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

Mike: [00:00:00] The HR Benchmark Report is in. And today we are talking about retention. So just a reminder, uh, if you go out to Asuresoftware. com, go to eBooks, resources, download the HR benchmark report, follow along if you would, please. And we're going through the eight categories, the date, eight different, uh, sections of employee lifecycle from pre employment through post employment.

It's recruiting, benefits, onboarding, development, compliance, retention, performance, and post employment. So we're, we're, we're. Three quarters of the way through here, uh, after today, uh, we're talking about retention, uh, spoiler alert of all the categories we talk about, retention has the largest correlation to revenue growth for all other categories.

But what we really unpack today is. Maybe it's not retention best practices in and of itself, but rather what does retention have to do and the kind of people you want to retain? What's the relationship between [00:01:00] that and all of the preceding categories of the employee life cycle from the survey? Can't wait to share the details with you.

Thanks for joining.

Intro: Welcome to Mission to Grow, the small business guide to cash, compliance, and the war for talent. I'm your host, Mike Vinoy. 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: Retention, retention, retention. Spoiler alert, I'll give you the punchline up at the top. Of all eight categories in the survey, from pre employment to post employment, recruiting, benefits, onboarding, development, [00:02:00] compliance, retention, performance, and post performance, has the biggest difference between shrinking and flat firms, zero growth firms, and fast growth firms.

Four of the five questions we asked, and we're going to go one by one through the, through this session and this, on this show. Four of the five had more than a 30 percentage point spread between Zero Growth firms and Fast Growth firms. It's the data is crystal clear of all the things Businesses should focus on and of these eight categories In the employment lifecycle retention is it so we'll unpack all the questions one by one You know my guest Mary Simmons Mary.

Welcome back to the show.

Mary: Thanks, Mike,

Mike: Okay, um If I take all questions together, all questions together, uh, and I'll read them and we'll go one by one. So, have you surveyed your workforce to assess employee engagement? Do you provide career path [00:03:00] coaching for employees? Do you have an employee recognition program? Do you conduct company wide meetings to communicate changes and other company initiatives?

Number five, do you conduct stay interviews to uncover employees perspectives? If I take all those, Zero growth firms said yes, 48 percent of the time to those five questions. Fast growth firms said yes, 81%. That's a 32 percentage point spread. Uh, massive difference between these strategies, these best practices, employee retention between fast growth firms and zero growth firms.

The spread gets even bigger. When you look at smaller firms, under 25 employees, it's a 35 percent of zero growth firms said yes, 73 percent of fast growth firms say yes. So, it's less for the smaller firms. Smaller firms, we've talked about this many times, they struggle with time and resources and money.

Uh, so it's [00:04:00] understandable why there might be less. But the spread is massive. 38 percent percentage point difference between zero growth and fast growth firms. Mary, uh, I'll ask the captain obvious question, knowing that you're going to add some not so obvious context to the answer here. Um, why is there such a big spread between zero growth firms and fast growth firms?

Uh, when it comes to retention.

Mary: you know, so I'm not surprised by the results. I'm happy. People are answering questions honestly, because this is the way I think the data would would pan out. I think that the, the. Small growth firms, listen, they may be panicked and thinking, how do I grow? How do I grow? How do I grow? And be ignoring the fact that your employees are, are a key to growth.

They might be focusing on marketing, for example, on cutting costs, changing vendors, but they may be, you know, [00:05:00] ignoring the thing that may be obvious to the fast growth firms, I'm not growing unless my employees stay. Retention. Is very expensive, two and a half times the cost of your employees. Fast growth firms seem to, understand that.

And, you know, retention has that engagement point. It doesn't matter if you have a full staff, if they're not engaged, they're not helping you grow the business.

Mike: Yeah. You know, uh, before we jump into the one, uh, the individual questions, the second largest, uh, gap. So of all the eight categories that rattled off, the second biggest, difference between zero growth and fast growth firms was development. I think no coincidence that those two things are related, right?

So maybe if you're not, if you're not developing your employees, maybe you don't want to retain them because maybe they're not very productive. So these things have to go hand in glove here, right? If I'm, if I have good best [00:06:00] HR best practices from recruiting, so I'm targeting the right type of employees, I'm onboarding them correctly, I'm staying compliant, I'm setting good expectations, building relationships based on trust and respect, and I'm developing those employees, It seems self evident that they would be the types of employees you would work harder to probably try to retain.

Maybe these down year folks, maybe they don't miss the people when they leave because they weren't that productive in the first place. Do you think I'm over reading into that?

Mary: No, I don't. And I, and I do think each of our categories that we've chosen to ask these questions are done, you know, in a way that we understand they work, you know, hand in hand, right? It's, they're all a part of the puzzle to make the business, help the business grow. And, you know, that development piece, of course, engages employees, right?

We, we show we're investing in our employees. It makes them, you know, better employees because their knowledge base goes up. Um, and then [00:07:00] you retain the staff. When somebody feels successful in their job, they are much more likely to stay. How do we help them be successful? All of the things we're going to talk about today, career pathing, engaging them, stay interviews, all of that helps engage them and retain them.

Mike: Yeah. So hand in glove, you got to develop your people to make them good enough that you'll want to keep them in the first place. That sounds rather inhumane to not, but, uh, Man, as a marketer, I know that it's way more expensive to get a new customer than to keep a current one happy and stay with you.

It's no different from employees, right? Uh, so, okay, so with that, let's dive in and tackle question number one. Have you surveyed your workforce to assess employee engagement? 44 percent of zero growth firms said yes. 83 percent said, uh, of the fast growth firms said yes. Um, [00:08:00] that's a 39 percent spread. It goes to 46 percent spread in the smaller firms under 25 employees.

27 percent of zero growth firms said yes, they do, uh, uh, employee, uh, surveys to, to assess engagement. 73 percent of the fast growth. Focus there. I, I know that, I know that the small businesses S you're, you're, you're cash strapped, you're time strapped. You don't have the, all the people in, in, in and skills and tools around you, so you're, you're just hanging on for dear life in some cases.

Why such a massive difference on this topic of assessing employees engagement,

Mary: I, and I think it's, it's all of those reasons, right? I think, you know, maybe a slow growth, smaller organization might say, this is time and money. Obviously, this is part of what we do on the HR compliance team. When we have a client, you could. A small business, [00:09:00] even a larger business wouldn't pay the thousands that we pay for a survey tool, uh, nor would they understand exactly how to, how to ask those questions, send that survey.

But I will say that there are free survey tools out there. All I would, would caution people is that You got to be careful about what you ask and be able to react to the data that you get. You can't just send an employee engagement survey and everybody says, I hate this, this, and this, and you do nothing about it.

It does nothing for you. But if you send these employee engagement, um, surveys, which we recommend to clients to do every year, more than, more than once a year, those surveys show just by sending it, it's going to help your retention because your staff is going to say, Oh, they, they really care about what I do.

Now, if you take that data, you share it with the [00:10:00] employees and say, we're being transparent. Here's what came out of the, of the survey. And here's what we're going to do about each of the points. Might not be able to do something up here, but we may do something there. That is, your attention and engagement is going to go through the roof.

They asked me, they listened to me, they acted on it.

Mike: Yeah, well, can you just maybe share some best practices around this best practice of surveying employee engagement?

Mary: Typical questions?

Mike: Sure.

Mary: Yeah.

Mike: Questions, platform, methods, whatever.

Mary: Yeah, so I think, uh, and, and, you know, it may be obvious, but I think that if you allow them to ask the questions anonymously, answer the questions anonymously, I think you're going to get better data. I think anybody would be afraid to say, I don't like management here. If their name was assigned to it, but that [00:11:00] is valuable information for you to know.

So that's that's 1 of the questions. Do you know, 1st of all, you're, you're going to be transparent. You're going to set a lot of times. Our questions would be. Do you know the culture and feel, uh, do you know the culture of the organization? How do you feel management and leadership reacts to your questions?

Uh, a lot of times we will include benefits and pay in the, uh, in the questions. engagement survey. The, so there is some basic questions, Mike, but this needs to be customized, very customized to the organization. And what are you solving for? Right? So you can't put everything in there. You have to say, I don't feel like my employees are engaged.

When a client says that to me, I'm going to ask certain questions. I'm just taking a litmus test to see if everybody's happy. Okay. That's [00:12:00] a different type of question, right? I have a low retention rate, different set of questions, right? And then we need to act on the answers or it's not, not useful at all.

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. All right. So just three buckets best practices around doing an employee engagement survey. This isn't walking around manager, uh, fingering, or, you know, how's the, how's my culture kind of feedback. This is, this is truly surveying your employees. So, uh, do a survey. Do it anonymously. Let people feel, feel the freedom and anonymity to, to speak their truth.

Um, uh, bucket your questions, uh, management. What do they think of you? Right. You gotta be honest as hard as that might be to hear. Think of you and what I think of leadership, uh, pay benefits. And then beyond that, we start getting pretty nuanced case by case around the company, [00:13:00] their, what their business is, et cetera.

Right. Um, and then I, I think the thing you said before I asked this best practice question is maybe among the most important is you got to be willing to act on the feedback. If you ask, if someone asks your opinion, you give that opinion and they're like, yeah, thanks. And then they do nothing about it.

It's worse than ever asking in the first place.

Mary: Agreed.

Mike: They might ask for something that is unreasonable. They might ask for something that you would love to do but you can't afford to. Just acknowledging that and saying, Hey, you know what? That's a great idea. Today, you know, here, here's, here's our, here's our, our capability.

We can't do that. You know what? When we get revenue from here to here, that's the kind of thing we're probably going to be able to afford. Uh, what can you do to help me on that journey so we can get there? So we all get that thing that you just asked for, right? I mean, there's, there's ways to acknowledge and still not have to deliver, uh, and not [00:14:00] disappoint.

Mary: That's, that's exactly right.

Mike: All right, here's our next question. Do you provide career path coaching for employees? Zero growth firms, 38 percent said yes. So about a third of shrinking flat companies, uh, provide career path coaching. 78%, it's a 40 percentage point spread. It's the biggest spread we have at this entire section, uh, that provide career path coaching for employees. What do you think the correlation between Okay. I have career path coaching for my employees. How does that correlate to revenue growth?

Mary: Well, I think that, uh, there's a couple pieces here. I'm just going to take one step back and say that you need the career pathing for retention reasons, because if I don't know I have someplace to go, and I'm a self starter and a hard worker, I'm leaving. You never told me that [00:15:00] I could move into that position.

So I went and looked for a manager position and I found it at another firm. At that point, it's probably too late to retain that person. And that's how career pathing is tied directly to retention. Now, as far as growing my staff, If I have career pathing and I'm coaching Mike and I'm saying, Mike, I see some leadership skills within some of the work that you've been doing.

We could all be leaders. Is that something you'd be interested in? Because I see the next path for you to be, let's say, a team lead and then a manager. We have that career pathing talk with Mike. Mike will normally, if that's something he's interested in, he will skill up. What do I mean by that? Mike's probably proactively either going to ask me for some development, going back to development, or Mike's going to spend the time to take a little course on the side, go to trade shows to learn things from [00:16:00] other, you know, industries, maybe go to a networking event, uh, that has something to do with the industry that they're in to learn best practices from competitors.

So, Mike is more engaged. Absolutely. It's going to help his retention, but I would argue that if that is a goal of Mike's and part of the career pathing is. Mike, here's some of the things that you need some more skills in, uh, to, to get to that ultimate goal. Mike's going to be more encouraged to do those things.

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. There's also another component that I think it's a little, it reminds me a little bit of previous question. Hey, don't ask for feedback if you're not going to act on it. I think sometimes leaders are afraid. To have the career path question, cause they know maybe there's a glass ceiling for this person.

And maybe, maybe, maybe they have a pretty good, whether it's a, whether it's [00:17:00] accurate sense or an inaccurate sense, they think this person is going to cap out here, or maybe they know that that person is super ambitious and they want my job and I ain't leaving. So they're not going to get my job. So I don't want to even go there and then have to face that.

Right. I think some of the best firms acknowledge the truth that. If they don't have a path, they're going to leave. So every day they stay longer than they otherwise would have is a win. And so maybe, maybe if I have a really good number two, I'm the owner of the business, I'm an active, engaged, hands on CEO, uh, president, uh, Uh, and I don't need a president.

I'm not going to have a president, but I got a number two who I know could probably leave me, make more money, have bigger job, more responsibility. Um, wouldn't it be great if I could keep that person around for another year? If I said, okay, I acknowledge you could do those things. My goal is to keep you for another year or two and help [00:18:00] mentor you for your next role.

So when you do leave, you're going to exit here and you're going to enter at the highest level possible, best compensation. What a massive win for you, because you've just kept a phenomenal employee for a year longer. And what a win for them because they've had great mentorship and open, honest conversation.

And they, when they do go in their job search, you're literally going to help them choose which offers the best one. So they maximize their earning. It's just win win all the way around.

Mary: I think it helps business too, right? Because, you know, hopefully they don't go to a competitor, but if they do, I'm a firm believer. I mean, listen, competition helps all of us be better at what we do. And they're, I get referrals from, from competitors all the time. Maybe it's not, it's a niche they don't do.

So I think that helps you. I think what I could say to some of the smaller businesses who are like, you know, a career pathing doesn't make sense here because you know, they're very flat [00:19:00] organization and a very small organization is you, you have the discussion with the employee to ask. Where do you want to go?

And if they want leadership, uh, it can look a lot of different ways, right? So we've, we've spoken in other sessions about there can be job expansion. So you don't necessarily have to promote the person for them to get a job. More responsibility. So I always was the person who answered the client inquiries.

I'm going to add that to your responsibilities. I'm going to show you how to do it. I'm going to train you. Now, again, I'm giving you some additional skills. That is always a positive for an employee. And then the other thing you can do is. is give them special projects. I mean, you know, I don't have, uh, we don't have all big employers.

So some of the small employers, I'll say, what projects do you have coming up? You typically take those on, Mike, because you're the business owner and you [00:20:00] want to, you're going to need to give that. Um, and we talked about this in development, but it does have a place here. There's a lot of different ways that we can discuss career pathing.

It doesn't have to be a promotion with a lot more money.

Mike: Yeah. And I, and I think I almost regret using that use case. I think it's a, it's a fine one, but it's probably far less common versus the frontline employee. Who wants to take on more responsibility and maybe not climb up some corporate ladder, but they do aspire to career development and making more money that you can still just assign them stretch assignments.

You can have them take a course. You can have them shadow someone. You can have them teach something to just continually develop their skills and say, Hey, I hope you never leave. Uh, the, the, the job that you want has really, really low turnover. People don't leave that job. Um, and, and, and we got some really good ones there.

So I don't know if something's going to open up next week or two years from [00:21:00] now. I want to make sure that you're as ready as possible. So I can't pay you more. I wish I could, but I can't pay, pay more for this position, but I want to make sure that you're as ready for that job as you possibly can be.

When that opening does arrive

Mary: Yep, exactly.

Mike: every week, every week longer, you keep that employee, you are winning, right? And that employee is winning. Cause it's, it's, it's, you're helping them and they're helping you.

Mary: Exactly. I mean, the knowledge that each of our employees have, no matter how long they've been with us, that institutional knowledge, we don't want walking out the door. We don't want it shared with somebody else, and we don't want to lose it within. So, you know, gaining, keeping, and the retention is a huge factor to keeping that knowledge.

Mike: All right. Next question. Do you have an employee recognition program? Maybe before I start talking answers, Now, again, we've mentioned this on previous, [00:22:00] uh, episodes of the show. This is a quantitative question, not a qualitative. We didn't ask, tell us about your training programs, about your employee recognition programs, what colors, the trophy you give.

We have no idea if their, uh, recognition programs are great or whether they, they stink. It's just a yes, no question. Do you do it? And so. Keep that in mind, and we'll talk about some of the best practices and things you can do for employee recognition. But a big spread, just under half of zero growth firms do it.

49 percent said yes, we have employee recognition program. 79%, that's a 30 percentage point spread between zero growth and fast growth firms. Clearly, fast growth firms understand That employee recognition is an important component of retention. Um, that one seems self evident. I don't need to, I don't think we need to explain why it correlates to revenue.

[00:23:00] Retaining your better employees is an obvious, obvious correlation. What are some of the best practices in employee recognition though, Mary?

Mary: I do, and this is another area where I think a smaller or a slow growth company might say, I don't have the money for this. You know, if, if I'm in trouble or I'm small, I, you know, I think they think, oh, I need to be giving, you know, thousand dollar gift cards. Employee recognition could cost Um, is it nice to give gift cards and things like that a hundred percent, but, you know, uh, I had an employer with, you know, it was relatively small, they had 30 employees and they're just, you know, saying to me, you know, my turnover is kind of high.

But besides the turnover, I just feel like employees are not engaged. We, and so we dug in a little bit and what we decided to do was a superstar of the week, and even though there's only 30 [00:24:00] employees, it You wouldn't believe just having that recognition, how much it meant to these employees. They had a weekly staff meeting.

That person got, you know, we talked about why, like gave, you know, help them give some examples. We, we, you know, created a, you know, a nice, um, you know, spreadsheet or whatever. And then we, you know, help them launch it. And they were like, you wouldn't believe how excited people get about just having that.

Being recognized, Mike, it can be free. Now, my employers that have 10 employees are going, really, Mary? Really? I only have 10 employees. So, you know, we did for a smaller employee, they had a bulletin board in the back where their employment posters were. Thank you. And then we created the, this just. Cute little, you know, with a big star on it, superstar, and they, they put it in the back and the employees were running to the back to go, Oh, who's the superstar of the week?

It [00:25:00] creates excitement. It makes that one person feel special. It really goes a long way. I mean, can you draw the line to retention? I don't know, but a survey like you provided, I think should help employers understand these little things that could cost zero. Mean a lot. And I know that's coming from an HR nerd, but the

Mike: yeah. I mean, at any survey like this, the debate is always causation versus correlation, right? And we're talking correlation here. So, uh, by having a superstar of the week, is that going to double your revenue growth? Well, not directly. It certainly is part of a fact pattern and the correlation 49 percent of zero growth firms are due employee recognitions, 79 percent of the fast growth due it.

I mean, this is over a thousand companies. The data is clear. The correlation is really, really strong. I, I, I think there's in some ways, almost more value from the free [00:26:00] stuff. I mean, you know what, you and I work for a great company and we have free sources, publicly traded and whatnot that, you know, the top performers go on a nice trip and there's stock options and there's like really meaty, great recognition stuff.

But sometimes in the day to day of the, of the job and the daily grind. You can forget that trip that happened however long ago in a good old fashion, pat on the back or just a very public in a daily standup meeting in front of your peers, Mary, you did a really good job yesterday when you handled that difficult customer.

I just want everybody else to know this is what she did. And I just want to know that made a real impact to that customer's life. And that's the kind of thing we need here, at Asure. I mean, those, things cost nothing. And the end. Oh my gosh, the way you can lift someone's day with free recognition, right?

Mary: It's so true. It's Yeah.

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. Um, okay. Let's move to our next one. Do you conduct company [00:27:00] wide meetings to communicate changes and company initiatives? Interesting. It's still bigger than the spread here. 16 percentage points. I'll talk about the numbers in a second. Which is bigger than a lot of the other questions throughout the entire survey of all 40 questions.

It's the least by about half compared to all the other categories, mostly because so many people do it. Um, uh, in the big population, all company sizes, 74 percent of zero growth firms. So three quarters of all companies say they conduct company wide meetings to communicate changes and initiatives. 90 percent of fast growth.

Um, on the smaller firms, 0 to 25, under 25 employees, it's 67%. So you go from three quarters down to two thirds, uh, and you go from 90 down to 85 percent of the fast growth. My assumption here, I don't know, I, I kind of just can't even [00:28:00] imagine not having company wide meetings to talk about, whether it's a conference call or face to face or whatever, to talk about changes, how, how.

I just don't, how could you be so busy that you couldn't? Um, it's a 16 percentage point correlation. So it's a positive correlation. You can't ignore it. Um, I suspect if we did a survey just on this topic alone, we would find qualitative differences that probably have a massive impact, right? Um, if you're guiding a client around how to structure company wide meetings to communicate change, what are the best practices that you see?

Mary: and I just want to go to your question. I, we have a new client and they are a retail establishment in four different locations. Everybody kind of has different hours, but they're open seven days a week. It is tough for them to do a company wide [00:29:00] meeting. So, uh, what we said to them is, you know, try to do it with the managers, put it in writing.

And then have the managers review. Here's the 5 points that we need to review for the company wide thing. Um, but, you know, listen, I'm always going to talk about compliance, so consistency matters. And so you want to be consistent in relaying company information. So that's 1 of the things that is a positive about doing a town hall or all staff meeting, you know, whatever.

You choose to do it. I will call it. I will also say I'm going to tie this to retention because the employees want to know the why, right? And usually when you do a company wide meeting, you're talking about the why. What do I mean by that? What I mean is that if you, let's say, are telling them that they have to [00:30:00] greet every, let's take this retail establishment.

You have to greet every single, um, client that comes into the office within 10 seconds. You can't just say that without giving a why, but when you say that consistently in a town hall, then you're going to get more engagement. Again, they care about me and they're, they're training me, and I think you're going to get better customer service.

So, I think best practice is try to have it at a time that's reasonable. You don't want to do it at 6 a. m. before the store opens. Don't forget you have to pay your non exempt people. This, if this is mandatory, you have to pay your non exempt people.

Mike: right. Um,

Mary: if these are done once a month, I think it's.

Significant to the engagement and retention that we're talking about.

Mike: in some ways I think this is almost easier for some firms in a world of remote work. Um, you and I aren't sitting in the same room having this [00:31:00] conversation and, and technology as such today with that you can have meaningful communications in a remote way. Uh, ironically might actually be easier on folks if they can, you know, at their own, at their home or off hours or whatever paid if they're, if they're, uh, uh, not exempt.

But, uh, easier, easier to connect in some ways today. Uh, last question, and this is, this is an interesting one. Um, do you conduct stay interviews to uncover employees perspectives? when I look at the big population of all company sizes, it's one of the biggest spreads of the entire survey, all 40 questions, 37 percentage points.

36 percent of zero growth firms said, yes. Fast growth, 73%. Here's what's interesting. The smaller firms under 25 employees, we, the zero growth goes from 36 down to 26. So it's about a quarter [00:32:00] of zero growth firms conduct thoughtful, I'd say proactive, well, we'll get into the qualitative. They conduct staged reviews to uncover employee perspectives.

For fast growth, this is one of the few questions that I've seen. The difference between Uh, the big population of all company sizes and the small ones, it's exactly the same built at 73%. So for, for the fast growth, the ceiling didn't move 73 percent for all of them, 73 percent for the small companies, uh, it dropped for, uh, the floor, for the zero growth from 36 down to 26.

So punchline. For companies under 25 employees, there's a 47 percentage point swing, 26 percent of zero growth versus 73 percent of fast growth that said yes to doing stay interviews. I think that 47%, if I have it right, is the biggest spread of any question we ask in the entire survey. What is [00:33:00] so magical about stay interviews?

Yeah,

Mary: I'm just going to tell a quick story. I, as you know, do a lot of seminars, um, on some of the topics that we talk, um, that you and I talk about. And I did an in person one recently with only HR professionals. And these are professionals at large, you know, mid to large companies, um, and experienced HR SHRM certified individuals.

And we talked about retention. And of course I included state interviews. Um, and I would say that 70 percent of the room of HR professionals didn't know what a stay interview was. So, uh, you know, I think number one, it's something that is newer. I haven't done it my entire career. I mean, I think I do it, did it instinctually, but didn't call it a stay interview.

Mike: I think you're hitting on something there.

Mary: Yeah. And I also think [00:34:00] how it's tied to retention is. Your employees want to be heard, right? And they want to know that you care about them. And when we do evaluations, we might be showing them that we care about them. But the problem is that, um, they're also waiting for the, for the shoe to fall. Right?

They're, they're like, okay, what's, how much money am I getting? Right. So they're, they're not focused entirely on Mike, what can I do for you? And that's what a stay interview is about. It is not your career pathing discussion. It is not your performance instruction. It is Mike. I give three, usually three questions.

You know, how is everything going and how can I support you? Right? What, where do you see any roadblocks and how can I support you? And if you could change something, tell me what you would change and how you would change it. I want it to be all about Mike, right? without, [00:35:00] I'm not pushing back on, well, you're not doing this or that.

It's really An interview where you're listening. And that means a lot to, to most people. And guess what? You get great ideas out of stay interviews also.

Mike: Right, right. Mary, I'm curious, you said that, uh, so even a midsize and larger enterprises SHRM certified professionals who don't even know what a state interview is, fair to say that there's a significant percent of our audience over the 1, 065 firms that responded, a lot of them probably don't understand it, right?

Like, you know, pollsters can make the, the, their politician of choice look terrible or, or wonderful. In a poll, all dependent on how you phrase the question. How do you, and maybe, maybe we phrased this one great. Maybe we didn't do such a good job. What do you think respondents thought that it meant when we said, do you conduct state interviews to uncover employees perspectives?

Mary: [00:36:00] I would guess they probably, they might have thought it was in the interviewing process for new candidates, even though it says employees that that's all I can. I can guess. And maybe they knew exactly what they are and maybe they are doing. stay interviews. I would just also, you know, on the compliance side, be careful.

Stay interviews are usually for your higher performers or somebody that you feel is at risk. The problem with that is it may create some inconsistency. And when we have inconsistency, we do open ourselves up for discrimination charges, right? Let's just say right now in your organization of 30 employees, your high performers.

Happen to be three white men. Well, if we do stay interviews with them and we're spending extra time and we're listening to them and we don't do it for the other individuals in the same positions or within the organization, [00:37:00] we may open ourselves up. So this does take some planning and some consideration.

Mike: No, that's really, that's smart. That's smart. Those are one of those areas you get in trouble. without realizing it because maybe you could even have it written. Hey, anybody, let's say I'm a sales manager, anybody over a hundred percent of plan, I have my, my, uh, formal stay interview because I want to be doing as part of our recognition plan and make sure we keep, keep our best.

If that coincidentally happens to be people from one group, all of a sudden, everybody else is a marginalized group and you didn't mean to, but your policy Right? It won't carry on. Disparate, disparate impact. Right.

Mary: Yeah.

Mike: I'm going to kind of do my wrap on this because I think, I think, I think the light bulb for me, even just walking through this today, um, uh, I want to share that and I'm going to let you get the last word. [00:38:00] Here's how I almost see this. If we walk through all the categories. So on one hand, the five questions for retention.

have the highest correlation to revenue growth. In aggregate, a 32 percent spread across all companies. 81 percent of all fast growth firms said yes to the five questions around retention. Less than half, 48 percent of the zero growth firms said yes. could superficially draw the conclusion that, Oh, I just got to put all my effort into retention.

I got to retain my people, retain my people, retain my people. But if I go further upstream here, Our first category is recruiting and hiring. If you're not targeting the best people in writing job descriptions, in creating interview processes and questions that map to those, those job descriptions, you might not be getting the best people selected in the first place.[00:39:00]

Move to benefits. If you're not offering the right benefit plans, you're probably not even attracting the right talent. Onboarding. If you're not onboarding employees properly, they might not have as great a first day, first week, first month in the job experience. They might be a little more Disenchanted with you versus the person who has an amazing onboarding experience.

Development. We talked about this one at the top. If you're, if, if, if everything you've done so far, recruiting, benefits and onboarding, uh, has led to good candidates and now you're investing in them and developing them, they're just getting better and better and better. Next category compliance, good on you.

You're following the law. If you're doing all those things, no wonder you would have a workforce that you would want to invest in to retain them, right? Whether it's free or paid, you would create programs to save these people, to understand their needs, their [00:40:00] desires, their wants, because you can't afford to lose them, right?

The inverse, I think, is also true. If you do a crappy job in all those other categories, You might actually have a bunch of employees that not a lot of love lost because maybe they're not super productive and maybe there's not a lot of love lost from them either, uh, because maybe they think you're not the best boss in the world.

Um, I just, I just can't emphasize enough how hand in glove, I think all these things are. Really interesting that retention pops out as the biggest impact category. But there's nothing to retain if you don't do everything else upstream from retention better. Otherwise, you're not going to have people you want to retain in the first place.

What, what, I'll give you the last word here.

Mary: yeah. And I will give you a quick story to wrap it up. We had a new employer, helping them, you know, with everything as we always, do. and they said, you know, we need help on the [00:41:00] recruitment side and we were like, okay, well, you're relatively small. You have 25 employees, you know, I'm thinking 10 percent turnover, right?

I'm like, Joe, you hire like three people a year and she's No, 10. I said, Oh, are you in a growth mode? No. I said, Oh, you're telling me that you have 50 percent retention. And she goes, I never really thought of it that way. So I don't think it's on people's radar. But, what I always say, and I'm going to repeat, especially when it comes to retention, having a good HR function in this area directly saves you time and money.

Whenever you have more money, you grow. When you have more time to grow your business, the business ultimately grows. We set up a, uh, a recruiting strategy. We set up a better onboarding. So all of the things you just talked about we put in place. Retention got better. Saved [00:42:00] time and money.

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. All right, Mary. Love talking to you on these topics as always. Thanks for joining me today.

Mary: Thank you.

Mike: And thanks to everyone else. And, uh, until next week, 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.

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. To learn more about how Asure can help your business grow, visit AsureSoftware. com. Until next time.