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Speaker 1 (00:00):
and final episode
with our friends at WH People,
and I'm delighted for Helen Sealto be joining me today.
One of the partners.
Hi, helen, hi, how?
are you, yeah, good thanks.
Last, but by no means, lisa,thank you.
Delighted to have you on.
Clearly, for those that havelistened to the two, we had,
wendy and Paul in previousepisodes and today we're going
(00:22):
to be talking about the hiddencosts around high labour
turnover and we'll get into someof the stats and the detail in
a second, but before that let'sfind out a bit about you.
So do you want to give us a bitof your kind of career biog,
what you've done, how you endedup working with Paul and Helen,
paul and Wendy even yeah, noworries at all.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
So I spent most of my
career in retail, in fact, in
the same retail.
I worked for John Lewis andWaitrose for 30-plus years and
did everything from operationsto running shop floor
departments, and then found myway into HR, employee branding,
(01:02):
productivity and HR systems, andso when I left John Lewis, I
then worked for a company thatsupported Workday, and that's
where I met Wendy, and we workedtogether there and I was
actually in sales looking atsystem support.
And then I moved laterally toDayforce where I ran the UK
(01:26):
sales team selling HRIS andpayroll.
So that's a potted history of a35-year career.
So that's that's me.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Excellent.
So some, some varieddepartments you've worked in
then, and then finishing withworking with Wendy and Paul at
Dayforce.
That's good.
Yeah, so we're going to talklabour turnover.
So I assume this is you puttingyour HR hat back on yes and my
retail hat back on yeah and andthe reality is that we'll.
We'll talk about it briefly, butanybody that's listening to
(01:57):
this is probably involved inconsultancy, hr, hospitality.
Some of the figures sincelockdown, I suppose, really have
been horrendous in terms of 50labor turnover, hospitality even
more so.
There's never been a time whereit's been that important, I
suppose.
Peel back some of the layersand think about how much it's
(02:17):
really costing you, why it's,why it's costing you that, but
also, as we've talked about insome of the other fees, with
when, with Wendy and Paul, costis king.
You know national living wageand I contributions.
The differential betweencolleagues, supervisory roles,
(02:38):
managers, is on everybody's mindall of the time because it's so
big.
But we never really talk abouthow much it costs to manage
turnover, do we?
Or the underlying causes or allthose other things.
It's just, I suppose it's aprocess, right.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, yeah, it's scary whenyou think about how long it
takes you to get somebody tooproductive, and if you include
that in your hidden costs ofyour staff turnover, then you're
actually getting to a placewhere it can take you sort of
two to three years of somebody'sannual salary to replace them,
(03:16):
and that's.
I think it's the hidden coststhat I've always found
fascinating, especially in aretail environment, because it
does tend to be a high turnoverenvironment.
Um, you were lucky if you wereat the 20% turnover, and I know,
post post-covid it's, uh, asyou say, much higher.
So it's the hidden costs thatI've always been intrigued by.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
So if, if we think,
work through some of those,
maybe so that there's the kindof true cost of employee
turnover, and yeah, how, howwould you typically break that
down?
Speaker 2 (03:44):
so you're obviously
looking at your recruitment,
you're hiring, your training, umsort of the sort of the pension
costs that you've got forrunning a very small pension for
them for any length of time.
So it they tend to be thereally obvious costs, um so the
the actual physical, how much itcosts your recruitment team to
(04:04):
replace them, or if you'repaying for headhunters, etc.
But it's the indirect costs oflost productivity and impact on
team morale, disruptions in yourcustomer service.
All of those things I thinkreally fascinate and actually
make a difference to your bottomline.
It's not just the cost ofactually replacing the person,
(04:27):
it's the impact on your businessand its reputation has the real
cost.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
And for you, let's
use John Lewis.
They sell everything clothing,perfume, which I know is maybe a
bit more concessions by thebrands, luxury handbags,
children's wear, have cafes,homeware, lighting.
So in that multifacetedenvironment you know you need
different skills to selllighting and different things in
(04:53):
children's wear than to make acup of coffee.
It must be really tricky forretailers that have got a
diverse offering to actually getanybody to a level of
productivity and proficiencybefore they leave.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Absolutely, and you
know.
And the other thing aboutretail is people tend to forget
they, you know they have, theyhave distribution, finance it.
So actually they have all ofthe, all of the skill sets you
need to acquire to run acorporate head office, plus all
the skill sets that you need toacquire to run a shop.
And John Lewis, at one pointI'm sure they don't have it
(05:27):
anymore we had eel farmers atone point so you even had to
train up people who sort of wentout and collected eels at
midnight.
So it's a it's a whole ball gameof of skill sets and in the
past you relied on the osmosisof the person that was
sponsoring the individual toactually be alongside them.
(05:48):
I mean, I remember I joined avery long time ago, in the 80s,
and my sponsor had been withJohn Lewis for 30 plus years.
So on day one I was workingalongside somebody who could
give me 30 years of culturalknowledge, of experience of the
business, of experience of thearea, the customers that live
there.
So it's a very different placenow not John Lewis, I can say,
(06:12):
but anywhere now is verydifferent in how you pick up
that information and thetraining required.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Yeah, and that must
be a real challenge for those
organisations with a bigheritage.
If you're a trendy startstartup and you've almost got
one, you're developing it as yougo, but those ones with a big
heritage must lose thatexperience and really feel it.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Yeah, you've got to
be a lot cleverer at working out
what the nuggets of.
I mean.
Any business right has to bevery clever at working out what
the nuggets of their points ofdifference are.
How are you different from thenext retailer down?
And if those are heritagecustomer service elements, then
you have to have an impressivetraining scheme in place.
You have to have an impressivesort of value set that people
(07:00):
can understand and buy intoreally quickly, because if you
don't have a point of differencein the high street now, you're
going to lose it to the internet.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Yeah, and it's
something that's always bothered
me I think you know, with myproductivity hat on and retail
hat on is the training of newstarters.
Yeah, if we take RetailRx,let's keep it generic.
Most of their people, ifthey've got shops, will be
general colleagues on the floor.
Let's say, working on the tills, putting stock out is a general
(07:31):
rule.
What I've always seen is andI'm guilty of this as well, so
I'm not preaching, I'm kind ofpreaching to the converted a
little bit New colleague X walksthrough the door and colleague
Y on Monday we say brilliant, wethink you're going to be great
at stock colleague.
New colleague x walks throughthe door and colleague y on
monday we say brilliant, wethink you're going to be great
at stock.
Uh, go work with um ann andjohn and they'll show you how we
(07:52):
work stock around here.
And ann and john will say allright, this is how we do it.
We're probably not supposed todo it this way, but this is how
we do it.
And nelly and phil from 20years ago, they taught me how to
do it.
Yeah, we, we embed thistraining of this is how we do it
around here.
And then the center have got acompletely different view and
(08:12):
wonder why the budget doesn'twork and productivity is not
great and we've got a load ofoverstock and this, that and the
other.
So with a high labor turnoveralmost embedding, let's call it
the best practice must be evenmore crucial because there's a
danger that almost you end upwith nobody that knows the best
way to do it yeah, so you couldend up with two.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
You can end up with,
um, the person that's been doing
the same week 30 years showingyou, or you can end up with
somebody who actually onlystarted a week ahead of you.
Um, so, the actual sort of thetraining and having online
capability so that people can,uh, sort of quickly go to a
(08:51):
training database of what thecenter wants them to do, and
also there's new capability nowwhere you can get your best of
somebody in another store torecord themselves doing it and
you can then then use that videoto train the people.
So there's ways around it.
I think the practical skills, Ithink you can find creative
(09:14):
ways around it.
It's the cultural and the valuetraining that I think is
difficult because that so muchdepends on the person they're
talking to.
The leadership, investing inyour leadership training so that
they actually they walk thetalk, because there's no point
telling somebody that you'rebrilliant, your, your business
is about people, um, and thentreating them.
(09:38):
Their, their line managertreats that particular
individual really badly I wasgoing to say something else and
really badly, um, treats themreally badly, and then they go.
Well, how believable is thisbusiness about treating people
well?
What do you mean?
Actually?
You just treat your customerswell.
You don't treat me well, soyou've got to live those values
in every leader.
So I think one of the biginvestments for me, when you're
(10:00):
talking about lowering turnoverto increase productivity, is
investing in making sure yourline managers talk the talk and
walk the walk yeah, and I thinkwe we forget, don't we?
Speaker 1 (10:13):
and again throwing
back the years when, when I
started on the shop floor atcollege in diy, the business was
the people I work with and myline manager.
So if I had a good line manager, the business was great
actually.
If that changed over time andit wasn't that, that reflects
the business, so we probablylose sight of.
We can have wonderful visionsand value statements and great
(10:36):
place to work surveys and stuff.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
For most people their
direct line manager is their
view of the business and canmassively shape, positively or
negatively, that experience yeah, and one of the clues to any
good change, management,training or development that you
have in a business is actuallyworking out which level of
management is the, the one thateither enables or blocks,
(10:57):
because there is always a levelof management that the message
gets down to and they go okay,I've heard them but I'm gonna
say like this um, and that's thegroup that you need influence,
and sometimes it's a lot lowerdown than you think.
And sometimes it's a lot higher,but working out where your
message in your business tendsto devolve and change, that's
(11:18):
really critical, because that'sthe group that you need to
tackle.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
So if if we're saying
labour turnover is not as high
as it's ever been, but it'shigher than history and kind of
peaked just after the pandemic,what are the underlying causes
of people leaving that kind of?
Speaker 2 (11:36):
you see, there's
probably an obvious one around
pay don't want to say it's ahygiene, because it's not.
It's very important and gettingit right is very important.
Um, and one of the things Iused to like to do is actually,
you know, you do exit interviews.
People say, oh, you know, I hadthese questions to ask.
So for me, the the question Iwould like to ask an exit
(12:00):
interview is why did you startlooking?
Not, why did you leave?
Because by the time youactually leave, you're leaving
for very positive reasons.
Normally you've got a job closerto home or the pay's better or
the hours are better.
But why did you look?
Because why you look is theproblem you need to solve for
your business and quite oftenthat is didn't like the
(12:22):
atmosphere, it didn't feel fair,or actually, yeah, my pay rate
was was bad and I knew that myfriend down the road was getting
better pay.
So if you can ask the questionabout what encouraged you to go
in the first place, they're thequestions that I think give you
the outcome for your businessand I think you know, obviously,
pay hours, etc.
I think one of the biggestthings that is a problem for
(12:45):
retail manufacturing anywherewhere you need people on site
doing the job nowadays,post-covid, is actually you have
to make being on site excitingand interesting because they can
find jobs where they can sit athome, gets paid similar wages,
if not more, and not havecommuting issues and child care
(13:07):
issues, etc.
So you have to create thatpoint of difference that coming
to a site and working with ateam is exciting and and and
good.
So I think those two, those twoare probably one of the key
turnovers for for anypresenteeism business, which is,
you know, obviously actuallyhaving to be there.
(13:28):
Then after that, it's alwaysline management.
Right, it's always how the teamare created, how the team feel,
how how the manager, whetherit's a fair environment, whether
they're engaging with them,whether they're challenging them
, whether they're making the jobexciting and it's interesting
because, having worked in shops,worked in head offices, worked
(13:53):
in our own business, the onething I miss is being in a shop.
Yeah, if someone still do.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Yeah, so especially
Christmas uh, yeah, mean, diy
was a bit more Easter, so kindof the time I'm recording, but
there again, boots was Christmas, but it's that, and some of
it's my probably control freak,managing the shop and kind of
being the orchestra a little bit, I suspect, but it's that maybe
(14:25):
taking over a shop that wasn'tdoing great, making it better
for customers and colleaguesthrough people, feeling
connected on a daily basis to ateam, feeling like you're doing
something positive or it'sgetting better dealing with
adversity.
So all those things we talkedabout, you know levers, starters
(14:46):
, people falling out, and allthose things you get with a
group of people, somethinghappening at Christmas, do that,
shouldn't that you have to dealwith the next?
Speaker 2 (14:52):
day.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
I don't kind of miss
some of that, but there is
something about if you get itright.
There's just an energy that youcan't quite put your finger on.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
Yeah, yeah, 100%.
I think retail can be.
Oh, retail can be probably oneof the most exciting places and
one of the places that I havelearned the most about myself,
about how to work with otherpeople.
It's.
There is just something,there's a buzz about it that you
(15:25):
just don't get anywhere else.
But we have to be reallyrealistic.
The buzz is there.
It's a great place to work, butif you compare it to I don't
know, maybe working in sales forhr, sort of an hr system, the
rewards are very different.
So you've got to be therebecause you love the environment
and and you love, you have apassion for it, not because you
(15:49):
think you're going to be able toretire and buy a Ferrari with
it.
And that's the fundamentalissue that anything I think like
retail hospitality, you have tocreate that atmosphere because
there is nothing else that'sgoing to make that a better job
than other things.
If it's not a good job and abetter atmosphere and a sense of
(16:09):
camaraderie and teamship, it'snot going to be the salaries
ever that keep people yeah,absolutely so.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
In terms of
strategies to reduce turnover,
are there any kind of top threethat you've got that people are
starting to implement, or thatyou're an advocate of?
Speaker 2 (16:28):
so I think you have
to get I mean you very, very
simply, the top two have to bepay and, uh, flexible scheduling
.
Right, you have to, you have tobe able to create an
environment where somebody canget good pay and somebody can
actually work hours that workfor their family because of
their, their fundamental hygiene.
After that, it's about creatingan environment where employees
(16:54):
are recognized, where their linemanagers actually treat them as
individuals, see their skillsets, use their skill sets,
develop their skill sets.
So the first two are hygiene,and then it's about actually
(17:15):
understanding who the person isand what they need from the
business and then developingsupport that enables them to get
what they want out of workingfor you.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Yeah, and that's
interesting, isn't?
It don't want in a team iseverybody wants to be the next
managing director, becausethat's just not going to happen.
But also, what you don't wantis everybody's just happy to do
the hours they do and plod alongat the rate they plod along.
You need that diversity of team.
And yeah, and again, I thinkhistorically, probably in my
(17:47):
experience, lots of appraisalreward pro processes have been
quite binary.
It's a, it feels like a processin a form that somebody's
ticking the box or somebody'sanswering a criterion, rest, um,
structured question that'sbased on a specific skill set
and if you're good at that,means this is your next job,
where, again, we're seeing lotsmore informal stuff now 15
(18:10):
minute coffee chats once a monthand and that people are far
more open to tell you how theythink and feel without feeling
that it's going to impact theircareer yeah, no, and I mean,
depending on how your pay sisterworks, you may need, you may
need a formal point in which yourecord it, because that may
drive a pay point.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
But actually getting
to know the individual that
works for you as an individual,um, seeing what motivates them,
because some people you know, weall know some of us are
motivated by being the best wecan be.
Some of us are motivated bybeing the best in the group.
So if, if I'm, if I'm justmotivated by my own development
(18:50):
and actually wanting to be thebest at what I do I want to be
the best graphic, or I want tobe the best at what I do, I want
to be the best bra fitter, Iwant to be the best carpet
salesman then actually that's adifferent skill set.
Actually I just want to learnnew things every day.
I have no ambition, but I wantto learn new things.
You might then move me arounddifferent departments.
So, knowing what motivatessomebody, why they come to work
(19:16):
outside of the hygiene factors,why they're there, what keeps
them there, that's the skill,for good leadership is actually
understanding the individual,and it doesn't take long.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
You don't have to
spend two hours with them to
work out what will actuallyfloat their boat for the next
month yeah, absolutely, and haveyou got any kind of, as we
close off, any top tips for thelisteners in terms of retention?
Speaker 2 (19:44):
uh, so yes, well, I
think it's probably fairly
obvious where I'm coming from.
Treat everybody as anindividual, work out what they
want.
And just remember, as abusiness, if you don't know what
your productivity, how long ittakes you to get somebody
(20:05):
productive in that area, youreally don't know what your
hidden costs are.
So use your data to work out.
Can you even measure what it'scosting you?
And therefore sometimes peoplewill go oh, somebody's resigned.
I'm just not.
But actually if you're, if it'ssomebody you want to keep, work
it out, because that could saveyou six months worth of
productivity issues by justsitting down with them and
(20:27):
trying to solve it.
Then now, if you can solve itearlier than that because you've
treated them as an individual,you'd understood what they
needed.
You're in a very differentplace.
But I think understanding whatit costs to make somebody
productive in your business andI don't mean just onboarding, I
mean getting them from the daythey start to the day they
actually make a financialcontribution that would be the
(20:49):
equivalent of one of your goodmembers of staff, um and
investing in the processes thatimprove people quickly and
retain them post that that'sthat for me, is about
understanding how you can reducecosts.
It's not a fluffy hr trainingdevelopment issue.
(21:12):
It's a bottom line cost savingexercise.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
Excellent.
On that note, we'll pause there.
I think there's been threereally insightful episodes from
yourself, wendy, and Paul andHelen.
If people have been kind ofinspired or it's prompted some
questions, this episode in chat,where's the best place for them
to find you?
Speaker 2 (21:36):
so they can find me
on linkedin or they can find me
at the team at whpeoplecomamazing.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
I really appreciate
your time fantastic pleasure
it's uh made me reminisce alittle bit of how much in stores
of people.
But, um, I don't know if I'llever get back there, but I do
enjoy walking around withclients.
You always feel a bit moreconnected to what's going on.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
I love being in a
shop, but not actually a shopper
, interestingly yeah, exactly,exactly appreciate your time and
yours, thank you.