Podcast Ep 67 | Why Should People Want to Work for Your Company?

Why should any­one come and work for you at the same salary as your competitors?

Employ­ers often com­plain that it’s dif­fi­cult to find staff and yet pay the same amount as the com­pe­ti­tion. How­ev­er, if you con­sid­er the sit­u­a­tion from the employ­ees per­spec­tive, you can appre­ci­ate that if the pay is approx­i­mate­ly the same, then many things you might not con­sid­er are actu­al­ly quite impor­tant to a candidate.

For exam­ple, the pur­pose of the orga­ni­za­tion, the role flex­i­bil­i­ty, career growth oppor­tu­ni­ties, the man­ag­er, or the orga­ni­za­tion’s pres­tige, all become crit­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions if the pay rate is similar.

EPISODE TRAN­SCRIPT

Please note that this episode was tran­scribed using an AI appli­ca­tion and may not be 100% gram­mat­i­cal­ly cor­rect – but it will still allow you to scan the episode for key content.

Brad Giles 07:04

Recent­ly, I’m in a work­shop and annu­al work­shop with a com­pa­ny. And I won’t say who, but we got through this debate. And part of that debate was peo­ple com­plain­ing about we can’t find peo­ple or there’s a skill short­age. And then some of the, you know, we’ve done this thing called the tal­ent assess­ment where we’re assess­ing the dif­fer­ent peo­ple in the orga­ni­za­tion. Yep. And then I just blurt­ed out, I said, why should any­one come and work for you at the same salary as your com­peti­tors? There’s no dif­fer­ence. And so that is what we’re talk­ing about today. Why should any­one come work for you, the lis­ten­er at the same salary as your competitors?

07:57

Yeah. And we can even up it same salary, or maybe even less, because I have seen a lot of peo­ple come to clients that we work with, for same or less salary, and I’ve seen some come from more, but there’s some­times peo­ple will come for less, which means there’s some­thing real­ly com­pelling there. But let’s just stay for the

Brad Giles 08:18

It’s not dou­ble. That’s the point. No, wind­fall. It’s not a wind­fall. Yeah, right. And that’s, and that’s the idea, you can always not always it’s, eas­i­er to get caught up in think­ing you just have to pay more. And, you know, the thing I would start with is, you know, com­pen­sa­tion is part of why peo­ple work for a com­pa­ny, I’ve always main­tained, it’s half of their pay­check, half of the pay­check is mon­ey, half of the pay­check is all the oth­er fac­tors that make them feel good about their work, or that the oth­er needs that the job meet. So half of its eco­nom­ic needs, half is oth­er needs. Truth­ful­ly, I think the eco­nom­ic needs are even less, but you know, the mon­ey, the mon­ey needs to be there. That’s what makes the world go round. So So the thing that we want to kind of frame this up with it starts about think­ing about what’s in it for them. Yeah, beyond mon­ey, because mon­ey is easy, but it’s easy to think about. But it’s inter­est­ing, as we’ve been build­ing our firm, and again there as well, by the time we get into the fall, there will be you know, 11, maybe 12 peo­ple it’s a small bou­tique firm that does, you know, bou­tique ser­vices. But, but one of the things we that we noticed and we learned along the way, one of things we noticed and learned along the way. Is that because we have such an amaz­ing team. Like it’s all a play­ers doing great work, that I found that there was many real­ly suc­cess­ful con­sul­tants and coach­es who actu­al­ly want­ed to be on an amaz­ing team. Yeah, and that the team was prob­a­bly equal­ly More impor­tant than the eco­nom­ics and a bunch of the things I’m hear­ing from peo­ple and When, when, when we’ve gone through our process, and they’ve been offered oppor­tu­ni­ty to join us. There, they’re say­ing I’m excit­ed to be a part of that team. And that was even in our ini­tial dis­cus­sions, what they were look­ing for. So, you know, the num­bers of the num­bers. But that is an exam­ple in, in, in our, our, our lit­tle firm, being a part of an awe­some team is a big, big pull a big poll. And, and, and a lot of com­pa­nies, though, there are maybe 10 or 15 dif­fer­ent vari­ables, the main thing is, is, is look­ing from the per­spec­tive of this per­son, and what is awe­some about your com­pa­ny that you might not even real­ize, par­tic­u­lar­ly, because you may have been in your com­pa­ny for 10 or 20 or 30 years and not even know the dif­fer­ence. So what is dis­tinct and com­pelling for some­body else that would meet their needs. And that’s what we’re look­ing at today. You know, one of the busi­ness­es that I used to own was a job board. And so it’s a bit like mon­ster or seek in Aus­tralia, where, you know, it’s an online por­tal, peo­ple go on, they place employ­ers place adverts, and peo­ple apply for jobs. It’s sim­ple. So it was very small in the con­text, it was indus­try spe­cif­ic and very small. But I got to see real­ly inter­est­ing sta­tis­tics between com­pa­nies that had what looked to be effec­tive­ly the same advert and the same pie. And one com­pa­ny with the same num­ber of views on an ad would get, like 10 appli­cants, and then the next com­pa­ny would get like 100 or 200 appli­cants, it was absolute­ly out­ra­geous, because every­thing else seemed the same, includ­ing the plan. What was it? What was the dif­fer­ence? Well, I, I would call it the employ­er brand. I would call it the employ­er brand. Like it was the sub­tleties in that advert. It was the posi­tion­ing of the com­pa­ny, peo­ple thought that they were going to be work­ing at a bet­ter company.

12:21

So it was the way they told their sto­ry basi­cal­ly, the way they artic­u­lat­ed the sto­ry of the company.

Brad Giles 12:27

Yeah, that’s anoth­er way to put it. Yeah. Awesome.

Kevin Lawrence 12:31

So what are its great insight and, and what, what, what are the oth­er vari­ables that we see that bring com­pa­nies in? Or bring peo­ple into com­pa­nies that pull peo­ple in? And one of our clients does a lot of recruit­ing right from col­leges. Yeah. Right. And for them, they talk about one, the oppor­tu­ni­ty for growth is some­thing and they’re com­pet­ing against a lot of oth­er com­pa­nies to get to land these stu­dents a lot, because every­one’s try­ing to recruit these col­lege grads. And in some cas­es, their pay is low­er they were in based on their eco­nom­ic mod­el. And they talk about the pur­pose of their com­pa­ny. Right. And the pur­pose of their com­pa­ny is pos­i­tive­ly impact­ing lives. It’s legit, they’re try­ing to help make peo­ple’s lives bet­ter. They do an incred­i­ble amount of char­i­ty work, and the heart of the com­pa­ny radi­ates through the peo­ple. Yeah. So they that for them is the mean­ing­ful­ness of that com­pa­ny and what they’re doing in the world, and because it’s so damn authen­tic, tak­en into account your ear­li­er word. Yeah, peo­ple get it. And it’s like, some peo­ple, and it’s a fil­ter, but some peo­ple real­ly, real­ly, real­ly want to be about it, because it’s such a mean­ing­ful place to work that gears so damn much. And also has that optic. So that’s, that’s in their case, we’re recruit­ing new grads, that’s a pow­er­ful strat­e­gy for them.

Brad Giles 13:54

Because if it mat­ters, that orig­i­nal ques­tion like, why would some­one else why would some­one come and work for you ver­sus some­one else? Because peo­ple often com­plain about being unable to find staff. They’re like, Ah, this is cool. Short, he’s like, it’s so hard to get good peo­ple. But you’ve got to look at it from the armor angle, which is, well, why would the good peo­ple come and work for you? What did they see through their eyes? Right? When they look at your orga­ni­za­tion, and this is a bit like look­ing in the mir­ror, it can be a bit dif­fi­cult at times it is, espe­cial­ly when it’s mid­night, but you know, it can be dif­fi­cult, but it’s worth it to under­stand why would some­one work for you? And if you can’t come up with a viable answer, then look to some of these oth­er things. So anoth­er com­pa­ny I owned was an elec­tri­cal con­tract­ing busi­ness and we did com­mu­ni­ca­tions in it and things like that, and peo­ple were great. amaz­ing skill short­age, like the, you know, you’d write busi­ness cas­es about how amaz­ing this skill short­age was, peo­ple would come in, and we would explain, the first thing that I would say to them is, look, we’re not like all the oth­er employ­ers, we’re try­ing to build the best of this type of com­pa­ny in the indus­try. And let me just before you, you know, get a bit hes­i­tant on that. We’ve won the Best elec­tri­cal con­tract­ing com­pa­ny in the whole of the coun­try, the only one from our state to have done that, and we’ve done it twice.

15:36

Right, so, so an award win­ning com­pa­ny, kind of like peo­ple that jump on the band­wag­on for the local sports team when they’re win­ning. Yes, peo­ple like to be a part of that. And then they get to feel like they’re winning.

Brad Giles 15:48

Yeah, we could­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly pay twice the amount of every­body else. But there were oth­er ways that we could bring the bride to life. And the point is, that was true, and you made it part of the sales pitch, we’ll call it

Kevin Lawrence 16:03

Yeah, all com­pa­nies have awe­some things that are true, but we for­get about them. Yeah. And that’s what this is about you, you have already awe­some­ness there, the unique val­ue is there is just there, there might be 15, dif­fer­ent things would res­onate, and you got to fig­ure out the ones that res­onate, that would absolute­ly res­onate most. And that’s why you’ll lots of peo­ple do these great places to work sur­veys, right. And they get cer­ti­fied as Bill Best Places to Work in Cana­da or my state, British Colum­bia or, you know, what­ev­er it hap­pens to be or inks, fastest grow­ing com­pa­nies like these, these kind of get­ting on the list. And it’s kind of get­ting on that list, espe­cial­ly I have, you know, some beliefs in some of those awards are a lit­tle bit. gam­ble, and not nec­es­sar­i­ly authen­ti­cal­ly, tru­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Best Places to Work. But it is a list, it is a cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and it gets peo­ple’s atten­tion. And it gets as long as you’re not just gam­ing it like some orga­ni­za­tion. And if you’re actu­al­ly using it to make your com­pa­ny bet­ter. Those things work. Because it’s a it’s an exter­nal cer­ti­fi­ca­tion that you’re spe­cial, a good no dif­fer­ent than leave your exter­nal­ly cer­ti­fied as organ­ic, or organ­ic prod­uct or an ISO cer­ti­fied busi­ness. So those those those are oth­er things that can kind of take you up a notch in the per­cep­tion of poten­tial employ­ees. One of the teams that I work with is called a physio co here in Aus­tralia, a guy called Tris­tan is the CEO, they’ve won the Best Place to Work in Aus­tralia or been in the top 10 for 11 con­sec­u­tive years. Now, that says some­thing to a poten­tial employ­ee when the pay rates are the same. It just says that you guys aren’t ass­holes. Yeah, like that. It’s that they’re not going to be com­ing into a night­mare. And that’s, that’s valu­able. Because peo­ple don’t, a lot of com­pa­nies aren’t great to work at. Yeah, so that would be anoth­er thing that could be if it’s true is, is if you have an awe­some cul­ture, like if it actu­al­ly tru­ly is an enjoy, I mean, Work is work, but you can be in envi­ron­ments that are healthy and pro­duc­tive and have a great cul­ture and don’t. So one of the things that we do when we do quar­ter­ly engage­ment sur­veys, as we prep for our strat ses­sion strat­e­gy ses­sions, we col­lect word clouds. And we say we don’t how would you describe the cul­ture of the com­pa­ny? in three words? Yeah. And then many of those word clouds go into what we pitch to poten­tial employ­ees say­ing, Hey, here’s what our team says about our com­pa­ny. This is the sur­vey from June. And here’s the word cloud of what our peo­ple say is, is their choice of words for us. Here is the things that peo­ple love about our busi­ness and why they like work­ing here, this is just the sur­vey from June, you can read what we’re about. And, you know, it gives peo­ple again, a val­i­dat­ed source that you are not and it’s a way to artic­u­late the mes­sage and it’s anoth­er thing. The oth­er thing that comes up in some com­pa­nies, and it’s not maybe not your com­pa­ny, some com­pa­nies, its flex­i­bil­i­ty and room for a bet­ter life, you’ve got a lot of very suc­cess­ful com­pa­nies that have a phi­los­o­phy. Yeah, if your kids got a real­ly impor­tant base­ball game, or dance per­for­mance, or any­thing, it’s you got to get your work done. But if you need to take off for an after­noon and go and get some­thing done, we want you to do that. You know, one of our com­pa­nies has a core val­ue called the impor­tance of fam­i­ly. So so that might not be yours. I’m just giv­ing you exam­ples. In some com­pa­nies, flex­i­bil­i­ty for your fam­i­ly can be a real­ly impor­tant thing espe­cial­ly not espe­cial­ly but well whether it’s for moth­ers who are care­giv­ing or fathers or care­giv­ing, or par­ents that might be involved in child’s sport. or activ­i­ties or some­thing maybe for their par­ents or their who knows. But flex­i­bil­i­ty of some sort can be a big val­ue prop for people,

Brad Giles 20:09

and espe­cial­ly after in the pan­dem­ic with work­ing from Yes, a lot of peo­ple at work, we’ve spo­ken about this before, a lot of peo­ple have been work­ing from home. And it’s become an expect­ed right or ben­e­fit of work­ing in a place that peo­ple now say, Well, if I can’t work from home at least one or two days a week, I don’t real­ly want to work there. We actu­al­ly have a new per­son that joined our team a few months ago. And she worked in down­town Van­cou­ver, but now that she has a fam­i­ly and she lives in the sub­urbs, she does­n’t want to com­mute down­town every day. When we talked to her boss, for pre­vi­ous boss for ref­er­ence check, he was glow­ing, he would hire her in a sec­ond. But she’s not will­ing to go into the city. reg­u­lar­i­ty, even two days a week, not some­thing she wants to do. So we have we, for us, she could work from home, she still got to get the work done. And she can catch up on her work at night after her kids go to bed if she did­n’t get through it all. Yeah, so that one sin­gle thing aside from that were awe­some. But aside, aside from that, it was that alone, oth­er­wise, she would­n’t have been avail­able for a new role, she would have stayed where she’d already been, I think, for 10 years. And what, and that’s awe­some. And what you touched on is actu­al­ly our next point, which is a spe­cif­ic leader that they might want to work from, if you’re pay­ing the same as oth­ers, under­stand­ing that, you know, one of the things that mat­ters is have work­ing under a great man­ag­er, yes, that can make a huge dif­fer­ence to some­one’s career, or even their per­son­al sat­is­fac­tion and happiness.

Kevin Lawrence 21:52

It is and thank­ful­ly, I have a great man­ag­er on my team, because I don’t think I might, I’m a great man­ag­er. So shout out to Dean, Dean Ritchie, my team is amaz­ing. Dean is the per­son who is work­ing with her as her kind of her man­ag­er and, you know, jen­ni­son, my team and col­lab­o­rates with her on, you know, train­ing and help­ing her to learn things. But he’s a great guy, and he owns it, and he will make sure she’s suc­cess­ful. And things go well, but and that’s, that’s a crit­i­cal part of peo­ple’s deci­sion. Yeah. And some peo­ple will fol­low great man­agers, right, they will come just because of the man­ag­er. I mean, that’s a sign of a great man­ag­er, by the way. Yeah. Is that that peo­ple want to fol­low them and go with them for sure. The next one is, is growth. And, and for some peo­ple, and I’ve seen this a lot, you know, if peo­ple are work­ing, you know, at a large com­pa­ny, and they’re a cog in the wheel or a num­ber on a spread­sheet, right, like they fol­low a process and grind it out. And it’s like, they, they want more. Right and and, and they want to go from being a num­ber or a cog to a deci­sion mak­er or a real leader, a dif­fer­ent deci­sion mak­er or a dif­fer­ence mak­er. Yeah. And, and that’s a big thing, we see a lot of peo­ple like, you know, one of my favorite places to get to find CFO is from the cpmg com­pa­ny. So the pack­aged goods com­pa­nies, because they have their they’re like out­stand­ing envi­ron­ments for finan­cial analy­sis and report­ing, and just run­ning the finan­cial end of the busi­ness because they’re mas­ters. And but there’s many times you’ll find ones that have been in a big com­pa­ny for a long time. But now, you know, they want to go into the actu­al CFO type role or a VP of finance type role. And if they have the right wiring to go from a large cor­po­rate to an entre­pre­neur­ial, which isn’t always the case, you got to look at some of the things, but then they get to put their stamp on things. And they get to be a part of build­ing some­thing ver­sus oper­at­ing a big machine. And that’s that is for some peo­ple, that is a huge val­ue, a huge ben­e­fit to them. And, and you and I work with many fast growth com­pa­nies. And that’s def­i­nite­ly a sto­ry that we can sell that our teams can sell. Because fast growth com­pa­nies cre­ate oppor­tu­ni­ties for employ­ees, they come up more often. Yep.

24:18

All right. So the final thought here is is is the pride and pres­tige. You know, and if you think of you know, we talked before you were talk­ing about a com­pa­ny called apple or oth­ers I’ve got a

Brad Giles 24:28

many com­pa­nies that work with our places that peo­ple will be proud. I have many clients that I am proud to work with. Now we’re this com­pa­ny in India called a shout out and they are a lead­ing home builder for the mid mar­ket in terms of trust and qual­i­ty and beau­ti­ful com­mu­ni­ties and all of these things I’m so I’m work­ing with over a decade. I’m so proud to work with them. And their employ­ers are two. Yeah, and that is some­thing because if you say you work for ashi­ana that is some­thing spe­cial in the cities that they’re in India and That pride flows through­out the whole com­pa­ny. And just like you would for some if they work for Apple or any, you know, com­pa­ny or brand that they res­onate with, or some­how it pro­vides mean­ing and just don’t for­get that your

25:14

com­pa­ny does have some­thing spe­cial, there is some­thing that is spe­cial that peo­ple can con­nect with. You just got to think about it and make sure it’s part of the con­ver­sa­tion when they’re decid­ing. Yeah,

Brad Giles 25:25

yeah, it is real­ly so impor­tant. The pride. Alright, so a quick­er con­ver­sa­tion today. But, um, yeah, I think that think­ing about this for peo­ple who employ Why should any­one come and work for you at the same salary as your com­peti­tors, because that’s the mar­ket and, you know, we’re expect­ing peo­ple, a play­ers to come in hordes to us, as opposed to every­one else who’s pay­ing the same pay, and it’s not a log­i­cal, it’s not a log­i­cal con­ver­sa­tion instead, what are the oth­er things that will real­ly mat­ter? And how can we make those shine?

26:09

Yep. Awe­some. All right. Well, hey, thanks for join­ing us on the growth whis­pers today. I’m Kevin Lawrence. My co host here is Brad Giles. For the video. Go to youtube​.com to get a hold of Brad evo​lu​tion​part​ners​.com​.au or for myself, Lawrence​and​co​.com. hope you have an awe­some week. We’ll see or hear you or you can hear us next week.