Hire Slow...Fire Fast

Welcome to A New Life podcast with Pamela Jean, where it's all about empowering women to empower more women. Get ready, friends, to create a new life. And here is your host, Pamela Jean. Hello, my friends, and welcome to this week's episode of A New Life podcast. I'm Pamela Jean, your host. Hey, friends, if you wouldn't mind, like and subscribe this episode. Share this with your friends. You know, we're all in this thing called life together, and our businesses are not easy to run. Share this with your friends. Today's topic is going to be really geared towards business owners. Someone who works in a company. And my title today is Hiring Slow and Firing fast. So you've all been in that situation where you hire an employee and they end up not working out so well. We're going to talk about some tips today on how to hire and how to fire. I know when I say hire slowly that sounds kind of counterintuitive because if you need someone to fill a position, you want them right now. You don't want to have to wait a while. You want them now. But trust me when I say this, hiring slowly will be your absolute, very best friend. So picture this. You're running a business and you need to bring in new talent to help your business grow. It's time to level up and time for you to stop wearing so many hats. Now, don't get me wrong, when you're a startup and you are in the beginning phase of growing and building your business, you have to wear all the hats. You can't afford an employee. And, friends, you can't just hire an employee to do something that you personally don't like to do. Like, if there's certain areas of your business that, oh, I don't like marketing, I'm just gonna hire it done. I don't like bookkeeping. I'm gonna just hire that done. You can't just hire someone to do a job that you don't like to do or you don't want to do. So that's just a little bit of a side note. So you're wearing all the hats and you rush through the hiring progress because you're so eager to fill the position as quickly as possible. You can't wait to start taking some of those hats off because you're done. You're tired, you're exhausted. But what happens when you hire someone who isn't the right fit for your company or your company's culture or needs and they don't have the skills needed to excel in the role the position that you have open, you've wasted time, you've wasted money and energy trying to make it work, only to realize that you have to let them go. You know, if you hire a new employee, it's probably going to take them at minimum 60 to 90 days to really get up to speed, to be completely efficient as an employee, to be actually earning, earning the money that you're paying them. You know, if in the beginning a person, you know, they don't start job day number one on the job and they're not up to 100% efficiency and capability, it takes time to train them. So I like to think about, you know, training kind of a probationary period as a 90 day trial period with an employee because it gives you enough time to see if they're going to catch on and to see if they actually have the skills. You know, I've been in situations before where I've been so desperate to hire someone out of my own exhaustion, out of my own needs. I've just been so tired and so exhausted and I was like, I've got to hire someone to do the sales or hire someone to do the office, managing, whatever it was. Because I was so tired, I hastily, hastily made a bad decision in a candidate. And you know, let's be honest, just that is my responsibility as a business owner to hire the right candidates, to be able to have the discernment, to do the discovery, have good interview questions, to weed through and pull out the really, really good candidates and the potentially fantastic employees. But if you're making your employment decisions based on your emotions or your exhaustion, I can already tell you you are not going to make a good decision. Like I said, you end up wasting time, wasting money and energy to make it work and then you end up having to let them go anyway. That's why it is so essential to hire slowly and intentionally. Take the time to thoroughly vet your candidates, assess their skills, qualifications, and most importantly, evaluate that their values line up with your company's mission. They might walk the walk, but do they talk the talk? Do they line up with your company's mission? It's not just about finding someone with the right skills. It's about finding someone who shares your vision and passion for your business and is in alignment of the moral compass and the code and the company's mission to move forward. It's hard to find good candidates. I'm not going to lie. Sometimes that can be one of the most difficult parts about being a business owner. Owner is finding the right people to align with and to work with you. But taking this slowly and not making an emotional decision is really, really important. Because if you are exhausted, just so fit to be tied, you cannot wait to get someone in there so you get some relief. That's not the right time for you to be making decisions on choosing the right candidate for a role. I want to talk a little bit about the other side of the coin because this side of the coin is extremely important and that's the firing fast side of the coin. It's absolutely crucial to address situations promptly when you realize that someone isn't right for the job and they just aren't fitting. They're just not part of the team. It just doesn't work. Whether it's performance issues, attitude problems, or just simply lack of fitting into the culture, ignoring the problem, which is what most of us want to do, will not make it go away. It will only prolong the inevitable and create some serious headaches down the road. I want you to think about firing someone as and I know this is going to sound kind of funny, but you're doing them a favor. Because chances are, if they are not excelling in the job, they know they're not excelling. They know that's not the right place for them, but they don't want to quit. You don't want to fire them. Honestly, the best thing for you to do is rip off the band aid. Let it go, Let them go all within, you know, legal ramifications. Don't, don't get me wrong, don't make a hasty decision. Look at your, your state, look at the laws in your, in your area and make sure that you're doing the hiring and firing properly with whatever state, the laws, whatever the laws say in your state. But keeping someone on that is not a right fit. That should not be. There is like a cancer in the entire company. One bad cell is going to eat up the rest of the cells and you will have an attitude problem, a cultural problem that you can't even imagine. Firing fast doesn't mean you're being heartless or insensitive. It means recognizing when someone isn't a fit or isn't going to work out that you make a decisive action to correct it. It's respecting their time as much as yours that, hey, look, this isn't going to work. I sure appreciate all your efforts. It's been great getting to know you, but it's just not going to work out. Show some respect for them and not keeping life miserable for them and for the rest of your team. If you rip off the band aid and make that decision quickly, it really ensures that your entire team stays cohesive. The current employees are going to feel like, wow, that was very supportive. That employee was not easy for us to work with. It really is ultimately a gift to let them go. This will allow them to see a new path forward. They will no longer feel stuck exactly where you are or wherever they are. But think about it. If you've ever been in an office situation where there's that one employee that no one wanted to be around, no one wanted to work with, it is like a cancer. They always. What's the old little saying of one bad apple can. Can ruin the whole bushel or whatever that is? Well, it's the same thing. One bad employee can completely infect and affect the entire base of employees that you currently have. And don't think about firing as necessarily a bad because honestly, it is a good thing. It's a gift to let someone go. Think about it. It's a gift to let them go so they can be allowed to go find their path, go find their super power. Find the place that they fit in best. It's not a bad thing to fire someone quickly when the writing is on the wall that they're simply not going to work out. One thing that you might want to consider is hire every person on a 90 day probationary period and be very clear about what that means to a new h. We have 90 days for you to see if you like the job here, for us to see, for me to see if you're going to work out working here. And know that after 90 days we're going to have a review. That would be the time for us to part ways if it's not going to work. And that is okay to do that. Be very transparent about that. Because if after 90 days they are not catching on, they're probably not ever going to. In fact, friends, after 30 days, if your gut is telling you this is not a good hire, this was not a good match, a good fit for our company? Let them go after 90 days. Let them go shortly after you realize it's not going to work, don't prolong the inevitable because the repercussions of prolonging the inevitable is worse. Honest. I promise you it's worse than just getting it over with. And keep in mind that you're releasing someone to go find a place that they fit in best. That's going to serve them well. And if you end the relationship in a good, positive way, you can still give Them a good reference. You can still say, yeah, they were great, we love them as a person, but it just wasn't a fit for this particular position we had opened. But yeah, they're a good person. You can never burn a bridge if you can help it. So how can you implement hire slow and fire fast approach into your business? Start by refining the process, your hiring process to focus on quality over speed. Don't get into that position of desperation to make a decision. Hire over quality over speed. Take the time to craft detailed job descriptions and thorough interview questions and involve key team members in the decision making. Perhaps you know, the office manager does the first interview and if they meet the criteria of the office manager, then perhaps they go to the VP of the company or the president of the company, whatever. But have different people, have a lengthy interview process, have a lengthy get to know process. Thinking about it like dating, you're not going to necessarily know after, you know, actually you do, after the first date. If someone is, is worth keeping around or not think about hiring an employee in the same way. Maybe not, that's, maybe that's not good advice. I don't know. But you have to change your approach to the hiring process. You have to slow it down and maybe that means everybody in the company steps up and takes on a little more responsibility. That is okay. But make sure there's so much transparency with the people you're interviewing on what the full job description is so they know exactly, exactly what they're expected to do. And then you can look at that job description and make sure that their qualifications fit and suit your needs well. And when it comes to letting someone go, my gosh, do it with compassion and professionalism, providing really, really good, clear feedback and support to help them transition gracefully. You know, I don't know of anyone that's been fired that said. Oh yeah, that was a great experience. I loved being let go. Of course not. No one is going to love getting let go. But if you can frame it in a way that you know, I want you to excel wherever you are and that's just not going to happen here. Let me help you transition into another position somewhere else that is a better fit for you so you can thrive and be at your best and do your best, you know, remember, building a successful business isn't about making, just making suitable hires. It's also about knowing when to course correct when to make that tough decision for the good of the team and the company. By hiring slowly and firing fast, you can really ensure that you surround yourself with the right people who will always be there to help achieve the goals and propel your business forward. And, you know, at the end of the day, you want the team, the people that you create around you to be very solid, but yet everybody has their own lane. They have their zone of genius within your company that you have your office manager who's an expert. You have your IT person who's the expert in it. Then you have your marketing manager and your salesperson. You have everybody in their zone Genius. That is what you're going to need to propel your business forward. If you're a small business, like many of us are. You know, I think what we try to do, and this is definitely something I've done in the past, which I'll raise my hand and admit, is I try to get one person to do too many things. I would always have the mindset of, I am not asking more from an employee that I'm not willing to ask from myself. Well, the problem with that thinking is I'm the owner. I'm the entrepreneur. I'm the owner. No one that is coming in as an employee is going to think like an owner. They're not going to think like an entrepreneur, because if they did, they would have their own business. So that way of thinking, as much as I thought it was a good way of thinking at the time, I realized later that, oh, my gosh, of course they're not going to think like me. I don't want them to think like me because if they think like me, then they're going to have their own business and I won't have them long anyway. Learn what each candidate's zone of genius is. Are they perfect for client care and customer communication? Is that their zone is sales? Their zone is it. Their zone is marketing. Their zone. What is their zone of genius? And keep them fulfilled in that space. Don't try to get them to be a salesperson and an IT person, because an IT person is probably not going to be very good at sales. Those two things don't go together. Or if you have someone in a creative role, a very, very creative role, where they sit in front of their computer and they create and they create art and graphic designs, they may not be the person to answer the phone. That may not be their gift because they like the solitude of just them and their computer. Make sure that you have a defined description of what you're looking for. And then work on seeking out the zone of genius through all of the candidates that you're that you're interviewing. So, friends, higher, slow, fire, fast. That is is one of the best ways forward in growing a healthy, healthy business. And I know that you have lots of hats to take off, but follow through on the hiring slowly and firing quickly. You will not regret it. Well, my friends, that's all the time I have today. Thank you so much for tuning in to A New Life podcast. As I said, I'm Pamela Jean. Thank you for joining me. I wish you all the success and happiness in your entrepreneurial journey. Until next time, keep moving forward and make your dreams come true. Thank you for joining us today on A New Life podcast. We will see you next time.