Shannon Peck - The Importance of a Documented Hiring Process and How to Safeguard Companies from Discrimination Claims

Time is precious and so are our pets, so time with our pets is extra precious. That's why we started Dutch. Dutch provides 24/7 access to licensed vets with unlimited virtual visits and follow-ups for up to 5 pets. You can message a vet at any time and schedule a video visit the same day. Our vets can even prescribe medication for many ailments, and shipping is always free. With Dutch, you'll get more time with your pets and year-round peace of mind when it comes to their vet care. Hi everyone, it's Bill Black, the exit coach from the Exit Coach Radio show. You know, one of the biggest questions I get on the show is what exactly goes into a business exit plan and when should I start creating mine? Well, I always tell people that the best time to start was 5 years ago, but the next best time is now because you never know when you might need it. So we put together a free report that describes what an exit plan is and what you should know. You can get it free by texting exit plan with no spaces to 44222. That's exit plan to 44222. Again, text exit plan to 44222. Welcome to the Exit Coach Radio show, the show for baby boomer business owners who are looking for cutting edge information as they plan their 3 to 10 year business succession and exit. Every week we interview top professional advisors for their best tips, strategies, and precautions so you can be well planned. And now here's your host, the exit coach Bill Black. Well, hey everyone, thanks so much for joining me today. Always a pleasure. You know, we talk a lot here on Exitoach Radio about getting your business ready for transfer and sale or or transfer in a family business or what have you, and one of the things we love to talk about. Is the people side of the equation getting your people ready, making sure you have the right people, because it's all going to be about your people when it comes down to it as to whether your business survives a transition. And luckily for you today we have back with us Shannon Peck. And she's a, she provides talent strategy and talent management consulting advice for Wajungo. I hope I got that right, Shannon. I probably botched it. Shannon's going to talk about helping clients to build positive cultures, streamline the hiring processes, and execute recruiting strategies that are much different than the norm. So today we're going to talk about how to get your business ready for a sale in the area of your people strategy. Shannon, welcome back to the show. Thanks so much for joining me today. Hi, Bill. Thanks for having me. It's my pleasure and I, I whenever I see a J in a in a company name, I don't know whether to go Wahango Wajungo. So please let's start with the name of the company. Where did it come from and how do you properly pronounce it? Yeah, you were close. So we jungo is actually um partly from the Latin term jungo, which means joined together. And uh Suzie Japs, our managing director, wanted to find a name that really stood out and reflects what we do. So we married the two, we and Jungo joined together and that's how our name was born. OK, now, now we know and tell us, tell us what again I mentioned a little bit about what you do help clients build positive cultures and streamline hiring processes and execute recruiting strategies. um what how do you go about doing that? What what are some of the the techniques you use to help businesses get ready, get the right people doing the right things or finding the right people? Yeah, that's a great question. So, you know, we like to partner with companies and create strategy around their people processes. And that can be whether it's how they go about attracting high quality talent, how they make that objective hiring decision, because many times, you know, I'll talk to hiring managers doing interviews and they're like, well, we're not sure if this is the right person, you know, they answered our questions, but we're just, it's, it's hard to make this decision so we give them objective ways to really come to that hiring decision. And then we uh help them in techniques and how to retain their A players um and really look at, you know, do you have everything in place so that your, your great talent will stay with your company. Um, and then finally, um, to your point earlier, looking forward and forecasting future talent needs when a company is in a high growth mode or if they're looking. You know, to transition and exit, you know, do we have the right talent in the right seats, uh, for our business goals going forward? That's so important and I can't tell you how many times I've been asked by a business owner to help them figure out if the person they have in mind to take over the company really has what it takes. I call it an owner's mentality, and not everybody has that. Obviously very few people have that, but a lot of times there might be, might be related. It might be a son or daughter of the owner. And they might think that this person is an outstanding person. That's not the question. The question is, do they have what it takes to lead the company for the next generation? And so how, how do you, how do you help companies who are preparing for sale or creating strategies to increase their value before the sale with with your strategies? Yeah sure now that's a great question so um one thing that we do that really sets companies up for success is helping them to build hiring processes and to document them so that companies are consistently following the same steps every time they hire someone and this does 3 important things for companies. The first thing it does is it helps to safeguard them from possible future discrimination claims. And the second thing that having that consistent hiring process documented does. is that it ensures that a company's hiring process is repeatable. So many times if an internal HR person or a recruiter leaves, all of their hiring knowledge and their best practices walk out the door and that knowledge is lost. But with the documented hiring process in place, a new hire can be trained in how to lead that hiring process without losing that valuable knowledge and expertise. So we consider a well documented hiring process to be an IP asset, asset, excuse me, and it shouldn't be simply a few, a few loosely connected ideas in someone's head. So once the company has their hiring process documented, it will help to attract and hire great talent for years to come, and it's repeatable. And the third thing that a consistent hiring process does is it increases the value of the business. So when owners are preparing for sale, those companies with SOPs for their business operations that are documented have more value to prospective buyers than companies who have processes that of course are not documented. So business practices such as a hiring process is considered to be part of a considered uh a business's IP. The buyers that are interested in potential um for growth, and they're interested in um increased earnings looking down the road, they want to see evidence that the current business operations are tried and tested and that they're well documented. So one operational area that we see that is often overlooked in companies when they're preparing for sale is on the people side, you know, do they have a strategically crafted and well-documented hiring process in place? Have a system run company. We talk about that all the time and of course the hiring practice would be specifically important because you need to be following, you know, the method you need to make it easy for whoever is next in that position and for them to know that they followed a certain process. And let me ask you a question. I've seen a lot of programs out there that would say our program can tell you whether somebody is a fast start person or whether they need a lot of supervision or whether they start on their own, whether they're detail oriented, whether they're, they need a lot of supervision, whether they have people skills, you know, all these types of things charted out and there's a lot of varieties of them. Obviously you all probably can can help with that. Now I've heard one way to use that. is to test your best and brightest people now and see how they show up and then when you're hiring someone, you would probably want to have someone that meets those same characteristics and the chances are pretty good you're going to be happy with that hire if they meet those characteristics. Is that all a bunch of are those myths or is that, is that the reality of today? Has that technology created better companies? Yeah, you know, great question though. I, I really do believe and we believe that we jungle that. Uh, there are best fit for a position, you know, the goal is to get the right talent in the right seat, and there are a lot of assessments out there to really look at, OK, well, what skills, abilities, knowledge do we have on our existing team? And we wanna sort of assess what um our incoming candidates are going to need to have and to make them a good fit for who they will be working with. And we think that is really important, uh, and there are some great assessments out there that can really help us to Uh, get a better picture of a candidate in that hiring process. So of course it's powerful to ask really good questions that dig into not only their experience, but how would they, you know, forward looking, how would they tackle certain projects, how would they think about, how would they strategize, how would they problem solve the challenges. In your company with your team, uh, and so it's really valuable to give those assessments and that gives you more areas to dig in the interview process because you wanna make sure that these candidates are a good culture fit and they're gonna be a good fit on your team with the management style that they're gonna have to work with, right? So you wanna make. Sure that that's a good fit and there could be red flags that come up in an assessment in the hiring process where you go, hmm, I'm not sure if they would be a good fit. So let's dig in and ask them more to discover more. And the, the deeper you dig with candidates in that interview process and really make sure that they're going to be a good fit before you hire them. The higher the chance of success, you know, you can never say 100% if someone's gonna be guaranteed a good fit. But with all the assessments out there and really good questions that are crafted in a hiring process guide, you can get, you know, pretty close to the mark, and we always say we think we can get you 95% guarantee that they're gonna be a great fit. That's terrific. That's terrific. Now, you know, one of the with with COVID-19 and everything that's been happening, a lot of people have their eye on again, is the person, we'll get back to that question of is the person I'm thinking of as my future leader going to be, are they going to fight, flight or freeze or in in a turmoil down the road, or are they going to show up as a leader? So are, so. I can understand if I'm replacing an administrator or a salesperson or a processor of some type, and I want them to fit certain characteristics. Are there good tests to determine whether someone could be a good potential leader of the company? Yes, there are. So, um, and again, it's, it's all about finding a really good assessment, and we do have a few that we really like. And that, it has to be an assessment that cannot be cheated because let's face it, in the hiring process, many candidates want to say what they think they need to say to get hired. Um, and some people might not lie, but some people might not really know themselves. And uh so it's really important to have an assessment that you can't cheat, and that really gives you a true picture of their capabilities. And there are some really great instruments out there that will actually show you flips in behavior. So they'll show you how a person will react, um, You know, every day, uh, under normal work stress and normal conditions. And then they'll also show you their flip of under pressure, under stress, when things are really tough, what will they slip to? Will they get defense. Will they get aggressive? You know, it helps us to get a good picture of how they'll react in all kinds of situations. So to your question earlier, will they freeze, fight, or will they really rise above and become that great leader and stand out and, and drive, you know, success forward? And we can assess those things, uh, with the right assessments given at the right time in the interview process. Great, great answer. Thank you so much for that. Now, you mentioned earlier about safeguarding companies from discrimination claims. Can you tell me more about that? Oh sure, I'd love to. So you know we talked earlier about having a consistent hiring process that's documented and all of the reasons that's important. But as far as discrimination claims, you know, when I speak with managers and business owners uh on a consistent basis, I ask them, you know, how do you interview, how do you assess candidates? And unfortunately, the answer that I usually get when we start to work with companies is they say, you know, I just want to get to know them. I wanna have a conversation with them. I wanna see if they're gonna, you know, click with our team, and if I like them. And, and I think that is an important piece. Um, but unfortunately, they don't have these templated interview questions prepared. And this is really dangerous because these business owners, they cannot ensure that they're asking the same questions of every candidate. And that's important from a legal standpoint. Candidates who did not get hired in the future could claim that they were discriminated against and bring a lawsuit against a company who has no set documented hiring process and that does not have consistent interview questions. So we want to ensure that we're asking largely the same questions of every candidate for a position, and they're going through the same steps of a hiring process. Uh, because, you know, when we're asking those same questions of every candidate. We also will know exactly where it is appropriate to put those assessments that we were speaking about in the process, and that will safeguard companies because they'll have evidence to present to safeguard themselves in the event of a discrimination claim. So it's so important these days to protect yourself in whatever way possible as a business owner, and it seems to me that if you have a certain, um, again we go back to that kind of profile of a person's abilities, uh, ability to work supervised runs, you know, fast start, we need somebody that's research driven, we need somebody that completes task, whatever. And you can point back to know what we were looking for was not a particular race or other orientation. What we're looking for is someone who fits this particular other profile of productivity that we've put together, and this person just did not fit that. It seems like that would be a tremendous help. And again, anybody can sue anybody for anything these days, but Anything you can have in your file it seems like that would be a tremendous help. Yeah, you definitely want to have that documented that you have asked the same questions of every candidate. They've all gone through the same process and so you have some evidence of why you made the decision you did and how that will match the job responsibilities. And of course part of that process that we haven't really spoken about today is really defining what those job responsibilities are in detail. And really having a clear picture of what success will look like in that role um and so we really think it's important to have a good description of that we call that a talent profile where we really dig down deep and. And help business owners, um, and leaders to really define the roles, because many times, if we have uh family members in a position, their roles are very convoluted and they are, you know, they're given all these extra tasks because there's sort of no one else um to do them, and why not? Um, but, you know, that's not often a great way to really define a role. Now you mentioned earlier about standard operating procedures, SOPs, and how important they are, especially when you're positioning your company for sale. Now I would liken that to like a franchise operation where, you know, McDonald's, for instance, has how, how long do you preheat the grease for the fries? How long do you put the fries in? how much do you salt them? You know, how long do they stay on the rack before they get thrown out? All of those things are detailed in great detail in a franchise operation for maybe a single location business. Sometimes we ask for the SOPs and it's it's in a dusty. Binder somewhere that somebody started putting together at one point and they haven't kept it up to date. What other ways do you partner with companies who are creating SOPs and strategy to increase their value before they get ready to go to sale? Well, another way that we partner and help companies is to train their hiring managers, um, you know, many times as employees are promoted internally to be a manager, many are told, you know, congratulations, you're a new manager now go hire and they've had no formal training and how to interview well, right? And we, we know what the result is often it's a bad hire. And as we know, a bad hire can be very expensive for a company. A recent US Department of Labor statistics tells us that a bad hire will cost a company approximately 30% of that employee's yearly salary. Ouch. So we like to partner with companies and train hiring managers how to interview well, so they can find a candidate who is a good fit. We teach them, you know, how to ask the right questions to really understand. Not only a candidate, you know, what they've done in the past, but what are their cognitive skills and abilities, their problem solving, how do they strategize, um, and how to work as a hiring team so they can objectively assess candidates, so they can guarantee that they're hiring someone that will be a good, you know, not only culture fit, but have all the communication skills that they need, the technical skills that they need to be a success in that role. Excellent, excellent information, and I know Shannon, that you and Suzy are both members of Provisors and so you're very tightly networked with a lot of great people, so you can always give recommendations to business owners who are asking for other advisers that might be able to help them. And if you are, um, if you could benefit by having a conversation with Jungo to talk about their hiring process, retention issues, or exit strategy in the area of talent, reach out to Shannon, shannon.peck. At Wejungo. Now I know how to say it, dot com. W E J U N G O W E J U N G O.com real simple. Visit their website, check things out, give her a call. It basically is only your business riding on all of this. So get your business ready in the people side of things. And again, Shannon, it's so great to have you on and really appreciate all of your knowledge that you're sharing with our listeners today. Thank you for having me, Bill. It was a pleasure. Thank you for listening to Exit Coach Radio. Time is precious and so are our pets, so time with our pets is extra precious. That's why we started Dutch. Dutch provides 24/7 access to licensed vets with unlimited virtual visits and follow ups for up to 5 pets. You can message a vet at any time and schedule a video visit the same day. Our vets can even prescribe medication for many ailments, and shipping is always free. With Dutch, you'll get more time with your pets and year-round peace of mind when it comes to their vet care.