How to KEEP Your Employees Longer (Proven Strategies)

So in this video, what I'm going to be going over is how to keep your employees, how to increase your employee retention, the importance of it, and why you're probably doing a few things wrong that are costing you to potentially lose a few staff. I'm going to be going over a couple of strategies that you can use and things that you should probably stop doing that are going to cause you some dramas. First things first, what is employee retention and like what's acceptable? So what's acceptable in a department is depending on the department. So the, the first thing you need to go through is go through like the Bureau of Labor or whatever the governmental department that has to do with labor statistics is in your country. Or you can go on something like Statista or you can probably just ask ChatGPT what are the common company wide employee retention and what is the standard employee retention per department. And then break down the departments that you have because like they're very different. So for example, across a company, the average retention of employees is 12%. So it means that you lose 12% of your staff every year. Right. So you're going to turn them over, which is fine. Like a certain amount of employee turnover I think is a good thing because like it, it sort of, it sort of brings in new thought. And you don't want to only internally promote. Not to say that you shouldn't do any internal promotions, but you don't want to exclusively internally promote. The reason is because everyone kind of thinks and feels the same way then. Right. And so that kind of creates an echo chamber of the same stuff over and over again. So you tend to sort of stagnate as a company. Right? Right. There's a thing called the Peter Principle that you can look up if you want, which talks about promoting someone to a state of incompetence. Right. So it's an average of 12% across most companies. However, in sales it's around 30% because sales is performance based and people have a tendency to over hire. Now why do you over hire in sales? Because it's very difficult to know if someone's good at sales until they're just good at sales. I know a lot of people out there will do like, you know, personality testing and disc testing and all this kind of stuff like that. And at the end of the day, like, I don't, I don't see a lot of validity in any of that. The only one that I've seen that's really good is Rich Divine's one, which is an attributes test, which is Testing attributes and stuff like that. But that's against like your company's values and what the department kind of needs to be well rounded. And he ran the Navy Seals and so it's a performance way of doing things. But it's very difficult to like say, oh well, if you're a di, you're probably going to be good at sales. It's like, well, you know, it's probably not the case, right? So it's, it's very difficult. So you over hire and then from there people fire and stuff like that. And that's why it's a high turnover. And then as well, good sales reps are difficult to keep because a good sales rep has a lot of opportunity because there are a lot more businesses than there are extremely good sales reps. And so there's, there's no lack of opportunity. All right, so you want to really figure out what success looks like because if you're going for like unicorn level stats of like 0% turnover and sales and all this kind of stuff, it's like you're just setting yourself up to fail. And that's silly, right? Also, one thing that I will say, and this might be controversial, is that you're a total quit if you think that someone leaving your business is them abandoning you or like that they're a bad person because of it. The amount of idiots that I see like going like, let's block this guy on social media because he left the company, like, man, it's a company who gives a right anyway? That always pisses me off, like, who cares, right? Like, just let them be. Like when someone comes to me and says I want to leave, I go, yeah, that sucks, man. But like, I'm not going to hold you back from going and pursuing opportunity. I would love the chance to talk to you about it and. But at the end of the day, man, like I'm team you. If it's the best move for you and your family to leave and I can't match the offer, then fair enough, mate, go take it. I encourage you, like, send me a card on your next holiday. Like I'm about it, you know, I mean, like that's all you can do. Like, it's so stupid anyway. I feel like that's one of the reasons why our retention has been pretty good as well, is because like, I won't, I will try and give someone a very, I think realistic like assertion as to what's happening in real time and, and try and make sure they understand my biases. I will say, listen Man, I'm going to give you two pieces of advice. The first is me as your boss, and, like, obviously, I want you to stay. So you have to take that with a little bit of salt, right? You have to understand that what I'm about to say to you is with the context that I would like you to say, stay. Right? And the second piece of advice that I give you, or at least questions that I ask, will be much less bias. It's like, help me understand what you're feeling, what you're thinking, the reasons for it. And sometimes, like, we've screwed up, and I'm like, dude, we screwed up. If you will allow me an opportunity to fix it, I would love one. If not, fair enough. I understand. And you need to do what's best for you and your family and like it. My. My stance has never been different. Sometimes people end up six months later coming back and realizing the grass wasn't greener. And sometimes they end up hating me for no reason. I don't know. It is what it is. People always make the decision that makes their worldview make sense, right? So. And that's. That's fine. That's. That. That's for them to figure out, right? So, like, what can we do to increase employee retention? I think that what I just spoke about with having realistic expectations is key. If you bring someone in, especially a sales rep, with an expectation of making a shitload of money, right? And, like, they don't do that straight away. Like, it's a. It's a crappy expectation. My. The one I said to people is. Is pretty doom and gloom, to be honest, people. Because I'm like, listen, you can make a good amount of money here, but you're gonna have to work hard. And it's not. Not super easy. We have a ton of opportunity, but, like, you're gonna have to do these things, and I'm gonna start you off in a more difficult way, because I feel like that's a better way for you to come in, but you might not like it. And that's fair enough. But if I start you any other way, I just don't think you're gonna go that well. Because I'll give you an example. If I bring somebody in and they're. They're an inbound closer taking booked calls only, and let's say it costs 200 bucks for us to get a book call that shows up and they go one for 10, and then they sell $3,000 product. No, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. I just spent $2,000 for you to make me 3,000 and you expect commission, right? So it's like, is that a good situation for me to bring somebody into? Or what if I just for the first month give them a shitload of phone numbers and say, hey mate, go for your life. We do all your training, we do all that kind of stuff. But those phone numbers cost me 20 bucks or 10 bucks. Now all of a sudden I've given you the same amount, I've given you 2,000 phone numbers or whatever. I wouldn't give someone that much, but like, you know, I've spent $500 on marketing and you've produced me, you know, because you've got 500 leads, you've produced me 10 sales. Now is 10 from 500 good? Not particularly, but it was cheap, right? So now I'm giving you a chance, and now we've got you a chance for you to screw up immensely and make a ton of bad decisions and not understand the sales process and stammer and stumble over your presentation because you haven't memorized it yet. And you know, you haven't done it with the A grade, most expensive leads. You've done it with cheap leads, which is the way to learn. And you've done it without a ton of like pressure, which a lot of people just don't really thrive well in that environment. Right. So. So there's that. So I think onboarding people correctly, having a good onboarding process, something that we've traditionally struggled with because again, up until like I would say a year ago, we very much reactively hired, right? But with, you know, the correct projections and processes that we've been putting over the last while, I feel like we're pretty good at not doing that now, although it does still happen from time to time. Right. Then from there, I think having a rewards and recognition program, right, is something that's important. I think the assumption is that you know what they want and I think you should just survey your people and ask them what they want. Some people want recognition, some want money, some want status, some want time with you. Right? Fair enough. So you don't know, so ask them and then create one around it. The other is having a pathway to grow. I think that's the main thing that I see missing from most smaller companies is that like even at a sales rep level, the top reps and the most experienced are treated the same and called the same as the brand new guys. And that's just very unmotivating. So having some sort of career pathway and then having real Conversations with people about their career. Like, if someone has come and they've worked in your business as a, as an, as a, like an operations coordinator, they've come up and they've become, you know, the, you know, the middle of the road, middle manager, ops guy. And then they've become like your ops manager, right? And then they're like, how do I become the coo? It's like, well, you have to quit, buddy. Because like, chances are, if I make you the COO and we get any bigger than what we are right now, you're in very much uncharted territory. And I don't like your chances. I'm going to put you in a situation where you don't know what you're doing, and I don't feel like that's going to end well for you. So either we create an educational pathway for you now, or that's where you want to go, right? Which is going to take a while now. I'm not paying for it. Or like, potentially you have a look at, you know, a year somewhere else in the same position where you're at in a much larger company. And then from there you come over and become the higher level at a smaller company, which is how you grow. Like, if you have a look at, like, you know, VP of Finance, the VP of Finance of $100 million, your business will then go away and become the VP of finance of a $300 million year business, and then go back to a $100 million business as the CFO, right? Like, that's how they do it. And then a lot of the time, what they'll do is CFOs and COOs usually become CEOs. That's sort of the pathway. Then they'll go to a $300 million business as a CFO, then they'll go to a $100 million business as a CEO, right? Or a 50 million dollar, your business as a CEO. That's usually like the kind of steps that you have to take. And then you can build your way up from 50 to 100 because you've seen the operations at 300. So you've been the CFO of a 300 million. So now you're CFO of 50, 100, 300. And so, you know, and then you might become the CEO of a billion dollar company, right? And then transition to the CEO of a 500 million. So you guys, I think you get my point, right? And the editors can probably edit a bit of that because it's probably a bit too much, right? But you know, having that real honest pathway, I think, and having an understanding career progressions and how they work, I think is really key. One of the best managers of people that I ever had was in the military. And he. He said something really cool, and it was this. And I say it to a lot of my guys, and I say, listen, there's three things. There's your family, there's your job, and there's your career, right? With your family, it trumps everything. Family has to trump everything. Like, none of this work stuff is very important. It's designed to, you know, do a thing. But at the end of the day, family is way more important, right? And so, but if you. And if you ever need anything, drop it and we will take care of it and we will help you out. If you ever use your family as an excuse to get out of something, you're immediately crucified, right? You are fired. You are done. That is unacceptable. So don't do it right? Then, like, the next thing is your job. You have to be good at your job, right? Most people aren't, but you have to be good. And so. And like, you have to know where you want to go in your career. And my job as your supervisor, your manager, your boss is, Is to help guide your career. Now, that may involve doing jobs that you don't want to do, but they are in the greater mission of your career progression to where you told me you want to get to. So are we cool with that? Don't mess with family. Be good at your job, and have an understanding that your job will sometimes be crap, but it's in the greater progression of your career. And I think, like, if that's the understanding, then. Then I think everything works really well. The other thing that he did, which was phenomenal, which was never hold a grudge, this is in the military. So he had the ability to punish and punish fairly hard. I remember one time I had to paint rocks, right? That was one punishment that I got. The most genius punishment was I had to wear cams, right? So just standard cams. When everybody else was wearing flight suits and we were doing a very difficult course, so I was the different one. And when you're the different one in a very difficult course, it's hard to blend. So everyone knew who I was. And that was a very interesting and outside the box punishment, which I would say was a character building. But, yeah, so, like, never held a grudge. Once it was over, it was over. And, you know, that's a big one because if you get into the habit of giving certain people shit jobs. Like it's pretty obvious and they're not going to stick around very long despite how much you're paying them because pay is not what motivates everybody. All right? So, you know, and then you can have retreats and all that kind of stuff and you got to invest back in your stuff. But I hope that was helpful. So I don't want to go too much longer. If you like this kind of content, let me know below and I'll do some more of it and I can go a little bit more in depth maybe in a podcast or whatever it is. I got Rich Diviney coming on the podcast soon, so that should be good. We can talk more about that kind of stuff and what they did in the seals. But yeah, guys, let me know what you think down below. Make sure you like and subscribe. Hit the notification bell, all that kind of good stuff, and I will see you on the next video. Bye.