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Businesses are increasingly recognizing analytics’ value in decision-making across various domains. One significant area experiencing a revolution is Human Resources (HR), now increasingly called People Operations or People Analytics.
As of this year, 30% of new hires leave within 90 days. The reasons aren’t shocking: 43% say the role didn’t meet their expectations, 34% left because of a specific incident, and 32% didn’t think the company culture was a good fit.
In this episode, Neha Naik, CEO and Founder of RecruitGyan, joins us to discuss how people analytics offers insights for understanding the employee lifecycle, from hiring with the right expectations to ensuring a cultural fit.
People Analytics: Hiring
The hiring landscape has evolved beyond merely relying on resumés and interviews. Analytics now actively pre-screens candidates with algorithms that evaluate various variables, ranging from skillsets to cultural fit. These proactive measures make hiring more efficient and improve the likelihood of creating beneficial matches for employees and organizations.
Predictive Modeling for Your People
In predictive modeling, data analytics tools delve into historical data from similar hires to forecast crucial outcomes. They can estimate a candidate’s likelihood of accepting a job offer and their potential performance once onboard. By doing so, these tools enable recruiters and hiring managers to make more informed decisions. The benefits extend beyond individual hires; the organization gains from this approach. Filtering out candidates less likely to succeed or stay long-term leads to lower turnover costs and a stronger, more cohesive team. With accurate predictions, the company can allocate resources more efficiently, focusing on candidates with the highest potential for success.
Onboarding Insights and Experiences
Leveraging data from past onboarding experiences, companies can tailor their plans better to meet each new hire’s unique needs and preferences. Customization could include specific training modules for particular skill sets, mentorship programs for career development, or team-building activities that align with the new employee’s interests. Such personalized approaches make the onboarding experience more engaging and meaningful for the new employee. The result is quicker acclimation to the corporate culture and faster achievement of total productivity. The company enhances overall operational efficiency and employee satisfaction by shortening the time it takes for new hires to become effective team members.
Early Identification of Issues
Identifying an issue makes it easier to address, preventing minor problems from escalating into more significant challenges that could adversely affect team dynamics and productivity. Monitoring specific data points, such as how often a new hire interacts with team members, their participation in group projects or discussions, and their completion rate of onboarding tasks, can give you a comprehensive view of their engagement levels. When you catch early warning signs that a new hire isn’t integrating well, you can proactively take steps to intervene. The ability of an organization to offer additional training, assign a mentor, or restructure team interactions to create a more inclusive environment. This proactive approach ensures a smoother onboarding process, faster acclimation for the new employee, and a more cohesive and effective team.
Culture
Predictive Analytics for Retention
Machine learning algorithms can analyze factors like performance reviews, engagement levels, and social activity within the corporate network to predict which employees are most likely to leave. Such insights allow for proactive measures to improve retention.
Exit Strategies
Understanding why employees leave is just as important as knowing why they join. Such insights enable companies to fine-tune their retention strategies, pinpoint cultural shortcomings, and implement data-driven improvements to benefit current and future employees.
Exit Surveys
While exit surveys alone are not a new concept, integrating their results with other data points like performance reviews and engagement metrics offers a more nuanced and comprehensive understanding of why employees choose to leave.
Churn Rates
Tracking churn rates—the percentage of employees who leave within a certain period—can offer insights into departure patterns. Is there a seasonal trend? Does the churn rate spike after annual reviews? Such data can guide future strategies.
Aligning with Customers
Ensuring employees share customer values is critical to building a harmonious work environment. Data analytics can assess the alignment between employees’ beliefs and customer expectations, guiding targeted initiatives to enhance overall satisfaction.
Implementing People Analytics
People analytics offers a 360-degree view of an employee’s lifecycle, bringing objectivity and foresight to processes traditionally managed by intuition and reactive decision-making. Leveraging data analytics in HR doesn’t just make life easier for the HR department; it can positively influence an organization’s culture, productivity, and bottom line.
With the right data, organizations can find the right people, keep them engaged, and understand why they might choose to leave. In a world where acquiring and retaining top talent is more competitive than ever, people analytics is not just a nice-to-have but a must-have.
Chris Hood (00:00):
Hey everyone. Thanks for listening. Businesses are increasingly recognizing analytics value in decision-making across various domains. One significant area experiencing a data revolution is human resources now increasingly called people operations or people analytics. As of this year, 30% of new hires leave within 90 days. The reasons aren’t shocking. 43% say the role didn’t meet their expectations. 34% left because of a specific incident and 32% didn’t think the company culture was a good fit. In this episode, Neha Naik, CEO and founder of RecruitGyan joins us to discuss how people analytics offers insights for understanding the employee lifecycle. From hiring with the right expectations to ensuring a cultural fit. Grab a copy of my new book, customer Transformation, A seven Stage Strategy for Customer Alignment and Business Value. This is your essential guide for customer success in the digital age. Learn from industry giants, adapt to your customer’s ever-evolving needs and revolutionize your business strategy to achieve sustainable growth. Available now on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or my website, and to support the show, visit chris hood.com/show. Subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast platform. Follow us on social media or you can email me directly [email protected]. I’m Chris Hood and let’s get connected.
Voice Over (01:39):
Connecting access. Granted, it’s the Chris Hood digital show. We’re global business and technology leaders meet to discuss strategy, innovation and digital acceleration. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Your digital evolution starts Now. Here’s your host, Chris Hood.
Chris Hood (02:11):
Welcome to the show. Neha, would you mind introducing yourself?
Neha Naik (02:15):
Hey everybody, thank you for having me here and I’m so excited to be here. So my name is Neha Naik. I live in Houston, Texas with my husband and two young kids, and I have a recruiting agency that I’ve owned for about eight years and I’m really excited to be here and share insight.
Chris Hood (02:31):
Let’s dive a little bit more into your background. It’s very interesting and I think it’s going to make for a great conversation. You have a recruiting agency, but you also have a background in data. How has those all come together?
Neha Naik (02:44):
Yes, so actually my very first business venture was a recruiting agency. That’s what I started my entrepreneurial journey on, so to speak. But then I decided to do what a lot of visionaries do and we can’t sit still. So I decided to then embark on my data analytics business, which is essentially all about all things data. So what we do is we look at data that companies provide us. Typically it’s in shambles, it’s in rev drop, and we take that and optimize it and then create power BI dashboards or any type of dashboards really to look at kind of their bottom line, whether it’s in operations, human resources, sales efficiency, whatever it is that they want to improve. We take the data that they don’t know what to do with, and then we build an infrastructure foundation for them so that they can really act on that data. And then we also do predictive analytics on that data as well because it’s important to, in a lot of companies talk about having data, but if you can’t do anything with that data, there’s no point having it right? So we really empower companies to use data for their benefit.
Chris Hood (03:46):
So then specifically, how much of that practice from a data perspective do you see also happening inside of recruiting and hiring practices?
Neha Naik (03:56):
In my recruiting agency, we are data first. We use a couple of different dashboards. We look at revenue, we look at profit, we look at operations, we look at client-based efficiencies. So we know based on data dashboards, if people like Clock Fify tells you for example what capacity people are working. And so as a team of over 40 people, I can look at my clock I dashboard and say, okay, this team is hitting 90 to a hundred percent of their hours and they’re starting to, I can tell that they’re burning out. Let’s go ahead and add one more person. So we use data to make those strategic decisions about hiring people, pausing people for their contract if there’s not enough work. But then we can also tell our clients the story of like, Hey, when you pay us, it’s not going down the drain. It’s not what I’m using to buy myself a yacht. This is where your money’s going and this is the profit. And so we can actually have a very reasonable direct and transparent conversation with them about our pricing and what the value of that is to our clients.
Chris Hood (04:52):
When I was at Google, we had an organization called People Analytics, which is basically what you’re defining. It looks at all of the data. They analyze how employees are doing satisfaction of the employees workload. It’s very critical. Yet we know that there’s a lot of organizations out there that simply aren’t looking at the data. They may have the data or in some cases even worse, they’re not even asking their employees how they’re doing. But that’s all part of this process, right?
Neha Naik (05:22):
Exactly. And that’s important, right? Because a lot of times, no matter how big you are as a company or how small you are, if you are struggling constant turnover in a department or a business unit, that it should be an automatic red flag that you need to look at. And so what is happening specifically within that business unit? And when I work with clients on strategy sessions, I talk about that. I tell them, look at what’s not working, and then we are going to work on fixing it by using data that you’ve already collected. And I think that’s really how you bridge the gap between where you are today and where you want to be tomorrow as it relates to retention and turnover and just employee within your organization.
Chris Hood (05:59):
Now, I love that you said that you’re a data first company. I think that’s fabulous. I’m sure the data has shown you some valuable insights in terms of things like what is the most common reason for turnover? Do you have any insights on that?
Neha Naik (06:14):
Yes, there’s multiple. I would say one of the ones that I’ve come across multiple time is a cultural mismatch or it is the expectation mismatch of what they were told they were going to do before they got hired versus what they were actually doing after they got hired. So anytime you have a cultural mis mismatch or job description mismatch, and I see this mostly in small to mid size businesses, especially with the job description mismatch, because my experience has been working with startups primarily prese to series E, and I see that at a startup there’s so many things going on at the same time, everybody has to take on ownership. And so if you come from a bigger company to a smaller company, that might be a harder thing for you to get used to. Now for bigger companies, I see a cultural mismatch specifically.
(06:58):
So they get in and they’re really excited and then there’s a bunch of red tape or they don’t know who to talk to, they feel secluded. There’s not a lot of attempts made internally to kind of introduce ’em to different people, whether it’s in their business unit, outside their business unit. And so really I think when people don’t feel safe and they don’t feel like they fit, and when I mean safe, I’m not saying physical safety, but just this emotional safety, we all crave that as humans. And so when we don’t feel that way, we don’t feel like we’re included, we’re part of something bigger, then the tendency is to then say, okay, I’m not happy here. I don’t want to spend 40 hours of my week here. I’m done. And that’s when you start seeing people then either go look for other jobs and then they take on extra contracting jobs to add onto their income.
(07:42):
So once they decide to leave, they can leave and still have some finances to kind of help ’em as a backup. So I think that’s the biggest thing is you want to look at your culture, you want to look at your interview process and what the expectation that you are setting for employees coming in and how that onboarding process looks. And if you’re aligned and if you are seeing a lot of turnover specifically in a business unit, you also want to look at the managers communicating. Are there weekly meetings happening? Is there collaboration happening? So really dissecting those types of issues will give you a really good depth of insight into why people are leaving your company.
Chris Hood (08:18):
When we get into this company and we begin to build those cultures that people want to gravitate towards, that data should be showing us what’s working and what’s not working. You said alignment. I think it’s a good word, but that doesn’t mean that just because somebody comes in and they’re not aligned with the organization’s values in that moment, that they can’t become aligned. If you understand and you’re asking the right questions and you’re making and adjusting the right elements within the culture to ensure that people feel welcomed and those values are aligned,
Neha Naik (08:57):
And this is exactly why anonymous surveys, having touched bases with your team members, your peers, your colleagues, your direct managers, even people skipping that direct manager step and going above just as a communication. I think it’s really important for companies to not just make that a priority, but empower individuals to take up on those options. Like doing offsites and doing quarterly business reviews and stuff where people can come on and express themselves is the key. Because unless you give people the opportunity to speak up, and especially if someone’s new, they’re not going to want to say, okay, I don’t feel good. Nobody wants to be a tattletale. But if you offer multiple opportunities and empower employees and say something like, without you guys, we are nothing. We may have the best product, the service, but without our employees, we’re nothing, right? So no matter how big of a company you are, if you make that proactive step to engage with your employees, they’re going to fit in or they’re going to add, I don’t want to say fit in, but they will add to your culture because now they feel like they’re part of something bigger.
(10:00):
They really trust your vision, your mission, your values and the story that you have. And so they feel like now, oh my gosh, I love where I am because these people actually care. They check in on me when I raise my hand and express any concerns. It’s not just like something goes into an inbox and then it’s gone down this vortex where no one ever responds. It’s being addressed in a timely manner. So really empowering your employees to speak up. And the way you do that, especially as leaders, is talk about that, write that in email, send biweekly emails, newsletters about how it’s important, have links for anonymous surveys. Look at those surveys and actually do something about them. Don’t just send surveys for fun, but once you get the results, act on them. And that’s a big part of who you are as you grow as a business.
Chris Hood (10:44):
Yeah, it’s amazing how many companies just check off the box. Well, we sent out a survey, but employees know, employees know that when they share their feedback and nothing happens, they’re not being listened to. And then that just builds upon that frustration. If I go back to Google, we had an annual survey, we had quarterly surveys, and then we had private individual surveys. Occasionally HR would reach out to us and say, you’ve been selected randomly to participate. I think I heard a few times, it’s just too much From the employee perspective, we’re being asked too much about our opinions. Is there a balance? How much should they be asking?
Neha Naik (11:31):
I think the answer, to answer your question, to me, I feel like every once a quarter is good enough, but it’s not like it shouldn’t feel bothersome, but essentially it depends on what the value is that you talk about with your employees. So it’s how you sell the survey and the reasoning behind it. And so it’s almost like it’s a health check of the business. It’s a health check of a business unit. It’s a health check of the employee’s, mental health, their burnout rate, whatever it is that you’re measuring. And so if you tell the employees, we’re sending these to you because we really care about your transformation as an employee, but also your transformation as a human being, how do you feel when you work here? Because I always say that work culture, it’s when you shut off your computer and when you go home and the way you act, that defines your work culture.
(12:16):
If you had a horrible day, you hate your manager, you hate everything, you’re not going to be a happy person When you go home, you’re going to be cranky, you’re going to be yelling at your kids, you’re going to be fighting with your wife, you’re not. You’re just going to be not a happy person. So it’s really important that when you talk to your employees about doing these surveys, it’s also the art of, okay, we want you to do these because we care about your mental health. We care about your physical health, we care about you as a human and an employee, and we want to make sure that we’re continuing to build this team that’s going to eventually lead us all to success. It’s a collective effort. And so once you talk about it that way, then I feel like you motivate people. But if you just say, okay, here’s another survey, answer it, send it. There’s a huge different tonality and I think people respond better when you tell them the why and you talk about the transformation. So using these surveys, we want to transform our company to this. We are here today, we want to be here tomorrow. How do we get there? So answering these surveys, this is going to be kind of that bridge that gets us to that next level.
Chris Hood (13:09):
We talk about success not from a just solely employee perspective, but we also want to understand how that directly relates to our customer success. And I feel as if there’s a direct correlation as you just outlined, if the employees are happy, they’re going to be more productive. And then that translates into success for your sales, your profits, your business value, customers are going to be more successful. How do you look at that when you’re comparing internal and cultural employee success directly with customer success?
Neha Naik (13:49):
Yes. I mean, there’s been so many studies done, but there is a very direct correlation in terms of how happy and healthy your employees are with how happy and healthy your pipeline is of new clients, right? Because of course, as somebody who’s happy working at a company, you are going to have your best for forward. A lot of us have probably worked at work cultures that were toxic, that didn’t really care about our wellbeing in any capacity, shape or form. I just remember thinking, oh my gosh, I hate Mondays. How many of us go into work thinking, I hate Mondays? If you are the type of person who’s doing that, you’re probably not in the right place. You should not hate Mondays. You should be very excited. It’s one thing when you’re like, you’ve partied too hard on Sunday and you’re like, oh, tomorrow’s Monday.
(14:34):
But it’s one thing where you’re like every Sunday night, it’s like it’s Monday and it just tells you that there’s something not aligned here. And so when you struggle up with that attitude on Monday and when you’re talking to clients of that company, of your company, you’re not going to be yourself. You’re not. I feel like you’re going to be stuck in this box of I’m here just to do what I’m told, and then once it’s 4:59 PM I’m going to start turning off my computers. I’m going to start saying my goodbyes and I’m going to head out, or I’m going to shut my zoom off and I’m done for the day, as opposed to someone who’s really engaged and really caress and they’re going to be there until 6, 7, 8 pm because to them, they’re building their legacy here at the company. And that’s the shift we want to make when we approach employees and we think about culture, we think about de and I initiatives and we think about just prospering.
(15:20):
It’s a collective effort. It’s not just because a C E O says so that’s great. You can love the CEO e, you can be loyal, but if you hate your job, you’re only going to be 20% at it. And we’ve all been there, we’ve all worked at jobs where we hated the job and we showed up just to get the paycheck. It just goes to show that either you’re doing something that you’re not supposed to be doing or you’re at the wrong company. And so it’s the onus then falls on us to figure that out. You don’t want to live most of your life miserable because you hated your job. And so again, finding the workplace that fits for you is going to be really critical.
Chris Hood (15:55):
I’m thinking back to one of my first jobs. I think most of my listeners know that I worked at a movie theater as my first job, but I also did a lot of work in retail. Look, I think we’ve all experienced this as well. Anytime you’ve walked into a store and either you get a sales associate that is very happy that you’re there, Hey, how can I help you today? Or you get somebody who’s like, I don’t want to talk to anybody today, and they’re sitting in the corner and they’re avoiding the customers walking in. Well, that’s a prime example of how you’re going to be able to drive sales. And yet, we know you just touched on it, we see a lot of people who go to jobs just for the paycheck. And this is on both sides, not just us wanting the job, but we see a lot of companies who lose an employee due to turnover and then they’re desperate.
(16:47):
We need somebody to fill this spot. We’re just going to go hire somebody. Well, in both processes, whether you just go and hire a random person, you run the risk of not being aligned with the role, the job, the company, the culture. So I firmly believe that the process of building the right culture and making sure that people are happy and aligned starts at the hiring practice from the beginning. You should be looking at this. And I don’t know if data necessarily helps us identify that more than say a process of just saying, look, we got to slow down. We’re not desperate. We don’t hire the first person that comes to us, or same thing with us. I can’t just take any job. I got to find a job that meets my needs and expectations as well as being happy in it. And again, I don’t know if there’s a data point there, but there’s definitely a process that I think a lot of us don’t really consider.
Neha Naik (17:52):
Yeah, I agree. I think as it relates to the data point, what we want to look at is how in alignment is your process compared to the job. There’s a lot of people, like you said, a lot of companies, when somebody leaves, they go into triage mode, and I see this all the time. It’s like we got a two week notice, hire, hire, hire. And then I’m like, okay, what should the interview process look like? I don’t know. I’ll talk to them one more person and then we’re going to hire them. And I’m like, please, no, no, no. Literally I’m just like, no, let’s build up. I get it. I get it that you’re stressed. I get that you losing this critical person in your business unit is going to have some type of a short-term repercussion on your business. However, don’t lose out on the opportunity to properly interview somebody because you’re going to have a lot more long-term damage if you find the wrong person or you get stuck on this hamster wheel of hiring, they quit or we have to let them go, oh, we have to hire.
(18:49):
Oh, they quit. We have to let them go. Not doing your due diligence. And so now instead of spending your time on business objectives and KPIs and initiatives that are going to make you revenue, you are now forced to change your time into hiring. And then when you go into triage mode, you stress out and then you hire the wrong person and you’re like, yes, I’ve spent two weeks onboarding them. Now they should be good to go. And then third week, the person’s like, I quit. This is not the right role for me. And you would’ve found this out a month ago if you’d have just structured the job description correctly, structured the interview process, the interview questions, the panel, and done some type of assessment to understand this person would be the right fit. So I always say I get it. As a business owner, I understand. However, it’s really important to take a step back, take a 20,000 foot view of what you’re looking for, who you’re looking for, and go into it very much informed as opposed to a haphazard, let’s just find someone. Right? You can’t do that anymore, especially with everything the way it is and how quickly the job market is changing from an employer standpoint and an employee standpoint. And so it’s really critical to make hiring a pre-thought and not an afterthought or like a triage mode situation.
Chris Hood (19:56):
Startup companies probably don’t struggle with that as much as larger companies. But I think when we get into a medium-sized larger company, there’s probably opportunity, and again, maybe this is where data can reveal that there are individuals internally that can handle more and could fill in temporarily during that hiring process. There’s some internal process there that I think data can help organizations alleviate some of that stress.
Neha Naik (20:29):
Yes, I completely agree, and I think that’s another reason. While I’m a big proponent of upskilling and upleveling even your talent, because you never know, there might have to be some type of a cross-functionality within employees where if someone leaves, now I will say that that’s great, but with the caveat of if you’re going to expect one person to do the job of a one and a half person, then you have to increase their comp or you have to give them some type of a bonus or something, right? Because otherwise, if Joe is doing the job of two people and he’s not getting compensated now he’s going to be the one to leave next. And we don’t want that to happen. We don’t want to lose more people because we didn’t make the right judgment call. So offering them some type of a bonus like, Hey, if you help me for six weeks until I find this next person, I’m going to give you a $5,000 whatever, so that you are still respecting their time, you’re respecting the fact that they’re stepping out of their kind of responsibilities and helping you with yours.
(21:22):
And the other thing you can do is also get contractor freelance workers who can plug in really quickly, help you with anything that’s super critical and buy you a little bit of time while you interview. And then once you get someone in that full-time role, then you can end the contract. So it’s fine because contractors typically know it is a short-term role, so it’s not going to be a huge deal, but you never know. I have a lot of people hire contractors and then they turn into full-time employees because they fit into the team really well and they understood what the objectives were and what the deadlines were, and then they turned out to be really good key players. But that’s another option. But yes, if you are going to have somebody else within your team help out, you want to make sure that you are keeping a check on them in terms of their burnout meter, but you’re also giving them some type of a monetary compensation for their time and effort.
Chris Hood (22:10):
Let’s go to the opposite side. We talk about hiring, but let’s talk about somebody who is leaving an organization, how critical. I know what your answer’s going to be, but I want to hear how critical is it to do a survey and conduct an exit interview to understand why they are leaving?
Neha Naik (22:27):
Very, very critical. When you do an exit survey with somebody, it tells you not just their motivation for why they’re leaving you, it also tells you how they felt when they were working for your company, and finally it tells you where they’re going. And I think those three things can really tell you a lot about your business. So if you find out their motivation for leaving, you’ll know whether it’s compensation, if it’s the benefits, if it’s the location, if it’s the hybrid versus remote or in person, if it’s a culture they didn’t like their manager or whatever the situation is, if you know what worked well for them and what didn’t work well for them, you can take that feedback and make sure you insert the learnings from that so that you are helping other individuals that join your company. And then finally, if you know where they’re going, you can say like, okay, they left us for this company.
(23:13):
Let me look at their benefits. Let me look at their comp. It gives you a really good understanding of where people are going, and I always like to think, take these as learnings, right? Don’t see where they’re going, and then why are they going to this company? We’re so much better. No, there’s got to be something about that business, whether they’re more innovative, whether it’s a culture, it’s got to be something. And so learning from that, I think you can then better your company. So I always say you are going to have turnover because as a business owner, that’s normal. As long as it’s not constant, you’re not losing people every week or every month and you don’t have a control on it, that’s an issue. But if you have turnover once in a while, just study why it’s happening and then take the learnings from that specific instance and then come back and kind of edit your current policies or infrastructure so that the next person that joins you is not going to leave for those same reasons. So again, take those as kind of learnings.
Chris Hood (24:03):
I’m also going to assume that individuals who are responding to an exit survey are more likely to be honest and maybe brutally honest than when they were working and filling out quarterly surveys.
Neha Naik (24:16):
Yes, that is true. Exit surveys tell you a lot more about your employees stay at your company than a quarter. I mean, yes, the quarterly surveys will give you 70 to 80% the truth, which is still not bad, but exit survey always gives you 90% plus because now they don’t really have a motivation to lie or sugarcoat things. They’re already leaving. What’s the worst you can do? So I think that’s the biggest difference for sure,
Chris Hood (24:40):
And I think there’s a natural correlation. Then if I get an exit survey response and it says I left because we’ll say culture or salary in theory, that organization should be taking that information and applying its findings back to the quarterly internal surveys so that you can adjust and make sure that you’re constantly understanding what’s happening. Otherwise, if you’re using the same questions every quarter, you’re not really getting much out of it, right?
Neha Naik (25:09):
Yes. And you should be changing questions every quarter based on your answers from the previous quarter. I mean, there can be some that are similar, of course, the usual normal ones, but again, change some of them up. But yes, I completely agree. I think if the issue is salary or benefits, you need to do a market analysis, market research of what the new salary rates are for that position at that level, and then make sure you look at team parity and make sure the people that are currently there are also getting that raise because you can’t just bring someone new in and then someone’s been working for you for five years and they’re making less than the newcomer because of your new survey. So first look at team parity and increase the compensation internally. And then when you bring someone new, just say, this is the market research, this is what it’s told us. We’ve had people give us this feedback. And so now the salary used to be 150,000, now it’s 170,000 based on our most recent research. And so again, it goes back to that because if you’re losing people to compensation or benefits, I would say that is not a good enough reason to lose people over with, especially with all these modalities of research and market research that we have at our disposal.
Chris Hood (26:13):
So it’s one thing to say we have the data and we’re not going to do anything with it. It’s another thing to say we have the data, but leadership doesn’t care about it because I’m sure there’s a lot of situations where the market research says we should be increasing our salaries, and yet we A C E O sits there and says No.
Neha Naik (26:32):
See, that’s the part where I’m like, then you need to really think about your why as a business owner and why you got in there. There’s an amazing book that my husband introduced me to, it’s called The Infinite Game. I was like, what’s the name of it? And he talks about the type of leader you should be. So of course, if you’re a C-level executive or a decision maker at your business, I highly recommend that you read this book. It’s amazing. And he talks about how to take care of your employees even when the times are bad, because what happens and how you treat them when times are not good is a type of reciprocation that you get. And so of course, if you are looking at the survey results and you’re saying per market research, there’s a huge mismatch, those are the conversations that you need to have.
(27:12):
Maybe you need to look at taking your budget instead of starting this new initiative that shifted towards increasing your employees salaries, because without people, you’re going to amount to nothing. More or less. You could have all the ideas, but if you’re constantly having turnover, you’re just going to continue on that hamster wheel, so to speak. So it’s really important that you act on those surveys. And even if it’s something like, Hey, we know that there’s discrepancy and it’s Q three right now, but by Q one of next year we will have the funds to give you the salary that you require or that you need per these standards. Just having that communication and sticking to it, I think matters, right? Instead of not doing anything. So I don’t even think people expect things to happen overnight, but they expect, okay, is it going in that direction? And I think a lot of times when people know, okay, it’s going to happen in a few months, then people are more likely to stay with you because they know you’re actually making those strides and you get six months to readjust your books so that you can now pay your employees more as opposed to rolling out this whole new initiative or buying this machine that you don’t really need. Right now,
Chris Hood (28:16):
I want to wrap up with KPIs, but I want to break it down into two basic concepts here, basic KPIs and advanced KPIs.
Neha Naik (28:26):
Yes. So I would say definitely some of the basic KPIs is turnover, retention, their de and I. So diversity, equity and inclusion metrics, the culture of the company. And yes, there is a way to measure culture. I’ve had people tell me that’s such a subjective word, but there is a way to measure it if you really wanted to measure it. So I think culture is definitely a huge one. The other thing you definitely want to measure is how satisfy people are when they work for you and not just at the company, but in their jobs. I would say those are kind of the basic KPIs. And then the advanced KPIs would look at when people leave your business, where do they go, which we’ve talked about, right? Because it tells you where people are going to and why they’re migrating to these other businesses. The second one would be hiring manager relationships or manager relationships with their employees.
(29:14):
So you want to get an understanding of, okay, are people working under this manager? Are they happy with what they’re doing? Right? Is the communication channel open, et cetera. The third thing you want to look at in terms of K P I is how above and beyond are people going in a specific business unit. So if you know that this business unit is the first one in the last one out has killed every single metric you’ve given them, they’re performing a thousand percent more. Okay, what is working well within that? What is happening? Is there more rewards happening? Is there more collaboration? Are the teams more diverse? What is happening? And then take that and replicate it, right? On the contrary, you want to work at business units that aren’t performing well, what’s not working here? How do we shift that? And it’s not to me about letting people go or firing people. It’s about, okay, this is not working. How do we make it work? Where are we today? Where do we want to be tomorrow? And what’s that bridge? And once you define that and reshuffle things, I don’t see why things can’t start working again. Sometimes it just takes a little bit of perspective to adjust things.
Chris Hood (30:16):
I Really like the concept of a performance matrix across in different teams to figure out which ones are overly performing, which ones are underperforming, and trying to find ways of mirroring those across the entire organization. I think that’s fabulous. Now, when I’m also thinking about advanced KPIs, I’m thinking about correlations between hiring and other areas of the business. So we talked about it earlier. Can you also track the correlation between customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction or sales and culture? Yeah, I agree. I think culture is something you definitely have to track, and it’s not impossible, but there’s other elements in there that you should be tracking that. Again, I think there’s a lot of companies that think, well, I’ve got my people analytics, I’ve got my sales analytics, I’ve got my marketing analytics. And they don’t look at those holistically to say, well, is there a correlation between how we’re marketing and our public perception in the world versus how our employees feel? Because I think there is a correlation. If you’re proud of your company, you become an ambassador for that company. If you are kind of embarrassed that you work at a company, you’re not really going out and telling anybody that you work there. Those types of advanced ways of looking at your culture I think are just as critical.
Neha Naik (31:47):
I agree, and I love the one you said about the client success and the employee success. I think that’s such a critical one because it really just paints a whole new picture. It adds a whole new dimension to your business metrics. And I think that’s so huge because that’s something that the leadership can proactively work on improving. And so I think that’s a really good call out. And then as it relates to sales, I just most recently signed up with a vendor and we had this issue where they promised us all these things and then lacked in fulfillment. So is your sales team great at promising, but are your operations backing up that sales process? Right? Because a lot of times that happens, you sell, sell, sell, sell, sell, and then on the backend it’s crickets. So it’s like, is there a correlation there and how can you fix that? And so it’s good to close sales, but then you also don’t want customers who are complaining about you on all social media platforms and now you’re getting sales and you’re getting negative reviews. And so I think that’s another one you want to look at. So I completely agree that’s a really good call out.
Chris Hood (32:46):
How can people get in touch with you?
Neha Naik (32:47):
Yeah, so you can find me on my LinkedIn. My name is Neha, I’m sure Chris is going to add this to the show notes. And then you can find me on my website, which is recruit gan.com. So it’s recruitGyan.com, Ian sounds for knowledge in Sanskrit. And then finally, you can email [email protected] at recruitgyan.com as well. And I’d love to talk to y’all and just network because I love doing that.
Chris Hood (33:13):
Appreciate it so much. Thank you for joining us. It’s been a great conversation.
Neha Naik (33:17):
Thank you so much for having me.
Chris Hood (33:19):
And of course, thanks to all of you who are listening. If you like what you heard, please subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast platform and leave a review. Your feedback helps us improve and grow. And if you have any questions, comments, or ideas for the show, you can connect with us throughout social media and online at Chris Hood Show. And please share this episode with your friends, family, colleagues, or anyone else looking to grow their business and start their own digital evolution. Until next week, take care and stay connected.
Hey everyone. Thanks for listening. Businesses are increasingly recognizing analytics value in decision-making across various domains. One significant area experiencing a data revolution is human resources now increasingly called people operations or people analytics. As of this year, 30% of new hires leave within 90 days. The reasons aren’t shocking. 43% say the role didn’t meet their expectations. 34% left because of a specific incident and 32% didn’t think the company culture was a good fit. In this episode, Neha Naik, CEO and founder of RecruitGyan joins us to discuss how people analytics offers insights for understanding the employee lifecycle. From hiring with the right expectations to ensuring a cultural fit. Grab a copy of my new book, customer Transformation, A seven Stage Strategy for Customer Alignment and Business Value. This is your essential guide for customer success in the digital age. Learn from industry giants, adapt to your customer’s ever-evolving needs and revolutionize your business strategy to achieve sustainable growth. Available now on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or my website, and to support the show, visit chris hood.com/show. Subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast platform. Follow us on social media or you can email me directly [email protected]. I’m Chris Hood and let’s get connected.
Voice Over (01:39):
Connecting access. Granted, it’s the Chris Hood digital show. We’re global business and technology leaders meet to discuss strategy, innovation and digital acceleration. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Your digital evolution starts Now. Here’s your host, Chris Hood.
Chris Hood (02:11):
Welcome to the show. Neha, would you mind introducing yourself?
Neha Naik (02:15):
Hey everybody, thank you for having me here and I’m so excited to be here. So my name is Neha Naik. I live in Houston, Texas with my husband and two young kids, and I have a recruiting agency that I’ve owned for about eight years and I’m really excited to be here and share insight.
Chris Hood (02:31):
Let’s dive a little bit more into your background. It’s very interesting and I think it’s going to make for a great conversation. You have a recruiting agency, but you also have a background in data. How has those all come together?
Neha Naik (02:44):
Yes, so actually my very first business venture was a recruiting agency. That’s what I started my entrepreneurial journey on, so to speak. But then I decided to do what a lot of visionaries do and we can’t sit still. So I decided to then embark on my data analytics business, which is essentially all about all things data. So what we do is we look at data that companies provide us. Typically it’s in shambles, it’s in rev drop, and we take that and optimize it and then create power BI dashboards or any type of dashboards really to look at kind of their bottom line, whether it’s in operations, human resources, sales efficiency, whatever it is that they want to improve. We take the data that they don’t know what to do with, and then we build an infrastructure foundation for them so that they can really act on that data. And then we also do predictive analytics on that data as well because it’s important to, in a lot of companies talk about having data, but if you can’t do anything with that data, there’s no point having it right? So we really empower companies to use data for their benefit.
Chris Hood (03:46):
So then specifically, how much of that practice from a data perspective do you see also happening inside of recruiting and hiring practices?
Neha Naik (03:56):
In my recruiting agency, we are data first. We use a couple of different dashboards. We look at revenue, we look at profit, we look at operations, we look at client-based efficiencies. So we know based on data dashboards, if people like Clock Fify tells you for example what capacity people are working. And so as a team of over 40 people, I can look at my clock I dashboard and say, okay, this team is hitting 90 to a hundred percent of their hours and they’re starting to, I can tell that they’re burning out. Let’s go ahead and add one more person. So we use data to make those strategic decisions about hiring people, pausing people for their contract if there’s not enough work. But then we can also tell our clients the story of like, Hey, when you pay us, it’s not going down the drain. It’s not what I’m using to buy myself a yacht. This is where your money’s going and this is the profit. And so we can actually have a very reasonable direct and transparent conversation with them about our pricing and what the value of that is to our clients.
Chris Hood (04:52):
When I was at Google, we had an organization called People Analytics, which is basically what you’re defining. It looks at all of the data. They analyze how employees are doing satisfaction of the employees workload. It’s very critical. Yet we know that there’s a lot of organizations out there that simply aren’t looking at the data. They may have the data or in some cases even worse, they’re not even asking their employees how they’re doing. But that’s all part of this process, right?
Neha Naik (05:22):
Exactly. And that’s important, right? Because a lot of times, no matter how big you are as a company or how small you are, if you are struggling constant turnover in a department or a business unit, that it should be an automatic red flag that you need to look at. And so what is happening specifically within that business unit? And when I work with clients on strategy sessions, I talk about that. I tell them, look at what’s not working, and then we are going to work on fixing it by using data that you’ve already collected. And I think that’s really how you bridge the gap between where you are today and where you want to be tomorrow as it relates to retention and turnover and just employee within your organization.
Chris Hood (05:59):
Now, I love that you said that you’re a data first company. I think that’s fabulous. I’m sure the data has shown you some valuable insights in terms of things like what is the most common reason for turnover? Do you have any insights on that?
Neha Naik (06:14):
Yes, there’s multiple. I would say one of the ones that I’ve come across multiple time is a cultural mismatch or it is the expectation mismatch of what they were told they were going to do before they got hired versus what they were actually doing after they got hired. So anytime you have a cultural mis mismatch or job description mismatch, and I see this mostly in small to mid size businesses, especially with the job description mismatch, because my experience has been working with startups primarily prese to series E, and I see that at a startup there’s so many things going on at the same time, everybody has to take on ownership. And so if you come from a bigger company to a smaller company, that might be a harder thing for you to get used to. Now for bigger companies, I see a cultural mismatch specifically.
(06:58):
So they get in and they’re really excited and then there’s a bunch of red tape or they don’t know who to talk to, they feel secluded. There’s not a lot of attempts made internally to kind of introduce ’em to different people, whether it’s in their business unit, outside their business unit. And so really I think when people don’t feel safe and they don’t feel like they fit, and when I mean safe, I’m not saying physical safety, but just this emotional safety, we all crave that as humans. And so when we don’t feel that way, we don’t feel like we’re included, we’re part of something bigger, then the tendency is to then say, okay, I’m not happy here. I don’t want to spend 40 hours of my week here. I’m done. And that’s when you start seeing people then either go look for other jobs and then they take on extra contracting jobs to add onto their income.
(07:42):
So once they decide to leave, they can leave and still have some finances to kind of help ’em as a backup. So I think that’s the biggest thing is you want to look at your culture, you want to look at your interview process and what the expectation that you are setting for employees coming in and how that onboarding process looks. And if you’re aligned and if you are seeing a lot of turnover specifically in a business unit, you also want to look at the managers communicating. Are there weekly meetings happening? Is there collaboration happening? So really dissecting those types of issues will give you a really good depth of insight into why people are leaving your company.
Chris Hood (08:18):
When we get into this company and we begin to build those cultures that people want to gravitate towards, that data should be showing us what’s working and what’s not working. You said alignment. I think it’s a good word, but that doesn’t mean that just because somebody comes in and they’re not aligned with the organization’s values in that moment, that they can’t become aligned. If you understand and you’re asking the right questions and you’re making and adjusting the right elements within the culture to ensure that people feel welcomed and those values are aligned,
Neha Naik (08:57):
And this is exactly why anonymous surveys, having touched bases with your team members, your peers, your colleagues, your direct managers, even people skipping that direct manager step and going above just as a communication. I think it’s really important for companies to not just make that a priority, but empower individuals to take up on those options. Like doing offsites and doing quarterly business reviews and stuff where people can come on and express themselves is the key. Because unless you give people the opportunity to speak up, and especially if someone’s new, they’re not going to want to say, okay, I don’t feel good. Nobody wants to be a tattletale. But if you offer multiple opportunities and empower employees and say something like, without you guys, we are nothing. We may have the best product, the service, but without our employees, we’re nothing, right? So no matter how big of a company you are, if you make that proactive step to engage with your employees, they’re going to fit in or they’re going to add, I don’t want to say fit in, but they will add to your culture because now they feel like they’re part of something bigger.
(10:00):
They really trust your vision, your mission, your values and the story that you have. And so they feel like now, oh my gosh, I love where I am because these people actually care. They check in on me when I raise my hand and express any concerns. It’s not just like something goes into an inbox and then it’s gone down this vortex where no one ever responds. It’s being addressed in a timely manner. So really empowering your employees to speak up. And the way you do that, especially as leaders, is talk about that, write that in email, send biweekly emails, newsletters about how it’s important, have links for anonymous surveys. Look at those surveys and actually do something about them. Don’t just send surveys for fun, but once you get the results, act on them. And that’s a big part of who you are as you grow as a business.
Chris Hood (10:44):
Yeah, it’s amazing how many companies just check off the box. Well, we sent out a survey, but employees know, employees know that when they share their feedback and nothing happens, they’re not being listened to. And then that just builds upon that frustration. If I go back to Google, we had an annual survey, we had quarterly surveys, and then we had private individual surveys. Occasionally HR would reach out to us and say, you’ve been selected randomly to participate. I think I heard a few times, it’s just too much From the employee perspective, we’re being asked too much about our opinions. Is there a balance? How much should they be asking?
Neha Naik (11:31):
I think the answer, to answer your question, to me, I feel like every once a quarter is good enough, but it’s not like it shouldn’t feel bothersome, but essentially it depends on what the value is that you talk about with your employees. So it’s how you sell the survey and the reasoning behind it. And so it’s almost like it’s a health check of the business. It’s a health check of a business unit. It’s a health check of the employee’s, mental health, their burnout rate, whatever it is that you’re measuring. And so if you tell the employees, we’re sending these to you because we really care about your transformation as an employee, but also your transformation as a human being, how do you feel when you work here? Because I always say that work culture, it’s when you shut off your computer and when you go home and the way you act, that defines your work culture.
(12:16):
If you had a horrible day, you hate your manager, you hate everything, you’re not going to be a happy person When you go home, you’re going to be cranky, you’re going to be yelling at your kids, you’re going to be fighting with your wife, you’re not. You’re just going to be not a happy person. So it’s really important that when you talk to your employees about doing these surveys, it’s also the art of, okay, we want you to do these because we care about your mental health. We care about your physical health, we care about you as a human and an employee, and we want to make sure that we’re continuing to build this team that’s going to eventually lead us all to success. It’s a collective effort. And so once you talk about it that way, then I feel like you motivate people. But if you just say, okay, here’s another survey, answer it, send it. There’s a huge different tonality and I think people respond better when you tell them the why and you talk about the transformation. So using these surveys, we want to transform our company to this. We are here today, we want to be here tomorrow. How do we get there? So answering these surveys, this is going to be kind of that bridge that gets us to that next level.
Chris Hood (13:09):
We talk about success not from a just solely employee perspective, but we also want to understand how that directly relates to our customer success. And I feel as if there’s a direct correlation as you just outlined, if the employees are happy, they’re going to be more productive. And then that translates into success for your sales, your profits, your business value, customers are going to be more successful. How do you look at that when you’re comparing internal and cultural employee success directly with customer success?
Neha Naik (13:49):
Yes. I mean, there’s been so many studies done, but there is a very direct correlation in terms of how happy and healthy your employees are with how happy and healthy your pipeline is of new clients, right? Because of course, as somebody who’s happy working at a company, you are going to have your best for forward. A lot of us have probably worked at work cultures that were toxic, that didn’t really care about our wellbeing in any capacity, shape or form. I just remember thinking, oh my gosh, I hate Mondays. How many of us go into work thinking, I hate Mondays? If you are the type of person who’s doing that, you’re probably not in the right place. You should not hate Mondays. You should be very excited. It’s one thing when you’re like, you’ve partied too hard on Sunday and you’re like, oh, tomorrow’s Monday.
(14:34):
But it’s one thing where you’re like every Sunday night, it’s like it’s Monday and it just tells you that there’s something not aligned here. And so when you struggle up with that attitude on Monday and when you’re talking to clients of that company, of your company, you’re not going to be yourself. You’re not. I feel like you’re going to be stuck in this box of I’m here just to do what I’m told, and then once it’s 4:59 PM I’m going to start turning off my computers. I’m going to start saying my goodbyes and I’m going to head out, or I’m going to shut my zoom off and I’m done for the day, as opposed to someone who’s really engaged and really caress and they’re going to be there until 6, 7, 8 pm because to them, they’re building their legacy here at the company. And that’s the shift we want to make when we approach employees and we think about culture, we think about de and I initiatives and we think about just prospering.
(15:20):
It’s a collective effort. It’s not just because a C E O says so that’s great. You can love the CEO e, you can be loyal, but if you hate your job, you’re only going to be 20% at it. And we’ve all been there, we’ve all worked at jobs where we hated the job and we showed up just to get the paycheck. It just goes to show that either you’re doing something that you’re not supposed to be doing or you’re at the wrong company. And so it’s the onus then falls on us to figure that out. You don’t want to live most of your life miserable because you hated your job. And so again, finding the workplace that fits for you is going to be really critical.
Chris Hood (15:55):
I’m thinking back to one of my first jobs. I think most of my listeners know that I worked at a movie theater as my first job, but I also did a lot of work in retail. Look, I think we’ve all experienced this as well. Anytime you’ve walked into a store and either you get a sales associate that is very happy that you’re there, Hey, how can I help you today? Or you get somebody who’s like, I don’t want to talk to anybody today, and they’re sitting in the corner and they’re avoiding the customers walking in. Well, that’s a prime example of how you’re going to be able to drive sales. And yet, we know you just touched on it, we see a lot of people who go to jobs just for the paycheck. And this is on both sides, not just us wanting the job, but we see a lot of companies who lose an employee due to turnover and then they’re desperate.
(16:47):
We need somebody to fill this spot. We’re just going to go hire somebody. Well, in both processes, whether you just go and hire a random person, you run the risk of not being aligned with the role, the job, the company, the culture. So I firmly believe that the process of building the right culture and making sure that people are happy and aligned starts at the hiring practice from the beginning. You should be looking at this. And I don’t know if data necessarily helps us identify that more than say a process of just saying, look, we got to slow down. We’re not desperate. We don’t hire the first person that comes to us, or same thing with us. I can’t just take any job. I got to find a job that meets my needs and expectations as well as being happy in it. And again, I don’t know if there’s a data point there, but there’s definitely a process that I think a lot of us don’t really consider.
Neha Naik (17:52):
Yeah, I agree. I think as it relates to the data point, what we want to look at is how in alignment is your process compared to the job. There’s a lot of people, like you said, a lot of companies, when somebody leaves, they go into triage mode, and I see this all the time. It’s like we got a two week notice, hire, hire, hire. And then I’m like, okay, what should the interview process look like? I don’t know. I’ll talk to them one more person and then we’re going to hire them. And I’m like, please, no, no, no. Literally I’m just like, no, let’s build up. I get it. I get it that you’re stressed. I get that you losing this critical person in your business unit is going to have some type of a short-term repercussion on your business. However, don’t lose out on the opportunity to properly interview somebody because you’re going to have a lot more long-term damage if you find the wrong person or you get stuck on this hamster wheel of hiring, they quit or we have to let them go, oh, we have to hire.
(18:49):
Oh, they quit. We have to let them go. Not doing your due diligence. And so now instead of spending your time on business objectives and KPIs and initiatives that are going to make you revenue, you are now forced to change your time into hiring. And then when you go into triage mode, you stress out and then you hire the wrong person and you’re like, yes, I’ve spent two weeks onboarding them. Now they should be good to go. And then third week, the person’s like, I quit. This is not the right role for me. And you would’ve found this out a month ago if you’d have just structured the job description correctly, structured the interview process, the interview questions, the panel, and done some type of assessment to understand this person would be the right fit. So I always say I get it. As a business owner, I understand. However, it’s really important to take a step back, take a 20,000 foot view of what you’re looking for, who you’re looking for, and go into it very much informed as opposed to a haphazard, let’s just find someone. Right? You can’t do that anymore, especially with everything the way it is and how quickly the job market is changing from an employer standpoint and an employee standpoint. And so it’s really critical to make hiring a pre-thought and not an afterthought or like a triage mode situation.
Chris Hood (19:56):
Startup companies probably don’t struggle with that as much as larger companies. But I think when we get into a medium-sized larger company, there’s probably opportunity, and again, maybe this is where data can reveal that there are individuals internally that can handle more and could fill in temporarily during that hiring process. There’s some internal process there that I think data can help organizations alleviate some of that stress.
Neha Naik (20:29):
Yes, I completely agree, and I think that’s another reason. While I’m a big proponent of upskilling and upleveling even your talent, because you never know, there might have to be some type of a cross-functionality within employees where if someone leaves, now I will say that that’s great, but with the caveat of if you’re going to expect one person to do the job of a one and a half person, then you have to increase their comp or you have to give them some type of a bonus or something, right? Because otherwise, if Joe is doing the job of two people and he’s not getting compensated now he’s going to be the one to leave next. And we don’t want that to happen. We don’t want to lose more people because we didn’t make the right judgment call. So offering them some type of a bonus like, Hey, if you help me for six weeks until I find this next person, I’m going to give you a $5,000 whatever, so that you are still respecting their time, you’re respecting the fact that they’re stepping out of their kind of responsibilities and helping you with yours.
(21:22):
And the other thing you can do is also get contractor freelance workers who can plug in really quickly, help you with anything that’s super critical and buy you a little bit of time while you interview. And then once you get someone in that full-time role, then you can end the contract. So it’s fine because contractors typically know it is a short-term role, so it’s not going to be a huge deal, but you never know. I have a lot of people hire contractors and then they turn into full-time employees because they fit into the team really well and they understood what the objectives were and what the deadlines were, and then they turned out to be really good key players. But that’s another option. But yes, if you are going to have somebody else within your team help out, you want to make sure that you are keeping a check on them in terms of their burnout meter, but you’re also giving them some type of a monetary compensation for their time and effort.
Chris Hood (22:10):
Let’s go to the opposite side. We talk about hiring, but let’s talk about somebody who is leaving an organization, how critical. I know what your answer’s going to be, but I want to hear how critical is it to do a survey and conduct an exit interview to understand why they are leaving?
Neha Naik (22:27):
Very, very critical. When you do an exit survey with somebody, it tells you not just their motivation for why they’re leaving you, it also tells you how they felt when they were working for your company, and finally it tells you where they’re going. And I think those three things can really tell you a lot about your business. So if you find out their motivation for leaving, you’ll know whether it’s compensation, if it’s the benefits, if it’s the location, if it’s the hybrid versus remote or in person, if it’s a culture they didn’t like their manager or whatever the situation is, if you know what worked well for them and what didn’t work well for them, you can take that feedback and make sure you insert the learnings from that so that you are helping other individuals that join your company. And then finally, if you know where they’re going, you can say like, okay, they left us for this company.
(23:13):
Let me look at their benefits. Let me look at their comp. It gives you a really good understanding of where people are going, and I always like to think, take these as learnings, right? Don’t see where they’re going, and then why are they going to this company? We’re so much better. No, there’s got to be something about that business, whether they’re more innovative, whether it’s a culture, it’s got to be something. And so learning from that, I think you can then better your company. So I always say you are going to have turnover because as a business owner, that’s normal. As long as it’s not constant, you’re not losing people every week or every month and you don’t have a control on it, that’s an issue. But if you have turnover once in a while, just study why it’s happening and then take the learnings from that specific instance and then come back and kind of edit your current policies or infrastructure so that the next person that joins you is not going to leave for those same reasons. So again, take those as kind of learnings.
Chris Hood (24:03):
I’m also going to assume that individuals who are responding to an exit survey are more likely to be honest and maybe brutally honest than when they were working and filling out quarterly surveys.
Neha Naik (24:16):
Yes, that is true. Exit surveys tell you a lot more about your employees stay at your company than a quarter. I mean, yes, the quarterly surveys will give you 70 to 80% the truth, which is still not bad, but exit survey always gives you 90% plus because now they don’t really have a motivation to lie or sugarcoat things. They’re already leaving. What’s the worst you can do? So I think that’s the biggest difference for sure,
Chris Hood (24:40):
And I think there’s a natural correlation. Then if I get an exit survey response and it says I left because we’ll say culture or salary in theory, that organization should be taking that information and applying its findings back to the quarterly internal surveys so that you can adjust and make sure that you’re constantly understanding what’s happening. Otherwise, if you’re using the same questions every quarter, you’re not really getting much out of it, right?
Neha Naik (25:09):
Yes. And you should be changing questions every quarter based on your answers from the previous quarter. I mean, there can be some that are similar, of course, the usual normal ones, but again, change some of them up. But yes, I completely agree. I think if the issue is salary or benefits, you need to do a market analysis, market research of what the new salary rates are for that position at that level, and then make sure you look at team parity and make sure the people that are currently there are also getting that raise because you can’t just bring someone new in and then someone’s been working for you for five years and they’re making less than the newcomer because of your new survey. So first look at team parity and increase the compensation internally. And then when you bring someone new, just say, this is the market research, this is what it’s told us. We’ve had people give us this feedback. And so now the salary used to be 150,000, now it’s 170,000 based on our most recent research. And so again, it goes back to that because if you’re losing people to compensation or benefits, I would say that is not a good enough reason to lose people over with, especially with all these modalities of research and market research that we have at our disposal.
Chris Hood (26:13):
So it’s one thing to say we have the data and we’re not going to do anything with it. It’s another thing to say we have the data, but leadership doesn’t care about it because I’m sure there’s a lot of situations where the market research says we should be increasing our salaries, and yet we A C E O sits there and says No.
Neha Naik (26:32):
See, that’s the part where I’m like, then you need to really think about your why as a business owner and why you got in there. There’s an amazing book that my husband introduced me to, it’s called The Infinite Game. I was like, what’s the name of it? And he talks about the type of leader you should be. So of course, if you’re a C-level executive or a decision maker at your business, I highly recommend that you read this book. It’s amazing. And he talks about how to take care of your employees even when the times are bad, because what happens and how you treat them when times are not good is a type of reciprocation that you get. And so of course, if you are looking at the survey results and you’re saying per market research, there’s a huge mismatch, those are the conversations that you need to have.
(27:12):
Maybe you need to look at taking your budget instead of starting this new initiative that shifted towards increasing your employees salaries, because without people, you’re going to amount to nothing. More or less. You could have all the ideas, but if you’re constantly having turnover, you’re just going to continue on that hamster wheel, so to speak. So it’s really important that you act on those surveys. And even if it’s something like, Hey, we know that there’s discrepancy and it’s Q three right now, but by Q one of next year we will have the funds to give you the salary that you require or that you need per these standards. Just having that communication and sticking to it, I think matters, right? Instead of not doing anything. So I don’t even think people expect things to happen overnight, but they expect, okay, is it going in that direction? And I think a lot of times when people know, okay, it’s going to happen in a few months, then people are more likely to stay with you because they know you’re actually making those strides and you get six months to readjust your books so that you can now pay your employees more as opposed to rolling out this whole new initiative or buying this machine that you don’t really need. Right now,
Chris Hood (28:16):
I want to wrap up with KPIs, but I want to break it down into two basic concepts here, basic KPIs and advanced KPIs.
Neha Naik (28:26):
Yes. So I would say definitely some of the basic KPIs is turnover, retention, their de and I. So diversity, equity and inclusion metrics, the culture of the company. And yes, there is a way to measure culture. I’ve had people tell me that’s such a subjective word, but there is a way to measure it if you really wanted to measure it. So I think culture is definitely a huge one. The other thing you definitely want to measure is how satisfy people are when they work for you and not just at the company, but in their jobs. I would say those are kind of the basic KPIs. And then the advanced KPIs would look at when people leave your business, where do they go, which we’ve talked about, right? Because it tells you where people are going to and why they’re migrating to these other businesses. The second one would be hiring manager relationships or manager relationships with their employees.
(29:14):
So you want to get an understanding of, okay, are people working under this manager? Are they happy with what they’re doing? Right? Is the communication channel open, et cetera. The third thing you want to look at in terms of K P I is how above and beyond are people going in a specific business unit. So if you know that this business unit is the first one in the last one out has killed every single metric you’ve given them, they’re performing a thousand percent more. Okay, what is working well within that? What is happening? Is there more rewards happening? Is there more collaboration? Are the teams more diverse? What is happening? And then take that and replicate it, right? On the contrary, you want to work at business units that aren’t performing well, what’s not working here? How do we shift that? And it’s not to me about letting people go or firing people. It’s about, okay, this is not working. How do we make it work? Where are we today? Where do we want to be tomorrow? And what’s that bridge? And once you define that and reshuffle things, I don’t see why things can’t start working again. Sometimes it just takes a little bit of perspective to adjust things.
Chris Hood (30:16):
I Really like the concept of a performance matrix across in different teams to figure out which ones are overly performing, which ones are underperforming, and trying to find ways of mirroring those across the entire organization. I think that’s fabulous. Now, when I’m also thinking about advanced KPIs, I’m thinking about correlations between hiring and other areas of the business. So we talked about it earlier. Can you also track the correlation between customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction or sales and culture? Yeah, I agree. I think culture is something you definitely have to track, and it’s not impossible, but there’s other elements in there that you should be tracking that. Again, I think there’s a lot of companies that think, well, I’ve got my people analytics, I’ve got my sales analytics, I’ve got my marketing analytics. And they don’t look at those holistically to say, well, is there a correlation between how we’re marketing and our public perception in the world versus how our employees feel? Because I think there is a correlation. If you’re proud of your company, you become an ambassador for that company. If you are kind of embarrassed that you work at a company, you’re not really going out and telling anybody that you work there. Those types of advanced ways of looking at your culture I think are just as critical.
Neha Naik (31:47):
I agree, and I love the one you said about the client success and the employee success. I think that’s such a critical one because it really just paints a whole new picture. It adds a whole new dimension to your business metrics. And I think that’s so huge because that’s something that the leadership can proactively work on improving. And so I think that’s a really good call out. And then as it relates to sales, I just most recently signed up with a vendor and we had this issue where they promised us all these things and then lacked in fulfillment. So is your sales team great at promising, but are your operations backing up that sales process? Right? Because a lot of times that happens, you sell, sell, sell, sell, sell, and then on the backend it’s crickets. So it’s like, is there a correlation there and how can you fix that? And so it’s good to close sales, but then you also don’t want customers who are complaining about you on all social media platforms and now you’re getting sales and you’re getting negative reviews. And so I think that’s another one you want to look at. So I completely agree that’s a really good call out.
Chris Hood (32:46):
How can people get in touch with you?
Neha Naik (32:47):
Yeah, so you can find me on my LinkedIn. My name is Neha, I’m sure Chris is going to add this to the show notes. And then you can find me on my website, which is recruit gan.com. So it’s recruitGyan.com, Ian sounds for knowledge in Sanskrit. And then finally, you can email [email protected] at recruitgyan.com as well. And I’d love to talk to y’all and just network because I love doing that.
Chris Hood (33:13):
Appreciate it so much. Thank you for joining us. It’s been a great conversation.
Neha Naik (33:17):
Thank you so much for having me.
Chris Hood (33:19):
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