Chapter 14
CREATING RIGHT RELATIONSHIPS WITH EMPLOYEES
ONE FRUSTRATION commonly voiced by small-business owners throughout the country is how to find the right people for their small, entrepreneurial, multiple hat-wearing companies. The more specific the vision and its delivery, the less likely it is that just anyone will fit within the organizational culture, particularly in firms that are more a matter of personality type and specialized knowledge than straightforward routine. And so it is with recruitment for a big-vision small business that sets a high bar for right relationship and qualitative growth. How might we incorporate right-relationship principles at the very beginning of our relationships with employees so that we increase the likelihood of making matches with kindred spirits?
While we all know, unfortunately, that a great interview does not necessarily make for a great fit, being as clear as possible before and during the interview can help a business owner bypass a few obvious mismatches. The keys to more effective recruitment include the level of clarity you have about your needs and the type of individual that might be best suited to them, what questions you ask, what information you share, how well you listen, and of course, how well you discern and apply the lessons of the past.
Before the Interview
Know why you’re hiring someone new. Why on earth would a business owner hire someone new if the organization didn’t need him or her? One possible answer is that she has assumed that quantitative growth is necessary and that, if her group is busy, she should hire additional employees in order to serve the new customers that she should also be seeking. She’s “should-happy,” which should qualify as a bona fide disease rather than as an accepted business practice!
A second possibility is that the business owner may not have assessed whether his group is operating efficiently, making an additional employee a reasonable investment. Is it possible that the existing group actually has the time and skill to handle additional work without jeopardizing a healthy work environment? Would a project-based contractor be more appropriate? Will the new person help the group make the pie bigger, benefiting all members of the organization, or will the result be the same-sized pie with smaller slices (or, Heaven forbid, a smaller pie)? These are questions a business owner might consider before casting the recruitment net for new employees. A big-vision small-business owner asks these questions as an opportunity for reflection and dialogue that will increase his own and his group’s awareness, and because he knows both the discussion and the answers will help find the options that best serve the organization’s vision.
Marketing Partners’ Pat Heffernan of Burlington, Vermont, discusses the decision to increase expenses, whether for new staff members, equipment, or office space, with her employees. Why? So they too can be aware of the decision-making process and help choose the most effective solution. “It’s not a 100 percent democratic decision-making process, because if Peg and I feel there’s something needed for the viability of the business, we’ll get it,” says Heffernan. “But often we’ll go over it with our staff. All we do is show them how the added expense will affect the year-end bonus pool, which often generates a different level of thinking and problem solving. Many organizations have profit sharing, but there’s never any profit. Our group likes to ensure there is a bonus pool at the end of the year, and discussions like this help support that goal.”
Know what and whom you need. This seems like a no-brainer, but small-business owners can easily miss or misinterpret this step because they’ve got a lot of other responsibilities, as well as time and budgeting pressures. Take a few minutes to map out the core values that make your best-fit employees successful in your company, as well as a job description that includes key tasks and the traits associated with a person who handles those tasks well.
Doug Hiemstra of Hiemstra Product Development, LLC, in San Francisco found these issues particularly relevant when he recruited for a sales representative for his eight-person design firm. In addition to keeping in mind that his office is fast paced and stressful due to deadlines and the nature of the creative process, Hiemstra had to be clear about whether he needed a marketing specialist or a sales professional. Many people—employers and job hunters alike—don’t recognize the difference between the two or aren’t aware that they may have conflicting assumptions about what particular job titles mean. “We get a lot of people who offer to be salespeople here, so the challenge is recognizing the true entrepreneurs from the wishful thinkers,” he says. “It takes a special personal makeup to be able to get out there and talk to people, to want to get on the phone and call people to schedule meetings. There are people who really prefer to do marketing rather than getting on the phones and overcoming rejection regularly. So it’s key to recognize the necessary personality traits.”
Look at what works. If you already have employees, notice what personality traits make someone a good fit for your big-vision small-business culture. Ask good-fit employees why they think they’ve been successful with your firm, what motivates them about working with the organization, and what sort of person would be most successful on your team. You might be surprised when employees raise insights and concerns you’ve not considered.
Schedule multiple interviews. Let candidates know up front that you’ll be scheduling multiple interviews for all candidates you’re considering and provide a specific time frame for your recruitment campaign. “The way we interview is important, and we really take a lot of time to hire people,” says Craig Galati of Lucchesi, Galati Architects in Las Vegas. Galati takes the first interview to talk more generally and determine if a candidate is aligned with the firm’s core values. Once that has been established, Galati will move the process forward to discuss capacities and talents and how the prospective employee might benefit the organization. “Some candidates get frustrated that it takes so much time, and we’ve lost some good people because of that,” he says. “But one wrong fit affects everything. In a firm like ours we work in teams that require a lot of collaboration. One person can break that chain for everyone, so we don’t want to be in hiring mode. It’s known in the community that if you get a job offer from us, it’s special. That’s how we want it.”
Another option to help foster a good fit is to consider having select members of your team do the initial round or two of interviews, making recommendations on the top candidates they think would fit best. If employees are participating in the interviews, make sure they’re aware of interview techniques and legal issues before the interviews begin. Once your employees have met with candidates and have forwarded an assessment to you, meet with the candidates yourself. When my own group started conducting interviews this way, we got some very interesting responses from prospective candidates. Several were incensed that they would be meeting first with employees of the company instead of the firm’s owners. Their response saved their time and ours, since such that kind of attitude is incompatible with big-vision operating priorities, including our right-relationship practice of being respectful to others regardless of their job title or place in the organizational hierarchy.
Know the value of what you’re offering. Value is often associated with monetary offerings compensation and benefit packages, yet there are other factors that make an organization valuable to its employers or customers. Big-vision small businesses offer a number of qualities and benefits unique to their mission, size, area of expertise, and culture. Such qualities rank as high priorities for many prospective employees, particularly in these times, when more and more employees seek meaningful work with socially conscious organizations. Doing a little research and having a dialogue about the value of your organization’s offerings can make a big difference in your confidence level and attractiveness to good-fit candidates while serving as a motivation booster within your group.
Many of the big-vision small-business owners I interviewed challenged the stereotype of the typical low-paying small business, for example. While few offered financial compensation at the top of their region’s pay scale, most felt compelled to offer financial compensation within a competitive pay range. Says Shelby Putnam Tupper, who has owned her graphic design firm for over a decade, “When a small-business owner says they can’t afford reasonable wages, I’d say that raises serious questions about the productivity of their staff or equipment. If they can’t pay their employees a livable wage with reasonable benefits, they might not have a viable business. That doesn’t mean you don’t look for ways to keep costs down, but you don’t increase your profit on the backs of your employees.”
While reasonable compensation is an important factor in attracting and keeping desirable employees, there are others as well. For example, surveys show that employees enjoy feeling like an integral part of a team and being part of an organization with an inspiring vision and important contribution to society. Employees also say that learning opportunities, positive feedback, and pleasant interpersonal relationships increase their loyalty to a particular employer.
During the Interview
Be realistic. A candidate is more likely to be a good fit if she’s worked—happily and productively—in other small-business or entrepreneurial environments. Look for prospective employees whose work history shows a preference for the responsibility, juggling, visibility, and multitasking that come with working for a small business. An alignment with the vision and core values is also important because that’s what fuels the passion to take the level of work quality well above the norm—a big-vision small-business priority. The key priority here is to identify opportunities for a mutually beneficial, enjoyable work relationship.
Ask questions that will give you the information you need. A big-vision small-business interview includes careful preparation and thoughtful dialogue. The questions you ask can help you find out whether a person is more comfortable with details or the big picture; is a self-starter or an order taker; thrives on a diverse, ever changing environment or a stable, routine-oriented one; is a positive person who spots the possibilities or a person who focuses more on finding the mistake. These can all be positive or negative traits, depending on the job you need done. Most recruiting ads feature requests for conflicting skills, like asking for a detail-focused accountant who is big-picture oriented or a strategy-minded proofreader. While someone may have honed a level of competence in both, most people are much more effective and efficient in one arena or the other. This is where it’s helpful to know what you need and to make sure recruitment ads and interviews clearly communicate those needs. Open-ended questions allow more space for the candidate to share more of his personality, expertise, and way of thinking and being. For example, questions might include:
• What’s most important to you about your work?
• What type of work environment do you like the least?
• Knowing what you do about our vision and our work, how do you think you fit with those?
• If hired, how would you like your participation to make a difference in our work and for our customers?
Go with your intuition. Sometimes you can’t put into words why someone is or is not clicking with you. If you aren’t sure whether to trust your intuition, delay the decision for a day or two until the direction from your instinct becomes clearer. The same rule of delay applies to overwhelming gut-inspired urges to hire a candidate because you like her as a person. A one- or two-day delay allows you to be more certain that your emotional response doesn’t result in hiring someone who doesn’t have the skills or capacity to be successful in your organization.
Communicate clearly and be gracious. Before, during, and after the interviews, communicate your intentions and progress with each candidate in a timely manner. This is particularly important if your interview process is time-consuming or lengthy. Big-vision small businesses aren’t bogged down in process or bureaucracy and thus have an opportunity to excel in thoughtfulness, communication, and right relationship. This extends to your interactions with prospective employees. An added perk? Given the increasing attractiveness of big-vision, socially conscious enterprises among potential employees, your demonstration of big-vision practices in action can serve as a beacon to attract similarly committed, like-spirited employees.
Alternatives to Hiring Full-Time Employees
One big question facing many business owners is when to hire full-time staff members and when to consider other options, such as part-time employees, independent contractors, or partnering with other small businesses. Unfortunately, there’s no hard-and-fast rule. The answer depends very much on the business itself, the particular needs, and an awareness of regulatory requirements. The ability to be creative and flexible is an advantage of a smaller, independent enterprise. There are several examples of how this flexibility might present itself.
Several years ago, we at Ivy Sea had a year during which several full-time staff members for a certain job category came and went. An intern on our staff suggested that a graduate student would be more compatible with an organization that was oriented toward learning and continuous improvement, which is how she saw our firm. In her view, people wanting the more settled routine and established outside-work socializing more typical of larger corporations wouldn’t mesh well with our independent, mastery-focused group. Students, in contrast, were geared toward learning and would find the firm’s dynamic pace and culture exciting.
We took her suggestion to heart. In addition, we expanded our definition of student to include candidates who had valuable skills but might be looking, for example, to reenter the job market after graduate school or after having stayed at home with a child or who were making a career shift and wanted to put their skills to use in a new way. We created an advanced internship we call an Ivy Sea Residency. The positions are full- or part-time, finite-term opportunities that can be extended for additional three- or six-month intervals based on discussions of mutual benefit. The positions are compensated fairly, with the high level of learning opportunity taken into account as part of the compensation package. Residents, in return, contribute their skills, and they get an opportunity to reenter the market, as well as to add new marketable skills to their résumés and work samples to their professional portfolios. Based on feedback from participants, the program has been a success, and it has helped us stem the turnover that had previously occurred in that job category.
We’ve now developed relationships with what we call our “extended family”—a small circle of likeminded professionals with compatible vision, aligned values, and a commitment to rising above the norm in their work. In addition, we maintain contact with a network of other self-employed professionals and small businesses with complementary areas of expertise with whom we partner and exchange referrals. This allows us an experience and expertise pool that is both deep and broad, without having to expand the organization to a degree that would negatively affect our ability to work according to our big-vision priorities and the golden rules for right relationship.
Helen Hempstead of Cor Productions in St. Louis, Missouri, also opts for such partnerships. “We tend to look for people just like us, which means we tend to partner with other entrepreneurial small companies,” she says. “While we can do everything from creating a concept, to writing a script, to shooting and editing, we often choose to outsource dubs and duplications to a subcontractor. Whenever we need closed captioning, we work with a business in our network. This way, we’re talking to the owner of the firm, and they know how important quality, service, and follow-through are when we give them our project.”
Doug Hiemstra takes a similar approach to staffing his product development firm. “While I have eight employees, we’re a virtual twelve, because I rely on a network of outside contractors for specific expertise as needed. It works well because we don’t need to have those senior-level people on staff full time,” says Hiemstra. Even Hiemstra’s employees were first independent contractors who worked well enough with Hiemstra and liked his vision enough to join him as his employees. “There’s a definite attitude difference with independents, who tend to be problem solvers who get the job done without making excuses,” he says. “The people to whom we subcontract are senior-level people who can contribute a lot at the front end of a project as to how to approach a problem. They contribute their expertise as needed for our project and go about running their own businesses.”
The latter factor is a crucial one to ensure that you’re not tapping contractors who don’t meet the independent-contractor qualifications required by the Internal Revenue Service. If you need the person at your office, working regularly month after month on a variety of projects, you probably have an employee, not a contractor. Talk with your accountant or attorney if you’re unsure of whether your need is more suited to an employee, a contractor, or a partnership with another small-business owner.
LifeQuest’s Barb Banonis is also careful to look for a good values match. “I find out what’s in it for them, what they’re looking for, and what they love doing, and try to ensure that the project I’m offering them functions around that,” she says. “Whether employees or contractors, it’s important to collaborate with people who really love doing what you need them to do, and clearly identify your expectations so you’re less likely to get bogged down in personality issues.”
Once you’ve made connections with the new members of your team—whether employees, contractors, or aligned-vision partners—you can continue to apply right-relationship practices to help you maintain a work environment and foster work relationships that dovetail with the priorities of a big-vision small business.