Cameron Herold argues companies should train employees well and treat them right instead of using legal agreements to keep them. Richard Branson put it best: train people well enough so they can leave and treat them well enough so they won't want to. Strong culture at companies like Acceleration Partners and 1-800-GETJUNK reduced attrition.
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Well, I'm not sure if we're live here. Well, I guess we are live. So I just wanted to do a quick, quick little video to talk about training your people and being worried about them leaving. So one of my clients that I coach, a CEO from Europe, sent me an email this morning. He said, hey Cameron, if we invest in training that a team member would do and apply that knowledge for our company, would you make them sign an agreement that they cannot apply for the next, let's say three years, what they learn to another business? So basically what they're saying is almost like a non compete or a non disclosure. So I'm fine with non disclosure agreements. But the bigger issue here is, you know, are you worried about growing your people and giving them skills and giving them IP and giving them the tools to do the job and then having them leave your company? So in the words of Richard Branson, he said, train people well enough so they can leave and treat them well enough so that they won't want to. I think that's a really, really cool insight to think about right now that if you're so worried about your employees leaving and going to the competition and using all of your cool ideas and cool systems at a competitor, just treat them so well that they're not going to go to a competitor. So years ago I was coaching a company that's now called Tenuity, it's used to be called Elite SEM and I coached Ben Kirschner and Zach Morrison and then four of their directors, Abby, Pat, Chris and Jesse, coached the six of them over the course of about four years, led for the strategic planning meetings as well. And they never had a single employee over nine years quit and go work for the competition. Not one. So they created such a strong culture. Strong culture. At one point they ranked as the number three company to work for in the United States. On Glassdoor, another client that I coached, Bob Glazier with Acceleration partners, ranked number 12 to work for in the US anyway. So the idea here is don't worry about your employees leaving and going somewhere else. Give them the tools, give them the systems, give them the training, keep growing their skills and their confidence to be better leaders, better at the day to day roles, really understanding everything you do to wow your customers and to grow your business and then create a culture that is so strong, it's a magnet that they're not going to go somewhere else. The reality is to put a legal agreement in place and try to enforce something and force them to do something is just such a negative tone and a negative way to actually build your business. So in the last 14 years that I've been working with clients, I've done worked with clients now in 26 countries. I've never had a single legal agreement with any of my clients. I don't have agreements with my employees. If they want to take my stuff and go somewhere else, they're more than welcome to. The reality is they can't replicate the culture and the DNA inside of our company. So, no, I'm not worried ever about anybody taking what I'm training them on and going somewhere else to use it. The reality is if I can't create a company that's strong enough to keep them, they're better off to go somewhere else. The second part of that is our job is to grow people and help them move on in their careers. You know, almost like building up being a parent, where our job is to grow our kids and have them leave the home to be a happy, healthy, independent adult. It's the same with our team. Sometimes it's the right time for an employee to leave and go work somewhere else. An example, Gordy Buffton, he's worked for me for the last 20 months. He's just moved on. He's going to go off onto a sabbatical right now for a month, then he's going to go off and do his own thing. I've encouraged him to do it. I've been encouraging him for six months to decide if he really wanted to stay in sales or if he wanted to go run his own business. So he wants to go run his own business. Awesome. Give him the wings to do that. The reason, the reality is you can't try to keep someone inside of your company forever. That really causes stagnation and frustration and negative energy. So allow your employees to go and grow and go somewhere else. I think it's amazing when you can actually see employees do that. One of my former team at 1-800-GETJUNK, Katie Dunsworth went off and started her own PR firm. After running our PR division inside of 1-800-GETJUNk, building it up successfully. Katie now owns the largest PR firm in Western Canada. She's about 75 employees. Amazing. But if we tried to keep her as an employee inside of 1-800-got- junk, she'd have been hating her career and hating her job and hating her life after a few more years. So don't worry about your employees leaving, but while they're there, invest in them. Invest in their growth. Invest in their their leadership skills. Teach them about situational leadership and coaching and delegation. Teach them about time management and project management. Teach them about running one on one meetings and classroom teaching. So grow your people's skills, grow their confidence and then create such a strong culture that they not want to go and work somewhere else. Hopefully that's helpful in your day. Love to see some comments.
