Episode 8 – Smart Staffing with The DISC Wizard

Welcome to the TRSA podcast. Providing interviews and insights from the linen, uniform, and facility services industry. Most Americans might not realize it, but they benefit at least once per week from the cleanliness and safety of laundered, reusable linens, uniforms, towels, mats and other products provided by various businesses and organizations. TRSA represents the companies that supply, launder, and maintain linens and uniforms. And in this podcast, we will bring the thought leaders of the industry to you.

 

Welcome back to another episode of the Linen Uniform and Facility Services podcast, interviews and insights by TRSA. I’m your host, Jason Risley. With the United States economy currently in growth mode, it can be a challenge to find top performers to work at your laundry facility. The competition can be fierce for top talent. If you find yourself in this predicament, this week’s episode is definitely for you.

 

I recently spoke with the disc wizard, Nancy Roberts, a certified behavioral analyst, to find out how commercial laundry operators can identify and hire the right employees and retain that talent once they’re on board. Make sure you listen to the end of this episode as Nancy has a couple offers for information that can help you navigate the hiring process and devise new strategies for recruitment and retention. If you like what you hear today, make sure you subscribe, rate, and review us on iTunes. In addition to iTunes, all 8 episodes of the podcast are also available on Google Play and Stitcher. Just to start off with, can you tell us about your background?

 

Sure. So, I worked for a small consulting company that did organizational and leadership development back in 1997. I was our office manager. And I just fell in love with what they did. I didn’t know that that would be even an occupation, to be able to help people in organization, get along and like what they do.

 

I had come from a history or experience where I hated every job I ever had. So working through this company where their mission was literally to eliminate suffering in the workplace. I thought how cool is that? So, at the end of 5 years there in 2001 after September 11th happened, they had locked about 70% of their business and hit the layoff, more of a staff. And I was one of the ones that had let go.

 

So in early 2002, I started my own business, eventually doing what I could learn to do there, which was, use the disk, but then reduce some team rotation and hire. Do you call yourself the disc wizard? What does disc stand for, and how does it apply to hiring and staffing? So, actually, I didn’t call myself the disc wizard. It’s, an interesting story that I when I started my business in 2002, my consulting company called Insight.

 

And I was a few years in, and I was using the disc assessment, which I’ll explain with that for those who don’t know it. And I had a client say to me, you know, when you analyze a candidate and then tell us how they’re going to act on the job, and if we hire them, they do exactly what it is you said they were gonna do. Like, where it’s like, you have a crystal ball. So I was in a marketing group at the time and I took that comment back to the group, and they they came up with this. They said, oh, that’s amazing.

 

You know, that that image of you sitting with your crystal ball, analyzing people. And of course, the disc was entire thing to it. So that that’s when I became. The disc, so disc is a 4 factor behavioral model, and the letters all stand for something. So the D stands for dominance and that measures somebody on how they handle problems and challenges.

 

The I stands for influence and measures how you respond to people and persuade them. The S stands for setting up and it measures how you pace yourself and stop change. And then the C stands for compliance and it measures how you respond to rules and procedures. And so everybody, when they take a disc effect, will get ranked on this for factors from a scale of 0 to a 100. So obviously, somebody who did 10% down is a little very different than 90%.

 

And now do all your clients use this assessment? I don’t have one client that doesn’t use it. So, yes, that is true. Every single client I have is. The reason being is no matter what I no matter what I’m doing with a client, whether it’s a leadership program, a team building, conflict resolution, helping them hire someone.

 

You’re you’re dealing with human behavior. Right? Human behavior and performance. So it really there’s no place in business that’s difficult. They’re just in.

 

Now I know in your industry, a lot of, you know, decisions get made around the process of machinery. But I always ask my clients who are who’s running those machines and who’s having to, you know, implement the process. It’s always people. It always gets cheaper. So, yeah, I don’t have that client.

 

It’s over 2 years old. And you mentioned that you’ve worked with, several operators and suppliers to the linen uniform and facility services industry. What difficulties with hiring and recruitment and retention have you found in this industry? Well, it’s funny because, my first client was a linen company, in Mississippi way back in 2002. And from there, I got, you know, introduced to and Roger Cappadero at the time, and some other operators.

 

And so in the beginning of my business, my business was primarily laundry facility and textile company. So I think right now, I think everyone’s challenged with finding people, finding good people. The the statistics are dismal if you’re an employer. If you’re an employee, it’s a great time. Right?

 

But if you’re an employer, I think it’s pretty difficult right now to find a lot of people and then, of course, to find the right people. That would be the challenge. So I think the additional besides what everybody in every company and industry dealing with across the board, I think the additional challenges that you find in your industry is, 1, it’s a it’s what I call a non glamorous industry. Right? So you’ve got the challenge that not a lot of people come up and go, hey.

 

You know what? It’s always been my dream to work in a laundry. It just doesn’t tend to happen. I also work with a lot of family owned, like, 3rd or 4th generation family owned businesses. And and the problem, you know, and I don’t wanna I don’t wanna blame it all on millennials, but the problem with the incoming generation for the upcoming generation is, you know, these are kids that are growing up on YouTube stars.

 

Very few of them are saying, I wanna go into the business at night. Grandpa, you know, so I think that next generation isn’t necessarily following the footsteps of the previous generation. And then I also know a lot of my clients are in small towns, through either in rural rural areas or inner city areas, and that presents some set of challenges that you’re looking for. And how have you coached companies in this industry to improve their HR practices? Let me just start by saying that I’m I’m not an HR expert, as far as, like, the profession or the department of HR or the field of HR.

 

So I wanna make sure people don’t think that I’m an HR consultant. I’m a behavioral analyst, so I read and understand people and their motivation and why they do what they do. And so, obviously, I work with HR a lot. But as far as being an expert in HR field, that’s that’s not my area of expertise. However, because I work with HR a lot, I will say one of the challenges my my particular site companies have is many of them don’t have a full time HR person or, you know, their HR person will be HR slash finance or HR slash safety or something along those lines.

 

So one of the biggest challenges they’ll have a ton. It’s not that they’re not aware of and don’t wanna implement the best practices. It really comes down with a tiny issue for them. They it’s like they know what they should be doing. They don’t necessarily know how to do it.

 

So what I try and help leadership do is really get clear about, obviously, their vision and mission, their strategic plan, and then what are those 1 or 2 really big priorities for HR this year? Because you can’t send your HR team or your HR person, this list of 10 initiatives to get done and expect them all to get done well, especially when they’re. Besides that, I have actually recommended, you know, clients look outside, their organization, outsource some of the needs that they have that might fall under HR. So I recommended to one client that they look at getting a, you know, they, obviously, they can’t put a full time recruiter in their organization. It’s just not big enough to do so, but they were using outside recruiting firms with not much success.

 

And I looked at it and said, wow. For the for the money you’re investing outside recruiters, you might be able to hire a part time recruiter on a contract basis and have them focus on those roles you need to hire for. And I had another client that did that, hired somebody part time and ended up employing this recruiter full time because she was so effective at keeping the studies. So I think I think that’s probably the approach I would take is take a look at it at, you know, at, like, the whole, you know, organization. What is it they’re trying to accomplish?

 

And then advise them on whatever practices it is they need to improve. So part of the problem sounds like potential understaffing in that area? Yeah. I would think so. You know, I have this opinion theory, etcetera, that for for a very long time, we looked at HR as sort of the, redheaded stepchild of the organization.

 

I mean, for a long time, quite frankly, HR professional just didn’t have a seat at the leadership table. They weren’t even invited to leadership meeting, treat, etcetera. And yet people are the most complex aspect of the business. Your business doesn’t get complex because you have more machines and because you have revenue. Business gets complex because you have more people.

 

And so why do we overlook or undervalue that one department whose sole purpose it is, to help us manage that complexity? So I think it’s, yes, probably understaffed, but the reason it would be understaffed is because we just don’t place the importance there, that we really should. Do you have any interesting stories from the hiring process that you can share? I have a ton. I think one is the challenge.

 

I I think the one I would like to share, is because it’s a laundry and because it’s one of my long, term clients in your industry. So I’ve helped this organization hire 3 different general managers. When they first were introduced to me was, in 2,000 or 2,007. So we’re talking about 10 years ago and they had had a lot of turnover in their GM positions up for, like, 3 GM in 78. And so they were introduced to me.

 

They learned of my hiring process of how we benchmark the job to see exactly what they’re looking for. And then we analyze candidate to see a floor match. And so we identified a candidate that would just really close match to the benchmark. So he was hired and he was like a dream fit. And he was with my client, right, 4 to 4 to 5 years, so he was great.

 

Unfortunately, they lost him a couple years ago. I mean, he actually have to wait. And so then, you know, they’ve been there in the process again looking for another GM. And my client is your recruiter. And when we analyze the final candidate, quite frankly, none of them were really good match to the benchmark.

 

And so I cautioned my client, you know, I I know you’re desperate. I know how hard it is to run a plant without a GM, but neither one of these is really a thing. So the recruiter really kind of pressed this, you know, one person and they, you know, they’ve got a history of success in the business. You know, their their skills are top notch, etcetera. So, anyway, we kind of got overruled and and the person who tired.

 

And it was a misstep. So one of the things we look at in the hiring process is cultural fit. Not just a person with the job and have the skill set and the company with experience you want. But do they really fit your culture? And my client organizational culture is something we call traditional.

 

And traditional is, you know, there’s a very set way of doing things, and most laundry owners and operator operators will understand it. There’s that protocol that you follow. This is the way we do things around here. While the candidate that was hired was a very low traditional person. So meaning he’s open minded.

 

He’s receptive to me when we’re doing things. He’s a little bit of a rebel, you know, a little bit of a maverick. Lots of trying to think about, checking things. The problem was when he came in, he didn’t really respect the way things were done. And so he really kinda ended up falling short and sort of messing some things up because he wasn’t looking for the the previous, you know, how did we do things and understand how do we do things before we do things changes.

 

And so every time my client called me that year that he was there in frustration, it was, you know, they would explain this scenario, and I would say that’s a slow traditional showing up. That’s a slow traditional showing up. So at a year’s point, they pulled the plug. We went back to the drawing board, of course, looking for people again. And we found a candidate that I will it’s so funny because, you know, of course, I know they could actually listen to this podcast recording.

 

They’re they’re gonna know I’m talking about them. We found this candidate that I have to say from the beginning in our early steps, well, seemed odd to us. The phone calls with him were a bit odd, you know, just when we would have conversations to try and, you know, talk to him about the job. It was just an odd you just didn’t get a great one of the 5 with this person. And so we cut through the assessment process, though, because of course, we had the criteria and the experience in the industry and all that.

 

And he lo and behold, he was the best match. Industry, and all that. And he lo and behold, he was the best match to the benchmark that we could see, probably in a couple years. And so, of course, we continued in the process, and he’s been hired and he’s just a great fit. My client is so happy.

 

They feel like it they’re back with their original g f. It was such a great fit. So the reason I shared it, I know it’s a little bit long story, but the reason I shared it is because it’s so clear that in those 10 years or how long has been. When we follow-up the benchmark, we got great results. Even when the benchmark and the the match to the person overruled our own gut feeling when our thought was at this time.

 

This is not this is just weird. What we find is interviews are successful less than 20%. If you go behind your gut intake, the entire, statistically, you’ve done 80% failure rate. And so we, my client and I, had to overrule our own feelings in the hiring process and really stick to that benchmark material. And when we did that, it was like a.

 

So it’s really important to trust in that benchmark? It it’s data. I mean, it’s science. It removes the personal bias that we bring to the hiring platform. Most of my clients are willing to admit that they’re not great at, you know, hiring people.

 

And so it really kind of gives you another way to look at the person in sort of black and white and how well we’re gonna match that job culture, without you saying on the paper break or, oh, I think they’re odd or, you know, we just didn’t really connect with something like this attached. We just didn’t really connect. Well, sometimes, the best employees are the worst and vice versa. Sometimes the best interview is for the worst employees. So you really have to sort of get past that as being your only criteria.

 

You recently wrote an article on recruitment and retention for September’s issue of Textile Services Magazine. Can you give us an overview of this article? Yeah. I think, what I was really trying to highlight was, well, 1, again, I don’t need to tell you how difficult it is to find people’s melody. I think everybody’s experiencing that.

 

Right? So we don’t have to go out and out about scary statistics that employees are facing. But I think the additional challenge for people in the living and uniform industry is that these lower level employees that we need for our clients, they’re not online a lot of times. They’re not on LinkedIn. They’re not on Indeed.

 

They may they may not even have a resume. Right? So, really, we need to figure out where to get in front of them. One, because they may not be online if those are, you know, resources for you. The other challenge is the good ones are in the employee.

 

So I have, a client in the construction industry, and they say if there’s a construction worker out of business right there out of a job right now, you don’t want that. The people that are actually out there and available, are probably not the people who wanna be hired. But here’s something to here’s, I guess, the slope of the lining. Statistically, 87% of people are disengaged in jobs. So, when Gallup does that survey every year and they, you know, interview or survey 2 hun 200,000 plus people, statistically, 87% of those people say if another opportunity came along, I would take it.

 

So the good news is is if you can get your message that you’re hiring in front of people, I’ve discussed strategies to do that, in that article, then the people that are employed and are able to to keep a job and might be great employees too will at least see your, you know, your ad or your notice or something like that. So that’s the challenge. If they’re not necessarily in typical places, you’ve got a couple of different strategies. So if they’re not using a search firm, online resources, or ads, where can commercial laundry operators look for potential applicants in their communities? I think what I, encourage my, my clients to do is 1, always be recruiting.

 

So you have to always be in the mindset of looking for your next best person. So for me, you know, if I’m out, let’s say, out for a meal and I have great service from somebody, I look at that person and say, oh, this is great at customer service. I’ve had experiences where I’ve had a customer service person sell me so well. I’m looking up for them. That I thought, wow.

 

If I return a salesperson, I would hire that person right now. So I think that’s the first thing. We need to all be in the mindset of always be recruiting. Always be looking for those people. Beyond that, you have to go where these people are.

 

Right? So if they’re not on LinkedIn, they’re not on Indeed, and they’re not maybe even actively looking for their employees, then you’ve gotta put yourself in a place where they may feel sort of like marketing and advertising. You’ve gotta advertise where your prospective clients are gonna show up. Same thing with prospective employees. So a couple of ideas is, things like community and rec centers.

 

So very often, community and rec centers will have because a lot of their people may not have access to computers. Right? Unless they go to a library, they’ll have actually bulletin boards. Remember those things that used to hang up in the laundromat, that you would put your, you know, garage sale on or I need a babysitter on. So that is still a viable place to put, like, a a a reduced version of a job ad or or, like, a scaled down, you know, wanted or looking for great people at, same thing with career centers.

 

I would throw daycare centers in there, smaller grocery stores and deli. So think about it. If we’re talking about rural communities or inner city community, they may not have these large, you know, well, in our area, the Wegmans supermarket or whole foods or something like that. But in the smaller grocery stores and deli, there’s still that, oh, it’s important when you walk in, and it’s got advertisements for the community. I would put up a job on it out there.

 

Laundromat, I mentioned that. So when you think about this population, very often, they’re still going to laundromat, and most laundromats still have the full to work. I talk more about nonprofit agencies, and I give in the article some examples of companies that have partnered with nonprofit agencies who are rehabilitating their people that come to their agents and really kinda professional developing people. So that’s a a place to look library. Yeah.

 

So those are just some ideas up here to put the notice that you’re hiring. I’ve got a list of, like, a 100 different sort of creative recruiting strategies on it. If the people that are listening to this podcast would like a copy of that list, I’ll share information again, about where they can find it. Sounds great. With so much competition for talent these days, what can a company do to stand out from the crowd when recruiting?

 

So if you are going to use the strategy they just shared about, you know, getting out there into the community, getting out where people are, and facing these ads, One thing I would definitely do is rewrite the job ad. So don’t take the typical job ad that gets posted, and put that out there. It it too much noise. There’s usually too much detail. It’s like a long list of skills.

 

And quite frankly, I don’t think people read it. So you don’t it doesn’t really, number 1, attract the right people, and I don’t think it really does any good job to read how long people. So I would take a look at their job ads, and I would think of rewriting them more like a marketing, you know, flyer or message. So I know it sounds funny, but the greatest copywriters in the world write for magazine that we probably would never read, like Star, Fire. So when you’re standing in the line at your grocery store, you’re seeing that the magazine back and, you know, there’s People Magazine, Oprah Magazine, and all that.

 

Those little blur on those magazines are goal. Is, again, those are the greatest copywriters in the world. And so what they do, they put this 4 to 5 word sentence. It’s crazy. It catches your attention.

 

Right? So the alien that just had a baby. You know what I mean? I don’t even care, but all of a sudden it got my attention. So you wanna write a job ad or close to job ad in these places that have that kind of snappy grab attention, you know, sort of title or headline.

 

And then you really just want that simple paragraph about what you’re looking for. And even more than what you’re looking for, more about you and your company. You wanna be honest about your culture. Don’t try and be that you’re something you’re not. Don’t try and be frugal, you know, when you’re a traditional culture.

 

But be honest about how you are, if you’re fanatical about quality, if you’re a high traditional family owned business, emphasize those things because you know what? People are so diverse. There’s some people that will be really attracted to that and some people that will be actually repelted by it, and I think that’s the good thing. So I would say, get a catchy headline title, you know, really kinda show your culture, in the blurb that you’re sharing, and then tell people what kind of position to. And we’re excited to have you talk at, TRSAs 7th annual health care conference in November.

 

Can you give us a preview of what you’ll talk about at the conference? Sure. Well, I’m excited to be there. My title of my talk is creative staffing strategies And I tend to use a fishing analogy when I’m talking about it. I’m not a fisher person.

 

Not a fisherman. But either of those people that do fish will kinda get this analogy. So I’d say the first strategy is you have to know what you’re looking for. Right? Again, I don’t fish, but I’m assuming that if you’re trying to catch up, a a bass versus, oh, I don’t even know another fish of salmon.

 

You’re not gonna be going to the same places, right, in order to find those different, fish. So you have to know what you’re looking for before you know where to go. Once you know what you’re looking for, now you need to go where they are. Right? You gotta go to that right stream or that right pond or that right lake in order to catch them.

 

3rd, you have to use the right bait. If you’re not using the right bait, you’re kind of wasting your time. And then 4th, there is a strategy to actually get them to come to you, which I don’t know if it actually can happen with FISH. But there is a way to do that with job candidates, get them to come to you. So that’s what I’m gonna be sharing.

 

And how important is the, screening and interviewing process to hiring the right candidate? Well, I feel like I’m gonna be a little bit contradictory here because I just said, that most interviews have an 80% failure rate. So now if I tell you it’s really critical, I’d move down contradictory. But it let me put it this way. It’s critical to do it right.

 

Right? When you when you do it right, it’s really important. If you do it wrong, it’s not important. So here’s how to make sure that the screening and interviewing process is actually working for you. You have to flip the traditional process on foot down.

 

What I mean by that is the traditional process is we identify people based on their resume, maybe their job application, and then the interview. We evaluate them for the job based on their skills and their experience. So I I obviously help clients hire a lot of leadership, management, and supervisory position. They don’t do quite as much, you know, lower level position. But even there, you know, we’re we look for people that have the skill set.

 

Right? Or the industry experience as well. And we make our judgment based on that. But the hiring model I use is we need to look at deeper things that are more likely to to predict that. And the one of the foundational things we look at is somebody’s values and their motivators are driving passion.

 

But why are they gonna why are they gonna do the job? And that’s really important to know. The next we have a couple of couple of why do you take action? The next thing we look at is those DISC behaviors that I mentioned before, that dominance, influence, steadiness, and compliance. And that really tells them how the person’s gonna do the job, how assertive or aggressive are they, how detail oriented are they, how fast leads are they, and that’s important to note.

 

And then the other thing we look at is their soft skills. So what are those competencies that they bring to the job? You know, do they have planning and organizing skills? Do they have time management? Do they have leadership skills, etcetera?

 

And then the last thing we look at is those hard skills and experience. Right? So the hard skills and experience is the part we normally look at in the traditional hiring and interview process. But I call that the tip of the iceberg. So when you think about an iceberg, you’ve got the 10% that shows above the water, and you’ve got the 90% that that mass underneath the surface.

 

You can’t see. Right? But that’s what bumped the Titanic. It wasn’t the 10% at the top. So when you make that hiring decision based on the 10% you can see with building experience, you’ll miss the 90% of the surface that is likely to predict the performance of the person.

 

I had an HR manager work with me when when she saw this model. She said, oh, I get it. She said, we hire for skill, but we fire for attitude. When we hire for the things that we can validate, we see that we end up firing them for things that we can’t. So with the hiring system, you actually get to take a deeper look at the candidate and therefore hire the people that match your culture and match the job, and have those higher indicators of stuff than what the traditional process usually would be.

 

And what are some ways companies can grow their current staff and keep them engaged to improve retention? That is such a great question. And the reason it’s such a great question is because you actually answered the question in your question. So you said, what are ways that companies can grow their current staff and keep them engaged and improve retention? You’ve actually identified it.

 

Growing your current staff is absolutely the number one key to keeping them engaged, which is the number one key that you can even retain. Right? So it just works backwards. When when Gallup did their survey, I think in 2015, they again, they they survey over 200,000 people working, and they asked them what was most important to them. Now back in 2005 when they did that survey, wages was still in the top five.

 

So people still wanted more significant wage or whatever it was. In 2015, wages will be the top five. Now that doesn’t mean people don’t want their pay. Right? Obviously, people do.

 

But I just thought that was interesting that in the 10 year shift, we just dropped off that top five list. So here’s what people want. They want pure motivation, which is basically they wanna work with a great team and help us succeed. They want opportunities for growth. They want a strong work culture, and they wanna be at the heart of that.

 

They want engaging work, Number 4. And number 5, they wanna be involved. We’re involved in that. You know, in on things that are happening. Not just with their job, by the way, or department.

 

They wanna be in on things that are happening with the department in the organization. The the next general. So that’s, like, generally speaking, what do people want. Right? You also have the ability to get much more specific and look at what each individual.

 

And when I work on employee engagement, this is what I talk to my clients about. We we can do these large scale employee engagement initiatives, you know, and try and improve, you know, management relationships and, communication across the board and put incentives in place and all that kind of of thing. The problem is when we do that, we’re really looking at people as all being the same. Right? Everybody wants to be the same kind of assumption we make.

 

That is okay in general. Right? So hit those top 5. But then you have to look at people as individuals. And when it comes to what people individually want, we have an assessment that actually determines 6 different factors and what is most important.

 

So without going into too much detail with that, I just wanna share a story with you of a client of mine who is going into a performance review with a with a an employee. And this was the email I got. It said I’m heading into a performance review with a great employee who got a significant pay rate last year. If she expect that pay rate this year, it’s gonna pull her a lot with the pay period of the position. I don’t see her being a good manager, and I don’t really have anywhere else to move her.

 

I don’t wanna lose her talent and her relationship with the customer, but I can’t afford a pair of get them up more than she’s making. So my response was, well, let’s assess her, see what her values and motivators are, what’s driving her performance because she was a top performer, which, of course, why my client is so afraid to lose her. I said, let’s really see what’s important to her because what’s important to my client is money. Right? My client is a business motive, is a business owner, is motivated by economic return.

 

So they’re gonna make the natural assumption that their employees are motivated by that as well. So nowadays we make this assumption that that’s what people want more money, more money. When have you noticed that we need to throw more money than a bad employee? You end up with the same bad employee. You’re just paying more for it.

 

So instead of that being the immediate solution of, oh, let’s get more rate. Let’s look at what they’re really motivated by. And when we did that with this employee, what she was most motivated by, which was kind of unusual for her position, is something called the aesthetic motivator. It’s one of the. And the aesthetic motivator is somebody who’s really more motivated by creativity, maybe some sort of artistic endeavor, self expression, self self actualization, really kind of developing themselves to be all the.

 

So my advice to the client was don’t just immediately assume that this person’s gonna want a raise. As a matter of fact, it was one of the lower motivators. Her economic drive was actually one of her lowest, so I didn’t think she’d necessarily be looking for that. So when my client had the conversation with her, she said it went amazing. She talked to her about how she was doing and and what she liked and what she’s been like.

 

And the girl was loving her job. Actually, just loved her job. Look forward to a couple of other initiatives that she was gonna get to help while around that really took her skills into account. And when she said what it is that she wanted, she didn’t wanna raise. She actually wanted more vacation, more time off because that’s what’s gonna be status science with that other pursuit, the creative passions that they wanna pursue.

 

And my and my client was happy to do that. Right? So here’s a there’s a minimal rate, but there’s no time off, which was really data science. So I think a a company can take these 6 motivators, and really create a billboard around each one. So that when you say you wanna reward an employee for, you know, high performance or something like that, you can almost give them the option of which of these would be most, you know, exciting to you rather than just trying to apply that small percent across the board and thinking about that, engage people.

 

So I would look at generally what do people want, but I would also look at specifically what is it that people want. Now if you’ve brought somebody on board and that’s just not working out, what are the impacts of a poor hiring decision on a company? Well, I think I I wanna share a story, and it it’s funny that we’re doing this podcast because the story comes from a TRFA event. So back in, I think it was 2,008, I was asked to speak at TRFA CEO summit. I took place in Boston, and I was speaking at the topic of hiring and firing.

 

And I remember asking the question, how many, and, and it was most, yeah, I was business owner CEO operator. Like how many people in the room by a show of hand, have an employee in your plan right now or in your organization right now that you know without a shadow of a doubt shouldn’t be there. And I’m not kidding. Almost every single hand went up. And I told them to look around the room.

 

It’s like, because you’re not alone. And then I said, okay. If the person’s been there more than a year, keep your hands up. So if you’re hands up. But if the person’s been there more than 5 years, keep your hands up.

 

That’s you more hands up. Then I was, you know, I went up to 15. I went up to 20. There was someone there with their hand up that had had a 4th performer in their organization for 20 years. I became, they became a client of mine, by the way.

 

They hired me after that conference. And so, really, you know, obviously, I’m known for my hiring, you know, process. But I would say if I if I were to say the top two escape they’ve become is derail or something. Number 1, it would be not bringing in the right people. And number 2, not getting rid of the wrong people.

 

That is the, the problem that I see. So really when you don’t spend the right time or, energy or investment on the front end and hire the right people, the implications are that become a harder person to manage. That takes more of your supervisors and managers’ time and energy because you notice you gravitate for poor performance, not the not the top performer. And then when it comes to letting the person go, it’s eggy. Right?

 

And there’s reasons for that, that exist in the hiring system, which is making things much more specific and more. So then when you go to let them go, you you don’t feel like you’ve got the evidence that you need or really the the information you need to make a a really hard and bad decision. And so you end up with what I call even more costly than turnover work, stay over. You’ve got those employees who aren’t performing to your expectation. They’re doing just enough to not get fired, but they’re not really not performing to the level that you need.

 

And I know organizations that have a large percentage of people like that. You can imagine how that leads them, the, the productivity and the profitability of a company. On the other side of it, if you do invest more time and energy in the hiring process and make sure you get more people that fit your culture and fit the jobs that we hired for, You reduce the time you spend managing them, and you reduce the energy and effort that you’re being interested to put into those people. And when it comes to firing, it is I’m not kidding. It’s, like, easy to do because it’s not all the fun and discussion that’s taking place out of the blue based on very generic, factor.

 

It’s very specific and very measurable. So to me, the the impact of a court decision is I I mean, I I honestly believe I’ve seen a take take company after when they can’t, you know, get the right people on board, get the wrong people involved. And in addition to your consulting work and speaking engagements, you also wrote a book called The Little Red Book of Hiring and Firing, 7 Strategies for Finding and Keeping Engaged Employees. What are some of the strategies you discussed in this book? So some of the strategies we’ve already spoken about, so we’ve actually covered probably 4 of the 7 as we’ve talked about, you know, knowing what you’re looking for, spending more time in the hiring process or walk time in the firing process.

 

Interview the book talks about interviewing. Really what the book is about. It’s sort of like the life cycle of an employee. Right? So everything from recruiting and onboarding through how to manage that all the way to what I’ll call off boarding or, you know, following the separation.

 

2 of the strategies are that you know, now that you’ve got them, now that you’ve got the right person in the role because you’ve hired the right person, now what do you do with that? Right? And we find that there’s one key thing that really separates the good from the bad in an organization. And when you apply this one thing, your top performer soar and your bottom performers almost read them out loud. Honestly, I have a strategy in the book that is how to get bad performers to fire themselves because it’s just nothing that anyone’s ever gonna love to do.

 

We don’t love letting people build difficult things for most finishers, but there is a way and a strategy to get people to fire themselves. And so that’s some of the things, the book talks about. Like I said, it’s the life cycle of it. So You’ve shared a lot of great information today on the hiring process and recruiting. How can our listeners find out more about you and your work?

 

I think the best thing to do is, obviously, they can go to my website, which is, discord online.com. But if you’re really interested, or have any questions on anything I shared, you can reach me by email atnancy@discwithersonline.com. And so if anybody and I thought I would share this at the end. If anybody wants that list of recruiting strategy, it’s a comprehensive list of other places to go where you can look to find people. You can just email me for that.

 

And I thought, also, what I would like to do for people who’ve sort of hung on till the end. You know, I know nowadays it’s it’s, a lot to dedicate 30 minutes to something. But if you’re still listening, I’d love to give an additional gift. I’d be happy to send people the, downloadable version of my little red book of hiring. So it’s a PDF, file that I can email back to people.

 

So if anybody’s interested, they can email me. I’ll send them that list for recruiting as well as a downloadable copy of that little red bubble. Yeah. That’ll be great. Thanks so much for sharing and thanks for your time today.

 

Oh, you’re welcome. Thank you, Jason. Make sure you take advantage of Nancy’s offer and get her list of recruiting strategies as well as a digital copy of her book. Once again, you can get in touch with her at nancy@discwizardonline.com. That’s nancy@discwizardonline.com.

 

Nancy also wrote an article for the September 2018 issue of Textile Services magazine titled Candidate Fishing, Luring Talent in Unglamorous Places, and she will appear as a speaker at TRSA’s upcoming health care conference scheduled for November 28th 29th in Charlotte, North Carolina. For more information on the conference, visit www.trsa.org/healthcare.