VANNOY:

Quiet, quitting, and what employers can do about it. I’m Mike Vannoy, vice President of Marketing at Asure. And this is a, a really interesting topic. So we, we’ve talked a lot in the past. We produced a lot of content around employee engagement you know, what makes the optimal employee engagement. But I think this, the topic of engagement is kind of almost binary. It’s like, is my employee engaged or are they not engaged? This topic around quiet, quitting has this intentionality about it where a a a new phenomenon of employees are intentionally kinda sizing their work effort to match what they think is, you know, my words fair, whether it’s fair pay or fair treatment, fair acknowledgement, fair in the marketplace. So a guest, most of you guys are, are, know very well to help me unpack this topic. And most importantly, what’s, what’s actionable, what can employers actually do about this? So welcome back to the show. Mary Simmons, vice President of h hr, HR Consulting at Asure SHRM certified Professional. For the past eight years, Mary’s been an adjunct professor at New York Institute of Technology. Prior to that, she was the director of HR consulting for a 55 year old HR consulting company in New York. So welcome back, Mary.

SIMMONS:

Thanks, Mike. Glad to be here.

VANNOY:

All right. So let’s, let’s just start out. So some people have heard this term, some people have not. You know, what is quiet, quitting?

SIMMONS:

It’s a really good question. It has a lot of people confused, I think because the term quiet quitting sounds like people are actually quitting their jobs. They’re not, they’re quitting the work that they feel is in excess to the match, like you said, between either the, you know, pay that they’re getting or the rewards, other rewards that they’re getting. So they’re not going over and above within their job requirements because of, you know, lack of pay lack of engagement, lack, lack of, you know, employers really listening to them, talking to them, et cetera. And although I think some people are confusing it with the great resignation, right? I agree. It is probably an offshoot of the great resignation, right? Because it’s, it’s a very unusual time, right? I’ve been in HR my entire career and these past two years really have challenges for employers and employees.

And I think, I think that’s the important thing, Mike, that the employers need to really look at their employees and really hear them out and understand this phenomenon, right? 55% of employees born after 8/19/89 are not engaged. Now, that might not be in particular new, but we as employers need to think about that and find ways to try to get our employees engaged. I will tell you from a compliance standpoint, your engaged employees are much less likely to trigger any kind of employment lawsuit against you. And I’m sure every listener understands that an engaged worker is more productive, right? So, in theory, why can’t they get their job done in an eight hour day, right? We want smarter more effective, more efficient workers. We don’t necessarily need everybody to work 10, 12 hour days like you and I, Mike

VANNOY:

<Laugh>. You know, I think that, I think that’s the right lens to look at this. So there’s always two sides to this HR coin, right? There’s the compliance side and the ever-changing laws are so hard to keep up with. But then there’s the productivity side. How do we build great, highly productive teams to grow our businesses? And, and that’s a super important point that you make. It’s, it’s like, even if you’re accidentally doing something wrong, a happy, engaged employee, they’re gonna, they’re gonna give you grace, right? They’re, they’re gonna say, oh, you know, chucks, you know, Mike, or you know, Mary they don’t mean to do this thing that, you know, maybe is, maybe isn’t okay, but I know that they care about me. They have my best interest. I love this company, right? You know, I’m not gonna sue. Yeah. It’s the disgruntled employee who feels like they’re being taken advantage of. They’re the ones who are, it, it’s a productivity problem that all of a sudden presents as a compliance problem, right?

SIMMONS:

Right. Right. A hundred percent. And, and I think some people have changed that quiet, quitting to other terminology, like work to wage and work to rule concepts, which really have been around for a long time. I just think that with social media, these type of, of movements, if you will, or, or philosophies, if you will, get out there quicker and get more spotlight on them, because there’s a lot of YouTube videos on this. There’s a, there’s a lot of tos on this topic. That’s really where it got, its, its, you know, sort of legs. And that’s cause the generation, the 18 to 34 year olds who are the majority of the workforce right now, they’re the employees that are pushing this philosophy,

VANNOY:

Right? Right. I mean, right. Old guys like me, I think the old case, Kevin Spacey movie, right? Where he intentionally, he quits the corporate job and he intentionally wants to work the drive through at a fast food place, minimum wage, but he’s gonna give minimum wage effort this, so 20 whatever years later. Here, here we are to, to me, Mary, and I’d like you to, to, to speak to on this topic, we, we wanna address specifically this, this, this concept of quiet, quitting, what it is, what employers can specifically do about it. But we shouldn’t lose sight. This is part of a continuum, right? Where this isn’t 1928 Upton St. Clair’s, the jungle that all of a sudden precedes the formation of unions and F L S A and workers’ rights and minimum wage overtime, child labor, all that kind of stuff, right? For a very long time when unemployment rates are, you know, between, you know, five and six and seven, and sometimes as high as 10%, the employers kind of had the power, right? Because especially younger generations without work experience, you know, they needed to Yes. Put in the extra effort, the extra in, in sacrifice, even if they weren’t happy about it, to get the jobs to get ahead in a world of three

SIMMONS:

Point to get ahead

VANNOY:

5%. Yeah. In a world of 3.5% unemployment, the employees have the power. And so whether it’s great resignation, that’s right. That’s right. Whether it’s quiet, quitting, whether it’s work your aid, work, your wage, whatever you wanna call this, this is just right facets of a continuum of the power shifting to the employee. Can can, can you speak to that, please?

SIMMONS:

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, I also want listeners to understand that we’re not just talking about wages here. This could be a relatively easy fix for some employers. And actually, let me take that word easy out of, out of my sentence. This has to be something that is ingrained in the organization. This has to be a shift in philosophy in the organization. And, and we’ll talk more about that later in the presentation. But you know, what’s happening is, look, let, let’s think about it. We had a pandemic. People were working from home, people were taking locations, right? So they were working remotely from, you know, beautiful locations and, and they had all these freedoms. And now we’re sort of, you know, pulling that back, right? Getting back to, you know, the way things were before the pandemic, and how are we communicating that to the employees, right?

You know, we’re in an inflationary period, so let’s layer that on top of it, right? And they’re paying more at the, you know, gas pumps. They’re paying more at restaurants the food store everywhere, right? And did they get a raise to reflect that? Are they underappreciated? Are we telling our employees every day that we appreciate them? Right? and that’s the reality, right? That’s the reality that there, we went through a very difficult phase in employment for everybody, for the employer as well as the employee. But we need to figure out how to move forward, how we are going to meet the goals of the organization, and we’re not meeting those without making our employees engaged, period. Yeah.

VANNOY:

I, I think you’re spot on. You know Elon Musk doesn’t have whatever you love him or hate him, he doesn’t have a great reputation as a, as a super kind, loving, nurturing boss. But if you work at SpaceX, it’s because you’re aligned to the mission, right? So you can be a super engaged, super dedicated employee because you wanna be part of the team to put the first human on, on Mars, right? And that’s what, and you’re gonna do anything for that, right? So whether it’s alignment to the boss or alignment to the mission, this isn’t just big company stuff though, right? Because, so like an example that’s been around, it’s not forever the local church or local synagogue, the office manager probably willing to work for, for not a lot of money, or the camp counselor for special needs kids working for not a lot of money, but there’s mission alignment. They are aligned to the mission, aligned to the goals. And it’s not, this isn’t just about pay. This is about being part of something.

SIMMONS:

It’s not.

That’s right. And we talked about this when we talked about employment branding in one of our other presentations, right? So, so these thoughts have to be intentional and they have to be real, right? We can’t make up why employees should work for us, and we can’t all have those strong missions, right? So I support, you know, a bagel store right here in New York, two, two locations, and a really, really nice employer. And you know what he does, Mike? He does something really simple. He listens to his employees, he asks for their opinion. What specials do you think we should run this week? Right? It doesn’t have to be all about pay, right? Yeah. Yeah. You know, what, how are we explaining to our employees that they are part of that mission, even if it’s not going to Mars, even if it’s just making great bagels, right?

Right. that employee has to know why and have, you know, some connection to the why, right? They should go over and above and, and, and not necessarily after eight hours, but productive and engaged within the timeframe that we’re asking them to work, right? That is acceptable, you know, in, in most cases. And when we ask them to go over and above, are you telling them why, or are you just saying, you gotta work extra hours, right? Right. You know, I need you to work extra hours. You know, you’re not gonna get a lot of buy-in, you know, when, when we communicate that way. So communication here is key to the employer, from the employer to, to the employees. It’s important.

VANNOY:

I wanna spend most of our time talking about practical advice and guidance you have for, for employers. And specifically on that on that topic. What else should employers first understand about what this phenomena is and what it isn’t? And I, and I kind of want to come back to engagement versus this intentionality of, cuz when I think engagement, I think I’m just kind of apathetic. I’m going through the motions. I’m not intentionally unplugging, right? I’m just, I’m not giving it my all perhaps. But there, there’s quite putting phenomena, there’s an intentionality component that I’d like you to, to, to spend a little more time so that before we start talking about what you can do about it, employers can recognize it when they see it.

SIMMONS:

Yeah. And I, and I think there’s, I’m sure that there are different, you know levels of the disengagement, right? So, you know, some employees are just going to, you know, base this quiet quitting philosophy on hours, right? They’re gonna say, I am taking my full, you know, half hour or hour break. I am a nine to five person. And that’s, you know, at five o’clock on the dot, I am leaving every day. Whether I have something to do, whether I have a deliverable or not. You know, it’s, it’s, I’m sticking to the time that I am paid for, right? Yeah. whether they’re exempt or non-exempt, right? So we’re sort of talking about employees whether, you know, no matter what their FLSA status is here. So some are gonna to use that timeframe, they’re gonna do what they have to do during that time.

They’re not gonna slack off, but you’re not getting one more second out of them. And I think another camp of this philosophy might be a little engaged. Like my job description says X, you are asking me to go drop off paperwork at a client. I’m not doing that. That’s not on my job description. And I think in both cases, the employees have some, some merit to, to what they’re thinking. And it’s our responsibility as employers to communicate, you know, the why and the how of all of that situation, right? Why do I need more time? Why do I need you to do extra? Look, a job description is never, ever, it would be impossible to list every single thing that you have to do. You have to sit at your chair, you have to turn your computer. I mean, it, it can’t be done, right?

And, you know, when we are doing job descriptions for employers, number one, you know, obviously we’re looking at the FLSA classification and being able to defend it, right? But number two, you’re always putting a line on there that says, and all other responsibilities as assigned. And when you hand that to an employer, you have to an employee, you have to explain it. You have to explain, these are your basic responsibilities, right? These are essential, these are non-essential. And then there’s a whole host of other things that you may be asked to do. And by the way, legally you can add responsibilities. Mike, I could, I could ask you to do a handbook if I wanted to, right? Yeah. Cause you’re employed by me. And if I’m asking you something that isn’t illegal, right? I can ask you to do other responsibilities. But how are we communicating that to employee, right? We’re communicating that to an employee by saying, I think this is a great resume builder. I think you’re doing a stellar job. I see you as a future leader, and to help you with those leadership goals, I wanna make you in charge of this project. Or I’m going to teach you how to do an employee handbook, because I think this is a skill you can utilize later in your career. And this is how, and this is where, right? Yeah. It’s explanation, <laugh>,

VANNOY:

You know, so of the, of the different facets, the way this quite quitting plays out, sometimes it’s, Hey, you’re only paying me so much. I’m gonna work up to what I think that that dollar amount is worth. Sometimes it’s, Hey, that’s not my job description. I’m only gonna stay in my job description lane in that case.

SIMMONS:

Correct.

VANNOY:

I, I, I, I love, I love that you brought it up that not, not only should, should you have the language in your handbook, and yes, you should have a handbook. Yes, should have, you should have job descriptions. We’ve been over this on many of our, we’re whatever, we’re never gonna stop beating that drum, right?

SIMMONS:

<Laugh>. But,

VANNOY:

But it’s, you’re not helping yourself if you make it the fine print of a handbook or a job description. And if you don’t, because Correct, the can kind of read as dry sometimes it, it, it doesn’t literally have to be fine print if, if you don’t speak to it and address it and talk about it. So, part of the interview process, part of the onboarding day one, here’s the job,

SIMMONS:

Everything.

VANNOY:

But keep in mind, we don’t know what tomorrow brings. I might find out that you all of a sudden are awesome at something that I didn’t know about, and I might wanna assign you extra tasks. I might have somebody else with a family emergency that to serve our clients, I might need to reallocate some work that you might be uncomfortable with. I’m gonna do my best to, to set you up to succeed. Right? But it, it’s literally talking about all those things with your employees,

SIMMONS:

Right? They, they don’t know why we’re asking them to do it. And some employees may look at it like just extra work, but in most cases, we’re assigning extra work to the stellar employee or to the employee that has that special skill like you, like you said, right? That’s out of their scope. But what’s in it for the employee? It bears explanation. And I like what you’re saying about the handbook, right? And is this mission, vision, culture in the handbook, right? So here at ashore, we, we have one ashore and Right, you know, within that philosophy is, you know, we all work together for one common goal. And I would, you know, suggest and recommend that all employers have that type of mentality. But you can’t just have that mentality without explaining it. Right? And, you know, what are you doing when you’re onboarding? Are you just having them fill out, you know, paperwork during onboarding and orientation? Or are you reiterating that, you know, listen, if you’re an employee who wants to stay in the position you’re in, that’s fabulous. And, and we support you in that, but we also support you in moving along in your career. And this is how, and this is, you know, our thoughts on how we would want, you know, to help you do that. Right? Right. And even if you stay in your current role, we wanna advance your skills as you continue to be employed with us.

VANNOY:

Mary, is there anything else that you would, that you would advise employers to be thinking about how to spot this in the workplace? What does this look like?

SIMMONS:

I, yeah, I think that, and, and I try to stay away from words like attitude, especially when, you know, I’m teaching performance management. You know, I’m, I’m, I’m not gonna be real happy when I’m, when I’m helping a a manager write an evaluation and they put, Mike has a bad attitude, right? We’re gonna flesh that out for sure. But for this, for this question, you know, that you just posted,

VANNOY:

Give that 30 seconds and explain why I do, Mary. I, I don’t know if everybody would understand that. Yes, exactly. Give give that 30 seconds and explain why you don’t do that.

SIMMONS:

Because, because attitude is too subjective, right? So when I’m doing an evaluation with a manager, I need examples. If I tell Mike that he has a bad attitude that does nothing to move his performance in the direction that I want it to move in, right? As a matter of fact, it does the opposite, right? Mike doesn’t think he has a bad attitude, I can guarantee you, right? So you want to have some, some real facts. But in this situation, we do wanna look at attitude. If people are showing up late, if people are not, you know, raising their hand and making suggestions and discussing topics, and, you know, grabbing at, at new responsibilities if they’re running out the door, those are some of the things that we wanna look at. And, you know, we have suggestions on, on how you can figure this out, right? Because as I said, we should be talking to our employees every day. Every employee should be touched every day. And I, I know a lot of listeners are like, are you crazy, Mary? We have a hundred employees or 200 employees. Well, you have managers, you have team leads, you have supervisors, you have mentors. And if you don’t have all of that, then you need to call me. Because we need to put those things in place. It’s not one person touching a hundred employees. We need to have a team touching the team.

VANNOY:

Yeah, I’m so that’s such a good point

SIMMONS:

To be successful.

VANNOY:

HR isn’t HR today, of course, you need a SHRM certified person who understands the laws for the compliance side, but to execute absolutely. An HR strategy, to build a great team that gets behind your brand, behind your mission to be highly productive, that is coincidentally compliant. And you’re, and keeps you out of trouble. That’s not a, an, that’s not a person, that’s not even a HR department. That is how I, I’ll say all supervisors and managers, anyone responsible for the supervision of work or employees, whether it’s a direct employees, correct, or dotted lines. HR is all of our jobs.

SIMMONS:

Correct? Absolutely. And, you know, teaching managers to be good managers of people is a cornerstone of a good HR function, right? Because a lot of times we’re just taking our magic wand and going, Mike is a stellar employee, so I’m going to w a manager tomorrow. So what changed from Tuesday to Wednesday for Mike? He’s got a new title, right? But his skills haven’t changed. And, and obviously the person that we promote must have e you know, exhibited some ability to be a leader, to be a manager. But we need to help Mike be a better manager of people. It will take an entire organization to move engagement, to increase engagement. It’s not gonna happen automatically, right? And with person,

VANNOY:

It’s a team. Mary, I wanna, I probably wanna set up a whole series of discussions for you and I around this whole managing two behaviors and feedback around behaviors and outcomes versus your attitude or perception of assigning intent. Oh, you didn’t do that because you are, or you think all the, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll save that, the rest of that for another day. Let’s move to, yeah. To practical advice. Okay, so, so everybody watching they understand, okay, there’s this new phenomenon. This is not just engagement where people are or are not engaged. You could have somebody who is actually fully engaged up to a certain point, and they’re not gonna give you a penny more that, that’s right. They’re not gonna give you a minute more because they’ve determined what, what the effort is, what is to match what they think. Either compensation or job description or whatever the, whatever the case is. So I think we’re all, we, we, we, we’ve covered that topic. What do we do about it? What, what, what practical guidance, and I know you and I kind of talked ahead of time here and, and I’m looking at a, a list. What, what, what are some of the practical things that employers can do to address this issue?

SIMMONS:

Yeah, so I think, I think there’s a lot of things, but one of the main things is career, career pathing. So what does that mean? Career pathing means that we are literally going to write down on a piece of paper, I, I say all the time to the employers I support, it’s not real until you write it down where the different positions can go. So entry level marketing, can they go into the web team? Can they go into the, you know a sales position? What is the career path for each of the positions? Now, my smaller organizations, I know that you’re twitching a little bit and going, Mary, I have, you know, I’m a very flat organization and I don’t have a lot of different positions. So what you are going to do for your employees is you are going to add some responsibilities, right?

And you, even if you have 10 employees, you may have customer service rep and senior customer service rep. You may have a team lead, you may have a team trainer. So think about how we can add some responsibility to some of these positions. Remembering what I said previously, which is, how are you communicating this to the employee, right? So sometimes you may not be able to give extra money when you ask somebody to be a trainer. You know? So you, you let me take, like manufacturing, right? I need each new employee to be trained on my CDC machine, right? And so I need to designate one or two people to be that trainer. So what are the other things that you can do for that person? Number one, by explaining that you are stellar at this, Mike. And that’s why I would like you to be the trainer.

Cuz I value your skills and would like you to teach them the right way to do it. A lot of times that’s gonna be enough, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, the other thing that you can do is possibly take away some other responsibilities from the individual who you’ve asked to take on the additional responsibilities, right? Maybe there’s an admin task that you can take away from them, et cetera. And short of that, maybe you can give, you know, every time somebody gets hired, I’m gonna give you a hundred dollars, you know, Amazon gift card or something like that. So it doesn’t always mean that you have to give more money. I know this is tough time for employers, right? So it’s not always money, but career pathing is important. Remembering also that if you do the career pathing, you have to tell your employees about it or it doesn’t help you at all, right?

So career pathing is very, very important to communicate and to lay out, and it also helps the organization, right? Because a lot of times, and specifically now we’re having a very hard time finding people look at your career mapping and say, you’re, I actually can’t find salespeople. But I did say to my marketing department that, that could you, they could go into sales. Let me go to my marketing manager and, and ask Mike, Mike, do you have anybody that you think would be interested in changing their career path and coming into the sales side of things, right? So, right. It helps the organization and the employees by doing career pathing. Very important.

VANNOY:

Mary, let, let me ask this. So you are clearly much, much younger than me but f folks of our, I’ll say our generation, yeah, our generation, we think as an employee, I’m gonna go above and beyond. I’m gonna, I’m that, that sounds great. I have an opportunity to grow in advance. I’m gonna put in the extra hours, I’m gonna study it home and, and read up and, and develop this new skill. And if I do, I’m gonna be rewarded. So great. But the employee who’s predispositioned to already think, well, they’re at, they’re just assigning me more work and I’m not gonna get paid for it. Why would I do that? H help coach us through what that conversation looks like.

SIMMONS:

I think there does need to be some type of a reward, right? So is it recognition? Is it a little more money if you can do it? Yeah. Is it, you know, career pathing? I’m gonna have you be the trainer because I see you in the future being the supervisor and then the manager, right? So we’re explaining that career path. Look, they have to learn the skills somewhere, right? So you gotta sometimes start small, start as the trainer before you become the supervisor or the team lead, and then you become the manager. Or, you know, maybe you can afford to do, hey, every time there’s a new employee, you need to train them. I’m gonna give you this, or I’m gonna take those responsibilities away. I think that you have to look at the culture of your organization to sort of figure out what works best, right?

Because there’s positives and negatives for every suggestion I made there, right? Yeah. Sometimes when we give money for every little thing they do, yeah. They’re going to expect it all the time, right? Right. So, Hey, Mike, can you open that door? Oh, am I gonna get a bonus for that? So sometimes it does backfire, right? And again, it comes down to, you know, how we’re explaining it, how we’re communicating it, right? Are you reiterating this in their evaluation, right? So when it comes to taking on new responsibilities, if that’s a category on your performance evaluations for your staff, for this particular person, you’re saying took on the added responsibilities of a trainer doing a stellar job training. And that’s going to infuse through all the categories on their evaluation. And a lot of times that’s all the employees looking for is that positive feedback, right? And the why, right? And I wanna go back to in it for me.

VANNOY:

Yeah. And, and I wanna go back to work exactly that where you were, you know, the beginning of our conversation about what’s the, are you communicating the why? If we make our, if we set expectations with employees through job descriptions, through how we perform handle performance management, how we compensate, if it’s all about the tasks that they perform, we’re gonna, we’re part of maybe unconsciously creating a transactional culture, right? Ver versus a mission oriented culture, right? If I’m running a marketing agency, maybe, maybe everyone just wants to be producing some really cool content, right? Great videos Yes. Game changing graphics, right? And, and when, right. They understand that that’s what they’re doing. Or if they’re an architectural firm or, or a a a a, a landscaping firm, it’s not about how many hours you worked and how many miles you drove to the job site and how fast you accomplish the task. Oh, those things are important. But if it’s right, how beautiful does that place look? Because the, the, the, the landscaping that you did, right? How many, how are our customers reviewing renewing with us? I’ll look at all the Google reviews we’re getting. If, if you get em, if you, if you get your employees aligned to the mission, the why, then career path is probably something that’s really exciting, right? But if it’s, if it’s about the work, absolutely.

Then it, you, you’re almost setting yourself up for this difficult conversation of, well, I guess I have to give you a gift card to, to, to work an extra 30 minutes tonight to finish that task protection

SIMMONS:

To do anything.

VANNOY:

Yes. Cause it’s so important for this our biggest customer tomorrow, right?

SIMMONS:

Yeah. And, and I like what you said about setting clear expectations. Handing the job description to somebody is not going to make explanation. And expectations clear, right? Yeah. We have to explain the expectations. There may be over time from time to time, you know, whatever those, you know, maybes are, let’s explain it and let’s explain why the overtime happens, right? You know, in manufacturing, overtime’s gonna happen When we’re busy, when we’re busy, you know the organization is doing well and it really makes us feel secure about, you know, our position. And, you know, it may lead to, you know, better, you know, raises because we did, we did better, right? So explaining why the extra hours are needed, what’s in it for the employee again. And as part of this, I would invite employers to think about empowering the employees. So you give a great example for marketing, right?

And, you know, that’s your passion. And it is an exciting field. And you know, what we, what we really do wanna create here is, it’s not called job path, it’s called career pathing. So we do want our employees to see the career here to be engaged with the job and the responsibilities and be excited about it. Listen, we’re not all, you know, going to be able to make every position exciting a cashier. I worked retail for years. It’s, it’s a little hard to make that exciting, but maybe you do different promotions, right? You know, if you, you know, service 10 customers in a row or sell the credit card to the customers, you get a bonus, whatever it is. I think part of it is setting the expectations, but also empowering the employees. When’s the last time as an employer, as a leader, as a manager, you said to your staff, how do you think we can make this a better organization for the employees and the customers?

Yeah. What are your ideas to make our products, our services better? Right? You know, better, more cost effective. When’s the last time you did that? Right? So honestly, that should be a cadence that every employer is on all the time from my bagel shop to a multimillion dollar manufacturer, we should have a suggestion box. And then if we use one of those suggestions, yeah, I do think they should get a hundred dollar Amazon gift card, or their name should be in the company newsletter. Or we should make a big deal at it about it at a, at a staff meeting, right? Because the opinions of the people who work for us should be very valued. And, you know, I’m always talking about diversity, equity, and inclusion. We also have to make sure that all of our employees feel fully heard and respected because their ideas are what’s going to make our organization successful in the end.

VANNOY:

Right? Right. It, last thing I would maybe say this expectation setting. You can’t go far enough upstream in this expectation setting, right? If, if you got a big correct you got a big project that’s gotta be done by 8:00 AM tomorrow morning for your biggest customer. If, if the first time you’ve ever broached the concept of we do whatever it takes to, to serve our customers, including working extra hours. If you broach that topic at 4:59 PM the night before saying, Hey, I need you to stay an extra hour. I mean, you, you’ve set yourself up for that problem. But if during the interview process that’s right, you talk about, Hey, you know what I recognize the modern world we live in, and so I’m cool you going to your, going to the dentist and taking your kid to the doctor and, and taking off early in the afternoon to go to the school play. Cuz sometimes we’re on conference calls at eight o’clock at night after the kids go to bed. If it’s a, a really important project, I promise I won’t to do that to you very often, but we’re kind of all in about serving our customers here. Yeah,

SIMMONS:

That’s right. And, and get, and people will rally and actually are gonna get the engagement. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I, and I think I’m just gonna go back to, you know, a topic we, we talk about a lot, but management training is very important. First of all, let’s talk about engaging our managers, right? We have to engage our managers. They’re probably the ones working those extra hours to a large degree. And it could be a supervisor, it could be a team lead. Yeah. But we have to engage our managers. And by training our managers and our employees, right? We do increase engagement. We show them that we care about giving them the skills to do a better job, right? Training is key right now with Gen X and Gen Zs. They want to be taught how to do it instead of just learning on the job.

And that’s our responsibility. We can’t expect employees or managers to be stellar if we’re not giving them the right tools. And the tools may be technology. The tools may be a better desk, a better computer, right? But most importantly, Mike, the tools are the training on the skills and the competencies that they need to do their job. I guarantee you, when we do a training session, I see the light bulbs physically going off in people’s brains as I engage with them and ask them, well, how are you doing it now? How do you think we can do it better? Here’s some suggestions. What do you think about these suggestions? Right? We, we, in very small doses, should we be telling our employees, right, a path that we’re gonna take? We should say, here’s my suggestion, right? As a leader versus a manager, right? Here’s my suggestion. Poke holes in it, give me better suggestions, give me different ideas. And if we’re all in a agreement, right, we’re gonna move forward with this path.

VANNOY:

Yeah. And you important, you don’t even have to go so far as to make it a democracy. You can say, Hey, this is what I want to do. I’m planning on doing this. That, you know, I’m, I’m not saying every vote is equal here, but I do want your feedback. I want you to make either help me change the plan or more poke holes at mind. It so we can make it stronger, right? I mean,

SIMMONS:

Ab Absolutely. Absolutely. And you know, it’s, as far as hearing your employees, you’re, you will have some employees who are afraid to raise their hand or nervous to raise their hand. So we’re a big believer in employee surveys, right? We do surveys for our clients for a lot of reasons, right? So sometimes it’s, you know, what do you like best and what would you change here? And, and sometimes you get better feedback if it’s anonymous, right? And, and I think one of the things that I caution employers about is be careful what you ask. Because when you get answers that you don’t like, you can’t act on everything, right? You know, if, if somebody makes a suggestion, everybody needs a 50% increase, you’re not gonna probably be able to react to that exactly that way. Yeah. Right? But you need to react to the survey. You, in my opinion, should be sharing the results of the survey in most situations, right? So here’s some of the suggestions we had. Thank you everybody for your suggestions. Here are some of the, the action items that we have that we are actually going to, you know, put into play now that you, they’ve been suggested by employees rather than, you know, just doing that survey and, and kind of leaving it on the side that you can’t do all right? Because then people are gonna stop answering the survey.

VANNOY:

Mary, can you give an example of maybe the a a surprising outcome? Where was it? Maybe perhaps not a surprise to you, but it was to the employer. Cuz I, I, I suspect most employers, maybe I’ve got 25 people, I know half of these people really well. I know their birthdays, I know their kids’ names. I know what schools they go to. The other half is, you know, we’re, we’re, we’re we’re small close-knit that most employers might think, I shouldn’t say most, many employers might think, hear that and say, that’s probably for a different type of organization. I know my staff, I know what they would want help, help debunk that myth.

SIMMONS:

So I did employee surveys for, for one organization. It was very family oriented. You know, for, you know, all optics were that it was a really well run organization, but, but the owners thankfully were smart enough to say, you know, I just wanna make sure, right? How can we make th this organization the best it can be, right? So we’re, we’re good. Can we get better? And one of the surprising things that came out of it was one of their managers that they thought was stellar, many, many employees had issues with. Wow. And we came to find out that, you know, talking to us on the HR team and the owners and the management team and the numbers that were being delivered by the department that this manager was in charge of was all good, right? But what that manager was communicating to her team and how they were communicating that to their team was absolutely polar opposite to the yeah.

Culture of the organization. And it, and it was, you know, kind of shame on us because we were like, wait, we did exit in interviews and how come we didn’t get anybody leaving saying, saying anything negative? They were scared to death of the manager even after they left because it was a small industry, right? So they were going to a competitor. It was really, really eyeopening. And yeah, those employee surveys can be very, very helpful. You know, I, I can give you one more example. Another employer was like, you know, I know we don’t, you know, offer enough money and, you know, I know that’s what everybody has a problem with, but, but you know, I still feel comfortable with you doing this survey, Mary, let’s, let’s see what, what everybody’s thoughts are on what they think needs to be improved here as far as work conditions.

Yeah. And very few said something about salary. It was all benefits driven, right? So that does go to total comp. Yeah. But we could fix it, right? It was a little bit easier of a fix. We added, you know, some, some benefits. We, you know, went out to market, found some benefits that were, you know, a little less money, you know, just tweaked it a little bit. Problem solved. Now, had they not done that survey, I think they would’ve been giving out increases, you know, and maybe hurting the bottom line and not, you know, helping retention, right? Right. Yeah. Cause all of this, look, we’re talking about quiet, quitting, but we also should be thinking about retention. And all of this is also going to help with retention. And we talked about retention previously. Retention is, you know, when you have an employee leave, it costs the organization two and a half times their salary. That’s a lot of money. Yes. So you, all of this is important when it comes to getting our employees engaged, but, and that ties to retention as well. And it’s all bottom line, Mike, it’s all bottom line driven.

VANNOY:

Marielle, I, the intent of the show as always is to share the very best information we can so employers can stay compliant and build productive teams That I will make a pitch for why you should outsource this function of hr, especially in small organizations. If you’re at a Fortune 1000, the HR department is probably this nebulous, nameless, face faceless department, and you’re probably fine sharing your concerns. But at a small company, the, the person in charge of HR may be the owner, it might be the spouse of an owner, it might be best friends or at least long lasting relationship with owner and employees are afraid to share because of retaliation, because they don’t think the information will be shared properly, of course transferred properly in a, in a, in address. So this really is an area where outsourcing this function makes a heck of a lot of sense. Mary, I know we’re about at, at time, any other final guidance you would give to employers to, to address this issue of quiet quitting?

SIMMONS:

Yeah, and I, I think one of the other things that they can do is stay interviews or retention interviews, right? So what that means is sitting down with every employee and talking to them, you know, frankly about, Hey, you’re doing a great job here. You know, what do you think can change? Sometimes they do want to talk it through and not make it anonymous and it, and, you know, they, it doesn’t have to be a criticism that they’re telling you. It could just be, you know, giving them time to talk, giving them attention, right? I think some of the other things that, you know, we always are doing is looking at all of the employment documents, right? So obviously it starts with the ad. What are the interview questions? What is the job preview that your managers are giving them, right? So that’s setting the expectations.

This is what the job looks like, right? What are your offer letters or employment agreements look like? You know, we talked about job descriptions. All of the documents that we have, the employment documents that are employee facing should be explained, should be reviewed. Obviously we’re looking at compliance, but we also have to look at them in the vein of, you know, is this still relevant? Things changed significantly in the past two years and if we went a hundred percent remote, when I do an interview, my team is remote, but I say there’s no such thing as a hundred percent remote because we have meetings, right? There may be a client that I need you to go to for the day. And I think you need to set those expectations upfront so you don’t have, you know, issues later. Looking at those job descriptions, creating the career mapping and succession planning, right?

So succession planning is equally important to the career mapping. Career mapping is showing the different paths that the position can take, right? Not the incumbent, the position. And succession planning is saying if Mike leaves, is there anybody underneath him who could take it? And what are the skills and compet competencies they need, right? And why that is important is because if I identify somebody on Mike’s team, that is, can be the succession plan to Mike, you know, what are the, we need to, I talk to that person and identify, Hey, you need to get this certification or this and we need to talk to them because they may say, that is not in my career plan. We are not aligned. And, and I don’t want it. And I think evaluations are very important to hear also, how are you using your evaluation process, right?

So we’re talking about, you know, the last year, the last month, you know, whatever you know, timeframe you do your evaluations, but it should be a conversation. You know, it’s, it’s so often thought of as, you know, the employees going in nervous, the manager’s nervous. And that is really not what an evaluation, you know, I is meant to be, right? It should be a conversation. And all of what we spoke about should be reiterated. And I think beyond that, you know, I want employers to think about what, what incentive plans can I, can I have here? Right? What are some of you know, the committees that I can create within the organization because, you know, listen, a lot of time engagement has something to do with boredom, right? We talked about, you know, wage and, and things like that. But I can, I can tell you that many, many, many surveys will tell you a lot of times employees aren’t engaged cause they’re bored with their job.

Yeah. You know, either it is a boring job or, you know, it’s not speaking to them. So create a fund committee, create a safety committee. <Laugh>, right? Create a you know, diversity committee, what whatever it is, you know, give employees a reason to, you know, get excited about working at your organization. You know, give, you know, $10 Starbucks gift card for birthdays. Everybody loves their birthday. Give a half day for birthdays. There’s a lot of rewards that we can do to get our employees engaged, have lunch and learns, right? So lots of people will come and speak for free at lunch while your employees are there. And they’ll appreciate hearing about, you know, how to care for elderly parents or you know, how to do yoga at, at your desk. You know have a wellness fair. All of those extra things excite your employees and they’re not necessarily going to hurt your bottom line. What it will do is help your roi, help your retention, and help your entire organization meet its business goals.

VANNOY:

Mary, as always, I learned a ton from you. Every time we talk, you give me like five ideas of future show topics for you, for you and I to unpack the thing that I, awesome,

SIMMONS:

Awesome. I love spending time with you. <Laugh>.

VANNOY:

The thing, the thing that I’m walking away here is you can, you can never move upstream far enough for all these things. Whether it’s the identification of the competencies that you’ll then interview on that will be part of your job description and become and part of your employee handbook that become part of your communication strategies. All this can be very overwhelming. This is exactly what your team does, is they, they do this for people because this is, it’s not even that it’s hard. Some of it there’s a legalistic component. You need to know the actual laws. Some of it’s like

SIMMONS:

You can cannot

VANNOY:

See around. Yeah. Some of it you need to be able to see around corners cuz you’ve seen the, the, this, this movie before, so to speak. A lot of it is just arms and legs and being able to get to it. And so we just, I just really appreciate this is exactly what your team does. So there’ll be a survey pop up at the end here for anybody who wants to learn more, how, how you Asure and your team can, can help people stay compliant and build great teams and avoid topics like quiet quitting. So with that, Mary, thanks so much and thanks to everybody else. Thank.