Succeed by Knowing Your Team

Episode 77

In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, understanding the goals and motivations of employees is more crucial than ever. Many of our businesses are faced with automation and Ai (artificial intelligence). As commercial cleaning services continue to grapple with those challenges, we’re still faced with workforce management. To our friends in Human Resources, we understand the emphasis on human capital remains paramount. Despite the rise of AI and automated technologies, the essence of many businesses still revolves around people.

Success is Based on Understanding

One of the key insights from this discussion is the multifaceted nature of managing a team. Employees come to each of our businesses with diverse backgrounds, aspirations, and personalities. All of these play a role in how they perform and engage with their roles, fellow employees and our clients. Historically, many cleaning jobs were part-time positions taken to supplement income. However, recent trends, especially post-COVID, indicate a shift towards full-time positions. It’s been my experience that more employees than ever are viewing these roles as long-term careers. This shift necessitates a deeper understanding of each employee’s personal and professional goals to foster a more engaged and stable workforce.

Ai Tools for Human Understanding

One of my business contacts has developed this personality profiler to help their clients. This platform is used to help better understand current employees and applicants. Frankly, our experience in implementing this personality assessments has been very positive. It helped us by aligning employees with roles that suit their innate strengths. For instance, identifying a “persuader” for sales roles or a “taskmaster” for operations can significantly enhance organizational efficiency. This approach not only optimizes job performance but also reduces turnover by ensuring employees are placed in roles that match their natural inclinations. Happier employees remain engaged and employed longer!

Moreover, understanding employee motivations goes beyond mere job placement. It involves recognizing what drives the individual. For some it’s career advancement. For others its educational opportunities, or work-life balance. By tailoring our available job opportunities to meet these motivations, our businesses can create a more fulfilling work environment. This personalized approach not only boosts morale but also encourages employees to invest more in their work and the company’s success.

Success with Strategy & Tactics

For businesses looking to adopt similar strategies, starting with free personality profiling tools can be an effective first step. These tools provide valuable insights into team dynamics without the need for significant initial investment. As companies become more familiar with the benefits of such profiling, they can consider more comprehensive solutions to further refine their employee engagement strategies. Ultimately, understanding and aligning with employee goals is a powerful way to cultivate a thriving and resilient workforce in any industry. Click the link below for a free test drive of the profiler. If you have additional questions, feel free to contact me.

 

 

This Week’s Podcast transcript can be found below.

 

00:08 Ray

Joel?

 

00:09 Joel

Yes, Ray.

 

00:10 Ray

Completion of this business and cleaning services in general is so reliant on staff.

 

00:16 Joel

Staff, people, human beings. Yes.

 

00:21 Ray

I realize that automation has taken hold in many areas. But there are some places that we are still decades away from that being remotely possible.

 

00:30 Joel

Yes. I laugh when sometimes people tell me that AI is going to help me make more money with my cleaning business. And I ask them, “Well, how is AI going to help me clean a toilet?” And then it’s crickets. I understand where in the business. But we already run lean and mean in a lot of areas. But it still comes down to people.

 

00:51 Ray

But the piece you’re going to share does involve AI.

 

00:54 Joel

It does, and it’s very interesting. So, part of running a business with employees, it’s multifaceted. Anybody who has ever dealt with directing other people knows that people are very intricate. They all have different passions. They have different goals in life, they have different reasons why they maybe take a cleaning job. Years ago, a lot of these jobs were part time and people would come in because they just needed to make a little extra money because they were a young family and they just needed a little bit more because they had some children. Or maybe their children were a little older and getting ready to go to college and they wanted to have a little bit more money for that or saving for a car. Where today more and more people are taking them as careers. I noticed in my own company that since COVID more people want full time positions, not willing to take part time positions. But then it’s getting to know that person. You have 30, 40, 100, 200 people working for you. What are they all about? Everybody has different goals, everybody has different ideas, everybody has different values. Everybody’s personality is different.

 

01:58 Joel

One of the things I’ve recently been introduced to is a personality profiler. And we will put that link down in the lower portion of this podcast because anybody can take that. Take the test run of finding out what your personality is on me. That link is free.

 

02:16 Ray

Okay.

 

02:16 Joel

And they can find out what their personality profile is. But what if you learned it for everybody in your organization? I’ve had most of my organization has taken to this point. And it helps you determine what personality type works best for certain job types. So, if we look at my management team, when I took it, my personality is a “persuader”. I’m the face of the business. I’m out there. I’m developing relationships and, and I’m looking for the sales and that’s part of my job responsibilities. And a persuader is a person, their superpowers to get people to make decisions. I’m not trying to force somebody into a sale. I just want a yes or a no. Because if I hear no, I may say in my back of my mind, okay, that’s not. Now, I can retouch them at a later date. But I’m not going to waste my time keeping following up with them when they got a no.

 

03:06 Ray

Well, you’re not going to waste your time, and you don’t want to waste their time either.

 

03:09 Joel

Correct. Now, my operations manager is a “taskmaster”. Wow. What better thing as your operations manager than have a taskmaster setting, again, their superpowers? Not a bad thing. It’s a superpower, is setting up the jobs in a certain specific way. And okay, here’s the beginning, here’s the end. This is the tasks that have to be done to get the result that you need. Oh, there’s a problem. Let’s look at the tasks that we have set up. Where do we need to make the change in order to get the results that we’re looking for? She’s perfect at it. Oh, and then we have our night managers. Every one of our night managers taking it is all a “thinker”. Well, what do you have to do on your feet when we’re typically doing the work after hours? It’s not like you can roll up and get commercial toilet paper if you’re out at the local grocery store, corner store. Because it’s not going to fit the dispenser or the paper towels. So, you need somebody who can think outside the box and get the results that you need. So just in my own little world, this is what we have developed and we know because people take it.

 

So our frontline employees that have a taskmaster mentality, we know the types of jobs are going to be better at long run. The thinkers, we know where they can go as we grow. They can be a site supervisor. They can be an area manager. Oh, we have chameleons. Well, that’s our admin piece. Why? Because they’re dealing with the public. They’re dealing with complaint phone calls or dealing with people that are having problems accessing the website information, trying to find our location, dealing with customers that have a problem, managers coming at them with different problems or different things that they need. So they need to have this type of personality because they’re dealing with so many different people. You couldn’t put a taskmaster in a job that needed a chameleon. It’s never going to work.

 

Ray

They’d be utterly Frustrated.

 

Joel

Frustrated, angry, and probably quit. So, what’s one of our biggest problems in this industry? High turnover. So, if we know the personality that works best with the job type and we can put that person in the job, we now have a happier person. But not only that, now we find out what motivates that person.

 

05:20 Joel

Because everybody’s motivated by something else. Some want education, some want vacation, some want free freedom, some want job opportunities and advancements. So, this is where, when you’re doing your normal meetings with people, you start finding out about that individual. And you start building programs that are going to help enhance their livelihood and their personal goals by having the right programs in place to help motivate them.

 

05:45 Ray

Okay, so for our listener who is building their staff, large or small, being able to dip their toe into this profiler.

 

05:53 Joel

Yes.

 

05:53 Ray

To help them understand who their team is.

 

05:56 Joel

Yes.

 

05:56 Ray

That freebie is a nice way to get in. Is there another option for them if they are happy with what they see and they would like deeper information?

 

06:04 Joel

Absolutely. Start out by contacting me. I get you in contact with the developer, that software and you can purchase that own software for use in your own business. Yes. There’s a monthly fee to it. But you can start out by using mine. That’s posted for free. It’ll be emailed to you, you’ll see yours. Any of your employees that you have go through it, it’ll go to whatever email that they put in. They’ll see the results. The end result is, is that if, if you have an open relationship with, with your staff, they’re going to share that information with you so you know where they are. And what better way to build your company and build it the right way by having the right people in the right places to help grow your company. Once we started doing this and realized we had the people in the right space, we grew substantially in one month. Because we, you know, you’re not micromanaging. You’re allowing people to use their superpowers and what they do best to help grow your company because now you have that trust in the individual because they have the right personality to handle the job that they’re in.

 

07:04 Ray

And for our listener, Joel and I have both shared the free version and used it ourselves. There is no personally sensitive information. Very easy to use, a very quick piece.

 

07:14 Joel

It’s like 18 questions and it’s yes or no and frighteningly accurate. And it takes three minutes to do the whole test from start to end. And that’s if you really think about it.

 

07:26 Ray

So, link in the description below. Feel free to contact Joel for additional information. Joel, I can’t wait to see how this helps our listeners grow.

 

07:34 Joel

Me either, because I’m excited, because I see what it’s done for my organization.

 

07:38 Ray

Thank you, Joel.

 

07:39 Joel

You’re welcome.