Hi, I'm Britney Saunders, and welcome to today's bonus episode of Big Business. I have so much to say about business, so how fitting for me to have a bonus episode every single week. In these episodes, I'll be answering questions submitted directly from you guys in my Big Business DMS. I'll also be talking about other random topics or perhaps delving further into topics from my main episodes. And as I always say, time is money, so let's get straight
into answering these questions. Question one, how do you get your staff to give a fuck about your business as much as you or really just enough?
In general? I feel like I did touch on this.
If I had to put it in a nutshell, I would never expect my staff to care about my business as much as I do, because that's not their job.
That's not what they're getting paid for.
If they are going to be as equally as passionate about fate as me, great, I'm going to take that. But I would never expect them to be on the same level as me, because when you're a business owner, you're a freak, like it's your life. I don't have a life outside of fate. Whereas my employees definitely do. But again, I think getting your staff to give a fuck about your business all comes down to that company culture. You want to give them a job that they enjoy doing.
You want to set them up in an environment that they enjoy working in. I feel like that's on you as a business owner to set that environment, set that company culture, and from that you are going to see staff that are going to enjoy what they're doing. They're going to want to do the work, They're going to be motivated. They've got amazing coworkers. I feel like staff enjoying their job and wanting to work there is one hundred percent on the owner. Next question is a great one.
Do you have a final say on every hire? No?
I used to.
I used to do every single hire in the business, But I've gotten a little bit busy and we've got a lot of managers now in every single area of our business. So all managers, depending on what area they are in in the business, they do the hiring. So our store managers hire out their casuals, our office team we have people in the office that do the hiring.
So I no longer have the final say, which is a very scary thing, especially to go from starting this myself and hiring every single person to now not having any part to do with the interview process and I'm just meeting that person as they walk through the door. Like it's scary. It's like, oh my god, what if this doesn't work out? But again, you just have to put your trust into your team and let go of things. As a business owner, how long is your training and
onboarding process? I think it depends on the area of the business that someone has been hired in. We have a bit of a structure with how our interviews work. During covid started doing the first round of interviews on Zoom or Google Meet or whatever, and we've kept it that way. So we shortlist all of our applications. We send out a questionnaire first on this website called jotform. If you don't know what that is, it's great. You can just create any form and have people feel it out.
So we send out a jotform for shortlisted applicants because we like to see if people can give us written answers, Because we always say if someone can't give us a written answer, then we're not even gonna bother wasting our time. Interviewing them and we're looking you know, it's good and the questionnaire is really simple. By the way, it might just be like five questions. It might be why do you want to work at Fate? You know, whatever the
questions are. We change them up for each role. And if someone's writing back to us and they say I just want a job like then maybe we're not going to waste our time then doing the next interview, So that's one thing that we do. We then have the Zoom or Google interviews, and then the third round will be a face to face interviews, so there's essentially three parts of our interviews. There might even be a physical trial element of the job, just depending on what it is.
If they're going to be working with our customers, we might get them in for a trial just to make sure that they can interact with our customers. But all in all, how long is it a good month?
I'd say, but it depends on the role.
Some are more easy and people can get straight in, but others we will spend a really long time hiring for For me personally, I hate when a business or an employer gets you to like have to do like a written answer or some of them, especially when you're in media, get you do like essays, oh no, we're not doing any of that. I would hate that too. The reason why I get that it's annoying. But the reason why we do it is because we never used
to do that. So like we would short list people on Seek, which is where we put all of our ads, and then we'd book them all in for that first Zoom interview. But then you'd waste your time with so many people on these calls who clearly just they've just applied just cause like you know, they don't. And whereas with us especially, we're always looking for people that are like passionate about the brand.
And then you jump on this Zoom call.
You've set up a time, like everyone's getting paid to be on the call, and it's like, so tell us a bit about yourself and why you think you'd be a great fit for Faith, and they're like, oh, I don't know, like and they haven't done their research. So we've found by sending out that questionair mind you it's only tiny. It might even be like some the questions
in what three words would your friends describe you? Like, it's just little things like that because we just find it weeds out those people that especially have just like some people just apply for jobs, like they don't even look at what they're applying for. So as annoying as it is, Xander, we do it so that we save our time in the future. I'm going to make you feel out a survey for this podcast. Another one, how do you manage your resignation process? What's your policy around this?
I feel like this is a tricky question because it depends on the situation. It depends on the employment type. It also depends on the employee's contract, because everyone has a contract. But for like our full time roles, for example, it's pretty standard, like we just ask that they give their two weeks notice or whatever, and then we try our best to you know, have a handover happen in
that two week period. But it's always really tricky and it's dependent on the situation, especially if it's someone resigning that I guess hasn't been the best fit for the company or business. Like there's been instances where I'm like, like, thank you for letting us know, and like you don't need to come in for the two week periods. So it's totally dependent on the situation. Okay, I've got two more questions. Do you still have that sick feeling when you know you have to fire someone? Yes, I get
that sick feeling. It's not often put on me to do the firing because we do have so many managers now within our business. I've kind of gotten out of it, but if our managers do need support in that, of course I'm going to be there. But I've even had to hand out warning letters when people have done stuff that's like significantly you know, bad, and I get that sick feeling. Like I don't think it ever goes away.
You definitely learn to become better at it and you know that this is for the best and that's what you have to tell yourself. But I still like psych myself out before I know I'm going to have that one on one with someone, because you know, when you're handing out a warning letter, you've got to give them like twenty four hours notice and give them the option to have a support person there with them if they want touch would no one ever has, because I'd be
really awkward. But I don't think it ever so it gets easier. You just learn to handle it better, and it does make you feel sick. And I always say to my staff as well, like when they first come on board with us, like we're very open with our employees, and we say like we never want to have to do things like that. We never want to have to hand out a warning letter. And even when I've given them to stuff, I say, I don't want to be doing this, but I kind of have no choice, Like
this sucks for both of us. I never want to freaking do that, but it's just part of it. And the last question, red flags to look out for when hiring. There's so many, And we were just chatting here in the studio and we were saying, when you meet someone in your interviewing them, I feel like you know immediately if they're a yes or and no. It's like it's
a first impression, and first impressions are absolutely everything. But I think I'll save that for a future episode and we can run through the red flags to look out for when hiring. And you want to know what the scary thing is about that people's red flags can come
out later. People's red flags can come out later. And I've experienced that as well, all right, So that is all the time that we have for today's bonus Big Business episode and if you want to have your say on a bonus episode, if you want to ask me a question, be sure to slide into my DMS. Just look me up on Insta Big Business Podcast and I'll be back on Monday with my next main episode