Hiring
When it comes to bringing in new staff or keeping the staff you already have there are so many ways to branch out. What I have noticed both being the new employee and accepting a new co-worker is they are working hard to bring their best.
When we think of the Hiring pool, let’s look at some statics
When hiring we should understand who is coming in the door…
- How many are foster kids? 6% of all US children have found themselves in foster care by the time they are adults.
- How many come from domestic home issues? 6 out of 10 men and 5 out of 10 women have experienced a severe traumatic event.
- 38 million people are under the poverty line
- 40 to 50% of people have experienced divorce.
- 5.4 million adults are on the autism spectrum.
More than 50% of people will deal with anxiety or a major depressive mental health challenge.
Adversity breeds resilience. They may not be the cream of the crop but let’s remember cream rises to the top. All the adversity that they have been through equals how their experiences have made them resilient and has brought them to a place where they want to learn and they want to be empowered. Imagine running a business where every worker loves the place they work as much as they love home. Maybe even more, especially if home is hard. When work feels like home it becomes an escape from what is hard, and you love what you do, then it’s not hard to do it.
Training
Before training someone, we must be ready to train them for success. Not just for ours but for theirs. If they are successful, then we are too. I have seen so many companies train from the perspective of throwing information at them and expecting them to bring it back out effectively. While some people can do this, it would be the minority. Training should happen at a pace that the employee can manage. It’s ok if it is a little slower. It takes seven times for a person to hear the information to reach the point of where they have mastered it.
Making sure that we prepare our workers before they hit the front lines is critical. We don’t put a soldier on the front lines of the battlefield before they are trained to take on what is there. They start in the back of the war before they move forward. Making sure they know how to use the tools and weapons they have to defend themselves and the other lives they are protecting.
Customer service is a battlefield of a different kind. Not only do they affect you within the company, they are the ones coming at your employees. Are they ready to meet those challenges? More than often customer service workers are like therapists. They deal with the problems in the customer’s world along with the issue at hand.
The Cycle of a Relationship
A relationship starts by love not as “in-love” but it can be affection or affirmation. The next part is what I like to call “The Bounce” where we often quickly bounce to judgement. This is also where so many get stuck. We must practice bouncing quickly to forgiveness and back to love. Not because we feel it, but because it is what is right. We can’t afford to land on judgement. This is where we lose customers and employees. Building relationships is a lot like building a bridge, bridges connect us. They can get us to one place or another. Like networking, they help us to get further along than we would on our own. They come together. One nail at a time, one board at a time. One step at a time. In order to get where we are going, we must take the first step. Without the first step we can’t make it to our destination.
