120. How do I attract and retain top talent?

Transcript – Episode 120: How do I attract and retain top talent?

Joe: Finding and keeping devoted employees in this day and age comes down to leaders and business owners committing to one principle above all others.

Joe: Welcome to Boss Better Now, the show for business owners and leaders who want to learn how to activate employee commitment in today’s everchanging workplace. So, why do people change jobs? There’s been a lot of job-hopping taking place in recent years, a lot of job switching. What leads someone to leave an organization or decide to join another? When I keynote at conferences or at internal company leadership meetings, I ask the audience, how many of you know someone who has changed jobs in the last couple of years? And nearly every hand in the room goes up. And so, then I ask, well, why are people switching? You tell me, what are the reasons? And as you can imagine, I get dozens of reasons back. People say that they know someone who changed jobs because of pay or because they were looking for a more flexible schedule or they wanted to work from home. Some people say they were looking for work that was more fulfilling, more challenging. Some people wanted to leave a toxic workplace or a bad boss. Some people wanted to advance their career. There are many, many reasons why people are switching jobs. And when I do this little exercise in a room full of people, it sounds like there’s a whole lot of reasons why people are switching. But I’m going to tell you what I tell them, and that’s this. Those answers are all the same. Believe it or not, every answer you just heard to the question, why are people switching? All roll up to the same big idea. And that big idea is this. People change jobs or choose to join a new organization because it’s an improvement to their quality of life. Some people are switching because they want an upgrade in pay. Some people want an upgrade in their schedule. Some people go looking for an upgrade in the work that they’re doing and how fulfilling it seems. But all those answers across the board are about people looking for an upgrade to their quality of life. And this is a reaction to years of seeing our work and our workloads explode and encroach into all sorts of different corners of our lives that they didn’t before. We know that Americans have been working more hours a week than nearly every other developed nation on earth for years. We know that we get away from work. We get less vacation time than all of the more economically developed countries on earth. We know that we have uh every person walking around with a kind of supercomputer in their pocket that allows them to be contacted uh in a variety of different ways. So, our boundaries around how work fits into our lives have evolved over the years. And so, what we’re seeing is people are saying enough. I want to spend more time with my family, or I want to earn a little bit more or I just want to have a better quality of life in one way or another. This is why people are switching. There’s a massive recalibration taking place around how work fits into our lives. And the truth is that the era of just trying to hire the best person for the job is over. If we want to attract and retain top talent in the workplace, what we have to do now is create the best job for the person. Well, how do you do that? Well, I want to give you two questions to spend time on. If you are a leader inside an organization or a business owner and you constantly visit with these two questions, you are going to dramatically increase your likelihood of being able to attract and retain top talent. The first question is this. What would make this place the very best place to be a blank? What are the positions you are trying to fill? What are the roles where it’s hard to keep people over time? You’re going to fill in the blank with that position. What would make this place the very best place to be a server, a landscaper, a nurse? When you tackle that question, you start to think about how do we create an employee experience that stands out in the marketplace where we’re competing? What would make this place the very best place to be a server? Well, of course you’re going to look at things like pay and hours and flexible schedule, but you can also look at things like culture and environment. What’s it like to be a waiter, to be a server in most restaurants? What are the parts of that experience that people find to be debilitating or that they try to get away from? How can you make sure that those things aren’t happening in your restaurant? So, maybe you’re looking at how you talk to employees. Maybe you’re looking at how schedules get built. How can you stand out? How can you answer the question, what would make this place the very best place to be a waiter? And that becomes your competitive advantage. It also forces you to look at your approach, your environment, and your values around your employee experience. A couple of years ago, we decided to create and hire a full-time position in my company. And I put a lot of time and effort into writing the job posting that we were going to put out into the world. And in addition to putting all of the relevant information in there about tasks and duties and schedule and pay and benefits, I also put a lot of information in there about our values, about our workplace culture. We talked about our mission and the impact we’re trying to make in the world in helping make work work for everyone and teach leaders how to be better bosses and create destination workplaces that employees love to be a part of. We talked about our internal culture as a company and our commitment to work life balance and our love of our monthly working meetings at the local Mexican restaurant and doing that work over chips and queso. And before I posted that job description online and opened it up for applications, I ran it by an HR consultant that I had on retainer just to make sure that we weren’t missing any key elements that need to legally be on that job description for public sharing. And when she got back to me, she said, “The job description is great. You’re not omitting anything important, but let me give you a piece of advice, Joe. If I were you, I would strip away everything here that’s not the tasks of the job and the info about pay. Those are the only two things that people care about. Now, I’ve been doing this work for a long, long time. And I knew that she was wrong. And so, we left the job description as is and we posted it online. And in 24 hours, we had received more than 30 applications for what was essentially an entry-level position. We knew that part of what would make this place the very best place to be an administrative manager around some of our online content, that was the job that we were posting, was all the other stuff that the HR consultant told us was not important. So that’s the first question. What would make this place the very best place to be a blank? The second question that you have to constantly visit with as a leader or a business owner is this question. What would make this place the very best place to be Melissa or Franklin or Ricardo? Why do people take new jobs? Why do people stay with an employer long term? The answer most of the time is because it’s what’s best for them and for what matters most to them. When we say it’s what’s best for them, it means they’re looking around and they’re getting something out of it consistently. Maybe they find the work especially fulfilling. Maybe they see that this employer allows me to continue growing and advancing in my career. Maybe they see that they can continue upleveling their skill set. Maybe it’s best for them because there’s something about how that job fits into their life that just continues to work. Maybe they see the impact that their work has on their community. They see a positive outcome, a difference that they’re making in the world. Maybe they look around and they say, “I feel really valued at this employer.” And so, they stay. But they also stay because it’s what m because of the impact it has on what matters most to them. This is another question that I often ask audiences when I’m keynoting at meetings or events. I will ask what matters most to you in your life. What is most important to you? And the answers I get back are always the same. People immediately say, “My family, my health, my friendships, my faith.” I get the same four or five answers every single time. Believe it or not, nobody says anything about anything that’s on their to-do list at work. And guess what? The same is true for every person working for you. What matters most to them has nothing to do with you. But here’s what I know. If working for you negatively impacts what matters most to them, then you’ve got no shot at attracting talent or retaining that person in your organization. If working for you negatively impacts what matters most to them, they are a flight risk constantly. Or they’re going to stay put and go through the motions and do the minimum. But here’s the other thing that I know. If working for you positively impacts what matters most to them, well then, you’ve cracked the code. You have figured out what it takes to attract and retain top talent. We know that people don’t leave organizations that positively impact what matters most to them. Think about it. If you want people to commit in your workplace, you’ve got to commit to them and their life outside of work. If you want people to give it all they’ve got on the job, you’ve got to give it all they’ve got and create an employee experience that works for them. And if you want your best people to never consider going anywhere else, then you have to create for them an employee experience and ultimately a life that they can’t get anywhere else. And that’s the one principle that leaders and business owners have to commit to above all others if you want to find and keep devoted employees. What you must want for every single person on your team and in your charge is for them to live a joyous prosperous life. If we start there, which is another variation of the question, what would make this place the very best place to be name? We end up reverse engineering an employee experience that positively impacts what matters most to people, that positively impacts their quality of life. You reverse engineer your systems and your policies. And yes, of course, it means that you still have to have rules and that sometimes the work is hard. But if you keep your finger on the pulse of what it takes to ensure that working for you accelerates the path to someone leading a joyous, prosperous life, you’re not going to have a commitment gap and you’re not going to struggle to find and keep devoted employees. When we take ownership of the human experience that results from people working for us, it becomes much easier to find and keep great people. So, there you have it. I’d love to know what you think. Drop a comment in the box below the video here on YouTube. Or if you’re listening on your favorite podcast service, send me an email at bossbetternow@gmail.com. That’s also how you can ask your questions about employee commitment, retention, leadership, workplace culture, and more. And who knows, maybe I’ll tackle your question in a future episode. Thanks for being here. See you next time.

Joe: Do you need to take your leadership knowledge and skills to the next level, but don’t have time for overstuffed courses or lengthy training programs? Then you want to check out Boss Hero School. This immersive 3-day leadership development experience with me is like getting an MBA in people leadership in just a couple of days. We’re going to teach you the methods and the mindset to create environments where people join, stay, care, and try. For more information, visit bossheroschool.com.