Culture Focused Practice

Hey. Hey, Dr. Tara Vossenkemper here, and you're listening to the Culture Focused Practice Podcast. Or watching, I guess. Thanks for being here with me. Thanks for joining me today.  

Here, I'm just gonna level with you. There comes a point in any hiring process  where you are tired, you're desperate, you're over it, and you really just want to get somebody in the seat, and you might start asking the question, which is the wrong question,  but the question, can this person do the job, instead of, should this person join my team? Is this the right person?

We shift into this bare minimum expectation with little regard for culture, bigger picture, vision team, et cetera. That shift, if you make that, it seems like a microscopic shift, that's the slow demise into chaos. And that's today's episode.

So before we go further, make sure you subscribe, especially if you want episodes that are getting at messy leadership. 'cause I think all of leadership is messy. We're all human. You know, make sure you subscribe. What's more is that when you subscribe, you basically help people who need this message find it.

Also, before we go further, let me just do the agenda real quick. We've only got three items on it for the day, and I like to give parameters for the episode itself. So agenda item number one is the cost of lowering the bar agenda. Item number two is how to hold the bar without freezing. And agenda item number three is strategies for. Hiring desert moments. You know what I'm talking about? The hiring desert. Fucking dreaded hiring desert.

So we're gonna get straight into it. So the cost of lowering the bar, let's talk about real costs.

First and foremost, and I think this is the most obvious culture, your culture will be diluted, is one way of thinking about it, but also I think it starts to crumble or it has the potential to start crumbling when we don't make hires with intentionality, when we don't ensure that they fit the culture that they're onboard with, the vision, that they're gonna vibe with the team. We are at risk of eroding the culture that we have so painstakingly built and protected and curated.

I'm not gonna say it's all gonna go to shit because I don't really know if it's all gonna go to shit. But what I do know is that the wrong hire will dilute the culture, at the very least. Will start to taint it at a stronger level. Might feed into it crumbling altogether, especially if there's other shit that's going on behind the scenes that you're struggling with. It just adds fuel to a fire.

 And I think what's more is that, you know, you see culture from a specific vantage point, as a leader at the practice. Your view of culture is gonna be very different than somebody who is kind of on the ground floor. You know, an employee who's working with you, they're gonna feel it in the same way.

They might not be able to articulate what's wrong or what's going on, but they will feel the diminished culture, the diminished vibe, so to speak. So it's not like you can keep this hidden or under wraps. If you make that bad hire and they are a poor culture fit, it's that it's gonna start to seep into the space around you, which is the entire rest of the team and business.

So that's one cost of lowering the bar. Another cost, and this is fucking real man, is training fatigue.   I do not want to constantly train. And I don't want my people to constantly train.

My integrator is out right now, and so I'm in charge of some of the onboarding stuff. For some new hires, it's exhausting and we don't even do the training.

I mean, we have it set up so there's automations and there's videos, and you know, there's intentionality behind meeting with people and all of that. But to go through this process, even just to get somebody onboarded is, it's exhausting.

Not to mention, it's not even just training fatigue with training. I would even add on, it's the hiring process fatigue. So if you have people who are part of your hiring process, I do, you might not, but if you do, it's exhausting for them. It's a lot of  messing with your schedule. It's a lot of a different type of mental load, and it's taxing to do.

When you get the right person, it's 1000% worth it, you know? So I'm not questioning the fact that we have to train new people. That's not what this is about. What I'm saying is that when we bring on poor fit hires, let's just say bad hires, or if we lower the bar to bring somebody on who's not really the right fit, who's not really the right hire, we are at risk of exhausting ourselves. Not just personally, but ourselves as in the entire team that's involved in the process.

So there's a ripple effect for constantly rehiring, re-interviewing, and also re onboarding. Just consistently doing this thing is exhausting.

 A third cost to lowering the bar is burnout. So I think it goes without saying that if we are eroding culture or we're diluting it at the very least, and we're also tired, we're taxed from constantly hiring, interviewing, onboarding, et cetera, we're probably gonna be more prone to burnout.

What's more, and maybe what adds to the probability of burnout should that theme continue, is that we have to always clean up after that wrong hire. So it's not like we're just tired from the training or from the onboarding. We're also in cleanup mode way more often than we wanna be.

It's exhausting to constantly have to go behind a hire and put everything back in place that was disrupted from them being there in the first place.  

So those are three real costs to lowering the bar for hiring the wrong person. One thing I didn't even talk about here because it's so obvious and I don't even feel like I really need to get into it, but there's a financial cost.

I think that goes without saying, you know, if you bring on the wrong person, there is a financial cost to not only bringing them on, but cleaning up after them, to your hiring team, being involved, et cetera.

So what feels more important to me is all this other stuff, the fatigue, the possibility of burnout, the culture erosion, but of course there's a fiscal cost as well, so.  

Let's segue into agenda item number two, how to hold the bar without freezing. So again, this whole episode is about not lowering the bar and what to do when hiring feels impossible. So let's talk about how do we hold that bar without freezing?

First and foremost is getting super fucking clear on what is non-negotiable. Whether this is skills based, whether this is values based, whether this is logistics. Maybe you need somebody to work a Thursday evening, period. Or they have to hold a certain type of licensure, or they have to wanna do evals, or it doesn't matter what, it's your non-negotiable, but. You need to be very, very clear on what that is. So that's one way that we can hold a bar without freezing.

 Another way, I love this one, is using structured rubrics and score cards. I love gut feelings. I love intuition. I think it is solid. And my tendency is to always have a layer of skepticism about my own and anybody's, honestly, input.

And I, I don't think skeptical, like, oh, I don't fucking trust you. But I do think like, okay, well if you think this or you feel this way, what I wanna know is how do we also have additional data to support that for myself and for others?

And so there might be something where you, you know, you have a scorecard that is a values analysis scorecard that you and the entire rest of your hiring team complete.

There could be a section on there that is for logistics. Do they meet the non-negotiables for this role? There could be also something in there that's about  skills, where if you are doing some sort of skills portion of your interview, which you should, if you're not, and if you are, then you have a section on the scorecard where you're assessing that person based on skills.

So you're getting three things in one scorecard, and again, data from multiple people, if you have multiple people as part of your hiring process. Again, data on values, data on logistics of the role and what's expected and needed, and data on skills.

And then you can juxtapose that or cross-reference that with your intuition or with your clinical director's intuition or you know, whoever it is that you hold in high regard and listen to with regard to hiring. So that's a way to be able to hold the bar without freezing up or without lowering your bar. Use a structured rubric or scorecard.

A third way is that you can try to make this waiting period feel productive. And so what I'll say is that. Kind of getting into, into the hiring desert stuff. But when we were seeking to hire and we weren't getting a lot of candidates, something that we started doing was revisiting our onboarding process and trying to figure out how do we automate this?

Who do we get involved? I think I revisited our, I hiring committee and I created a whole manual for them. It's cute. It's like a, just a few pages, you know, but still something to help guide them in the hiring process. I came up with a whole conceptual framework for a hiring pipeline. We did some research into career fairs.  I revised our whole position description I made it way more reflective of our tone and vibe, you know. It's so much more ridiculous, but accurate to us, and it pulled some of the right people in.

Uh, there was like a variety of things that we did that helped us enhance what we have, formalize what we have, and also I would say helped future us keep in contact with candidates down the road.

What I will say is that it still is rough. It still is hard to be in a position where you really need to bring somebody on and  you have people applying and you're just questioning whether or not you should just let them through because you meet somebody. I'm not dismissing how difficult that can feel.

What I am saying is we just talked about the costs and I'm giving you a few other ways that you can hold your bar, hold steady. Don't lower it  based on that internal tension you feel,  but still use that time effectively by doing something like  reviewing all of your hiring related things. Again, like your onboarding process, your position description.

If you have a hiring team, maybe a hiring manual, maybe the scorecard and the rubric. Maybe you formalize that process. There's a variety of ways you can make it productive.

 This is actually a good point to segue to agenda item number three, which is strategies for the hiring desert moments. I think we have probably all been there. I will say this past, honestly, the past year, maybe past year and a half, but I think mostly the past year has been one of the hardest times for us for candidates to  apply.

When you're in those hiring moments, here's some things you can do. And of course this still like the making your waiting productive, we're sort of. You know, calling back to the last point of holding the bar, but I would say some of the things you can do in those hiring desert moments include, communicate, tell your team what's going on, and maybe you start a hiring bonus.

Maybe you have a hiring bonus or a referral bonus, and you tell your team. Y'all. I need you to think of any one person that you would love to work with and send them this hiring flyer. Let them know we're hiring. There's a referral bonus in it for you, and if they start with us, there's a hiring bonus in it for them.

So let your team know what's going on and that you really need to bring people on and you might enlist their help to try to find the right people. Another strategy is hiring slow, but staying visible. And so if you are waiting until you need to hire before you post a position description, for example, you've waited too long.

If you are thirsty, that already indicates that you're dehydrated. It's the same way with hiring. If you need to hire, that's too long, that's it's too late. You've been needing to hire and you just weren't aware.

 So for me, this hiring slow, but staying visible piece means that you might constantly have a position open. If you're in a place where you don't have a hiring desert, you just constantly have the right people coming through. Golden. Maybe you don't need to do this thing. If you are not in a place where you have candidates coming through all the time, you might need to do this.

And this is basically always having a position open. Always making sure that you stay visible in front of the right people. It could be that you start some sort of like talent pool and you stay in quarterly communication with them. It could be that you start doing a career video each week and it's just a generous thing you do for your community.

And then you also are now in contact with a bunch of people. So when you do have a position open, you sort of post it there and say, Hey, also we're hiring for anybody interested or maybe share this with a friend if you know that they're looking for a new position.

 The point in all of this is that you want to consistently show up with where your people are, and if you don't know where your people are, one, you can create them. Two, I would again, ask my team and say, where do you think these people live? How did we find you? You know, it might be something like that. 

A third and final strategy for the hiring desert moments. And I'm already kind of speaking to this, but let me just bring it home. I would refocus on my hiring pipeline. So I think I said earlier in this episode that the pipeline was a framework I developed when we were in a problematic place like we needed to hire and we weren't getting enough candidates.

 And in that pipeline, the very first phase in all of it is attraction and awareness. And so if we don't have people to apply, we're not attracting enough of them. If we don't have enough candidates, that's on us. We are not doing something that's either attracting the right people or just enough people, period.

So it might be in your own hiring pipeline or your own hiring funnel that you are focusing way more heavily on the attraction and awareness phase of all of this. A couple of things you can do within that phase, and again, I already kind of alluded to this.

You can reach out to past candidates. You might have developed like a talent pool or some sort of candidate pool where you stay in touch with previous candidates 30, 60, 90 days after they, you know, interviewed and they potentially accepted an offer somewhere else, or people who just didn't sign on because it wasn't the right time or something came up, these are people that you wanted to join and they said, no, that might be your candidate pool.

And then at the same time you develop something like a talent pool, which is people that you met that you just think you're fucking awesome and you ask them, Hey, can we stay in touch? You're awesome. I would love if you came to work with me one day, I would love to be able to work with you in some capacity. Maybe that's your talent pool.

 And then also maybe you start doing presentations at local universities or just in the community regarding career trajectory or  career enhancement type things. Or you know, transitioning from agency to practice or from practice to agency. You know, it could be any direction. Where it's just a value-based project.

It's not something that you are seeking to get candidates from that right then, but it's something where you become known for being career oriented and employee focused. And  when you do have something like an opening available, you could pass this on to the group that you're also doing values based information with.

 Because in that way you're not just asking something of them and they don't have to do anything regardless of what you ask, but you're doing something that is values driven, providing value to them is what I mean, and then also staying in touch with them when and if you do have openings.

I'm also weird about asking people to apply directly, if it's that sort of relationship. I might do something like, let them know I have an opening and ask if they have anybody that they would recommend for the role. And in that way, you're not poaching or headhunting, which I do not like to do. Instead, I'm just saying, Hey, if you know somebody, do you mind sending them our way?

And in doing so, you might actually get that person to apply, but the reality is that you're asking for some help, you know, for some support, for them to share the information rather than apply themselves. So that can be a helpful way of growing the number of candidates within that attraction and awareness phase.

The only other thing I'll say about this hiring pipeline and like the attraction and awareness phase, in particular, is that it should be constant. It shouldn't be something that you set and forget, and it shouldn't be something that you do only when you need to hire.

It should be something that you are consistently attending to. It's a way of continuing to stay in conversation with people who may or may not ever work with you. I think the point is just that we're keeping in touch with people. We're staying front of mind. We're providing value if possible, and when push comes to shove, we are also growing our list of possible candidates.

That is, you know, it's serving them, but it's also serving us goodness. But the hiring desert moments, man, they are, they're rough, you know. That's a really tough place to be in. I'm saying that from, uh, experience and also knowing that in those moments, I too wanna lower the bar.

And it, I'm lucky in that I have the right people around me to say, no, you know, like, no, Tara, this isn't gonna work. You can't, we're not bringing that person on just 'cause we need this thing because they don't meet any of this other criteria. Or my whole hiring committee is like you know, their recommendation is recommend with reservation. Here's why.

When I'm in a good space, I can confidently say I am of the belief that if it's not a hell yeah, we want that person on our team, it's a no. When I'm in a borderline desperation space, that's the bar that I'm like, well, maybe. But it is pretty much a yes though. Like I, I think I feel kind of good about this.

Healthy space tara would say like, no, no, no. That's a no. You might be desperate, but you're only asking yourself for trouble down the line. Please don't do that.

And I should say the same to you. Please don't do that. Please just hold your bar where it needs to be. Please understand and fully integrate that there is high cost to bad hires, which you've probably experienced in your group practice ownership or leadership.

And please consider that in those hiring desert moments, you have a variety of other options where you can tend to all of your processes related to hiring and onboarding, and that you don't have to just seek to fill this position as quickly as possible, even if you do need it filled as quickly as possible.

Okay. Here is my final call to you. Two things. Number one. I'm gonna ask again, subscribe. Or review, actually. That would be fantastic. If you are listening and you enjoy what you're hearing, please review the podcast for me. The more that we do this, again, the more that it hits the right people, and by right people, I mean people who need to hear it in the same way that you might need to hear it.

Number two, if you really feel like, I need more of this, I need more clarity, I need more strategy, I need more boots on the ground help, not just pie in the sky ideas, but like help me bring it to life.

Consider joining the membership. It's my Inside the Living Practice membership, which is a play on my Living Practice Framework™, thank you very much. And it's all boots on the ground. It's community, it's training vault, it's recorded q and As and recorded trainings and you request what you want. It's tools and resources. It's a variety of things that ideally benefit group practice owners and leaders.

So, there's that. You can get there by going to www.taravossenkemper.com/the-membership. That's how you find it and sign up. Other than that, I'm done. This has been great. I really appreciate your time as per usual, and I will see you in the next one. Bye.