How To Reduce Employee Turnover & Increase Engagement | SDR #249

Welcome, everybody, to the big show. I'm Chris Collins and this is Christian.

Hello, everyone.

Today we're going to talk about how to reduce employee turnover and increase engagement. It's a pretty lively, if I dare say, spicy conversation.

Yeah, I like there's a little Easter egg in what you just said there.

We talk about dating in an age gap. Yep. And travel. How we want to travel more. That and much, much more. Coming up on this edition of Service Drive Revolution.

Okay, so I want to talk about travel and I want to talk about something funny that happened with the little age gap. But first, I want to ask you a serious question.

I'm ready.

Are you really?

Yes.

I want you to think about this for a second. Okay. Before you answer. Eyes closed in the answer can't be funny.

Crap.

When you close your eyes. Where are you going?

I'm here waiting for your question.

What is your favorite part of what we do?

Like what we.

Do.

Oh, my gosh. There's so many really great things I'm gonna say.

The top three.

Okay. I love fixing stores and watch.

Going from it to the fix.

Losing money. To making money specifically. Yeah.

This is what I thought you'd say. Okay. What's number two?

Making better humans.

Okay, explain.

Just because I think that when we give people stability and organization to their work life, they then start to let that leak into the rest of their lives.

Yeah. And it in a sense, raises their self esteem.

Yeah, for sure.

I think if anything, we're in the business of self esteem in a lot of ways. Yeah. Which I don't think we ever realized before.

But it's more and more apparent every day every.

And then the sooner we can get a man, especially service managers, the sooner you can manufacture a couple wins. And they start to get confidence. They're. Cause historically, they're not open to change. Historically, they're kind of stuck in the same habits, but they want different results. And when you get them a couple wins, they start to feel better about themselves and then, yeah, they. Then they're looking for change.

The bar is so low, so few of them have ever even been told thank you before. Like, yeah, it is a position that is sad. And my third favorite thing to do is I like to see people laugh.

You're good at that. I would say it's.

Yeah, I'm pretty fortunate like that.

Yeah.

What did you think I was going to say?

I didn't know.

Oh, well, I would like to know.

Is why I asked.

Yeah. Well, usually you'll ask a question where you're headed Somewhere.

It wasn't that case.

Okay.

Because mostly genuinely curious.

Yeah. You ask questions to get me to catch up to you. It's kind of fun.

This wasn't that. Oh, this wasn't that manipulation that I do. What's your favorite part of what we do?

Yeah.

You know how a while ago Patricia said.

What is it like to have people tell you.

Constantly how you've changed their lives? Or. I forget how she worded it.

Yeah, I remember that.

But there's a weird thing that we maybe don't realize this because it's hard to understand the stuff outside of.

What we're doing day to day. Right. Like, just our general, like, focus in front of us.

Yeah.

But how many times have you met somebody that has. We have affected. And we never. Like, we've affected them, but we've never met them. And then when we meet them, they've done all these things from our content or the On Demand or the book or whatever it is.

And.

Like, it's a weird thing when people are absorbing this content, but we don't. Or we're talking to them like we're.

Friends of theirs, but we don't. They don't invite us over to dinner, in a sense. And so when you. When you are affecting people in a positive way.

And I think it's the. It's the thing that you were saying, like, they don't get enough appreciation. Yeah. And so when you're trying, it's hard, though, because it's a thankless industry full of a bunch of crooks.

I really believe that a lot of the people that listen to our thing know that we get it. And I think that that's probably. Probably really comforting to them.

And then I would say a close second is the Chris Collins effect.

That's fun to watch.

You know how you love to make people laugh? Yeah, I love to watch that. I love it even more in the moment when they fight me.

And they don't realize that the thing they're talking about isn't even relevant. The thing that they're holding on to so dear is their excuse why they can't be successful or they can't higher tax or they can't. Whatever it is. Whatever. The thing is, they genuinely, in that moment, believe that it's that excuse and.

They would die on the hill part of their identity. That's right.

And then they go. They step away. Like, the pressure comes off for a minute. They go home or whatever. And then they come back and they're like.

You were right. Like.

It'S not. There's no reason to die on the Hill for that. Yeah, right. That thing that Chris Collins, the. The telling the truth, even though most people won't tell the truth, like. Most people. How many people do you know that will tell people the truth? Most people want to be liked more than they want to tell the truth.

For sure.

Yeah. I don't. I don't.

I also think that most people in. Because of that whole liking thing, I think there's a lot of people that aren't equipped to handle the truth.

Yeah.

And they usually don't like me.

Yeah. Now. Now, that's a funny thing, that Chris Collins. Don't you think that's funny? The Chris Collins effect, where I think on day one, they might not like you, but they just.

I'm okay with that.

So, like, the lesson is, is that if you're trying to get people to like you, tell the truth, maybe they don't like you out of the gate, but the long game is that they'll like and respect you.

Yeah. You know, one time I read this book by this Harvard professor on giving speeches, you know, and I don't even think I. I wasn't even into chapter two. And I looked the guy up, called his office, and it was like, how do I. How do I spend time with you? Like what? And he said, oh, I have a package. I'll write a TED Talk for you. Well, I'm not doing a TED Talk, but. And so I fly out to Boston and.

To his. To his office there at Harvard. And.

So he guarantees a standing ovation.

That's a great guarantee. By.

All your money back. But he's. But he says most people won't do it.

Why?

Because his formulas for 22 minutes or something is like a. Or maybe it's 12 minutes. I don't know. Because TED talks are 18 minutes. Like, for the first quite a while, you have to kick the audience down the. The road. Or he's like, you got to kick the can. So you gotta make them feel terrible. And most people can't do that.

Okay. And you go four stages beyond where the normal person would get kicked down the road, and you just keep going and going and going.

Okay. And then when you flip.

Is when you have. When they have the. Aha.

Well, it's kind of like the TED Talk version of the Chris Collins effect.

Kind of. Yeah. But he's like, most people won't do it.

When I was like, you don't know me.

It's funny, right? I don't know if you're aware of this or not? But my. My chick, my girlfriend is younger than me.

There's a little bit of an age gap there.

Yeah, like 20 years or something.

Something.

She's much younger than me. And sometimes things happen that are kind of funny.

Oh, this is gonna be great.

We were watching Interview with this couple. The wife was telling a story about how when they went to get married, there was a five day waiting period for a blood test.

And she says, why now? This couple's from the South.

Yep.

By the way. And she's like, why was there a blood test to get married? And I said, well, honey, there's. There's parts of America where they're really worried about you marrying your cousin.

Yes.

Sister.

Family tree must have branches.

Then I thought of you because I thought that was pretty funny.

That is good.

It falls in line with your sense of humor.

Yeah, that's right. That's funny. I hope they pass test.

That's green. I was.

You don't live in one of those states?

No, no.

Lord, no. I was.

I was on my way to work the other day and I tried something different. Instead of walking to work. No. So I took a bus.

Wow.

So I'm sitting in the back of the bus, this lady gets on, and all I hear is the bus driver being like, oh, my God, that thing is so ugly. Get to the back of the bus. And so the lady goes back, she sits next to me, and she's like, I can't believe that guy just sat there and insulted me and picked on my babies. I'm like, yeah, you should go up there and give him peace of your mind. I'll hold your aardvark.

Baby. In the hand was an aardvark instead of a baby.

I gotta quit taking the bus.

Yeah. The more shocking part of that story is that you took a bus an hour. Do you know why we built this library?

To facilitate the learning of leadership, to.

Dramatically decrease our travel.

I love the idea.

Home field advantage, right?

I really believe we're gonna stop traveling as much.

We are going to stop traveling for sure. I hate it. Oh, I hate everything about it. I don't know. I hated it before COVID and then now I just hate it.

I was just stuck in what I consider the black hole of travel. DFW airport over the weekend.

Dallas, Fort Worth?

Yes, sir. I've never been there and not been delayed.

Really?

Yeah.

You think Dallas is worse than Chicago?

I do. I've been to both many times.

Has that been delayed in Chicago? More especially in the winter, you and.

I together have been delayed more in Dallas.

Didn't we have to spend the night in Dallas once?

Yeah, we stayed at that nice hotel.

Because we missed our. Our connecting flight was delayed, though. It wasn't Dallas.

Yeah, we were in Cincinnati.

Is that Cincinnati?

Cincinnati. And you went up to the agent and you're like, hey, I think we're gonna miss our connecting flight. And they're like, no, you'll be fine. And literally, we missed our connect. We missed our connecting flight by a long shot, if I might add.

The person just didn't care.

They just wanted to get away from you.

Yeah, I have that effect.

Yeah, it's. It's endearing.

Chris Collins effect.

The Chris Collins effect is that everyone wants to run.

They realized too late that the flight was delayed.

Earlier today, Chris said a really funny thing. He was looking at a picture, which is something you just have to get used to with. The line of work that we are in is that unfortunately, you have to regularly look at pictures and videos of yourself. And he. He's like, oh, my God, I look like I want to kill somebody.

Yeah. And that's the. That's the video they put up to sell advisor training or whatever.

Come on in.

I look like the meanest.

But buy our. Buy our advisor.

No.

Yeah, it's not.

Oh, man. It's funny. Okay, what's in the news?

Okay, we have a recall in the news, everyone.

No.

I know you're not a gambler. Fine. Maybe an ex gambler. I don't see gambling much anymore. Who do you think the manufacturer is?

Ford.

Ford has recalled nearly 1 million trucks and SUVs. This is a dangerous one, folks. Missing owner's manual info. Missing owner's manual info. You ever see that before?

Can they fix this with a PDF and an email?

A sticker. It's usually a sticker that gets stuck in the back of the owner's manual, but I'm not sure exactly how they're going to do it now. I like the idea of the pizza recall. That's a recall.

So to where does the tech get paid? Point one, to put the sticker in.

Owner'S manual doesn't have instructions for adjusting and removing extra head restraints, which could increase the risk of injury if the vehicle is involved in an accident. So fun.

Interesting.

So Ford, but that's not near as good as this.

This is according to Ford Motor Executive Chairman Bill Ford.

Billy.

So Billy says US can't yet compete with China on an ev. Evs not possible. No one in the United States can compete with China on evs. They develop very quickly, and they developed them in large scale and now they're exporting them. Yep. They're not here, but they'll come here. We think at some point.

The only place Tesla is exporting from China is Canada. They're not exporting them here because they have enough of them here.

Yep.

You want to talk about how to reduce employee turnover and increase engagement?

Okay. So my. My number one tip for reducing employee turnover and increasing employee engagement is don't be a stranger. It's hard to make friends from your office.

So get out there, make friends. Learn a little bit about the people that work for you. I think that that's a. That's a huge ticket to saying I actually care about the people that work for me.

Yeah. So I think if I would just layer that into more of an organized system, like have a planned attack for how to touch your people in a way that makes them feel included, gets their feedback, but also reiterates what's important. And so some ways to do that would be to have weekly meetings where you review the numbers and any, you know, any obstacles that they might have to keep them from accomplishing that. But touching them in little groups. So you could have a meeting with, let's say you had teams or lateral support. You can meet with the lateral support groups, or you can meet with a section of the shop. You could meet with the, you know, I don't know. I'd meet with the advisors almost every day.

Yes. Make sure to check with HR and proper techniques for touching your people.

Did I say touching people twice?

I didn't mean it like you think.

I just held it in too.

I meant with words and intentions.

Yeah. It's like figurative touching.

Another way to do that organized approach is to have an important employee committee, which I've seen work really well, especially with technicians.

Oh, we just did that internally. We did a little committee. They got so jazzed up about it here with the Top Dog competition, we had some coaches. Oh, no. With Elite group. Remember that?

No.

So we had a committee get together to talk about how to improve the Elite group that we have.

Oh, yeah. But I thought some of our coaches that were in elite before for yes.

And they took it very seriously. So that was a really great exercise.

Yeah. So I've seen that work really well with the text where you. Where there's, you know, two or three that they vote. Like, let the text vote who their, like, committee is, and then they meet with them. You buy them lunch or something, and Let them all meet and then they present solutions. So it isn't a, it isn't a complaining session. It's how do we get better. So if you present an obstacle, you have to present like two or three solutions.

Yeah. If you don't set that rule, it becomes a complaining session would be my guess. Yeah, that's smart.

And then you want it, you want to explain it. Like the solutions that you present, you want to make them easy for me to say yes or no. You don't want it to be a thing that I have to go away and think about out or research or whatever. So the, the more well thought out it is, the quicker we can get to an answer.

Yeah. So there's. So coming out of those meetings is like a defined action plan of sorts.

Yeah. And you want to be really careful that you're honest with them about why you don't. Why you're not going to okay something. If you're the manager that just kind of wants to be liked and you just agree but you never actually do anything, the committee will lose its impact.

That's great.

So some sort of an organized way to touch them on a weekly basis in regards to performance and improving the system. Most of the important stuff you learn from the people on the front lines and if you have layers in between you and in that then you're not going to. To be able is effective.

Yeah.

Like if there's protocols, if the people that are helping the customers can't give you honest feedback at the top, you're. You're never going to really know what's going on.

Yeah. So you have to be willing to hit the constructive criticism personally on your leadership head.

On the cashiers, if you have them and the people that answer the phone and the porters know more about everything, what's going on and how the customers are feeling than anybody else.

Would you, on your, on your committee, would you have term limits? Would you want to get fresh blood in there?

Maybe. I've never done it that way, but I don't know that that is. I don't know that that's a bad thing. It. That depends kind of on how big the shop is.

Oh yeah.

If you have 10 texts, you don't.

Need to rotate everybody.

If you have 70, it kind of rotates naturally.

And people don't want to do it after a while too because it's a lot of work.

Yeah. I think that that's the thing is I was thinking of is, is if you're always the, the committee guy, you don't take it as seriously.

What is the one thing that an employee can give you that is the indicator of them attaching their job to their identity?

Creativity.

When somebody gives themselves, they vest themselves to try to make it better. Their creativity. They. They are making it a part of their identity. And what's the one thing we try to keep people from doing anything?

We just want them to follow the system.

No creativity. Yeah, but people that are creative are open. They're constantly trying to improve.

Right.

They're creating flamin hot Cheetos at the.

End of the day, but we're trying to make them closed and inside of a box. Oh, yeah, right. Oh, remember that old saying? I mean, I hate it, but think outside the box.

Yes.

Yeah. That's kind of what that's about. Right, Got it. But creativity, we don't encourage it enough. Yeah. Another one that I have. How to reduce employee turnover and increasing engagement. Gamify.

Okay. I've got a similar one to that. But yeah.

What does gamification do?

It unifies people for a common goal.

What happens when you're playing a game? Where does it take you?

To your childhood.

Yeah. And then it. And then in your childhood. It was fun.

I love that. Yeah. And I put down here.

Using gamification and tying it to goals of what we're trying to do, and then events are a really, really big thing as a reward for the gamification. So I dig that a lot. The pizza party doesn't seem to have enough pull. It's almost. People take that as a. There's like, there's memes and jokes about it on the Internet, about how the pizza party is just like the biggest. I don't care about you.

On that note, doing things socially with your employees is a. Is a great way to get to know them and understand them. And, you know, if you're. If you're always working hard together, but you don't have any fun together, it's not a. It's not a real relationship.

I think that that's probably one of the best pieces of advice I remember you gave me. Not. It's been a few years. Yeah, it's been a long time. But I think I had said to you that, you know, man, it's really hard to be friends with your people. And then you had said, well, I don't hire anybody I don't like. And I thought about that for a really, really long time. And I'm like, yeah, you can be friends with your people. You just have to have boundaries. Right.

What do you mean by boundaries?

Let's say that we're going to have an event. We're all going to go to Topgolf and have a thing.