Pixie dust, beliefs and employee recruitment

One of the biggest challenges in today's business world is finding and keeping employees. I'm told its catastrophic and there's more demand than there is supply of good people.

This is not a new problem. In 2006, my wife and I built our first restaurant. Finding good people was hard back then too. We needed 21 employees on opening day and could only find 15. We needed friends and family to donate their time until we could fully staff the business.

Simple economics states the more available a product, the lower the price will be. With employment, the same can be said. With an abundance of people willing to work, the lower they will accept to be paid.

However there is the other side of that coin. The less you have of something, the more valuable it becomes. 

Less people willing to work means you have to pay higher wages. 

You face a "no win" situation. Either way, you lose customers... 

If you decide to continue paying less wages, you run the risk of increasing number of sick days, increasing employee turnover, increasing training costs, increasing customer wait times and losing customers. 

If you increase wages, you need to increase prices OR understand profit will decrease. Nobody wants to lose profit.  But increasing prices also turns customers away as they find a cheaper alternative.

I believe there's another way around this problem. 

Ray Seggern, a Wizard of Ads partner, brilliantly discovered at the heart of all business are three pillars: Story, Culture and Experience.

Your company's Culture is WHO YOU ARE. It is the experience your employees have within your company.

Your company's Story is WHAT YOU SAY.

Your company's Experience is WHAT YOU DO. It is that experience your customers have when they interact with your company.

Authenticity is what happens when Story and Experience align. When they don't, you get bad reviews and complaints.

High Morale is what happens when Story and Culture align. When they don't, you have cancer, and high employee turnover.

Brand Ambassadors are born when Story and Culture and Experience align. Your customers become part of the family, part of the brand. 

If you want to find good employees, you have to identify why customers buy from you. And why employees stay with you. By uncovering your superpower, you will find people who will want to work for you.

So how do you motivate a minimum wage employee today? They are unreliable, lazy. And when they do show up, they spend half the time on their phones (sic).

If this is how you feel, you either have a problem with your hiring process or your management process. 

There's never been a time in history where kids were respected. 

They do things different from the older generation. Because of it, they are constantly criticized.

You either hire bad or you treat the right person bad.

Employees do quit on the spot, without notice. They have no loyalty and will leave you for 25 cents somewhere else if your values don't align.

In fact, very few people make a change for little increase in pay. They leave for some other reason. They don't like the management style. There's someone in the organization who pushed them to leave. They don't like the hours. They don't like the job.

They may leave for a better paying job if they don't feel fairly paid. But it won't be for 25 cents. 

So how do you find and keep good people?

It starts with belief. You can't motivate someone who doesn't want to be motivated. You have to find people who believe in the same things the organization believes in. When you get a group of people believing in the same things, greatness can be achieved. Groups working on a common goal, in the same direction will motivate themselves. 

Worry less about motivating your employees. 

Identify what your company believes in. 

Find people who believe in those same values. 

Hold everyone accountable to those beliefs, from the janitor to the CEO. 

Celebrate both small and large achievements around those beliefs. 

Creating and maintaining the Culture is like sprinkling pixie dust on your company. It transforms it into a magical business where the work gets done by happy people treating your customers the WAY you would treat them. 

It's your job as the leader to protect that Culture at all costs.

None of this is based on theory. I used it for my restaurants. That first restaurant I spoke of back in 2006 had an annual employee turnover rate of less than 25%. The average turnover rate in restaurants is about 100%.

Learning about beliefs for customer connection, I decided to use it on a recruitment ad to see if it would create a spark with potential employees. 

Placing an ad on Kijiji, we started the ad with the businesses beliefs. 

        We believe work is hard, but we don't let it go unappreciated. 
        We believe we need to have more fun.
        We believe in people before profits. 
        We believe you are not perfect, but neither am I. If you can forgive me, I can forgive you.
        We believe customers deserve our best, even when we don't feel our best.
        We believe karma is a bitch, so we work hard to not upset her.

After one week, we had 14 applicants. With basic information based recruitment ads, 75% of applicants don't show for the interview. With this ad, 12 of the 14 met with me. I hired 8 of them. Two years later, 6 of them were still working for the company. They were paid minimum wage.

Employees are no different than customers.

They are people.

They want to be respected.

They want to be connected.

You care for them.

They care for you.

Happiness is a fish you can catch

Happiness is a fish I remember fondly in my youth.

Mom and Dad didn't have a lot of money. 

Mom was a teenager when I was born. 

Dad was a middle school drop-out.  

Without formal education, the world beat the snot out of them.

Yet I angled mostly good times in my childhood. 

As I aged, it became clear we were poor, living in a trailer, growing our own food and hunting for whatever else we needed.

But...

We were happy.

I think about those days and wonder how my parents kept the wheels on the trailer, both figuratively and literally. 

I went to University for 7 years and got an MBA. 

My sister joined the Army and then became a top Lab Tech in one of the biggest hospitals in Canada. She's 45 and is studying for another degree in Management. 

After the kids left, Mom went back to school and became a nurse. 

Dad kept huntin' and fishin' and growin' his garden because that's what Dad loves to do.

My parents used superglue to create happiness and didn't know it. 

Here's what I've discovered:

Happiness is based on four neurotransmitters/hormones in the brain. Endorphins, Dopamine, Serotonin and Oxytocin.

1. Endorphins are the body’s response to Stress and Pain. 

A good example of an endorphin rush is the Runner’s High. After a marathon, the body will secret endorphins to mask the pain in the muscles. Only a few days later, the runner will realize the stress as the body goes into extreme pain.
Other ways endorphins are released is through emotions. Think of a rollercoaster. 

The adrenaline rush is basically an endorphin surge to protect the body.
Watch a comedy. If you laugh, you received endorphins. 

 
2.Dopamine is responsible for Motivation and Reward. 

Without Dopamine, we’d never know when to eat. It's secreted when we do all the fun stuff: Smoking, drinking, gambling and having sex.
Linked to pleasure and highly addictive, it's dangerous and destructive if unchecked. 

Franklin Delano Roosevelt references Dopamine with, “Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort”. 

 

3. Serotonin is responsible for Pride and Status, Serotonin is released when we encourage or help someone. Interestingly, it gets released for both the person receiving and the person giving the help or encouragement.  Some say it's the Leadership chemical.  The interesting thing about Serotonin is that most people TRICK Serotonin by buying things. 
 
4. Oxytocin is secreted when there are bonds of love, trust and friendship. 

With intense feelings of safety, we know someone has our back. 

Physical touch, such as hugging, shaking hands can give us a boost of Oxytocin. 

Generosity with time, or showing people we care about them, delivers a sliver of Oxytocin. 
Oxytocin makes us better people. 

It inhibits addictions, boosts our immunity, and increases creativity.
When we are around people who believe what we believe, we feel safe, creating large doses of Oxytocin.
George Sand is referring to Oxytocin when he said "There is only one happiness in this life, to love and be loved".
 
More interestingly, another fact about Oxytocin is that it is important to childbirth.
It increases four times higher during the last trimester of pregnancy.
A final pulse during birth helps uterine contractions, opens the cervix and moves the baby into the birth canal.
Both mother and baby get a burst of Oxytocin during the last moments of birth.

In the search of my white whale, "What makes us happy"? I've come to this conclusion.

Happiness is both short term and long term. 

It shows up when we buy stuff to make us feel good about ourselves. (Serotonin)
It emerges when we do fun stuff like eating, drinking, and gambling. (Dopamine)
It appears when we laugh. (Adrenaline and Endorphins)
But all three are short-term bursts of happiness. They last as long as the activity and fade as fast as they lit the darkness.

To live a long happy life, we need to give and receive love. 

Love is the nectar to life.

Love is the nuclear warhead that euthanizes sadness. 
Love has to be unconditional as "Mother's love". 

Despite our misgivings, unruly behaviours and blatant mistakes, this love hugs us in a swaddling blanket and says everything is going to be ok. 

You are going to be ok.

Mom and Dad knew that instinctively. 

They didn't have much but they always loved and supported me in my crazy ideas. 

 

When it comes to business, your job is to sell happiness. And the best happiness that is long lasting and unbreakable is through the use of Oxytocin.

Stop worrying about the colour of your logo, the size of your ad, or the shares on Facebook.

Connect with your customers. 
Show them you care.
Love them for their uniqueness.
Listen to them.
Make their lives better.

Encourage them in their dreams.
Support them when they fail.

Forgive them for their mistakes

.
Love your customers as if they were your own children. 

If you do this, Oxytocin breathes into the river of life catching all the customers you'll ever need.

You'll be happy.
They will be happy.

Your business will grow and your life will be AWESOME.