The Great COVID Churn

[Music] hello everyone welcome to the 21 hats podcast I'm your host Lauren Feldman this week we discuss William Vander blum's prediction that 2021 will be the year of employee turnover his theory which he says he's already seeing in practice and Williams a recruiter is that pent up forces that were blocked this year by the pandemic will be Unleashed in 2021 especially as vaccines arrive and the economy improves his advice now is the time to make sure your best people feel appreciated or as he puts it better to keep a good employee even if it costs you more than you think it should than to have to call me plus we established definitively that there's a lot of confusion about the surprise tax liability that PPP loans may be creating and we discuss whether when the time comes businesses should require employees to get vaccinated even in Good Times owning and running a business can be a lonely Pursuit our hope is that these weekly conversations will if nothing else let owners know they are not alone in facing these challenges same thing with the 21 hats Morning Report which you can subscribe to at 21h hats. substack docomomo features Paul DS who is founder and CEO of Paul Down's cabinet makers which is based outside of Philadelphia and makes custom conference tables William Vander blumen who is CEO of Vander bluman Search Group a recruiting firm based in Houston that works with churches and other faith-based organizations and Laura ER who is CEO of Jimmy beans wool a digital version of a neighborhood yarn shop that is based in Reno Nevada and also owns a wholesale supplier mateline TSH in Fort Worth Texas the episode is titled the great Co churn welcome Paul William Laura I'd like to start uh with you William uh you run a recruiting business uh which gives you perspective not just on your own employees but but also on those of uh the client companies you work with I'm wondering if you've drawn any conclusions as to what this crazy year has done to relations between employers and employees and what that might mean going forward I do think that um this year and the pandemic in particular has accelerated a lot of things um that that might have taken a while to change and it's also decelerated some things that were going to change and didn't and a quick way of saying is I think you're going to see in fact I know because I'm already seeing it you're going to see 2021 as a year of I'm calling it The Great covid churn in other words it's a year of turnover and what are you what are you seeing that convince you of that you ever remember in elementary school there were the tests you take and then there was the teachers Edition that already had the answers in it uh we we kind of get the teachers addition on the job market because we're already seeing people tell us I'm ready to make a move and and it's December and who moves in December you move in January right that's when everybody's going to lose 10 pounds and balance their checkbook and but we're already seeing uh instead of January okay I'm ready to look around uh we're seeing in December some pretty major moves and it's it's made me stop and say what's really going on here and couple things I'll I'll try not to ramble but one um the pandemic put a put up a dam in the middle of what's a normal flow of turnover like like turnover just happens in the job market I mean there's there's healthy turnover there's unhealthy but there's always turnover except when there's a pandemic uh you know obviously some companies had to lay people off because of the pandemic so there was some churn there but a lot of good people that would have made a natural move because of career stage or a geographic need or a promotion or try a new thing a lot of the people that would have made those moves voluntarily hunkered down during the pandemic and what should be a natural flowing river of healthy transition uh it actually got damned up by the pandemic so that that's one thing and when now that uh vaccine's been approved in the UK and should be here in the US pretty soon and you know maybe it'll take till end of Q2 for everybody that wants a vaccine to uh to to receive one um by the end of Q2 I think the fear of moving will have gone away and that's just to say we've lived with a really uncertain year and a lot of people that would have made a move have said I don't need any more extra uncertainty in my life right now so I'm going to wait and make a move once this clears can I jump in like so where we live you know in Reno a lot of I don't know what the the statistic is but there's not a huge population of people that were actually born in Reno and are from Reno you know it's a lot of people from the east coast and um all around and people are moving home you know they've just decided they're like this is it you know I'm done Laura I Laura I totally agree with you I would say there are a myriad of reasons why this is going to be the year of turnover one of them is people who were waiting to start their own company people who were waiting to take a job at a competitor people who were they're like no I'm not doing that right now no more uncertainty now right after that there's a whole lot of other reasons like um we're doing several searches right now for repeat clients where we placed an individual and it's only been 3 four five years and the individual has moved and the client has rehired us to refill the spot which You' think why would you rehire us if the guy only lasted that long and they say well no no no no they they did a wonderful job but the pandemic has made them realize they want to live near their family of origin they want to go back home that's only going to accelerate and then you add in I've got uh some dear friends in Park City which has been a quiet little mountain town forever and now it is one of these bedroom communities outside of a major city and Salt Lake's growing like crazy well Park City's growing quicker because you you know as Lauren can relate Princeton and the Stamford con all the places and Betty Draper would have lived that everybody said was a dead real estate market well it's hopping everybody wants out of the so people are moving geographically and that's going to increase in 21 people are moving for family reasons that's going to increase in 21 people are moving because they would have moved in 20 and they put it off and that's going to increase in 21 the other thing that's happened is everyone's job has completely changed and a whole lot I mean I can't tell you the number of people who are like this isn't what I signed up for anymore and it is that's interesting Laura have you seen any of this are you experiencing any of this turnover well um I'm not directly in our business experiencing the turnover but from a geographic Viewpoint um we're seeing the exact same thing because you know Reno and then we're right by trucky you know we're on the edge of Lake Tahoe which is where Doug and I moved 20 years ago from the Bay Area and at the time it was 80% second homeowners you know we had a population a 14,000 Monday through Friday and then 100,000 on the weekends um and right now it's like 100,000 all the time and so it's similar to the park city thing you know and it's really drastically changing the community we can't keep up the quality of life is so different but from a turnover like employee standpoint I have a very different perspective than the employees do so I only see what I want to see you know in some ways so for me I'm like oh my God everybody's so happy you know they love their jobs they love their boss um I'm but I you know I checked in yesterday and I'm like how much turnover do you think we're going to see next year and we have one girl who we think you know she wants to start her own business just as William just said um we have another girl who is going to be moving out of you know back to her country of origin you know in the near future and this has really ignited that down in Texas though it's we're seeing kind of the opposite uh where people are really hunkered down I think partially because of the way that we treated people during this um I don't know that anybody's going to go anywhere you know they're seem very very happy and grateful and we think actually that this is going to be the year 2021 will be the year where we're one of the best places to work in the city in Fort Worth you're kind of taking the opposite perspective sort of things have been so difficult and uncertain that people are just happy to have a job and eager to make it work is that kind of what you're saying that's part of it yes and I think that I would like to think and again I know I'm you know speaking from an ivory Tower but I would like to think that our true colors came out you know as a employer and how we treated people um and that people are cognizant and realize that they work for a good company you know and they work for people that care about them and the grass is just not really that green that much Greener anywhere else does that make sense does make sense Paul how about you I recently sat and had the thought that this is the first year since 1988 when I have neither hired nor fired anybody and uh so I would vote for at least my experience stability but uh in another Enterprise that I'm associated with uh that's in the sort of peripheral to the restaurant industry we made an effort to hire it last spring because we realized a lot of good people were on the street so I think a lot of it has to do with what sector you're in that some are going to be churned through involuntarily more or less and and there's going to be a lot of moving around or people moving in and out of different Industries um I think that you could you could throw out any answer and there's going to be some sizable group of people who who it applies to 2021 is bound to be just as much of a surprise as 2020 is my my feeling is there going to be a difference in professionals and the behavior and the turnover of professionals versus like Warehouse hourly workers I think that professionals tend to be a little more transient you know and they'll move other places like William said out of their city of origin versus most of the hourly employees that we have this is where they're from they're never going anywhere this is where their family already is so they're just looking for a good job um and a good stable job to be at for a long time yeah I I think that's spot on Laura I think uh we are primarily within what you would call the professional industry so I I don't have nearly as much expertise as you guys on the nonprofessional but uh one and and we may be skewed in our view because we lean so heavily this way but sidebar just for a second the reason Billy Graham is Billy Graham other than a lot of people would say he was a great preacher or God blessed him or whatever Billy Graham's Billy Graham because of World War II I mean he really broke loose in 1949 and that's when this Mass evangelism movement happened and what why is that well people just face death pretty much square in the jaw in the eye and all all of a sudden they're like wow life's short wow I better think forward like past this world or whatever you want to say so like just from a forensic study of Billy Grant I think you're going to see after this pandemic not quite the same conversation but people saying life can end quickly this is more fragile than I thought I want to do something that matters and not just earn the buck or so you're going to see people changing jobs turnover is going to happen because people make values based decisions for their career that they might not have made if they didn't have to stare at pictures awful pictures of overloaded icus or lose a friend or family member or whatnot so I just think there I'll be quiet after this last one but there's also like the latter half of the Baby Boomers are yet to retire and a whole lot of them have said I thought I was going to do 10 more years but this is I am not I can't run at this pace and my company needs a different leader a digital native and let's find a parachute and get me out of here quick it's a reckoning total Reckoning right William if you see this coming uh either for your business or uh in those of your clients what do you do what do you suggest that's a great question um so get to know a good executive Search [Music] firm funny how that came in line one right there if you're me it's how quickly do we staff up because I do think we're going to be incredibly busy next year um but if you're not me three three pieces of advice um you know retaining employees it's almost like customers retaining a good employee is way less expensive than going and finding a new good employee so I would say make sure your compensation is right um we spent within our vertical of faith-based schools and churches we spent the last two years building compensation data and algorithms and and because that vertical is horrible about sharing information with each other we're we're already setting a record number of compensation studies that we're doing for clients uh because people are trying to make sure they're paying their people fairly we don't want to lose somebody over a couple thousand dollars so point point one of getting ready for turnover make sure you're paying fairly don't lose somebody over a small amount of money because because replacement costs are way more than a little bit more of a raise uh and and this is a year where it's really tempting to say well it's you don't know what's going to happen so we're not going to do raises or we're going to lower pay a little bit or I would say just the opposite it's going to be the year of turnover so spend whatever you can to make sure you're paying very competitively we gave raises this year it's a pandemic and so we feel like most of our profits need to go to our employees because they're the ones who are on the front lines so it's not even about retention it's about doing the right thing you know and it's about recognizing that half of our employees may have somebody might have a spouse at home that's not working right now and so what can we do to make their lives better I've got a slightly different perspective on that I think it's really important to not necessarily just hand out money to employees because the one thing once you do that you can't ever get it back and uh my particular industry is still quite uncertain it's just not clear to me who wants to buy big conference tables um and I think it's important that the company remain healthy I'm going to air on the side of the company survives because that's actually the best thing for the employees in the long term anyway they're already compensated well over market and they don't have any place to go to get more money in my industry and I do a lot of messaging with my people about we work for the company the company has to be healthy in order for it to take care of us and sometimes the company takes care of us and sometimes we take care of it and I see this as a period during which we take care of it nobody none of them have had their pay cut uh other than a brief period of unemployment that was mandated when we were shut down by the state and I took the PPP money and actually bonused people back in the spring to sort of top up for that period of unemployment and other than that everybody's been working full speed and they're going to get all the pay they would normally get so you did give them a bonus I mean so you did give something back to them I gave something but now we're you know now we're at the end of the year and I if I if I heard what William was saying it would be like now I would put my foot harder on the pedal and pay them more or bonus them more and try to buy loyalty and and uh I don't know if that's what he say I don't know well I'll withdraw that you're you're trying to ensure loyalty and you just did you already did because you did already give bonuses out to them Paul it sounds like you're not terribly concerned that you're going to experience the co churn next year is that correct no I'm not personally I mean I could be surprised I don't know I mean employees are what they are but uh um I don't see it as likely for me because because as I said We already pay over Market it's a good place to work uh and I don't see people having better Alternatives Paul I think you referred to a side hustle earlier in this conversation that you haven't mentioned to us before did you say was in the restaurant business what were you talking about so I have a son who's autistic who is now an adult and uh in the course of uh dealing with him I I uh entered into a relationship with a service provider who deals with dis intellectually disabled adults and they have an employment scheme they've been trying to establish as a nonprofit um which is a bakery operation to employ employ people um like my son and it also employs regular people as well because you can't have an entire business staff with autistic people uh and I'm on the board of the nonprofit that owns two bakeries and a coffee operation a bunch of little micro businesses and uh in the course of just you know running that um that's how I how I got into the restaurant world interesting we're going to have to talk more about that at some point if I thought about it I probably would have given a more coherent answer but that's how William I'm curious are there any signs of the churn you're talking about that aren't obvious uh when employees are thinking of leaving are things that owners should be looking for uh to be aware of this well I'd say in general you know Shore up your compensation and and that's not to buy loyalty as much as to make sure you're not going on the cheap in year that feels like you could and then you end up losing people over a couple thousand dollar second thing is you know whatever there's so many best places to work surveys out there but but if you're not regularly taking one of those that's a blind 360 of your company culture and and that there's so many good ones we have one that's totally free the cultur tool.com go and take it there probably 10,000 organizations that have taken it you can measure yourself against you're so good what's the URL again the culture tool.com okay is there an 800 number too exactly operator standing by no love it that's a really great idea brilliant I'm so glad you mention that we we were tired of the shortcomings some of the ones we were using so we just built our own and did it through a bunch of research but anyway um I would say Lauren you need to be doing a self check kind of like going to the doctor and make sure there's not a a problem in your culture because you know uh people will leave if the culture's bad and if the manager bad but then the third thing I'd say is just be ready for the thing you weren't ready for I I've already faced it isn't that easier said than done it's going to be a year of surprises I I my I had a a mentor a long time ago tell me and I I've kept it to this day uh William you need to keep a vomit list I'm like what are you talking about he said this is the you of of all your staff people you need to know right off the top of your head the two or three that if they came into your office at the end of the day and said hey if you got a minute I need to talk to you about something which we all know what that talk is it's the I'm leaving talk um the first thing you do is reach for the trash can because you're going to vomit like know who those people are and take care of them even if it's inequitably taking care of them take care of them in a way that would if they're really going to leave it's not cuz you're not taking care of them not appreciating them not paying them enough not creating a culture for them and and guard against those you will lose some people you didn't think you would lose this year Paul I bet you lose somebody yep from a personal standpoint I have never had to practice stoicism and like a stoic approach to life more than I have in the last nine months and I think what you're saying is for me you know that's kind of my way of getting through it but just it is what it is if I do the right thing I pay them well enough I make sure our culture is not toxic and we're in a good spot we're listening I can't help it if somebody wants to move back to Chicago you know and like you said you know wants to move somewhere else or has changed their priorities everybody's changed and so it just is what it is William have you tried to quantify the cost of turnover um You You You referred earlier to how it's more expensive to replace somebody than to keep somebody have you tried to put a number on that okay everyone listening to this podcast I am not paying Lauren to ask me these questions so because just like you have another URL for us I have blog articles and you can spell Vander bloomen however you want to spell it in Google it's the only reason we named our company that and so you'll get there and look for articles on turnover cost of turnover vanderlin and you'll see we've done really specific studies on what it means and it's scary what uh particularly if you get north of about $75,000 in salary you lose one of those and it it is is well into six figures the replacement costs you're not saying to pay the new person you're saying just to replace them it costs six figures that's right that's right and I mean you can figure it out yourself but like how many meetings are you g to sit through to hire the next person and how much do you get paid an hour so what's the soft cost on everybody involved what's the loss of momentum what's the loss of Revenue how long does it actually take take once you've got a new person to get them up and running where they're earning their keep it's so it's it's just it's like we we say it in sales all the time better to keep a happy customer happy than to have to go find a new one well better to keep a good employee even if it costs you more than you think you should than to have to call me hey can I can I jump in and play the role of Jay um I'm going to just ask the question whether you think it's not also likely that the stress on the business in the last year has revealed your weakest performers and that it may not be bosses cleaning house that that contributes to the churn that's good good impression of Jay I can try to imitate his particular delivery too if you want but I think that that's what he would be saying any thoughts about that um is is it possible any of you are sitting there thinking about the churn and you have certain employees in mind that you hope will move on no because we did that or for us we did that back in April you know I mean that gave us the opportunity at the beginning same Lauren and and we didn't just get rid of dead weight we all of our people were good but when we had to do our layoffs back in early April or late March I don't remember the date I compared notes with my coo and uh one other leader on our team like if we had to make this percentage of a cut who who do you think should go and all three of us had the same lists they independently drawn up like not one name different and it wasn't that we had it in for them or they were bad people but it was just like I know who we really cannot lose so the people that are shining are shining bright we've had a lot of internal promotions even since this summer as we've had a nice little surge of business um I I think I think this is a time where it's like hey if you're working your tail off it's going to show like never before so that's not the way would say it but uh yeah same thing I mean we're doing more with less people and it's unbelievable it's so impressive so the the one of you know sort of in the in the course of this conversation so far I'm picking out an assumption that the economy is going to continue to be pretty strong and do you guys really believe that I think it could really go either direction well I think if it goes the other direction you'll have turnover as well but that would be more like if I'm going to have turnover I think it's much more likely that I'm just going to have to downsize that you know I'm staffed for a 4 million a year and I know what 2 million a year looks like and I may just have to go there and uh as opposed to someone just leaving I mean that can always happen but that that to me is a different event I would say what I've learned studying the job market as a search person is that churn happens most in the highest highs and the lowest lows of the economy that's just historical fact so if it turns South churn happens then some some of it's forced some of it's unforced but uh I I don't think there's any way around it I'd love to find a way I don't know if I'm talking to Jay or Paul I'd love to find a way to tell you you're not going to lose anybody next year but I'd rather tell you to be ready for it okay thank you let's talk uh about the uh PPP issue let me see if I can articulate the issue correctly please correct me if I get this wrong but basically it's the IRS seems to be saying that if your PPP loan is Forgiven the loan then becomes essentially a grant which means it's taxable income uh and you if you can't deduct against that income which seems to be the case uh some owners are going to wake up and realize that they have to pay tax on more income than they were expecting do I have that right and are any of you concerned about this that sounds correct and I think in an earlier iteration of the podcast I couldn't put my my hand on why that might be a bad thing because personally we got the the money and I still have the money so if I if it got converted into a grant and then I had to pay some tax on it I'm still way ahead by a couple hundred grand but if you were if you were not able to operate and you paid out all of your uh PPP money to your employees uh you might not have any income or any cash to cover the tax bill that's coming and it could be quite bad and I think that people who were maybe in the restaurant industry or some of these other Industries where it was really impossible to either operate normally or to sort of recover from the hit um could be in in a very difficult position well let me ask William this cuz Willam I know you've tracked the PPP thing closer than anybody from the very beginning this shouldn't be a concern for someone in the restaurant industry should it if they are losing money I mean if you're losing money this is not going to be a problem for you right the the trick is going to be they're going to be some businesses that think they're going to lose money and then when the loan gets converted to a grant they end up with a profit that they have to pay taxes on that they weren't expecting do I have that right the short answer is Lauren I don't know and and I do I really don't know anybody that's studied the PPP more than our team particularly our coo and we've talked numerous accountants including our own that works only with family-owned small businesses that are in growth mode and so I mean like there's smart accountants that completely disagree on this on how it will play out um my current opinion is that uh for my we took p p money we spent it on salaries it will show up on our Ledger as it's exhausted and my accountant's current advice and I believe she's I'm I'm G to believe with her for now is that uh if it is taxable income that we will be able to deduct the payroll money that we spent that income on so it's just a wash you just can't double dip you can't not call it income and then deduct the payroll in another spot in your ledger so I I I think that sound that's the way you described it sounds wrong to me you you pay it out to the employees and no you're not allowed to deduct those expenses and so basically the forgiven amount just ends up as income without a compensating deduction from the paying to the employees now I was talking to my business woodworking business owners group and all those guys were in the same boat that I am which is they still had the the money because they were able to operate and I said well I'm thinking of just taking it as cash and paying the taxes on it and they're like oh no no no no no don't do that we're just going to buy equipment because then we get a Section 179 deduction that we can take this year that eats up the extra income so it's basically like getting a bunch of free equipment from the federal government that's how they're thinking about it so can I just interrupt I mean six months ago when we were talking about the PPP stuff I think Lauren would have said Paul aren't you g to go to jail I mean for just holding on to that money are you worried about getting in trouble not at all I mean first of all if you look at my books you you you can you I mean money is fungible which money is it that I have right now is it the money that I made by operating profitably over the course of the summer or is it the money that that uh that the government gave me they gave me money admitted it like on a podcast on a public I'm not worried about it it's it's not there was not all I did was get money pay my employees operate normally I haven't done anything that that's wrong like where's the fraud what what was it I think Laura is raising a concern that some expressed early on that if you if a business applied for the the money for the loan they had to need it and if they didn't need it um that could be cause for uh that could be a problem and I think that's what she's referring to the fact that you haven't spent the money suggest oh I'm I'm not worried about that at all first of all they asked me that question on April 15th or whatever it was where I was sitting in my office by myself and all of our customers were shut down and if you said to anybody then or even now is a guy selling huge conference tables likely to be in a good position a year from now the answer is no and it's still no you know like all we we we do business with all kinds of people and uh a significant amount of my business comes from Midtown New York and there's nobody there right now you know like I'm still just as concerned about the future as I was in April and if if that was the question am I concerned about the future am I worried about what's going on yeah I'll I'll I'll stand up in a court of law and swear to God that I I'm not sure that not going to need that money and things have changed over time too I think that is receded as an issue as the government has changed the rules uh Laura I'm curious about you are you concerned uh about the uh deductibility issue and uh a possible unexpected tax bill um no because I learned my lesson from being so concerned that I was going to go to jail you know in our old podcast that I'm not going to spend time being anxious about it until the rules actually come through and until we find out I just can't do it again you know there was this whole thing has been so emotionally exhausting with the uncertainty of the rules and how's it going to play out so you're not even thinking about you're just waiting until you know something definitive yeah it's just is what it is again it is what it is there's nothing I can do about it and I'm not going to waste time trying to figure it out because we don't know you know as William I mean if William doesn't know nobody knows you know so once he tells me what the deal is then we'll know we're keeping our powder dry in case we have to pay a tax bill but my current hope and understanding is if you received the money and you spent the money and it's you know within a p&l then the current understanding that I'm adopting is you should be fine but I'm also keeping money set aside in case I'm wrong so none of us are CPAs and uh I think we've kind of gotten three different versions of three different approaches to dealing with this and I think that's makes the point that we should make which is uh be careful uh anybody thinking about this should not assume that they know everything they need to know let's move on to another happy topic I'm curious has anybody gotten their insurance bill health insurance bill for next year yet it's amazing in what way uh well I you know our benefits guys it's just across the board he manages probably 500 small businesses and he said across the board rates are coming back lower insurance companies are freaking out that people are going to cut benefits so they're cutting costs everywhere they can to try and get things down to keep people from leaving benefits plans when you might have expected that there with a pandemic underway rates would Skyrocket I'll add a data point to that I mean in pen all these things are different state to state cuz states have different Insurance regiments but um under Obamacare in general if a insurance plan doesn't spend out all the money that they collected in premiums the previous year they're supposed to give a refund and a lot of those plans did not spend out because people stopped doing voluntary medical transactions so we actually got a refund from our insurer back in May and they're like holy smokes you know people just sto going to the doctor and so we've collected all this money and premiums we got to give it back um and so that could be part of it that all of those plans are sitting on big pools of cash and they have to go back to a state insurance regulator every year and justify their rates and so they're going to have a hard time going and saying we need to raise our rates oh but you didn't spend all the money you had last year so we saw a very minor increase in two of the three plans that we offer and a decrease in the bronze level plan and it's a wash more or less but that's that's better than it's been over the last 10 years William that kind of suggests that the same thing that you see happening with employment next year could happen with medical procedures there could be pent up demand uh for all kinds of things that people weren't going to the doctor for this year fascinating yep Laura have you got in your plan for next year I haven't looked at it but this was the very first year that we had ever offered health insurance so I don't have a lot to kind of go to reference so I don't know I know our home insurance has been quite an issue and quite a problem um but and we're having trouble getting our house insured but that was that because you're in fire country because there was a fire a hundred yards from our house yeah yeah that's probably why yeah yeah it might have something to do with it yeah you thank you so don't have a lot to say on the health insurance stuff it'll be this is a whole new experience for us actually I just have a quick question for William do you know approximately how much you pay for to ensure your people not anymore I used to and now my CEO manages all that I just know if we have a big increase or not it's the second biggest bill I pay every year and yeah it's it's huge now we don't fully underwrite insurance we we subsidize the premium but not fully right I mean even taking into account I do the same thing share cost of my employees but it's still the second most expensive thing we buy as a company even like more expensive than cost of goods yeah like from a single thing yeah um yeah I mean I I've got cogs and that's a bunch of stuff but uh okay in terms of like writing checks to one company for one thing ah yeah yeah great point I mean I yeah ours is and I don't think people realize that I know that people don't realize I mean it's for us I mean six figures for sure you know well beyond six figures and you just started doing that last year we just started doing it this year yeah 2020 and has that worked out well for you are you happy with the way it went um yeah yeah I mean more people took advantage of it than we thought we going to take advantage of it so it makes me happy to know that people have insurance I'll I'll tell you a couple of data points on some of my hourly workers I take the cost of covering them and their families and divide it by the number of hours worked so that they have some some sense of what is Insurance in dollars per hour and uh it ranges from $4 to $10 an hour in total cost and oh that's a great way to do it that's a great way to like drive it home and make it understandable for because you got someone who's making 18 bucks an hour and we're picking up the insurance bill it's like oh by the way you're actually getting paid $28 an hour just do you do you do 401K as well uh we have what's called a simple plan which is a version of that and uh that's available for everybody and about half of them take advantage of it okay but you don't throw anything in there it's not one where you we throw in up to 3% of their wages and they still won't sign up then I'm like well okay I offered you free money you didn't take it then I'm done with that so but the the health insurance is just super expensive and I think a lot of people don't realize how expensive it is I'll do my Jay impersonation he likes to point out that the minimum wage discussion often ignores health insurance and there's a huge difference between a company that's paying minimum wage and no health insurance and one that's paying uh something in that Arena plus health insurance yeah absolutely and then speaking of the vomit conversations one of my one of my very best workers uh as a guy who doesn't have great English came into my office in August and I got to speak to you and I'm like oh my God you're not leaving because we really rely on this guy and the what he told me was that his 13-year-old daughter had just been diagnosed with stage four esophagal cancer and that what he was asking me was would it be okay if he took some hours off here and there uh because because his wife had had to quit her job and uh he needed to watch his other daughter and and I was like well sure uh but you know beyond that what can we do to help and he didn't have the English to really answer that question but at thinking about it what I did was offer to pick up all of his deductibles and any bills he had and uh because this guy is not prepared to deal with the American Medical system and uh so uh going through the last few months he's brought me a few bills but I was worried that they were getting lost in the mail or like you never know what an insurance company will do so I finally uh persuaded him to give me access to an account we set up with the insurer so we could actually see all the bills the the insurer does not make this easy uh you have to download a spreadsheet and the spreadsheet is in a bad format so you can't actually sum all the transactions and a lot of things had to happen before I could see the bills but his daughter's already racked up more than half million dollars in bills just since August and he personally would have been on the hook for more than 9,000 bucks so far and then that clock is going to reset on January 1st as the new plan year comes in and you know like how does an ordinary person deal with this uh I'm spending a fair amount of time and Company resources in my own personal resources to make sure this guy doesn't end up bankrupted by this and that's just you know I don't even know what the moral of the story is but uh it's just a sickening situation for anybody who actually has a need for medical care well I think the moral of the story to me Paul is that 30 minutes ago you said I'm not giving anybody raises and I'm not giving anybody bonuses and blah blah blah blah blah but then you've just told us like five stories of all these things that you do do to make your business one of the best places to work well that's what I'm saying sometimes you know you take care of the company and then the company can take care of you and everybody in the company is aware of this gentleman situation and they all know that they're working to help him in this situation that's so cool and if it happened to them you know hopefully we'd have the resources on hand to help them too and that's why the company has to be healthy and that's why you don't just hand out money to employees because as I said once it's there you can't get it back I have one quick question for all of you we had an item in today's Morning Report uh which talked about business owners starting to think about whether they will require employees to be vaccinated once vaccines are available quickly have any of you guys thought about this boy I know I saw that and I immediately told Doug I'm like look at this Lauren says that we might be able to require people to like get the vaccines um that's fascinating I can easily see both sides of the argument and uh I think that you might make the case that we require employees to do any number of things to be safe in the workplace and to not endanger uh themselves or their their fellow workers including all kinds of safety equipment and all kinds of safety procedures and um so I don't think that conceptually it's different from uh requiring people to wear uh breathing apparatus when they're working in a in a in a difficult situation but you're going to run up against a a group of people who just do not want to do anything like that and uh see that as an imposition and I don't know how it'll do you anticipate that at your place I'm not sure I would require it um hey there's yeah we're not public facing and uh I think that I would probably put it out to my people as a discussion like what do you think we should do here and in case there's somebody who strongly objects then we would at least know who it is William have you thought about it yeah a little bit I appreciate you putting it in the morning report which I read every single day thank you William every every morning you mean right it's like first thought so anyway I you know Lauren I think it's going to be a different answer for everybody I live in Houston Texas so the city of Houston give you a sense of our spirit here there is no zoning allowed in Houston people don't know that nationally like it's not legal and it's so Texan it's like it's my dirt and I'll damn well do what I want with it right you can build a skyscraper wherever you want it's why the if you fly over Houston say oh there's the skyline no there's the sky no there's the so trying to force Texans to do anything is is pretty tough and you you got to choose your battles carefully I I doubt very seriously I'll have to force that I think our people which is 72% Millennials they're going to line up for it what about your um your church clients um it could be an issue there do you see them requiring it you know I haven't uh seen it but your article was preent and we're going to send it out to people because we send thought hey have you considered this because are you really going to take your kid to a church where they're not requiring their people to get vaccinated etc etc etc Laura have you thought about it I mean I'm sure we're not going to require it I mean we just won't like William said I mean we're in Nevada and it's a little bit of a wild west and Texas yes and we're in Fort Worth so we probably won't and help me understand this if we have one or two people who don't do it then aren't they the only ones that are in danger anymore like so if they come in and they've got it aren't we all vaccinated so we're fine probably yeah that sounds right I mean we have a couple we've got a couple like hippie antivaxers um that probably won't do it but you know what fine then if you want to get it go for it the rest of us will be fine I think Paul's point about the public facing issue is important there if it's just your group that's one thing if it's in a restaurant or somewhere where where people are coming in it makes a difference yeah really great Point um that's a really really good one so yeah on the public facing side then yeah we probably we'll have to have a strong conversation I hadn't really thought about it from that S I bet I could get most of my people to do it because if we did then we'd be able to get rid of the masks and everybody hates those you know that's a great way to sell it isn't it yeah super smart yeah really really really good one I like that all right guys my thanks to Paul DS William Vander blumen and Laura Xander as always thank you for sharing thanks for listening everybody this episode was produced by Jess thubron founder of blank word Productions remember we started the 21 hats podcast to help business owners feel a little less isolated to let them know they aren't the only ones fighting these battles if you got something out of this conversation please help us reach more people tell a friend subscribe and review us wherever you get your podcasts follow us on Twitter at 21h hats and let me know if you have a question or a comment or a topic you'd like us to cover my email address is LF Feldman 21h hats.com see you next time [Music]