Should I Be Paying People More to Hire or Keep Them?

Hey, I'm Kris Plachy, host of the Lead Your Team podcast. Running a million dollar business is not easy, and whether you are just getting started with building your team or you've been at this for a while, I'm going to bring you honest, specific and clear practices you can use. Right now today to improve how well you lead your team.

Let's go ahead and get started.

Hey, hey, hey. How are you? Welcome back. This is the final chapter of the Leisure Team podcast. If you've been with me for a while, I hope you'll transition with me into the new podcast, which launches, uh, next week. I'm so excited about that. It's gonna be, as I've mentioned before, um, more of a seasonal approach.

So we're gonna do 13 episodes focused on a particular sort of theme. The name of the new podcast, dun Dun, dun, will be Leadership as Feminine with Chris Plaquey. And we're gonna cover a lot of what I already do with you. So a lot of, uh, what I would consider how to CEO. Tactics strategies, things to think about.

So a lot of what you are used to hearing here, I'm also gonna integrate some interviews that are relevant to the theme. And I also want to take advantage of this platform, if you will, to really have. Bigger conversations about women and leadership and, uh, where we have so much tremendous opportunity in the world going forward to really change what it means to lead.

So I'm really looking forward to this next, I don't know if I'd call it a chapter. I might even say an, it's a new book. And I'm really grateful to all of you who've been listening, um, to me for a long time, and invite you to join me on the next journey. So this is the final installment, if you will, of lead your team.

Now, for those of you who used to listen to my very old podcast, it was, uh, when I very first started a podcast, probably what, seven years ago. We will not be taking this one down, at least not right away. So all the episodes that you love, that you go back to, et cetera, none of those are going away. It's just that you'll start to see some new artwork.

It'll be a new name and a slightly new sort of approach. But if you already subscribe to this podcast in your podcast player, you don't have to do anything. You're still gonna continue to get it. It's not gonna disappear. But as you tell people about it and you share it, just if you wouldn't mind, please be sure to share the new name, just because that makes it easier and long, you know, makes it faster for people to identify with that.

So, uh, the other thing I will share with you is the day that this releases is the day that I'm starting Five Days to a Better Team. The Team Audit Challenge, it's at How to ceo week.com. This is gonna be a, essentially a drop video for you each day on how to really do a team audit. How to know, like, are you the problem?

Are they the problem? Do I just have process problems? Why am I not getting the results I need to get from people who work for me? And what can you do about it in, in five days? And so each day you'll get a video, and then on the final day, I'm gonna do a live q and a. And I would love to have you there. So if you didn't register for it and you are listening to this right now, just go to how to CEO week.com.

You can register, you'll start getting the videos, and then you'll be invited to the live q and a with me on Friday of this week that you're listening to this. Okay? So as we go forward here, what I want to talk to you about in this episode is the decision to pay people more money or not. And I wanna talk about this from a couple different perspectives, but the primary driver of this topic is because of the challenges with hiring people right now in the pandemic.

And, um, if you're like many of the women that are in my had a CEO program, um, or the lab. This is a, this is a thing, this is a real thing. And I know I did a podcast a few weeks ago called Hiring Post Pandemic. If you haven't listened to that, you might wanna listen to that podcast as well. What I sort of wanna give you perspective on is we can argue all day with the, the reality of what it means to be trying to hire people, especially people in the worldview that I'm sort of watching people, you know, under 30 bucks an hour.

This seems to be where we're really struggling. I don't know. I'm sure it's true in your town, every retail shop, grocery store, food, restaurant, you know, Is hiring. Everybody is hiring and they can't find people. Even our school, our high school, that my kids go to school, they can't find enough people to work the lunch lines and distribute food, and it's a crisis.

It's a talent crisis. So what we've been talking about a lot in our coaching calls is, you know, what do you do? So the first thing is, what I always have to remind myself and others is we can stand at the wall. There's a brick wall there and metaphorically, and we can. Stand at the brick wall and yell at it and decide and just yell, this isn't right, this is wrong.

Why are people working? The government should stop unemployment. All the things that I hear people say, right? It's, it's okay, but yelling at a wall doesn't get you anywhere. And you run a company and you're an entrepreneur and you're creative. So how about we instead sort of do some quick analysis of.

What matters to you And then we go about our business because what I know for sure is there really are great, capable, talented people who wanna work. I know this and they're always wealthy, but the way that you may have attracted and hired people in the past probably needs to change. And I think that's really true for almost every organization.

I have a girlfriend who's a pretty high level leader in a very different space, but even she, right? It's just, it's just absolute. She says war out there on, um, premium talent. People who have the level of experience and competency that, uh, companies need. So, but before we go into scarcity and we just start throwing potential solutions at a problem, I wanna remind you of why we hire people.

Okay, so while I know it feels like you hire people to help you, right? That's what your brain is like. I just need someone to help me. And so you hire people to help you. What we know is true is that we really are hiring people to deliver a result, and so then we have to ask ourselves, what is the value of that result?

To you and to your company. Okay, so, because one of the things that I think is the first thing that people consider is, should I just pay people more money? How much more money does this gonna cost me? I don't have a lot of money, like I can't afford to pay someone, you know, a third more of what I was paying them before.

Like all the things that, that I know a lot of goes through a lot of your brains. Do I just pay people more money? Now? The truth could be. Yes, you, you do wanna pay people more money. I don't know. I don't know the answer for you. You have to figure this out for yourself. But just choosing to pay people more money is not the solution.

Okay? So if you're in a quagmire right now, you need to hire people. You need more support to deliver on the results of your business. You have to make a couple decisions. The first one is, Are the results that I have committed to in my business, realistic in this current market. So, as an example, a few of my clients who run storefront type of organizations, they have, instead of trying to fight with, not finding good talent, they've adjusted how they run their actual business.

They've questioned it and said, oh, I'm gonna do it this way for a hot minute. They're not paying more money. They're doing things a little differently, so they're not, they personally and the other team members they have, are not as taxed. You could look at the market and say, okay, overall everyone is getting two bucks more an hour.

So if I wanna attract people and not be dismissed, discounted immediately because I don't pay enough, maybe this is something I wanna do, and you run that number, you don't just make a knee jerk decision, you make a decision based on the result you're trying to achieve. You may decide that where you were going to find people needs to change.

Maybe instead of using Indeed, you go to LinkedIn. Maybe instead of posting on Craigslist, you put flyers up at the local coffee shop. Maybe you put things at the high school bulletin board. Listen, I don't know the answer. What I do know is if you're doing the same thing you were doing 18 months ago to hire people, that's why you're frustrated.

And there is a real truth about what's going on, and we're gonna talk more about this in future podcasts, but we have a traumatized workforce. We have traumatized entrepreneurs. We have, we have a global trauma that everyone is experiencing differently. And some people wouldn't even call it a trauma.

That's fine. You, you don't have to believe that. But what I want you to hear, even if you don't agree with me, is other people do. And those are people you might be trying to hire, and those are people who are looking at your 18 bucks an hour, $22 an hour, whatever it is, a hundred grand, and making a decision through the lens of a traumatized mind and spirit about whether or not it's worth it.

Because what we know now is people had a whole year, even if they were financially destitute and struggling, they had a year. Where they may not have been working and now they're gonna come back and sort of think what's worth it. And you have to answer that question for you first and then attract those people.

But it's a totally different game and I don't think it'll ever go back. You know, I know a lot of my clients who were real resistant to remote working remote are starting to warm up to that because I really know there's a contingency of the workforce that will never go back into a building. And not because they're afraid of getting sick, but when we're like, oh, well that was cool.

Why would I go back in there when I can do it out here? So as leaders, we get to choose y'all. We get to choose and argue for what we think is right and and, and be petulant about it and frustrated and dig our own heels, or we experiment, we play, we test, and we invite ourselves to recognize that because you're already an entrepreneur, you're already a problem solver.

Love. And maybe this isn't the problem you chose to solve, you didn't sign up for this one, but guess what? Surprise. In addition to everything else, we're gonna add shortage of great talent into your mix, and you're gonna either get mad about it or you're gonna laugh and giggle, which is what I tend to do, and just say, okay, this is fun.

What is it worth to pay for this resource, for this result? Or is there something else I could do? So I've given you a lot more questions than I know I have answers today. But what I'm hopeful I've done through this discussion is at least kind of cracked open your mind a little to be creative, resourceful, resilient.

And determined. Like I, I really listen. Every time I try to go hire someone, I've, I have the, all the same thoughts you do. I'm never gonna find anybody. Nobody's gonna fit the bills, Sue hard, they're gonna want too much money. And I go through all of that, and then I just have to remind myself that, look, I have an amazing team already.

So guess what? There's amazing people out there. I know there are, cause I have a few in my team now. I didn't get the only ones, but how I go find them and attract them and enlist them to be a part of my business might need to be different. So take some time today and think about it, like give yourself a time to just reflect like, what am I missing?

What am I willing to change? What am I willing to consider? What am I willing to pay? Give yourself all of that and see what bounces back for you. Okay, so I will see you next week on our new Shiny brand new podcast, and I will look forward to maybe seeing you in the How to CEO week.com, the five Days to a Better Take.

Go to that. You'll get some really powerful resources and a live q and a with me. Can't wait. Talk to you soon. One more thing before you go. In a world of digital courses and online content, I like to work with my clients live because I know that when you have someone you can work with, ask questions of and meet with, you're so much more likely to get the success that you want.

So head on over to how to ceo live.com. To learn more about our very exciting, very exclusive program just for female entrepreneurs. We'll see you there.