Episode #617: From 100% Staff Turnover to Zero: Building a People Foundation That Scales - with Maritsa Inglessis

(upbeat music) Hi there and welcome back to another edition of Scale Up Ready, the podcast brought to you by Smart90, inspired by the entrepreneurial scale-up system and designed to make navigating our scale-up journeys that little bit easier by learning from others' experiences. I'm Kevin Brent and in today's episode, I'm joined by Maritza in Glesses, who is the founder of The People Keeper. Now, if you've ever found yourself frustrated by staff turnover, struggling to delegate or wondering why people don't stay, then this is definitely an episode for you. Because Maritza shares how she helps growing businesses build stronger people foundations through what she calls three-legged stool framework, or we certainly called it that on the show. We discuss why retention is rarely the actual problem, how weak systems often sit behind eye-high turnover and why founder fears can become one of the biggest barriers to growth. And a standout message from this conversation is that turnover is usually, in terms of staff turnover, is usually a symptom rather than the root cause. And when businesses put the right foundations, management capability and business systems in place, retention becomes the natural outcome. Now, I don't want to think this is all strategy and high-level stuff. We dug into some real examples and we explored a fascinating case study where a business was experiencing 100% annual turnover. It's only relatively small business, but they reduced that figure to zero and has maintained it for over two years. And most founders that I speak to have that sort of challenge, but they also feel stuck plenty happening, not always clear on what generally matters this quarter. And if that's you, the G90 summit is worth a look. It's a structured half day, where we work through everything competing for your intention, go through the caduce, the must-do's, get down to three or five absolute must-do's that must happen in the next 90 days. And then we commit to them and build the system with the team to make sure they actually happen. It's quarterly, it's virtual, 97 pounds, smart90.co.uk/submit. Make sure you don't miss any future episodes by subscribing to Skelet Radio, where we like to listen to your podcasts and why not give us a follow? And you can also nominate a guest for Skelet Radio, if you know someone with an interesting Skelet up story and you can find out how in the show notes, for now, continue listening for the full discussion with Maritza. Welcome to another episode of Skelet Radio. I'm delighted today to be joined by Maritza Inglises, who is the CEO and founder of the People Keeper. So Maritza, welcome to Skelet Radio. Thank you very much for having me. No, pleasure. And I'm going to you just move back from Greece, yeah? Back to the UK. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, move back to the UK. It was about nearly six months ago now, but yeah, we've settled into our new home that we moved into a couple of months ago. And yeah, it's strange. We've had this all this hot weather recently. It's a reminiscent of some of the, yeah. Yeah, brilliant, good stuff. So the People Keeper, what's that all about? What is it that you do? Yeah, so I help growth-focused business owners and founders to really embed the people essentials that they need in their business to help them grow and scale successfully without it all landing on them and feeling stressful. It can be very pleasant and enjoyable. So yeah, that's what I help them do. I hold their hand throughout that are working together and really help them to embed helpful habits, ways of working, the basics, the systems, the nuts and bolts, so that actually they can grow successfully. Yeah, so partly overcoming that founders trap that a lot of us get into where we've had some early success, we've got some traction with whatever it is that we're doing, but then we struggle with the people bit and we have people come and go, we struggle to get people to do what we would like them to do, be proactive and really take things on and whatever. Yeah, is that a achievable, that nirvana of a wonderful working place where everybody put in the same direction and high performing, but also loving what they're doing? It totally is, I think a lot of times people say, oh, that's the pink and fluffy idea, or whatever, it's not possible. People are unpredictable, they don't want to work or whatever the excuse is. I think it is possible when you stop just sort of adding on like Stickelbricks, that's what happens typically, in a small scale up company or startup company, they will add things on in different ways of working as they're growing and developing new sort of process as they're going and then what happens is that that becomes a little bit top heavy, right? Because, or like a Lego structure, it's just one thing and you add things on without that thought and careful plan. That's where we get the elastic bands out, isn't it? Yeah, reinforcement. But yeah, that's why it becomes quite difficult, because it's just been bolstered on, bolstered on and bolstered and not really sort of built with a foundation in mind. But when you stop to do that, which although it might feel counterintuitive, because when you're wanting to grow, you're really chasing that. It doesn't need to be a huge pause, but just a little bit of thought, Esther, what are we trying to achieve? Who are the type of people that we want working for us? Who are the, what are the type of skills and capabilities that we need? Yeah, you've used that pause word. Somebody just the other day, used phrases like permission to pause, you've got to give yourself a mission, pause in those situations, haven't you? Because, as you say, it feels a little bit counterintuitive, but if we don't do that, then all we're doing is having more obstacle bricks, as you say on top, which is it? Which is a lot of stuff. Absolutely. So what do you do differently from other people that might be offering to solve this sort of problem? Yeah, absolutely. So really, the difference that I offer is that I partner very closely with that business and that business owner. I become almost embedded and become their side person to really build based on their vision and their ambition and their business goal, something that can then support that as opposed to just saying, "Oh, here's a policy suite or some handbooks or some templates that you can use, go and use them and enjoy it." I will actually create those for that particular business or develop a particular process, for example, that isn't a sledgehammer to crack a walnut, but it's something that works for that particular business, if they're hiring lots, for example. And I'll also help them to then embed it to train anyone else that's involved and say recruitment or managing people or doing regular performance reviews or things like that, so that I can make sure, A, that they understand how to use it day to day, but then B, that actually it works for their business and then find tweak. If there's things that we think actually, that might be a bit cumbersome or we don't have that particular capability, then might need a little bit more hand-holding on that particular part. Yeah, there's a lot of that sort of guidance and making sure that it works. So kind of, I guess the best analogy is like having your car mechanic fix all service your car and then coming with you for a week to make sure that it's actually working. - Okay. - It's longer than a week, but that's the best way that I can kind of describe it and then during that week, you've got like a bit of a guide that says, oh, actually don't rev your engine so much or don't do this or mind this and be wary of that sound, or those kinds of things. So it's really a mix of the dunceau, the mentoring, the education, and a little bit of coaching as well, so that the business owner and everyone else who is responsible for helping that business owner achieve what they're wanting to achieve in that business knows exactly what they need to do and how they need to do it. - I think we're getting to the detail of that in a moment, but what got you into this, 'cause it's more than just HR as in the traditional what we think of, as you say, with employment contracts and all those sort of things and books and things. But what got you into it? What's your background? - So I do have a HL background. I've been in the field for over 20 years now, makes me feel very old. I've seen, I've worked in some really large corporate, global organisations. I've seen what best practice looks like. I've seen how it can be done really well. What I realised though, when I started working for myself, doing some contracting and things like that was that there was that a really big gap in that ability to translate what works really well and the best practice into what would actually work for the smaller businesses, start-ups, scale-ups, SMEs. It's that thing of, some of it is the, I guess the maturity or lack of maturity of that business. And some of that is a combination of things. I think some of it's like Founders Syndrome. Some of it's that feeling that, oh, it will just happen magically. It will get better when we grow that kind of thing. And unfortunately, I saw what happens when actually the people side is forgotten and you do leave it to chance and the impact that that has on businesses from not just from a reputational perspective, the culture, all of those things that might be considered pink and fluffy. There's a bottom line impact here. And I've talked about this quite a lot previously, Where? you know, when you lose someone because of a preventable reason when they leave your business, it can cost you anything from three months to two years of that role's salary to replace them. And they could leave for any reason, you know, it could be that you're onboarding didn't actually set them up for success or you know, they've got a manager that's quite difficult and treats their, their team differently to how the other manager and the other department treats them, you know, there could be different reasons, but they're all preventable. And I think that was the biggest thing that I saw. The second thing that made me really focus in on this is that, you know, the traditional way of HR being considered as the emergency service to drop in and fix something that's gone wrong, it's such a rubbish way of doing it, you know, it's it's reactive, it's stressful, it drains time and money and energy, headspace, all of that stuff, you know, there is a better way of doing it and it doesn't need to take longer, cost more, or, you know, be as stressful when you actually again do that meaningful pause and actually give some thought to, you know, what it is that you're trying to achieve and who are the people that you need around you to do that, that's literally the crux of it. Yeah, interesting and you know, going back to your Stigle bricks and the elastic bands, I mean, you know, that's a classic elastic band or even a sticky plaster, isn't it, over the over the head. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely, because somebody, you know, you might get, I've had several conversations in my time of, oh, you know, this person isn't performing, we need to exit them. Okay, but what, you know, when you start then digging into it, it's like, well, actually, what support did they get? How was their onboarding? What did their manager do to help them and to reset expectations and, you know, did they need any training? Were they given any training and it's, what is always focused on, unfortunately, is the problem rather than what the root cause of that problem was. And I would rather focus on the root cause because that's the better fix than like you say, the sticky plaster that only is temporary because actually, if it was caused by poor onboarding a crap manager or, you know, real, unclear expectations and swim lanes, you know, that will remain even if the person leaves. Yeah. So you're only fixing something temporarily and that, that to me, is doing half a job and I just didn't want to do that anymore. Yeah. And take us through your business journey with the people keep it because, you know, you've, we're talking at the beginning and you've just come back from Greece, so you know, you've been living internationally. You know, how has the business evolved over the years from when you started, how different is it from what you had in mind when you set out and, you know, what are some of the, some of the things you've changed and decisions you've made along the way? Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. That's a really good question actually. But, but yeah, certainly when I very first started, it was not called the people keeper. I was literally just doing contracting, so I wasn't even set up as a limited company. But yeah, that's, that's when I started out. So we moved to Greece, mid-COVID, my husband and I and our three dogs and I, the job that I had been offered in Greece completely outside of the HR field and people field. The offer was rescinded like many people had that happen because of COVID. And I then sort of, I did a few other sort of jobs that I could at the time and within a few months, I was really missing the people, people world, right? People in HR. I know it might sound weird, but yeah, if it's, if it's something that you've been doing for such a long time and then you stop doing it, you're like, actually, yeah. So that's kind of what happened. I started then doing some contracting, some, you know, fix some contracts and some consultancy and that was when I had those experiences with those startups where I could see that there were things that were going wrong that could be fixed. But there was no appetite for that to happen and I thought, right, actually, there is a better way of doing this. So I then thought, right, this is what I want to do. And really sort of jumped in feet first and set up my, my limited company. It was called I am HR consulting. Very much HR consultancy focused. And I then realised that actually, there were, there was a bigger problem that could be solved, which was more around retention and employee turnover. And the fact that actually it's cheaper to keep your people than it is to replace them. Yeah. You know, it may not be, it may feel a bit, a bit strange. It may not be believable, but it really is when you start thinking about, okay, it can take three, six, nine months, two years salary. It doesn't cost that much to keep someone. And so I started really focusing on that employee retention piece primarily with the minds of finding, fixing and preventing high employee turnover in organisations. Yeah. And I then, and I did that really successfully. One of my best clients. And I talk about them even to the stage. And though we stopped, you know, we finished working together two years ago, they had before we started working together. They're only a team of four. It was two directors. And then they had a team of four. They had lost in that previous year part of us working. They'd lost four people. So their employee turnover was 100%. Yeah. Yeah. And I actually, a number at the time, I included the directors in the calculation. And it actually came out of 60, 67% or something. And they said, oh, no, don't include us. And I said, oh, if I don't include you, your employer turner is 100%, so which, which terrible news would you prefer? Anyway, they even to this day, two years later, they haven't lost anyone since the work that we did together. I've saved them roughly about 150K, probably a bit more now. And for a business of four people, excluding the directors obviously, that's a huge saving. And what, you know, the directors have been able to step back, which was the main complaint that they came to me with. So, you know, it does work. But then I realized, and I think it's part of that, you know, when you have other changes going on in your life, you then sort of start thinking in your business as well. And then I realised I thought, well, actually, I could probably have more business owners here if I just break out my offering. Because it meets more business owners and business of where they are in their growth phase, without it being this really huge six months effort just to solve a very specific problem. It can actually help with lots of different things. So helping them to get compliant to then sort of plan a little bit of growth, and then to really look at the future and what they need. So yeah, that's kind of the evolution of where I've come from. So the passion and the kind of initial big pain was this retention piece, keeping the people, hence the people, as the name, as the name. But then some extra elements with that to be able to cater to specific needs that people might have. So you've got the basic HR piece if people need it. So that's a bit more transactional in terms of the handbooks and all of those. Yeah, the legal and operational base. Yeah. That's almost like, you know, as leg one of leg one of your stall as we were talking earlier, isn't it? Yeah. And then it's the then it's the people management, the onboarding, the recruitment kind of. Day to day stuff. Day to day stuff. And then the future piece if we're planning, planning where you want to go with the business, I mean, we're going to take on a lot more people. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. But all at the point at the end of it, I guess, is we've got people that are doing what they should be doing well as the business owner would like to happen. We've got less of a people headache going on a business because we're retaining the people that we want to retain and not having a high employee turnover. Absolutely. And it's almost a happy consequence of doing that work, those different layers of work because it makes that business much clearer, much easier and actually more enjoyable to work in. And so people are more invested in that end goal that you have in your five years time or, you know, if you're really trying to get your business off the ground, they're more invested in that because actually they feel that they, cheesies it is, they feel that they've been looked after and they've had a really good experience or they've had a good experience of where they've got too so far and they get it, they get the contribution that they make to that business goal. How they help that business make money. They get the owners' passion because it's been communicated really clearly and they understand why it's important to that person. They won't ever, there's a misconception people, people will never feel the same way about a business as that owner will. And they never, they never will but you can definitely close that gap by, you know, communicating more making, like I say, making it easier and in more enjoyable places. to work in and it's almost a buy product of it. Very good. So does that mean that one of the challenges we have as small business owners and it doesn't really matter what the sector is but certainly professional services is how we charge for our services. Do we charge for time, for value? With the different levels of offering, do you have different ways that you charge your clients? Yes, yes, I do. So one very wise person said to me, you know, not to charge for your time because then it almost makes it more transactional in that way. And so how I work with my clients and just the nature of how I actually deliver my work, it lends itself better to a project basis. So I pay like it's a one off, we can, we have offer payment plans as well but it's a one off amount that delivers an end result that's pre agreed and yeah. And then if they, if that particular client wants to then maintain what we've set up, you know, and have me on hand to answer any queries and things like that, there is also a subscription or retain the model at the end of each of those three legs. Yeah, and really that is to make sure that actually all of the good stuff, you know, that we've put in place continues to happen. And if anything comes up, any queries, any advice, that kind of thing, I'm on hand and I'm kind of already, I know what's, what's been set up and what's happening. The theory behind it as well is that, that bit around actually, you know, a business that only has say two or three employees will not need a full time HR person, they'll need that support as a when and really up until they hit about 40, maybe 50 employees, will they need somebody, you know, there. So that my role is to kind of project in the best possible way that's the most cost effective way as well. Because paying by the hour doesn't actually work out as cost effective when, when we end up doing the actual work. Yeah, good. And, and I really like to go back to the example you gave with the business with the four employees and 100% because I, you know, I'd like to pick a little bit about what you did because I think that will illustrate and have in people in mind. So what kind of business was it first of all? What? What? Yes, it was, it was a recruitment temporary agency for temporary staff. So quite high volume, very last minute requirements in a very specific industry. And yeah, that the, the business owner came to me saying, I really want to step back, you know, and then as I started speaking to them and finding out more about what was going on, why do they feel that they couldn't step back and then start talking about certain things. And in fact, the people had left and things like that. So there are a number of kind of tasks or things that we needed to achieve by working together. So, you know, obviously, obviously no name to no Pat Drill sort of stuff. But, but, you know, what, why was there a, was there a fundamental reason why there was such a high turnover? Yeah, so they had gone, there are a couple of, there were a few things actually. So they had gone from being a business that was in person. So they were office based and with COVID, they moved to being remote only. But their ways of working, ways of communicating, everything hadn't really evolved to accommodate that different, different environment, you know, work environment. That was one. The other was that the business owner was getting a little bit to involve and actually overly complicating things and, you know, putting the business a little bit of risk by the things that they were saying and doing and, and the things that, that then materialise as a result of conversations they were having with employees. And then thirdly, the way in which they on boarded employees, a little bit, the recruitment as well. They were actually working with a recruitment partner as well and, and we needed to work, rework that process. But most importantly, the on boarding, they, they were doing virtual chair sides. So literally there was somebody dialed in to a Zoom meeting for pretty much two solid weeks to learn a particular, that their, their ways of working, how, you know, staff were booked out, how the, the, the client requests came in, you know, the way in which they did things. So the shadowing, shadowing somebody in the role. Yeah. But on Zoom. So it was very, it was, it was, it was a number of different things. It was very overwhelming. Yeah. It's very boring. And, and really that person for two weeks, they weren't able to be even remotely productive because they were, they were literally shadowing someone and trying to absorb all of this information that if they didn't absorb in two weeks was a bit sort of like, oh, you're left to go on your own. Yeah. Right. So, so yeah. So that, that was, those were, I guess, the three main things. Yeah. So we got, yeah. So we got, yeah. So the, so the remote, yeah, remote working. So, so well, let's put them off, you know, one at time, I imagine the fun ones are going to be, um, how you, how you managed to talk to the owner and change their, stop, stop them, uh, yeah, dropping grenades into the, yeah, but it was actually really, really fortunate because they wanted to step back anyway. They wanted to be spending less time in that business. They have their other things that they wanted to pursue, which they haven't been able to go and do. Um, but they, they wanted that, and they also wanted, there was a particular individual in that business who had shown real promise and, um, they wanted to promote that individual to take on the role of, uh, office manager. So they would be dealing with a day to day management of the rest of the team. Um, and so they had already got the idea. I just helped them to, you know, to make it a reality. Um, so that the stepping back was the bit that took a little bit longer, but as, but what I, what I did to help that happen faster was to really mentor the office manager and give them as much training and as much support as possible during the time that we were working together. So that they really felt comfortable that they could step into that role, move away from being someone's peer to being their boss. Um, and understanding the, the basics, obviously, you can't, you know, you can't teach everyone everything about leadership in a short space of time. It's something that you gather over years of, of being in a, in a management and the leadership role, but to try and, well, to give them a really good foundation of knowledge of how to that, that piece around stepping up to be a leader, not a friend, um, you know, the basics of managing people, how to have successful one to one, how to have difficult conversations, how to manage the performance ongoing in a, in a development sense, rather than a punitive sense, um, how to really set clear expectations, how to communicate with the team. All of those things that make it even harder when you are in a remote setting, not impossible, a massive advocate of remote, remote working, it can work when you make the effort to make it work. Um, and yeah, so, so really giving them that foundation absolutely helped, um, getting their ideas and opinions on things and, and, and acting as a sounding board for them to test their ideas and thinking in a safe space that wasn't their boss, but was somebody external and could really sort of help them sound it out. Um, yeah, that, that was, that was the work that we did with that individual. And then they gradually started taking on more responsibility as they were feeling more confident, and now they're, they're flying. Um, and then, um, and presumably once the owner saw that the manager was stepping up a little bit, they were less likely in, in client to come in and pick holes and micromanage. Yeah, because they had it under control. So, you know, it was, it was, well, and they didn't actually fair play to them, although they, they've, they felt initially, they were like, actually, I need to control this. They did start stepping away. Um, yeah, yeah, as that person started building their skill. This is a very common desire and challenge that we, that we see with businesses that are, that are scaling the owner, you know, at some point, wants to feel that they can step back without all of the plates that are spinning suddenly falling off the end of the poles. Um, but it, but it's, it's, it's difficult. Sometimes, you know, we feel we may not have the right people in the business already. Sometimes we, you know, maybe we think we do, but, but we're struggling to actually step, step away. Other than, I mean, great people can pick up the phone to you and, and, and, and ask you to come in and help. But, but if, if, if you're not available, what, what sort of things should they be thinking of? I mean, you're given us a couple of things there, but what, you know, how, how can we, how can we start to help to make that possible transition? Yeah, for them to step up. I think, I think, first of all, um, be really clear on what, they would need to step back. Would it be that there are particular tasks that need to be done by someone else? Are there tasks that nobody else can do? Which is entirely feasible. Be clear on the task that can really be given away. And understand who within your business can do those tasks. If it could do those tasks, whether they can do it now or whether they might need a little bit of support and training to do it. Yeah. That in particular, the second point about the support and training to do it is really important because oftentimes, and I hear this from founders all the time, oh, it's just going to be quicker if I did it myself. Yeah. But when you start doing that with one thing, five things, ten things, you know, it then actually you then don't end up giving anything away. So I think really fundamentally being comfortable with when you're sitting down to think about this, knowing that by the end of this little pause that you're taking to understand this and to kind of plan it in a way that you will be giving some tasks away and that you need to feel comfortable with doing that. So actually, it's not about if you should give those tasks away. It's about how and what tasks can I give away in the best possible way so that actually the person that takes them on is successful when doing them. What do they need to know? What access do I need to give them? What authority do I need to give them? You know, do they need to, when do they need to escalate it to me? Do they need to escalate it to me at all? Actually, can they take some action and then just let me know? It's classic sort of delegation stuff after that you've made that decision. But I think the fundamental sampling block that I hear people talking about regularly is more psychological one, rather than an actual then going and putting it into practice. Yeah, one good, excellent. And sort of in there, I think a couple of things. Because the part of it is the outcomes as well that we want, isn't it? You mentioned that with your, when I asked you about how you charge for your services, you know, and you're talking about not by the hour, but it's about the outcomes, the results that people are looking for. And with the delegation, that's part of it as well, isn't it? And it was, I think you were saying that in there as well, it's not just the task, it's actually the level of authority and what the level of ownership, if you like, of the outcome that they can do without having to keep bouncing back to the owner. So if they've got ownership of that, and that's pretty clearly the other thing that you, autonomy, yeah, that autonomy, the other thing that you, that you mentioned and then moved on quite, quite quickly, was this idea of what needs to happen for the owner to feel comfortable about it. Because I've told somebody else about fear in business. And we have a fear, don't we, that, and maybe there may be some rational elements to those fears, and there may be some irrational elements, those fears, but we fear that if we just delegate something to somebody else, that certain things are going to happen that may or may not, may not happen. And there's something I remember from a book called Turn the Ship Around, David Marquette. I was all about nucleus and marine and how he changed the whole, the whole way that he led that submarine. But the simple thing that he did, and I'd love your thoughts on this, was he got his people when they were delegating to write down all of those fears. First, so I'm really scared about delegating the sum of it. So because I'm worried that these things might go wrong, right? Or these things might happen. So the first thing was to just write it down so that I acknowledge them myself. And then the second thing was actually to get that list to the person who's delegating it to. And essentially, so look, these are all the things I'm worried about. If you manage to find a way so that those things don't happen, then I'm happy. It's just a really simple idea, isn't it? But could be huge. Definitely. Yeah, I've got a really fond memory of working with another client. Again, a husband and wife team seems to be a thing, actually. But I really love it, actually, because it's a completely different dynamic. But anyway, they were, we were working together on actually towards the more startup end of it. They needed to make sure that they were bringing people in legally and compliantly and that they had that foundation, a solid foundation there. As we were working together, some of the things that they were saying was around the fact that because they had grown their business organically, they started in their living room, moved to the garage, moved to another premises. They'd hired people. They'd become very more friends with their employees. And the lines were getting really blurred and they felt that some boundaries were being crossed and I'd asked them about whether or not they'd had a conversation with their team about this or on an individual basis, because you don't want to call everyone out at the same time. And they said, oh, no. And I said, well, why? In this law, because, you know, because we're a bit worried and I said, but, but, what are you worried about? What's the worst that can happen if you have a respectful, but open and honest conversation with them about what you're observing and why that's not okay and what actually would prefer to happen instead. And they said, oh, well, they might leave. I said, but would they really do that? You know, would they really do that? And actually, if they did, that's more about very action and there, that's a them thing rather than a new thing. If you've been respectful, you know, all of those things and you've communicated quite clearly what you're expecting as the employer. Yeah. And they then choose to leave that says more about them than it does about you. And they were like, oh, wow. And I could literally like, it's a fun memory because I could literally see the light bulbs above their heads simultaneously. And yet it really, it's such a powerful question to ask of what is or think about, you know, yourself when you're doing this. What is the worst that could happen? Yeah. Yeah. And then and then actually address those things and then go through those things one line by line. Yeah. And then when you rationalize it because it because we love going to fear because it keeps us a bit comfortable as well. It stops us from from from making really perhaps what our brain might think of as bold decisions. It stops us from you know, it's a protection mechanism. But actually when you then try and rationalize those things and go through each thing that you're afraid of, you will actually see something quite different happening. And then it helps you get to the root of, okay, well, I'm afraid of this. How can I help myself to not be afraid of it? What can I do? Yeah. How can I then make sure that the person that's doing that task that I'm a bit afraid of or that links to the thing that I'm afraid of or worried about? How can I make sure that I prevent that bit from happening? Yeah. Because then you're you're, you're addressing the thing that potentially is a breaking point within your business because if that's a real fear, but then you're also not placating, but you're satisfying your inner monologue and your inner ego of like actually, I've looked after that because I've done this, this and this. And I know that you know, they might make a mistake as a point of learning. That's okay. You know, we've got, I've got mechanisms to, to, to, you know, to deal with that. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, yeah, they won't make that mistake again. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They may not even make that mistake in the first place. Yeah. You know, I think that's, yeah, I think that's absolutely right. You know, what is, what is the worst that can happen? And, and could, could I live with the consequences or deal with the consequences if that happened? As the first point. And, and then the likelihood is that that actually wouldn't happen. Anyway, if we do all of the right things, yeah, up front. Yeah. Great. Good. And, and so I just want to go on quickly on to the, so, you know, that was all based on the example really with the, you know, putting the remote, you talk about the remote systems, the owner, exactly needs, but you also mentioned on boarding. So, you know, what, what, what advice do you have for people about on boarding? Because there's a big difference, isn't there between making sure somebody's got a laptop and an email account and a phone, um, then, then proper on boarding. Is that fair? Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. One is, one is just giving somebody the tools. The other, you know, proper on boarding is, is with those tools, how do you actually then do the job properly? So, one is that, you know, I always like to split job stuff that, as it relates to job as to the what and then the how and this is a classic example. You've got the tools, but actually how is it that you then do it? And on boarding is really to show you how to use those tools to then do your role properly. And the point of proper on boarding is to get someone up to speed as quickly as possible, which might sound like I'm stating the obvious. Yeah. But the number of times things are missed, even basics. especially you don't notice it in remote businesses, where does that person need to show up on their first day? Is it a call that they're dialing into? What is that? You know, and that again, that's still the what, but you know, having a bit of a plan, are there any key people that they need to meet internally? Because actually they work closely together. Can they share, can most key people share some of their wisdom if they all work on a particular client? Are there any quirks or are there any sort of, you know, that kind of thing? Because you'll have assessed the person's technical ability to do that job, the intricacies and the biggest part of onboarding is that, okay, what else do I need to know? You know? - And this is, you know, you know, again, this comes back to what you're saying about the end of mind, the outcome and the timeframe. Because you said, you know, to be up to speed as quickly as possible a bit during the job. So what does that look like? You know, is that, you know, is the goal three months, or is it six months or is it two weeks? What is it that this person is operating effectively at their role or ideally even superb at their role, but certainly effectively at their role? And what does that mean? What does effectively at their role mean? And if you've got that, then you can work it back, can't you? - Absolutely, absolutely. And it's something that's so often missing. And actually, it's such an important part because if you've got that of what success looks like in each role, it then informs everything. That is the pinnacle, the lynch pin sorry. You can go and interview people. You can assess people that you've interviewed. You can onboard them. You can then, you know, have conversations about their performance, you can have really informed conversations. If they know as well, what that end result looks like, what an amazing discussion you could have as a manager and the employee, that's really clear. How, what better a way to set expectations for what good looks like? - Yeah, and it comes back to that. It's a class example of where it's so useful to just take that time to pause, right? Because otherwise, it's like going shopping and just getting the first things off the shelf because you're hungry. - Get your recipe and then. - Yeah, yeah. - I'm hungry so I go shopping as opposed to, yes, the goal I want is that I've got a balance meal tonight that is whatever. Yeah, or equally, my goal is to drive in, you know, I want to get from A to B. I want to actually end up at this destination. I don't really care which route, I just want to be efficient route in there, but I don't need to tell somebody to turn left at the next junction, turn right at the next one and straight on or whatever. Because they can work that out on the way or they can work out what they need. But yeah, if we're not clear to start with, then we kind of, so it's a really, but on boarding is one of those really good ones that people should be able to see the importance of it, rather than just going, look, we're stressed in our business. We need another person that's asked somebody and let's tell them to do that job. - Exactly, exactly. Yeah, because then when you do that, that is the only thing that they will do. So then don't be surprised three months down the line when you're pissed off that that is the only thing they're doing 'cause the surprise, you set it up that way. Just one more thing I wanted to make, one more point I wanted to make on that is that when you've got that, the expectations of what great looks like for every role, how wonderful is it? But, you know, in about two years time, once that person's been on board, it's successfully, or, you know, maybe even a shorter period of time, but they're performing at that level that you need to, they're smashing it, they can then see actually what's expected of the next roll up. - Yeah. - And maybe it doesn't exist in that business yet. So there might be a little bit of work and a bit of a conversation about that. But, when you have all of that information and you make it publicly available, people can see other options of what they can do and how they can learn as well. They can start getting more involved and that's how you make people care more because they can see opportunities where they can help and they can support and they can, you know, if there's a difficult client picture, for example, they can go in and support their colleague and just working in their own silo, you know. - Yeah, and this is your third leg of the store, isn't it? This is the future facing piece where we've got a future view of the business and the roles, because that shapes our hiring plan. - Yeah, we need to bring in people from outside, but also our development plan, if we need to develop people from inside. So, you've got your three-legged stool being, get the basics in place, the legals, the contracts, the policies. Then the next leg is making sure people are on board, you've got proper hiring plans and they've got the performance management and then you've got the future facing, okay, actually, where are we headed? And the natural consequence of all of that is that you should keep your people. - Hmm, absolutely, absolutely. And I think, you know, the future facing one is where, I mean, there's risks with all of those three legs, but, you know, the future facing one is, I guess, sometimes where I get most of my frustration when I'm speaking to clients, but also potential clients is that when they'll, you can see it in the passion, they've built a really successful business, they're now in a position where they want to double in size in the next five years or they want to grow 20% year on year or they want to get funding or they want to exit, all fantastic goals, you know, but then when I started to drill into the people side, they've not even thought about it. Yeah, actually, they've probably got a really great team in place that could help them to get to their goal. Maybe even faster or at least share the load of getting there, but they then haven't thought about, okay, well, how can I, you know, like a football manager and utilizing their players effectively? They haven't even thought about how am I going to win this match? They're just thinking, oh, you know, we'll just, it's a pipe dream, but they haven't thought about the strategy behind it. And again, it's, I think it's that hesitant pause. - Yeah, really? - The pause is that problem. - Well, it's been fascinating. I think we've drilled into a couple of really, really key areas. So thank you very much, Marissa, for sharing our expertise. - Oh, we welcome you so much, but brilliant. You're right for a couple of quickfire questions. - Of course, yeah, absolutely. - Great. - Absolutely. - If you could go back to your younger self, what advice would you give the young Marissa? - Oh, be fearless and confident in your decisions. - Brilliant, I bet. Any particular learning resources that could be a specific book, a particular podcast or something else that you've, would highlight to others that you've found particularly useful? - One of my favorite people podcasts, which actually I think others could listen to as well, just because he makes it so enjoyable is Luke Lohmann-Honey. He does a podcast. It's all around people experience in the workplace and he talks a lot about the way in which you can improve it, you can make it better and the impact that that has. And I really enjoy listening to that. - I'm not familiar with that. So sorry, was that Luke or Luke? - Luke Hohmann-Honey, yeah, yeah. - Okay. - He does a lot for people, people, but I definitely think there's better fit in non-people people listening to it as well. - Yeah, brilliant, good stuff. Any bits of tech, any clever bits of software, that you've, the lightest? - I'm probably quite boring actually in that sense. So I, because I do all of my stuff myself, I'm by no means a tech quiz. In fact, I had to enlist the help of Claude to write some code for my website. So I guess, yeah, to be honest. - That's pretty good going to be. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, that would be, that would be it. Yeah, so giving them a good prompt, which actually is something that people could go and use. It's a really useful tool on my website. It's a people-cost calculator. So if there are people that are worried about, people leaving, they can go and put in their numbers in there. I don't ask for an email address or anything, and it will give them a red amber green scoring and what to do next, along with a cost of how much it's costing them to, yeah. - Yeah, it sounds like a good tool. So if people would like to get hold of your find out that tool, how do they do that? - Yeah, so also my website is thepeoplekeeper.com. - Yeah. - And there is a resources section. So there's more than just the calculator. There's a whole load of, again, downloadable stuff without an email address required. There's also on my website, there's some videos and other podcasts that I've done that could be an interesting listen. I do a blog as well. So there's loads of interesting stuff in there around, you know, how to turn things around, what to consider as you're growing your business. So yeah, a really great resource. Go and have a little rummage and have a read and if you need to contact me, obviously, my contact details are on there as well. I also hang out on LinkedIn. But yeah, you can find the link to that from my website because I get that I haven't got the easiest name to spell. So yeah, go to thepeoplekeeper.com and you can find everything there. - Brilliant. Well, Merit to English is, thank you very much, Deep, for being my guest on Scalette Radio today. - Thanks so much, Kevin. I hope you enjoyed that. discussion and if you're building and scaling your own business, you might well be interested in our book, the Entrepreneurial Scaleup System. And it's exactly what it says on the tin. It's a practical handbook around scaling a business in a structured way. And you can order a copy on all your favourite online retailers, including an audio version or you can find it and other supporting resources on our website, www.easusgroup.co.uk. Which is esusgr.co.uk.