:41:00] ways to do with more with less. I, I don't have all the ideas.

I want your ideas. Your, your job is to come up with five different ideas of, of, uh, a stretch assignments we could assign to all of our team members. So all of us are doing this together. Report me back, back to me next week with what those best five ideas are. There's your stretch assignment to hand out more stretch

Mary: I like that. I like that. That's awesome.

Mike: All right, Mary, anything else I kind of want to revisit. So that's the five questions. And I kind of want to revisit the fact that. Development so far in this series, by far the biggest impact, uh, 30 point spread, uh, 36 point spread on firms under 25 employees. Uh, uh, as it correlates from fast growth firms to zero growth firms that say yes to those five questions.

And again, recruiting is 10%, 20 percent for benefits, 13 percent spread for onboarding, 30 [00:42:00] percent spread for development. So mathematically, massive impact. What's the one thing that you would advise business owners that they could do, you know, tomorrow morning with their teams to start turning on the power of development?

Mary: Well, and I'm just going to reiterate that I said, you know, you, you asked in the beginning, why do you think they're not doing it? And I said, you know, time and money. And so I would wrap up by saying, whatever time you put into development. It will come back to you in dollars and cents. And what the first thing that I'd start with is I would ask your employees, what training do you think they need?

And it would have to be the different positions, right? Uh, and you might just start with your leaders and say, what type of training do you need? And then you're going to say to yourself as a business owner, I've got this bucket of [00:43:00] money, uh, that I want to spend on training so I can go external, or I need to find.

a subject matter expert internal, or I need to find some piece of technology that is relatively inexpensive. You have to start somewhere. I'd start with your leaders cause it's gonna then trickle down to the employees. Um, but you have to do something or you should. It leads to ROI.

Mike: And I think my guidance would be this. I, I think too often Small business owners, entrepreneurs, they think about development as though some, that's what big companies do. That's some learning and development thing. That's a, that requires budget. That requires time that I just don't have. And I think they're making it way more complex than it has to be.

It really can be as simple as taking any employee. and saying, Hey, can you go research this for me? I know that your core job is doing this. [00:44:00] I'd like you to carve out 5 percent of your time over this next two weeks and go research this topic, because I think if we're going to be successful, we need to be better at that.

And then could you, could you just, in our, in our, in our weekly staff meeting, just report back what you learned over on that topic. There's a stretch assignment you assign to someone. You've just got to learn, got a topic to train all your employees. You've got some team building. You've signaled who you're, you're rewarding your high performer with, with trust.

Uh, there's a million really good things happen there and it didn't cost you.

Mary: I agree.

Mike: All right, Mary, I always love talking to you. Uh, another great conversation. Uh, our next topic, uh, in this series, uh, is going to be compliance. So, uh, Could be more hardwired for that one. That's, that's, that's development is probably the coolest and funnest. Maybe they're going to have where I think you have the most expertise perhaps, uh, after your time in the industry is compliant.

So, uh, [00:45:00] that'll be a good one as well. So thanks to everybody else for joining today. And thanks again for joining me, Mary.

Mary: Thanks, Mike.

Mike: Until next week, thanks for letting us be part of your mission to grow.

Outro: That's it for this episode of Mission to Grow. Thanks for joining us today. For show notes and more episodes, visit us at missiontogrow. com. If you found this content valuable, I invite you to share it with a friend and subscribe to the show. If you really want to help, I'd love it if you left a five star review on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you listen.

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