Rethinking Hourly Worker Motivation.

Other Podcast Episodes:

Episode 263: Chris Tuff – Millennial Whisperer

Small Business HR Episodes

Transcript:

The following is a full transcript of this episode. This transcript was produced by an automated system and may contain some typos.

Henry Lopez (00:15):

Welcome to this episode of the How of Business. This is Henry Lopez, and for those of you who don’t know David, it might be new to the show. He originally was my co-host officially, but then he got booted for all kinds of reasons. We can’t get into low ratings, and the such. David went off to do much bigger, greater things, had his own show for a while called the How a Car Washing still involved in that, but now it’s called the Car Wash Show. And so he comes back every so often, especially when I have a topic that I want to get his wisdom, experience, and insights on, as is this topic. So today we’re going to chat about what I’m entitling managing hourly wage employees, managing hourly wage employees. This can be a challenge for those of us who transitioned from a corporate or professional environment like David and I did, and now all of a sudden we’re faced with hiring and managing hourly wage or minimum wage employees. So David and I are going to explore this topic, share our own challenges with this, and some practical tips and advice on how to maybe do it better.

Henry Lopez (01:15):

I’m also going to have a free download for you that I’m calling Five Ways to Engage Hourly Wage Employees, and you can find that on the show notes page for this episode at the how of business.com. So we’re going to make some generalizations, so please nobody get offended by that. We’re going to kind of to analyze a subject. Usually you got to put it in a box. And so that’s partly what we’re going to do here. And so when we talk about hourly wage employees being different than corporate or salaried employees, I’m not trying to say that one or the other is better or lesser. It’s just a reality that there is a difference in our experience. And so that’s what we want to chat about. Lemme just open it up with this, Dave and start to get your thoughts. What are some of those differences? If you think back, especially when you first started your business, the carwash business that you had to be challenged with from having, because you were a manager and a leader and a VP in the corporate world, and then all of a sudden you were hiring hourly wage employees. What were some of those early challenges?

David Begin (02:17):

I think a lot of it is mindset. So the mindset of the people we used to run with and we ran with people in the high technology space, which was even more on the extreme side of what we’re talking about. But our environment was much different than the carwash environment and the restaurant environment than any other type of environment where we were hiring employees that were typically hourly wage. So when we stepped into that, and I don’t know why I did this. I mean I still kind of kicked myself a little bit, but I just thought they thought like me and I spent many years being frustrated with employees because I’m like, why do they not want to do it the way I want to do it? Why do they not think the way I think? Why do they not think like an owner? Why do they not think like a manager? And I just simply had an epiphany one day that said, you know what? They just don’t, that’s not them. That’s not their background, that’s not their mindset. So we were throwing in an environment and we thought that environment was normal, Henry. And I think that’s probably the biggest realization that I had was we thought what we did was normal, where in reality it probably was very un-normal.

David Begin (03:24):

And so when we ended up starting to manage employees and workers, it was a big shock to my system because they’re very, very different. I think it’s good that they’re different. I think we need both types of people. But I think the biggest thing is you and I were very focused on work. We were very focused on our career, we’re very focused on our work. We would almost do anything we needed to make money and get ahead. We were great about sacrificing, sacrificing some family time. At times we would sacrifice personal time, there’d be times we’d be traveling too much, we’d be sacrificing our health. But I think there’s a big difference between we saw some longer term benefits out of that. And I think professional people, we’ll make those sacrifices in hopes of something where I think hourly workers, because of the contract that they’re in with their employers, difficult to see how putting in extra time, extra effort is going to pay off in the long run. So it’s kind of a long-term short-term approach.

Henry Lopez (04:30):

Yeah, no, a lot of great points there that I want to dive into, especially the point that you make about, we have also to some extent a generational gap and we’ll dive into that because a lot of the employees that we have had as employees on an hourly wage basis are typically younger. And so there’s particular challenges there. And again, there’s good and bad, but certainly we come from a generation where it was you just did the work heads down to an excess, right? That’s one of the things you and I have talked about many times on this show is that the millennials have kind of figured that out, that what does that get you? But nonetheless, yeah. Let me just highlight a few of the things you touched on as in a career situation. First of all, we’re being compensated hopefully at a whole different level where we can usually support a family. When we’re talking about hourly wage employees, that’s not always the case. So it makes sense that they don’t look at that job the same way that you and I looked at our highly compensated sales jobs.

Henry Lopez (05:29):

That’s normal. So at the corporate level, you have more of that focus on career, on professional advancement, usually more self-directed, probably if nothing else, because you’re later in your career, you’re more mature, perhaps you’re not usually at that younger phase, and you’ve got a job that you feel is a career, not just a job that serves a temporary need or a short-term need. On the flip side, of course though, and you sort of alluded to is we have these huge egos and these big demands, you more than I did some management. You managed a lot of these people in the corporate world, and it comes with its own set of craziness, right?

David Begin (06:10):

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, they’re difficult to manage. In many cases. I think hourly workers are much easier to manage than

Henry Lopez (06:19):

Salespeople, and perhaps it’s because of that short-term, more short-term focus. So let’s talk about some of the typical makeup. And again, here I’m generalizing, and then that kind of leads to some of the challenges. A lot of times what we’re talking about is more people into blue collar segment if we’re using that delineation between white collar and blue collar. So a lot of times in our businesses it falls more in that category. They tend to be younger, as we talked about, the millennial generation or even younger now, temporary or transitional. In other words, this job that they have with us, they don’t necessarily aspire or even think five years down the road or maybe even two years down the road. So it’s a much shorter term focus, understandably. That’s something that, it was an epiphany for me, David, and related to the mindset points you’re making is I had to come to accept that because the only way I knew how to coach and ask questions about what people wanted was the typical, where do you see yourself five years from now? Well, a younger person and especially a person in these types of positions, they’re like, what? I’m not there yet.

Henry Lopez (07:29):

I’m worried about how am I going to pay the bills this month? Or how am I going to pay the insurance on my car this month? My parents are making me do that, or How am I going to get through school working as I go through school? That’s a lot of what we are dealing with. So a lot shorter tone focus, not typically when they come to work for us. Is this a career position now? It could turn into that, and there’s certainly hourly wage employees that stay places for a long time, but that’s usually the exception. So those are some of the typical makeup. Anything you would add to that?

David Begin (08:00):

Yeah, yeah. It’s very different than when you and I did, and I think that’s good. I think if you look at the, let’s take the last 150 years, I think there was many more people than there were available jobs, and I think that gave an upper hand to employers for years and years and years. And I think we’re starting to see a transition with there’s just less people in the population for the number of jobs that are out there. So I think the power is transferring from the employers to employees to some extent. And I think our kids looked at what we did and said, I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to sacrifice like that. And I think those two things coming together are kind of the macro trends that are happening to create this gig economy, transitory type of work environment.

Henry Lopez (08:56):

This is Enri Lopez with a quick message about our show sponsor and trusted service partner, the franchise guide. Giuseppe Grammatical is the franchise guide, and he provides expert consultation services to help you find the right franchise small business. If you are considering a franchise business, I recommend consulting the franchise guide. Giuseppe is a franchise veteran who simplifies the process of franchising and excels at guiding his clients to the franchise model that best suits them. He helps people like you find flexibility and freedom in their lives through franchise business ownership, and as your guide, he will help you answer any of your questions about franchises once he gets to know you and what you’re looking for. He creates your own personalized model and shows you which franchise opportunities are a best match for your needs and preferences. The best part, it’s all free. There’s no catch. Like with real estate or business brokers, Giuseppe’s fees are paid by the franchise company. So if you’re interested in a franchise business, take the first step in schedule a free, no obligation call with Giuseppe. To learn more and to schedule your consultation with the franchise guide, please go to the show notes page for this episode at the how of business.com. There’s also a link to the show notes page in a description of this episode.

Henry Lopez (10:08):

A couple of the things that are even more challenging, and again, this is not in every case, but what I have found often with this type of employee is that often, and part of this is lack of maturity because again, they tend to be younger, is they have an avoidance of confrontation. And so how does that manifest itself? It mad itself is sometimes they just don’t show up. They don’t say, Hey, I’m going to give you my two weeks notice. And so we have to understand that that’s part of sometimes the dynamic of this group of people. Not always, I’m generalizing, so you’re going to have challenges with them showing up on time for work or because they’ve got other things going on under their lives. Again, these are typically transitional positions for them, not career positions. So we got to try to think of it from their perspective. You’re going to have a lot more issues with drama from our perspective, what we would call drama and the impact of their perform and that impact on their performance and availability. Listen, it’s not like we didn’t have drama in the corporate world, it’s just that there was more, for most people, there was more at stake, and so it was less interference of that drama with their day-to-day performance. What do you think there?

David Begin (11:19):

Yeah, I think so. I think when you and I started our career, it was important that we keep our personal lives at home. And we were told that probably 50 times, but I think the new generation really doesn’t differentiate between their personal life and their professional life. And you see that in the workplace and organizations that address that and support that and deal with that tend to keep these people longer than the organizations that don’t.

Henry Lopez (11:46):

I think one of the ways that manifests itself, I have this very vivid memory, David, we had just opened I topic, which is the frozen yogurt business that we owned and just sold earlier this year. And we had a young lady who worked for us who posted something that was inappropriate from our perspective, but included our name, and in other words, it was identifiable that it was something she was complaining about at work. And we talked to her about it, and it was such an eye-opener for me because she really had no concept that that was the wrong thing to do from our perspective, right? Because her communication over social media and her life and work, it was all together. There was no delineation there, like you’re saying, that we are used to certainly in our background and in our corporate environment, and that was something that was a huge learning experience for me.

David Begin (12:38):

Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I agree. And you and Ike, we got slapped upside the head many times doing interviews and screening candidates, and it was just we like, it’s no longer in the 1980s, I guess. And so you and I had to really change our ways and I had to change my mindset, and once I changed my mindset, I was able to change my ways about that. But it was a tough transition to put our brains around this. The other thing I want to say about hourly wage employees, they’re typically just starting off their work life. And so they either just got out of college or they’re out of high school or they went to community college. And so they’re developing skills. And I think there was an expectation for the most part, if we went into our careers that we had developed skills. And I think we have to kind of meet people where they’re at.

David Begin (13:33):

Some people are never taught some of these basic skills that employers are having to teach, show up on time. When you and I grew up, that wasn’t even a question. And then our parents would instill that in us anytime we started working in high school. Hey, you got to show up on time. You got to show up for work. If you’re not going to show up on work, you got to call your boss. If you’re sick, you got to call ’em early. The things that are typically not happening now. So most of these people have a subset of the skills they need to do the job, and it’s our responsibility as employers to decide where do we need to fill in those gaps?

Henry Lopez (14:07):

And I think that part of that mindset shift, David, for both of us, was from thinking, oh my gosh, I have to do this now. Are you kidding me? To, oh, I get an opportunity to impact a young person, and they leave here whenever they leave here six months from now, a year from now, two years from now, a better young person because we’ve helped them with developing those skills. And I think that’s an important mindset shift. If you go at this fighting it, boy, I want them to be like, were, you’re going to be miserable for the entire process.

David Begin (14:39):

Yeah, because they’re not right. They didn’t take the same path we took. They don’t have the same interest and desires that we have. I talked to a lot of people. I was even talking to my son’s high school class maybe five or seven, 10 years ago to his DECA class, which is kind of a business presentation type of club. And I would ask how many people wanted to own their small business. And I was surprised how many people, even in that DECA class, were not interested in owning a business. And we’ve got friends in the medical field that are trying to try to, they’re kind of in their mid early sixties. They want to retire. They can’t find people who want to buy the practice because even younger doctors don’t want the responsibility of owning a practice. They just want to work for someone else. So they’ve got the flexibility of living in Florida or go living in Colorado or moving to Montana. They cherish flexibility a lot more than they do taking on responsibility.

Henry Lopez (15:39):

Such a great point. And then also to that point is what we have found, and everybody I’m sure others listening have found, is that, listen, these young people, they’re going to be just fine. This is a great generation, just like other generations. It’s just different in their perspectives and in their mindsets. But we have had wonderful young employees that impress us every day. So it’s not that we’re here complaining as old men about these use today that have no potential. That has not been my observation at all.

David Begin (16:12):

No. Yeah, exactly. And there’s some things they do, which I love. I wish that I would’ve done it.

Henry Lopez (16:17):

I mean, this whole mindset on how to look at that balance of life that we gave lip service to, it’s brilliant. They’re spot on in identifying that that’s what life should be, not the sacrifices that you mentioned that we made in our careers.

David Begin (16:34):

Exactly. Yeah. And I love what they’re doing. I think it’s time. And I am siding with the employee many more times, and that’s when I realized as an owner, my job as an owner is how do I develop and take care of my employees? Because I figured out once I took care of the employees, they’ll take care of the business for me. So I had focused my efforts on how do we develop, train, encourage, and send employees and make this a great place to work.

Henry Lopez (16:59):

And when you do that, then you not just make it a great place to work, but you make it a great place to own and lead as opposed to a combative environment where you look at your hourly wage employees as the enemy. Sometimes if you go down that path, you will hate being a business owner.

Henry Lopez (17:19):

Okay, so we’ve touched on it, but let’s talk a little bit more about what motivates in our experience, hourly wage or minimum wage or blue collar employees. We’ve talked about that, but I think it’s about meeting their immediate or short-term needs. This job satisfies or provides for them on a short-term basis. So they’re looking for things like fair pay, certainly, but you touched on it, flexibility is almost more important than anything else like that flexibility in their schedule, either because they’re juggling school or maybe they’re a young parent or they’ve got other interests going on. There’s a lot that’s going on in their more transitional phase in life that if you can accommodate that as opposed to the more stringent, no, we work nine to five here six days a week, that’s going to be harder to attract and retain these types of employees, right?

David Begin (18:08):

Yeah, exactly. I think flexibility is one of the most important attributes that young employees are looking for, and we see that with the flex work, the work at home versus coming back to the office issue that we’re dealing with now, people are just almost putting their foot down that they don’t want to go back to the office. They don’t want to do that grind that you and I did where we’re in the traffic for 45 to 90 minutes one way going to the office, sitting in office and spending that time coming home. I mean, how many hours did we spend in the car, Henry driving to the office?

Henry Lopez (18:43):

Oh gosh, I remember it Well, I remember I had a manual transmission back when that was still an option and thinking, oh gosh, I got to get an automatic car because of this stop and go traffic in Dallas.

David Begin (18:55):

I mean, think about it now. I mean, do we really need to be doing what we’re doing? And I think that’s been a great reset for both employers and employees. And you hear the bad stories about employers doing this or employees doing that, and you’re always going to have, like you say, the small percentage of people who are trying to ruin it for everybody else. But I think this has been a great reset and I think corporations are going to take a fundamental look at how they interact with their employees and how can we make it a good environment for employees to want to work for us.

Henry Lopez (19:32):

Absolutely. So speaking more about what motivates them, I had an opportunity back on episode 2 63 of the Howa Business podcast. I had a chance to interview Chris t, and he’s known as a millennial whisperer. He wrote a book about it and we chatted about it. A couple of interesting stats he shared. He said, millennials, according to his research, are on track to make up 75% of the workforce by 2030. So again, it’s younger and younger people that we’re talking, not always, but younger people typically that we’re employing here at an hourly or minimum wage, and they’re motivated by more than just money they want to belong or be part of a greater purpose. That part of it has been a challenge for me as well, because again, we come from the background and mindset, which is what purpose. The purpose is. You get a paycheck and you get benefits and career advancement, and who cares about what the impact is on the world around us or our community. But this is important to younger people, and believe it or not, even as hourly wage employees, that’s an important part of what they want to have as part of their work environment.

David Begin (20:34):

Yeah, they do want to believe in what they’re doing, and sometimes it’s called work for a reason, and sometimes there’s not a general purpose to it, but they want to be connected to what they’re doing and why they’re doing and how what they’re doing is making a difference. And so if you’re explaining that to people in the car wash industry, how is that making a difference? Well, we’re making people happy When people come through the car wash, there’s no better feeling for me and most people than when they’re coming out the end of the car wash tunnel and their car’s clean and so they feel good. So there’s a psychological lift that we’re giving people where we’re in the business of making people happy by giving them a clean, shiny, dry car. And so when you think about it from that perspective, then, okay, that’s our mission guys. Our missions are to serve our customers, to make ’em happy, to meet ’em where they’re at today, if they’re grumpy or if they’re happy to. And once you communicate that, then they start getting it. They start, okay, this is why we do this. This is why we make sure our equipment is working properly because our equipment is what makes people happy.

Henry Lopez (21:39):

Yeah, absolutely. And you got to communicate that and set that vision, that culture that then people buy into, especially hourly wage employees. The other thing we chatted about that we’ve touched on already in that episode, episode 2 63, is that need to make that personal connection. That’s one that I think I still to this day struggle because I believe, and I think that most people would agree with me, that you got to be careful as to how personal you make that relationship. It is an employer employee relationship, however you want to know about them and somehow be connected in their lives because that’s important to them. Again, we were like you touched on, we were taught to separate work and life. The reality now because of this balance that they’re striking, it’s all intermingled, and that’s why they’ll text about something or post something that to you or I might seem inappropriate, but to them it’s just the way they communicate, the way they live their lives.

David Begin (22:38):

And if you think before the industrial age, for example, we’ll go on the way back machine here where most people worked on farms. I mean, there was no differentiation between your personal life and your work life. It was your life. And then when we put everybody in factories and in desk and offices, you sort had this expectation that you kept those things separate. And I think you’re starting to see that swing around where people don’t want that anymore. They don’t want to compartmentalize their lives between here’s my work life and here’s my personal life. The other thing I want to mention here, and this was a big mind shift for me, is if people go to work for you, they don’t go to work for you thinking they want to do a bad job, they want to do a good job, they want to feel good about what they’re doing, and they want to get better at doing what they’re doing. And I think when I fundamentally took that mind shift that people that come to work for me want to do a good job. And so what can I do as an employer to help them do a good job? How can I take friction out of the process for them so that they can do a good job? That made a big shift difference for

Henry Lopez (23:47):

Me. It’s such a huge perspective, David. I mean, I so completely agree with that, and that’s been my experience as well. And if you’re listening and you’re at a point where you’re just burned out with all of your employee issues, then I would challenge you to kind of stop and take a step back and think about it as David explained it, that really it’s us that have to change our mindset and our philosophy on this. I agree with you wholeheartedly. I’ve always believed that most people want to do a good job. And so what you and I started doing many years ago is when something didn’t go well, somebody didn’t do their job, somebody even somebody didn’t show up, we always pointed the finger first at, okay, where in the system did this happen? What can we do better? Did we not screen properly? Did we not onboard ’em properly? Did we not train ’em properly? Did the system let ’em down? And usually I can find issues there. Not always. Sometimes it was just the wrong fit. But if you take that perspective, you’re just going to enjoy your business so much more. I know I’ve said that before, but that’s such a key point. I see so many people get so burned out in their business because of the way they look at the employees.

David Begin (24:58):

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And then it, you become bitter, you become angry.

Henry Lopez (25:03):

Worse. Oh, it just escalates and then you end up having a heart attack. Alright. There’s a bunch of other episodes that some of them that David and I have done early on, employees. So if you go to the how business.com, click on podcast archives and then employees, you’ll see all of the episodes previously, different topics related to hiring, retaining, and onboarding employees. So a couple more things about attracting, it’s interesting. I did a search online on a couple of job postings of people who you would normally think of as hiring hourly wage employees like McDonald’s. Listen to this little blurb that McDonald’s has on their website for applicants. It says, working at McDonald’s restaurants gives you an opportunity to build a successful future while offering a number of perks and the flexibility to meet your goals. Both McDonald’s and its franchisees offers their employees a variety of development opportunities ranging from world-class training programs to high school completion courses and higher education tuition assistance. So the things that highlighted there, flexibility, we’ve talked about, they’re offering their employees more than just the job, but hey, I’m going to help you finish high school or finish college or help you with that. Whatever it is, you’re on a vocational track, whatever it might be, young employees, hourly wage employees value that. Otherwise McDonald’s put that at the top of their main sites to attract employees, right?

Henry Lopez (26:30):

Here’s another example. There’s a car carwash chain, and when they listed their benefits, competitive pay, college tuition assistance, flexible schedule, a fun rewarding environment and team atmosphere. So think about all the keywords there that we’ve been talking about. Again, it’s that tuition assistance in that case, flexible schedule, a fun environment. So those are all key things that we need to think about. Are we creating those experiences? Are we offering those types of benefits in our businesses?

David Begin (27:04):

Yeah, I mean all that’s important because you want people to, people can’t go to work for you and worry about health insurance or they can’t go to work for you and worry about am I going to get time off or not? And if you’re just treating at as you’re an hourly worker, you work your hours when you’re not working, you’re not working. And that’s pretty much it. Those people will always have an eye toward other businesses. And if you want to retain employees, which is the big issue that people are struggling with now, make it a place where people want to stay. Don’t expect employees to stay if you’re not making it a great environment to stay.

Henry Lopez (27:39):

Agreed.

David Begin (27:40):

And McDonald’s probably doesn’t expect people to stay most of their employees, they don’t expect them to stay there forever.

Speaker 4 (27:46):

No,

David Begin (27:47):

But they’ve done a good job of saying, Hey, we’re going to help you develop the skills to build a successful future and we’re going to train you and you’re going to leave here with a bunch of skills that you’re going to be able to take on either to college or your next job or whatever. But we want you to launch from here to be a better version of yourself than you were when you came.

Henry Lopez (28:06):

And if they can extend someone staying with them instead of six months a year instead of a year, two years, that’s a phenomenal win for an employer.

David Begin (28:14):

Yeah, it’s huge. But I think McDonald’s understands, look, we’re not going to keep these employees

Henry Lopez (28:18):

For a long time. No, they’re not career employees typically.

David Begin (28:22):

Yeah. This is a job where you start and you start learning how to work.

Henry Lopez (28:26):

That’s right.

David Begin (28:26):

And we’re going to do everything we can. We’re going to make it great. We’re going to support you in whatever way you need supporting. But I don’t think franchisees are sitting around wondering why people are leaving in 12 to 18 months. I think it’s part of the job. It’s

Speaker 4 (28:40):

Part of the job,

David Begin (28:40):

But make it a great place. So they tell their friends, they want to get their friends to work there, the people that are working that are happy and they’re getting their needs met

Henry Lopez (28:49):

Again. Certainly that’s an example in the food industry where turnover is high. We’re sharing these examples just to give you these thoughts, these ideas, these experiences. And again, a lot of you listening might have both professional employees, salaried employees, and hourly wage employees. The key takeaway hopefully so far is that there are differences here that we have to be mindful of. And a lot of it is mindset. But I want to take a step back to attracting employees. David, you got a lot of input and guidance and coaching and a lot of thinking that went into, I dunno, about five years ago maybe now when you’re brought in an HR consultant to help us. I think I was working with you at the time to try to find this GM position I think it was. And we were just struggling with it. And we had this forced mind shift, I call it perspective of we always thought in the interview and the attraction process that the prospective employee had to sell us on why they should join us. And instead this shift of, well, we need to impart sell them on why they should join us. Talk to me about that and that experience.

David Begin (29:55):

That was such a mind shift for us. And I think you developed great interview questions. I mean, you were one of the best interviewers for candidates, but it was probably the old school method of interviewing Absolutely. Where you tried to get them to sell you on why they should come work for us. And people just don’t have that same mindset. And so when we finally shifted the way we interviewed to say, we want you to come work for us, here’s all the great reasons why we want you to work for us. Now. You still need to know if they’re a viable candidate and if they can do the job, but you got to spend a lot more time selling them in this environment than you do them selling you.

Speaker 1 (30:34):

Now,

David Begin (30:35):

There’s highly competitive organizations and industries where if you want to get in that industry, you’ve got to sell yourself. And so there could be a number of people who are very interested in working for an organization unless a podcast from the founder of The Brew, which is a news outlet that does an email every morning. And he talked about a guy that just wanted to go work for him so badly. So the guy literally was helping edit the newsletters as they came out. And he actually created a newsletter. He said, let me show you what I can do. And he created the next day’s newsletter for them just to show what his ability was. But it’s that type of stuff that you and I were used to of people really going the extra mile to try to sell themselves. That’s not common.

Henry Lopez (31:26):

And I’ll tell you, just as an aside, I’m helping a client hire a professional position, highly paid professional position. And it’s amazing to me, David, how nine out of 10 of them don’t even do any research on could they know what the company is, but they don’t even bother to do the research. I am just appalled because you and I would’ve spent hours doing research anticipating questions, but that’s just not the way it works anymore. But anyway, let’s move on. We’ve touched on some of this, but I think that then, so that’s about attracting employees, onboarding them is so critical. We touched on some of these. I just want to rattle ’em off and then we can add some color to it. But you have to have a solid training program. I think that’s so critical to retaining and motivating hourly wage employees. You have to, and we touched on this, you have to give them the tools, the training and the coaching to help them succeed, to enable them to do the right job.

Henry Lopez (32:21):

They want to do the right job. But I see so many environments where they’re just thrown at it, kind of learn on the job, and that not only frustrates people and they’re going to quit on you because they’re like, you know what, I’m not going to put up with this. Now, I remember very clearly back to one of my first jobs, I was a stock boy at a grocery store, the classic job. And I remember very clearly, don’t forget that first day. The attitude and the prevailing method was that they would work you to within an inch of your death on that shift, right?

Speaker 4 (32:53):

Yeah.

Henry Lopez (32:54):

I remember being exhausted. And then the manager, very classic style manager of that age, no, no, you’re not done Now. You’re going to go get all the shopping carts from the parking lot. And I just remember thinking nowadays, if you did that to somebody, they probably would’ve gone in their car and left or just left. That approach. It just doesn’t work anymore for all kinds of good reasons. So you got to give them the training. You have to onboard ’em the right way. You have to make them welcome and feel part of the team right away. I think those are some critical points to onboarding. Any other thoughts there?

David Begin (33:29):

The one thing that our car wash consultant told us that really stuck with me is when you hire somebody, they’re still interviewing because they might’ve accepted the job, but in their brain, they’re still trying to figure out, did I make the right choice? And the first couple of weeks is very critical for them to decide, yes, I made a good choice. This is going to be a good company to work with. And so making sure you’ve got a good strong onboarding program is critical to that. I think training anymore is a requirement. It can’t be optional. That’s one reason why we created a consulting company I created Henry, was because there’s just a real lack of training in the carwash industry for new employees. And we wonder why we have the turnover we have.

Henry Lopez (34:14):

Yep. No, absolutely. Great point. That’s another great takeaway there. Alright, so we’ll begin to summarize it here and close it up. I’m looking through my list of items that we’ve talked about and the only thing maybe that we hadn’t touched on is making sure that you create from their perspective opportunities and that there are rewards and recognition. This younger generation that’s important as it was for us for that matter. It’s important that you recognize them and you reward them. Don’t do it in how much I hate the employee of the month plaque. That doesn’t really mean anything but real reward and recognition. People do appreciate that just like we did, especially when we were young as well. Got to remember how important that is. Maybe you have a bonus program to institutionalize some of that. That’s always a key thing as well. Just remember with bonus programs, keep it short-term and focused.

Henry Lopez (35:08):

Make it a campaign as opposed to this long-term thing that loses its effectiveness over time. You got to pay people accurately and on time. There’s no excuse for that ever, no matter what type of employee. So those are some of the other things. And then you’ve got to make sure you’ve got your managers and supervisors with this same mindset and this same approach so that they’re doing it the right way. They’re doing, again, what would’ve applied to us or to them, which is the public praise and the private coaching. So you got to make sure that your managers and supervisors or leaders are on the same page with you on this approach and this mentality to how we attract onboard and retain hourly wage employees.

David Begin (35:51):

I think it’s good. Yeah, no doubt, no doubt. I was very, paying people was extremely important to me. And I think it’s beyond a crime for employers to withhold wages or not pay their payroll taxes and things like that. I don’t have much tolerance for that. I think it’s wrong in every way. These people need their money. I mean, these people aren’t like you and I where we’ve got a couple weeks cushion, they have no cushion. I mean they’re planning on that paycheck. They hit their account on Friday, and when you don’t pay ’em or you pay ’em accurately or withhold wages and you’re making life difficult for ’em is just, I just think that’s wrong. Agreed. First of all. But I think part of this, the other thing I think when we were talking about rewarding people, I think, well, whatever culture that you want to develop, and we were trying to develop a culture of serving the customer by keeping the tunnel clean, by making sure the equipment was tuned, but also by serving if a customer had a need. So in your meetings, I think one thing that we were getting good at was telling the stories of people who did that.

David Begin (36:57):

There’d be examples. And I still think about these examples of employees that have waited. So they’ve locked, A customer might have locked their key in the car when they were vacuuming out their car or something along those lines. And the customer or the employee would stay there with the customer long after close until their husband or wife or friend could come and bring them a key or a locksmith was coming and they stayed with them. Or if they had a battery that was dead, which happened often for whatever reason, people would drain their batteries in our vacuum parking lot. We had this portable charging unit we would take out there and get them to start jumpstart their car. We actually purchased that so we could do that. But telling those stories of what employees are doing that reinforces the culture and reinforces the points that you want to make in your employee meetings, really helps craft that culture. And I think we’ve all been in organizations where we’ve seen good culture and we’ve all seen bad culture, but it’s a lot more fun to see good culture. So how do you reinforce culture? You reinforce it by telling stories of things people did to point out the fact that we’re a customer service organization.

Henry Lopez (38:07):

Yeah, great example. Great point. And it’s about focusing on catching your employees, doing the right thing and then sharing that. And you will be surprised as to how often, especially over time as you develop that culture where it’s not us against them, how more of that will happen. And you celebrate that and you share that.

David Begin (38:26):

Great. Yeah. And anytime you’re interfacing with employees, whether you go on site or you go to the store, find things that are going well, it’s interesting. My personality and characteristic is I’m one of those guys that could find when you had two pictures next to each other and there was something different about ’em, I could find that in seconds, which is a gift and it’s a curse because you start using that against your employees. When you go on site as an owner or as a manager, you start seeing everything that’s wrong. Well keep that inside you and mention it as you’re walking out the door, but spend your time pointing out what’s working, what’s going well, because people crave that and

David Begin (39:06):

Even managers and VPs crave that. They want to know that they’re doing well. So find things that are going well, tell ’em what’s going well, and then figure out how you’re going to casually mention, Hey, here’s a few areas of improvement maybe we can work on. But don’t walk in like I used to do and point out all the things that are wrong that need to get fixed because that just deflates the entire team and it doesn’t create a culture where people want to work for you.

Henry Lopez (39:32):

Absolutely. And of course it undermines the managers and the supervisors and it makes you crazy, right? It’s hard. It’s a mindset shift. And to me, that’s how I’ll summarize and close here is this, at the end of the day, everything we’ve talked about starts with us as the owners and your partners, whoever else are in the high level leadership roles in your business. But it’s our mindset that needs to shift on this. It really is. Everything else will flow from there. Sure. We’ve shared with you some tactical ways and you can find a lot of other tactical ways to do this, but it starts with us making this mind shift adjustment as to how we look at this. And trust me, not only will it make it a business for you that you will better enjoy owning, but you’re going to get out of this labor force the best of them. And there’s a lot that’s good there that you will be able to leverage and everything will just be better. The culture will be better, customer service will be better, your efficiencies will be better, all of it will work better and you’ll retain people a little longer, which is huge.

David Begin (40:37):

Yeah. And I’m the poster child because I was the operational manager and I lived in the dark world for many, many years and I lived in the good world for many, many years. And my only regret is not figuring this out sooner. It would’ve changed a lot of things in my life. It would’ve changed a lot of things in the life of the employees that worked for me. And I just wished I would’ve figured if I had any business regrets. That’s probably one of the biggest business regrets is I didn’t figure that out earlier.

Henry Lopez (41:09):

Well, we’re not taught that even if you had gone to business school, they don’t teach that. So it is one of those things, David, that I think sometimes for most of us, we just have to learn it the hard way. And so that’s the case. Dave, another great conversation. Thanks for your insights and experiences on this topic of managing hourly wage employees. Thanks for joining me today.

David Begin (41:30):

Yeah, thanks Henry. I always enjoy it. And I was thinking as you were making the introduction, this is how we started the podcast. You and I would be talking about these types of subjects. That’s

Henry Lopez (41:37):

Right.

David Begin (41:38):

We thought, Hey, why don’t we start a podcast? And that was kind of the beginning of it.

Henry Lopez (41:41):

That’s right. Alright, this is Henry Lopez and that was David Begin, and thanks for joining us on the episode. On this episode rather of the how of business. We release new episodes every Monday morning, and you can find us anywhere you listen to podcasts, including at our website, the how of business.com. Thanks for listening.