I walked into the office today like I have every single day of the Covid situation…aware, confused, and hopeful that the “status quo” doesn’t remain for much longer. We’ve had an interesting run during these Covid days. We were first forced to look at the workforce and make some decisions to cut back to our key and most tenured employees. We based this off the workload at that time as well as the backlog which looked good but we knew wasn’t long lasting. We shifted our schedules allowing our employees to work four 10 hour days. This created less overlap in employee schedules and interaction. All seemed good if the work would hold out. There have been delays in materials, issues with materials being correct along with issues in completing jobs that are 100% our fault. All “normal” issues by most standards but very detrimental during this time. We have managed to keep the hours at 40 for each and every employee and we’ve not been in a situation where we couldn’t pay our employees which is something we are proud of. Then, within three days, three of our four installers turned in their notices. Each employee had a different reason or opportunity as to why they were leaving and none were leaving for another company in our same industry. I’ve learned over the years that a two week notice isn’t very handy from the position of getting work completed from those employees, so we almost always accept them early. It’s just how I do business. To be clear, I’m never mad at an employee for leaving to better themselves and I will never discourage them from doing so. Does it hurt when you do your best to be loyal to your team and someone leaves? Yes, of course it hurts. It makes you question everything and here are two of those answers from the one million questions that occupied my mind…
1. You cannot bend over backwards during hard times to retain an employee because you are scared they are going to leave your company. You create negative issues in your culture and your integrity because to my very point…those employees are going to leave if the opportunity arises.
2. Employees don’t necessarily care about the reality of you running your business like a family. The idea is amazing but in the end, employees want great pay, work life balance, a plan for growth, and a positive feedback along with their constructive criticism.
No, the above isn’t about every employee and while I hate stereo types, this is more of a generalization about retaining employees in the world today.
PS – One of those employees threw a fit when we accepted his notice early. Interesting, right?