VANNOY:

How to attract candidates rather than just recruit them. Hi, I’m Mike Vannoy, vice President of Marketing at Asure, and my guest today is Mary Simmons. If you’re a regular watcher of the show, you know Mary but she is our Vice President of HR consulting at Asure, and she’s a SHRM certified HR professional. Also for the past eight years, Mary has been an adjunct professor at the New York Institute of Technology. Prior to Asure Mary was the director of HR consulting for a 55 year old HR legal consulting firm in New York. Welcome back to the show, Mary.

SIMMONS:

Thanks, Mike. Glad to be here.

VANNOY:

Be okay. So a as we were talking before about, about this topic you know, I, I I think we, I think we ha have to have a shift in mindset here around recruiting, right? I think for forever the term recruiting in the HR world ha has really meant probably more sifting through resumes than it did actual recruiting, right? And so the advent of correct job boards and ats the applicant tracking systems so that a hiring manager doesn’t have to wade through a hundred resumes to figure out which one or two people are actually qualified. Those things are still important in an internet world. But with the labor shortage hitting Main Street candidates have choices and there are fewer applicants that there’s something like two jobs open to every person in the market looking for a job right now. So this is a buyer’s market. Can you just talk about what do you, what do you think is most important, I think in our preparation for this conversation, the, the first thing thing you talked about was just knowing your organization and having some, some self-awareness. What, what, what, what do you mean by that?

SIMMONS:

Yeah, a hundred percent. And, and you’ll be, you know, jumping in a lot here because when we talk about attracting candidates, we’re really talking about moving into a marketing mode and Right. Even when the job market turns around, Mike, we still have to have this approach and we’ll go through the reasons, but one of the biggest reasons is because when we’re talking about bringing new candidates to our organization, we have to also think about retaining them. It’s not just filling the gap, right? We have to think about retention. And to do that, you wanna attract the correct people. So I give the analogy recruiting, traditional recruiting used to be, you know, you and I are sitting in a boat with our fishing rods and we, we have them out there with really good bait on the hook, come work for us. We have a job opening, and that’s all it used to take, and we’d pull those candidates into our boat, right?

Yep. Unfortunately, as things evolve and as other organizations get smarter about pulling those people away, organizations need to look at the back of the boat, cuz everybody’s jumping off the back. All those fish, all those candidates, all those employees are jumping off the back of the boat, right? So we have to put something a little bit more attractive that is unique to our organization on our hook, right? To attract the right people. Because in the long run, that’s gonna help recruit those people. So it has to be customized to your organization. So when we work with organizations and we figure out their recruitment strategy, right? Yeah. So you kinda have to have a strategy. You can’t just Right. Throw ads up and hope, right? We always say hope is, hope is not a strategy, right? <Laugh>, you have to be very deliberate, just like you would be deliberate when you are marketing the organization, right?

We’re moving into a marketing mode. So you have to know your organization, right? So what are the benefits you are giving? What is the salary that you’re giving and is it competitive with what everybody else is doing? And I know there’s a lot of smaller employers on the, that may listen in and say, well, I can’t compete with the huge manufacturing or the huge organization around the corner. I can’t compete with the benefits. And, and, but there’s a lot of things that your current population might like, right? And there, and there’s a lot of benefits that you can give that aren’t that expensive, right? So giving people their birthday off, it sounds silly, it’s just one extra day, Mike. But if that is the population that makes sense to pull into your organization, right? Then that’s gonna be a great benefit. So you need to look at total compensation, you need to look at who you are and answer the question, why would somebody want to work for your organization? And don’t gimme the answer cuz they want a job and I give them a salary. That’s the wrong, an <laugh>, that’s the wrong answer. We really have to be deliberate. Why would somebody want to work for your organization? I, I wanna, is it your products? Are you

VANNOY:

Go deeper there, right? Because people don’t sign up to work at SpaceX because they think Elon Musk is an easy boss, right? With a 35 hour work with <laugh>, right? I mean, he is notoriously or ridiculously hard demanding boss. People work there because they wanna be part of a mission. They want to be part of the team that put humans on, on Mars, right? So, as crazy as that might sound That’s right. People work there. So I do want to touch on things like salary and benefits and, and, and, you know, creative ways to attract, but speak first about this. Why would someone want to work for you in this? What I, what I think is a a, a critical missing component is mission alignment, right?

SIMMONS:

Definitely. So that, that’s a big piece right now. So, so let’s just take it a little bit further and let’s start to do our research, right? So we’re gonna back into knowing our organization by knowing our employees. So who is your current employee base? Yeah, right? And what is the profile of the person that fits into that base, skill-wise, culture-wise, mission wise, right? Yeah. And you can’t make any assumptions here. So what we will do for an organization who says, Mary, I can’t answer these questions, we will do employee surveys, right? And we use employee surveys for a lot of different things, but this is a really valuable one. And I would ask that one question. Why do you like working here? And you’re gonna get all kinds of different answers, Mike, but I guarantee you there’s gonna be some common denominators that then you can leverage, right?

Yeah. Because when we assume somebody knows, well, I have the best products, somebody, people should know that when I advertise a job, they don’t tell them that. Tell them your rich history. And if the profile of the people that you’re looking for and the profile of your candidates are individuals that really value, let’s say volunteer work, excuse me, or the mission of your organization, you need to state that, right? And you could put that right in an ad, right? So people make the mistake a lot of times of saying, of using their job description for an ad. They are two completely unique, very important documents, and you’re drawing from your job description Absolutely. To write an ad. It is not the same thing. When I go to help an organization with this recruitment strategy and I see that job description, <laugh>, I start shaking because that doesn’t say the why. It’s not gonna help anybody want to work for your organization.

VANNOY:

Yeah. You know what I, I think even backing up to the mentality. I think so many people, so many small businesses, entrepreneurs think about, you know, I’m, I’ve got a job opening, my hair is on fire. I’m working 80 hours a week. I’m doing payroll on Tuesday nights at 10 o’clock after the kids go to bed, when my team is long gone, <laugh>. And oh my God, I just gotta put a body in this seat. They go to what are the job boards and, and post a job. And it, and it’s transactional. But when you think the, the value that employee is gonna have, the cost of turning that employee over if they’re not a good fit it’s just so expensive that I appreciative of, of the hours entrepreneurs put in. But this has to be right there at the top of priorities. And you would never, if, if you’re, if you’re looking for, if you’re, if you’re looking for a, a, a, a soulmate to get married, how would you treat the courtship process? And it, you, you would treat it as a courtship process. You wouldn’t just say, Hey, who wants to go out on a date with me tomorrow night? Right? I’m these are my time slots. I’m available for a meeting for an interview to see if we’re a good fit or not. It’s a courtship, right?

SIMMONS:

Absolutely. And, and I think you put it very succinctly by saying it’s, it’s transactional and it’s not. And part of of talking about attracting candidates is not just thinking about recruiting and attracting candidates when we have a job opening. You wouldn’t stop marketing your organization or selling your products or services ever, right? That is a continual thing, right? Attracting candidates to your organization is a continual thing. It has to be in your cadence all the time, right? So for, for, you know, our listeners that are like, that is way too much work. First of all, we can help you do that. But second of all, don’t do it when you have an opening, figure out the recruitment plan when you don’t have an opening so you’re not on fire, right? So you’re not in a place where you down a person and work is crazy.

Do it when you don’t have an opening, because you need to be attracting candidates. And, and, and I’m sure you will back me up here, Mike, anytime our name, our organization’s name is out in any kind of public, you know, place, be it indeed be it on LinkedIn be it in a newspaper, right? Even if we’re just looking for candidates, we are promoting our organization. So marketing our organization and the presence that we have in the marketplace is tied into attracting our candidates. The message needs to be the same, right? So just like you have a brand, right, Nike, just do it. Right? So I just use one that’s really recognizable. Yep. we need to have an employment brand. Even if we are a very small organization, you have a brand that you are out there in the market. Maybe it’s not defined by, you know, an expert like you, Mike, maybe smaller organizations don’t have that marketing professional, but that brand is out there or they wouldn’t be in business, right?

So what is it? Is their services extraordinary? Is their, you know, mission as you said, extraordinary. Are their employees extraordinary? What is your brand? Right? So when I did this for a, a freight forwarder, right? A a client of ours, we really came around to the fact that it is a family environment, right? So much so that the mother, the father, the two sons worked at the organization, the mother was cooking full meals at lunchtime, there was a full kitchen, right? Not a big organization, right? You know, we’re talking 25 employees, right? But an unbelievable culture. So much so that it was okay if they weren’t the top payer. It was okay if they couldn’t compete against the bigger organizations. They had something the other organizations didn’t. The why was if you worked there, you felt like you were part of a family that is very powerful and very attractive.

VANNOY:

And I, you know, a second ago, I I used the phrase mission alignment. There’s culture alignment, right? Because there’s some people that might hear you just described it and say, oh my god, that sounds horrific <laugh>. That’s not, that’s not what I want from my employer. I’ve got my own family issues I gotta deal with. I don’t need another family. I mean, but there’s somebody else that might say, oh my gosh, I feel like I’m just a cog in the machine here and I really want to go, I want enough money to meet my needs and feel validated in the marketplace, but I just wanna belong somewhere. So part of this isn’t just recruiting and great marketing isn’t just saying BS cuz everybody’s BS meter is really good, right? It’s being authentic for you actually

SIMMONS:

Are. It’s gotta be real.

VANNOY:

Yeah. I I, right Mary, I I can even think of scenarios where, and and I’d like you to maybe give some advice on this. So maybe you’re, you know, you’re not number one in the market. Maybe, you know, you’re actually pretty broken right now and you got a light, a lot of white space between your processes. You, you don’t have the skills that you need. You, you, you’re getting crushed by a competitor. Well, what are you gonna do? You gonna fold up tent and and, and quit and, and, and, and close the doors? Well, no. You’re gonna, you’re gonna fight, you’re gonna dig in and you’re gonna grind therein maybe lies your brand, your employment brand for this leg of your journey, right? Can, can you speak into how to, that’s right. How to comm develop and communicate and lean into an employment brand when maybe temporarily we suck.

SIMMONS:

Well, I, I think that what you said was, first of all, the truth is you can’t make up, right? So you can’t take somebody else’s brand and go, oh, that sounds good. I’m gonna make that our employment brand. It has to be real. And that’s why you have to do that, the research, right? You gotta do the work. Yeah. and if they’re not a leader in the organization, there is another positive about that organization because the employees that they have are working there for a reason. Yeah. So what is it? Right? So, you know, you talked about mission and, and we’re always talking about culture, but the mission might be that, you know, we might be the little guy, but we’re striving, you know, we’re, we’re still competitive in the market. Come help us, you know, rise to the top. It might be something like that. Yeah. Where

VANNOY:

David, come join us. Help beat Goliath, right?

SIMMONS:

Yeah, exactly. And you have to make sure that that is aligned with your needs, right? So if you want people who are okay to come into the organization and help improve process and procedure, right? Then that’s, that is probably the right employment brand that you wanna go with. And you know, you have to add some positives there, right? So we empower our employees would be something that I would add there. Yeah. But you know, you have to do the work. Why are my employees here? What are the positives of my organization? I mean, I’ve added to, you know, ads I’ll put at the bottom for employers. You know, why should you work here? Make it really easy, right? And I put simple things like free parking, free flexible work schedule. I mean, that is number one on everybody’s list right now. And I can tell you that it has switched from fully remote to hybrid. Hybrid is the desire for, for most workers. This, you know, that’s what the surveys are telling us right now. So what is it about your organization?

VANNOY:

And it’s not just saying that’s what they want, it’s saying that’s where the greatest productivity lies, right? It’s, it’s not full-time office, full-time home. It’s the employees who flex are the most engaged. It’s not just what they want. It, it, the, it, it bears out in performance.

SIMMONS:

Right? Right. A hundred percent. But if you are that employer, and I was working with somebody the other day and they were saying, Nope, I have a brand new office. It’s a beautiful office. I want everybody in the office. I made my pitch for why he should do hybrid, and I wasn’t convincing him. And I said, okay, why do they have to come into the office? Tell me why they have to, well, there there’s more collaboration because I give free lunch. Oh, you give free lunch, okay. That goes into the ad, right? Yes. So why, right. You know, my husband just went back into the city, free lunch is $20 in a lot of places. Right? So that is a big benefit. So if you’re doing something like that, you should list that in the ad. Don’t take things for granted every little positive that you’re doing for your employees. We need to tell them we need to spell that out in our ads to attract people. Right? Why keep going back to the why do they wanna work for us?

VANNOY:

Yeah. You know what I I, and, and this is where the factual description of your environment versus the marketing kind of come hand in hand, right? So the fact may be we have an owner or a c e who says, no, my employees will work in the office and doesn’t believe in hybrid work. You know, we would advocate possibly otherwise, but it irrelevant. That’s, that’s their prerogative to make that decision, right? Right, right. But instead of saying if an office job, it’s, we value collaboration. We value teamwork so much. We don’t feed you as an enticement to come work here. We feed you because we’re all together, work shopping, our ideas, collaborating. And that’s what makes this place great. Right? So that’s the marketing. Well, I would tell the story of, hey, we require our employees to come to the office. That’s right.

SIMMONS:

And I’ll, and I’ll tell the employers on the call a secret here, it is a fact that your employees are more engaged when you pay for their lunch. We, we had a manufacturer that we were working with who was very frustrated about everybody going for their lunch and then coming back. And you know what, it’s like 15 minutes before lunch. Everybody’s talking about where they’re going 15 minutes after lunch. They’re a little tired, they’re a little slow, they’ve relaxed or they’re coming back late, right? Yeah. so we tried to set up some process and procedures communicate to the employees, right? It’s, if it’s an hour lunch, really you have 45 minutes cuz you gotta sign out. None of that was working. So we said, let me, let me, let’s just test this. Let’s do free pizza on Fridays. Lots of organizations do this. Sure,

Let’s do free pizza on Fridays. Productivity went through the roof. Your employees are more engaged. It is worth every cent you pay when you pay for lunch. Your employees are there, they’re not late, you’re not missing productivity. But another thing happens when they’re eating lunch together, right? So I also had a professional services organization, different issue. It was more, you know, there wasn’t a lot of collaboration, right? There was a lot of silos in the organization and we worked on it in, in a lot of ways. But one of the things we suggested for them also was bring in lunch at least a couple days a week, right? Bring in lunch. Everybody goes into the conference room. This is pre covid, of course. Sure. Everybody goes into the conference room and they have lunch, collaboration, teamwork, engagement, all rows. Because you’re gonna start off talking about the new Game of Thrones show. Right? House of Dragons. House of Dragons. And then you’re gonna start talking about work. Right? Right. Right. And, and not that that’s the goal. The goal really is for your employees, for you and I to get to know each other better so that we can work better together. But you can’t, I you can’t understate, you know, those little benefits, like the free meals, the, you know, even a free breakfast is a positive thing, right? Your employees will come in earlier if they know there’s bagels waiting for them, I guarantee you.

VANNOY:

Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and I would just encourage people, so as, as you talk about, as you, as you create your ads where somebody who’s never heard of you, maybe first, that’s their first brand exposure, right? Is wearing my marketing hat. The first brand touch would be maybe a, a, a posting on Indeed or LinkedIn or however they, however they found you. Right? that is a brand impression, just how you write that. And so better to baseline description is the bare minimum. That’s kinda what everybody does. We’re moving towards actually expanding and talking about what of the other benefits are. Maybe it’s lunch, maybe it’s the ping pong table, maybe it’s the Xbox in the break room, whatever that is. But to, to me, to really then elevate that game is those are just, those are ki those run the risk of just check the box.

Me too. Yes, I have them. What is your Y why do you have x an Xbox in the break room? Why do you have free pizza on Fridays? Why do you bring bagels and fruit for breakfast every day? And the, and the why that’s right is where you’re going. It, it’s, we value employee engagement. We, we like group thinking because we know that more heads are five heads are better than one. Right? That’s how you describe the job. And oh, by the way, to help, to help facilitate that. We have free pizza on Friday or we bring bagels in on Wednesday or, or what, or we, we, we, we value a fun environment where people can take a break and engage. That’s why we have an Xbox in the break room. And maybe you don’t do those things, but it goes, all goes back to the what is the why you do what you do. Right?

SIMMONS:

Right. And, you know, going to the attraction, we wanna make sure that we’re also talking about, you know, I got my HR hat on. Now we also wanna talk about d e i, right? Diversity, equity, and inclusion. That is what makes our organization the strongest that it possibly can be. And for employers, you know, I’m always gonna tell you compliance wise at the bottom of your ad to put equal employment opportunity always, right? Our affirmative action employers or federal contractors have a little bit of a longer byline that they have to put on an ad. But I would invite everyone to also say a statement about the fact that all employees are fully heard. Because that is an important piece to A, making your organization successful, and B, making those candidates understand the culture of your organization that they’re coming into. And that I can tell you is a big piece to being attracted.

And, and, right. I also want everybody to understand that there’s, you know, that is an appeal to everybody when we say that everybody is fully heard and fully respected, right? That’s important to every individual. I can’t imagine anybody saying that they wouldn’t, that they wouldn’t want that, right? So it’s important that we say that, but from the beginning we’ve said everything has to be real. So if you say it, it should be real. And then that should be one of your, the trainings that you give. And while I’m talking about that, if you are giving training, that is a very important piece for the younger generations, which are the biggest generations in the job market right now. Right? Right. Training, training, training. Right? So if you’re doing training, make sure that’s in your ads. And if you’re not doing training, talk to me because you should be, it’s very, very attracted to the candidates.

VANNOY:

So this, this could be a gigantic rabbit hole to go down, but you know, you ask your employees what are they like? That’s the starting point, right? And then you from there so you know your organization, you know your employees from there, you’re trying to build an employment brand, right? Maybe, maybe you are, maybe you just don’t have any of that good stuff. Maybe you’re, you, you, you’re, you’re an entrepreneur and you’re really great at your craft and you’ve hired employees, but you know, don’t have experience or knowledge expertise in these other areas. So you haven’t developed a company that has these things. Maybe you’re a great leader and you know all these best practices you should do, but your hair’s on fire trying to keep the business alive, and you don’t have time to get this stuff. Whatever the reason is, right?

 How, what, what practically, so, okay. They’ll, they’ll talk to their employees. They’ll, they’ll have an understanding of the company. All of these recommendations kind of require the business to have thought about whether it’s free pizzas or a training program or a mentorship program, or whether flex time. And a lot of these things haven’t been even contemplated yet. So we almost have to move further upstream here, don’t we? For, for, which is great HR practices. So before you can have a great ad to recruit people, you first have to have great HR strategies in place before you even have the opening. Can, can you speak into that a little bit, Mary? And that’s probably another topic for a whole nother day, but

SIMMONS:

Well, you know, it’s really tied in together, Mike. And so we do uncover, when we start to do this exercise and we start to do strategic recruitment plan for organizations, and again, small ones or big ones, we do uncover a lot of things, right? We do uncover things like, you know, what, what are the misses that we have as far as the employees, you know, desires, you know, what they’re looking for in the organization and what are we missing to increase engagement? So, you know, training could be one of them. Compliance could be another, right? Your employees very often know more about compliance than you do. I, I had an employer call me the other day and go, you know, an employee just resigned. And he said he’s do this, this, this and this. Is he, I had no idea. And I said, yeah, he’s right.

<Laugh>. Yeah. And we walked through everything, right? But an organization should know their mission, vision and their goals, right? That’s, that’s, you know, business 1 0 1 and that’s where we’re going to traject right into the ads. And, and you started talking about, well, you have that entrepreneur and he is really smart and he’s really great at what he does, but he doesn’t have any of the other stuff. That right there is a great story. So that’s what you’re doing here with the ad. Yes. You’re telling a story. Yes. And that’s what attracts people, right? Yeah. and so one of the things that I want everybody to, to be thinking about, I already talked about the fact that this is a marketing campaign. This never stops. And I don’t mean that you always have to have an add on indeed. Right? That’s not what I’m talking about.

But what I’m talking about is if you’re, if you have a website, and I’m hoping everybody, and or if you have a LinkedIn page, a LinkedIn page is free, you can do a business LinkedIn page for free, right? You can pay for bells and whistles, but you can do a free LinkedIn page, right? Or the leader can have a LinkedIn page. What are you putting there that’s in line with your mission, your vision, your goals, your culture. Yeah. Right? And attracting employees. Little things like we have national payroll week and look at all the great things we’re doing for our employees, right? Yeah. Little things like that that is tied to attracting more employees to your organization. You need to make your organization an employer of choice. How do you do that? It’s pedal to the metal. Your organization is being marketed at the same time that we’re talking about all the great things that we do here.

Cuz guess what, when I see that on LinkedIn, I say to myself, well that must be a great organization and I am more prone to use their products and services. And you might say that cuz I’m an HR geek and I like what I like their, their employee practices. But I think that most consumers want to do business with an organization that treats their employees well. So if you’re treating your employees well, you should be capitalizing on that and building your talent pipeline all the time. So what are you putting on your, on your website? You know, we have an employee of the month. Here’s Mike. These are all the great things that he did. Right? We had an employee picnic. All of that should be on your website, LinkedIn, Instagram, and you know, I know everybody’s not that, that tech savvy, but it’s not. It’s probably, I’m gonna say 20 minutes a week. That’s it. That’s all I’m looking for. Yeah. And you will start to see the tide change.

VANNOY:

And, and I would encourage people to think about it in, in kind of two ways. So do, and and I just know this for, for marketing. It’s like I, I can publish social media all day long every day, which we do on all the platforms many times a day. Do I really, am I naive enough to think that I am attracting all kinds of people in real time? Some, but, but mostly, no. But when, when, when a prospective client looks at us because maybe they, maybe a sales rep called on them, they didn’t, maybe it wasn’t a, a marketing touch that exposed them to, as Asure as that person evaluates us and decides, okay, I like my sales rep. That person made a lot of sense. Is this company for real? They start Googling you, they start checking out your Facebook page, your LinkedIn page, your whatever page. Have you ever posted anything that might or might not hurt you? But if there’s this long string of employee recognitions and lunches and trips and celebrating so-and-so’s birthday, you’re screaming culture. Right? And, and so even if your say social media, your emails, your blogs, your website presence that you have around your careers page or your employment brand, even if it doesn’t intercept anybody looking for a job, when they do come before they say yes, they’re gonna research these things and they’re gonna find a lot about you. Of course.

SIMMONS:

That’s right. Yeah. That’s right. And there should be, you should be controlling what they see. You want as much positive press as you can get. Cuz no matter what we do there, there may be some negative things out there, right. About our organization. But if, if we can take the driver’s seat and be a little bit more intent about the information that we have out there about our organization, you will see that you will start attracting people to your organization. And, you know, not to, you know, overstate you know, the recruitment strategy in the example that I gave you. But we literally, after six months of changing the ads and making sure that we were intentional about look, telling people all the great things that the organization did, right? Yeah. Like, you can’t take for granted that every organization is cooking a home, home, you know, cooked meal every day for the employees.

Right? Right. That that really doesn’t happen. There were people who applied to the organization through the website and said, I heard about your organization and it’s, and it’s sounds like a great place to work that is worth all the work that we’ve talked about you know, through this entire time together today that is true attraction. And what I was saying about retention is now because we’ve been intentional, because we have stated what our mission, our vision, and our culture is in our ad, we should be aligning the individuals to our organization better. And in the long run, Mike, that will help with retention. You said yourself, there may be people that say, I don’t wanna work in an organization that says that they’re, it’s like family that’s not attractive to me. Fine. Let those individuals self select out. Yes. Because they’re probably not the right fit for your organization. Exactly. Right. We want people not just to fill seats, but to stay in those seats and help us grow and be successful.

VANNOY:

So I I’m gonna speak into, to one thing that I think is really important to candidates, but then I want you to kind of just put, put your really tactical HR hat on. And I want you to kinda list out what are the buckets around compensation benefits, things like that, that, that training as a really big one that that, that if, if employers aren’t currently doing these things, they need to really start evaluating and implementing some of these things. But the biggest thing that I, that I think people are drawn to is authenticity. Right? People will self-select and align to whatever that mission is. Whether it’s putting somebody a on Mars, maybe somebody wants a leisure lifestyle business lifestyle job and, and, and they’re willing to trade everything, including money for flexibility, right? Maybe somebody is just really super into the product, right?

And that’s what they care deeply about. Maybe it’s a collaboration. But no matter what you do, it, you, you, authenticity is the most important thing. People’s BS meters are really, really good. And you don’t want somebody to say yes only to find out you were just BSing them in. Oh, that’s not what it’s really like here. Much, much better to say, Hey, I’m a I’m a machinist and I’m great at building parts. I built a pretty good business here. We’re doing, we’re doing a million, going on 2 million a year in revenue. I, I don’t know what I’m doing in marketing and hr. I really need your help. Right? That, that might sound like a dream job to an HR manager. It might sound like a dream job to a marketer, right? Saying, here’s a place that I can really kinda run my own shop and, and have great freedom. Right? So whatever you do, right? I think just telling your authentic story, the right people will be attracted to you and the, and the wrong people won’t. And that’s, and that’s a good thing for both of you. All right?

SIMMONS:

Absolutely. Absolutely. So when we talk about total compensation, yeah. Right? And we, it’s a lot of times it’s also called total rewards, right? Statistics will tell us, and and a lot of people would be surprised, money is not the top motivator for the majority of your candidates or employees. Okay? Yeah. What is at the top of the list is all the things that we’ve been talking about, empowerment, collaboration, and now of course work schedule is rising to the top in, in the surveys, right? Yeah. Right. So are you talking about that in the ad and all of that? You know, the compensation I, I realize is difficult for employers. So what we’ll do is we’ll do salary benchmarking for them and we’ll say, okay Mike, you’re looking for a mechanic in Illinois in a particular town. This is what the state of Illinois’s average salary is.

This is what your town’s salary average is. This is what nationally that individual is making. So what I’ll invite employers to do is say, look, and we’re just using mechanic cuz it’s, it’s an easy example. Let’s say you want them to have, you know, a C D C certification and you’re, you’re not finding that. Yeah. So employers need to be a little creative when it comes to things like that. You may need to bring a c d C trainer into your organization once a week, right? Once a month, whatever it is, and hire people right out of high school who have a mechanical or BOCES who have a mechanical aptitude, and then you will train them, right? I had another organization come to me and say, I have an aging population. You know, there’s a lot of of brain drain when they leave. That’s a problem.

Yeah. So what are you gonna do? So we’re gonna set up policy and procedure manuals so that everybody can do a brain dump and tell us everything that they do. Well that’s very attractive to a new employee, right? Here’s a manual for everything that you need to do. So how are we communicating that? So at the top of the list, statistics will tell us it is collaboration and empowerment. Work schedule is is inching up there, then of course salary is up there. Then we talk about the benefits, right? So for most of the organizations that are listening, right, there are, you know, regulations that you have to abide by, right? Right. So the Affordable Care Act being one of them. And then you also may have some state regulations. California and New York right now are mandating that you have a savings plan for your employees, right?

So 401K esque. So those are really at the top of the list, but there are so many things that, that my smaller organizations can do that we have moved into place that make the difference, like getting your birthday off. Like stop giving one week vacation for their whole first year that they work for you, Mike. Everybody values their time off, right? And again, you have to research this. If you have an organization that does not, you know, really value time off, then that’s not something I would increase. But the, the standard is two weeks within the first year and when I, I was just doing a handbook and I’m like, you’re giving only one week their first year. You know, that is not exactly attractive to, you know, new employees. And that is, I’m not gonna say it’s a free benefit, right? Because loss of productivity costs us, you know, money.

But it is something that’s a little bit easier to change than saying, okay, Mary, now I’m gonna pay the entire cost of medical for my employees. Yeah, that’s very expensive. Yeah, for sure. But there’s little things like the free meals, like how about free swag, right? How about giving a free t-shirt to employees once a month? You’re marketing your organization. Yeah. You’re making sure that they’re coming to work dressed appropriately. Yeah. Right? So you, you don’t have to worry about dress code if they have an employee t-shirt or sweatshirt on. Right. <laugh>. And, and employees really value that kind of, of, you know, benefits, right? So total rewards can be anything from, you know, free ice cream, free bagels, free lunch to free swag, and all of that makes a difference in a attracting and retaining your employees,

VANNOY:

Right? Right. So, I mean, and this isn’t an info for as Asure we want people to get value, whether they’re a customer or not, listens to this show. These are all things that we just do. When, when, when someone retains us for an outsourced HR services relationship, love to do that. Let us know after the show if you want us to talk to you. But the, the message is, regardless whether you’re using as Azure or you’re doing this on your own, you need to benchmark your local marketplace and your industry, right? On salary, on benefits, and not just insurance benefits, but time off. Right? And then also perks, right? What are, are there other categories that employers should be thinking about benchmarking?

SIMMONS:

I think those are, are the big ones. And you know, a lot of times when we’re working with an HR professional at an organization that they’ll very often say, my handbook’s fine. I did the handbook. My benefits are fine, I did that. But one of the benefits that we have being a national provider and having, you know, hundreds and hundreds of employers that we help in lots of different industries is we can also suggest best practices, right? So what I’m going to suggest to a manufacturer as being a leading benefit, right? And that’ll attract, you know, the manufacturer, you know, floor individual is gonna be different than the law firm that I support or the church that I support, right? Right. Or the nonprofit. It’s gonna be different, but time off and the benefits and the work schedule and salary are going to be at the top of the list for most of the candidates.

So how are we, you know, working that? So a lot of the nonprofits will go, Mary, you know, I have even non-profits that have contracts will say, you know, this is prevailing wage, this is what I’m gonna pay. Right? I can’t go around that, or I can’t afford to go around that. So now we have to back into the other benefits, all right? If you know that you are not a top payer, how are we gonna attract people? What are the other benefits that you’re looking at that we can attract candidates and retain them, right? That’s the name of the game. Attract and retain, recruit, retain. I wanna

VANNOY:

Get one topic that I wanna move to retain in, in our closing moments here of those different buckets that we talked about, salary benefits you know, time off, things like that. I would encourage employers not to think about these as I’ve gotta be competitive in every single one of these categories because that’s, that is a marketer I’m thinking that just puts you in a sea of sameness. So like I talking to a, a salt a hair salon client she doesn’t offer benefits to her employees, but she’s really very open, kinda leans into it and says, Hey, I could provide you benefits that’s gonna have a cost. I choose to pay the very highest commission rates in the industry. And so as a result, she retains people who candidly don’t need benefits. They probably have that somewhere else in their family, but are, are the highest performers and that will build the most because they’re gonna make the most money.

Right? You could take the exact same opposite approach in saying, Hey I, I, I can, I I can do anything. I can’t do everything, right? I, I could give you benefits or I could pay. That’s right. All much money. We don’t pay as much. We know that we don’t pay as much, but we pay, we have the richest benefits program of the entire industry, right? Or the entire state or whatever. Right? However you, you pitch it. Just know that you don’t have to be equal on all these things. In fact, maybe you shouldn’t be, maybe you should try to strive to be the best at one thing, right?

SIMMONS:

That’s a great strategy. That’s a great strategy. And you know, just goes back to what we said in the beginning. You have to know your organization, you have to know who is the best fit and that’s the benefits that you’re gonna capitalize on, right? Right. So if you had a really young organization, right? And you know, you were attracting a lot of entry individuals, I wouldn’t be purporting, you know, and talking about your 401k, it’s not what they’re looking for. They’re looking for time off and training <laugh>, right? Yeah. So, you know, you have to know who you’re attracting. If you really need, you know, 20 year experienced engineers, then you’re gonna be talking about your 401K plan. So a lot, a lot of it has to do with who you want to attract as well,

VANNOY:

Right? Okay. We only got a couple minutes left here, Mary. So I know the topic was how do we attract not just recruit talent, but this kind of begs talking about retention too. So what guidance do you have for people in this context of being recruiting mode to also then retaining those employees once they get ’em?

SIMMONS:

So I would invite employers to, you know, leverage the employee surveys that we do with candidates. So you have to know why people are leaving. That’s a very important factor. So we, when we do exit interviews, we do two things. Number one, we act as that outsourced HR representative. So the employees are a little more honest with us, right? Because, you know, they don’t wanna be honest with maybe somebody internal because they don’t wanna hurt somebody’s feelings. But boy, they, they give us, you know, all the information, but we also utilize the employee survey platform that we have to have them fill out an exit interview. That way, not only do I have a dialogue with that employee and why they left, but I also can record and populate a report for the employer that says 20% of your people are leaving for salary, or 40% are leaving because you don’t have health benefits.

Let’s start talking to some brokers. We might need to, to get you know, some medical benefits in here. Yeah. So it’s very important, just like I said, you wanna do a survey to find out why your employees stay and what they like about your organization so we can be authentic, as you said. We also wanna know while why they’re leaving and you need to fix that. And a lot of times I’ll say to employers, look, we’re gonna go on this path. But you know, we have to make a commitment to attempt. We, you can’t change everything. Employers can’t change everything. If, if an employee, I had an employer that was in Florida and you know, it was a trucking company and a lot of people left because the office was in where the trucks were and it was noisy and hot. And no matter how much air conditioning in that little booth, like you can picture it, they just couldn’t keep office people, you know?

And so there’s certain things you can’t change. But, you know, maybe we can alter it a little bit, but if you’re gonna go down that path, you really have to commit to making a change. And you have to know why people are leaving to help retain people, right? That’s important. And before they leave, what we will also do for some employers is we do stay interviews. And that stay interview is talking to as many people as we can within the organization. And just having a frank conversation, Mike, how’s everything going? Sit back and let’s listen to the employee. Let them have a platform to talk. And again, that’s where the outsourced model really works well, right? They may not have that honest of a, of a dialogue with the HR person or a manager or you know, anybody that’s internal but outsourced boy, they just give us as much information, you know, as they can and they feel good cause they’re being heard. Yeah. So all of this is is very important. And again, when we’re helping organizations, I like to say, you know, we save you time and money and you know that this, all of this does take a lot of time, but it is very important. Yeah. In the long run, it’s gonna save you time. For

VANNOY:

Sure. Yeah. You know, it’s interesting, we, we ended where you began, right? It’s, it’s know thyself, so know your company, know your employees. Yeah. Why do employees stay? Why do they leave? That informs your brand, your employment brand strategy. And so that informs your how do you have strategies around salary, around benefits, around time off, around training, around the onboarding experience around culture, and then interviewing those people yet again, stay interviews. Exit interviews was my strategy is working. That informs my brand strategy. And this is a never ending loop, right?

SIMMONS:

That’s right. That’s right. Pedal to the metal. Yeah.

VANNOY:

<Laugh>. All right, Mary, love talking to you. Thanks Mike. I, I think this is really, really good advice. The, the war for talent has hit Main Street. This is no longer a big company thing, and small business owners and entrepreneurs and mid-size companies alike, they have to have to lean into this. They have to be forward thinking and have a recruitment strategy. You’re, you’re not gonna get what you need by just simply posting the generic ad and taking what comes to you anymore. That’s, that’s that, that, that world I think is done. So, great topic, great timing.

SIMMONS:

Thank you.

VANNOY:

Thanks Mary. And thanks to everybody else. We will talk to you all next week.