Don Phin - The Inspired Workforce

All right, we're going to move right to our next guest, and, uh, he is joining us from Coronado, California, down the street here. Don Finn from Think HR, uh, and Don is an attorney and VP at Think HR, and they offer online HR tools, live help and training to more than 70,000 small and medium sized businesses nationwide. And Don's going to talk about the inspired workforce. Don, thanks so much for joining us. How are you today? Uh, very good, and thanks for having me coming on here. I enjoyed listening to Laura. Laura fascinating we've had a great show and we're gonna end up with there's no, but I hope you and the good thing is, uh, uh, I'm a little bit up north. I'm in uh the at the Mothership. Think HR that's located in Pleasanton, so you know that you have Exit Radio and I sold my business to them last year and I'm on my 2 year contract and I love being with these folks. Well fantastic well that's great. Tell us about Thi HR what's it? What's the company all about? What do you do for clients? Uh, we, uh, do three basic things. So one, we, we have online resources and you know, so who's ever in HR who's ever handling that type of function can go online and know about the laws, know about how to hire, do all those types of things. So we, we have an award reading online portal. Uh, the second thing that we do is we have uh about 24 people sitting around answering phone calls all day long. It's our live team so. You know, typical of a lot of the entrepreneurs, they don't have full-time HR executives. You and I are both very familiar with the Visage organization. Um, those people a lot of times don't have full time HR. They don't know what they don't know and for them I'd rather have them just pick up the phone and so we have handled over 180,000 calls and we have an enormous database as a result and they people just love our service there and the third thing is we have a training portal with over 400 titles in it. And I believe that training today is just so important. One thing I always challenge employers, I said, you know, you, you, you can, can get lost in how you think about things, you know, people on a show like this, the natural learners, uh, but if you ask your workforce how many of you even spent $100 to educate yourself on anything in the last year, how many people do you think are really raised their hand? So if you don't put people in a system where they learn, they don't learn. It's just the, the reality of it. Those are the 3 things that you do. So you're a great resource for businesses that say, you know, we, we want to get. A top notch help because being, being a business owner today with employees means a bit of having a target on your back. You really need to understand what's going on, what all the rules and regulations because they change so much every year and give your employees and your, your, your HR people somewhere that they can turn to to get that help with without spending a lot of time or or money on it, I guess, right? Uh, it's, it's easier to pick up a phone call and get a response from a hotline team that spend 400 bucks an hour with the lawyer. That's a good point. What's the first thing that you want business owners to know about HR? Well, and I'll, I'll follow along the lines of the presentation I gave to the visit CEOs, and the first thing we do is I help them. I have a little documents 150 things that we have to worry about in HR is to understand the breadth of HR, you know, so everybody that starts a business, me included, you have to know your product really well you know how to have to market and sell your product and you have to collect the money that comes in. So we're very good about operations, sales, and finance, and those people tend to report to us. Not a single entrepreneur had to know HR to start their business. And many of them, I, I get around them. Why would they know great HR? Most of them wouldn't know great HR if hit him in the head. There's no reason. They, they don't read any books on HR. They hate HR, the whole nine yards. So as a result of that, they, they have an expectation they place on somebody who they give that role to. That's unfair. Uh, they're, they, they're just thinking of very small basic things about HR, not realizing it's a very big world that they're stepping these people into, and they do need help. So that's the first thing that I that I tell everybody to really worry about and the second thing is I have them really understand the math of HR so they know the math of sales really well sometimes they know the math of operations, but very few of them know the math of HR. Very few HR people know the math of HR when I'm training HR people, I teach them math. And if you look at the basic things that happen in HR hiring people, uh, losing people, getting them to produce, um, paying them benefits, uh, dealing with their work comp claims, dealing with their employment practices claims, you add all those variances up, it's never less than 10% of payoffs we actually go to a worksheet where we have all these figures they add them up. And so if you've got 25 employees at $40,000 a piece, you've got a million dollars in payroll, I can show you you have at least a $100,000 HR variance. Which is to be expected, the greatest variance in any organization is on the soft stuff, sales, one sales guy that sells the other one that's a 100% variance, right? Customer service has a great deal of variance. HR has a great deal of variance. Hopefully operations doesn't, or you get hit with product liability and malpractice claims all the time. Hopefully finance doesn't, or, or you be in jail, but on the soft stuff, the people stuff is where all the variants exist and so does the greatest competitive opportunity. So the thing to understand is that numbers are very real. We go through the numbers and let's say it's a $100,000 variance. Now what kind of revenue you're gonna have to bring in to put that $100,000 back in your pocket and it's gonna be at least 4 to 1, so you have to bring in at least $400,000. So one thing to help them do is to connect the dots you understand that your poor HR practices put an incredible burden on your sales team because who else is gonna make up for them? And when they start getting that and you know how many more sales, how many more dollars oh my god, just because we had one bad hire. And it really start understanding it, you know, so that, that 5000 that came out of your pocket because you made a bad hire, you're gonna have to bring in 2000 just to put the 5000 back in your pocket and break even you're not even getting ahead at that point. So the math is really important to understand. Unfortunately, most HR people don't understand the math very well. Well, you just made a tremendous amount of of sense I'm sure for most of the people listening they probably haven't thought or they may have thought about the breadth of HR, but not so much the math of HR, and it can be a tremendous burden on your company like you say if you have poor practices because of those extra costs and uh you know, we, we know people are complicated. Why do we think HR why do most people think HR is easy? And I'll say this kindly because historically and I see it changing, it's not been a high IQ function. How many people that are rocket scientists get attracted to go to the HR department now that there are million dollar HR executives. They work in public companies, um, but for the most part HR has been pooh poohed so much that who's excited about seeing at the cocktail party they work in HR, right? So it's not attracted the top echelon executives, but that's changing. I, I see that changing. I mean now having courses in college where you can graduate with HR degrees, that's only, that's only happened in the last 10 years. So we're actually paying some attention to it. We're dealing with a legacy problem in a lot of our organizations. Well, it's become a bit of a science, not only do you have to understand that there are a lot of technical impositions that are placed onto HR departments every single year. There's another wave of new legislation, but there's also socio socio and economical things that are happening. People are different generations are coming to work and need to be managed with different expectations, and so you have 6 the brain drain of the baby boomers that are leaving and Uh, or maybe morphing into another role with the company. There is a lot of, uh, there's a lot going on in the HR department, isn't there? A lot of dynamics and a lot of it's going on whether you have the HR department or not it's still happening. And so some of these things are, are, you know, start with hiring great employees so how do we, how do we hire better or great employees? The first thing to understand is that it's the tipping point. Uh, who you hire just like who you marry is the tipping point in your marriage. It solves most problems down the road. Who, who you hire solves most problems down the road, and I say you see very little difference between dating and hiring, you know, if, if you don't think you can get the attractive mate, you won't try to, you know, if you don't think you get somebody, uh, that, that's financially sound, you won't try to. So, uh, you get what you expect to get, you know. And reality is half of employers have a better expectation than the other half, don't they? Uh, half the employees out there are better than the other half, and my starting point question is which half do you have? How would you even know? So one of the things is we live in a big role of assumption, and I encourage people to get very clear. So if you're big good to great fans, you know, Collin's book a couple of years ago, everybody wants to be in the top 10%. Well, what are you doing to do that? Are you determined to hire the top 10% of employees and how do you go about doing that? How do you know if they're in the top 10%? So many employers have an inherent fear. So I kid around at the visage workshops and I go, OK, how many would you like to have the top 50% of employees? And they'll raise their hand. I said, how many would you like to do what it takes to get the top 25% of employees again there was that. Now how many of you would be willing to do what it takes to do to get the top 10% employees and you see their entire body language change. And why the fear kicks in. Where am I gonna find them? How do I do that? And as a good Buddha says, what comes to you comes from you, and if you don't intend to get the top 10% of employees, guess what, you never will. So the first part is to really decide who you are and what you want on the bus, as Conn says, and then you work backwards from then. Coy said beginning with the end in mind. Well, the end in mind is we only hire the top 10%, and the question is how do we go about doing that? So there are some good steps and and the first thing to do is to attract people. You, you, you, you don't go finding the top 10% you attract the top 10%. Does Google have to go find anybody? No, they're, they're an employer of choice, and I don't care if you're the local plumber or financial firm or other types of owners on the program today that there is an employer of choice in your marketplace and if you're not it, why not? So you look at Zappos, they're very basic business. They stick shoes in a box, OK? It doesn't get much more complicated than than that. They've made themselves an employer choice of Monk's warehouse employees in Las Vegas. You know, because they chose to be the employer of choice, they don't have to go find anybody. People knock on the door. Southwest Airlines doesn't have to go find anybody. US Air does. You know, so being employer of choice and attracting people is the, the starting point of all of it, you know, are you worth a 10% employee? And then once let's say you've attracted a high level of employee, then the question is how do you know what you've got on your hands and what you're really hiring for is trust. Uh, you and I get the work that we do because people trust us because we're good at what we do and we're passionate about what we do and that was makes us trustworthy. Same with any employee, so you can test for the skill set and guess what? I, I helped a business owner higher CFO. So half the CFOs above average and half of them are below average, right? How do you know what what you got in front of you? You, you don't have that expertise to discern through, so you test them. Guess what? You know, their, their substantive language is gap analysis. Well, you can have them take a gap test and guess what? You'll know exactly where they stand on gap analysis instead of you guessing about it. And if you want to hire the top 10%, then you're gonna say, all right, amongst these different categories if we aggregate every, if everybody scores in at least the top 20% aggregated, they'll probably be in the top 10%. So we can say, all right, we're going to hit a benchmark of top 20% in all these different categories, and if we do that, we'll end up hiring the top 10%. So you know I want a top 10 20% gap analysis and then what substantive program do they run the business on? Well, QuickBooks, guess what, we'll test on that too. We want a top 20% of QuickBooks and, and then we're gonna do these personality profiles so you probably had guests on that do that and you know, according to Gladwell there's, uh, in blink there's 2500 of them. So as I tell the employers, guess what, the best one is the one you use. And they're very good at discerning people's, you know, their, their, their personalities. So if I'm hiring a CFO, I want a very detailed personality if somebody doesn't have a high attention to detail, I'd be really concerned about hiring them as a CFO now when it comes to a sales person, that's the last person I wanna hire is somebody who's very attended to detail us doing a high technology sale, uh, but they've got to be more of a relator type person. So these assessment tools are very valuable and then the last part of it is the interview process and most managers interview to be liked. It's just a deep inherent need of ours to be liked, you know, and so we dance around in the comfortable middle, never really getting to the tough questions and putting people on the conditions that they may face in real world and in real work where not everybody agrees and everybody's under pressure so when you're asking people questions, disagree with them whether they're you you really do or not just to see how they react, you know, put them in tough positions ask them to answer tough questions that you have at your company. And then from an emotional standpoint I asked two questions on two sides of the equation. One question is what felt unfair to you at your last job? Now imagine one enough to ask that question when you were dating, right? So I asked people what felt unfair to you at your last job, and if they say nothing, they're lying. Why you might own the company things feel unfair, so I, I won't hire a liar. Uh, and then when they tell me what it is, I'll do a 6 sigma trainer or a 7 year old will do. I'll go 5 wise on them. So why is that unfair? They give me the answer. Why that? Why that? And then you get your personality on full display and you understand how they're going to react to something that feels unfair while they work for you. It's a real shortcut to get to somebody's victimology on the other side of the equation we asked what were you most excited about at your last job? Where where is your energy lie? Where are you most productive? How can I put that position person in that position here? So that's how we avoid the dance in the middle. We go to the extremes. what felt unfair, what you're most excited about? Great interviewing questions. Oh great, great for us unfortunately we're gonna, we're running out a little of time right now and I want you to be able to tell our listeners how to get in touch with you. Great tips so I I I'm taking notes like crazy here. How do our listeners get in touch with you? Um, first of all, my email address is simple enough. It's D Finn, that's P H I N, so Don Finn D Finn P H I N at Think HR just the way it sounds, T H I N K H R.com. And you know, if you contact me uh you can see the think HR thing. I can easily set you folks up for uh uh uh a free trial of the program. You can see what we're doing. I, I tell the business owners if you got 15 or more employees you need a program whether it's our program or somebody else's program. Make sure you have some resources for that HR person so they can do their job right that if it helps you prevent one bad hire or one turnover or one drama or one anything within a year it'll pay for itself many times over. Great information. It, it's been great to have you on. You've really given us a lot to think about and a lot of great tips. I love the uh. The hiring tips and the breadth of HR and the math of HR, and I'd love to have you back on again sometime so we can talk more in depth about what you do at ThinkHR. And again for our listeners get in touch with Don, go to the website thinkHR.com. And again, Don, thanks so much for joining us today. And before, before I leave you, remember you had asked me what things can they, if they contact me, will I give them? There's two things I'll give them. One is I wrote a book about what I learned about building a business. And I, as you know, I saw that it's called From Chaos to Order and I'll send them that ebook and I, I also did another book that you would love called The Visionaries Workbook where I talk about everybody from Napoleon Hill to Stephen Covey and say, you know, how would they advise you about your business and it's a good workbook to go through very helpful. So if somebody emails me, I'll send them those two documents. That sounds fascinating. That sounds great. All right, well, thanks so much for joining us. Uh, it's been a real pleasure to have you on and um again, we'll be, we'll get in touch with you and uh love to have you on again sometime soon and get more in depth on some of these topics. Thanks back at you. Alright, we'll take a short break, we'll be right back after this, so please stay with us. You're listening to one of many shows on Exitoachradio.com. We're interviewing advisors, authors, and thought leaders for their best tips, ideas, and precautions so you can be well planned. If you'd like to be a guest on any of our shows, go to guest.exitcoachradio.com. Exitcoachradio.com. Come listen for a minute. You're listening to Exitoachradio.com, the information station for age 50 plus business owners, where we're interviewing top advisors for their best tips, ideas, and precautions so you can be well planned. We upload new one minute tips every day. Exitcoachradio.com. Come listen for a minute.