VANNOY:

Hello everyone, and welcome to today’s webinar where we are unpacking our latest ebook that we published just the other day, A pulse on the state of HR for growing companies. So if you want go ahead and hop on the website, you can kind of, kind of read along, if you will. Sure. software.com/ebook. Pulse on the state of HR for growing companies. You can find it just in a resource center might be easier to navigate that way. And so this deck is laid out really as a summary, right? So what you see here is the thumbnails from the actual book. We have incorporated some of the same graphics, maybe to make it easier to follow along. The detail is in the ebook. Really encourage you to, to, to download it. If you don’t have it, we’re gonna record today’s webinar.

We’ll send everybody for who registered a link to the recording so you can listen to it another time. We’ll share it if you want, along with a link for the ebook. So if you wanna follow along, great. Otherwise we’re gonna be kinda unpacking kind of the, the highlights, but also maybe a little bit of the behind the scenes for, for what we learned in, in some of the methodology behind in, in, in some of the key takeaways. So with that we’ll go ahead and proceed. So you know, prior, we, so we, we, we launched this survey it was, it was prior to Covid 19 and it was to small business owners specifically, we’re really targeting owners and we didn’t put a cap on the size of business, but generally speaking, you know, we’re talking companies that, you know, some of’em were micro less than five employees, but going on all the way up to over a hundred employees.

 And what we’re really trying to understand is the HR practices and the challenges and the opportunities that were really top of mind for those small business owners who are really working hard and competing to try to grow their business and, and understand the differences between the growers and the not growers. And so we, we ended up getting response from near nearly 400 different owners. The variety of industries were from food and beverage to accounting firms daycares, hair salons, consultants and that was across 26 countries. All, all, all, excuse me, 26 states all across the country. So more than half of those owners had been operating their small businesses for more than seven years. Well, you know, so that would mean, you know, just under half, less than seven. So I think, so I think the punchline is, we, we got a real mix, right?

We got mature businesses, we got really small businesses. We got some pretty good size small businesses in, in ownership and industry that really kind of crosses the gamut industry and geography. So regardless of size what we saw was some common threads emerge right in, in, where businesses of all sizes shared some of the same problems. And, and, and so we’re gonna take a little bit deeper dive into what those are. You know, it’s small is a big deal. So they, they became really evident to these small businesses that growth is an important thing that it will unpack that in a second. Clearly reading the data, finding top talent was the number one challenge that that these small businesses faced. I think if you try to read a lot of the popular HR literature, it’s written for big companies.

It’s written for 500,000, 5,000 plus employee companies where, you know, this whole quote unquote talent management or has, has been well documented for a long time. But it’s never really been aimed in, in thought through those small business owner, the entrepreneur’s lens. But clearly the survey told us the 400 respondents that getting talent is, is the, is is their biggest issue. Then the next thing is just how do they spend their time? And there’s some really interesting things came outta here about how people want to spend their time versus how they actually spend their time. More specifically, how is it that companies are growing, spend their time versus want to, and how does that compare to companies that are shrinking that actually spend their time versus they want to? That’s probably the most important takeaway, I think, from, from this entire study.

 And then ultimately, culture, culture matters. So, you know, it, it, it became interesting how these growing companies, regardless of size, viewed the HR function to companies that were, you know, flat or, or shrinking. So it, it, it’s with that lens that that we unpack the ebook and, and walk through this with you. So small is a big deal. And so I mentioned that we did the survey, it was pre covid, it was late q4, so it’s still really quite recent. And candidly, we’re prepared to launch the, and planning to launch the, the, the, the results of this study in April March, April. We were compiling the data in March, and we all know what happened in March and April, right? Covid hit and absolute game changer. And it seemed silly. And candidly, whether tone deaf to publish the results of a survey, how to grow your business at a, at a time when we’re all, you know, thinking about the safety of our families and survival of our business, let alone growing that, right?

Is is states and municipalities shut down. And what we thought was gonna maybe be a 14 day shutdown turned into a several months shutdown still still going on for some. But a as we, as we kind of dusted this off here a few months later, and then dovetailed in some of our research on, on kind of state of current business it, it, it seemed applicable, right? That for the, for the reasons that growing is so important to small businesses. So, like I said, of of the 400 ish respondents that we got on this thing, they indicated that growing was kind of everything to them. So even the roughly half of the companies that aren’t growing, it’s, it, it became clear that the snow was because they didn’t want to. It’s not because they had lifestyle businesses that they were just, you know, playing golf on Fridays and didn’t care to grow it more.

They were, they were facing, you know, any number of headwinds, right? Maybe mature business, young business, product problems, market problems, any, any number of problems. But it was never, we never interpreted this as the, the fact that people didn’t want to grow. And, and the reason we kind of extrapolated out that is, it is such a huge deal is when you’re a small business, you know, one customer could double the size of your business, one losing one customer could put you outta business, right? So it’s, it’s not, at least in the log numbers, it’s not hard to grow a small number. It gets really hard to, to grow a big number. And when you have a big number of big revenue you might actually make more sense to stay flat, but get leaner and become more profitable, put more money in your pocket in, in the form of profit from optimizing that revenue versus simply growing it.

But when businesses are small you know, it was no secret in, in, in the respondents made this loud and clear that growth is, is everything to them. And what we learned at the time was that 40% truly expected to grow. So in, in Q4 of, of 19 40% of all business, these small businesses, they expected to grow in 2020. And 10% of of them expected significant growth, right? So h how did that change with, with Covid? You know, it’s interesting I think it was chamber commerce, the, the pulled this, the number on the right hand side, you’ll see the footnotes in the, in the ebook. 50 or 7% of small business owners feel positive still about the overall health of their business. So, you know, that 50% sure probably matters a heck of a lot if you’re maybe a software development firm versus a bank versus a restaurant versus a bar versus a, a, you know, a, a hair salon, right?

 Different businesses have been impacted wildly differently. You know, if you’re, if you’re selling video conferencing software, this might be a boom time for you. Ironically, if you’re a restaurant, boy, tough, tough times, right? So, so not gonna try to cast too wide of a net with this. But it was interesting, you know, coming off of an economic event like none of us have ever seen in our lifetimes, it’s at least about a hundred years since something like this impactful has happened to our economy. It’s still 57% feel positive about the general health and p and l of their business. 68% believe that their businesses can recover. So two thirds of businesses don’t think they recover. Now, that might mean a third feel they can’t, which is, you know, a, a fairly scary thing. But when you think about small businesses having nearly a 50% failure rate inside of a seven year period, I think it really, honestly just speaks to the optimism.

So maybe, maybe not the actual financial health of businesses so much as is the, the spirit of entrepreneurs and the fight and the grit and, and the willingness to work the butts off and grind. But the punchline was, it, it became clear. And I, and I think this, the, the post covid surveys validate this, that, you know at least half of small businesses, not all, pretty much all small businesses wanna grow, but half of ’em are in fact planning for growth, even if that growth has not yet arrived. Okay? So one of the things I wanna, I wanna do here as we walk through the pages is, is kind of compare, contrast you know, what growing companies, the lens that they see the world, and then companies who are not growing. And, and I’m gonna go deeper on that on the, on the next couple slides, but this, this area of talent, it really, really jumps out.

So one of the questions we asked in our, in our talent management checks section of the survey was, what, what are your biggest concerns for, for growing? And so we say finding talent is the top challenge, but honestly, you see the subtext in, in, in, in the, in the parentheses there for the growing companies that, so the number one concern that we saw, if you take your eyes to the bottom left of this slide for those that were expecting to grow. So what is the biggest challenge you face in, in, in this environment? If you’re expecting to grow, the number one they said was competing against other employers for talent. So the business across the street, the person maybe in your same industry, you’re the number two, they’re the number one. Maybe you’re the no name startup, and there’s the 800 pound gorilla in your industry, in, in the number one concern for companies who had plans to grow.

Now, this doesn’t mean they would grow, we don’t have any access to their financial records, but this is, so this is self-reporting, but those who said they were either growing or had gonna have significant growth at 40 and 10%, their number one concern was competing for talent with their other competitors. Right? Now, the number one concern, keep in mind, the context of these questions are all HR oriented, right? The biggest HR concern for companies not planning to grow was the kind of paperwork, right? It it was, it was, it was the cumber, quote, unquote, a cumbersome hiring process in, you know, you can read the study, it’s a little more detailed than that, but it’s like, it’s a paper based manual processes around hiring in, in onboarding employees. And, and this a real lens into, into the, the meat of the study that we’re gonna unpack in about two slides from now.

But we, we’ve all heard about talent, right? And, and the important, the, the, in the, in the hunt for talent. But it would just, this is so telling how the companies in growth mode see their number one concern. It was competing, like truly competing think sports. You’re competing for that talent versus having a cumbersome administrative process. You know, it, it, it reminds me of a story. I used to be in the software business and remember that there was always the comparison about you know, hiring inexpensive programmers, you know, some sometimes offshore dev groups versus maybe a much more expensive per head local or from industry experienced dev people. And there was kind of the, the joke slash example that, you know, how, how many, if you were gonna hire newly graduated music students therefore inexpensive mu music students, how many of ’em would it take to write Beethoven’s fifth Symphony?

And the answer is none. You could hire one, you could hire a hundred, you could hire a thousand, a a thousand together. Could never write that because it was the work of a genius. It was talent. Only a genius with that kind of talent could write it. And so it only took one person, but it took the right person. And same thing in the software world. You could hire, you know interns, you could hire new grads, you could hire offshore, you could build very inexpensive on a per headcount teams. But if your focus wasn’t talent, you might be able to crank out, you know, 10,000 lines of code a a day, very inexpensively. But what if you had that one programmer who was so brilliant, they came up with the algorithm, they didn’t, they didn’t need 10,000 lines of code. They needed four or 500 lines of code to accomplish the same thing, and therefore, they were so much faster, the product ran on you know, few less, less energy consumption and, and, and more efficiently.

And, and the, the list goes on. The, the punchline is, this is all about talent, right? This is not about headcount and, and fill, putting butts in seats, but the, the companies who are really in growth mode and actually having plans to grow, not just desiring to grow they, they saw their number one concern different. Now, I think it, it’s worthwhile mentioning you know, the right half of, of, of the screen the lower right, you know, what’s, what’s the covid 19 impact? And I think at least for a short term the supply demand curves have, have kind of reversed roles, right? At, at least temporarily. And because no fault of their own, there are some extremely talented people that their businesses maybe had to shut their doors or had shut the doors temporarily at, at minimum disrupted. And so, I can tell you a firsthand experience here at ashore, and for sure, I can tell you talking to customers and entrepreneurs and friends of mine who are entrepreneurs, there is more talent in the marketplace today than there has been maybe in our, in our lifetime.

So you, you think about the unemployment rates with all these shutdowns, it’s, it’s, I don’t wanna make light of it. It’s a, it’s a tragedy, right? It’s a terrible thing that everybody has to wade through. But this is a one time, a moment in time where business owners who are savvy and willing to, to act, I would say, act boldly and, and make big decisions. And, and what does it, what does a big decision look like? A big decision might be I don’t have that headcount budgeted for, but that person is so good. I’m gonna slot ’em anyway, as long as I can cashflow it. A bold decision might be, I’ve got some people on my team who, who meet the minimum requirements. I like them, they’re nice, but they’re never gonna get us to the next level. And you might have to upgrade talent.

And that’s, it’s a damn difficult thing to do. A, a as a boss, it never should be an easy thing for anybody, right? But you, we as, as a champion for small businesses that are trying to grow we would just be foolish not to at least point out that the, the story on the left. You gotta, you gotta think how you think about growth and and how you think about talent. But we have a window in time here. You also have to think about how could you possibly act boldly and upgrade the talent of, of your business to, to, to drive growth. Okay? So the next thing we explored that, that just stood out, is where people were spending their time. And so, no surprise to anybody in the call. We, we surveyed you know, you got responses from 400 businesses.

 A huge percent of these were business owners, right? So it’s not just little micro shops 2, 3, 4, 5 employees. There’s, there’s some good size companies here, 50 and 75, and a hundred, 150 employees, where it’s, where you have an entrepreneur owner, or at least an ex head executive for the company. But by nature of being, you know, not a large enterprise where is it they’re spending their time in owners, people literally with owner, business owner titles as, as self-reported in the, in the respondents 30% of their time is spent in HR management, or, excuse me, 30% of them are spending their time in HR management, 30% of their time in record keeping 40% keeping spending their time in employee tracking. So this is not meant to be an overt sales pitch for Asure there’s a million different vendors you can choose, but it does scream, if you think about the prior slide what’s the one focus for the growing companies to spend on talent to focus on talent, not administration.

But yet, you look here where all businesses spend their time. Business owners are spending their time on tasks that could easily be, if not completely automated, they could at least be improved, right? In, in streamlined by becoming electronic, from removing paper and adding self-service for HR management to electronic record keeping. Instead of you know, keeping a W 99 fo, you know, piece of paper in a file folder in a desk. I mean, in a covid world, how do you, how do you have to even go to an office to even collect those? You gotta be electronic. And then employee time tracking, you know, there’s, it’s a, it’s a, an embarrassing number of people still you know, you, you might use Excel, but it’s still manual if you use Excel that add up people’s time to then key into a payroll system, right?

So all across the board, it, it became clear that people are spending too much of their time in these manual tasks. But what seemed maybe more interesting to explore was if we would compare this against how people want to spend their time versus how they actually spend their time. And then break that down another layer. How is it, how does, what does that look like at shrinking companies versus growing companies? So, so let’s first look at how people want to spend their time. So we’ll take our eyes down the, the, the first column, the want column, right? And so the first row is growing companies. So this is how they self-reported their wants versus their, how they actually do it. So wants growing companies, the first four things, right? Employee performance reviews, employee recognition, ipro, improving employee culture, providing professional de development.

All of those are really strategic, right? They’re all about getting the best people and developing them, creating a culture where we all succeed. And it’s a winning, growing culture in developing and growing people. Number five, what do they, how do, what do they want? Well, they, they, they want to spend more time handling employee issues. I’d be curious if we peel back the onion what employee issues look like to them, but clearly in the want column for growing companies, they want to spend their time one through four developing their people and growing their people and, and creating a winning culture, right? And if you look at companies who are shrinking, and you ask, how do you want to spend your time? Well, the way they say they want to spend their time, you know, they, you know, number one, employee recognition. That, that’s great.

 Number two, reporting an analysis. Three, employee issues. Four writing and posting job descriptions. Number five, onboarding verified employees. I mean, if I look at that, that’s so kudos on number one. But number two through five is administrative, right? So the companies who are literally shrinking, it’s their heart’s desire to do 2, 3, 4, 5. So four of the top five ways they want to spend their time around administrative tasks. And now, now that might sound a silly, like, who would want to do that, but it’s probably a reflection of, you know, we’ll jump over to the, to the column on the right about how they actually spend their time. But, but it certainly, it’s it, if nothing else, it’s a, it’s a lens. It’s a look through look through two different lenses. The lens of a growing company thinks about people and how to develop those people to get ’em around a goal and greater winning culture.

And the lens for a shrinking company is how to do paperwork better, right? And how to be better at administration. Now, if we, if we flip the script here and look to the right, look at the actuals. So how do growing companies actually spend their time? Well, tracking time, attendance, okay that’s, that’s administration. Number two, HR forms three employee records. Four handling employee issues. So it’s like the top four of how they actually spend their time. Well, that’s not always just focused on people, that’s administration, right? Maybe that explains, but then you look at number five, at least cracking the top five, how they actually spend their time. There is a focus on culture that those companies trying to grow, even though they probably spend way more time than they want on administration, ev as evidenced by the difference between how they actually spend time and how they want to spend time.

 At least they’re doing something today about working on culture. No, you flip to the bottom right. The companies that are shrinking, how are they, how are they spending their time? Okay? Job descriptions, paperwork, HR forms, onboarding, verifying time and attendance. Literally 100% of the way they spend their time is administrative, right? There’s nothing strategic about developing employees, growing people, finding the right people, the right talent building a winning culture. And so I think that probably if we, if I think we could give these folks some credit, cause that might be a shrinking, in a shrinking business for, you know, you know, reasons out of their control. You know, if, if, if you are in the airline industry, I mean, there wasn’t a heck of a lot you’re gonna do to, to, to have your business not shrink if you’re running a hotel or a restaurant.

I mean, the economic headwinds are way larger than, than the talent you might bring as a leader, right? So I’m not, we’re not saying that they’re shrinking because it’s their fault or their bad managers, but it’s still telling the lower, right? Literally zero strategic, how they actually spend their time, 100% of their time being spent in administrative functions kind of probably then explains their desires on the left, right? That the number one thing they wanna do is God bless. We wanna at least recognize our employees. And while two through five on the bottom left are still administrative in, in a lot of ways it, it, it’s at least improvements upon what you see on the right. So what you see in the bottom right, managing HR forms, at least number two, they want to have HR reporting and analysis so they can grow, right?

So I, I don’t think we can under state the impact and importance of, of this slide. It’ll be this page in, in, in the ebook that when we think about how is it that companies are growing, just how they see the world, whether it’s their fault or not, that they’re growing, you know, maybe, maybe they’re not great managers and they, they’re just you know, dumb luck. They’re in an industry that is just growing and they’re riding the riding the wave. Doesn’t matter. The way in which they see the world is clearly different from an HR perspective that they see HR as a function of developing and growing people in culture. And those who are shrinking, regrettably, see HR as an administrative process. So I, I hope that sinks in cause I, cause I think that kind of means everything about how you view it.

So the, the last big takeaway, and it really, I think kind of ties back, is that culture really matters. And what we, what became clear from our study, and then all of our other research is that it matters early. So we, we published another ebook earlier in the year that, that underscored this exact same point that the culture, you, it employees zero through five really has legs through employees. Number 50, right? If you don’t start to manage and create culture until employee number 50, you’re gonna get the culture, you get <laugh> as you grow to employee number 100. So the, the successful companies were, were obsessing about what the culture of the company was gonna be from, from the beginning. And when we asked the question, what are the top three things that were impacting your ability to, to create culture, they were all, they all came back to talent.

The answers all came back around talent. Number one was competing against big companies. So why do you, you know, there, there’s the old saying, people join companies and they leave bosses. Why would you, why would you lose an employee to a big company? Probably the perception of culture, and maybe that perception could be as silly as free snacks in a ping pong table in the break room. Or maybe it’s compensation. Maybe it’s how they reward their employees in the freedom they give them to, to, to do the work they want, right? Regardless of the reasons, that was the number one thing that the, the, the respondents feared about impacting culture because they would, they felt like they could lose talent to the big companies. Number two, in number three, it’s really the same things. It, it’s work-life balance.

So quite literally, the respondents to the, to, to, to the survey came back with these three competing for talent, work-life balance, perks and amenities. But I think they all just, if you think about it, they tie back to culture. People join companies, they leave bosses. So if they, if their employees perceive the grass is greener on the other side, aka a better culture, then that’s where the threat lives. And then we, we just kind, kind of teased out as a separate topic a little bit about millennials. I, I’m gonna let you read, I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna read the, the, the comments <laugh>, I will say they’re fairly disparaging against millennials. What, you know, ask the question, what things do you seek to understand about millennials in the workforce? And the responses it was a free form question there.

Responses were, were not flattering to how the respondents viewed millennials. So I, I put the, put some stats here to kind of maybe help sink in. Clearly the respondents were frustrated managing millennials, but if you’re frustrated managing millennials you don’t have another strategy. But to figure it out, because millennials make up 31.5% of the US of the world population, gen Z is 32% by 2025. So in just a few years from now, millennials in the US are gonna make up 75% of the US workforce. So I think, you know, forgive my language, I think it’s time to kind of quit our bitching about the challenges. And I think some of these challenges are totally valid, right? I mean, the, these, you know, the Gen X to the millennial, to the Gen Z, they really do have different characteristics as as a single group.

But at the end of the day, you’re managing individuals, right? And so acknowledging some of the top trends I think there’s a call to action for a lot of small business owners. You know, if you’re going, if you have five employees and you’re adding number six, you know, maybe you can hire a non-millennial. But if you’re trying to grow a company and you’re going from, from employee five to someday 50 or 500, guess what? You’re not gonna be successful. You know, have some millennials and some Gen Zs in there. Cause it’s just the, the, the, the, that’s just what the demographics say. So you can read more detail. I won’t say the disparaging comments other than to validate you know, I get it. But it’s also called action to work on it. So with that, I think the last thing that we, that we wanted to give some guidance here in, in this ebook was some considerations before returning to work.

So, I, I’m being super simplistic here in just a kind of highlighting the top five, there’s, there’s a lot of fine print here. We, we there’s a really nice survey here excuse me, interview that we did with our own VP of hr, Cheryl, Cheryl Tribu that has the real meat behind each of these five topics. But how do we think in a covid context about, you know, all these things, whether it’s, you know performance management and talent management and culture when, hey, guess what? You know, the governor just shut our state down. You know, forget all that stuff. I, I’m thinking about how do I actually just like live day to day? So some, we’re trying to give some really practical guidance that, you know, we’re not tone deaf. We know what the reality is here.

But how do you think about building a culture, a winning culture for your company to grow while you are still kind of in the reopening business in, in, in bringing employees back to work? So number one is you gotta keep your virtual doors open even when the physical doors aren’t. So that kind of just is what it says it is, right? If you’re in a shelter order that doesn’t mean you stop communications with your employees. Now, if you’re if you’re a barbershop, I mean, hard put hands on customers when you can’t open your doors, that doesn’t mean you as a boss can’t continue to talk to your staff, plan, train, watch videos virtual cocktail hours, something to, to maintain connection, right? Number two, be transparent. You know, your, your, your employees, regardless of what generation they come from, are, are, are adults.

They can and need to handle the truth. Be transparent about everything that you’re doing. Number three, make real connections through virtual onboarding. So the, there’s great tools use, use them, whether it’s your iPhone and just being simple. Facetime, are you using one of the more modern business tools to do some video conferencing? You know, we, we don’t have to do everything via phone and email. Make, make real connections. Number four, put workers first by implementing flexible, supportive policies, right? We as entrepreneurs, business business owners, we’re going through real stuff right now, right? Our employees are going through some real stuff too. You know, you got a loved one who’s sick. You’ve got, you’ve got an elderly person in the home and a kid going back to school. There’s a lot of scary stuff and things you gotta deal with way beyond work.

So, be flexible, be patient, but more than just personally implement policies and communicate and demonstrate those policies so that everyone understands them. And then number five, this, this should go without saying it should, it shouldn’t be it shouldn’t be a policy, it’s a value, right? I mean, you care about people, you care about their safety. You got, you gotta create a work environment that, that honors that. So with that, I wanna thank you that that takes us through the ebook. The fine print is there. You can learn more details, but I wanted to share with you the, the, the, the kind of the punchline. And it’s, it’s this, companies who are growing see HR as a strategic thing. It’s all about finding the right people, developing and recognizing and growing those people, and then developing a winning culture that you can grow your business.

Companies who are shrinking, maybe through no fault of their own, the data is clear. They see HR as an administrative compliance function, no question. There’s some administrative and there’s some compliance that goes along with hr, but it’s a heck of a lot more fun working with companies trying to help them grow their businesses, working on the strategic stuff. And with that, my, my 15 second infomercial is that’s what we do. We at Assure see Human Capital Management, H C M, through the lens of business owners and entrepreneurs and executives and mid-sized companies for us. There, there is you know, you gotta get your paycheck right? You gotta file your taxes accurately and on time. You have to follow the laws, but really, we think about human capital management as how do we help grow your company by finding better people, developing those people, and developing winning cultures.

And with that, invite you to, to download the ebook. And I want to thank everyone for attending today’s webinar. Look for an invite we will be sending for next week. As you guys probably know, if you’re watching the news, president Trump signed an executive order when Congress didn’t as expected, I would say pass any legislation. I think we, we’ve been tracking the Heroes Act. We’ve been tracking the Heal Act both in the, in the House of Representatives in the Senate. We expected there to be some type of reconciliation before they went on recess last Friday. It didn’t happen. So president Trump signed in signed an executive order. There are still a ton of open questions. We are gonna have a webinar on this next week. I believe it’s, I believe it’s Thursday.

You’ll look for the invite. We are expecting to get guidance from the I r s, general, general Counsel from the I r s actually on Saturday. So at today, we understand the guts of the law. We understand the guts of what’s gonna be required and how small business owners can plan for this. But frankly, there’s more questions and there are answers. We expect to get most of those answers. At least the Li the Lion share the important answers on Saturday from the I R Rs. And then we’re gonna unpack that and share that with you next week, because the, the thing starts to get implemented on September 1st. So clock’s ticking and we’re looking forward to getting guidance from irs so we can share all that with you. And with that, I wanna thank everybody for your time and wish you well, have a great day.