I’ve talked a lot about turnover. After sending this tweet I decided to calculate the numbers, I was off a bit, keep reading.
To me, turnover falls into 4 categories (there can be some overlap between #1 & #4)
1 – People you’ll miss, leaders, potential leaders – people who if they were in your company today would be doing amazing things, helping you to see new things, new business units, etc. (Note to me this is the ONLY turnover that matters). They chose to leave, and you wish they did not.
2 – People who left before you fired them (they probably saw it wasn’t a good match too). Note: These people left b/c you probably saw they weren’t right, put pressure on them and they realized it was not what they wanted.
3 – People you had to fire
4 – Life changed – Strong performers (not always people in #1, might be) but people who’s path changed so much you couldn’t help (family, wanted to go back home, new career path, etc).
So over the last 5 years we’ve hired about 80 people and had about 30 leave.
Here is how they break down into the categories above:
#1 – The people who we are worse off for them not being here – 4 (10%)
#2 – People who left before we let them go – 8 (30%)
#3 – People who were fired 14 (46%)
#4 – Life changes 4 (13%)
In the last year people hired in 2012 we are closer to 15%, so we are getting better and better. If your business in year 1 has the same turnover in year 5 you are either a GREAT judge of character or you aren’t pushing yourself to greatness. New businesses, new managers often settle, or we convince ourselves of people who aren’t right for us.
I used to always try to see the best in people in interviews and that is NO WAY to hire, being overly positive in your thinking causes you to ignore the bad parts and focus way too much on the good.
I phrased the 50% turnover # wrong (I meant people who left or were fired) over a 5 year period. So Its really 23 of 80 or 30%, but I will say that in the earliest years voluntary turnover was non-existent, no really it was ZERO, involuntary turnover was like 65%). I sucked at interviewing, and the cost of being a bad interviewer is having to look a lot of people in the face and say sorry, and that sucks. So I have gotten a lot better.
I could hire a LOT better now than I could 7 years ago, 7 years ago I had NO experience hiring. Sometimes you get lucky (Like I did with Adam, Crystal, and Rachael, all at 5+ years at SEER) but those 3 out of maybe 10 made it from my first 10 hires, now remember I am great friends with 2 hires from back then, but 5 were complete disasters.
The data
I don’t have the data going back to 2005-2008, so I am trying to look at the last 5 years super quick if numbers don’t add up LMK. I am pulling interns out, since they have a purposeful limited life span.
Are people scared for their jobs?
Unfortunately sometimes, and i fucking hate that!!! But I understand why, 3 team mates in the last 4 weeks brought this up, and I asked them how could I fix it, help me. I don’t want people worried or nervous and one of them said that if SEER implemented a more direct “warning system” people would know…oh if I have never had an official warning, then I am good. So I learned from that and I trying that. I’ll let you know how it goes.
The lessons
NEVER EVER APOLOGIZE for trying to build the best team possible, that will be your guide when tough decisions have to be made.
The sooner you can get your company to the point where you can get people to relocate several states away… YOU WIN! (62% of SEER’s hires in the last 18 months relocated, form TX, CA, SC, MA, IL, MN, GA, KC, FL etc etc). The 102 months before combined… ZERO.
Clients hate project turbulence, but if you articulate your vision on building the best team possible, I have found they put trust in YOU / the team / the system.
Open another office if you feel you are tapping out of local talent or can’t get people to relocate.
“If you are running a business for the first time, and you last more than 4 years, if you have too many of the same folks you hired in the beginning that is a problem.” That is a quote from one of my advisers she said that to me many years ago when I would brag that voluntary turnover was ZERO. Since I didn’t know squat about hiring, it should be expected that I made some mistakes right, turnover that low was a PROBLEM, and I had to have the cajones to fire.
Beat yourself up over category #1, those are the people you couldn’t retain but if they were with you today would be KILLING shit. Of the 30 who are not here, its the 3-4 in that top category that I beat myself up over.
Its ok to have high expectations. Every morning I go through my team by name and see who I remember and what I know unique about them. Its just one of the many pressures I put on myself to create a great company. I personally invest a lot of time in knowing people personally at SEER, I push my leadership team to do the same, and knowing how we can help them achieve their goals is KEY. I never had a manager ask me what I wanted to accomplish in my personal or professional career.
If I am going to see you as more than a way to make $$$, then I don’t want to invest that time in people who I don’t feel make an equal investment back.
Be resolute in your beliefs…people who are crappy to other people here gotta go, period. Whether that is you spend all day taking smoke breaks and chit chatting while not helping your colleagues who are swamped or if you are a bad cultural fit.
There are a limited number of people who strive for greatness everyday, I want them HERE, not because its “safe” but because if they are good to each other and good to our clients they’ll always know there is room on the SEER bus…indefinitely. The world is full of people who interview well and have temporary hustle.
IS THIS BAD PR for SEER?
Maybe. But its the truth, my team knows this already, and they still refer people like crazy, they see the insides of what this company’s heart is.
Have you ever had someone give you one perception of a company and then when you get there its different? We’ve all been there.
Wouldn’t the world be better if people told you the truth about their companies vs. trying to convince you of all the good things? I tell every interviewer what causes people to NOT work out at SEER, why? Because I have to be honest with them, about our good and bad. In that way I never mislead them.
The cool part is that I go OVERBOARD for every employee that I can, I attend funerals, baptisms, weddings, I front load raises as bonuses so they can pay down debt, give 5 figure bonuses several times (and that doesn’t get them to stay FYI), my average annual raise the first 5 years of our existence was 22% (those days are over, but for our first 9 years of existence we budgeted double digit raises). I fly people to places they’ve wanted to go to see family members, I build their links when they go home for emergencies. I have sent their mothers thank you notes, I’ve paid for parent’s hotel rooms to come visit their kids who have relocated, I fire the clients who treat them poorly. The monsters at SEER know I’ll die trying to make this the BEST place to work, but there is an equal responsibility back to be the BEST they can to our clients and each other.
So I think my desire to only work with the best, is because I want to be the best boss anyone has ever had. I want to care more, take more time to know what makes them tick, etc and I guess what I want back are people worthy of doing that for.
I think deep down my clients appreciate my unyielding desire to put the best people I can possibly get on the front lines.
Keep in mind guys, I could blog about our vacation policy and how awesome it is, the intent of this site is to be the “anti-cheerleading entrepreneur" that tells you how awesome you are, that you can go build great stuff and make millions like instagram, or that 17 year old kid who sold to Yahoo for 30 MIllion, it is is to talk about failure, mistakes, and the hard road of running a business even with an amazing team. There’s enough of the rah-rah blogs out there that inspire me, I just decided to take a different bend.
If you have people that are more gritty, and real, let me know, I find that I learn more when people tell me their mistakes, then when they tell me their successes and I hope this blog serves that purpose for people like me.