 Okay, good afternoon everybody Tom Stewart here. I'm with Liz Trotter. This is smart business moves. Liz Where's our guest? Where's our guest, Tom? You are our guest. You're it. Okay, and you guys for those of you that think we just didn't do a good job of scheduling a guest, we decided that I would talk about this KPI, this metric, this topic, and Tom also has one. So when you see Tom on You'll know that we planned that one too. All right, so I think that's next Wednesday. Is that the last Wednesday? It's the last one. Yeah, next Wednesday, or maybe it's Monday. It's Monday the 31st. I'm kind of tying it up. So yeah, this is planned. This is this was a conscious decision. Yeah, so we figured that every once in a while It's okay if we actually say something to not too often Although you you guys all know that doesn't shut me up if I'm not a guest. I'm still talking Tom you're much better at that. You let the guests talk. Hey, Denet. Good to see you 80s outfit figured out. Thank you for reminding me. No, no, I don't I need to get on that It's really hard. I was on there today looking for like 80s costume. Denet, what are you wearing? Yeah, I would love to know what other people are wearing And when you even when you search for 80s costume, you know what shows up a lot is 70s outfits Which is weird. The only thing I can find for 80s is like Madonna Outfits or 80s workout wear. I don't even know what men are. Oh men you're gonna have to wear like the long shag So, yeah, I don't know what's going on here I thought you were for some reason macho man Randy Savage or back to the future guy or Ferris Bueller 80s Well, I googled 80s costume ideas. Oh, there is a Don Johnson thing Tom pull that one up. I Could pull that off Yes, you absolutely could pull that off. Oh and the white shoes and everything. That's it Denet. Good job You can totally pull that out. That's awesome. Okay. Who is a nice person from around that what what that show Who could I be that was in that show? What's the name of that show? I don't think there was a Miami Vice yeah, it was two guys. I could do a guy First time just as a man Miami Vice costume Yeah, no you have to wear that the pastel The pastel shirt is really critical for that outfit Yeah The light blue or the light pink and these those other ones that you're looking at those are things that my son-in-law wears now He could get that That's it And the shoes have to be white Absolutely, and you have to wear socks That's what I thought when I saw the his facial hair. That's what made me think it I was like, absolutely. You can do it with your hair. That's perfect. That's gonna be awesome I'm not sure if that's really great for you Tom that you already look so much like an 80s guy Why I'm an 80s guy There you go. You're ready to go. Well, I need I need to figure out something for 80s too So I'll I'll do I'll do the same thing 80s costume ideas female Martha look at what you're doing to us. You're making this so difficult Who else is going to is anybody else on here that is going to QTS and is doing the 80s Thing I can't remember what the other one is because I'm not gonna be there. Oh Like the flash dance time saying they're all like that and the other ones are more like 70s That's 70s. Yeah 70s. I was like, okay. I could wear that a 70s average Joe that's nothing It's hard Right. It's really hard. I know you have to have like the big really big fluffy hair Costume, but see mostly you see this 80s disco thing or Madonna. Well, yeah Madonna I guess was kind of technically 80s. Yeah All of those see they're all Madonna or workouts though Maybe that maybe that tracksuit thing They have that tracksuit. I can maybe do that. I don't even see it now Let's see what I mean Madonna and work a whole lot of Madonna Don't work out work out. So I'm thinking that's what everybody's gonna be wearing Except me I will not be in Madonna or workout wear. Oh I can do that makeup. I can do that. All right, I'll figure something out. Oh anyway Okay, so I think we've talked enough Liz. I'll work on it. All right, Denny. Thank you I don't know if you're wearing those tight clothes though. Oh my gosh I need something. All right, so KPIs anything else anything else going on right now? Oh, you said the market Stop market keeps going down and down every day. I mean I have to start cleaning more homes I don't know this is getting Depressing because you didn't yesterday have to think about cleaning more homes. No, it's you know, it's all good though Who it's you know, it's an opportunity to buy right? Yes All right All right, so we're talking about KPIs today and what exactly was the topic was it retention and Employee engagement and retention retention and engagement. I can't remember what order, but that really doesn't matter Those were kind of the the the general topics and what are the what are the KPIs? You know, how do we know if we're you know doing a good job of employee engagement and Yeah, a lot of the numbers that we use and talk about and you know, certainly, you know Producing and made central or design for continuous improvement You know, it's nice to know what you have a goal You know, what's kind of normal and where do you want to be? But where you are is where you are and the idea is you know, I want to know where I am and know You know when I do things to get better I want to be able to see objective results that I'm moving those numbers in the right direction and You know retention, I guess is kind of straight. Well, I know there's a lot lot to that but engagement is I Don't know if we think about measuring employee engagement very much. We don't talk a lot about that. I Think that the companies that really are concerned about retention do talk a lot about engagement Because that is most concerned about it or do a good job managing Talk about it think about it, right? I don't think it's easy I will I will say that All right, so So you hit on something that I think is really useful and I think that a lot of people do this a Different than I do to think about it in a different way than I do and you guys anybody that's been on all month long will recognize it Because I've asked this question of every guest you have in the benchmark Hey, so for me How I work better is if I have some type of a benchmark that I'm working toward Because it makes it easier for me to focus on hmm What could make that number happen? But if I just have this vague idea of improving it It's too difficult for me. It's like I could pick 50 things and they're all gonna make an improvement But they you know, how far are they gonna move the needle? So it doesn't work as well for me to versus having Some number out there and that's where I'm going. That's what I want to get to So when I'm thinking of like did you have a question Tom or comment? No, it makes me think of the term necessary, but not sufficient Yeah, and you've heard me say that before it's like we're improving also. Well, thank you. That's necessary But it's like we've gotten employee turnover down from 400 percent to 375 percent. Well, thank you. That's moving in the right direction, but it's not sufficient, right? Which is why for me it is really important to have that that thing that I'm going toward So, you know, I'll be talking a lot about probably strategic success groups today just because we do a lot of this I know that if people tease me too about KPIs I'm like, no, like when I'm thinking about KPIs like we're checking six basic KPIs Because in my mind, these are the key performance indicators for your company Everything else falls under there and I consider all of those other ones more like IP eyes important performance indicators, but Those top those top five or six Those are the things that tell you bottom line if anything else is working. So I really I Really like to think about where I'm going having those benchmarks. So for example, if I'm thinking about When I'm working with people this happens a lot when I'm working with people they're like I'm not able to keep people and The first question I always ask I ask always ask these three questions And I know it frustrates people, but these are the three things I want to know When you lose people like what what percentage of people do you lose at what stage of the game? Are you losing them between one three days? Are you losing them at a week? Are you losing them at a month? You know, where are you losing them first? The second thing is do you do exit interviews? Do you know why your people are leaving? Why try to figure it out go to the source find out why people are leaving and fix those problems first Right, I find that and it tell me you and I both have seen this every time we're talking It doesn't matter what the what the KPI is that we're tracking, right? If we say okay, we need to improve profit just as an example People will start telling us what needs to improve before they even look at what's causing the problem, right? Why right? Yeah, they don't even look at what's causing the problem and they don't look at what are the right things that you should be doing They just start they're like no. I'm just gonna start fixing that Well, that's and I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I actually I much prefer do something over nothing But ideally let's do the right thing Let's do the thing that's gonna move us forward the fastest the best and get us to That metric that we want to track and I I'm I love metrics. I love to see Where where we're going? Are we succeeding or not? All right, so First thing is how long are they staying? The for for me if you're looking for at retention you have to find out how long people are staying Now I've done a lot of this work already and so I know why after what 27 years this business So I know for me and my company this won't be the same in every company, right Tom different Why people leave is different in different companies and also different locales and Like we found out before it didn't take us long to figure out that people leave in Portland For different reasons then they leave in South Carolina, right? They're different issues So you have to figure out for your own business, but there are some things that are kind of the same Like the first few days if somebody is leaving in the first one to three days 95% I'm not gonna say I don't have this. I don't have don't somebody send me something saying let's show me your data on that 95% It's a guesstimate Over a bunch of time. I probably do have data for this somewhere though It's close to 95% of the time this person shouldn't have been hired in the first place There was Something that we should have been able to figure out that they they didn't really want this job or they couldn't couldn't Take this job. It wasn't gonna be a good fit for them does and I'm saying 95 900 because Legitimately sometimes in the first couple of days Something happens and now a job that they really thought was gonna be great. Isn't that gonna be great anymore? I'll give you that but the majority of the time in those first three days. They're they don't belong there. So Do you agree with that Tom? Does that does that hold true for what you've seen? As a rule you can you can say that You know, sometimes it's an execution thing. I mean it could be a lot of things, you know, you know, maybe You miss something in the interview more times than not, you know, maybe they're a good fit But they didn't have the transportation thing at the daycare figured out for instance and Sometimes that's avoidable. Sometimes you ask the question and you don't get the straight answer So, you know this in some regards, this is the red marbles blue marbles thing again It's like did you make a bad hire? It's like well, you made a good hire based on the data that was given you and At some point if you were given bad data, you asked the right question and get the wrong answer or get a less than than honest answer then You know, do you consider that a bad? Do you consider that a Internal fail or just, you know, you you you guess the the logical color and it just wound up being wrong And so I'm glad you brought that up because That is the whole purpose of tracking this data and knowing when you lose people if you're losing and when I'm saying one to three Days, I'm saying if you're losing the majority of your people and the first one to three days You're either hiring wrong people if you're losing the majority of them in that time frame. You're doing something wrong Something wrong. It's on you. It's not bad people. It is Something wrong now Chances are good if the majority of your people are leaving in the first one to three days. It's not it's not a bad hire Not if it's the majority. It's something that you're doing wrong something. You're not onboarding them correctly They're not feeling like they belong here. This is not the right company for them They thought their expectations are not being met in some big way So They wouldn't have in most cases There's always, you know, the fringe case where somebody came along and offered them, you know a buck more an hour and they Left but as a rule, you know, they wouldn't have taken the job if they didn't have Expectations that they were gonna like it. It was gonna be a good job for them. So you you somehow Bursted their bubble, you know, kind of kind of messed up their expectation, you know, right out of right out of the shoot Yes, so if you have a lot of them that is 100% on you So when we're talking about like your little balls Tom, right? You're right. Sometimes there's the outlier the person who they thought they had everything taken care of and they didn't or whatever but if the majority is is Happening in that time frame you just the smart move is to accept you're doing something wrong You need to fix up because that's a smart move if it's happening all the time If you have a whole bowl of red bull red balls, sure you pick one out Periodically you're gonna get a blue ball But the first four balls aren't gonna be blue if you've got 95 balls that are red and five that are blue The first four aren't gonna be blue. Sorry. That's not happening Right, so if you're the majority is not working out The smart move is change what you're doing change your onboarding from the very first day, right something So might be Expectations it might be how you're bringing in them in but it's something there. So, you know this If I could Liz I want to want to share a kind of a Different way of looking at turnover and what you're talking about Kind of kind of reminds me of that because a lot of people Worry about all the people that they're losing, you know, like, you know, the Tens of people that that that that are quitting and If you flip that around and look at well, how many technicians do I have and how many technicians do I really need? Normally that gap is relatively small You're burning a lot of calories and you're hiring a lot of people just to fill, you know, one two, you know Maybe three positions. So if you can say well, I don't care about all the ones that are leaving I need to care about The two people who didn't stay and be thinking about, you know, out of all of those people Who were the two that should have stayed and what could I've done differently? There's a lot of external things. Maybe, you know, it was a bad choice. The car doesn't work They didn't, you know, whatever they just weren't the person I thought they'd be but somewhere out of there There were two awesome people that didn't stay and that was on you What do I need to do differently? And if you can just keep two of the people You're not having to hire the dozen others that left anyway So that actually you're you're bringing up a good point. So one of the One of the things that I like to track are of the people that are here On a scale of one to ten, what do I rate them? So I if I have Well on a scale of one to ten if I have ten people and eight of them are fives and Two of them are threes This is a really good metric that I need to get fixed now I don't want to bring in more people That are going to perform in this way. That is not a good thing to me That is really really similar to if you aren't closing on any of your Leads stop throwing money at at your sales Yeah, it's like I need more. I need I need to spend more on Advertising I need to improve my marketing because I'm not getting a lot of you know I'm not getting new customers. It's like well, you're not answering the phone and you're not returning emails. I mean Yeah, so stop spending more money trying to get more leads if you can't close the leads that you have so one of the very first things that I like to measure is The I start one of the things I start with is looking at the workforce I have right now. What would I rate them? And this is one of my favorite questions? I learned this from I think was Jim Rohn and His question is this if you could go back in time and You didn't need this person would you hire them again? It's such an amazing question and it's crazy how so many times you're like man That person is just a problem. I don't if I didn't need them would I hire him again? I wouldn't she calls out all the time. She's constantly sick She has a negative attitude. No if I didn't need 10 people if she was my 15th person I would absolutely not hire her again. All right. That is really good information for you to look at so so you say if you don't need them I'm Trying to figure out what the what I don't need if they if they if you didn't need them you wouldn't hire You wouldn't hire anybody. You didn't need right? Oh, no, sorry. I'm not saying this, right? So let's say that I have 10 people that are working for me currently Okay, let's just say as an example COVID heads, right and Now I really only need eight of these people Right and I'm gonna go down the list if right now. I really don't need 10 people Would I hire this person again? Yes, I would she's amazing. I'm gonna keep her. How about this person? I hire her again No, you might come up with what what many people do come up with is eight out of ten people I wouldn't hire again All right, they're like if I had to now you can't get rid of all of eight of those people, right? but you can begin to look at This is a really great KPI in my book Because if the people that I'm keeping are not the people that I actually want that are doing the good work for me that I need to Have done then again, I need to change something so We can talk about some of the things that we have to change But I just wanted to hit on some of these KPIs that I don't think people think about are the people performing in the Ways that you want them to perform So one of the things it may central does that I really like is it gives sort of an overall score, right? It doesn't have the the culture piece added into the score yet So I do that separately, but it does have an overall score like how Does this how often does this person come to work? How often are they late and what's their quality score, right? And sort of gives this this overall score for the employees And I remember Back in the day Tom before you had made central you and Derek and I were in the war room And Derek had this idea that all employees should always be ranked and you should put that on your on your Website What they're rating, right? This is a 10 this employee is a 9.9. This one's at 8 This one's a 7 and of course we had to scrap that for different reasons But he was like that's kind of where it's going to be going and especially in the gig economy, right? But the independent contractors and we are seeing a little bit more of that for sure But I remember Derek coming over this idea and I was like that's amazing We have made retention of our technicians our number one priority for over four decades now Absolutely, if you're making a priority so Patrick actually I love that I do know that about you know, I've heard about it from you for years Can you share a couple of the KPIs that you track to make that one of your Your your number one priority not one of but your number one priority What are some of the metrics that you track to see if you're being successful or not? I might be curious to see Would you say that retention is probably If not one of maybe the most Unappreciated, you know metrics and running a business You always hear about we have a hiring problem. We have a hiring problem It's like well, you have a retention problem and you're trying to fix it by just hiring more Which is the same thing we're talking about with sales, right? If they if the jobs are going out the back as quickly as they're coming in What what good is that you you've got to you've got to have that back door shut? Absolutely, but but you know business owners and managers Measure and talk and think about you know the sales funnel and leads and conversion rates and That's part of the the the normal, you know dialogue that that goes on But you don't hear people talking as much about just to think about it the term customer service And what that implies? You don't hear people talking about, you know team member service or employee service the same way It's almost just taking it taken for granted compared to Think about all the the time that most businesses spend trying to figure out how to make customers happy Are they spending a comparable amount of time trying to figure out how to make their employees happy in a lot of cases? No, I think I'm in a different situation than you Tom because the people that are attracted to me are interested in employee engagement and So they're interested in retention and they want to talk a lot about retention and engagement So like in my strategic success groups, I would say we talk about it a lot It is a common topic of conversation and it's something that we measure regularly and we you know We work on so time and energy and treasure is invested in it absolutely Absolutely, so so I think that my experience is different than yours because the people that I work with are You know, I'm going to be pushing on this all the time. It's one of my normal one of my normal soapboxes I carry this one around constantly. I'm throwing it down and jumping on top of it every chance I get So people are used to that's why you're today's subject matter expert Exactly because I do talk about it all the time And I could probably talk about it for hours and hours and hours and just never get tired of it It's a it's a passion for me Yeah, absolutely your employees automatically improve client retention. Well one caveat there one caveat So if you don't track the KPI that I just said Of how are they performing you could potentially have a whole company full of Underperformers that are and we see this all the time Tom where the employees that they can't get their quality up There's like back and forth can't get their quality up can't get their times up and the employees are just going through the motions Yes, they're able to keep them, but they're just going through the motions and they're not performing at their best we We've run into that with like some acquisitions that we've done in the past and You know the employee retention seemed to be pretty good And it was all awesome until we really figured out that there wasn't any Accountability and attendance really didn't matter and quality wasn't a thing and Okay, well, we're gonna have to wear a uniform now And we're gonna have to be here at a particular time and we're gonna have to get certain qualities It's all sudden. It's like this isn't a fun place to work anymore I agree that if we were retain employees Assuming like in your situation Patrick because you are constantly keeping the focus on retention My my assumption is that you are constantly focusing on retaining really excellent employees To I'm assuming that that's that that's a given for you but I have seen where people are focusing on retention retention retention and pretty soon they have a broken culture of employees that are running the show and Business owner is miserable can't get out in front of Any anything in their company because the employees are pretty much deciding how how things will run All right, so another another important I think KPI is and then I don't see anybody tracking this I mean people in my groups obviously track this but I don't see anybody else tracking this in any meaningful way is How happy are your employees? How happy are there? How much do they like their jobs? So that's not something that people track on a regular basis and So is it how happy are you with your job or how happy are you? period with your job with your job, so I Finding out how happy people are with their job matters. It's really really an important metric to be be tracking And you can be on an unhappy person, but still be happy with your job You can be in a bad situation at home and still really be happy with your job But you can also be a really happy person person you can say yes I'm a very happy person, but I hate my job Right, so I think it's important to know how happy are they with their job? How much do they enjoy their job? How much do they look forward to coming to work? How much? Value do they find and the work that they do do they feel? Filled up by their job or do they feel depleted at the end of the day There's lots of different questions to measure this too at the end of the day Do you feel exhausted and like oh my gosh? I just need to sleep or do you feel like energized and like hey, what do we want to do? Let's go. Let's do something. So I think those things really those are a lot of different ways of measuring I'm not ways different things to measure and to check on to see how happy people are in their in their jobs but it's really simple most of the time for the if you start asking this question on a regular basis if you Start asking this question every week for the first month. Everybody will tell you they're thrilled. They love their job For the next three months. They'll tell you they hate their job Everything under the sun is terrible. The equipment isn't right. The supplies aren't right things right down So-and-so is a witch they'll tell you all of that for the next three months And then after that you'll find out how people really feel about their job Remember reading an interview one time from a manager who made the claim that Everybody in his company is happy and the question was asked well What's your secret? He says I fire everybody that's not happy So are they happy or are they telling you they're happy to Hey, Salisha What would you suggest suggest to be a good to asking them as a group digital survey one-on-one So lots of different ways can work and it depends on your culture one I Like to do things and as simply as possible just give me the info, right? So if I can so if you can come up with a survey that you can send out easily to your people not Anonymous though y'all so I know anonymous surveys are really popular and people think it's the better way to go But anonymous surveys aren't going to give you the that information that you need They're not going to give you the data that you need because And I can give you an example and I will get back to your question Salisha. I'm not ignoring you Here's an example if Liz says if if you get a piece of anonymous feedback that says I really think we need to do something about our Vacuum cleaners they don't suck the way we need them to suck, right? They suck in the wrong way. Yeah, they suck And not in the right way If you don't know who that's coming from your tendency can be To blow that off and be like, oh, please our vacuum cleaners are fine But if you know that that's coming from somebody like somebody like me really wants to be able to do a good job vacuuming You're gonna take that that feedback seriously If you know it's coming from somebody who's really critical about every single thing that you're doing your company And they never think anything's good enough. You're going to accept that information in a different way Okay, we need to look at our vacuums and we need to test them and see if they're actually Sucking you know, you can go you can go to that person and say give me more information How can you understand what's not working? Um, I guess the flip side of that though is and I believe the primary reason that people do anonymous surveys Is they're afraid that it's like Voting is you know for like political figures is an anonymous thing because you don't want everybody else to know Do you want your boss to know that you don't really like your job? I mean All right, so now you're getting to another metric that I that I tracked that I believe in I think is very important And that's the trust kpi How much do we trust each other? Because if if there's trust in your business if there's trust in your company people will tell you What you want to hear they'll they'll give you the correct answer and they'll give you the truth So remember I said when you're sending out surveys, and I'm coming back to salisha I remember when I said um, if you're giving out surveys for the first month everything's amazing It's awesome That's because they don't know what you're going to do with this information Am I going to get in trouble or is there going to be a backlash? They don't really want to know nothing ever changes in this company. Anyway, it doesn't matter what I say, right? We've all heard all of those things So in the first month you get nothing but If you respond well to that feedback every single time you get it Take it seriously great. Excellent. Everything's excellent Okay, then I'm not going to change anything because I don't want to mess things up If you guys are happy with the way things are In the next month, you'll start to get the trickles of well not everything's perfect You know the vacuum can I say that well, you know, I really didn't Everything like 99.9 percent of everything is perfect But you know like the vacuums could be and they're kind of testing. Okay, I get it and you're like positives like oh, that's awesome Okay, that one percent thing. Okay. Well, we can dress that Yeah, how about maybe 10 percent's not awesome. Well, I'm still got a job So let me tell you how I really feel let's hear about that too and The the trick here is It's about you You have to truly want that feedback. So if you think you want that feedback But you know, you're not good at handling negative feedback Don't ask Don't ask because you'll make the problem worse All right, so Salisha for you What's a what's a good approach to asking them? What's the level of trust in your company if you have a small company chances are good You have a higher level of trust and if you have a bigger company right because there's a Nothing that I'm saying is 100 of course, but smaller companies tend to Talk with their people more and they're they have more more dialogue closer conversations And remind me to tell you that that is another KPI I'm just making a little note here. So I don't forget to mention that one here um, so they have What was the other kpi? I'm sorry conversations Right or connections um So smaller companies tend to have a higher level of trust and Because of that you just ask them Straight to their face like so tom. What do you think about blah blah blah? The lower the level of trust the more space you need to give between Between you and the answer between them and the answer So people will tend to write things More they'll write more things than they will say directly to your face It's interesting They'll say more things to you even on zoom though Then they would if they were in the same room with you Which is I know that there are some there's some research being done about that right now Which is really interesting Because it seems like it'd be the same but it's not So that that physical space makes a difference, which is interesting. So it's easier for me to provide Feedback that's not glowing if I'm writing it down as opposed to just looking in your eye and telling you Yep So the hardest thing I can put it in an envelope and hand it to you and run away Before you have a chance to read it and and people also feel like they can wordsmith it And in writing they could write it and then they could fix it and make it sound better And then they could fix it again and write it away so they could make it right They're afraid to say things because they're afraid you're going to take it the wrong way Whatever that is the wrong way. You're going to get mad You're going to think that they don't like their job that they're afraid they're going to get fired I spoke with someone just today that is one of the highly Most highly valued employees in her company. She's in my manager's group She's in no danger of being fired At all none. I mean she'd have to do something bad to be fired She is highly highly valued and she said to me twice I'm just worried. I don't want to get fired So it's interesting right people people worry about getting fired, especially if they value their job so um, give them space giving um If you ask them in a group if you ask people in a live group you will get more negative feedback then if you ask them in a If you have one person that trusts you Because one person will start the ball rolling and then everybody will be like, oh, okay, that went well And you'll get it all So if you want to get it all really fast and you have somebody that you and you can actually prime the pump with this It's like I want you to lay into me and tell me how much I suck and after you do that everybody else will That's right. So and here is another trick that you can use for that is you can go to the person that you know is the crabbiest person that complains the most is least happy and Tell them that you're you're going to you need their help ask for their help I need you to help me point out and find out what all of the things are So do you know what any of them are when you get started with those you can start with those? Yep, they'll be an earful They'll give you an earful right there And they will do the service of getting your your group going now If you can't manage that and you can't handle that don't do that because for many people that is too overwhelming and depressing and Leaves you in a place of I don't even know what to do. It's like way too much way too overwhelming I really personally love a digital survey. It's my favorite Well, unless I'm going to do one-on-one. I mean, I love one-on-one I can get better stuff. I can ask better questions and I can build the trust but if I don't have Possibility to do one-on-one then I love a digital survey Like and my preference Is the same survey going out repeatedly not with different questions And I know that's really popular ask different questions, but I want some data to track I want to know does this number go up? You have a baseline and getting back to the continuous improvement you can compare survey after survey and which is where I am able to give you the information about When you first start putting out surveys the first month is awesome and the next month and the next actually closer to two months and sometimes three months is Not so great. And then you fall into the pattern of okay. This is this is what is really going on It's right between that two and three month period where people are settling in and they're like and All of these numbers that I'm giving you are assuming That you are managing that feedback well So if somebody says to you Well, I just hate the way we do time off Nobody in this company gets enough time off and we're all tired and we all hate it and you say Well, there's nothing I can do about that We need people to work if you guys weren't calling off all the time It doesn't matter what you say if you respond with Yeah, but you're wrong You're not going to get feedback Your situation is not going to improve. You're going to continue in the same exact cycle Because you're not going to build trust and people aren't going to tell you You know, they're they're just going to stop and that's when you're going to hear the things like nothing ever changes Anyway, it doesn't matter what you say, you know, all of that. Why should I tell you you don't care those types of things all right, so That question was hard to answer salicia. You can see because it depends on A lot of different things which Patrick will back me up here. I know Which is why it is so difficult for many many companies to manage their employees Rarely is there one right answer? They're just is not people are too different And what people want and expect and how they communicate all of these things are so so different but there are some There are some best practices And so getting to the KPI that I said I wanted to mention Tom. How often do you connect or communicate with your employees? So this is a number that I really like to track And it doesn't have to be you the business owner. It can be whoever it is that is managing your employee your employees Doesn't matter who but whoever that person looks up to as their Manager, we've all seen the research that talks about your employees They care. They don't leave jobs. They leave managers, right? We've all heard that we've all heard that so Part of what your manager needs to do So I really like to have a list of metrics that the manager has to do to manage their employees and one of those is How how how often are you going to communicate with your employees and in what ways are you going to communicate? How many times are you going to communicate one-on-one? How many times in a group? How many times about personal? their personal situation versus their performance and sort of Not for and also what are the what are the topics that you're going to talk about? so Is there like a framework? In your mind a best practice like if you're another You know, you've got your groups and you do a lot of coaching, you know I mean you're you're always helping companies with this and if They're talking to you about gee my employees just don't seem to be happy. I have a lot of turnover You know, how do I get my supervisors involved in this process? How do I get started with that? We don't maybe that's something that we could kind of think about because You know, what are best practices? What would you you know? How do you know if you're because you know employee engagement? It's not all about just the owner you've got You know the the leadership in your organization. It's a team effort. So What do you what? How do you how do you charge your leadership team and manage your leadership team? so they're You know getting the most most traction on employee engagement All right So this is what we kind of teach until you have like 10 employees or so As long as you are not like a virtual office where your employees are out there Cances are good that you're the one that they need to connect with right So up to 10 employees once you have 10 employees Some people have less eights, you know, some people have more 12 But then you start getting somebody between you and your employees because they need to start supervising them or managing them one or the other so When there's a barrier to growth by by the way, that's really important A lot of companies are able to grow up to that point at 10 But they can never figure out how to get that layer of supervision in there and they're kind of stuck at 10 forever So we have this conversation a lot So this is something that this is part of what you have to do this part of the framework the things that you were doing for your employees They're at this level and then you have your next level and this is your supervisors managers, whatever Let's just say one level supervisors right now and then you're here You have to now Do the same activities that you were doing with your employees with your supervisors And they now are charged with the same activities with the employees So that the trick is How do you appear stop talking to these people down here? How stop because you can't just completely pull away So you have to transition them and where I see I just had a talk with a business owner actually The beginning of the week Monday. She's like my manager. I've lost so many managers I've lost six managers in the last four months. What am I doing wrong? And it didn't take long to see that what she was doing wrong is that she's going around her managers She's Trying to manage the people and not giving her managers the power that they would be able to do their job So they're constantly feeling like the you know, the stool is getting kicked out from under them So it is not an easy thing to To work with On you stay in your lane, right? I think that's the saying that we hear all the time Stay in your lane. That is not your job to manage the employees. That is someone else's job Your job is to help them manage those employees Not by telling them what to do by helping them figure out how to do their job better Letting them do it letting that giving them some metrics to track right telling them some things that they have to do So that they have a format to follow you have to contact them this amount of times You have to celebrate birthdays. I don't care how you celebrate them But you have to celebrate them. You have to you have to do these things I'm not going to tell you how to do them. That's on you. That's your job But these are some of the things you have to do you have to talk with them You have to contact them once a week I don't care how you how you communicate with them. You can do it by text if that's better, but you have to How do you measure that? So, um, which thing? um Okay, you're the supervisor you need to Celebrate birthdays. You need to have at least one contact a week with every employee that you're directly responsible for You know matter meaning measure accountability So we need to measure that and create accountability because if they aren't celebrating birthdays and meeting once a week You need to know that right? Yeah, absolutely So you track it the same as you track. I like to put metrics on everything because you can track it the same way you Track all your kpis. How do you track them? Do you track them in a spreadsheet? Do you track them in a software program? Most of this stuff that i'm talking about There aren't a lot of programs that track it but there are some Um that you can find they're kind of pricey for our industry So most people track this stuff using excel or sheets So like a like a shared spreadsheet and every supervisor goes to it and kind of documents Yeah, I had two birthdays. I celebrated this week and I You know, maybe just yes or no. I talk to every Person or maybe you have every employee's name listed there and they have to check off if they talk You know had one at least one connection with them Find a spreadsheet. So there's a couple different ways of doing it One is that you just said right there Tom is you can have all of your employees listed and one thing that is really helpful to know is um Some employees need to be contacted once a week They need to have some kind of connection with you once a week I think that that is a really good place to start But there are some employees that need to have some kind of feedback from their supervisor daily There are some some employees that feel like hourly would be better. Am I saying that? No, but you need to know that some they're different people need different amounts of of connection For example, I really don't ever need anyone to tell me I'm doing a good job Like my employees anybody that I work with This is just not something that I need but in other relationships. I might need that So you need to look at Your employees and what do they need? So On the spreadsheet that you were just talking about Tom where everybody's listed one thing that is really helpful is just a A quick number this person needs in the in the following in this coming up week This person needs three connections. This person only needs one this person needs five So that we can sort of track. Are they getting what they need? I do have another I find a workbook and do you think that The need for connections might change from time to time. It's like okay now your attendance is going sideways or your quality is bad or Whatever else that the number maybe goes from one to Some higher number Absolutely, but that is not how much they need to feel fulfilled in their job How much contact they that and what I'm talking about is just that they How much contact they need to feel happy in their job to feel to feel like they love their job Right to feel like they love their job. Like this is a good job for me. I like it They that's a different number now. How often do you have to talk to somebody whose job is going sideways? more often Almost always it's more often than you're currently talking to them Because it's still going sideways. They need more help Typically, that's the word I like to think of they just need more help more support But at some point in time people have to go Okay, like if you you also have to have that that lying in the sand what What is the place where sorry we can't work with you anymore? And and then it's time to let people go because not everybody is fixable Not everybody wants to be Not everybody wants to perform to their highest Stand level. So we're talking about contacts. You could Contacts could be necessary in order to improve improve performance or Contacts are necessary in order to make people feel appreciated feel loved like they matter That they matter are there other types of Contacts that we would It could we boil it down to two and it's like you matter or we have a performance issue Uh, well, I I think you could also do a meaning contact, right? So I mean people really do And you're always You know, I'm a big fan time. I've heard it forever. I think everyone should have a number to track They should all be measuring a number in their company Because that makes them feel like they're helping and they're supporting. So that's For every contact you need to define, you know, what was the purpose of Contact was it matter meaning? Measure a measure could be kind of a performance thing or you know, it could be good or bad Or accountability, I guess would be a performance. That'd be great, too Yeah, absolutely a lot of times accountability is Um when we're talking about accountability it is us Holding people accountable in the correct way Right and helping them to be accountable for their job So when I'm talking about holding people accountable, I don't mean Telling them what they're doing wrong so that they can fix it. I mean It's showing them what accountability looks like and how they can be accountable in their job So that's what I mean when I'm talking about accountability So I know we are like we are Pressing up against the top of the hour It's Docker that Liz could talk for an entire hour about Retention But you know, there's A whole lot to this it's not just You know, it's it's there's a science to this and there's a strategy behind it with with and you have with purpose and intent and um You know Without a playbook you're just kind of winging it I was going to try and show just a quick tracker But I I don't have time to show it. It's hard for me to find but here's another really really easy thing to do I do this with a lot of almost all of my coaching clients that are having trouble with Um turnover I give them this easy easy spreadsheet All it is is all of the employees names on the left hand side and then it's written by week and just asking them every week I like to do it on payday. It's my favorite time. All right Like like on a scale of one to five. How happy are you with your job? And just write that number down. You'll see exactly what I told you before High numbers for the first month Low numbers after that and then high again and sometimes you don't ever get those really low numbers. Yeah, good on you That means that you really are doing a lot better than maybe you think you're doing so But if you're having turnover chances are good. You're going to have that at least two months of some bad numbers But you get some data to track Really easily that way really fast and then it becomes easy to improve on And you're just basically tracking how happy are you with your job? That's it ask them What do I need to do to get a higher number next week? Yeah, and actually I don't ask them that what I say is Let's say they give you a two or a three out of five and you say what would need to happen for that score to go up Now go to a five Just go up what would have to happen Yeah, what would have to happen and they'll they're usually happy to tell you and a lot of times it's surprising that Especially this is after the three month mark You'll find that people scores might be a little bit low And sometimes it'll be a low because they just want to be able to talk to you They just want to be able to tell you about what's going on You'll find a lot more personal problems after the the about the four month mark Like yeah My my my husband would just stop having to give me a hard time or my car would have to stop breaking down for me to To get have a higher score. So a lot of times doesn't have anything to do with the job So That's it. Those are good guys. Guess what we're done for the week We are yeah, but we're gonna be back monday five o'clock eastern. Guess who our guest is gonna be Uh, we talked about it and I already forgot, huh? I know it's not chris. He's on wednesday Smart business move contributor Joe walsh go waltz. Oh my gosh. He's amazing. Great. We're going to be talking about scheduling and if you want a real I hate to use the term nerd, but I mean I say this in a in a in a complementary way Joe measures and manages scheduling in a way that's a lot more detailed than 90% of the businesses out there So he's going to bring some good stuff to you in terms of how to use kpis to improve your scheduling and business outcomes Yeah, that's right. That's right. See who who okay, so we're done We're done for the week. So you guys have an awesome rushy week. We'll be back five o'clock monday eastern time. Bye. Bye