If you are managing HR in a small employer, one to 500 employees, and you think that you cannot compete with your much larger counterparts for talent, I'm going to try to convince you today that you can. Welcome back to the HR Connection, the podcast focused solely on those managing human resources in a startup or small employer environment, one to 500. Why do we say small employer and not small business? Because revenue doesn't matter. We have clients who are doing mid-market enterprise-level revenue, but they're doing it with less than 500 employees. And so we focus in on employee size. And recruiting and hiring is definitely one of those things that our clients feel like they can't compete. They feel like they are behind the eight ball because they have much larger counterparts that are paying way more and offering bigger benefits. We see this mostly with our tech clients who are competing with Facebook and Google and Apple for the same tech talent and I get it. It is incredibly daunting to think about how you can match the pay and the benefits of a giant like that. But I'm not convinced you have to. And so today I wanted to talk through some strategies that we use when we are recruiting for our clients; some things that we do inside employer branding to make sure that their value is shown. First, I want to tell you what your value is because I do think that small employers have very unique value that people want. They just don't know about it. And so, uh, we'll talk about the value proposition that I think small employers have, and then we're going to talk through how do we compete? What is it that we're offering? Uh, what can we do in the recruiting process to compete when we can't always pay or offer the same level of benefits that some of our much bigger counterparts can offer? First, let's talk about what candidates really value when they are looking for a job. Uh, I do not want to pretend that pay is not important. Of course, it is. No one is going to work for free. No one. So pay is absolutely important. For all the roles that you have in your organization, you should be paying a fair market value. You need to understand what the market value is, and then you need to decide where in that market value are you going to pay. For all of our small business employers, we suggest paying at at least the 50th percentile. If you've ever seen compensation studies, compensation structure, you know that they usually report out at a 25th, 50th, and 75th percentile. We do, we never recommend paying below the 50th percentile. If you need to pay below the 50th, you may not need the role or you may need to look at some other alternatives that you can do. So paying at least at the 50th percentile, and of course, from there, as you can pay higher, you should absolutely do that. But making sure that you have a good compensation strategy and that you are paying fairly for the role is the most important thing. It doesn't mean paying competitively.  You do not have to take your competitors and find out what they're paying, figure out what they're paying, and then match that or go above it. You have to be able to understand the entire package that you are offering. So yes, what do candidates value? They need pay, of course they do. They need to be able to pay their bills. But as long as you know that you are paying a fair market wage for the role the area the area that the employee lives, not necessarily the area that you are operating in, as long as you know that you are offering them a fair market wage, that you are, you have a mechanism for consistent cost of living increases as appropriate, and you know that you are not creating an environment where they are not able to even live on what you're paying them, then that's what you need to do in compensation. Do not think about what your bigger counterparts are doing. You can't match it. You're not going to be able to match it. And if you try to match it for this role or that role, then your compensation is going to be all over the place. That is not sustainable. So 50th percentile is our recommendation. That's the floor. That's the bare minimum. And then you go up from there as your budget allows. Um, and if you can't do that, if you can't do the 50th percentile, you may not need the role you need to look at something else. Okay, let's talk about what else they value. We always think of benefits, of course. We want to be competitive and pay and benefits. Benefits is another area. I don't think you have to match your competitors. Um, we inside this business, we have eight employees. We offer a Coursera which is a qualified spending, um, employee health reimbursement account, I think is what it's called. I'm not a benefits expert. Um, but that allows all of my employees to be reimbursed for medical expenses, not just premiums or co-pays, but also just visits to, uh, a pharmacy and cold medicine and those sorts of things. It was right for my business because all employees can participate whether they had benefits through a partner or not. Um, and budget-wise, I was able to set an amount that they could be reimbursed. It works. I didn't feel the need to have full robust medical dental vision plans, and I don't think depending on your size, you should either. Now, certainly, in that one to 500 range, as you increase, as you're into the hundreds, you should be able to afford some standard benefits. Um, even at the 30, 40, 50 range, you should start to be able to afford some standard benefits. But even smaller than that, I don't think you have to. And I think that you can get really creative in how you offer benefits and again, not looking at your larger counterparts and thinking that you're going to have to compete with that. And let me give you an example. My husband works for a very large multi-billion dollar firm, a retail firm, and they have thousands, tens of thousands. This is a global well-known name. If I said the name, you would know it. Um, and they have tens upon thousands of employees all over the the world. They have phenomenal benefits. They offer phenomenal benefits. And why? Because they have so many heads on those benefits. There's so many lives on those benefits that carriers give them wonderful plans, amazing plans. They make the company itself makes multiple billions of dollars a year, so they can afford to give a little bit more in the benefits. They can offer a little bit more um of a cost share. And there's no way that even if a small employer wanted to offer benefits, that we would ever get that rich of a benefit. We would never get the same offering to us that that size of a company is going to. So rather than beat your head against the wall and pay really big dollars for benefits that kind of stink anyway, get really, really creative around what can you offer. And if that's just a stipend, like an individual monthly benefit stipend that you pay in payroll, I think that's okay.  If it's something like a Coursera if it's um incremental benefits, we'll have clients who offer a medical plan, but no dental vision or dental vision are offered, but it's 100% paid by the employee. And then as they scale, as they get more profitable, as they have extra dollars, then they start to add more things. I think that's wonderful. Don't feel like you ever have to offer a full benefit package that you're much larger counterparts are offering because even if you offer it, the benefit is not going to be as rich. So don't bang your head up against the wall. So pay and benefits, do I think you need to have something? Yes. Do I think that you need to uh kill yourself trying to compete with the the much larger um outfits? No way. You're not, you're not going to. So stop trying. Let's think about the things that are beyond pay and benefits that candidates really find valuable. One of the things that I tell new employees as they onboard in my business is, look, I cannot compete with some of our much larger counterparts in pay and benefits. I know that um you know we are not offering at the top level of medical plans and all of those things and and that our pay, while I think very fair for the market that we're in and for the areas that we are in, um I know that there are competitors who pay more. I know that. I can't give you those things right now. What I know I can give you, what I would put my business against 50 others is the ability to learn things that you would have never otherwise had the ability to do. In our organization, we offer fractional human resources support. Here's what that means. We go into small employers, and depending on their size, we are either their entire HR team or we are the supplement to their HR team on a reduced number of hours per week. So anywhere between 12 and 30 hours, we are your HR support. In that, we are doing everything. So rather than basis business on scope, I base it on hours. And what that means is that employees who come to us and let's say they are generalists or business partners, payroll specialists, whatever they may be, they were in-house before, usually, handling maybe one area of human resources. Or even if they were a generalist, they were doing it in one organization with one set of personalities and one set of policies and rules and workflows, where they come here and now they are touching every area of HR. They are handling all areas for our clients. And they are doing it across 10, 12, 15 clients. Uh, they are doing it across 10, 12, 15 different personalities and groups of leaders that they have to navigate and use all their best soft skills. They are doing it inside all these different softwares. We come in and we work in the client software. So they're doing it in Paylocity and Paychex and ADP and Rippling and countless others. And so they come in and they learn so much that they may have never had the opportunity to do. Not only that, they learn how to navigate small employers at a very high level. They are they are navigating, again, using those soft skills that you may not get to hone in an organization where you're just kind of dealing with that organization or especially if you're just a generalist and maybe not considered at um the executive level, then you don't get to really hone those soft skills where you will here. In many small employers, most of our clients are the same. When you go into their organization because of the way they work, because of the way that people have to wear many hats, because of the way that um the business grows and is trying to scale and the things that they're trying to do, employees learn so much. I think it's harder to learn in a large organization. I think it's harder to learn when your role is often very specific, very dialed down to a certain set of skills. It's also usually very um rigid in the way that you can manage that workload, meaning that the job that you're stepping into in a large organization has been around for decades. And so there's processes and there's workflows that you just kind of step into rather than get to be creative and figure all that out on your own. In a small environment, you are oftentimes building from the ground up. You could be the first person that has ever been in that role. Which means you get to create it really and make it your own. And that's super exciting. And so one of the things that I think small employers have to lean into in the recruiting process is what are we going to teach you? What are you going to learn here that you cannot learn in other organizations? You will not learn it in a larger org. You might get better pay. You might get a better benefit. But you will not develop yourself at the same pace and in the same way that you're going to here. I know in my org, uh, with just eight employees, if I have somebody say, "Hey, I think that we should go try this," or "I think we should go do this," I don't care what their role is, I'll say, "Fantastic. Do you want to head that up? Do you do you want to start doing some research and work on that?" It could be anything. It can be completely outside of the realm of their job duties. But they have an idea. They want to offer that up. And they're interested in that area. It's something that's kind of piqued their interest. And they think that it could be beneficial to us. Wonderful. Go figure that out for me.  And that you're not going to get that elsewhere. You're not going to get that in larger organizations. So the biggest thing that I think small employers offer that large employers don't at that at the same level is learning opportunities. And I think that we have to lean hard into that in the recruiting process. The next thing that I think employees or candidates value that small employers can give them that large employers can't is purpose. Especially when you are in startup mode or you're still super small. And you are trying to scale somewhere. You are trying to get something. To have a small, scrappy team that's trying to build um this this business from absolutely nothing to profitability from absolutely nothing to um, you know, 100 employees, whatever it is, there are so much drive in that. And not even in just the building of the business, but sometimes the purpose behind the business. We have a lot of nonprofit clients. And we um hardly ever have an issue getting candidates for their recruiting pipeline. It's a if sometimes if it's a niche role, a really unique role, we'll struggle but people generally want to connect with a purpose. They want to feel like there is a purpose. And sometimes that's in the build of the business and the way that the business is scaling. And sometimes it's in the purpose of the business. What is the business doing? I remember several years ago, I was brought in by a client that was building a machine for radiation, cancer radiation. Um, and they were building something that was going to improve the way radiation was administered. This was a startup. They had just gotten their first round of series funding. Um, and they had just made the appropriate hires, the the right hires for that. And I was brought in to clean up a recruiting and onboarding process and build some of the basic infrastructures that they needed. This is back even when I was by myself. And I remember flying up to to um San Francisco and walking into the office. And the CEO, founder, had said to me, you know, I feel like we're not really you know, I want you to talk to people and just see how do they feel about the pay and benefits. We have the series funding, obviously. Um, you know, I've got dollars earmarked for payroll, but I just want to understand where people sit on things. And over the course of two days, as I was talking to people, um, about lots of different things, what I realized in all of them is that they were there because cancer had affected them. And they wanted to make a difference. And that was your scientist and your, um, engineers who were actually building the machine. And that was your marketing person. And it was your office manager. And it was people who were there not because they expected exceptional pay and benefits, but because they were connected to the purpose of the business. And they wanted to be inside of something that was going to change the way we potentially cured, and that's what they all believed, that over time maybe they could be part of something that potentially cured this disease that almost everybody is affected by. So depending on what your business does, you could have employees connect to a purpose either in the way that it's growing, the way that it's building, or in the actual service or product that the business is delivering. And so part of your recruiting process has to be talking about that purpose, has to be helping people connect to the desire for that purpose because we all want to feel like we are connected to something. The next value that candidates are really looking for, they find valuable in the recruiting process. This is going to be no surprise, but obviously controversial for people, is flexibility. Candidates want flexibility today. Obviously, there has been so much talk and so much debate about return-to-office plans and is RTO absolutely necessary? Does remote work, does it not work? Um, I don't want to get into all of that debate here on this episode, but what I want to say is I do think small employers are poised to offer more flexibility. They can have a little bit more grace in maybe working hours or office hours. Uh, we are a 100% remote environment. We have employees spread out all through California, one in the Midwest, uh, we do not have an office and, uh, employees can take their kids to school, they can go pick them up in the middle of the day when school gets out. I don't expect them to, um, figure out other arrangements from that. You work from home, go get your kid, bring your kid home, get them settled, get back on your computer. Uh, do I expect them to put in their hours and do the work that I want them to do? Yes.But do I also know that I built this business because I was laid off while on maternity leave and I did it for great flexibility with my child and I want to offer that to my employees? Yeah, yes. So go, go get your kid, go pick up your kid from school. And I know my employees value that. I know they appreciate the fact that they don't have to have this discussion about who's picking up from school or who's dropping off. That person who works remotely can do that. Take your kid, go pick them up. Oh, they they need to stay home sick. They can stay home sick with you and no, you don't have to take a sick day. If you can manage the work in them, fine. Um, then please do that. So again, just like the learning opportunities, am I going to be able to compete in a lot of areas with, uh, my much larger counterparts? No, but do I know I'm competitive in the flexibility space? Absolutely. It comes with cracks, right? I'm not promoting 100% remote all the time. We certainly are starting to identify how it, um, how it hurts or not really hurts, but I guess slows down the relationship building, the organic conversations, how sometimes it makes our projects and things move a little slower because we're remote. So certainly not saying that I'm not advocating for 100% remote. Uh, it's what I do and I think we'll stick with it, but I am mindful of the fact that there is a, uh, probably a huge benefit to a hybrid situation. What I'm saying is, and whatever your situation is, if it's remote, if it's hybrid, if it's in office, offer that time flexibility then. Maybe it's not a straight eight to five. Maybe employees can come in after dropping their kid off. Maybe they can leave and go get their kid or do something. Um, that offers that flexibility. It's much harder for them to get that in larger in your larger counterparts. So when you can offer them some flexibility to be able to manage their life, that's what people want to do. They want to be able to work in meaningful jobs that allow them to still manage their life. We use this term work-life balance and I don't know that it's ever a balance. I think there's, at different times in your life, there's always one that demands more. And I think you have to just flow through that. But I think that as employers, if we can give, especially in a small space, if we can give employees the flexibility within reason, and as long as they're not taking advantage, to manage their life while also working, let's do that. Let's offer that. And that can be a huge draw in the recruitment process. I know that for us, when we post a job, um, and put on there that it's 100% remote, we get hundreds, hundreds of applicants. And many of them are not qualified. Many of them are just looking for a remote job. They're looking for that flexibility. And so they they come and hope that that they're going to be able to do that here. And it is such a draw that I would say if you are a small employer and you are being very rigid in your hours, in your work setting, in your work location, and you're not allowing for any kind of flexibility in that, then that more than your pay, more than your benefits, is why you're not competing for talent. I'm going to give you one more value that I think candidates look for, um, even over, or at least that they find intriguing, even over something like pay and benefits. And that is decision-making and influence. In a small environment, you are much more likely to have direct influence over the things that are happening than you do in a much larger organization. I see this even in our clients who have, you know, in the hundreds of employees, those employees are still part of the departments. And because the departments are relatively small, they have more say. They have more decision-making power. They have more influence. Their input is requested. If we are going to roll out, and we certainly suggest this to all of our clients too, if you're going to roll out something that impacts all employees, get their feedback. Get their feedback before you roll it out. Get their feedback after you roll it out and have tested it. Rather than just do this top-down situation in a small employer, it's much easier to get input. It doesn't mean that everybody gets the final say or that everybody has to buy in. That's certainly not what I suggest. But it is a good idea to get feedback or input on things and make them feel like they are a part of the process rather than just the process as being spit out to them and they have to follow it. And it is, that is much more organic and that happens much easier in a small employer. And I think that employees, especially who have been in a big business space for a long time, could really be looking for where they can make an impact, where they can actually have some influence and some decision-making ability or at least input on it, um, in in that comes very easy in a in a small space. So those are the things that I think that candidates value and how we kind of incorporate some of that into the business. Um, but let me give you a few more ideas of things I think small employers can do to be competitive. And then we're going to talk about how to take all of that and translate it into the recruiting process so that you're getting candidates in the door. So the good news about recruitment strategies is that they are also often retention strategies. So you are kind of hitting two birds with one stone there where you are doing something to attract candidates, but that same thing also maybe keeps people in your business. And so I wanted to, I always, always get this question. And so I wanted to take the time in this episode to talk through low to no cost perks or benefits that you can offer and if you do offer, you should definitely include them in your recruitment process. Um, so let's talk about a couple of things that our clients do that we see go over really, really well. I believe that all businesses of all sizes should have some kind of recognition program. And depending on where you fall in the one to 500, depends on how robust and how structured that recognition program needs to be. So in a super small, I consider us a super small, we're under 10. Um, things like just some peer-to-peer recognition, uh, just we have, we use, uh, GChat and so just going in there whenever we can and shouting out an employee or if I get positive feedback from a client, I will go straight to GChat and make sure that I share that with everybody, tell them what the client said, who the employee was. Um, so your recognition program can be as small as just some peer-to-peer shout-outs or some leadership shout-outs. That stops starts from the top down. So um, if you're wondering how to start that, it's very simple. Just start doing it. Just have your leaders start doing it and encouraging others and it will, it will flow. Um, so peer-to-peer recognition in a small environment can be very, um, very simple. No cost. It takes five seconds, usually, to to shout out somebody. We will sometimes do just full appreciation days where, um, I'll put in the chat, you know, who do we appreciate today or what, who who do you want to shout out and and we will make sure that we are doing that just so they get that recognition. We celebrate birthdays, we celebrate anniversaries. That's really low-hanging fruit. It's really easy things to do that, um, are fine. They're, they're enough of a recognition program that because it's a small environment, that person even feels a little bit more special. If you can imagine shouting out a birthday in a room of 40 people versus a business of 4,000 when it's just an email or a chat, it's a bigger deal when you're in that smaller space. And so a peer-to-peer recognition, leadership to employee recognition, of course, but doing that publicly, anniversaries, birthdays, if they're okay, some people don't want to celebrate their birthday and that's their choice, but anniversaries, birthdays where you can celebrating those things, um, and making sure that you're just showing appreciation as often as possible. Some of our environments are stressful. They're really, really stressful. And saying a thank you, showing gratitude can help ease that stress a little bit. So what do I think employees, what's a low cost, no cost thing small employers can do? Um, that adds value. They can have a recognition program, more robust as you get larger. So as you have the budgets for these types of things, your recognition program can then include um gift cards and lunches and uh employee events and things like that. So as your business grows and you have more budget to be able to allot to that, then of course you add more to it. But at the very basic, and no matter how small you are, it's easy to do uh peer-to-peer just shout-outs, just appreciation for work that somebody is doing. Volunteer days.  So I don't know if this is because we're in California, but many of our clients have volunteer days and they always go over really, really well with employees. And this is where you give them four hours, eight hours, whatever, of PTO that they can go and volunteer. We actually see it two ways, two ways. Uh, some clients will just give four or eight hours of PTO and they will allow an employee to take off whenever they want to go and volunteer at something. Whatever, a volunteer place of their choosing. Or they will do group volunteer projects. So they will form committees and groups and let people volunteer to sign up to maybe go do habitat for humanity or around here. There's a lot of, of course, ocean cleanup, that sort of thing. So um, volunteer days, not something in in my big business life that I think we even had. Uh, maybe because we were so large and giving all of those people that time off might be difficult, but um, a lot of our small employers offer that and employees really seem to like it because it allows them to disconnect for a day, still get paid for it, and be able to go and be like they are contributing to something. So any of those types of days that you can give, volunteer days, mental health days, uh, I have many clients and I have the same philosophy. I've had many CEOs over the year come to me and say, "I can't pay at the top dollar. I can't offer the best benefits, but I can give time off." And I, I believe the same thing. We, for the last, for the first time, last year, shut down um, for the holidays, the week between Christmas and New Year's here in the States. We shut down and it was amazing. It was so nice for the entire team to be able to have that break and so volunteer days, times like that, extra holidays, um, we have many of our, our small clients offer all holidays, every holiday. If the bank would be closed, they are closed. And so rather than just your big six or eight or whatever the bigs are, um, they're offering all of them. Martin Luther King Day and Juneteenth and and Indigenous People's Day and all of the extra days that that people don't always give off or that that businesses don't always shut down for. We have many clients who do. They offer every single one because again, they feel like that time off is a way to add value to give people a break, to recognize we're really thankful for the work you're doing. We realize sometimes we ask you a lot. So we're going to give you the space to to breathe a little bit. Um, I think that's a huge value add and that's something that's really easy I get it that paying people for a closed day is a budget concern so you do have to do the math and see what you can afford even if you can give them a floating holiday. We give a floating holiday around their birthday. Um, a floating holiday, just one extra thing can make a difference in your overall value proposition that you are giving to employees. Two more um offerings that we see our clients delivering that employees really seem to like and those both fall into the stipend category. So we have a lot of clients who offer professional development stipends. Um, so that is where employees can go and take a class or a webinar or something. Some of them are uh as low as $250 per employee. Some of them are up to a thousand per employee. So stipends for professional development or just a budget for professional development that allows employees to go do something that they're interested in. Um, even if that's just, especially if they have something like continuing education that they need to do or certification that they have, then having a stipend where they can go and and do that can be super helpful. We also see stipends around remote work, like building a remote space. This happened mostly after COVID, but we do have a few clients who were in office before COVID, went remote, stayed remote, and then give stipends now to new employees to be able to build whatever their home office setup. They give a certain dollar amount, do with it what you want. Um, buy a desk, buy whatever, and and that's what you can have to to create your office. And people really enjoy that too, especially if they weren't working remote before and now they have to build an office. Uh, we see stipends around commuting. So helping with commuter benefits, which um is actually a tax benefit. You can, you can set up an actual program for commuter benefits and potentially have some tax savings there. But parking stipends or bus um public transportation if you're in a state that has that, a city that has that. Those kinds of stipends to help people with that commute, even just gas cards sometimes. Those little things I always used to be amazed at how thankful people would be for gas cards, food cards. And I certainly don't want to um make it sound that simple that it's just so easy to hand out a gas card and people are happy. That's obviously not what I'm saying. But um when it comes to what value are we giving, it's those little things every once in a while that I think makes a difference for people. I'll tell you one of my favorite perks, I guess, or it's like a random thing that I do for my team. And I think they would tell you they really like it. It's a company called Sugar Wish. We'll link them. Um, but it's a company called Sugar Wish. And they do boxes. So you can get a snack box, you can get um one that's candy or one that's popcorn. I think there's one that's wine. Um, I don't know. There's all different kinds of boxes. And so me as a leader, I go in and I pick what I want. I can pick a four box or a six box, meaning that's how many different varieties they get to choose. And then my employees get an email and it says they've been sugar-wished and they get to go and choose, do they want a popcorn box? Do they want a um, do they want a candy box? Do they want something else? I think one of them is even like succulents and candles. So they have a huge variety of stuff. And it allows every single employee to pick something different. They all don't have to get the same thing. They can all have something that's unique to them. I have employees who are vegan. And so it's hard to come up with one gift. Little things like that. Little companies like that that you can low dollar, I think one Sugar Wish, I want to say it's under $50. I'm pretty sure it's under $50. Um, so you can send those out. That kind of recognition, that kind of value add, it doesn't seem like a big deal. But it is when employees know you are a small employer with limited budgets. And you have stopped to think about them. You have offered something to them that recognizes them for the work they're doing. Um, that is on top of their pay and their benefits. And it is unique to your environment. It's not necessarily something that they're getting elsewhere. I think the key is to be really thoughtful with it. Um, we've all seen the jokes on, uh, Instagram or TikTok. I'm sure the company that recorded a billion dollars plus in earnings in Q1. So here's everybody's Apple. You know, to celebrate we're going to give everybody an Apple. Uh, let's not do that. Let's, let's be thoughtful about the things that we can do and let's let's not worry so much about the dollar amount of them, but well, if you're recording a billion dollars in earnings, we need to be thoughtful about the dollar amount. But if it's, if it's just this kind of general offering that you do, um, making sure that you are being thoughtful about it, I think is more important than dollar amount. Celebrating things, as I mentioned, like birthdays, anniversaries, we do, um, an anniversary bonus. And so people who have been here depending on how many years they get a bonus added to their paycheck. Little things like that that that for me as a small seven-figure business, it's not a budget busting. It's not going to break the bank. And it is shows them that I'm thinking about them and I care about them. And it, and because of the way we roll it out, and that's another piece of this, it's not just about sending a sugar wish. It's about sending a sugar wish and then saying, hey, it's a random Friday and I was just thinking about you all and how thankful I am that you're here with me and that you are doing this job. And that you are managing our clients who I know can be stress-inducing. Um, and that you're doing this while managing your kids and your life and it's, it's not often to me about the perk itself. It's the way that I communicate that perk the way that it is delivered that I think adds value and that small employer feel that is valuable to candidates and they would really want to come and work in an environment that feels like that. I compared working in a small employer to working in a small business in an earlier episode. Nope. I compared working in a small employer to living in a small town in an earlier episode. And I think that part of why people live love living in a small town is that camaraderie piece, right? You, you feel like people care about you and they know who you are and they want to help you and they want to, to develop with you. And you know, there's some nuance to that, of course, but I think that you have that in a small employer too where it's not so much about these big lavish offerings, but these smaller pieces of gratitude or this extra day off or this extra flexibility, this extra, uh, week that we're going to close that our large counterparts can't do. They can't close for that week because we're talking thousands of employees, but we can. Because it's really not that much of an extra burden on our budget. Uh, when you're doing those things, that's how you set yourself apart in the value that you are offering to candidates. Okay, so now that we've talked about why a candidate would choose a small employer over a large employer, we've talked about what are some things that you can do low cost, no cost, things that you can do to have an employee value proposition. This is what we give employees. Um, now we need to talk about how do you use that in the recruitment process? How does that work for you? And how is that going to help you attract talent? Well, the thing that you have to do is talk about it. You have to talk about it a lot. Employer branding is a term that we often think is associated only with larger organizations. They're going to have this huge, robust employer branding plan and social agenda and all of these things. And sure, they are. They should. Um, but so can you in a small employer. And so whether that be your website, whether that be anything you send out in the hiring process, even your job ads, the way that you are writing job ads and putting them out there, should highlight the values that you are giving to employees. The, the workplace experience that you are creating for them and the things that you are offering that they may not get from their larger counterparts. Now, am I suggesting that you go say we give employees $25 gift cards? No, maybe not point that out directly like that. But you can say that you have a recognition program that offers the type of, one of the things that I'm always surprised about is how many small employers do not have an about page or a careers page or something on their website that talks about the business, the purpose, the values, what it offers employees. If you are hiring, if you're not hiring, you don't need a careers page. If you're never hiring, you don't need a careers page, probably. Or if you're hiring, incrementally, maybe in the beginning, you may not need that. But if you are really trying to attract talent, you're going to want to have at a minimum a careers page on your website that talks about what employees can expect from you as an employer. What is the mission-driven focus? That they're going to see. What are the types of perks that might be unique to your organization? Like closing between Christmas and New Year's. What are the things that they can expect from you that they're going to get from you as an employer that could be unique from your much larger counterparts? And so you want to have this on careers page. You want to have it then reiterated in job ads throughout the recruitment process, throughout um the interview process, and the onboarding process. You want to make sure that you are continually driving home this is what we are offering you that is going to be different than anybody else. It's going to be different than any of our competitors. Um, and the more you do that, the more you are going to reiterate what you're offering, the more you are going to attract the right talent to you. We often spit out careers pages that are kind of bland. They just have a job board and they maybe have the benefits that we offer. But they don't really talk about what can the employee expect from you as an employer? What is a day in the life look like? What kind of, what do you believe about communication? What do you believe about learning? What about professional development? About influence? And decision-making? What, what are your thoughts on that? And how do employees experience that inside your organization? When you talk about those things, what happens is employees say, I want that type of environment. That's the type of environment I know that I'm going to thrive in. And do I need to take 5,000 less, 10,000 less than this person?  Or than this company is going to offer me? Maybe, but I'm going to be so much happier here. And if their budget allows for that, they're going to be so much happier. We had um a friend of ours recently who's going through an interview process with several companies. And it came down to two offers. He had two exact offers in terms of roles. So the role itself was the exact type of role, but the environments were very different. One was a much larger org. It was offering 20,000 dollars more in total comp. So not just in, not in base alone, but in total comp between a little bit extra base, better benefits. Um, bonus, uh, program that the way that theirs was set up, it was going to be about 20 grand in total comp. Then a much smaller org. So we're talking the the first org had, I think, 10,000 employees. And then the second one had about 300 and 75, if I remember correctly. So the $20,000 over here in total comp, but this uh smaller employer was hybrid. The large employer was five days in office with about an hour and a half commute in California. So hour and a half on a good day. The smaller company was remote, hybrid, two days a week in office, with about a similar commute, but only two days. It offered um professional development opportunities. In the interview process, they told him about all the things he was going to learn because he was the first person to ever have this type of role at their organization. And so he was going to be effectively building this from the ground up. And so long story short, he took the smaller org, the 20,000, uh, wasn't enough for him to want to commute five days a week to want to go into a large team where he wasn't going to be heard or valued. He was going to be given kind of a playbook of how to do his role rather than go into the smaller org where he was going to get to create everything from the ground up. So there is some immense value in what small employers can offer. The thing is we don't talk about it. We don't share it. And that's where employer branding really comes in, is thinking about on your careers page, at a minimum, on your job ads, at a minimum, you should be talking about what is the environment that you are going to ask a candidate to walk into. What are they getting with you that they're not going to get somewhere else? If they are building a remote role from the ground up, say that. If they are going to be wearing many hats, say that. Be honest about what they're going to be doing and how that could be, you know, it could be a little stressful to wear many hats, but you're also going to learn a lot and if that's something you're looking for, this is the place for you. So the way that you are going to compete overall with your larger counterparts is never ever in pay and benefits. It's always going to be in the value that you are driving as an employer and in their employee experience. That what you are giving them, how they feel about the work they're doing and how connected they are to it, how driven they are by it, and those little nuanced things like peer-to-peer recognition and a big celebrations for birthdays and anniversaries and and marriages and whatever it is that that you might celebrate. Those little things that add up over time that make you feel like you are a part of something the more that you can highlight those things and talk about them, the less struggle you are ever going to have to recruit the talent that you need. So as we wrap up here, let me give you some homework. If you are inside of a small employer, you are managing human resources or maybe you're just a leader, who says, hey, my company needs to think about this, then I'm going to give you some next steps. I'm going to give you some things that you can do to maybe start to think about how you are recruiting talent differently to really highlight what that value proposition that you offer is. And so that's the first piece of this. The first thing that I want you to do is come up with three unique um opportunities that you give employees that maybe some of your larger counterparts cannot. So three employee value propositions that come from your organization. I'm going to give you mine as an example. I mentioned most of these, but let me, let me tell you. The first one is the flexibility. So as I said, we are 100% remote. My employees can take their employee, their, they can take their employee school if they wanted to, but they probably wouldn't like it. They can take their children to school, pick them up, um, they can have that flexibility they need if there's doctor's appointments, if there's school plays. Do your thing, right? Go and and and do that. Just make sure you are getting your work done, putting your hours, but they're, there is that flexibility for them to be able to do those things. No commute ever. Uh, we get together a couple of times a year, but that's more of a fun thing. Uh, outside of that, they they work from home 100% of the time. The second thing in my business is my employee value proposition is what they learn. And I I talked about this, but the fact that they are doing human resources all-encompassing human resources across many, many clients. We do not niche down by the industry. Uh, only the size. So as long as you're willing to come here and we'll work with you, which means that we have um, you know, business partners in general. This could be working with 50 clients and one of them is a tech and one of them is a manufacturing and one of them is a retail and one of them is a nonprofit. And maybe work with all of them on the same day. And so they are balancing from industry to industry, personality to personality, HR need to HR need. And so the learning that comes with that is absolutely immense. And again, I will put that up against any in-house HR role that you are probably not learning at the pace and the amount that you are learning here. And then the third one, and this is big specifically for human resources. So if you are an HR professional who's maybe an HR department one or um, even part of a small HR team, is that we are taken seriously. As an HR, you can sometimes be overlooked. You cannot be taken seriously. You can be seen as a cost center. You don't have a voice. Nobody's listening to you. But because clients are particularly coming to us, paying us to handle their human resources, they are going to listen to us. And so that is a value. I haven't even thought about for a long time. I haven't even realized this is something that was unique to us. Um, but an employee, my own employee, started saying that that it was nice to come from an in-house HR role where they maybe aren't heard, maybe weren't valued. Come in and said, this environment where because clients are coming to us and they're paying us for our services, they actually hear us. They actually listen to us. They want us to be a partner. They want investment that they're making to be worth it. And so we get that voice um that you don't often get from in-house space. And so those are my big three. I have others, but those are my big three that I know I offered that my larger counterparts cannot do not offer. Um, and so you're going to do that same thing. You're going to sit down and think about, you can think about more, but at least what are your three? What are your big three that you know set you apart from other employers who are competing for the same talent? Once you have those, you know where they are, you are going to think about how can you incorporate this into your career stage, into your job ads. It could be a short tagline. Maybe there's just a a one or two sentence that you share. Um, maybe it's a more descriptive. Maybe you you talk about it a little bit more thoroughly on a career stage or even inside your job ad. Hard nonprofits have really great job ads where they share um the mission and the vision and the drive behind the nonprofit, the purpose. And then they will kind of have this tag around the employee experience and what they can expect. And um, it really, really highlights, I think, how well you can write content, career-related content that speaks to not the great pay and benefit and virtue you offer, but the purpose that you're giving people, the value that they are going to experience from an emotional standpoint, for working inside your organization. So once you have your your big three or how manyever you want to do, then you want to think about how do you incorporate that into careers pages, job ads. It doesn't have to be overnight. It could be slowly over time. Maybe you're just sending a sentence here and there or a paragraph here and there. But doing something to start to talk about the value that you deliver to employees that has nothing to do necessarily with pay benefits and perks. You should talk about that. You should definitely say that you offer those things, whatever it is that you do offer. But I think that employees are going to, or candidates are going to resonate way more with the experience that they can potentially have with you that has nothing to do with those other things. And then the third piece of homework I have for you is to start thinking about what are some low-cost things you can do to um add to your employees. Could you um if you don't have a recognition program or a process, could you start with them? If you don't have a lot of time off offerings, is there anything maybe to increase that? Is there any way to increase flexibility? What what is a low to no cost perk that you could add a great way to figure this out is to ask your employees um when I was starting to think about benefits, I asked the employees that I had at the time, and that's why we went down the path that we did of not offering medical dental vision, but offering this to Sarah because I had so many employees saying on my on my spouse's benefits and they're much better benefits than what we could get. I wouldn't take ours anyway. So why would I go offer something that half my employees are not going to take? So you could ask employees like what is a perk if you could have a magic trick for a day um what's a perk that you think would be really helpful to you. And of course you're going to get some answers that you can't do, but that's okay. You're just looking for ideas um and some of them could be simple that will just blow your mind that you're like that's all I need to do to make you feel valued or to make you feel like I'm adding to your life um that's easy. So good idea to ask them but but kind of think about the the overall perks that you're offering um what is it do you feel that gets balanced? Do you feel like it's fair? Do you feel like it's competitive for the space that you're in? We talked about compensation and how you need to be offering a fair market wage. Same thing with perks. I do think that you have to uh understand your industry and what is typically offered, not by the giants, but by people who are uh in the same space as you, the same size or on the same revenue uh I always remind people look we are this amount of employees, this amount of revenue. I think we're really good for that. We're really good for that size. Are we great for um you know a thousand person team that's doing a hundred million dollars? Of course not. But am I am I really good for the size and the revenue that I'm at? I think that's the way that we're pretty competitive. So that's what you need to to keep in mind is is you're not competing against the giants. You can't. You are just competing against the same space that you're in. And when you're looking at one to five hundred, it's really small. Don't don't even try to compare yourself to one to five hundred. If you are less than 20, compare yourself less than than 20. If you're less than a hundred, compare yourself less than a hundred. Make sure you're you're staying really close so that you know what is uh being offered and what are some things maybe some easy low to no cost perks you can add that in lieu of paying benefits might make somebody feel valued and might make somebody want to be in your environment or where you're much larger counterparts. As I said, the good news about this is that recruitment strategies can also be retention strategies. So all of the things that we talked about today are things that are also going to help employees stay and one of the biggest burdens in a small employer is when you have employees leave, is so hard to have um on a small team somebody gone and others have to fill in that space and then to go through the hiring process again and the onboarding process. So the things that you do on the front end to try to recruit and attract talent um a lot of those carry over and help to retain and maintain the talent that you have as well. So by doing just a few simple exercises here to really kind of being thoughtful about what you're offering, you are building two birds with one stone.