Values Alignment

Values Alignment

by | Jun 16, 2022 | Blog, Hiring, Podcast

 

Today we are joined by Lindsay Harle-Kadatz, the host of “Businesses are people too! A Podcast.” In this episode, we’ll reflect on Values Alignment. We’ll discuss Neuro-change, the challenges people are facing during the pandemic, and why you need to see a business as an actual person.

What is Neurochange?

Why do things change in our brains? Mindsets, beliefs, subconscious, and more are all woven into the framework of neuroplasticity. It helps us understand how our brain changes. Neurochange is the science behind what you need to do and how to get your brain to work with itself. 

What are the challenges people are facing during Covid?

 People reflected on what values they believed in and if they still rang true for themselves. People know relatively quickly what matters and what doesn’t and can cut through the “crap” much more rapidly. Businesses realize they are not who they used to be.

Working from Home vs. Office?

People want to work from home more. It’s a hard change to navigate to come back to the office. Businesses are wondering how to create a connection between remote workers. One thing to remember about remote workers is people will get their jobs done when you trust them to do it.

See the Business as a person?

Lindsay believes in seeing the business as a person too. It comes from the definition of a corporation as an individual entity. In marketing and branding, mental wellness is also off if a company’s brand is off. Seeing it as a person helps with brand management because you realize there is a reputation and relationship it has with other companies and other people. What many people say about companies isn’t always grounded in reality. Outcoming generations can feel that their identity is tied to the business. In contrast, incoming generations believe that they are the ones who determine the business identity separately from their personal identity. 

What parts of the business to see as a person?

First and foremost, ask the people. Ask them how they feel and what they think. Sit down with each team member and ask them what they think: those conversations will tell you where to improve. Remember that you hire people to be better than you at a job. Trust your people.

How do we get trust back?

Fall on your sword. Own up. Hold yourself accountable. Leaders own up to their mistakes. Ask yourself if your ego getting in the way of you and your team achieving something? 

How to bring about change when people aren’t in alignment?

This is very situational-based. Always bring in an HR professional or a lawyer. First, ask yourself if you, the leader, are doing the same things you want your employees to do. Also, ask them how they understand the values they need to follow. 

Parting thoughts: 

Take some time to stop and reflect on whether our daily actions reflect and align with our values. If they do, “cheers!” But if we notice our activities are not aligned with our values, let’s get curious and dig in on how we get there and what our values actually are. 

Learn More

Lindsay Harle-Kadatz

Lindsay is passionate about supporting leaders to empower, promote, and champion their people and seeing each team member for the value they bring to their role, well beyond their skillset.

Values Vixen 💛 | Neuro Change Method™, Certified Master Practitioner 🧠 | “Businesses Are People too! A Podcast” Host 🎙

Lindsay’s favorite business books are Necessary Endings (Dr. Henry Cloud) and  Traction (Gino Wickman). 

Favorite movie: the first Jurassic Park

Lindsay’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindsayharle/ 

 

Mike and PivotCX:

Mike’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/indymike/ 

Pivot2First Podcast: https://pivot2first.com/

PivotCX: https://pivotcx.io 

Hiring for Attitude

Hiring for Attitude

by | Jun 16, 2022 | Blog, Hiring, Podcast

 

Mike and Athin Cassiotis delve into the importance of setting a growth mindset in business and life, business coaching and mentoring, developing your company and personal brands, and hiring for attitude in this job market.

Athin’s Process with service-based businesses

Ramping up service-based businesses is relatively quick, but you must ensure you provide an excellent service. Athin helps business entrepreneurs manage whether they need to adapt their model to be more sustainable (e.g., recurrent revenue vs. one-off jobs or changing their marketing and sales strategies). 

 

Differentiating your business and your personal brand

“People buy from People”  and how you position yourself and your brand affects prospective clients’ decision to do business with you. Someone will buy based on trust and connection if there are a few options with similar offerings. It’s very compelling to understand and utilize these methods when running your business. 

Touchpoints: 

We get distracted very easily. Gone are the days when you could cold-mail people or just ask them to buy from you. It takes more for people to trust a business and several touchpoints before they’ll buy from you.

The importance of Mindset

It’s what’s between your ears that will determine your success. People sometimes have beliefs that are holding them back. Understanding yet questioning those beliefs can unlock your ability to succeed. 

A great explanation of this is by Robert Kiyosaki in his book “Rich Dad, Poor Dad.” In it, Kiyosaki speaks of how many of our parents taught us that money is the root of all evil; however, the flip side argues that not having money creates a lack of freedom. Putting a proverbial mirror on yourself to uncover limiting beliefs and updating your actions takes effort and happens over time. It’s easier for someone from the outside (a mentor or coach) to help uncover and help change business direction. This shift in beliefs changed Athin’s life exponentially. 

A new type of hiring challenge

In the US, people are slowing growth. It’s just hard to hire right now. What are the biggest challenges in Australia?

  • Australia is a country of mostly immigrants, and many people come from overseas, especially for tech.
  • Skills shortage, tech or otherwise, makes it hard to find good people.
  • Great Resignation: employees are rethinking what is essential for them. Remote work vs. office vs. hybrid is an example. Clear work options will make it easier for employers to retain and attract new employees. 
  • Culture: Being clear on business purpose, mission, and values.

Hiring For Attitude

To fill openings, you might have to rethink what makes someone qualified. You can’t wait 60 days to make a hire. Employers must quickly decide if someone is a good fit for the role and the team culture. 

What do people need to change the most about hiring?

  • Do you have to have that person as an employee? Some roles might be well suited for people who are contractors if it’s challenging to find people? Being flexible in this regard can go a long way. 
  • What are you actually offering to people? There are a lot of opportunities out there. How do I make it more enticing for them? Work arrangements and benefits, why would I join my business versus another company.

The Biggest Takeaway in Recruiting

Hiring should be based on values, attitudes, and behaviors

  • It’s unlikely that you’ll get someone with all the skills you’re looking for, especially with the skills shortage we have right now. You can train someone on the skills they are missing, but the values, mindset, attitudes, and behaviors are usually deeply imprinted into somebody. While it’s possible, using coaching and other methods to change attitudes and mindsets can take a long time.
  • Know the things that should be required and, know the things that can be taught, be realistic about it. 

What are the most important questions to ask?

  • With language awareness, prospective employees are likely to touch on their values and attitudes, allowing employers to learn about their motivations.
  • Learning what people have gone through in their lives. Learning about their grit, discipline, and the challenges they’ve overcome. What did they do growing up? Playing an instrument, a sport, or doing martial arts shows that someone has discipline and commitment. 

Final thoughts

The big lesson in business and life: be yourself; it doesn’t work if you try to be someone else. Whatever you’re doing (business or otherwise, always have a growth mindset. If we’re not growing, we’re dying. Put yourself in uncomfortable situations, and learn new things. Think whether getting a coach and mentor to know how to do things better would be beneficial. Time is the only resource we have; learning from someone can cut down on time needed to succeed.

Learn More

Athin Cassiotis

Athin hails from Adelaide, South Australia but has lived in Sydney, Australia, for over ten years. He started his first business about 5yrs ago: Waste Management Consulting, and it’s been about 2 ½ yrs since he began consulting and mentoring service-based companies.

Podcast: Business Growth Show → Insider Secrets and great feedback on Business with entrepreneurs and celebrities. If you can ask great questions of the people around you, you can get great answers. 

Favorite business book: Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill (Fundamentals of business mindset, being curious and delving deeper to set yourself up for success).

Favorite movies: Jim Carrey’s Ace Ventura and Eddie Murphy’s Beverly Hills Cop series. (having a good laugh and being different, be you; it’s a key lesson)

 Athin’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/athincassiotis/?originalSubdomain=au 

 

Mike and PivotCX:

Mike’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/indymike/ 

Pivot2First Podcast: https://pivot2first.com/

PivotCX: https://pivotcx.io 

The PEO Revolution

The PEO Revolution

by | Jun 3, 2022 | Blog, Podcast

 

It’s time for a PEO Revolution. Today I’m joined by Dawn Lively and Daniel Fuller of FullStack PEO. We use FullStack at PivotCX for HR benefits, payroll, and everything we do managing our people. If you look at a PEO, they allow a smaller company like us to compete with more prominent companies for talent. It’s an option that can be transformative if it fits your organization.

What is a PEO

PEOs (Professional Employer Organization) are outsourcing firms that provide services to smaller businesses. They enter a co-employment agreement with their clients and become the employer of record (EoR) for tax purposes. Typically, PEOs offerings may include human resource consulting, payroll processing, employer payroll tax filing, benefits administration, recruiting and hiring, regulatory compliance assistance, training, and development. 

Reasons to use a PEO for HR needs:

Although people think of outsourcing accounting as a business function, many don’t connect the dots about outsourcing HR. Using PEOs enables small companies to focus on building their product and growing their company without allocating additional resources to HR tasks.  It becomes pretty simple and can save a lot of time. Many entrepreneurs don’t think that they only have so many hours in a week to put into work.  How many of the things that a PEO does are going to give you, if you do them yourself and you do them very well, will provide a business any advantage over what a PEO can do? I’m not sure there are many. 

Entrepreneurs’ Resistance to the PEO Revolution

There’s a profile of people who think they have to know the ins and outs of their business. The hardest thing to get some business owners, especially some new entrepreneurs, to realize is that they should use PEOs to free up their time and energy instead of holding onto HR tasks until they’ve mastered every aspect before giving any away.

A mentality that has to be learned

“A quick story, we worked with another HR tech going in scale-up mode. Their team comprised HR professionals, and they knew how to do the job themselves because they had done it before but realized from the beginning ‘if we’re gonna grow and scale and positively answer to our investors, we need to give this up.’ The team started with us when they were just three cofounders; they hadn’t hired anyone yet but wanted to have the benefits piece in place for when they recruited and onboarded that first person.

When you have that personality where you want to know and control everything, you have to be challenged to let it go to be successful.”

What are the biggest challenges business owners face when it comes to HR and people?

The first challenge is finding people. Once they find them, the second challenge is differentiating themselves from competitors.

“What will stop that person you brought on six months ago, especially in today’s market, from getting an offer from a competitor for $15000 more. What will stop someone on your team from taking $15000 a year more? If someone hasn’t proactively thought about what besides compensation is gonna keep that person here, and they haven’t done anything about it. I think it’s going to be a big challenge for them.”

Solving this issue has a lot to do with culture fit and being part of the future strategy. Dealing people in on stock options when possible and appropriate. Having buy-in regarding the company’s values, mission, and vision and including them in the decision-making process. Listening to people and getting their feedback (some of the best ideas come from feedback)

It’s also vital to consider ideas and act on them; otherwise, it negatively impacts the culture. 

How many companies are having trouble finding people?

That person was hard to find before the pandemic, and it’s even harder to find now. We hear about that struggle with most of our clients. 

It’s very different when you are a small business vs. a big company. What are companies doing to attract talent?

In essence, there are two parts to this. The first is finding talent and being able to attract it. Secondly, companies have to work hard to retain talent. Companies that usually offer 2-5% raises to their employees in this tight labor market have to do 4-7 or 4-8% increases to be competitive. “But you have to do what you can afford as a small company. So half is trying to keep the talent you already have in addition to recruiting and growing.”

Learn More

Dawn Lively

Dawn has over a decade of experience in the PEO industry, providing administrative, operational, and strategic human resource guidance to small- and mid-sized companies. She has served in a Senior Director capacity, overseeing human resource, client service, benefits administration, and payroll administration functions within a PEO. She was also instrumental in both strategic planning and tactical execution to achieve the strategic goals.

Transformational Book: Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) and related books

Favorite Movie:  first “Point Blank”

Dawn’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dawn-lively-she-her-hers-9558b08/ 

Daniel Fuller

Prior to working at FullStack as VP Business Development, Daniel’s background includes coaching entrepreneurial leaders and mission-driven organizations. While completing his MA in Global Leadership, Daniel founded Sycamore Way, a startup focused on developing tangible skills for leaders and organizations to be talent development cultures. He hosts the “Savage to Sage”, a podcast exploring the evolution of entrepreneurs through the crucible of starting and growing companies.

Transformational Book:  “At your best” by Carey Nieuwhof

Favorite Movie: “Dead Poets Society”

Daniel’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielfullerindy/

Podcast: “Savage to Sage” explores the evolutionary journey of entrepreneurs and founders. https://www.savagetosage.com/ 

Mike and PivotCX:

Mike’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/indymike/ 

Pivot2First Podcast: https://pivot2first.com/

PivotCX: https://pivotcx.io 

The Secret Sauce to Employee Retention and Productivity with Traci Chernoff on Pivot2First Podcast

The Secret Sauce to Employee Retention and Productivity with Traci Chernoff on Pivot2First Podcast

by | May 12, 2022 | Blog, Podcast

In this Pivot2First episode, Mike and Traci Chernoff consider the secret sauce to employee retention and productivity. How to optimize the recruitment process by bringing people, technology, and businesses together. They also cover why peer interviewing is a great idea. The four pillars of employee engagement, and the interaction between AI-powered and human-powered HR. 

Where did we all go wrong? It seems like HR is about humans. How do we get to where we need to be to bring the humans back? 

Although it’s good that we’ve optimized and focused on efficiency, innovation, and technology, we’ve lost our way a little bit in the age of technology. Streamlining, operational efficiencies, labor operations, labor efficiency optimization, and bringing people back into the equation is not an all-or-nothing game. It can all happen together at the same time. While we focus on optimization and efficiency, we should simultaneously focus on the people who make all that happen. Something operators and C-level executives forget is that employment and sales are relationship-driven. They get the sales and marketing piece right, but the HR part wrong. Approaching employment and hiring with a relationship-driven mindset starts with the people in Hiring management positions (whether they’re C-suite, executive/director level) focusing on creating a specific culture or product to solve a problem.

By bringing thought leaders, people with different levels of emotional intelligence, and others committed to giving workers a good experience, we can create initiatives that support that goal. 

Happy employees create happy customer experiences. When you focus on building a happy employee experience and giving them an environment that allows them to be more productive, where they want to get to know the product better, and where they want to make the customer experience exceptional, you don’t have to think about the bottom line because it positively unfolds for you. 

Many companies have spent a lot of time and money automating. Where did we all get it right?

It’s a myth that “if you pay people right and give them good benefits, they’ll stay forever,” people want more than that. 58% of Americans who are eligible to work are hourly. There’s much vulnerability based on pay, benefits eligibility, and being full-time vs. part-time. The truth is that employee engagement is not just about Pay and Benefits.

At Legion we think of The four pillars of Employee Engagement:

  • Pay
  • Benefits
  • Employees, as people, want flexibility and predictability: 

Employees want the opportunity to decide what their lives look like. They want to know they’ll get 40 hrs/week of work. However, they want the flexibility to determine what those 40hrs look like and have the ability to switch shifts or work a different schedule.

  • Employees want to feel connected to the bigger picture through culture and communication:

When employees feel connected to the bigger, they feel connected and grounded in the purpose and mission of the organization. Having tools for frontline communication with employees makes a huge difference in the way they connect with the purpose and mission of the organization. An engaged workforce will do a better job. They’ll be happier and more likely to stay than to churn. 

 

Why do companies process candidates like chickens instead of building relationships?

Sometimes companies aren’t clear on who they are. They sell blue skies because that’s what they want from the company, but it’s essential to be super transparent about where you are today and what you want your future state to look like. 

Additionally,  companies, hiring managers, and people assigned to recruiting, are not hiring for diversity of thought. They aren’t hiring people different from them, who think differently, who have other priorities. Bringing people onto a team who present and represent different ways of thinking and priorities creates a more comprehensive team environment. In this kind of environment where ideas are challenged, individuals have more growth opportunities.

What do companies get wrong before someone becomes an employee? How do we improve employee engagement?

When we think about what we’re expecting from candidates, there’s an imbalance in expectations and what’s reasonable. We shouldn’t bring just anyone, but there’s a way we can think about candidates differently, getting a little bit more humanity to the interview process.

 As we have experienced throughout the pandemic, the way we interview has changed. Instead of asking the same questions from a candidate over and over, candidates can go through the PivotCX process to screen them for the basic qualifications of the role. Hiring managers can then focus on asking pointed or challenging questions to figure out if a candidate is a good fit for the job. 

 Not having peer interviews is also a big issue. Knowing how a new team member will interact with the group is absolutely critical. The reason people stay even when you see manager turnover is because they love their peers and the group of friends they’ve made at work. If we know 50% is employer-controlled (the way we expect people to work) and the other 50% is whom we are working with, then we should place our intention and energy into listening to peer feedback. Involving peers and giving them the psychological safety of expressing their opinions when deciding who to hire will strengthen the bond between the employees, other stakeholders, and the organization.

 

About Traci Chernoff

Traci is a self-starter and entrepreneur with a passion for people, strategy, and innovation. She is host of one of the most interesting HR-focused podcasts: “Bringing the Human back to Human Resources.” She has been an HR Manager, Trainer, and Director of HR and is now Director of Employee Engagement for Legion Technologies, an AI-powered workforce management company with a mission to turn hourly jobs into good jobs.

 Book that changed your life: Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (reading it in high school allowed me to find my own power and know it’s okay to be exactly who you are), the Nightingale by Kristen Hanna (Historical fiction novel set in France WWII. It awoke my spirit and soul). 

Favorite Saying: “Every problem has a solution.”

Your favorite movie: the Harry Potter series (growing up before the films came out was great!)

Final Thoughts: I appreciate you listening at talking about all the things that make me excited and passionate about HR. Let’s continue to talk about why bringing humans back into business is a great mission to have.

Traci’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/HRTraci

Podcast: Bringing the Human back to Human Resources https://hrtraci.com/

 

Learn more about Mike and PivotCX:

Mike’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/indymike/ 

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Speed Wins in Recruiting, Every Time – Kyle Roed on Pivot2First Ep. 7

Speed Wins in Recruiting, Every Time – Kyle Roed on Pivot2First Ep. 7

by | May 5, 2022 | Blog, Hiring, Podcast, recruiting

 

Speed Wins in Recruiting, and when it comes down to it, not all HR professionals recruit at the ideal speed. Mike Seidle and Kyle Roed discuss recruiting strategies CEOs can bring back to their team to get ahead in the competition for talent. 

What are the most common out-of-date practices you see out there?

There are a lot of people who still manage people with 40-year-old processes. Examples range from attendance policies to recruiting. However, the world is speeding up, and the expectations of our employees, applicants, candidates, and hiring processes need to get faster. Speed wins in recruiting, every time. Even if an employer comes out with a great job, but there’s a prolonged part of the process, or there are people who halt progress, it makes it hard to hire great people.

Policies and culture can also be stuck in the past. Instead of flyers in the breakroom or 50-page handbooks, people want to access information on-demand from their devices. Moreover, today’s employees want a company with a social media presence they can be proud of, inclusive, and willing to change, listen, and confront issues society-at-large faces these days.

Another issue companies face is a low application completion rate and even HR resistance to change for fear of not being compliant. Applying for a job should be as easy as buying something online. Most of the time, today’s applicants are willing to invest more time in a lengthy application only if they have built some rapport with a business. 1-click applications help counteract this issue. All HR needs to start the recruiting process is an applicant’s resume, and applicants can fill out an extended application after the first phone screen or an onsite interview. 

What should CEOs be asking about their Recruiting practices?

In business, we talk a lot about sales and customer experience funnels. It’s the same in recruiting; it’s a funnel and an experience. The product is your company, and you’re trying to get someone to buy into it. It’s the same KPIs as sales, skewed slightly for HR. 

  • Candidate Experience: Can a candidate apply easily and go through the hiring process smoothly? Having a fast candidate experience is a competitive edge. You’ll win the war for talent if you can do this regularly.
  • Quality of Hire:  Can we keep hires? What’s the new hire turnover rate? Companies should have sound structures to select candidates. Yet, businesses need to be agile enough to adapt to changes and talent acquisition strategies that enable them to make good decisions in hiring. 
  • Candidate Flow: How many candidates are we funneling? How many candidates does it take to hire one person?  Recruiting is a unique skill in HR; not all HR professionals are adept at recruiting, and your best recruiter might not be an HR professional within your organization. 
  • Market development: Who are we reaching out to? Are there other groups/demographics we’re not reaching out to? Organizations with more diversity, equity, and inclusion have a diversity of thought, and they have intensional, inclusive cultures that allow those ideas to bubble up. This is the right thing to do, but it’s good for business too.

Learn more about Kyle

Kyle Roed is the Vice President of Global HR at CPM Companies, Cofounder of DisruptHR, and host of the “Rebel Human Resources” podcast. He fell into HR and fell in love with everything about people practices. In his almost 20 years in HR, he’s discovered that things in HR are ripe for innovation and has sought to challenge the way the HR community thinks about the world of work. 

Transformational Book: In a professional context, Good to Great; has been a true north since college. 

Favorite Movie: Shawshank Redemption; it’s a great story of triumph.

Rebel HR Podcast: Everything innovation in the people space www.rebelhumanresources.com 

Kyle’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kyle-roed

Learn more about Mike and PivotCX:

Mike’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/indymike/ 

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