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

MTG - EP 120 - Anita Lettink
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Anita: [00:00:00] Really think through from a demographic point of view who your workforce is and where they are. From a skills point of view, do you know the skills that they have today? And do you have a way to upscale them to the skills that they need tomorrow? And then what is the role that technology can play in all of these workforce issues?

How can technology help you solve some of that? Because, spoiler alert, I do not think that we will all be replaced by machines in the short term.

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 [00:01:00] 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: The future of work. Uh, welcome to Mission to Grow. So normally on this show, we are pretty hyper tactical, whether it's compliance or finance or ways to grow your business. Uh, manage your people, manage your talent. I want to come up a couple thousand feet today and be a little more strategic and try to look around the corners.

What's coming for our future, for technology, for the supply of labor, the demand for labor, and maybe more specifically tie back, how does this impact small businesses and what do they need to know? If they're going to try to grow their business. So we've got a really cool guest to talk about this topic.

[00:02:00] Uh, it's really interesting as we've met and we've talked how, how similar our stories and the things that we've talked about, uh, including overlap in the payroll industry. Uh, so she resides in the Netherlands. She brings over two decades of experience guiding organizations through rapidly evolving landscape of modern employment.

She's the founder of HRTechRadar. com and the author of two books. How to select your next payroll and equal work for equal pay. Uh, both those books provide a practical guide on selecting payroll technology and tackling pay equity within organizations. Uh, in today's episode, we're going to explore trends that are reshaping how we work, the impact of emerging technologies on HR, uh, and her vision for a more adaptable, productive workplace.

Welcome to the show, Anita Lettink.

Anita: Thank you Mike for that nice introduction and hello listeners, watchers. Very nice to be here.

Mike: So, uh, as we talked before, I [00:03:00] think there's probably three big buckets we want to explore. There's demographics that are changing. There's the skills that are gonna be required in the future workforce, and then how will technology and automation impact all that? For those who maybe, only get a minute or two of this show, What would be the one thing that you'd want them to walk away knowing about the future of work?

Anita: Really think through from a demographic point of view who your workforce is and where they are. From a skills point of view, do you know the skills that they have today? And do you have a way to upscale them to the skills that they need tomorrow? And then what is the role that technology can play in all of these workforce issues?

How can technology help you solve some of that? [00:04:00] Because, spoiler alert, I do not think that we will all be replaced by machines in the short term.

Mike: Yeah, right. There will for sure be disruption, but not straight out replacement, right? Yeah. Yeah. I'm, I'm, I'm with you on, I'm with you on the spoiler alert. Um, let's maybe talk about the first one. So demographics, if I'm the chief human resources officer for a Fortune 500. Uh, I was attending conferences 20 years ago, talking about the war for talent and migration jobs, uh, supply and demand of labor.

But if I own the local florist. Uh, or a local restaurant, that was a bit esoteric. Um, why should a small business owner care about something so esoteric, [00:05:00] not

Anita: Mm hmm.

Mike: in actuality, hitting, hitting the world today of demographics? So can you unpack that? Yep.

Anita: So I think that when you, when we were observing trends about 20 years ago, we saw this coming, these demographic shifts, because as people are born and people die, you can pretty much chart what the future population looks like and what that means for the workforce. You just don't know the specifics, and there's always some, some changes. We have known for a while that shortly after the Second World War, there was a large boom in births. Now called the Baby Boomers. I don't like the generational buckets, but okay, that's what everybody understands. And that we also knew that this was a large cohort, and [00:06:00] Generation X and Y that came after were not as large.

And we have known for a while that from a numbers perspective, starting around 2020, 2025, 2025, More people would exit the workforce than enter the workforce, especially in the global North. But also there were high hopes. That technology would make us more efficient and more effective. And therefore we would not notice this as much.

Well, here we are in 2024. And what we've now learned is that, yes, we have automated more. We have more technology. We use more technology, but instead of eliminating work, it has also created a lot of, new jobs and extra work. And I think that if you have a small business, you might have seen [00:07:00] this in, in the past year or so.

You already started to notice this during the pandemic. If you kept your company open, um, shortly after the pandemic, it was harder to get people because There is almost full employment. And what I can see here in the Netherlands is that local businesses like restaurants and supermarkets really struggle to get people into the door.

And there's a very simple reason for that. We have high demand for jobs, so there are a lot of jobs available. We have probably the highest workforce participation numbers we've ever seen in history. And the number of young people coming into the workforce is a lot lower. So where supermarkets, um, We're recruiting people 10 years ago, the same supermarkets [00:08:00] still exist, but the number of people that they can recruit from is a lot lower than it was 10 years ago.

And I think that all, you know, across all industries, across all professions, it does not matter if it's, um, desk based or desk less work. There is a generic shortage of people and that is because of numbers.

Mike: I, I, I'm right there with you. Uh, I, I think. I think this has been a hidden issue and it's, you know, so much of the time, I think this gets blamed on things like presidential politics, you know, here, here in the U S I'd say, uh, it's been, you know, I don't care what side of the offense you sit on red versus blue, whatever, but the political scene has been crazy for, for several presidential cycles now.

Um, and I think a lot of folks might [00:09:00] say, okay, job shortage, that has to do with the economy growing supply in, and therefore, uh, red president, bad blue president, good or vice versa. I think that gets blamed a lot. I think technology gets blamed a lot. I think, uh, a war in the Ukraine or the middle East gets blamed a lot.

I think, I think there's a lot of things that get blamed. But the answer really is super simple. It's, it's, it's pretty straightforward math. As societies become more wealthy, their birth rates plummet. And that's not a U S thing. That's not a Netherlands thing. That's not a Europe thing. That's a global thing.

As, as, as countries and peoples come out of poverty, birth rates plummet. It's just a fact, right? And,

Anita: absolutely. And I think you gave the perfect example. So when you start to compare countries all over the world, um, you see that the most [00:10:00] developed countries, what we call the global north, but of course, Australia is, and New Zealand are also part of that, um, all struggle with the same issue. And there's a variety of politics.

There's a variety of economic factors. But what is similar throughout all of these economies is that they're wealthy economies. They all saw a population boom shortly after the Second World War, and they also birth rates declining starting in the early 2000s.

Mike: That's right. That's right. And so the math is super straightforward. It's birth rates for birth rates starting call it 50 years ago, 60 years ago, and certainly birth rates 20 years ago is as we now have our 20 year olds. It's just simple math how many people per year are going to be entering [00:11:00] the workforce.

We know how by year based on birth rates how many people turn 18 or how many people turn 20 every year. Maybe a little bit of a wild card on when they exit the workforce. You can say 65, but as, as you have advancements in medicine and what does retirement even mean, second jobs, you know, gig economy, that's a little bit mushy, I think on the outline, but the math is the math, right?

How many

Anita: The math is the math, and also because it is demographics, there is no easy fix. Because if you would say, okay, now we would like everyone to have more children, and you do a lot of measures, you put in a lot of measures to do that, the effect only shows up 20, 25 years from now, so it does not work that way.

Um, I

Mike: And without delving into the politics, very few, lots of countries have tried to intervene here. Very [00:12:00] unsuccessfully.

I very hard. Hardly ever works. China being an example of turning their backs on the one child policy, allowing people to have two children, but maybe three, not working at all. And

They were successful at tamping it down with the one child policy. Authoritarianism is good at restricting stuff, but it's not good at fostering growth.

Anita: and they are now one of the countries with, that is, um, aging the fastest

Mike: That's right.

Anita: because of this one child policy. So the problem there is that pretty soon, one working person, one working individual will have to support four retired. individuals. That is an unbelievable situation. In most of, um, the Western world at this point in time, it is one to two.

Mike: Yeah. Um, okay. So. [00:13:00] Like I dig all this stuff. I could talk about demographics and all that for, for many, many hours. I got some authors we can recommend on another, another show. Uh, but what does this mean for a small business owner? So like, uh, if regardless of, I blamed it on personal politics or a Ukrainian war or whatever, a.

com bubble, a real estate bubble, whatever the, whatever it may be, you and I are contending. That you can't ignore the math based on birth rates. We know how many people turn 18 every year. We know how many people turn 65 every year. So entering and exiting the workforce in there simply is a labor shortage.

So facing this labor shortage, what do small business owners do?

Anita: Be very, become very creative and really think through the work that you have in terms of, does this work need, need to be done in my place of work? [00:14:00] Or can I, for instance, allow people to work from. Maybe that is home, maybe that is somewhere completely different in the world. Can I outsource it to, uh, to another country, to another person?

Um, can I hire a company to do some of this for me? Like a third party that helps you get some of the work done. But also, when, um, You look at vacancies. What always surprises me is how many demands people have and how many requirements there are in vacancies that are not really necessary for the role.

But it's, we've always written vacancies this way. These are our requirements. And sometimes I still see vacancies that have five, six pages of job requirements. That is untenable. You'll have to be a little bit more creative than that. [00:15:00] And maybe you can also, for instance, if you have, we know that, um, there are a lot of caretakers, people who take care of their families.

that can maybe not work from 9 to 5, but might be able to work from 10 to 3 during school hours or something else. So how can you be creative in all sorts of ways, um, to, to get people in? I'll give you an example. I had to go to the dentist and, um, my dentist only has Office hours, 9 to 5, but I work 9 to 5, so that is completely impractical.

His son just joined the practice, his son is early 30s or so. He is now running evening hours. So six to nine, and that suddenly opens up more possibilities for me. And I know that is not always [00:16:00] possible, but it also opens up possibilities for people who like to work in the evening or can work in the evening, but maybe cannot work during the morning.

And so it is being super creative in thinking about your, um, your customers or your audience, and then also maybe get away from, we've always done it Like this, if you work here, you work for 40 hours or 48 or whatever it is. You work from nine to five, because that is when we are open. Everything that you can rethink and where you can be creative, I would encourage you to do so because first of all, it sets you apart from the rest.

And secondly, it allows you to tap into, or underutilized parts of the workforce and maybe be more successful in hiring. And, um, retaining people.

Mike: Couldn't possibly agree on that one more. Yeah. Let's, let's, let's spend a little more time, uh, [00:17:00] going through some of these buckets. So I think number one is, uh, you said it can't be business as usual. I think if you're blaming the labor shortage now, and we've all experienced it. So even if your company doesn't experience this and you're, and you're listening, watching today, We certainly all know what it's like to walk into a restaurant and you think, Oh, I'm going to get seated right away.

Cause you see, uh, the back third of the tables are empty and you got a half hour to an hour wait because they don't have enough staff to actually even operate at full capacity. Right. I mean, we all, we all see this, even if you're not personally experienced that. And if you believe that the reason is presidential politics wars, real estate bubbles, whatever, whatever, or this.

this. Or it's a pandemic and this too shall pass, whatever your logic is, you might be tempted to think I'm just going to keep doing with the way I've always done it and this too shall pass. Once you acknowledge the [00:18:00] world has forever changed, the, the scales have tipped, more people exiting the workforce than entering based on demographics.

It's like, okay, I really do permanently have to change something. Whether it's where I recruit from, the type of people I recruit from, my benefit package, my salary packages, uh, the way in which I pay the, maybe I split jobs up, maybe I combine jobs. Something has to change. I'm not overstating that, am I?

Anita: You're correct. Yeah. Something has

to change. And I don't know what it is because every, every business is different. Have the example that you gave, uh, about the restaurant. Um, remember two years ago when we were in a pandemic? Oh, I don't know if that was the same in the U S as it was here, but here, Um, at a certain point in time, we could go back to restaurants, but there was an, let's say a policy to limit human contact as much as possible.

So instead of, [00:19:00] we've never had this, um, habit like in the United States where, um, people seat you. So you walk in, if there is a table, you, you seat yourself. Um, then there were QR codes on the table with the menu that you could open on your phone. And. And then there was a waiter coming to bring your order.

But recently, I was in a restaurant where the order was put on a robot in the kitchen. And the robot came to your table, and then the waiter picked it up from the robot and put it on the table. And I thought that was, you still retain human contact. So that has not changed. You still have a person who puts the food on the table.

But as I was talking with, um, with the people that I was with, we were trying to figure out How much time would be saved by this robot running back [00:20:00] and forth between the kitchen and the tables, but also how much healthier it was for this person waiting on us that they, they did not have to carry all those heavy items on a tray.

But instead you have this robot that then takes over the heavy load. So I thought that was super creative and I know it takes investments and it is not for everyone. But if you start to think that way, there are all kinds of, um, tools that might help take some of the load off. And As we get more, as we become more used to using technology, I don't mind so much if I sit down and order through a QR code.

Not if I go to a fancy restaurant, I want someone there taking my order. But if I'm just going out for lunch, [00:21:00] It doesn't have to be that fancy. So why not?

Mike: Well, as we were talking before the show, my wife and I who were visiting my son in, uh, in Germany and everywhere we went, Germany in, in the Netherlands. Uh, it was, it was the QR code on the table. That's how you ordered, right? Yeah. Uh, and to answer your question, don't know how it is in the States. We are diverse, but we are not homogeneous.

We, it, it is of each

Anita: Yeah. I, I usually, um, I, I, when I come over, I only visit the larger cities, like New York, um, Vegas, some, some cities on the, on the West coast. So I, and I don't visit, um, um, don't visit a lot of very small businesses. So that is a little bit of unknown, uh, territory for me. I, I see what they do here.

Mike: Your, your experience of life in the U S is very different if you're in Florida or Texas versus New York or

Anita: I know. Yeah.

Yeah. [00:22:00] Um, okay. So a couple of things. So we're, we're kind of tapping into, we're jumping, jumping ahead a little bit into automation, perhaps with a robot, but I think it's fair to say if, if I know that the, there's a shortage of supply of labor, um, then maybe I get creative about.

Mike: Maybe the, maybe the jobs that I used to have can be redefined. Maybe I have fewer people, but are more, specialists. Maybe I have higher paid, fewer people who can do a little everything, or maybe I go the opposite direction. Maybe I go after. I fractionalize jobs and have less expensive people, but maybe more of them might fly in the face of a supply issue, but they might be easier people to get.

But I think the point is there's different ways to reimagine the jobs in and of themselves, right?

Anita: yeah. And especially [00:23:00] when you start to think about jobs as a collection of tasks or activities, then you can also take a step back and think about whether the grouping still makes sense, or if you can rearrange it in a slightly different way. and benefit more from, um, from the people that are available in the workforce.

Yeah,

Mike: something else I think really important and clearly there's been a trend towards outsourcing, offshoring, globalization. Um, but, uh, but it obviously started at the large enterprises who would maybe, uh, build, say an India based, uh, IT staff or a Costa Rican based call center. Or so that big functions, call centers, development, uh, engineers.

[00:24:00] I, I, I, I think this has still got a long ways to go to creep into small businesses. I think the mentality has been. And I'm a small business owner, so I'm not judging my small business owner, uh, friends here and listeners. Um, most small businesses tend to hire within a five to 15 mile, mile radius of where their place of business is.

And maybe if I'm a restaurant, maybe that I have to, I can't have virtual bussers and cooks and, and, and, right? But maybe there's one job that is maybe your bookkeeper. The bookkeeper doesn't have to be local. The bookkeeper could be anywhere on the globe, right? And so what's, what's your guidance for just how to, how should small businesses and mid sized companies think about, you know, good gravy, the, the, the, the number of talented bookkeepers that are available within a 15 mile of my [00:25:00] business versus the entire globe.

The talent pool is just insanely bigger. It sounds a little intimidating, you know, uh, how, how does your business owners think about pursuing at least some jobs to outsource in possibly offshore?

Anita: Yeah. So let me give you an example. I'm also a small business owner, just like, uh, just like you are, um, my website, my graphical designer, they are not here in the Netherlands. Uh, I used to work for a large enterprise. We used to offshore a lot of, um, our activities and through that. I also worked, um, with our graphical team that was based in, uh, Kuala Lumpur and, um, other parts of Asia.

And now that I have my own business, one of the designers became an independent and I use her to design some of my, uh, some of my [00:26:00] artwork. Um, but as an example, that's maybe a little bit closer to home. Um, a couple of weeks ago, I needed the services of a notary, and I called to, I called the local notary, and they said, well, we can fit you in 12 weeks, and I was like, yeah, but I need something now.

Everyone is busy. So I went online, and I noticed that there was an online notary service. where you can sign up and they will send you, this was not something very, specific. this was for contractual services. So they, sent you an overview of the work with a fee. I signed it and they got the work turned around within a week.

So this online notary service is still based in the Netherlands. I have no idea who they use or where they are, but this is an example of Let's say a creative way of having people help you or do [00:27:00] part of the work for you without having to hire someone who is physically present in your area.

Mike: right, right, right. All right. So tapping into redefining jobs. Tapping into a new workforce, man, when you remove geography, the number of talented people at your disposal, it just, it's not, it's beyond exponential. It's just, it's the, it's the globe. And if you open your mind to

Anita: Mm-Hmm.

Mike: um, you'll be amazed at the talented people in the affordability of some of this talent,

Anita: Yeah. And I, I think one of, one of the advantages for people in the United States are that so many people speak English. For me, with this notary service, it had to be in Dutch. So that limits the, the, um, where you can, where you can go with this. But like the example with graphics design, if I can explain it in English and this person speak, [00:28:00] speaks English as well, we come to some sort of.

agreement, then everything from there works because we both speak English. Um, and there, um, Americans can, um, probably do a lot of business. And also there are a lot of Americans, if you really want to hire an American person, there are a lot of American people living all over the world where, um, where they understand the culture, they understand how it works in the United States.

And then. You can still hire them on, against a somewhat lower fee because they're based somewhere else and therefore their living expenses and their fees are lower as when they would Uh, be from, let's say, working out of New York or another high cost area, Boston, whatever.

Mike: That's right. So sticking with our restaurant, uh, metaphor, maybe it's your bookkeeper. Maybe it's the person who designs your menus, right? Maybe it's the [00:29:00] systems integrator connecting your

your

Anita: it's the person, maybe it's the person checking your time cards, the person running your payroll for you if you don't do that yourself. Maybe you, you might even, if you have an automated inventory system, uh, might have someone that helps you order. Stuff. Um, someone that answers the phone for you does not have to be in your restaurant.

So there are a lot of jobs when you think about the restaurant that, well, obviously the cook has to be there, the waiters have to be there, but around that set of people that must be on the ground, there are all kinds of jobs to do that maybe don't require a full time presence on the premises.

Mike: Yeah. And as to what you said earlier, when you fractionalize jobs based on the skills, it allows you to split some functions up. So maybe you only have 10 employees and not a single [00:30:00] one of those 10 could be outsourced to an area outside. But if you change the job descriptions of those 10, there's an excellent chance that one or more of those people, you could literally just change the, change their roles.

And now all of a sudden you do have someone that could be, could be not even necessarily outsourced. They could be an employee. They could just be 25 miles away. They could be in the next state over, uh, it could be the next time zone. They could be any other other side of the globe. But it, but it starts with possibly having to redefine the jobs.

Anita: Yeah, and it isn't always easy because what you will find is in a full time job, there are a lot of things that people just do because they are there. It's not necessarily in a job description, but you're there, so. As you walk to the kitchen, you take some plates away or, um, as you have a couple of minutes, you clean the bathroom or whatever, [00:31:00] something like that.

Um, so you really need to think through what do people do all day and not only look at the job description, but also look at what they do in practice. Because there's always There's always light between the two.

Mike: That's a good point. Yeah.

Anita: that I have noticed is that when people are there for a longer period of time, they tend to still own responsibilities of other roles that they had in the past, and they were promoted, and they did not hand that off.

to their successors. And so these roles have changed. And I know that a lot of small businesses, I mean, in my business, I don't have job descriptions. Everyone just does what needs to be done. Um, but I do occasionally Look at what everyone is doing and, uh, [00:32:00] um, think about does that still make sense? Give you another example.

Um, we, we have two people who, who help us. They are like juniors and we train them. And. Coincidentally, they were both off last week. So we were like, okay, who's now going to pick up the phone? Um, so one of us decided to do that, but at the same time, we started to discuss, huh, should we not start to think about hiring a phone answering service?

Because why do we need people to have, this is making it harder for us to, to schedule these, consultants on the jobs that they really need to do because they also have to pick up the phone. The phone doesn't ring that often anymore. So maybe we should just hand it over to a, um, to an answering service.

And so it's constantly rethinking what everyone is [00:33:00] doing, picking up these bits and pieces that might be better handled somewhere else or automated, or maybe, maybe it's acceptable. And in our case, it is actually acceptable to say, well, we can just have the phone go through to an answering machine. And as long as we call back within four hours, that is acceptable for our customers.

So that's probably what we're going to do.

Mike: Yeah, no, I love that because, so we've explored a bunch of different ways. You've talked about the robot delivering food in the restaurant. We talked about, uh, uh, offshoring the actual body, the, the human being doing the job, we've also talked about fractionalizing the work in some of it is to a vendor.

Right. Not, not a, not an employee, not a 1099, a vendor who's providing this, this service. So I think re imagining all the jobs in the next, leaving all those things open to you. Um, [00:34:00] I'm going to maybe put a cap, put a, put a bow on the demographics, maybe give you the last word. Here, here's my thinking on demographics before I moved to skills and automation.

Um,

your, all, all, most all businesses, certainly small and mid sized businesses, You have the opportunity to, you have the opportunity to enjoy almost no deficit in the supply of labor. So, uh, it's true that, you know, countries compete against each other to, they want businesses to relocate into their country, they'll give them tax breaks.

So, The Netherlands might compete against Germany, might compete against the U. S. Just like in the U. S., states compete against each other. Texas and California have a, have an epic battle going on right now. Keep your company here, keep your company there, right? And keep the jobs. Here's the benefits. At a local level, there's a restaurant on this side of Main Street and a restaurant on this side of Main Street.

You could simply just be better than the [00:35:00] restaurant across the street. You could simply be better than your competitors and draw the local talent. And you don't have a labor shortage. so I want to acknowledge that, but one of the ways you're going to do that is by having better HR practices, by, by recruiting smarter, by having better compensation plans, better benefit plans, better performance management, better skills training.

So people feel like they're part of something. They're part of a mission with you. whatever your. your employment brand is, you always, I believe, have an opportunity in a local business, no matter how tight the labor market, to simply out compete everybody. But you're also naive to think that there isn't a labor shortage that is here to stay for the next several decades, and that you shouldn't be opening up your mind to different recruiting strategies.

Talent pool [00:36:00] strategies in redefining and fractionalizing jobs as part of that journey. Maybe I'll give you the last word on demographics before we move on.

Anita: I have nothing to add to that, Mike. That was a perfect summary.

Mike: Yeah. Thank you. All right. Let's talk about, uh, and maybe you lead me here. Skills in automation and technology. There's a little bit of a yin and yang here, right? I mean, it's the new technologies that drive the need for new skills. It's new skills that create new technologies. And there, I mean, do

Anita: Yeah. It's a little bit of a difficult. So what, so it's what comes first, first new skills, then technology or first technology, then new skills. And I think it's at the moment we're seeing both, um, we know that jobs are changing, um, we know that we can automate more and we know that, um, Some of the work will go away, therefore people will [00:37:00] need new skills.

And we also know that society is changing and therefore people need new skills. So the coming years, as we go through this change, as we start to understand better where and how to apply technology, we also need to make sure that. The people we have are well equipped to do these types of jobs because we didn't actually talk about that with the demographics, um, topic, but in a way how you can also help become, help yourself become a more attractive employer is by making sure that when people walk into your door, um, they are different people from when they walk.

out of your door. And in between, I think it is, um, the, the responsibility of [00:38:00] the employer to make sure that they are well equipped for the work that they are doing. And when things change, that they also teach their employees what is changing and how to respond and make time for people to, um, to acquire these new skills and train for these new situations.

Yeah.

Mike: So I've got a couple, I got a bunch of thoughts going through my head here. Um, on one hand it's, so I can't remember his name. There's a famous, relatively famous Ted talk. Uh, gentleman's from Germany. He, I think it was Deloitte, maybe one of the big, big consulting firms talked about how the number of human beings involved in the manufacture of a car was relatively unchanged over like a 50 year period, but it's the roles people played, [00:39:00] uh, in those, right.

So used to have an assembly line and literally people turning wrenches. Uh, and now there's a lot of automation. So you look at the assembly line, you're like, Oh, where'd all the jobs go? Well, there's just as many jobs. They're just in different, there's people designing circuits and electronics that go into these cars, but that's a whole different skill.

So I think, I think the average small business owner understands, okay, that's, that's a transformation. But how. How does the small business owner think about, okay, that makes sense. But I'm not Ford or General Motors or Audi or, or, or, or Mercedes. I mean, I, I, I, I got, I have 15 employees. How, how should I be thinking about upskilling and what's the important of upskilling yeah.

Anita: So what we, what we know, uh, and I talk about this regularly in my keynotes, is that when people choose to work for [00:40:00] you and not for someone else, the number one thing they take into account is compensation, because when you are at home with your partner and you're talking about this new job, you're talking about the job offer, and maybe you talk a little bit about what the job entails, but mostly it is. Does it pay more than your current job? If so, yes, let's go and do

Mike: Your significant other knows exactly how much you make. They don't really know exactly what you do,

Anita: exactly, exactly. Yeah. So that is compensation. The interesting thing about that is on day one, that changes. Now, the most important thing is how can I grow here?

Mike: Yeah.

Anita: What is the plan? And so in the first couple of weeks, it's probably some sort of onboarding. So there you're good, because in the first couple of weeks, people learn a lot, but once they have acquired the skillset that they need to fulfill [00:41:00] their role, and depending on what you have them do, that can take, Like a couple of days to a couple of weeks, maybe some, sometimes for like exceptional a couple of months, but then they start to think about, okay, what comes next

Mike: Yeah.

Anita: and it is important as a small business owner to have a little bit of an idea when that moment is, is that in six weeks, is that in six months or is that after 12 months or so it is, it depends on the jobs.

Flipping burgers at a local hamburger joint is something completely different half from being, um, uh, let's say an assistant in a medical office, but therefore it's important that you first evolve for yourself. Have an idea of how difficult is this job? How much upscaling and rescaling is required? And when can [00:42:00] I expect people to do this job with confidence that they have mastered their skills and now they are fully productive, but then also based on what I have seen in combination with how this person develops, when do I start to bring in more challenges or when do I think this person is ready for next role and What do I need to do as a business owner to get them there?

And there I think that small business owners have a tremendous advantage over corporations because they are so much closer to their people. And typically business owners, small business owners know everyone that works for them. There are not a lot of CEOs in the corporate, uh, in the corporate world that know everyone that works for them.

Um, and that makes that they can create much more personalized [00:43:00] learning journeys or career journeys. Uh, journeys as we, as we call them today. And don't think that that means that you have to offer elaborate courses and training programs and all of that, because, um, we also know from experience that most people don't complete those.

But it is the ability to have some learning available at the moment that that is. And that can also be a short snippet or a one hour training or whatever is necessary for the job. You have such a large audience we cannot talk to, we cannot give an exhaustive list of options. But what we do know is that people at the moment find career opportunities, find training on the job, progression on the job.[00:44:00]

More important than I would say a couple of years ago.

Mike: There's, there's no question. And the data, the data bears that out. Uh, so. We, we produced our, our HR benchmark survey. We do this every year. So the 2024 HR benchmark survey. Um, my colleague and I, Mary, we just did a, an eight week series on this. So there's eight

Anita: I saw that. Yes.

Mike: Yeah, and, and I'm just pulling up some of the data here.

Um, one of the, one of the biggest correlations there were, uh, to revenue growth. So we asked, so if those who didn't know it, we asked 40 questions over eight sections. So five questions, uh, times eight sections from pre employment through post employment. Do you do this best practice? Do you do that best practice?

Do that best practice? So it's all yes, no questions. Uh, and then one question at the end, what best describes you last year, a fast growth company. uh, growth company, or was it a down year? A flat or a down year? And so then we correlate revenue growth to HR best practices. [00:45:00] And, uh, development of employees is number two of all of the eight categories.

So of, uh, on average, firms that didn't grow, 50 percent said yes to the five development questions. 80 percent said yes, uh, from the fast growth firms. I get, if I drill in more specifically, and I love where you're going with this, because I think this so applies to small business. Uh, there's one monster question.

Do you frequently assign stretch assignments to your employees? Zero growth and shrinking firms. 35 percent said yes. Fast growth firms, 81 percent said yes. That's a 46 percentage point spread for something so simple as assigning a stretch goal. And I think when you're in a corporation cascading org charts and well defined roles and [00:46:00] responsibilities and job descriptions, I think it's, you have to be so much more intentional to assign stretch goals in that kind of environment.

If you own a business. You're, you're working your face off. You're, you're dying on a daily basis, trying to get more stuff done. It's just easy to, Hey, I know you're not ready for this, but I really need your help and give you some guidance and pointers. I'm going to need you to figure this out on your own.

Cause I got to go take care of this other fire. That's kind of life of entrepreneurship. And I think throwing people into the fire, while maybe not as good as a really well defined curriculum and career path and a formal L and D, blah, blah, blah. There's still tremendous value from exactly what you're saying of upskilling and developing your people.

Uh, and I think maybe the opportunity is not to make it easier, but it's more, more within reach perhaps for small businesses. What do you [00:47:00] think of that? Yeah,

Anita: assignments, uh, because that gives people the opportunity to take ownership of something and show what they're worth. And that makes that you also hold the opportunity for promotion or getting ahead in your own hands. Yes. Because you know, this is a stretch assignment.

You're either up for it or not. If you're not up for it, it means you need to develop yourself a little better or wait a little longer maybe. But if you're up for it, then you have the opportunity to show yourself and really make a difference. And I think at the end of the day, people want to be seen for what they have contributed. That is what is important. Um, it's, it sounds really simple and it's very hard to do, but I think [00:48:00] everyone wants to be seen for what they contributed.

Mike: I think that's so important because I, you know, as, as, as I was thinking about preparing for our conversation today, I'm like, okay, skills. I kept on going to that auto manufacturer example. It's like, okay. It's not people who know how to turn wrenches and run a welder anymore. It's people who know how to write code and that's, those are new skills, but very, very difficult to make that transformation.

But I think you're hitting on the head in a world where you're competing. For an increasingly scarce resource, labor, employees, right? And we'll recompeting for that. You've got to get more from those people that you do have, and you need to retain them because you can't afford to lose them. And the number, again, like you said, compensation makes the decision upfront, but now once they've started, the most important thing to retaining that employee is, are you upscaling them?

Are you developing them? Uh, and we can talk career pathing and all that other stuff, [00:49:00] but simply providing training, man, the employee is engaged in what you're doing. When they're getting trained, they, if it's a stretch assignment, boy, I'm rubbing elbows with the boss and they're trusting me. So I feel good about that.

I feel like I'm part of something. Um, uh, you know what, maybe I'm only going to be here another two, three years. Maybe I'm only going to be here six more months, but I'm acquiring the skills to graduate to the next level. There's just a lot of goodness there.

Anita: Yeah. And back to your point, um, about, um, I would say data scientists and engineers and everything that is online versus everything that happens offline. When you look, and I'm going to. Switch a little bit to technology, but when you look at everything that is happening in technology and how, where we, where we hear that generative AI or AI is coming for our jobs, those are predominantly desk based jobs, [00:50:00] programmers.

I have people like me who write, um, who write a lot, who teach, um, a lot, might be for some portion, um, replaced by AI or generative AI or online coaches, online trainers and tutors and all, and all of that. I actually have a huge amount of respect for people in deskless jobs. And I also think that people who know a trade and who know it very well will be very hard, um, to be re it will be almost impossible.

I mean, if I, if I look at my own house, my house is not the same as my neighbor, neighbor's house. If I need an engineer or a plumber. I have no idea how a robot could do that, because they would have to learn this completely different setup every single time. That is not how robots work. They are, [00:51:00] there is some sort of standardization level necessary.

So that either means we build all houses the same, so we have a robot that goes from house to house. Um, or we still have, like we have today, people who can fix stuff. And how to work with their hands and who know very well how to do that. Um, I have a, um, friend who is a plumber, but he's not a regular plumber.

He's an, um, emergency plumber. So if something breaks down, you can call him and he will show up within the hour or so.

Mike: Mm hmm.

Anita: First of all, it's incredible how often he gets called out. I wouldn't want to have his job. But secondly, the income he makes. It's like three times that of a regular plumber. So that shows you that there is a lot of money and opportunity also to be made in jobs that we have might [00:52:00] consider blue collar or desk less.

Um, And that maybe the stakes are becoming a little bit more even between how, where we used to think of what color high level jobs and blue collar jobs. And now suddenly the white collar jobs are under attack and, uh, or desk based as I prefer to call it. And that's less, um, jobs are making a comeback.

And so that is also important to, um, to realize, um,

when we important to talk about the distinction, just like we talked in demographics. There's a difference between the macro story and what, what, what it means for you as a local business. In the macro story, there's going to be disruption. I mean, I was. It was nine, 10 months ago. I'm in Phoenix for a work event and, uh, it was a 45 minute wait for an Uber.

Mike: I'm like, I'm going to try the new Waymo, the driverless, uh, call it the driverless Uber, if you will. [00:53:00] It was a, it was a phenomenal experience. It was weird. I videotaped myself and share it with all my friends and family. Cause it was like super weird watching the steering wheel, you know, go all on its own, you're driving and there's no driver in the car, but it was such, it was such a.

Pleasant professional experience. There's nobody to tip. It was, I would say it was your best Uber experience that you've ever had, but you didn't have to tip. Um, and I'm like, all drivers are going away. I mean, all drivers are going away now.

Anita: Except in Amsterdam.

Mike: Well, you know what? There's a reason it started in Phoenix because it's in a desert.

It's flat in the entire city is laid out on a grid,

Anita: Integrate. Yeah.

Mike: in a grid.

Anita: Yes.

Mike: So it will be a long time before it even makes it to say, I mean, I can't, I lived in Boston for a minute. I

mean, Yeah.

Boston, no way is it ready. [00:54:00] Amsterdam, no way, no way. Is it ready? Um, but you can see the future and, you know, so I don't think it's next year.

It's not even probably five years from now, but it's coming.

Anita: It's coming. Yes.

Mike: And so there will be major disruptions to some groups who get, probably get wiped out faster. I mean, I grew up on a farm. My grandpa, my grandfather had about a 160 acre farm in the Dust Bowl of Nebraska. My dad was born at the end of the depression and it was just backbreaking work to feed a family on 160 acres.

You know, uh, call it 40 years later, my dad ran over 5, 000 acres with a bunch Only a few hired men because it was, you had a bunch of big ass tractors, right? So technology transforms things, uh, but there's still, uh, there's still opportunities. So, so, so let's acknowledge there's going to be big transformations.

There's going to be winners and losers. I hate to say that, [00:55:00] but as a small business owner, how should they be thinking about using technology? And we can talk specific AI if you want, or just automation, but how should a small business owner in, in a traditional. In a traditional bricks and mortar face to face serving my customers type of business, how should they be thinking about technology?

Anita: I always think that you should really think through where does it add value that you have a person do something and where does it not? Mm hmm. And when you have figured out those two lists, then you can start to think, okay, where it does not matter so much, where it does not add a lot of value. Are there technologies that can help me?

And that does not necessarily have to be AI. How you already mentioned automation. There's huge distinction between [00:56:00] automation and AI, and then also between AI and generative programming. AI, because we have been using AI for about a decade. And when you open your social media feed, everything that you see in there is, has been decided for you by algorithms.

And they think, well, you always look at cat pictures or dog pictures. So, so let's show you some more dog pictures so that you stay here and, and like what, what we do.

Mike: Give you that dopamine hit every time there's a new cute puppy, right?

Anita: Exactly. So people come back and they, and they stay. Um, it's the same actually for, for work. So when you have decided parts, what activities can be done by technology or don't have to be done by humans, let's start there, then you can look at your list and, and, and go through, um, All of them to see, could we automate them?

Is there a [00:57:00] technology available that can help us do this? Um, could we maybe outsource it? And it does not necessarily have to be a technology. You could also have third party handle it, um, for you. Um, and then once you have created this list and, and, and thought about what could be handled by technology, then you can start to think Okay, maybe here this is automation, this is regular AI, this is some other form of technology, self service or whatever, and then maybe you also have some that can be done by generative AI or other forms of Uh, machine learning and, and, uh, have whatever is available in, in, in robots.

Um, the list is long, I would say.

Mike: Yeah, yeah, right. I think that how I would guide small business owners [00:58:00] is don't lose a lot of, well, don't lose a lot of sleep about how you're going to be displaced by. technology and AI, you know, unless you're running a taxi cab service and Uber's invented, right? I mean, you should, you need to be mindful, I suppose.

But I would encourage people to think, okay, this isn't going to mean you go to zero employees and it's all the robots running your business for you. It's probably an awful lot like, and I run my department in corporate America like this, run the businesses I'm involved in same way. How do I grow my business?

Title of the show is Mission to Grow. How do you grow your business, but without necessarily adding headcount? Therefore, expense, right? I can add technology, uh, far less expensively. I still need and want humans, right? Um, and so whether, whether, if you're a marketer, maybe, uh, Maybe it just freed up [00:59:00] a x number of hours a week because you can use the chat GPT to write in, uh, 80% of your blogging and social media for you.

Or you can use a machine to, to, to, uh, automate, uh, emails and calls, um, uh, or your a a a hair salon and you're using online booking software. Where customers can book themselves, that doesn't mean you're firing your front desk person, but it probably means your front desk person can handle twice as much traffic at the front door if they don't have to do some of those transactional tasks that could be left to

Anita: Yeah. Or bring some coffee or some tea, or maybe do some sweeping. There's always had like we. Discussed earlier, you can combine different roles and maybe let some, some portions of it also be handled by [01:00:00] technology. In whatever shape or form, I would not be too So, I hope that I'm being realistic about AI.

Not too optimistic, not too pessimistic, but what I also see at the moment, especially when it comes to, um, generative AI, there are a lot of large businesses experimenting with what, what this can do for them.

Mike: Yeah.

Anita: Um, I also see a lot of projects remain in the pilot phase because it's very early days. People aren't exactly sure if what is happening is now adding value or not. And like you mentioned, at this point in time, I wouldn't worry too much about Am I going to be replaced? I [01:01:00] would think more along the lines of, do I understand what is happening? And is there an opportunity to test this on a small scale in my business to see if there's an advantage for me, and maybe the advantage is not there today, but at least you've tried and tested it.

You know what it can do, and maybe in 12 to to 18 months you come up with something that would work and where you could apply this technology. But don't go overboard and try to generally generative ai your whole business. It's way, way too early. Mm-Hmm?

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. Um, boy, all kinds of rabbit holes that, that I love that we could go down there. Uh, what, what jumps out to me is it kind of goes full circle where you started our conversation around, uh, job descriptions and listing the skills, and then [01:02:00] reimagining what a job actually is. If a, if, if, if today a job is these five skills, could I redefine the job?

So it's actually three of these skills and those two. Uh, get either offshored, automated, something else. I think you start breaking down all the job, all the tasks that get performed in your business and breaking those down. And so sticking with my, my hair salon example, and you went to exactly there.

What if you could implement, forget generative AI for a second, Just some good old fashioned, been around for quite a while, uh, automated booking software, uh, an iPad on a kiosk. When you walk in the door, they can self check in. My kids did that, getting their braces, uh, well over, you know, 15 years ago, way over more than a decade ago, they're, they're, they're self checking in at the orthodontist.

Um, So checking in, uh, they could, they could check out for via Apple [01:03:00] pay right here on the way out the door, but maybe you still want, now you can redeploy that front desk person to give hand massages and wine and tea and coffee, and you've just elevated the customer experience without really any material change to your cost structure.

It seems reasonable to say that you, your revenue will grow because you'll either be able to charge more or you're going to retain more customers. Uh, just, I don't think this is always a cost cutting. I'm replacing this person for this technology. I'm replacing this person for somebody else offshore. We need to re imagine the jobs themselves down to the skill and into the task level.

Anita: Yeah. And I think in most of the examples that you gave, the replacement isn't cutting costs. It is being able to do more with less.

Mike: Yeah. How do I go from being a 1 million business to a 2 million business without doubling my [01:04:00] headcount? So I double my revenue, but I don't double my headcount. You're still going to probably need more people, but how do those people become more productive? Right.

Anita: Exactly.

Mike: Any other guidance you want to give small business owners, midsize companies on, on how to, how to think about technology?

What should they, what should they, what, what, what legitimately should they be afraid of, do you think?

Anita: I think the only thing that you should be replace, uh, be afraid of is being replaced by your competitor who offers a more seamless experience.

Mike: Oh man, I just couldn't have, couldn't have said that better. I think, I think there are so many people, well, I'm not technologically, I'm not, I'm not, you know, technologically advanced. I don't, I don't understand that stuff all that well. Man, your competitor across the street probably does. And if they don't yet, they're gonna, I mean, either you or them is going to figure it out.[01:05:00]

And the one who figures it out is going to win. You know, whether it's, uh, whether it's going, and I'm going all the way back to the beginning, because I know we're about time. When I think all the way about back in the beginning, if we're recruiting, let's say I am still attracting local people because I need front desk cashiers, uh, at my fast food restaurant, but one business has, uh, get paid at the end of your shift and the other doesn't.

All other things equal, there's a competitive advantage for talent there. Uh, it doesn't require paying more money, but it requires some technology. to be able to pay on demand. Um, right. And so, uh, I think we got to think about how to use technology as a local competitive advantage, or at least a marketplace competitive advantage.

And don't be afraid of getting replaced by AI afraid, be, be very, very, very, very afraid of your number one competitor, leveraging AI and just kicking your rear end. [01:06:00] Yeah. All right. Uh, man, I knew we could probably talk forever. I know we're, we're a little over our schedule time. Anything, I'll give you the last word.

What's, what's your, what's your final guidance here for small business owners, midsize manager, company managers around the future of work?

Anita: I typically tell the people that I, um, that I consult with is the people that will be most affected by the decisions that you make today. Are your future employees. Now, because you will need a little bit of time to implement and introduce all of that. And so keep them in mind, even if you don't know who they are, when you make today's decisions.

Mike: That's a really great advice. Anita, I enjoyed our conversation very much.

Anita: Thank you for inviting me, Mike.

Mike: Yeah. And thanks to everybody else, uh, for [01:07:00] joining us. And Lettink us be part of your mission to grow until next week.

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.