Hey Jamie-Miller
I made it through your dissertation!
I’m sorry to hear about your frustration with trying to find an A-player. Managing people can be quite frustrating. Both customers and employees.
A little about me so hopefully the following is a bit more helpful.
I spent a lot of my career developing my leadership abilities with books, events, corporate based/forced training, and of course through mistakes of my own or my peers. I have managed larger team of 50-70+ employees. Starting with 16 years old and up. My business was seasonal, yet cyclical, so I could always plan on when I needed the most people on hand. I tried a lot of different things including paying a stupid amount of time and money on Indeed, local recruitment/job fairs, community spending, etc. You name it, I tried it.
The overarching theme was always the more I invested my time, training, mentoring, and coaching with my existing employees the more A-players I had. They would also recruit like-minded individuals weeding out bad apples because they knew they were going to be working with and training them.
People are people. Following instructions, policies, and the like are always going to be an issue. The best advice I can give you is get to know the person behind the mistakes. Find out why they show up to work. IE: what it is they’re exchanging their time for money for. What bills, what vacations, kids, dreams, goals. That’s the motivation to get them to follow through on doing the policies and instructions. Giving them the reason a policy follow-through helps them make more money, therefore making more of their dreams/goals come true will motivate them on a different level.
Lastly, overpay them. I understand wages are one of the few things in your control to manage expenses, but top talent requires top money. If you’re competitive at $25 hour but could see potential where they are worth $30 in the near future. Pay them what their future is worth. You need to make sure they know it, but A-players are motivated by money, freedom to try new things/come up with ideas, being challenged, and are not going to stay put or get recruited easily for anything but top dollar. Think of all the time you spend recruiting, hiring, training, and firing. My bet is if you were to monetize all the time and resources you’re paying well above $30/hour to not retain a top-player.
There’s a lot to touch with in this forum discussion, so I took a broad view. If you would like to chat more please DM me. We can also set up a Zoom meeting.
My business partner and I will be at Jobber Now, looking forward to meeting you and sharing a beer.
Hope this helps,
Matt
Kalea Consulting
