Tips to Successfully Onboard Employees and Retain a Strong Team

Episode 180: Setting your new hire up for success in the beginning is essential to keeping and retaining your team. In this rewind from 2022, Vonda and Lori share a check list that you'll find helpful in the onboarding process as well as retaining your current team ~  and can implement right away!

Sponsored by:
Flower Clique
Flower Clique Prep School
Real Life Retail Florist

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:04

So number one is the only truly sustainable competitive advantage that a business owner has is the culture of your shop.

SPEAKER_00 0:21

Welcome to the Business and Pleasure of Flowers.

SPEAKER_01 0:23

We're your hosts, Vonda LaFever and Lori Wilson, and we believe that business and fun are a perfect combination. Kind of like us, Vonda.

SPEAKER_00 0:37

Hey, Miss Lori.

SPEAKER_02 0:39

How are you doing, Vonda Su LaFever?

SPEAKER_00 0:42

I'm doing really great. How are you doing?

SPEAKER_02 0:45

I'm doing well. And I know we aren't having a book talk today, but I did just finish a book that we are going to have a what are we? What am I going to call these book talks? A um book pod, pod book talk, pod book talk. I don't know. I'm going to come up with something, but I just finished our friend Nicole Price's newest book, Spark the Heart. Yeah, what did you think? It was so good. Is Spark the Heart Engineering Empathy in your organization? Um, I finished it and had a it was supposed to be a one-hour, it ended up being a two-hour Zoom book club with Nicole and a whole group of us the other night that was so great, so inspiring, so funny, because you know, we all do go down rabbit holes. Um, but it was really good. And I do want to, I told her, I was like, listen, we're gonna have to have you back sometime to summarize it because I do have questions. Um, it's a great book. I highly encourage anyone. She gives a lot of just her personal story, so she sucks you in at the beginning with stories of her life. So, you know, I was like, you had me, I will tell you, I was crying the very first chapter, and and in in in good ways, but um, like you you will cry too. You will identify with some things at the beginning, um, that has nothing to do with works, just you will like um, but the last half of the book is as you can tell, you can see um as my all my highlighted strategy after strategy after strategy about workplace, um, how to um teach empathy and implement different types of empathy strategies within your industry, no matter how big a company or small. So it's fascinating, fascinating stuff. Um, and she debunks a lot of myths about uh empathy. Number one being you don't have to be born with it, you can learn. So, what I wanted to tell you today, the little tiny nugget that goes along with what we talked about last week about respect. For those of you that are listening, if you listened to last week's, we were talking about the importance of respect. How do you get it? Is it earned? Is it demanded? All of this stuff. She has a section in here that called dignity versus respect.

SPEAKER_00 3:28

Ooh.

SPEAKER_02 3:29

And I had never really thought of the difference between the two. And she prefaces this with an incredible story, and I don't want to go into too much detail, but she was put into a situation, it was an intentional situation where she was um dropped off at a beach somewhere in California for four hours with no phone, no nothing, no money, no nothing. And she was not allowed to talk. Oh, um, and she had to spend four hours there by herself, and she shares what happened during that time. This beautiful, amazing story. It changed her life. A homeless person encountered her and started sharing. Anyway, I don't want to give away too much.

SPEAKER_00 4:16

Don't give it away.

SPEAKER_02 4:17

Yeah, I'm not, but but here's the the thing dignity comes from the Latin word dignitas, which means to be worthy, as in all people have the right to be recognized for their humanity and to be treated ethically. Dignity is given, you just have it, no one can take it away. Every single person on this planet, everyone has dignity. Respect is from the Latin word respectus, meaning to look back at, as in showing admiration for someone because of their abilities, qualities, or achievements. You are respected by others for what you have achieved or experienced or how you've handled yourself, how people have seen you. Anyway, that was that was like a little aha moment for me in how I see people, every single person. It's such a good reminder, even if I'm mad at my husband, just for the littlest thing, going, you know what? He still has dignity.

SPEAKER_00 5:33

He does, right?

SPEAKER_02 5:34

I don't need to respect what he believes right here at this moment, but he's I still owe him dignity. He still has dignity. Anyway, I thought that was fascinating.

SPEAKER_00 5:45

Wow. Mm-hmm. Well, so I'm gonna order the book just because I've talked about it. You and I talked about that, and then we will talk about this maybe with Nicole. Yes, yes, right.

SPEAKER_02 5:56

She talked about seven different empathy strategies. She was not born with empathy, she's a chemical engineer. It took her eight years to learn empathy. So her whole point of the book is if I can do it, anyone can do it. So that's I'm not just trying to plug her. This book is a game changer.

SPEAKER_00 6:20

Wow, I love it.

SPEAKER_02 6:21

I think for a lot of people.

SPEAKER_00 6:22

So, anyway, well, and kind of goes into we're talking about respect and dignity. And today we're gonna just do a replay of episode 134, which was about a year ago, and how to fix your employees onboarding and retain a strong team. Because you posted something in our Facebook group that said, What are you doing this summer? And somebody said, What?

SPEAKER_02 6:46

Yes, someone was like, I'm trying to figure out how to get employees, how to keep employees. I mean, the same thing over and over. Other people were like trying to develop policies, procedures, um, a lot of you know, a lot of interesting things. So this is the one that made me think, you know what, we have a good podcast that we did. And I went back and listened to it as you did too. And we're like, well, we really wouldn't change much. And I was looking at the notes, and I was like, gosh, it really is the same kind of concept. We talk about, I don't know, six or eight different onboarding things, one of which main thing, understanding, make sure your employees understand what their actual job is, what your vision of the job is.

SPEAKER_00 7:34

Exactly. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 7:35

You know, don't hire them without letting them know here's my expectations. That's what that entails.

SPEAKER_00 7:40

And that's kind of the thing you should be doing this summer, right? If you aren't doing the hiring right now, you need to determine what those expectations are before you fill the position. So why don't we just listen and uh everybody enjoy?

SPEAKER_02 7:53

Yep. This article is by a man named Ted Bauer, and it's it was short, but it sparked a lot of truth for me and you and what we deal with every day. So I'm hoping um this will help. And it's all about how to fix your onboarding. So I think a lot of people, and and and many times this is true. We've been hearing over the last two years, people just don't want to work, they don't want to work, they don't want to work, and there is some truth to that. I I get it, but there's also truth to they just don't want to work at your place, you know.

SPEAKER_00 8:36

Yeah, and we did cover that a little bit. Yeah, we did when we asked that the internal, external, you know, are you saying, yes, right?

SPEAKER_02 8:44

So this just takes it another step deeper. I think if whoever's listening, if this is something you're struggling with, I'm hoping by the end of this little half hour, you'll be able to walk away with like some some takeaways or some, oh, I'm gonna try changing just that one thing and see what happens. So, anyway, talked a lot about how it's expensive to hire, right? Because you hire, you start training, and then four days later they don't show up. Um, or what is happening, they come in for their second interview, and they never come back when it's time to start the training. So this article is suggesting that we need to make three assumptions about onboarding. Number one, so number one is the only truly sustainable competitive advantage that a business owner has is the culture of your shop. So true, so true, because in reality, whoever's working for you, it's not like they're gonna be a you know $500,000 a year salaried employee. So that's not you can't offer that, right?

SPEAKER_00 10:12

You can offer a fair wage, you can offer a fair, right?

SPEAKER_02 10:15

But there's there's got to be a lot more to it than just because quite frankly, again, as one shop owner told me, they could go work at Taco Bell for that same amount of money or more for two dollars more. So the only thing you have, it let me back up a minute. A lot of us think, or a lot of business owners think, well, I am the best shop in town, I have the best reputation, we have the freshest flowers, we have you know, we have all of this, which is great. But think of that which is your product, it's right, it's the product. Yes, most people aren't gonna come work for you because you have the prettiest product. True, they're really not. I mean, in in this industry, maybe a designer, right?

SPEAKER_00 11:04

Maybe a designer designer would want to be in um a real recognized shop. There's there's something to that, right? Especially when you're getting to learn more and to grow more. You want to be in a reputable shop, right?

SPEAKER_02 11:19

Right. So that that is going to be important, but you can't discount does everybody get along? Are they fun? Are they backstabbing? Whatever. So the first assumption your competitive advantage is the culture of your business of your shop. Okay. The second assumption that we need to make is poor fit with the culture is the number one fail of a new hire by just, and we've known this for decades, right? Right. It's so important that when we go into your onboarding steps, you put these questions in place to make sure they are going to be a good fit. Because if not, you're just gonna be, it's a waste of your time. Number three is effective onboarding is the way you reduce the risk of bad hires, and it's also the way you assimilate them into your culture. Yeah, that makes sense, right? Right, but this one, these three for some reason are incredibly hard for a business owner to understand. Um, culture for somebody that let's say you've owned your business for you and your husband own it, I don't know, for 30 years, and this is a new concept, it's gonna be hard to grasp. You're because you also you gotta own it, you gotta take a little ownership in why people keep leaving, right?

SPEAKER_00 12:51

And that's the hardest part, right? It's like, oh, can't be me, right? I have to look internally and say, right, what am I doing? Or also sometimes it might not be you, it might be your other employees, and they're very clickish and they're not going to let someone else in. Right, right. So that look is not inclusive, right?

SPEAKER_02 13:09

So when you're focusing on your products, your service, your margin, you know, oh, we have 300 deliveries a day, or you know, all of these things, that's great. But what you really need to be focusing on are people, ideas, and listening to those ideas, listening to those ideas, staff, and training at a pace that's comfortable to them.

SPEAKER_00 13:39

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I kind of went down that rabbit hole, right? Because when it was like, you know, the onboarding process is important, yeah, and because of the culture, but oftentimes we just throw them in there, right? It's just like this is what you're gonna do, and you know, you're gonna come in, you're gonna clock in. When you get done that, maybe you need to do the vacuuming, or else you're the one that has to process the flowers and then put them in the cooler. And then if the phone rings, be sure you're gonna answer the phone. And you know, here's your stack of orders. And besides doing these stack of orders, always continually see what else coming in and what's going on the next day, and then at the end of the day, you need to do this and do this. And now, by by now, I'm like, I don't want to do this her, but uh we have to break them in slowly. Right, it's like, you know, today let's concentrate on this, and then tomorrow, this, and then if you're trying to bring them into the culture of the shop, you want a really key employee, like you mentioned before, somebody who can mentor them that can take them through those steps and be the one that they're gonna model.

SPEAKER_02 14:44

One thing this article talks about when you're hiring them, go over expect, you know, by the end of the first week, we hope that you can achieve this, this, and this. But you know who does this really well is um fry tags in Austin. When I was on that panel with the owner, he talked and I was like, wow, that's so smart because you're gonna overwhelm them. Yes, you're gonna overwhelm them. So do these little markers, like by the end of the first week, let's have and and then follow back up, right? If if you have a mentor that's helping them because you're not, you still need to come in and have that check-in with them and the mentor going, hey, how are we doing? Do we need a little extra time? I mean, and by that point, do you have any questions? Right. You have questions, concerns, comments, criticism, whatever, right? And by that time, you will know, you know what, they really are fitting in well. They're a little slow in figuring things out, but that's okay. I can you're gonna be able to figure that part out too, right?

SPEAKER_00 15:57

Or they're not fitting in. Sometimes when you're in the process of on onboarding and you're turning it over to somebody else, and you get really busy and you can't get back to them, and then they're wondering what's going on, and you're like, oh shoot, I gotta get back over to here, and I've got to see how they're doing, and it really gets us kind of into what I think it's referring to as the busy track.

SPEAKER_02 16:20

Yeah, well, it it absolutely does in our actions, it shows we're busy. The other thing, Bonda, and I've told you this before, it's one of my pet peeves, and I have a person very, very close to me that does this, and she's related to me, so she knows she does it, but every conversation, I'm so busy. Oh, I'm just busy, and just so much so sometimes you don't even want to talk to them anymore. But I'm just using as an example, it's it's a habit that a lot of people have. We're all guilty of it every once in a while. But when you're onboarding a new hire, be very careful of your words. If you go to them and go, I'm super busy, I can't, you know, but so and so is gonna help you. You just that's really not a good introduction.

SPEAKER_00 17:21

No, you know, because then they think that you're not approachable.

SPEAKER_02 17:26

Well, you're not approachable, and it also says, You don't really value me, you don't even know me yet. I was wanting to, you know, you need to take a little time and get to know them. Um, so that's why I was saying it's a good if you do have someone else there that can be that mentor for the day-to-day, but have those end-of-the-week markers, um, maybe um every couple days. Hey, how are you doing? Do you have any questions? You know, even if you take them into, you know, aside, don't always do it in front because you want them to know that you're approachable.

SPEAKER_00 18:00

Makes so much sense because otherwise they're just like she hired me and she's gone, right?

SPEAKER_02 18:05

Right. So in this article, it says, Do you know how awful it is to start a new job and on day two already have your manager barely paying attention to you and you're sitting there going, I said no to job B for this. You know, so again, we don't mean to be busy, we don't mean to do this, but perception is is everything.

SPEAKER_00 18:31

And I think on hiring for somebody in the floral industry, the floral shop, it makes a difference if you've worked in a flower shop before or not, right? So if that employee's already worked in shop, yes, they know a little bit more. The onboarding is different. We have so many new people who want to enter our industry, and thank God for that, that we really have to be careful how we're mentoring them and how we are really using this onboarding process to make it a really good experience for them.

SPEAKER_02 19:02

You know, it's uh it's always an interesting debate in our members only group about people, shop owners that they prefer experienced or a lot of them prefer no, especially when it comes to your sales team. Um, you know, designer, of course, you want some, but they're like a lot of them come in with bad habits, and they're so it's so much harder to change than it is if they just know nothing.

SPEAKER_00 19:33

Well, if they're bringing in a new person for sales, right? They could put them in sales prep school, which is your prep school, set them in there and learn how to sell without having those bad habits, right? Oh right, you know, when they're selling shoes, which is so different from selling flowers, exactly, and that's the key is giving them good habits to start with. So I understand why our members are like, boy, I'd just rather have somebody, you know, I want to be real honest about sales prep school.

SPEAKER_02 20:04

I do I say this to every person I meet with that purchases it. Do not sit them in front of this computer the first day and have them go through everything and assume they're trained. No one can do that, that's impossible. So, one of the uh ways that we encourage people is to discuss the goals you want them to achieve by the end of the week and don't have more than two or three. I mean, you know, they need to be, especially that first week, they need to be easily attainable goals because you want them to feel good about look, hey, I did it, I got all those done.

SPEAKER_00 20:49

And you also want them to be able to be working into the culture of your business, and if you have them just watching something and studying and doing this, they're really not getting the feel of what your business is about, what the culture of your shop and you as the owner and the other employees and the delivery driver, you know, well, right, and again, not to keep talking about our prep school, which I do love, but one really cool thing that are that would be easy for a shop to do with our flower design prep, uh again, along with sales prep, put them in those positions of oh, you this is how you process flowers.

SPEAKER_02 21:34

The other part of that is they might love it, and all of a sudden something sparked and they're like, Oh my gosh, I do love this, or I love delivering, or I, you know, put them in with all of your rest of your staff too.

SPEAKER_00 21:52

The sooner the better. Right, right, because then they feel like they're a part of that and they don't want to leave, they don't want to leave it.

SPEAKER_02 22:00

And and during these times, the other thing they say is asking them the question, like let's say they did something new today, let's wash buckets. Did you like it? You can be honest, be totally honest, you know, because maybe they did, or they're like, no, I don't, I don't. Okay. So you know in your mind, only put them there when needed, right? Or if that's what you hired them. So put them in all of these little pockets of your business to see what inspiration sparks.

SPEAKER_00 22:34

Yeah, you might have hired them for sales, which is what you need them for, but they're not on the phone, especially, you know, in your slower times. What is it that they have said, oh, you know what? I really didn't mind doing that. You know, or I I really did like processing flowers because I could see all the new varieties and the colors, and yep, you know. So, yeah, paying attention.

SPEAKER_02 22:54

Paying attention and another, another really important step in that hiring conversation after you've hired them. And I again, I learned so much when I was deep diving into these things, especially if they never worked in a flower shop, they need to know how does this company make money? What is important? And what I mean by that is the difference between me going through Taco Bell drive-thru, they're just can I take your order? Yeah, okay, pull up to the window, right? If they're coming from that type of job, which there's nothing wrong with that job, but the higher price point you sell when you're offering things, the better. That's how the company makes money.

SPEAKER_00 23:43

It's very important. It's how the company makes money and how the customer is more satisfied. You have to put those two together. You know, it's not all about us making the money. It's no we know that the customer is more satisfied if they purchase a nicer product. Right, right. And the other thing is that you for employees, you know, you're getting them onboarded, but knowing that they're there's education for them continually. Yeah, they always should be able to learn. Okay, and a lot of people, it's like, this is what you're doing, this is it. Uh, no, here at our company, the culture is continuing education. We like you to know what's going on in the industry. It's not this little bubble we're in, and that's it.

SPEAKER_02 24:26

No, and there's so much, there's everything from free YouTube or great videos to you know paid go and learn. I think um I've talked to a handful this last month of shop owners who they're not going, but they're sending their employees to the next gen summit um event for SAF. And I love that. And I think if I was a part-time employee at a flower shop and my boss valued me enough to want me to go, I would never want to leave that place. I would feel like, wow, because they're investing that money, and that means they believe in me. Exactly. I mean, that's the key. That's very cool. Um, the last thing, there's so many of them, Vonda, but uh the the other thing I want them to really think about is again, this onboarding process should not be done in two to three days. I know a lot of people, that's your goal because you need employees, right? But it's this vicious cycle, you're cramming them full of expectation and training, and they're overwhelmed and they're like, I can't do this, I don't want to do it.

SPEAKER_00 25:47

And this time of year, and until you get to crunch time before a holiday, you have the time to really mentor them, take the time to have them learn it correctly because it's to your advantage if you can really get them to understand not only how to do it, but why they do it. Yeah, it's the hows and the whys on that onboarding that really do make a difference and make people really embrace what you're asking them to do.

SPEAKER_02 26:12

I think back to something Julie Poulter said to me when I was your scapegoat for the oral design school. But back when you know you guys were showing me different ways to do something as simple as bow tying, and she said to me, which by the way, she's the best teacher, she's so kind, not that you're not, but she's just so encouraging. She's very patient. But she said, um, when after the video was done, and she said, Listen, if you were in my shop, I would have you go in the back and spend the rest of the day making bows and putting them up on a corkboard. That's how you learn. So don't think the because I was like, I'm never gonna remember this because I don't have ribbon at home, I don't work in a shop. But she said it takes that amount of practice to feel for them to feel confident. Right, right, and I just loved that, and I think that's really in everything you do when you're on board, you show them, you apply on you show them the example, and then have them do it 20 times before until they feel good about it.

SPEAKER_00 27:34

I mean, that's even with processing flowers because you want to make sure that's done correctly, and it's the repetition. It's like, you know, and that's easy to repeat, right? Because you get flowers in every day or every other day, right? Right, having them do things like that, right? Or again, like you're saying, answering the phone. Well, practice, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:54

If they're still not comfortable answering the phone, have them be dialoguing. I mean, we've said that a hundred times, practice, you know, it can be as awkward and silly as you want. Um, so the last few tips define who your employee is. Again, your avatar, right? We talk about the who do you want it to be. Define why they're valuable, share with them. Hey, you've got a great voice, you are really peppy and energetic, you're gonna be great on the front part of our store answering the phone. This, you are gonna be so valuable. Define how you're gonna interact with me. So if I'm your owner, I'm gonna say I'm always here if you need me, but Vonda, my uh right-hand woman, is gonna mentor you around. That doesn't mean you can't come to me. That just means she's gonna be out here. I'm gonna be kind of all over the place. But if you need anything, so define that relationship and define how long, if you're processing flowers, you're gonna say, for this whole week, or whatever you decide, we're gonna put you back in processing flowers because it's a very important job. We really we think you can, we know you can do it, but you you know, or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 29:13

And then I'm gonna check in with you at the end of the week and see. Yeah, so you're yeah, you let them know when you're checking.

SPEAKER_02 29:20

Right. So I think the caveat to that is kind of common sense. If you're the mentor or the if you're in day two, let's pretend it's me processing flowers, and day two, you know, this isn't this is not probably something she's gonna shine better elsewhere, we would say it's okay to finish out the end of that day, and and then the next day go, you know what, we're gonna have you somewhere anyway. It's okay to transition it if you see either they're not doing it well, or if you see they seem really frustrated, right?

SPEAKER_00 30:07

Watch those signs, and as long as you didn't hire them for that specific job. That's what I was gonna say.

SPEAKER_02 30:13

That's like if you hired me as the designer, you would quickly realize, well, that is just silly.

SPEAKER_00 30:19

So that was not a good idea because she's chatting with everybody, and so you might as well put her out in the front room to wait on those customers because she really seems to know what she's doing. Right, right.

SPEAKER_02 30:27

So, you know, that's really I mean, I hope we're providing some tips and ideas. The bottom line is if if you could just walk away with one thing, slow it down. Again, it's why flowershop owners are so amazing. They can multitask, they can get quick turnaround time, they get a call from a funeral home. Oh my gosh, we forgot to order a casket spray, it starts in 30 minutes, boom. I mean, it's unbelievable how they are. But to a new employee who isn't used to that, it can be overwhelming. And they're like, you know what, I can't do this. And and they don't come to you. That's the thing. They're not going to come to you and go, I feel like I can't do this. They just stop showing up.

SPEAKER_00 31:13

Yeah. So watch the body language. You know, whether the eyes are rolling or whether they're like watching you go back and forth really fast. Um, just watch for those because you want to create that culture that they want to stay there and be part of you.

SPEAKER_02 31:30

Yep, exactly. Thank you so much for listening to our podcast. We hope you enjoyed spending time with us because we enjoy spending time with you.

SPEAKER_01 31:39

If you did, make sure you hit that subscribe button or add the Business and Pleasure of Flowers to your Google morning routine or your flash briefing on Alexa. We look forward to seeing you next week.

SPEAKER_00 31:53

So please come back and join us and discover how a bit of knowledge and one small change in your mindset can take you to new levels in your life and business.