Wendy Sellers – How to Attract and Retain Amazing Employees

Connect with Wendy:

• 

Connect with David:

• • 

• david.turetsky@salary.com

Connect with Dwight:

• • 

• dwight.brown@salary.com

Podcast Manager, Karissa Harris:

• HRDataLabs@salary.com

 

Production by Affogato Media

Resources:

• The HR Lady
• Suck It Up, Buttercup: Be a Leader People Will Follow
• Salary.com Consulting practice
• HR Data Labs Season 8 Episode 9
• HR Data Labs Season 8 Episode 7

• “Finding [employees] alone—never mind amazing [employees]—is very difficult, and it’s expensive since the pandemic.”
• “Managers shouldn’t feel bad about going to training, because the world has changed . . . and we need to keep those managers [up-to-date].”

Announcer: 0:01

The world of business is more complex than ever. The world of human resources and compensation is also getting more complex. Welcome to the HR Data Labs podcast, your direct source for the latest trends from experts inside and outside the world of human resources. Listen as we explore the impact that compensation strategy, data and people analytics can have on your organization. This podcast is sponsored by Salary.com, your source for data technology and consulting for compensation and beyond. Now here are your hosts, David Turetsky and Dwight Brown.

 

David Turetsky: 0:38

Hello and welcome to the HR Data Labs podcast, I'm your host David Turetsky, alongside my trusted friend, co-host, partner in crime, Dwight Brown from Salary.com. Dwight Brown, how are you?

 

Dwight Brown: 0:48

I'm good. David, how you going today?

 

David Turetsky: 0:50

I'm okay. It's really freaking hot here in Massachusetts.

 

Dwight Brown: 0:54

Is it?

 

David Turetsky: 0:55

Yeah, but I guess I shouldn't complain, because we're not we don't have a hurricane bearing down on us.

 

Dwight Brown: 1:00

Yeah, that's true. Could always be worse, right?

 

David Turetsky: 1:02

Could be, it could be, I hope not, but it could be. But today, Dwight, we have a treat. Today, in the past, just just for context, we've had the, Not the HR Lady, Tara, but today we actually have The HR Lady trademarked, actually. Wendy Sellers, Wendy, how are you?

 

Wendy Sellers: 1:22

Fantastic. How are you?

 

David Turetsky: 1:24

I'm okay, just a little warm, but good.

 

Wendy Sellers: 1:26

Yes, it's a little warm everywhere. And I'm glad I'm not in Texas right now.

 

David Turetsky: 1:30

Yes, yes.

 

Wendy Sellers: 1:32

Which is where Tara is and she's in she's in Texas. I'm in Florida.

 

David Turetsky: 1:36

Yes, yes. I have lots of friends in Texas, and right now I'm thinking about them, and this has been a bad weather event, so I hope it goes goes by quickly. But today we wanted to talk to you and get to know you a little bit more. So give us a little bit about your background.

 

Wendy Sellers: 1:54

Sure. So I'm currently known as The HR Lady, that's the name of my business, and yes, I do have two trademarks on that. I've been in HR longer than I care to admit. I think if you've been in HR for more than five years, you already are clinically insane, right?

 

David Turetsky: 2:11

I'm insane about seven times over. So that makes total sense.

 

Wendy Sellers: 2:15

I've been doing HR for closer to three decades now, and about, I don't know, maybe 11 12, years ago, I went out on my own, decided I wanted to help many people, and that's why I became an HR consultant. My primary focus as an HR consultant is with small businesses. They usually just don't have HR so they're winging it, and they're not always winging it well. So my goal is to help them in an affordable way, and then I do a lot of management training for any size business.

 

David Turetsky: 2:48

Oh, that's really cool. So are you a coach? A certified coach?

 

Wendy Sellers: 2:51

I do not do coaching. The only time I do coaching is when I'm, you know, dealing with, like, maybe performance improvement plans. But I don't do coaching. I do more. I'm consulting to the business owner, the managers who are acting as HR, and then training those managers and those business owners. You know what the heck the laws are, how to do things like performance improvement plans, you name it. Usually, if you could, if you could train people in a way that they can just understand in their terminology, they get it. It's a miracle, right?

 

David Turetsky: 3:22

Right, but understanding and staying on top of all those things is just a job in and of itself. So kudos for that.

 

Dwight Brown: 3:29

Especially a small business owner.

 

David Turetsky: 3:31

Oh yes, yeah. So Wendy, what's one fun thing that no one knows about you?

 

Wendy Sellers: 3:39

You know, I'm kind of an open book, so most people know a little bit of everything. But one fun thing that some of our listeners may not know is that I live in my RV, so that's where I'm calling in from right now. I live in my RV in St Pete, Florida, and I've been living in it for, geez, eight, eight and a half years, and I love it. I'm not, I don't think I'm ever going back to traditional housing.

 

David Turetsky: 4:01

Well, I mean, you started, you were starting the trend of tiny houses. So, I mean.

 

Wendy Sellers: 4:06

Yeah, the funny thing is, I used to always want

 

David Turetsky: 4:07

Yeah, but RVs, we've seen RVs that are extreme a tiny house, but there's not always places to put them. You know, the communities don't always have tiny house communities. I think post pandemic, there's probably more of them, and they're not that cheap either. They're very expensive! amounts of money as well. I guess it kind of depends on the size and the capabilities you're looking for.

 

Wendy Sellers: 4:33

Yeah, absolutely. I used to have a motor home that I drove across the country on a 69 day trip by myself, and last year I switched that out, and I have a travel trailer that you pull.

 

David Turetsky: 4:45

Oh, cool.

 

Dwight Brown: 4:46

Nice. So do you still tour around a lot?

 

Wendy Sellers: 4:50

I haven't since I got this new one, I'm living in a really fun city blocks away from downtown, so I'm like, I'll jump on a plane if I want to go somewhere!

 

David Turetsky: 5:02

But you could, you could! Especially if there's a weather event that comes toward your area.

 

Wendy Sellers: 5:08

Oh yes, I have escaped one too many times in my RV because of hurricanes, because, again, I am in Florida, so hurricanes are everywhere. So I absolutely can. I'm just currently choosing not to.

 

David Turetsky: 5:21

Nothing wrong with that.

 

Dwight Brown: 5:22

Not unless you're forced. Yeah, totally get it.

 

Wendy Sellers: 5:24

Yeah.

 

David Turetsky: 5:26

You know, hopefully we won't hear of anything you know that forces you to do it. So we're gonna keep our fingers crossed. Yeah. So the topic for today is one that we've talked about a few times, and I think it comes very close to the hearts of all HR people, no matter what function you're part of, which is how to attract and retain amazing employees. So the first question for you, Wendy, what is the top concern of employers?

 

Wendy Sellers: 6:00

These days, it's finding employees, you know, that are, that have the knowledge, skills and abilities that is needed for the job at hand, and then keeping them is the next one.

 

David Turetsky: 6:10

Right. Well, you talked about in the in the topic, we talk about amazing employees, and there's a gigantic differential between average employee and amazing I hope, right?

 

Wendy Sellers: 6:20

Yeah, there really is, you know, people want to, you want to hire somebody and be like, Oh yeah, they're going to start the first day, and they're just going to be awesome and knock it out of the ballpark. But, you know, there's so much that's required to make that happen. So the first thing is finding the amazing employee, which the manager needs to be involved in. And we have to get it, you know? I can. I can go down how to do that if you want. Or shall I wait?

 

David Turetsky: 6:46

Well and I think one of the bigger problems is that you could hire an employee in one company, and they're amazing. Hire another employee, different culture, different background of the company, and they're not amazing. We've seen that after time and time again.

 

Wendy Sellers: 7:02

Right. And you'll get, you know, former employers or teammates, co workers, to do the testimonials and the reviews of of the new candidate. And of course, you know, you would think that nobody would put on their job application, Oh, call this employer, because they're gonna, they're going to give me, you know, bad information, but you'd be surprised how many people do put as a reference somebody who does not give them a good reference! So that's a whole other conversation about figuring out how to properly recruit, but finding people alone, never mind amazing people is very difficult, and it's expensive! It's very expensive since the pandemic.

 

David Turetsky: 7:44

Didn't we used to talk about the word referral as being kind of the best source of hire. At least I remember that. You know, we always used to ask people, you know, we want to hire good people. So, you know, go back into your, you know, history, find people you think would fit in this culture and let them know that we have a job opening. Is that not the case anymore?

 

Wendy Sellers: 8:06

No, it is. But the thing is, it's so competitive out there that if you... So, let me back up here a minute. If you have an amazing culture, and that's what you're bragging about to the candidates and your, and your employees truly do believe you have an amazing culture. You don't even have to ask them to refer. They're trying to get their friends in anyways. You know, their friends already know, oh, I work for an amazing company, and I want in let me know when there's an opening. But if you have to basically pry it out of your employees hands to say, please, please refer somebody to me, please. Then you probably have some cultural issues or management issues, or some things going on that the employees aren't already bragging about you and getting people in there. There's also the possibility of paying your employees like a bonus or something as a, hey, if you refer somebody, we'll give you a bonus, or whatever you whenever, whatever kind of, you know, money it is, you know, there's, there's two sides of that coin, because they may just refer somebody and then split the money with that candidate, or something like that, and then they're there 90 days, and they walk out. And so, you know, there's never, like, an easy solution when you're trying to get your current employees to refer. My my one big concern is like, yes, if you have a great company, let them brag. Let them send people in. Reward your employees for sending in their friends, their neighbors, their cousins, whoever else. Make sure it's legit. You still got to interview them, but be careful that you're not getting the same type of employees over and over again. And by the same type, I mean gender, gender orientation, you know, race, disability, ability, and we tend to hang out with people that are like us. So it kind of can hurt with your with your, you know, if you're having any kind of, you know, initiative to get some diverse people in there.

 

David Turetsky: 9:58

Yeah, right. Especially if you start with the nepotism channel, which, not only do they look like them, they really do, they're all related. But when one person leaves, you know, or one person has a problem, then basically that entire group has a problem.

 

Wendy Sellers: 10:16

Yeah, it's hard. So there's a catch 22. I'm I'm for it, you know, I'm definitely for hiring friends and even family, but you got to have your rules set up. You have to have your handbook set up. You have your managers trained. You still have to interview and you still have to pick the best of the best, even if they're related to the owner or the manager, or whoever it might be.

 

Dwight Brown: 10:35

As difficult as that might be, it's not, you know, it's very challenging, especially if the owner is

 

Wendy Sellers: 10:38

Well, if the owner respected the HR person referring somebody, it's hard to say, sorry, you know? and the managers, then they should be able to say, they should say, Okay, here's a candidate, pick, you know, you guys pick whoever is the best for the job. But we know that doesn't always work out. That's not the reality of the situation.

 

Dwight Brown: 11:05

Yeah, we all like our jobs, and we figure we probably got better job security if we don't go against what the owner says.

 

Wendy Sellers: 11:12

Yeah, unfortunately, that is, I mean, it's the reality of the situation. I'm a very realistic person, so you just may have to change the job ad or something like that, or the job description, so that it's 100% clear that we need these candidates to have XYZ. And when the owner hands you them said they don't have that skill or have the capability of getting that skill, that's why I'm turning it down. You know, your candidate referral.

 

David Turetsky: 11:37

Yeah, which you have to do very carefully, by the way.

 

Wendy Sellers: 11:39

Yes, yes.

 

David Turetsky: 11:42

But I wanted to ask you one other question you had mentioned as part of the first question, answer that that's still a hard market to try and find good people in. Right? The market is still really tough. What's going to change for that? I mean, because the demographics aren't going to change dramatically any day soon, although you know the graying of the workforce still is happening right now, there's still a lot of us, like me, who are getting near retirement age, even though I'm never going to be able to retire. Thank you to my children. But I mean, how do we deal with the fact that our demographics and our immigration policies are really not being very favorable to, you know, helping win that talent war?

 

Wendy Sellers: 12:25

Yeah, and it's, it's actually probably going to get worse before it gets better. Because if we're trying to without getting into politics and get my blood boiling here, but if we're, you know, trying to stop people from coming into this country who actually want to work, then we're still not going to, you know, make any changes anytime soon. So the biggest thing that I would say is you've got to get your the management team has to be trained. They have to be the right people. Don't just promote people into managers because they've been there the longest or because, you know, they're willing to take the job. If we have good managers, then the employees who are struggling will be able to get helped by the managers and, you know, trained up, up skilled. And if we have good managers, less people will be walking out the door because they had a bad day. And then that's how we retain people. So we have to really learn how to treat employees like they're valued, even if they're not the your number one choice. It's your only choice. You know, it's your only choice. We're not being able to hire anybody else for whatever reason it might be. These are your choices here. So let's work with what we have, including upskilling our employees and making sure that the managers are trained to be managers and not just shoved in there because they're the only one that took the job.

 

David Turetsky: 13:43

Right.

 

Dwight Brown: 13:44

Out of curiosity. You know, we, for the longest time, we were talking about the great resignation, and you know, now, matter of fact, we had many episodes where we talked about the great resignation. And now the the tide's kind of shifting. Have you seen that shift in the clients that you're working with, and their ability to be able to attract and retain amazing people?

 

Wendy Sellers: 14:06

I would say I've definitely seen it slow down of the employees being voluntarily leaving. But it's still happening even people like just in my group of friends, who are working in decent jobs. Every single one of them has an updated resume. Every single one of them is still looking at the job ads that are coming through their email. They haven't unsubscribed from those job ads yet. So people are still looking. They're just kind of going the wait and see, like, Okay, let's see what's going to happen. You know, listen to this news channel over here, the you know, things are going on in the economy, economy, and listen to this one over here. And then, of course, we have a presidential election year, so I think people are saying, Okay, let me just hold on right now. They haven't fired me. I haven't quit. I'm still looking for another job, but I'm not as active about it. But if something falls into their lap, I think most people will be more more than willing. Especially if it's the pay and the benefits are there, are more than willing to jump ship and go somewhere else. So, you know, for the employers that are listening, don't get too comfortable thinking, oh, you know, it's we're back in charge. The employees and candidates aren't in charge anymore, because they still really are. And how did you, you know, really assess that in your company? If you, if one person leaves, I don't care if you have 25 employees or 2500 employees, but if one person leaves a team, and it kind of destroys the week of the entire team, then that's how you know that the employees are still in charge. You know, if you, if you're saying, I don't have somebody just lying around to put in their position, or I can't go and put an ad out and have somebody fill the position by the end of the week. That's to me, how I know. Okay, well, we're still not in charge. Then the employees are still in charge right now.

 

Dwight Brown: 15:52

Interesting.

 

David Turetsky: 15:52

Right, right, yeah.

 

Announcer: 15:56

Like what you hear so far? Make sure you never miss a show by clicking subscribe. This podcast is made possible by Salary.com. Now back to the show.

 

David Turetsky: 16:06

One of the things I wanted to ask you before we move on is, there's a there's a sentiment that we feel a lot about quiet quitting, which is, you know, less engagement. And it kind of goes along with the the whole problem that Dwight was talking about, about people, you know, disengaging and leaving and feeling empowered, and you kind of talked about this a little bit, but there's always been a rainbow. There's always been a kind of a large range between someone who's actively engaged and someone who's actively disengaged and causing harm. There's also the good performers and bad performers, and a range as well, including the people who are pretty average. And when we're looking at the people, especially in hard economic times, and we're looking at people to cut, we first go to those people who are disengaged and bad performers, and we start looking at them and saying, Well, we gotta get let them go. But when we come out of these hard times, we're gonna find it's really hard to try and replace them, right? I mean, from what you're saying, it's not like there are a ton of people out there that we're gonna be able to get back into those positions and backfill. So yeah, I might, I might get rid of the people who are actively disengaged, the people are causing harm to the company, but not necessarily terrible performer, not necessarily average to semi bad performers. I might want to coach them and be able to train them into something else, right?

 

Wendy Sellers: 17:27

Yeah, absolutely. I literally just wrote a training this morning on performance improvement plans and the fact that, you know, we should stop only putting people on PIPs performance improvement plans because you want to get them out the door, right? We should be treating everybody at all the time of saying we want to make sure your performance and your behavior is as good as it possibly can be. And always have our every single one of our employees on some kind of development program. Doesn't mean that they're in intense coaching or PIPs or even training, but there should be ongoing feedback year round. We wait too long. I mean, it blows my mind, where people say we only do one review a year, I'm like so you wait 364 days to talk to your employee who's not doing that great? Or, on the other hand, is doing great to let them know officially that, Hey, good job or not, good job like we should be. The once a year reviews, they drive me crazy. We should just get rid of them. Now, I understand some organizations, especially public organizations, you know, it's written into their bylaws, or something like that. That's fine. Then then recap the 12 months worth of feedback sessions, but it's all about feedback and making sure your employees have a job description and that it's right year round, not once a year, once every five years, when you're looking to replace them, we should be doing compensation analysis, making sure that we're we're paying our employees what we the market is asking for, and then even surveying the employees of saying, What benefits do you want? Maybe they don't want, you know, X amount of sick days, but they want more PTO, or they want, you know, whatever it might be, bringing their pet into the office. So, you know, get get creative, but ask your employees what they want. But if you just say, hey, what do you want? That's, that's, you're not going to get an answer. You have to get definitely, you know, have a lot more specifics, because employees aren't us. They're not managers or not HR, they don't really know the answer that you're looking for. So go ahead, a little bit, all over the board here, but everybody that should be listening is, first thing I would say is job descriptions. Let's look at the job descriptions. Are they right? And then let's build smart goals and career plans out of the job descriptions. And then also, for if you are interviewing, build the appropriate and the right interview questions from that job description. And then the same thing with the reviews too, using the job description for a review. It doesn't have to be this complicated review form. You could literally just be printing out your job description and then sitting down with the employee, line by line, saying, Okay, how are things going? What's going what's going on? What can I help you with? Good old fashioned conversations.

 

David Turetsky: 20:19

But that's what's gotten lost, I think, in the entire world of performance management, because managers now say, Well, you screwed up last week, so I'm going to keep belting you with that. Or you haven't made your numbers in a couple of months, even though you were a star performer for the first, you know, however many months. And so what I what I think I hear you saying is, is that we need a lot more manager training, right? We need to be able to help managers understand how to be managers.

 

Wendy Sellers: 20:50

Yeah, they really do. Managers in today's workforce, not managers in 20 years ago. We really do. And you know, managers shouldn't. They should. They should not feel bad about going to training, because the world has changed. That's the end of the story. The world has changed. And we need to keep those managers, you know, understanding, hey, this is what's going on in the workplace now. Here's, you know, terminology, laws, holy, goodness. So many laws have changed the past few years in HR land and managers need that training. It could be as simple as just sitting down with three or four managers in a conference room and then, hey, what's your what's your number one problem? And then everybody talking it out together so they can learn from each other, and they can lean on each other. But often they're afraid to ask because they think it's gonna be egg on their face because they're asking for the training or asking for more time with a director. It's just, it's just insane.

 

Dwight Brown: 21:49

Well, and it's easy, it's easy for managers to say, well, I got management training 25 years ago, so I've got all that I need, and it's easy to forget that things change. Your work environment changes. I mean going back to the demographic discussion, the demographic has severely changed from I think of my management classes, which were 20 25 years ago, and I think of what it would be to manage the new demographic coming in fresh out of college. I I'd need a refresher. I'd need updating!

 

Wendy Sellers: 22:26

Yeah, absolutely, and not even that Dwight, how about fresh out of high school? Because not everybody's going to college. They don't even, they don't even get that experience that, that college experience of, you know, dealing with other diverse people that are not like them and things like that. They're coming right out of, out of high school, and many of them coming out of high school, or, you know, they're super, super smart, but they don't have the business sense, so we have to teach them that. And we expect miracles of a 17 year old or an 18 year old. We expect miracles of a 30 year old. And it's like, you know we have to for we have to put ourselves in those new, those young people's shoes, to say, Well, did I know this stuff when I was that age? No, we may doubt. We think we did, but we did not.

 

Dwight Brown: 23:14

We're now managing people whose brains are literally still developing.

 

David Turetsky: 23:19

But the problem is, is also everything has evolved so much. I mean, forget about the laws, forget about the regulations. The world has evolved. It is, it is not the same world that when I came into the world of work, it's not the same. The people are different, the people, the cultures, are different, you know. And then introduce all the laws where what you can say and what you can't say, what you can do and what you can't do, what you know, who you can promote, and what you can do about that. It's all different. And I'm not saying it's bad or it's good, it's just different. And so, yeah, trying to, you know, rely on stuff that I learned over the last 35 years is stupid. I need to learn too. I need to get training. Everybody does!

 

Wendy Sellers: 24:06

Yeah, like I said, I was doing, creating a performance improvement plan, a training for managers this morning. And I'm like, looking at the form, I'm like, Okay, we need to update these forms because they're so outdated, and nobody even uses a form they usually you're going to use, you know, their cell phone, or some, you know, something that can be written on, on a on a smart, smart device.

 

David Turetsky: 24:31

But even those forms on the smart devices, all they are is, is basically just taking the document that you have and putting it in a form. I mean, all it is a now web based form, still the same thing. I don't know if you ever dealt with the manila envelopes with the really secure red string on them. It's basically our mascot. And you know, that's how I used to send increase recommendations to managers, you know, making sure it had that red string attached. Because if it didn't, then it wasn't secure.

 

Wendy Sellers: 24:58

Yeah, this just blows my mind! That just sounds insane right now, but many large organizations still use that too. A lot of colleges still use it.

 

David Turetsky: 25:13

Yeah, but, but then again, those HRISes, they were built or designed with taking that form and making it routine, so all of the forms that we see, you know, the workflows may be more variable, and they make it they could have conditional logic in them. Well, you could get that from the mailroom. All you do is put the conditional logic as the next person who is going to get the that manila envelope.

 

Dwight Brown: 25:35

Kind of like your form 1040, every April 15th.

 

David Turetsky: 25:39

Oh, you know, it's so painful to talk about, even think about. But, but, no, but you're right, though, right? I mean, but if you're, are you a tax professional Dwight? You're not, right?

 

Dwight Brown: 25:51

Yeah, exactly.

 

David Turetsky: 25:52

But you still have to fill out that form.

 

Dwight Brown: 25:54

Right.

 

David Turetsky: 25:55

And it's the same thing with HR, right? Where, I mean, even HR professionals have to relearn things every year. That's where I was going with that, Dwight.

 

Dwight Brown: 26:05

I wondered where you were going.

 

David Turetsky: 26:06

Yeah, even the experts need to learn what's changing, like the new laws that come out, the new pay transparency laws, you know, we have to know in that state what is the minimum requirement for satisfactory compliance with that law? Yeah, well, not everybody's going to know that. And Wendy, in your world, when you deal with small businesses, you know, how do you train them to be able to understand how these requirements uniquely, because it's small business world, how do they understand how to actually comply with those regulations?

 

Wendy Sellers: 26:39

Yeah, so I do it like an audit when I get a new client, and it's literally just a spreadsheet. And it's like, Okay, let's start here. Let's just start answering, start answering these basic questions for me, so I can figure out, are you compliant with just the necessities. And then if you're not, we got to get you there. And then, then the second thing is, if you are okay. Now let's move on to the functionality. You know what HR really is? HR in the past, used to be forms and paperwork and even payroll, which never made sense to me, payroll should not be in HR, but that's a whole other conversation. Separation of duties is what's really needed. You know, let's get the functional part of the compliance part taken care of, but the rest is okay. What do you do when there's violence in the workplace? What do you do when somebody just yelled at somebody, or threw a book at somebody, or stomped out of here and or in the, you know, in the parking garage or parking lot, yelling at the top of their lungs or crying like, what do you do? Most managers are not prepared for that, because they're like, Whoa, I was supposed to manage, if you got, you know, 50 pieces of this widget in a box. I didn't know I was gonna have to manage your emotions, right? Well, all generations definitely have emotions, but the younger generations, and this goes for no matter. If we're doing this in 50 years from now, I'm gonna have the same conversation. The younger generations, right? They still have to learn how to be professional and everything, but they're, they're we need them so they are in charge. So we have to realize, as managers and as business owners that, yeah, people's emotions do matter, and you can't just tell them to suck it up buttercup, which is the name of my book. You know, you can't just tell him to suck it up. You have to say, Okay, we're going to suck it up together. And this is what I'm going to do to help you manage your emotions, but I'm still going to hold you accountable, but then I'm going to help you. And if it and if it happens again, you know, you're you're out the

 

David Turetsky: 28:38

Hey, are you listening to this and thinking door. to yourself, Man, I wish I could talk to David about this. Well, you're in luck. We have a special offer for listeners of the HR Data Labs podcast, a free half hour call with me about any of the topics we cover on the podcast or whatever is on your mind. Go to salary com/hrdlconsulting to schedule your free 30 minute call today. But we also have to worry about them getting violent and all too often this is happening, you know, not in just small businesses, even in large businesses, but but specifically in small businesses, we may not hear about it a lot, because it doesn't make the headlines. You know, the big headlines that the large businesses do, and it's unfortunate that just there's a lot of mental health issues that aren't getting dealt with. And that's what a lot of times that's what leads to that, right?

 

Wendy Sellers: 29:31

Yeah, it really is. There's a the one thing that I I love about the two youngest generations, Gen Y and Gen Z, is that they are, for the most part, I'm generalizing, obviously, but they're open to be to saying, Hey, I have this condition, and I need help. Where the other generations, we were kind of taught to hide it, you know, it was like an embarrassment or something like that. Where now they're like, Nope, I have this issue. I have this issue. Some still don't, depending on how they were raised in their family, and managers are just sitting there freezing, going, you have a mental health condition. I'm not prepared for that. I don't know what to do or how to help. And then they don't know what to do, so they ignore them, or they avoid them. Well, that's not going to help the employee, and that's certainly not going to help your customer!

 

David Turetsky: 30:16

No.

 

Dwight Brown: 30:16

All right, it's this lingering fear of something that we don't understand as managers and understand how we deal with it, which goes back to what you were talking about before. There's ongoing education that needs to happen. And you know, it's kind of a it's kind of a constant thing.

 

Wendy Sellers: 30:32

It really is. I mean, I'm The HR Lady! I do management training all day, every day. That's a majority of my business these days since the pandemic, because a lot of companies said, oh, we need to train our managers, because we have turnover, and we need to keep people and I learn stuff every single day, from employment attorneys, from consultants, from from you, you know, every single day. So we have to realize, like the world is continuing to change. It's not going to stop anytime soon, and we need to allow our managers the time to learn and then the time to implement. And so that's the other thing, it's costly to run a, it's a more costly to run a business these days, because you might have had a working manager before, and you know, maybe 10% of their work was managing humans. Well, now it's probably more 50% of their time is managing humans, where 50% is doing some, you know, project work or something like that. And that's a hard pill for employers to swallow. They're like, well, I just lost an employee because I promoted management. I'm like, Yeah, but if you don't promote them to management and get them trained, you're going to lose a lot more employees!

 

Dwight Brown: 31:45

Right.

 

David Turetsky: 31:46

Do you see there being a big difference in the size of the company and how much training managers need?

 

Wendy Sellers: 31:52

Um, yes, and no. So here's the thing in in small businesses, which is a majority of American businesses, they don't have HR, you know, they're, they probably don't have a CFO. If they do, it's a consultant. They don't have the expertise in house. So the managers are picking that up. They might be a little bit of accounting, a little bit of payroll, a little bit of HR, and so they need to be trained more on the laws and the, you know, the day to day behind the scenes where, in bigger companies, maybe you have a full blown HR department, and you don't need to know about the ADA in detail, but you do need to know about it a little bit, because you're going to need to hear things and spot things and Say, you know that I think my employee has a disability, let me run to HR. They can tell me what to do and then I'll run back. So you still need to know a little bit of something in a big company, and then be an expert on how to communicate and give reviews and hire and things like that. So you know the answer is yes and no. They need to know something about everything, no matter what size company they are. Hopefully the smaller companies will have some kind of consultant like myself that they they can say, you don't need to be an expert John manager over here, but you need to know this. And when this happens, call Wendy.

 

David Turetsky: 33:16

Right, exactly, exactly. And I think that the companies that fail typically, are the ones that say, Nah, these people have it. John knows what to do. Don't worry about it. Yeah, and John doesn't really know what to do, and John's struggling. And John leaves because he's like, I can't deal with this anymore. I'm I don't know how to deal with people. I don't. There are too many issues.

 

Wendy Sellers: 33:40

Right. Well, John was trained by his manager 20 years ago to just yell at people and they'll, they'll do what you want them to do.

 

Dwight Brown: 33:51

Hit them with a stick.

 

Wendy Sellers: 33:54

Just, you know, threaten them or whatever it is and it's like, back then you just fell in line and you were like, Okay, no problem. You were still mad as an employee, but you were like, no problem. And now you're like, I'm out of here, John, because I have 20 other companies that have been begging me to work for them. And even if it's less money, I'm going because I don't want to deal with you!

 

David Turetsky: 34:13

Like we were talking about before, they still have the power of using their feet to be able to find another job.

 

Wendy Sellers: 34:18

And the other thing is, even if they don't walk out the door, they can just quit and stay, right? They can just say, I'll do the bare minimum because you're not a great manager, and you won't realize it anyways. So I'll do the bare minimum and I'll collect my paycheck, but I'm not going above and beyond, not one iota. And because you're not a good manager, it's not going to make a difference to me. I'm just going to be miserable to be around, and then I'm going to bring everybody else down!

 

David Turetsky: 34:44

Right, right again, that manager now causes a huge crisis inside the company that the owners don't know about until it actually hurts them real bad.

 

Wendy Sellers: 34:53

And it's usually something like, this is what I get a lot is, yeah, but that manager has this one technical certification that we need in order to do something! And it's like, oh my goodness, no, go pay double the salary somewhere else. Make that person an employee. And trust me, when your employees are doing cartwheels in the parking lot because you got rid of, you know, a bad manager or a bad employee, there's your clue that you should have done this a long time ago!

 

David Turetsky: 35:23

Yeah, workplace toxicity is just awful. It makes everybody's job so much harder, and it just makes our lives unlivable.

 

Wendy Sellers: 35:32

It really, it does. And then if they have, if they're on your health insurance plan, it makes your health insurance claims go up too!

 

David Turetsky: 35:40

Yeah, why is everybody on so many medications?

 

Dwight Brown: 35:42

Yeah, exactly, blood pressure medication and anti anxiety medication. It's a great mix!

 

David Turetsky: 35:52

Well and HIPAA does not allow us to talk about that more. So, we're gonna walk away from that one. Wendy, it was a pleasure having you. This was an amazing discussion. I feel so much better about knowing the fact that training is such a key component for all size businesses, but most specifically, in different ways. And so thank you very much for being here.

 

Wendy Sellers: 36:24

Yeah, thank you for having me. I'm here. I'm here to help!

 

David Turetsky: 36:27

And in the show notes, we're going to put a link to your book. And what was that, again?

 

Wendy Sellers: 36:32

Suck it up, Buttercup!

 

Dwight Brown: 36:33

Suck it up, buttercup!

 

David Turetsky: 36:37

There you go. Perfect. Well, people can't see it on the audio, but Wendy just put up the suck it up buttercup cover of her book. Please go take a look at it, and then call Wendy if you need any help and you're a small business and you don't actually have to be in Florida!

 

Wendy Sellers: 36:53

Yeah, absolutely! I help people all over the country, and I'll be rolling out a subscription based service soon as well, and it'll be very affordable.

 

David Turetsky: 37:03

There you go. Great job. Well again. Thank you very much. And Dwight, thank you as well.

 

Dwight Brown: 37:08

Thank you. Thanks for being with us today, Wendy, this is great.

 

Wendy Sellers: 37:10

Thank you!

 

David Turetsky: 37:11

Thank you all for listening. Take care and stay safe.

 

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