348: Staffing Struggles
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Summary
Have you had issues with staffing? 2022 may very well be defined by the labor market flipping to empowering employees. This has meant hiring and retaining staff has been difficult, especially as a small business. From competing on wages, to connecting with mission, job applicants are able to be very picky. We break down how we’ve changed our processes and have been investing in existing staff. Having staff will continue to be a major issue into the new year, and we have to prepare for it.
Main topic:
Staffing pains
Using technology
Sometimes stuff just happens
Touch points with staff
Main takeaway: Hiring staff is one thing, retaining them is a whole other beast. Thankfully, there is a lot you can do to retain staff with a solid onboarding and culture building process.
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
hiring, people, staff, person, company, pet, hiring process, business, job, life, employees, scheduling, staff members, megan, training, visit, client, onboarding process, super, sitter
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin
Meghan 00:10
Hello, I'm Meghan. I'm Collin. And this is Pet Sitter confessional and open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Hello there, welcome to 2023.
Collin 00:22
Happy New Year,
Meghan 00:23
thanks to pet sitters associates and our Patreon supporters for making today's show possible if you don't know what a Patreon member is, because it's a weird word, it is somebody who financially supports us with a few dollars every month and helps to keep the show going.
Collin 00:40
Yeah, and you can go to pet sitter confessional.com/support, to learn all of the ways that you can help support the show.
Meghan 00:47
And we appreciate every single one of them. Absolutely. With the new year and reflecting on last year and this coming year, we've been doing some really deep dives and reviews of our business and how 2022 went and we talked about that a few weeks ago on the episode. But one word kept coming up again and again. And it was hiring last year was really our big deep dive into hiring. We recently crossed the one year mark of having employees and running a business remotely. And so it's really been a learning curve, to say the least on a lot of different friends.
Collin 01:17
It really has and hiring has been a major issue for us. And I think a lot of people as well who have had to bring on staff or been interested in staffing up their businesses. And obviously every market is different. Where you live has its own proclivities for hiring and own interests and needs of people there. So this is really just our from our experiences based off how this has been for us.
Meghan 01:41
And so some things that we have been finding are, you know, getting people to apply has sometimes been an issue, it's been a slog to really get people in the door. When we first started hiring the very first application we sent out, I had 300 people apply for that position. And I thought that was just amazing. And it was amazing come to find out because a year later, when I put out essentially the same hiring ad I usually get between 40 and 50 people now.
02:07
So it's been a pretty steep drop off. And that's man it made us realize a part of hiring is always be hiring always have that ad out, always be looking for for new hires, and be looking for people to staff up for different things and seeing can I use this person in this way? Or is thinking a little bit more of a wider diversity of roles and personnel that we could have potentially because we know we always need to have that top of mind?
Meghan 02:32
Well, and so we've worked on making our ads much more targeted and narrow in scope. And that could really be another reason why we're not getting as many applications. So instead of saying, you know, pet sitter slash dog walker, it's now morning Pet Sitter slash dog walker or midday dog walker or weekend.
Collin 02:49
Yeah, that I think that's really helped, at least at some early expectations moving forward with a lot of the applicants as well. So yes, it does self select out people who are interested in the position going oh, well, that's not I can't work weekend, so I'm not going to apply. So I think that that has definitely helped cut down on a lot of those people as well.
Meghan 03:06
Something else that we've been finding is getting people to show up for our interviews hasn't been a major issue. But it's not not been an issue. Right. So over the last year, we've conducted well over 60 in person interviews, and only three people have completely no showed or ghosted us, obviously, with the phone interviews, there's been a higher percentage there, because it's much easier to just not pick up the phone than to not show up in person.
Collin 03:32
Yeah, and this is even after we've had many hoops to jump through, and they made it through several rounds of email communication about interest and more information about it. Then when we get to the phone interview, ghosting there. And then those three times where we did schedule an in person where they agreed to the time they accepted the calendar invite, and then they still didn't show.
Meghan 03:52
And so there's not a whole lot that you can really do about that you can't force somebody to show up, you can't go knock on their door. So there isn't really much to get around that it's
Collin 04:00
just something that has been happening, I think with increased frequency that more people are experiencing as well. So when you start to hire, you have to understand that some percentage of these people will get to a certain point in the process, and then stop responding to you. And that's just going to happen.
Meghan 04:16
One more thing that we've been finding out and this has been the absolute major issue for us is getting people to stick around for more than a month. Yeah, there are certain things that we've been doing to try to get people to stick around more. You know, they've been leaving for a lot of different reasons. And the major one is really life. You know, some have decided they couldn't do a second job like they thought they could or they wanted to go back to school or they wanted to just start their own business. It's really been for varying reasons.
Collin 04:44
So what's going on? Why is hiring such a slog these days there a couple things that stand out. One, people are still trying to figure out what their lives look like many are actually not work looking for full time work. They're looking for a lot of flexibility in their lives
Meghan 04:59
and And that's why having a part time position is so great. So I know a lot of people think before they start hiring that they have to have somebody bring somebody on full time. And that's just simply not true. We hired when we had zero guaranteed hours.
Collin 05:12
Well, and that becomes part of an issue is because people may think, oh, I want a part time job, here's a part time job and pet care, that will be satisfying to me. But because of how a lot of our businesses are set up with a lot of vacation clients, a lot of inconsistency of scheduling a lot of unpredictability with how busy we are, are not going to be from time to time from week to week, that can be quite a shock to people who come in expecting a consistent 20 hours a week, 15 hours a week, or five hours a week. And you have to tell them no, that's actually not something that we can provide at this time, depending on where your business is. And that's something that we had to start communicating very early on in the process. With new hires, also, people are just looking for higher wages. And we've seen that over the last year wage increases with inflation, with everything going on, people are looking for more money in their pockets. And as you know, listening to this, pricing, and Petcare makes this kind of hard to do hard. Not impossible, though, but harder, it does, the margins in this business in this industry tend to be a lot smaller. And we have to help people understand that. And that may be a reach for us as we try and raise and increase wages to a point where it attracts more people, because of what they are expecting. But trying to explain to people, what we can offer some of the back end stuff and help them see how they can see themselves in the company is really where we have to go. Because people are looking for something that is super fulfilling. They want work that aligns with their personal values with their core values, and something they can see themselves investing in and being invested in. And so as a US companies, we have to figure out ways to do that with people who we bring on. And I know we'll talk about that here in a little bit as
Meghan 06:56
well. And I want to touch back on the flexibility part of this, we have had several people apply who really see this as more of a transitory position just because they want to travel to different places, or they want to just hop from here to there. And they don't really see this as a career necessarily. And I know that's something that we struggle with, as well as business owners of like, wow, I can actually make this thing into a career. But I think that's something that people applying to our jobs as well see that because they just think I can just pick this up and drop it whenever I need to
Collin 07:31
somebody they can turn on and off as their schedule dictates that they need to and as business owners, I know at least it you can set scheduling up for however you want to do it. I know how Megan and I have decided to do ours is predictability set days set times that are going to be consistent across the board so that we have consistency and scheduling people, our clients have consistency with people coming arriving. And the staff members have consistency of when they're needed. And that says this has been a big part of educating people on the consistency aspect of it the teamwork aspect of it the necessary needed predictability of schedule of showing up that it's not something that you can pick up, turn up, turn on, and then move away as need be
Meghan 08:15
well, because I think it's one thing to say I need every Wednesday off for all of eternity, because I have specific meetings or specific things that I do on Wednesday. That's one thing, but people just seem to want to go, Well, I want to be able to travel while I do this as well. And that's just not something where that we're able to accommodate or want to literally
Collin 08:37
had somebody who applied who wanted to basically travel for weekends, at least every weekend out of the month, and sometimes for whole weeks at a time she wanted to disappear and then be able to come back on and at right now where we are we we are not able to accommodate that. And but it's I know that that feeling of wanting to turn it on and off is not just bespoke to her.
Meghan 09:00
Well, and I think it's again, because people don't see this as a legitimate business. And so they just think, oh, I can walk a dog here or walk a dog there. And it's not that big of a deal. So I can just turn it off and turn it on. But it's we need to Yeah, again, educate of this is a real thing. It is an actual job. And I need you to treat it like an actual job because I'm going to treat you like an actual staff member.
Collin 09:25
And that is something that as far as feedback goes with our staff, they they tend to be very surprised with how serious we actually take this, even though through all of our hiring process, all of the systems, the SOPs, the technology, everything that we use, I think a few of them have been a little shocked about what we are bringing to bear and that we are an actual real company on the other side that it's not some fly by night kind of thing. And that is an aspect that you who are running a business can educate people on about what you're doing, what you're providing the severity that you bring the serious SNESs that you take not just caring for the pets, but the seriousness of hiring somebody you know of all of the paperwork you are paying for those things you are paying for the training, you do have the insurance you do have the bonding that they are covered under, talking to people about that really helps them understand exactly what they're stepping into. And I think can combat a little bit of this flightiness of people who think of this in a transitory nature. Because as we've hired over this last year, we've hired about 18 people, maybe not about exactly 18 people. And currently, we have eight working for us. And this is just some real talk, the longest that a staff member has worked for us has actually been two staff members who just celebrated their six months, and we couldn't be happier to have them on. It is such a rich blessing and contribution that they have brought to the company. The shortest was actually a new hire that didn't even make it through the onboarding process. They didn't do any of the visits, they had to actually sat through the My one on one onboarding, walking through all the systems and processes and then texted us later that day, letting us know that they had taken another job. And
Meghan 11:07
that was super fun. Appreciate you wasting our time.
Collin 11:12
But that's another thing is that as you hire some of the behaviors of employees has changed a little bit of people accepting multiple offers, for companies going through stages of hiring and onboarding, to see which they're actually going to like, and then ghosting or canceling and quitting. To go from there. Versus I know, when I was accepting jobs, it was you pick one. And that's what you're you're committing to not saying one's right or worse over the other. It's just our expectations as employers, knowing how people are going to behave when they're applying to my position?
Meghan 11:49
Well, frankly, because of 2020. And what subsequently led to that the employee does have at least right now in this moment does have the leverage in that position. They are demanding higher wages, you know, everybody is hiring. So employees are really not a dime a dozen right now. And
Collin 12:08
they're very picky. They're very picky about what they're going to take and who they're going to work for. And as our employees have left because of life changes and things like that, we've always asked them, What can we do better? What what what could we have done to help you up for success? And what do you need from us and their responses across the board have basically been, you are awesome. The job was a lot of fun. I It's been one of the best things I've ever done in my life. It's just time for me to do something different right now. And like Megan said, that was go back to school that was take care of sick family members that was take care of their own personal mental, or emotional, physical health at that time. And that's okay.
Meghan 12:44
I will say though, that truthfully, though, it does hurt a little bit because we have invested time, money energy into these people. And so when an employee leaves, it's not the best feeling in the world, even if it's under great circumstances, if they're going to pursue some other enjoyable thing in their life. It's still as the boss, I'm like, Oh, like that stings a little bit?
Collin 13:03
Well, we've learned a lot from this entire process. And we're going to continue to learn some But Megan, what you just said there, I think is one of the most important ones that I've had is that it's genuinely it is truly okay to mourn when a staff member leaves, you can be sad, you can be upset about that and hurt by that. But you cannot let that impact how you treat the next hire. You cannot let that Jade you let that shadow how you interact, how you say hi, how you go through the next onboarding process. Because every person who we have hired, they comment how much they love the interactions with our training with the shadowing who visits how personal we are, we cannot start to become disgruntled every time somebody leaves because that means that new hire that comes in, we are on the offensive already. We think worse about them. We go well, basically, the back of our head is like well, when are you leaving? So we treat them with dismissively. We don't listen to them. We don't try and connect with them. And that damages that relationship. Now is this easy? No. It is not. But every new person to your company is just that a new person to your company. And you as the employer owe it to them to treat them as such.
Meghan 14:21
Well it's kind of this is not the same at all, but it kind of is of like dating, you know, you your boyfriend broke up with you and you go out on another day. You don't want to spill all the the tea of the previous boyfriends you just want to start over fresh and say Hi, my name is Megan, how are you?
Collin 14:39
Or when I was teaching the first class of the day would really tick me off. And they would leave and the second class would come in and I would a lot of times bring my emotions how upset I was at the first class and bring those to bear on the second class and I was way shorter with them. I didn't pay attention to them. I was very dismissive and I wasn't kind and you have to learn to go For those people who are new, what happened at that last situation, I cannot let allow me to impact how I move forward with this, we think about this with visits, you have that one rushed visit where everything goes wrong. And, and then you have to walk right into the next visit. And you cannot carry the burden from the previous visit into that next one. Because it will impact that the animals can sense that same thing with people. And so
Meghan 15:23
here's some things that we've learned one, we need to approach the hiring process by basically trying to convince people why they should not work for us. So you know, a lot of times we say, here's why you should work for us. But at the end of the day, people don't truly understand what we do until they've actually either done it for themselves in their own business, or have worked for us in our business. So we do a lot of real life crazy situations that have either happened to us or to other sitters that we know of, and we try to gauge how that person reacts and how they handle being asked the question and then how they respond and answer it. Yeah. When
Collin 16:01
I asked them, What would you do if you came into a home and there was somebody naked in the kitchen? Everybody immediate? Well, not everybody, the majority people laugh nervously, and then look at me to see is this person serious? Because they think it's a joke, they think it's a joke. And when I go, Okay, I don't laugh or respond, they suddenly all of a sudden get real serious about that situation, and actually think about it, because they weren't expecting it. And that's an important part of the interviewing process to not play to those things, and just play it straight. And be serious about those kinds of questions, because they're going to read that off of you and see how serious you are actually taking it. And we need to be upfront about what we can provide, as far as number of visits hours per week. And, and really not shy away from the dirty details. Because too often, we want to try and attract the people to our companies, we want to make it look as pretty and nice as humanly possible. So that they will choose us mentioned making you mentioned dating earlier, we want to be as attractive to that person as as possible. But what happens once they start joining our company, and they start working for us and realize it's not all rainbows and butterflies, that is a disservice we have done to them, and will probably increase the likelihood of them leaving early because they will feel like they have been misled and sometimes lied to. Well, I
Meghan 17:19
feel like that's definitely something over the past year that we have continued to refine and hone and basically getting more and more drastic about it. Because at our very first hire, she went through the onboarding process, and then read the employee handbook and went, Oh, this is super serious. I didn't realize all of this. And we went, that was our first lightbulb moment of oh, we need to do a better job explaining this before we get to this process. And we are not wasting our time. I mean, yes, not wasting the potential employees time, but more. So our time, our time is incredibly valuable, just as everybody else's is. But we need to do a better job of explaining these things early on. And that starts with the job ad. So if you are not happy with the applicants, that is the first step is to look at your job ad, especially the title, what kind of people are you attracting with your title? Is it literally every Joe Schmo and Jane schmo out there? Is it a specific type of person?
Collin 18:09
We do that with clients, we talk about who is your target clientele, and we try and figure out language and graphics and social media marketing messaging to get to that particular person? Because we know I'm not for everybody. I don't serve as every type of pet owner, I'm for a very specific subset of them. The exact same thing with your hiring Megan, you mentioned look at that ad, if you're not happy with who is applying go, what kind of language Am I using? Do I have this, it's super flexible. Pick when you want and you actually get upset and that makes it that you are not able to accommodate that, get rid of that language immediately and make an actually state what you need. And because that is you setting that very first expectation that they will bring into the company, it really all starts with the job ad even then one thing that we've learned is that you can have everything in place perfected dialed in, and life still happens. So when you hire people, you're you're actually hiring into their life. And there will be repercussions from that. And that's okay. Sometimes you do everything right. You'd nail the job ad, you nailed the interview questions, you nail the training, the shadowing everything. And it still doesn't work out. Like we said, Some people said, You know what, it's actually time for me to go back to school. That's not anything we did wrong. But that now we have repercussions from from that. And we have to go through the hiring process. And recognizing that all of the courses, all of the training, all of the input all of the oversight for you and your hiring process. It will just not work out sometimes. And we need to be honest about that. There's there's no silver bullet to this
Meghan 19:47
because people's lives are messy. And so you really don't know what's going on in that potential employee or employees life that they may not be telling you about. Right?
Collin 19:57
Yeah, exactly. And stability matters. Stability matters when Hi Hiring people I know when we look at some of the major reasons that most people stay, it's the fact that there is actually stability in their life outside of this job. So they have family in the area, they're looking to build out a life. We've started to ask this great question that actually we heard from another sitter was described your current situation be as specific and detailed as possible, it's a great way to try and see is this person just scrambling for a job. And then you get to make the judgment call more with more full knowledge of who you're hiring, so that you're not surprised when you look up and you go, Oh, they never stopped applying. And now they're moving on next week, you want to try and know as much information going into it as possible.
Meghan 20:42
We've also learned to never stop checking in and showing up for staff. At first, we just did a three month review, but we really weren't catching problems early enough because people weren't quitting before the three months or they recruiting right after three months, as I was scheduling the three month review. So now we do monthly check ins. You know, after the onboarding process, we asked them how that was how comfortable they're feeling if they're ready to go off on their own. And that's usually about the two week mark. And then about a week or so after that we do another check in. Because we don't really see staff face to face, we do have weekly meetings that we have everybody go to but we don't I mean, I don't think I've ever met any of our other remote location staff in person. No,
Collin 21:25
you never have. So it makes it hard to have that those those little moments that people to bond to connect, to have conversations about what's going on in their life. So what we do now is we try to have a lot of really high quality touch points with them throughout the week in little ways. And that's we've seen a huge improvement from that.
Meghan 21:48
It's also important not to overbook, or build beyond your current staffing ability. We've wanted to take on so much as a business and then try to hire for that. But that's just asking for a headache truthfully,
Collin 21:59
yeah, when we had we had a few people quit a few months out before Christmas, we were still in the we need to be taking on as much business as possible. We need to go go go go go. But we had to pull the reins back hard and go no, there's no guarantee I'm going to have staff by Christmas, I cannot overcommit myself, because then I'm only letting people down. And that's a bad look, that's a bad image for our company for our brand, but what we actually stand for, so really trying to measure the growth and grow well, with the people that you do have.
Meghan 22:30
As we've brought on more and more staff, we've realized that videos really save your life. So use more of them, we certainly have, we are slowly building a library of videos covering a whole ton of topics on you know how tos client walkthroughs. In their home, we attach the video links to the client notes that all staff can review the information and then watch them we love loom for this. It really it cuts down on having to say the same thing over and over again. And now you can show them physically where everything is as well, so they can review it.
Collin 23:03
Another thing, we've started to share more not just about videos and client notes, but share the plan and the vision that you have, and what you want your company to look like. And it can be scary to sit down with your staff to discuss the future. But it's really,
Meghan 23:15
really important, especially if they want to feel included in it as well
Collin 23:19
be honest, when the slow times are coming and when the busy seasons are going to start help prepare them mentally and emotionally for those times they get a feel for the ebb and flow of your company and how you envision either expanding or not what you want their position to look like in 510 years, because that's something that that we as the owners are responsible for doing, I need to go okay, I have I have hired somebody, my commitment to them is until they fail to meet their job expectations and requirements. And I have to let them go or forever. That's pretty much the what you're signing on to as as an employer. And so if you don't have that plan for the forever, that's something that you need to get real serious about. And then have conversations with them about how they fit in. And let them know about what you're wanting to offer new things as different services or when you want to start hiring again, because they may know somebody who is going to be a good fit because they know your company culture, they see what you're doing. Reach out to them first don't feel bad about about talking to them about that kind of stuff.
Meghan 24:27
You can even ask them to look over the job ad and say, Hey, I'm looking to hire you know, somebody to take overnights while you take over days. Is this something? Is this still the job that you see it as
Collin 24:38
because what that does is really one of our last lessons here is it's that you need to learn lean into the strengths of your staff at the three month and at the six month review. We end that by asking, Okay, what's something that you think the company should be doing that you'd like to take the lead on? And this is something that I learned from my previous job? It's a great question. it because you're not just asking what can we do more of, you're giving them a chance to take ownership in the company and ownership over their position. And from this question alone, we've been able to add things like photography, because somebody had an interest in that nail trims because somebody was like, Hey, we should be offering this, and I love doing it. So we said, Great, that is something that we can do that we would not have done before, because we didn't have people interested in doing it. And it's made us better. And it's helped for the staff members to see themselves as growing with us. This is kind of called upskilling, or rescaling of your existing staff members. And it offers a great way to fill talent gaps, offer new services and cut down on hiring and other costs associated with that, basically, looking at, I have, what are the strengths of the people who I'm bringing on. Now how can I use those to both a helped my company be better, but be helped them see themselves as more of a part of this, you get to by doing this entire process. And this is important, because Megan mentioned this earlier about that word career, because when we are providing employees with education and opportunities for that career development, and mobility in our company, it increases engagement and retention. And again about that career, we get so many people who don't think that this can be a true career. Many of you listening didn't know that pet sitting dog walking could be a career until you started your own company. So how do we change that as as companies as employers, we do that by having additional training and growth opportunities when that staff member is ready, and more importantly, talk about that with them.
Meghan 26:40
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Collin 27:25
And I do have to just touch on the insurance one more time because that is something that I'm starting to bring more and more into conversation with people who are bringing on to show them how serious we take this, many people do have no clue that there is pet sitting dog walking specific industry specific insurance. And I get to educate people about that during the interview process, because they have no idea. And I think that's a really great way to get help them see what we are bringing to the table.
Meghan 27:53
And so with this new year, here are some things that we are leaning into. The first one is we're using social media to talk more about our company culture and our values. So our company has four promises that we promise to every pet parents, and every single one of our staff members needs to know what those are. And so we are sharing those on social media. And we are talking about those at our weekly meetings.
Collin 28:16
And the sharing them out helps potential hires connect with us. And it helps existing staff stay content and invested with us. So again, these two for the price of one social media post,
Meghan 28:27
also having a more transparent raise criteria with set goals and metrics to achieve. This is a daunting task. Because there really aren't industry standards for this kind of thing. And it's hard to really say, Okay, what does progress look like at the six month mark at the 12 month mark within our company?
Collin 28:48
Yeah. And so looking at other industries and going yeah, what does what would a 50 cent raise? What would $1 rays actually look like? What Why would somebody get that? What would that mean for them to achieve that and taking into account everything else. So having better performance reviews, and having better guidelines and goals is something that we're going to be moving into. We'll also be embracing the true diversity of our staff. So one thing that we've done is we've added a gaming channel to our Slack group for the staff who love gaming and streaming on Twitch. We're also celebrating their personal successes, you know, wonderful grades in school or finishing a home project or whatever that is, and just letting them know that we see them as the whole person that they are,
Meghan 29:29
and then continuing to have high touch points with our staff this year is something that we're really excited about because again, we see our staff during weekly meetings and then we send them off and they go out and do great work and provide excellent pet care. So we need to make sure that when we do interact with them, it's a great experience and it's highly valuable to them. It's like coming prepared to the team meetings with great info and encouragement really also because they're not getting encouragement from anybody else. So it's super rare. Important to as the boss as the one that they're really interacting with to provide that encouragement. And with that with our, you know, monthly check ins that we try to do, you know, one to three months, we try to make these less of a review much more of a, hey, let's get your feedback. Let's check in, we call them check ins, because we just want to see hey, how's it going? How are you feeling? Are you still enjoying the job? Is there too much too little? These kind of things. And then we make the three and the six month more of a review of, hey, here's some things that you could work on. Here are some areas where we need to see improvement.
Collin 30:34
But honestly, the majority of the questions are us asking them to review us. We ask for their feedback on how we are equipping them, how we are training them how we are supporting them, do they have the tools, equipment knowledge to get the job done? Well, what more could we be doing so that they feel like again, that they can help contribute to something that they if they have problems, if they have concerns, we're we're fully open to getting that kind of feedback.
Meghan 31:00
We also want to do better at streamlining our hiring and onboarding and training processes. I feel like in the past year, we have, we have soared with like learning and lessons and improving this. But I know we've had to do it a lot. But I know it is simply just the tip of the iceberg. We you know, gusto makes hiring and onboarding, super simple. And we love them for our payroll, and all of that. We have it set up automatically to send all the documents for our new staff to sign. And it saves us a bunch of time. So we still highly recommend them. And while we like in person interviews, to save time and money, it probably potentially needs to be conducted more via zoom calls, we're hiring really at a rapid rate. And you know, with our remote area, we're not always able to go down and do those in person's in person.
Collin 31:49
We're also working to implement standardized assessments. So basically Google quizzes during the training process to better capture an understanding of their understanding of what they're learning and doing this. And Megan, Megan made these and they're really cool. And really great. I can't wait to start using these more.
Meghan 32:08
Well, thank you. I mean, so call into the training videos, the onboarding videos, and there's four of them. It goes over our, our company mission and promises and other ones for the employee handbook. Another one was meet and greets. And another one is the 10 things you need to know to get started. Yeah, so I basically we made questions through those videos. And at the end, they have to answer those and get them correct.
Collin 32:30
So again, we do this all through loom it gets automatically sent to staff. And basically at the end of the video, a button pops up that says take the quiz, they click on that they're taken to the Google quiz to complete and then we get the results when they're done. And then now we can sit down with them, and talk through the questions and in answers to see what else more help they can do. And I know that there are companies that do this, there are platforms that will do this kind of service for you things like train you will is a big one, or something like teachable, but basically right now we're so new to this step in the process that we're really trying to optimize what we have at our disposal to see what we like and don't like, before we start looking at specific systems to accomplish this task, I'd rather have really good questions and training videos nailed down, and then put those on a platform, then try and manage a platform and get everything that's going at once. It's just too much to handle. So really, and we're already paying for these things. So we want to try and get the most out of them as possible.
Meghan 33:25
But it is a fine balance here because we have gotten some feedback that not everybody is as technologically literate as some other people. So other, there might be differences in learning styles here. Some people may be better physically in person, some people may be better just sitting and watching a video,
Collin 33:42
which is why I still having those shadowing visits in the shadowing trainings, for Meet Greets and all that is still critical to this, but doing our best to get as much information in front of them before that first visit before that first meet and greet so that they can then shadow we could do in person discussions and do fast paced q&a after the fact and
Meghan 34:00
not miss the human element. Exactly. I think automation is great. But I don't think that completely automating the hiring process is really at least at this point in the pet care industry a super best thing for it,
Collin 34:14
but and nothing will really ever replace you standing next to somebody going look at this dish. It's not fully washed. You need to watch that again. This is how I wash dishes or Hey, see this mess over here. Here's how we're going to clean that up. And nope, nope, don't put the trash back in the back on the counter because you're going to forget it make sure you put that trash bag over by the front door so that you don't forget it and you have to stumble over it to leave and you don't leave a stinky trash bag for somebody. There are aspects of this we're just feeling the flow of a visit will never be fully replaced. And so for me doing those training visits, making sure I'm continuing to be fully present that I'm not jaded that I'm not frustrated that I'm not angry about something and I'm they're present in the moment because genuinely the staff members are super excited to be there. They couldn't they can't wait To get the visit started, if I come in all grumbling and gruff and frustrated and angry about something that's going to completely put them off and ruin and put in damp and any sort of learning that could actually take place, and it's going to hurt them in the long run. And so continuing to invest in people, we talked about that a lot. We're investing in people that have staffing issues, invest in people, is really what that takes place. And sometimes that person is you at the end of the day.
Meghan 35:23
So if you are having struggles with staffing, hopefully some of these lessons from our own personal experiences have been helpful. But if there's something that we did not cover, and you really want to let other sitters know about it, and it's super great, and it's been working for you, you can let us know you can send us an email at feedback at Pet Sitter confessional.com or hit us up on social media at Pet Sitter confessional. Thank you very much for listening today. We also want to thank pet sitters associates and our amazing Patreon members for financially supporting the show today. Thank you for taking your most valuable asset your time and listening to this today. We hope it's been valuable to you. We'll talk with you next time.
Collin 35:59
Bye
