When HR and Payroll Effects Internal Culture

On HR & Payroll - We speak about improving internal culture of a business often & HR & Payroll are no exception. Today's show covers many nuances of HR & payroll do's/don'ts as Angela Acres of Dominion Payroll & James Danella discuss this in depth. Terrific episode to learn from... be sure to tune in!

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Transcript

Unknown: 2:10

I'm great. Thank you for having me. I You sure? Well, I have been in the payroll HR industry for 21 years now, started right out of college. So I was in business, international business. Thought I was going to travel the world and get paid to travel. Then 911 hit, and no one was hiring anybody for international work. So while my friends are working at Barnes and Noble and Starbucks, I decided to take a sales job working for one of the large funeral companies. And so thought I'd do it for a year or two, didn't plan on getting into sales. Ended up really loving it because I'm outgoing, but I'm also really into numbers. I'm kind of a numbers nerd, so payroll and analytics and technology is kind of my jam. So really fell in love with the industry. And like I said, It's been 21 years, so worked, worked for large one of the largest companies out there, owned my own company and operated basically between 10 years owned and operated apparel, HR company, and then I just realized that I really missed the sales side of things. I wanted to be able to focus on sales, be part of a team. It's kind of lonely at the top, and wanted to be something bigger than than what I was doing. And so I started interviewing with a bunch of different companies, and found dominion and fell In love with them, and The rest is history. Yep, I'll Say I'll pay you later. I Yeah, I kind of feel like behind every success is kind of a horror story. So sometimes you got to walk into the horror story before you can make it a success. So I received a call from a CPA last year saying I have a client that needs your help. They're in desperate need. And I was like, okay, you know, explain to me what happened. Well, they had one gallon. I was doing everything for them, the payroll, the HR, a whole wide variety of employee management, and it was all being done in house. So she kept everything in her head. She knew what her processes were. She was responsible for all of it. There was nobody else in the company that knew it. Then she had a death in the family, and she didn't show up to work. So the first week went by, they kept calling her asking for help, and she was just radio silent. So they reached out to the CPA. CPA reached out to me. I went out there and just I spent a whole day, eight hours, just going through her desk and her files and the computer and just trying to figure everything out. It was a nightmare. Not it wasn't organized, but I was able to figure out what was going on. And they had somebody else kind of teed up somebody that was helping with, you know, adding up the manual timesheets to get into payroll. So that gal kind of was next in line to be able to take over this role. So I proceeded to train her and explain to her all the different processes that I was able to figure out and get her back on track temporarily. Ultimately, the goal wasn't just to get somebody back in the same situation, because they recognized at that point that wasn't the way to do things. And so we talked about, let's put in technology. Let's put in processes. Let's have some checks and balances where we know what's going on. We build everything. We train you. We record those trainings. We document the processes. So that way, even if this other person ends up being sick or on vacation and you need support, we understand exactly everything that's going on. You have that support from us. The other big thing is the amount of time that was being spent. So that next week that poor lady spent, I think she worked 70 hours that next week just trying to manage all of the stuff. So by the time we got our technology in place, we added timekeeping, we automated the payroll, direct deposit. No, they weren't printing their own checks anymore. They weren't paying their own taxes. She wasn't having to figure any that out, even figuring out over time and how many hours each employee was working all of that was happening. It got it down to about an hour, hour and a half a week that she was spending on that process. So so that was really, you know, and then now they've just continued to grow, and she's able to focus on so many other things during her week, versus having to spend time in all of those manual processes. And they're protected, because, again, if she is out sick or away from the office, they can always come to us, and we have that documented process as well. You Wow, So thank you. I have another a new client that just started with us that another one that was doing everything internally, and they actually the main building caught on fire. They lost everything. So that was a pretty big, yeah, so, you know, once again, their, their CPA said you need to get everything in the cloud. You need to get it, you know, off your desktop computer, in one location, all the paper gone. You know, all the paper copies of everything was gone. Everything that was on that computer was gone. So, you know, again, I feel like behind every success story kind of has to be a horror story. But moving over to us now, everything you know they do, all other onboarding, is electronics, all of their documentations and. Cloud all their timesheets, all the payroll. We back everything up in encrypted way, so that way. And then two, the contact is actually in Aruba this week. I spoke with her last week, and she's like, you know, I now can go on vacation. I don't want to bring my laptop and work, but at least I can go on vacation. So if I need to do a little bit of work while I'm there, at least I get to do the vacation versus being tied to my desk, right? I mean, I i That's, I mean, that's my personal story. So, you know, when I was working for the big box, you know, payroll company, I made really good money. They threw all the incentives, all the, you know, all the commissions and, you know, trips and vacations and gifts and all that kind of stuff. And I made great money going into business for myself. Obviously, you know, you don't do it for the money. You do it for the passion. So, you know, that was a different story. And I made good money. I got to the point I was doing good for myself, but when I knew that I wanted to get back into sales, I interviewed all of the like everybody, just about those couple I knew I would never work for, but I just interviewed everybody out there to see, okay, you know, where's the right fit for me? Where am I gonna, you know, fit in culturally? Because once you've been a business owner, you kind of have a different perspective. And I just wanted to make sure, you know, wherever I landed was going to be, where I was able to just continue my career forever. I didn't want to have to make another change realize something wasn't as great as I thought it would be. So, you know, dealing with all these different companies, some companies that were larger, they didn't pay more, they had better benefits. But I could, I could tell in the culture and talking to different people in my research, you know, in looking up their reviews from clients, you know, yeah, sure, they can pay you a lot of money, but if it's not going to be a great cultural fit for me, if the clients aren't satisfied, it's going to make my job miserable. Is it worth it? And there was a couple companies that were pretty good that I was impressed with. But when I met with dominion, within minutes of walking in the door, I was like, this, this is it. And it was because of the people. It was the culture. You know, the second you walk in the door, everyone greets you. There was a on their wall. There's a mural that says, every little thing that you do matter. So every employee, when they walk in the door, they see that, but they really believe it. I could tell it wasn't just a mural, that that's how their culture is, the way the service people acted, compared to, again, when I started my career and I looked, I'd go into the service office, it was just a very toxic culture, very apathetic. I walked in there, everybody was energetic, you know, with each other, working hard, happy to be there, and so for me. And then in looking up reviews, they had really good client reviews, and I took a pay cut, but I was happy to take that pick up, because I knew I would be, I would be satisfied in my work and and I knew eventually I could get to the point where I could make more money. So it's not all about the money, but obviously you got to put food on the table. But for me, it was more important to have a culture that I believed in, and to be working with people that were that loved what they did, that did a good job to get great care of the clients. And you know, with that, I think that a lot of people share that same desire. If you working for somebody that you really believe in, do. It takes good care of you, takes good care of the customers. You're willing to do that versus just going to the largest company to get the most money you Oh, yeah, yeah. And, and you mentioned that you thought that I was the owner when I when you and I were first talking and getting to know each other. But that's one thing that I love about Dominion as well, is that basically say, this is your business. You need to run it like it's your business. And I go, Okay, I know how to do that. I can, I can do that. I can take ownership and and do the things I need to do. And so that I think that they, the fact that they treat us that way and let us really treat it as our own business makes a difference as well. Thank you. Yeah, yeah, so obviously, you know you have to pay on time. There's no if ands or but, so if your pay day is every Friday, every other Friday fits in the 20th whatever. It's documented in your handbook. There's no way to get around it. So, you know, not making payroll isn't an option. If a company doesn't pay on time, they can go to the State's website, you know, depending on what state you're in, just look up, you know, whatever your state is, and then you'll be able to find information. There'll be a tab for employer and a time for employee. And there's always resources there on who to reach out to, if your employer, whether it's that they didn't pay you on time or maybe they didn't pay you correctly. So a lot of times, if somebody's doing manual time sheets, they're not calculating over time properly, or their rounding, I've seen companies that always want to round to their favor. You know, you're supposed to, if you're going to round your time, you've got to, if they show up, you know, a certain amount of time early, and you pay them extra, they show up a little bit too late, you pay them less. But it's got to work both ways, and I've seen companies try to always work it in their way. So if an employee ever sees a situation like that, definitely go to your state's income tax or unemployment page, and you'll have an employee service area there. From an employer's point of view, that's where I deal with a lot more. I don't deal with the employees directly. I deal with the employers. And what I see with a lot of small businesses is they get super excited so they start a new business. They've got that entrepreneurial bug. They have this vision for what they're going to be able to do, and and they believe in it, and they should, but they get a little ambitious, a little over ambitious, and so they know what they're capable of, but they put the cart before the horse. So I always recommend grow organically. Employees are great, but they're not a commodity. You can't just hire and fire at a whim as you start to make money and lose money. That's going to hurt you culturally, and I've seen so many companies do that, where they hire to plan for the future, which is great, but if they over hire, and they end up not getting as many clients as they expect, and they can't make payroll, they're gonna have to let people go. And that really, really hurts. Because not only does that hurt, the people that are let go that now have to go find a new job, but then everyone else is looking at each other, going, well, who's next? And maybe none of them are next. Maybe that you cut exactly what you needed to, and you're going to grow, but that is always going to be a fear in them, and no employee wants to work for somewhere that they don't feel secure and stable. So I think it's really important to grow organically. Only hire to what you need, not what you what you envision. Do it slowly. The other thing is, I see clients, well, they'll get that one big client, that dream client that brings in a lot of revenue. So they go, oh, man, I've got all this money now, so I'm going to do all these big things. I would say, don't, when you're budgeting, put that money aside. Pretend like it doesn't exist. Budget based on all the rest of your income. Because if you put all your eggs in one basket, that client can leave at any point, and then now you're in a similar situation where when it comes when it's time to cut the most. Sense of thing you've got is usually your employees, and that's an easy thing, easy to let go, but it will hurt that company culture and morale, which hurts your internal culture, but also the clients can feel that they will, they will see that on the outside. So it's going to hurt your ability to grow and retain your current clients. You Yeah, so we, most of our clients, we have them pay directly out of their account. So we've got some risk in it, because with Ach, there's a two day process. So if they are paying their employees, usually, let's say they pay every week, or every two weeks. Usually there's they'll submit payroll on Wednesday for a Friday pay date. But what happens is, we initiate that ACH on Wednesday, but on Thursday, we're pushing money to the employees, the same time we're pulling money to us to cover it. So that's where, again, you know, you get an NSF one time, you know, slap on the hand. Second time, slap on the hand. Third time, we no longer are doing direct deposit or same thing with tax payments if they NSF, you know, you know, sorry, you're not gonna have to make your own tax payments, because we can't take that liability on if it's a brand new business that's just starting, where we're not certain that they're going to be stable, we'll ask them to wire just to make sure that we know that the funds are going to be there. But, yeah, we usually, we're the ones that take the risk on that, because we're, you know, we're trusting them that they have the money available. So Oh, NSF, I'm sorry, insufficient funds, so that's when, yeah, they they're spending money where we go to pull the money, and they don't have it in their account. I Yeah, Exactly. I Sure Do there Oh, Yeah, I Oh, 100% and I agree with you on pinnacle. We actually bank with them at dominion, and I bank with them personally, so I can attest to how fantastic they do and compared to the rest of the industry, I have seen with clients and internally, the same thing where, and I feel like what often happens is, when you're hiring somebody for a minimum wage job, you know, the most baseline position, companies sometimes don't value them enough. They think, oh, you know, they're just a commodity. They're doing something that, you know, that doesn't bring me direct value, so I'm not going to treat them with the same respect and appreciation that I do the rest of my team. And that's really an unwise thing to do, because they have that, you know, even maybe today, they don't have the skills to be able to be in a higher role, but they can get there. And so I think it's super important to from day one when you hire them, that they feel valued, they feel cherished, they see that career path and there's an opportunity for them to advance and that you recognize the little things that they do, just like you would everyone else. So I think it's important to recognize all employees. Some companies don't recognize anybody unless it's something big, but to be on a daily basis looking for the good in your employees, regardless of the level, is important, but especially when it's in the lower level, because those are the people that are going to eventually be able to grow and to be something bigger within your company. And it's always better to be able to hire from within versus having to continually look out there and, you know, replenish that that lower level position because You're having high turnover. I yep, I love it. I Oh, yeah, I you. And I think an example, a way to do that too, is every time you see them say, Hey, thank you, you know, thank you for doing this, you know. And I do that internally with the person in pack out, you know, somebody who is printing the checks and packaging the checks. You know, on a daily basis, I'm interacting with them, asking them about their day, see how they're doing, you know, thanking them for what they do. If I'm out of business and I see a janitor, I'll say, Hey, thank you for doing that. We really appreciate that, you know. And those people will look at you like what you know, because often they're not getting appreciated, and so I think that's really key, both internally with our company, but also when we when we're working with vendors, to just make sure that they feel appreciated. Mm, hmm. Uh, yeah, so I would say the most important thing when you're hiring and firing is to hire slow and fire fast. And what I mean by that is so many people hire fast and fire slow and they're just so they need somebody. They need a body. They need a warm body. Especially today, ever since covid, it's so much harder to find employees. So people often are saying, I just need somebody with a pulse at this point. Okay, that's great, but you don't you really need to find the right person. Take your time. It's better to have an empty role and you having to wear multiple hats than to hire the wrong person, because then you've allowed somebody into your culture that can shift it, that person can have a negative impact, and then now you're struggling to okay, how do I get this person out of here? And so taking your time to do multiple interviews, also, sometimes I see that one person thinks that person is great when they interview and then they interview with somebody else in the company, and that person will go, I see red flags, so I would highly recommend having multiple people involved in that conversation. I know Dave Ramsey's company talks about how interviewing the spouse, because they're like, Hey, you don't want to let crate. You know, you're this employee, might be great, but they're. Married to Crazy. Crazy is walking in your door. So be careful about, you know, the whole picture, not just the employee that you're hiring. So take your time. Really make sure that they're the right culture fit, and then if there's any issues, you got to get rid of them right away that you can't hold on. Obviously, you've got a document. I'm a huge proponent, and I say this with my clients all the time, because we do performance reviews in our system. We do write ups in a system, I say it's super important to do those performance reviews, to do those write ups, because if you let somebody go, they're immediately going to say, well, you let me go because of my gender, my religious belief, my X, Y and Z. So you have to document those things all along. But as soon as you have enough documentation, fire, because if you don't let them go right away, a couple things are going to happen. First off, that toxicity is going to continue to infiltrate the office. Also, the rest of the staff is going to see they're all aware. They're not dumb. They're seeing this person underperforming, doing things the way they're not supposed to, and if you're not letting them go, that looks bad on you. So your other employees are looking at you like, what's wrong with you? Why is this person still here? So that hurts the morale, so that you just gotta, you gotta cut bait and bail as soon as you can, as soon as you recognize that this is not a good fit. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and everyone else knows it too. They're going, what's going on? Why is this person still here? Why are they here in the first place? So you know, you got to take your time with the hiring and let them go As soon as you see An issue. Thank you. Thank Yeah, so, like I had mentioned in the beginning, I've worked for the largest of the large. I've worked for the small of the small. I've owned my own company. So I've kind of been, you know, I've gone against every client, every payroll company out there. I've had clients come over from everyone under the sun. And I will just say it's well known that our industry has a bad reputation for customer service. We are not known for great customer service. I mean, we're, we're up there with the cable company, as far as you just know, if you're calling them, you just, oh, I don't want to make this call. I'm going to be put on hold for a long time. I'm going to speak to somebody in a foreign country, most likely, they'll they're going to tell me something, or they're going to say they're going to do something for me, and it's not going to happen. And or the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. Or, you know, I remember, back in my days working for the large publicly traded company, clients would say, I will call three times and take the best of three answers, because you get a different answer every time. So it just, we're not known for great customer service, really. And so the thing, the real big thing that got me to want to work for dominion was because of the customer service, and that was a reason why I started my own business as well. Because business as well, because I saw that issue, and we did. We had that same culture that I see in Dominion, so that no voicemail policy. You pick up the phone right away. You always, you always get somebody. I spoke to a client, a new client, just last week that had come over from another large company, and they said last month, they were on hold for three hours with this payroll company, three hours. So, you know, I think it's super important to put customers first, and that's really our motto. Is service first. No voice mail policy. If you email us, we're going to respond and get something resolved within 24 hours. Clients appreciate that. They know that they're valued our internal culture, because it's so healthy. We really have that desire to go above and beyond when we're human. People make mistakes, but anytime I've seen a mistake happen, the person who makes a mistake takes ownership. Every the team comes around and everybody drops everything, and they come alongside to get it resolved. And you know, and clients see that and you know, and now they we've established a loyal relationship, because they feel safe with us. They know, you know you really care. If you make a mistake, you're going to take ownership and get it resolved. And so that's that's gold. I. It would be the same thing. It would be the customer service. I mean, technology is great, technology is important, but if you don't back it up with the customer support, you know, then it's I think that's a reason why so many people, unfortunately do their payroll in house, and they do all these manual processes around onboarding and timekeeping is they're just afraid of getting burned. And if our industry could do a better job of coming along and supporting and putting the clients first, I think a lot more businesses would be successful because they could delegate more of that, outsource and focus on their core business, versus having to deal with all those manual processes for fear of, you know, not being supported properly. Correct? Yeah, Yeah, I so, Yeah, I yeah, I That's crazy. Yeah, Do no, this was great. Thank you for having me on today. Sure my best way to reach me, honestly, is my cell phone, because I am out and about a lot during the day. So I'll give it out Sure, 615-295-0894, or Angela a at dominion, payroll.com Again, that's Angela a at Dominion payroll.com do that's a Great question. Yeah, we're in all 50 states, so yeah,