Effective Human Resource Management

In this week’s The Faces of Business episode, our guest speaker was Todd Russell. Todd is a Professional Employer Consultant at Oasis Outsourcing.  Todd helps companies better manage their human resources with fractional human resources management professionals, payroll processing and other human resources services. We discuss effective human resources management practices Todd sees companies using to stay current with increasing regulations and to attract and retain the talent needed to run successful businesses. 

In this The Faces of Business episode, our guest was Todd Russell. Todd is a Professional Employer Consultant at Oasis Outsourcing.  Todd helps companies better manage their human resources with fractional human resources professionals, payroll processing and other human resources services. We discuss some of the effective human resources management practices Todd sees companies using to stay current with increasing regulations and to attract and retain the talent needed to run successful businesses.

The conversation of the episode began with Damon introducing Todd to the show. After this, Damon asked Todd about the current employment market and its dynamics today. To this, Todd said that initially, it was not as extensive as it is these days.

He also said that the companies that are hiring today, can pay incredible hourly wages and they are doing that. Todd also said that in today’s workforce, all they want is a good culture to practice their workings in.

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Moving on, Damon asked Todd about what made him get into helping people with payrolls. To this, Todd said that he has spent around 7-8 years in large corporations and also worked with small and medium-sized businesses.

According to Todd, he likes working with small businesses because he knows that when they start a business, they’re passionate about a service or product. But, once their business gets a bit successful, they have to face the bitter truth of hiring and keeping people in the company. This is where, Todd comes in to make their business more interesting and fun, all the while working on them in their own capacity.

After this, Todd elaborated on effective human resource management. He said that in order to establish effective human resource management, one has to establish the company culture according to what fits best in a company.

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Further, Damon asked Todd to share why he got into this business of helping people his way. To this, Todd said that when he was in his twenties, he heard a Zig Ziglar quote that if you help enough people get what they want, eventually you get what you want as well.

This is what led him to work for his cause by empowering others with effective human resource management. After this, Damon asked Todd about the increasing complexities in the job market and how are they affecting people these days.

Answering this, Todd said that a lot of things from HR to simpler tasks in a company were all tech-based. This is why Todd said that we have to mitigate a few things to keep things moving and to encourage effective human resource management.

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The conversation ended with Damon thanking Todd for his presence.

Get the most value for your business by understanding the process and preparing for the sale with information here on our Selling a Business page.

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Exit Your Way® provides a structured process and skilled resources to grow business value and allow business owners to leave with 2X+ more money when they are ready.

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52:50

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, company, employees, talking, business, hr, hire, day, books, phenomenal, culture, compliance, years, payroll, fractional, person, linkedin, business owner, ride, hr professional

SPEAKERS

Todd Russell, Damon Pistulka

 

Damon Pistulka  00:04

All right, everyone, welcome once again to the faces of business. I’m your host, Damon Pistulka. And I am very excited for my guests here today. I’ve got Todd Russell, from away aces of paychecks company. We’re gonna be talking about effective human resources management. And I think this is something that’s on a lot of people’s minds today. Todd.

 

Todd Russell  00:27

Yeah, definitely. Most, most people I talk to this is hrs biggest point of contention for them right now.

 

Damon Pistulka  00:35

Yeah. Well, you know, with a great resignation, I think I think this this has been a quite a shift. I mean, how long? We’ll get into your background a little bit before this. But after this, but you know, how long has it really been since there’s been an employee market like it is today?

 

Todd Russell  00:56

Wow. That’s, that’s a good question. That was the build back after 2008. For the tech sector, I think was probably you know, 2009 2010. But I don’t think it was even like, yeah, like it was right now. So. Yeah, I’d say, I don’t think we’ve seen anything like this. Yeah, we’re just so open for employees right now.

 

Damon Pistulka  01:25

Yeah, yeah, that’s for sure. And we got Gary Gary’s on here asking, How do I get into the event? Well, Gary, if you go to my profile on LinkedIn, you’ll see it live there. And then you can you can watch it right there. If you just go to mine on LinkedIn. Want to say hi, Michael Connors here today. Hey, Mike, how you doing? How Chicago? So? I know, I think because you just think about it. And it is it is a universal. Even when you talk in the manufacturing companies and anyplace else, where they’re their supply chain problems, they can’t get everything. They still can’t hire people enough. Again, not enough. Yeah.

 

Todd Russell  01:59

No, and it’s crazy. I mean, the companies that can hire, they’re paying incredible, yes, hourly wages to these guys. I met with a business owner give a day, He’s unique. He owns two restaurants. He’s He’s not having to pay, like there’s a restaurant right next to his, I would consider them both fast food.

But he’s paying about two to $3 less per hour than this competitor in the parking lot is. But the reason he can do that is because of the culture he has at his business. And they’re one of the few companies I’ve seen out there like that. But culture definitely makes a difference. People want to work somewhere where they are appreciated. And they feel like they’re part of a team. Right? So that makes a huge difference. But, man, other than that, I you know, looking across the parking lot fast food place hiring for 18 $19 an hour. That’s pretty high.

 

Damon Pistulka  03:04

Yeah, it is it is. And it was the same. Same thing here. You know, in Seattle, I know that it’s it’s, you know, we’ve got different minimums in the in the city and things like that, but you know, it is it’s it’s 20 bucks an hour for just about anything anymore. And that that doesn’t seem to be enough to hire people. And it’s there’s a lot of different reasons for it. But one of the things that, that you talked about culture and younger people, millennials, Gen Z, I was just I just heard something today that earlier. I was reading this morning, actually, it said that, you know, millennials are the biggest population group ever to hit our labor pool.

Since the baby boomers. Yeah. And, and I didn’t, I didn’t actually realize that till a few years ago, when I looked at it. I’m like, Wow, this millennial bubble is really, it’s quite significant. And then when you think about the things that they care about, that was what they were talking about, they’re talking about the fact they care about, they want to work for someplace that, hey, they’ve got a little bit different work life balance and working for a cause and be part of something bigger. And you talk about culture that really fits in there. Yeah, for

 

Todd Russell  04:17

sure. And, you know, you saw in the tech industry over the last What, like 10 years ago and stuff, it was really popular, do you have the pool table and, and soda fountains or whatever, and companies that had, you know, people coming in and providing fresh fruit every day and stocking the fridges. And now I think there’s still some of that, but I think really, I mean, people are gearing more towards where’s the real value? Like, is there a team here that I want to work with that are supporting me and helping me? And are we all working towards a cause that we can get behind? And I think that’s a big part of business today for sure.

 

Damon Pistulka  05:00

Is it you? That’s That’s funny, you bring it up my daughter very first job out of college, he’s been out five or six years now first job out of college, went to work for a place that did exactly what you’re talking about. They had outings they had, you know, Friday afternoon food bars they had, I think they even had a beer tap. So after five one day, they could have beer in the, you know, beer to the office, whatever the heck it was. But it was a horrible place

 

Todd Russell  05:29

to work. Well, and, you know, surprisingly, a lot of businesses in the past that I’ve had a lot of those things like that. It’s because their culture really was horrible. But they were trying to cover it up with with all these things, right. So the companies that really take an interest in and focus on building the right culture with a purpose. Those are the companies that really like the one I was telling you about earlier here. You know, he didn’t have to pay two or $3 More an hour for people. People come there through referrals, because people love working with him. So yeah, culture is huge.

 

Damon Pistulka  06:13

That’s, that’s great. That’s cool, because that’s a great example of how, and he probably doesn’t have nearly the turnover that other people do as well.

 

Todd Russell  06:21

No, he has 250 employees right now. He is doing phenomenal. His turnovers are really low. And yeah, people waiting to be interviewed when when there’s an open position.

 

Damon Pistulka  06:36

Yeah, yeah. Mike, Mike says something here. He said, That’s a good, that’s a good point about the cover up because it is I mean, some of these companies, I mean, you look at and and I’ll just keep my my daughter, for example. Yeah. So she, she moved to another company. Now this is this is an engineering firm, and old engineering firm. They are way more traditional. But they did have a good culture. It was more, you know, we’re here to do really good work, we’re doing this and they didn’t have some of those frills.

They did other things that were nice for their employees and developed a more culture based around, you know, we’re going to perform well, we’re going to work together, we’re going to, you know, do what we need to do. She enjoyed that a heck of a lot more, and made a lot more money. Yeah, you know, so it’s, it really isn’t a good culture doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to you’re going to give up anything really as an

 

Todd Russell  07:38

employee? Yeah, I would say it’s the opposite, right? Yeah. If a business owner really does understand the culture, and the culture drives business, right, because once you get the right employees, if you’re not having to babysit your employees, because they love what they’re doing, that’s going to show to your clients. Right. And so that’s going to come through, it helps them be a lot more productive. And the bottom line seems to increase, right.

 

Damon Pistulka  08:04

Yeah. Yeah. That’s a great point. So Todd, let’s talk a little bit about your background. How did you get into helping people with payroll? Yeah. Virtual virtual event? Well, your your work? You know, what, what led you into doing this?

 

Todd Russell  08:23

Yeah, great question. My background has always been in technology. I spent time in telecom, started off selling software and computer hardware. And so I’ve always had that small to medium sized client base. And I spent probably seven or eight years in large corporations, and some of the largest out there, work some large companies, and had a good time. We had some success through that. But my passion was really working with the small to medium sized businesses.

Those are people who are, you know, they’re starting a business because they’re passionate about a project or a service. And they start seeing success, they start hiring people. And then pretty soon before you know it, they’re focusing on HR, legal issues, payroll, taxes, all these different things, workers comp, and then benefits for the employee, and then worry about the culture for the employees. They get into where business isn’t fun anymore for him, and they get it almost. And so that’s, you know, when I saw that a lot in my other businesses that I was working with small to medium sized businesses.

And, and that’s just, it made that passion. So every time I went in, and I was sewing, for example, a hardware or software piece, you know, to help them with their company or telecoms. I always wanted to know, tell me, what keeps you up at night? Tell me, you know, what is it that and I’m talking 20 years ago, 15 years ago, boy If that you if you could change, what would it be? And finding out what that was, and then trying to make that connection for him? Yeah, no, even if it didn’t have anything to do with me. And so fast forward, I worked for a company here locally.

And was trying to actually figure out what I wanted to do next, after I exited that company, and a friend of mine kept pushing me and said, hey, you need to come work at this company. He was older in the company went down, finally talk to him. He hit me on the right day. And it made sense. And that’s been four years ago. And it’s been great. It’s been phenomenal. Absolutely. I mean, I mentioned this to you earlier, but it’s, this is the best company I’ve ever worked for, from an employee standpoint. paychecks and Oasis have been phenomenal. But that’s, that’s my background, really on working with a lot of small to medium sized businesses and passion.

 

Damon Pistulka  11:00

Cool. Well, you you mentioned, you’d like to help people find solutions, even if it’s not you. And I think that shows through, you do a bit of a you do quite a bit of networking, you facilitate some networking groups they’re in, in the Salt Lake City area, talk about that, and your passion around, you know, putting people together, helping connect dots.

 

Todd Russell  11:22

So, in my 20s, which was a long time ago, I had a Zig Ziglar course that I was listening to, and, and one of his sayings, right? If you help enough people get what they want, eventually get what you want. And that kind of stuck with me, I’ve always had that kind of personality. And so I’ve always been one to have a group of people that I know, if somebody needs an attorney for business, I know who to send them to.

If somebody needs, you know, marketing, or whatever that might be, I’ve got an expert than I can put in front of them that I know. And I trust. Yeah. And so during the past, I had a group here in town, we had about 22 companies, and I put their logos, their name, their phone number, their email address, and a short paragraph about their company and what they did, and 22 of those on the back of a piece of paper.

So every time I would meet with a business owner, if they brought up anything on that list. Yeah, that was even remotely close, right? Like that was a pain. I’d give that to him and say here, let me save you some time. Any of these people on here, I’m willing to give you a personal introduction to and help you out with, there are people that I trust, and kind of build that out for him. But that’s just always been a passion of mine. So the networking side of it. There’s a lot of great networking groups out there. Personally, for me, I’ve got one group, that’s phenomenal that I attend here in Salt Lake City.

And then I’ve got my own that I that I get together with you’re part of we do you know, every other week, we get together for an hour talk business, talk about how we can help each other. And then on my personal side of it, I make it a goal to reach out to five people in my network on LinkedIn that I haven’t talked to face to face that I maybe don’t know as well as I should, and reach out to them and have phone calls. So I sometimes takes two weeks to get them on their calendar. But I go through that and just try to reach out and say, Hey, I just want to talk to 15 minutes. Let’s get to know each other. And if there’s anything I can do to help you, I want to know what that is. So

 

Damon Pistulka  13:35

cool. So doing all of this networking, what are some of the things that you said, Wow, I never really thought that this would answer that.

 

Todd Russell  13:52

Well, I, I love that I have, I feel like I have a great network nationwide. Even though most of my work has been here in Utah, I spent four years working nationwide and built out my network a little bit that way. But honestly, over the last four years, I’ve been able to build out a great network of people that when I when I connect with them, I set up a 15 minute phone call. We have a short call, I get to know who they are, what they do. And one thing I can do to help them you know what, what does that look like for might be had thought about doing a custom banner on your LinkedIn profile? Yeah, let me help you on that.

I’ll send you one or whatever. Yeah, walking through something simple like that. So I don’t know, I guess it would be just meeting so many people. I love that aspect of it. I never would have put myself you know, 25 years ago, I wouldn’t have looked at me and said, Yeah, I’m gonna go meet people. But yeah, I don’t know if that answers your question.

 

Damon Pistulka  14:57

No, no, it does. It does. And I think I think it’s one of the things that you You’re showing that you’re not only you’re doing this locally, you’re doing it naturally. But as you start to network, I think, and I absolutely just look at the definition of bad network, or that was me in the dictionary, it was me in the dictionary 510 years ago. And once you start doing it, I think you realize there are so darn many interesting and intelligent people to talk to. It’s like books. It’s like, yes, you just want to keep reading them, because there’s so many different people to talk to. And so go ahead.

 

Todd Russell  15:33

Yeah, I mean, here’s my my whole theory on that, right. I don’t think there’s ever been somebody I haven’t met that I haven’t learned something from I try to anyway. And we talked about that I was on a call this morning with a group around the nation, there were 27 people on the call. And we were going through there, and there were a couple people who have just started their own businesses.

They’re making that leap and getting out and one of them had a 10 minute presentation, and just phenomenal. And she’s never had her own business. She’s starting out, she’s getting things going. And you could tell she was very nervous talking to people. And then we weren’t even a big group. But she was nervous talking. And she did phenomenal. And there was such good information that she had there. And so seeing that seeing people be successful stepping out of their comfort zone. Yeah, I love that part of it.

 

Damon Pistulka  16:30

That’s cool. That’s cool. Because it is, it is you talk about when someone first goes out on their own in business, it’s a scary thing, because they do they are in that position. They’re the ones that are gonna have to do the presentations to talk to people and all that. And oftentimes that wasn’t the case before.

 

Todd Russell  16:47

Yeah, exactly. I, you know, a quick story. I’ve got two VPS that I know, there was a company here in Utah. But they weren’t active on LinkedIn. They had active data accounts and everything right. But they weren’t very active at all. One of them had never posted on LinkedIn, anything. Yeah. And I, he brought me in because he wanted some help with LinkedIn, specifically. And so we started talking, we were going through some things, and he was having such a hard time, just writing a first post. And I sat there looking at him, I’m like, let’s, let’s talk through some things really quick. Let’s talk about some of your accomplishments.

So he starts listing a few of them. And I knew him and his family a little bit. So yeah, let’s get a couple more. And then I’m like, he says, Oh, I wrote a book that you’ve written a book. He’s like, Yeah, I wrote a book. We’ve sold like 10,000 copies of it. I have. So anyways, to fast forward, it’s been, what a year, year and a half now. And he is he’s doing live video on LinkedIn. He’s on LinkedIn every day. It’s amazing to watch. People like that better, just so talented, and have so much they’ve just make that first step. And get out. Yes, people.

 

Damon Pistulka  18:10

Yes. That’s awesome. That’s an awesome example. Because that we literally have people with incredible stories walking around us every day. I’m totally convinced that that and, and that’s a that’s a great addition to the stories because if they just saw our Yeah, and they’re the people that are sitting in the grocery line bias at our churches in the schools along with our kids, and you know, and you just don’t even know exactly.

 

Todd Russell  18:39

Every and yeah, I believe that 100% Everybody’s got a great story.

 

Damon Pistulka  18:44

Yep. That’s for sure. That’s for sure. So you you read a few books now. I mean, how many books? How many books do you think you’re going through in a month?

 

Todd Russell  18:57

I always have, I always have to audibles going. And the reason I do that is because depending on the mood I’m in, right, yeah, switch back and forth. But I always try to go through about three audible books a month. Once I go through an audible, I listen to it, if I love it, I have to buy the book, and I have to read it. And there’s just something about that, to me that it’s a lot more meaningful. I think I became a lot more of it. So probably, I would say three books a month, and then one that I’m reading a month as

 

Damon Pistulka  19:34

well. Okay, so that’s cool. So have you always been a reader like that?

 

Todd Russell  19:39

No. In fact, it was probably 11 years ago. I was working with a guy who read two books every week. And he is the He’s phenomenal guy. You look at him and you Wouldn’t sink and turbos. I’m talking about you. This isn’t the same as he. He’s in his 60s, Ironman like crazy. He, he is not the quickest out there.

But he’s done I think 13 or 14 Iron Man’s. And when I traveled with him the first time, I looked over and he was reading a book right next to me. And he was just starting. And we got to Boston, and he had a different book. And I said, You switched halfway through and he goes, Well, I finished the first one. And that kind of got me going, like, Wait a minute. And so anyway, he and I, he encouraged me to read more. And that’s when I started reading more. And just got into it. It’s, I love it. I love to read. So, yeah, I’m not always just business stuff.

I got to give a plug here. If you are a sci fi fan. Don’t list Yeah, Mark van named one of the coolest guys I’ve ever met in my life. Anyway, I met him back east at a convention in Boston for a night it Summit. And the guy I talked to him for an hour. And then I got this book, The next week when I got home. And I saw his name, and I thought it was a marketing thing. And start going through it. He’s written like seven or eight books, probably more than that. But they’re just phenomenal. He’s a technologist, and I love that kind of stuff. Yeah.

 

Damon Pistulka  21:34

Yeah. Well, that’s cool. And, you know, I found too, that I’ve reached out to a couple authors that I’ve, I’ve really enjoyed their books, and I, you know, on LinkedIn or something like or even on Facebook or LinkedIn, and just really go, I wrote this, you you wrote a hell of a book here and give them reasons why.

Because I want them to know that I read and I really studied, the details are really, it really hit me. And you’d be surprised at how many people will write you back a really nice note. Yeah. And, and I’m like, they’re, it’s they’re real people. Because you read these books, and you go, this is absolutely incredible. And then you connect it to the real person on the other side, and they’re just normal people. It’s cool. And it only goes to show there are these amazing people around a solid every minute. There really

 

Todd Russell  22:26

is there’s i I’ve met two authors in the last month. One of them I’ve downloaded his book and started listening to it. It’s science fiction as well. But he’s phenomenal. I’m, I mean, I got to know him because he does training and we were meeting we met over LinkedIn. And yeah, you know, he’s phenomenal at what he does. And then I find out he’s not just a speaker and everything else. He’s an author and several books that he’s written. So I love finding stuff like that out about people.

 

Damon Pistulka  22:55

Yeah, it’s very cool. Like my akiza. Mike reads a lot of books that he does. He does summaries of them. He likes to write summaries about him on his blog. So that’s one of the things that he does. He reads a tons of books, too. It’s really cool. And he also is commenting about your friend that does the Iron Man’s at 60. Yeah, that’s that’s quite a feat. I tried to try to run a marathon last year and my knee said no, and I went and had surgery. So

 

Todd Russell  23:25

the guy that I’m talking about, they’re all CK Those are his initials. But we we had a contest and our company was an IT company, right? a technology company. And they wanted to have something fun to do so on the top of the parking garage, they said, come bring your bike.

Yeah, I’m gonna ride a lap around the every time you go around. You have to stop and eat a doughnut. Oh, God go around. So this guy from our team went down there and being the iron man that he is right. Yeah, he he went up like crazy. These guys were, you know, on the third and fourth donut throwing up on the site. And he just kept going around. I think he ate doughnuts. Going around but anyway. Yeah, fun times fun things.

 

Damon Pistulka  24:13

That is that is. So let’s, let’s talk a little bit now. I do like I know and people listen this they go I want to talk about effective human resource management. We’ve been talking about books, we’ve been talking about networking, we talk about all this because I really think that that helps, it helps us get an idea of the person we’re talking to. And then and we’re going to talk a bit about more about the topic.

We talked a little bit about culture earlier. And and you know the importance of that and then helping that to to retain employees because if you create that good and work environment, people are going to be around more longer hopefully. And now before we got on we were talking about the the two things that everybody’s talking about. compliance and hiring people. And I want to I want to talk about compliance a little bit, we’ll talk about hiring people.

But this is one of the things that I see in a lot of businesses now is that we used to 1520 years ago, even five years ago is even a lot better. I think you could have someone in the office that’s taking care of payroll, they’re doing just fine. But the complexity now has gotten more and more, it just seems like it’s it’s could be federal, could be state could be whatever, these these rules and regulations just keep piling on these businesses, whether and I don’t even know him anymore well enough to even talk about them. But the complexity of it just to stay in compliance. Do you see that as a major challenge for the smaller companies?

 

Todd Russell  25:56

Yeah, definitely for, for a lot of my clients, it’s, it’s a big challenge, because everything from HR, right, to just operating their business, and then even on the tech side, and over the last couple of years, especially through the pandemic, you know, there was so much coming out the, you know, free money that PPD is a really free, what do we have to do if we don’t qualify for it? What if we do it, and then we don’t follow up with the things we’re supposed to be doing for it? Yeah, and I’m trying to talk to high level on this.

But there’s a lot out there that affects small to medium sized businesses today. And if you don’t have an expert in your field, I mean, on your side, helping you out with that you could be in a bad way. I had one client who has, they’re in about 12 states. And in one state alone, they had two issues with employees. And, you know, several $100,000 later, they’re trying to figure out, hey, do we need to, and that’s actually, why they came to us is we talked, and they decided to wait, and then they have those two issues, and came back to us. And those are the types of things that we try to mitigate and come in and help companies with, so they don’t face those kinds of issues.

 

Damon Pistulka  27:19

I am always surprised at how many businesses, business owners executive I talked to that have at least one, six figure employee, whatever that happened in the last few years, you know, it’s almost like everyone has something. Yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s that kind of work to to get the compliance or get the whatever we need to do in in order or to prevent that from happening. Because it’s not necessarily compliance, because it’s been, it’s a myriad of things, you know, it’s like, right, I use the 1099, when I wasn’t supposed to use a 1090 or improperly let somebody go.

And because they, they were from another state that we won’t mention it, that they they now have a lot more liability and that they ever realized, because their state is much different. And, and you know, this, there’s so much of this stuff anymore. And now, with the remote workforce, it’s probably even worse, because I can have office people that work in Montana and Texas and Florida and California, it doesn’t really matter. But I have to comply with the laws of that state because they’re working in that state.

 

Todd Russell  28:39

Exactly. Exactly. And, and so it’s it becomes a lot like I mentioned earlier, once, you know, for a small business to get going and be successful. And then they’re successful, they’re hiring more people so they can continue that success. And there comes a point where on that graph or that chart, right, all of a sudden, they’re spending more time looking at the payroll, trying to deal with their taxes, trying to deal with compliance, trying to deal with all these different areas, human resource, onboarding, culture, all these things, right. And a small business one, if they’ve never got the training, they don’t know what they should be doing.

They don’t have the background. So legally, they could be in hot water. Right? So don’t even know it. Yeah. And so there’s a lot of issues there that that can come up and, and that’s really where it is beneficial to have somebody like us, for example, to come in and provide, you know, just HR services only or the payroll and HR or complete benefits, you know, whatever it might be. But that’s those are the conversations I have every day. Yeah, talking to business owners and trying to understand, you know, what is it that’s keeping them from being able to build their business.

 

Damon Pistulka  30:01

Yeah. And I think the as I was thinking about this, in preparing for our conversation today, I think one thing that has changed in in human resources, human capital management, wherever you want to say is that it’s getting specialized to the point like tax preparation is or something like that, where you go, I mean, business owners don’t not use CPAs anymore, they have a CPA, that’s going to fix their tax that’s going to look at their taxes at least once a year and help them through that.

But I think HR has gotten to a point now on that and their people, just making sure that they’re managing their people using a fractional resource to help effectively manage your, your human resources, or the people. And the and the thing and make sure you got the processes in place and to be in compliance, is,

 

Todd Russell  30:53

that’s really what we provide, right? It’s kind of like a fractional HR person, we provide a dedicated HR person, we provide a dedicated payroll person. And those are people who are experts. And if they don’t know the answer, they’ve got people to back them up on their team. But with the, you know, average tenure of, like, 15 years experience in our industry, for example, these are people that have been around the block and know what they’re doing. So

 

Damon Pistulka  31:19

they govern, they can help. Yeah, they can help you

 

Todd Russell  31:23

make some big difference to a company right to be able to have that. So I think you’re you’re spot on with that. Yeah, the way

 

Damon Pistulka  31:31

Well, it’s, it’s, it’s the changing world we live in, right. It’s no different than we talked earlier about this an employee market now. It’s just the compliance and everything else on on the employee, how you handle employees, and the importance of doing it, right. Because of the penalties or just because of creating a better culture. I mean, cuz we look back, I always, I always think back to I look, we talk about onboarding, 15 years ago, right?

You hired somebody, you just, you know, they, they, they worked with, with Susan over there, and Susan was going to be the person that was going to train them, and he made sure everything was okay. They knew where they, you know, had to sign in, inside out whatever in their company, and, and they had their, whatever they needed to do their work. And that was it. Yeah. Now, we talked about these onboarding process and going through and training and just just OSHA training and the other kind of security training, you

 

Todd Russell  32:30

have a lot of companies out there today, you accept the offer letter. And within a couple of days, or the next day, even you, you get a FedEx package in the mail with, here’s a couple of shirts and hats, and here’s some stuff for your family. And here’s some snacks. Welcome to the team, here’s a blanket. And that’s just the initial start of onboarding. And it’s all about building that culture and getting people off on the right foot. If companies really understand number one, the cost of losing an employee, right?

So when you hire and you train, you go through that there’s always a learning curve. And that’s money that you’re spending, you’re investing on that employee. I had a business owner once tell me that the first year is my investment in you. The second, third, and so on, are your investments in me basically, as a company, and he goes, it’ll pay off for me in the second, third and fourth and fifth year, but I’m going to invest whatever I need to, in that first year. Understand yet. He wasn’t talking about salespeople, he was talking about hiring people for his company. Yeah, electricians and things like that, that

 

Damon Pistulka  33:40

for him. It’s right. So what what are the kind of the, the numbers that you you look at now, the cost of losing an employee,

 

Todd Russell  33:51

if I don’t know if I should even throw numbers out there, but if you look at it, you know, as a business owner, you have the cost of their salary, right? Then you have food assuta, you have all these different units that come into play. If you have benefits, you have that on top of there. And then you look at opportunity cost and the cost of that employee, you know, doing work or not doing work, and doing it right or not doing it right.

And then the training who is training that person, some companies have a trainer, so that’s a sunk cost, really into that person? Yeah. And you’re putting a lot of faith in them to go out there and put that so there’s been numbers that have been thrown around 150% of whatever their salary is. Yeah, seen them all the way up to 300% based on their industry and what they’re doing so yeah, it’s

 

Damon Pistulka  34:46

it’s huge. It’s huge. I was was in on this book I’m reading it’s this is talking about the not only the cost of losing an employee that they said they were talking about a player employees because this is this is the I think a lot of people, when you look at costs of employees and things like that, it’s like it is. I mean, I don’t go, I don’t I don’t go to the grocery store and find the cheapest, you know, thing I can find I find the right thing, right? I’m not looking for, you know, the cheapest strawberries I can find on the shelf, just because they’re under a buck or whatever it is, you got to find the right thing.

And I think we we sometimes as business owners, and executives, we forget about the the true cost of the, the, the kind of person we hire, and instead of looking at the person and hiring the right person for a position, we sometimes get caught up in the wage and net wages is one of the things because you can lose 10 times what you’re paying, if that’s not the right person. Exactly, especially in these critical positions. But that’s, and it’s even so much more now. Because I mean, what are some of the attrition rates you’re seeing and some of the people that you businesses that you you know, now,

 

Todd Russell  36:01

so I have had a couple business owners I’ve talked to in the last couple of months, and that they will hire anybody that applies, because they just need employees. So if you were to look at manufacturing or warehouse, those are heavily hit right now. Fast food, carwash, those are ones that are just trying to hire whoever they can feel so they can stay open.

It breaks my heart, we went to a restaurant the other day, we’re driving by and pulled up and they aren’t able to stay open because they don’t have enough employees. Yeah. And this was a standalone building restaurant. It wasn’t like part of a strip mall. This was a you know, they probably have normally 30 employees there at a time. Wow. And they couldn’t stay open because they only had a handful of employees show up.

Yeah. So from from that standpoint, attrition comes into play big time. You hire somebody, you put that training and like we talked about, you’ve invested in them, and you want them to stay there, right? The longer they stay there, the better, more effective employee they’re going to be hopefully. And so you want to build that out. But yeah, depends on the industry depends on the company. But I think across the board attrition rates are worse than they’ve been in a long time.

 

Damon Pistulka  37:27

Yeah, yeah. And you like you said, you’ve got you’ve got an example there, too. We talked about earlier, where the attrition rate is really good, because they’ve got good culture. They’ve worked on a long time. And it was that was established well before this. So that’s, that’s good to know, in and as you look at at this, do you see that companies are really making some of the changes that they need? They’re like, hey, what, we’re just biting the bullet. We’re doing what we need to do, or do you see a lot of them like a turtle crawling, you know, putting the legs inside the shell and waiting it out?

 

Todd Russell  37:59

No, I think the ones that are like the ladder, they’re the turtles. I think a lot of those have folded and close their doors. I think the ones that I’m seeing now are more about what do we need to do to adapt and change? What What can we do that improve culture morale? And, you know, is it all about pay? Or is there something else we can do? And there those are the owners that are I think, really thriving right now. Yeah, markup?

 

Damon Pistulka  38:28

Yeah. Yeah. Well, that’s, that’s cool. Because I think that, you know, while it’s, it stinks to see businesses go away. There’s some of them that, you know, this is an evitable sooner or later because of this, or some other reason, right. And, you know, these, these, when you study these, these multi generational 100 year old companies, and these riches have this huge longevity. One of the things that I think is so interesting is they could be building skyscrapers one day, and the next day, they’re in manufacturing, and the next the next millennia, they’re in something else, because they’re adaptive enough to understand that. It’s just not working. We got to change or we’re going out. Yeah.

 

Todd Russell  39:13

And if you can, if you’re nimble enough to make those changes.

 

Damon Pistulka  39:18

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that’s, that’s hard, too. But John, John has a good comment here. He says, it sets the company back six to nine months. This is one of the things that I think is, is huge and key roles now. Because, you know, just think if you’re, if you’re a development company, and you had a SaaS product, and you know, two of your lead developers walked out, say, you got 10 and two of them walked out, holy heck, that’s a huge, huge blow, and then you hire the wrong person for those positions. And as even, you know, you’re as he said, you could be set back a year or more by that kind of thing.

 

Todd Russell  39:54

Well, exactly. And I’ve, I’ve had companies that I’ve talked to, for example, In the last couple months that one of them wanted to hire an HR, VP of HR, this is a company that only had I mean, between 10 and 20 employees. And I was kind of shocked that that was their next hire, they thought they needed a VP of HR, the very high salary.

And, you know, going through the discussion with them, as we talk more about it over several weeks, you know, that person who’s going to come in, but also hire another person, a generalist, because this VP wasn’t the one that’s going to put the ads out for people. Yeah, interview, the initial interviews, do the onboarding any of that stuff. So you know, talking to the business owner and talking through some of that as well, I think goes back to helping them understand the big picture of Yeah, makes sense from what doesn’t make sense?

 

Damon Pistulka  40:56

Well, yeah, exactly. I mean, because when you look at that kind of situation, you may want to have a generalist inside, because that might be perfectly fine for your company, but but use a fractional specialist at that higher level that can set policy, you know, shape track of the things and actually, we’re helping a company now in another area, which is it in cybersecurity do that, just because that is such a specialized field these fields are getting so it’s just incredible how all this stuff is getting so specialized that unless you’re a big enough company, you really can’t afford it.

Keep somebody that’s at that high, like you said, VP of HR level, just because of the training, the recertification and all the stuff that they need to do.

 

Todd Russell  41:41

Yeah, exactly. And what they will and won’t do, right. Yeah. Once you get to that VP level, you know, do you still, are you still gonna be the one that puts the ad in the paper? Or put Seattle monster? I’m dating myself? They’re the paper. Yeah. But you know what I mean?

 

Damon Pistulka  41:58

Yeah. Like, are you gonna process the payroll? Yeah, exactly. You know, that’s not happening. You’re gonna work at the end and make sure the timesheets are right for everything. At the end of the week. It’s just not happening. Right. So yeah, yeah, that’s exactly right. You have to have the right level of people in your business, and but you need the right expertise for your business

 

Todd Russell  42:18

100%. And I’m all for HR professionals in in companies, oh, yeah, I haven’t in four years, I haven’t replaced or displaced an HR professional, when I brought a client on, so we always we complement, you know, what they do, the way I look at it, in HR, there’s about 27 Different things that an HR professional, should be doing or could be doing, according to what falls under there. But they probably are passionate about three or four.

And they’ll tolerate another two or three of those things. But they probably don’t want to do the rest. Yeah, and so that’s where we can come in, for example, on the fractional side and, and really offset that and help them look like a superstar, which is what we’re all about, right? Yeah. So whether it’s an HR generalist, or the VP of HR, we want to help provide that. So

 

Damon Pistulka  43:12

and, and give that highly trained, it’s, again, it’s not an HR in, in, in some of the smaller companies, like if you had 20 employees, your your person that’s handling HR could be your it could be Dave The bookkeeper who also is a, you know, buys the materials for, for the office, and you know, something else too. And exactly. You’re using trained HR professionals that do that day in day out all day long.

 

Todd Russell  43:41

Yeah, and the big difference there is, we want to come in with somebody who is they get to know on a first name basis, that knows their company, and that can work with them and help guide them through and help coach them and be that true HR support that they need.

 

Damon Pistulka  43:58

Yeah, so yeah, yeah. Good stuff. Good stuff. Well, Gary says, you know, it’s easily five to six months to train a new employee. And I think that, that in a lot of cases is is, is maybe even an underestimate, underestimate, or, let’s say understating it a bit. And then when we’re coming, right, but, but you know, because these some of these are just terribly long to show people how to do it, especially if there’s complex processes or anything else involved. Right. Yeah. Awesome, awesome stuff.

Well, you know, I just want to talk to you a little bit about some of your some of your other passions here. Now you’d like to ride motorcycle a little bit of you. And if people have not been in Utah, they probably don’t understand how beautiful of a place Utah really is to ride motorcycle. Yeah, so

 

Todd Russell  44:51

it is amazing.

 

Damon Pistulka  44:53

Yeah. So you you’ve got what’s your what’s the kind of motorcycle you’ve got, again? A

 

Todd Russell  44:59

Honda Africa Twin. Okay, so it’s an adventure bike.

 

Damon Pistulka  45:04

Yeah. Yeah. And about how many miles you put on that thing a year.

 

Todd Russell  45:08

Last year was about 2500. All right. And that was a short year. So yeah, we have a lot going on. But I’m, I’m hoping to do about 5000 this year. Good. We’ve got some trips planned.

 

Damon Pistulka  45:22

So when you’re in Utah, Have you have you extensively gone in Utah, north south all around? Or, or is it been good enough that you can just stay around the Salt Lake City area, and you’re good.

 

Todd Russell  45:34

So I’ve done a lot around Salt Lake Park City, up in that area, right. And so the first trip is in about three to four weeks down to Southern Utah. Okay, and so that’ll be fun if Goblin Valley State Park we’re gonna go to so there’s some amazing places. I’m Southern Utah is just full of different parks, right? Zions? Yeah, Canyon, Grand Canyon, different parks and dirt roads for ever. So I’ve got a good friend who’s done 40,000 miles in the last like five years on his bike, and he’s got to list must ride this trail. So I’m going through that and awesome rides.

 

Damon Pistulka  46:25

Yeah. So my next question was gonna be where’s the best place you’ve ever ridden in Utah.

 

Todd Russell  46:32

So there’s a pass guardsman pass, that goes up from Salt Lake, up through the canyon, and then comes down into Park City. And that’s one of my favorite just because I love this area. This is where I grew up. And it’s the mountains that are here are just as home for me. And by going up through there, and you know, you’re at night, a lot of switchbacks, a lot of steep hills there and coming down the backside of the park city. It’s just beautiful. So that’s yeah. And then you’ve got like two or three different ways you can come home from there. And yeah, yeah, that’s been phenomenal

 

Damon Pistulka  47:13

stuff. And then then you don’t you don’t fight the traffic like people would in other places as well. So that’s, that’s really good. Yeah. Cool. Cool. So you’re going to Southern Utah, if there be any dream trip with your motorcycle, what would that be?

 

Todd Russell  47:33

I so let me tell you, if you’re a rush fan, I’m talking about the rock band, right. Oh, yeah. Yep, Neil Peart wrote a book called ghost writer. And his ride from eastern Canada all the way across Canada. up to Alaska and then down to Mexico. I’ve got friends that have done the Alaska to Mexico ride and really that sounds amazing to me. I’d love to live up to Alaska. I think that would be phenomenal Yeah, just a matter of finding the time to

 

Damon Pistulka  48:11

Oh yeah. But yeah, I was just talking that one day I was just talking to a guy on Saturday is getting ready to do the four corners United States Oh, it’s gonna start out and you know go all the way hit each corner and come back this summer I forget how he said it was gonna take a month or something like that you know, so he’s gonna it’s not gonna be that fast but yeah, some of these rides some of these things that people be able to look at and the the the there’s a lot of beautiful places

I mean you can go there’s that the road in Tennessee is called Dragon something or something like that that you know I’ve had people I’ve talked to the men on it but man I tell you they’re just some some roads like you’re talking that just stick out to you as a motorcycle ride Are you go oh my god. I mean, there’s there is one for me. I drove I drove went down and met some people outside of God I can remember the big park with the with the El Capitan in it. I forget Yosemite Yosemite.

I’m driving down Yosemite right. And I get down there and I’m meeting him in the next morning. So I stayed at Hotel and Sinara and I get in this. I don’t even know where the heck it was. But there was a road that went up the hill in over the end of the park from from Sonora, I think it was this road was like 10 or 12 miles long and it was full of switchbacks and tight turns. I mean like 1520 mile an hour a lot of the way. It was one of those things that you get up to the top and the brakes are just yell and atcha and just hate you. I went back down and went back up at like three times that day just because I was overhead.

It was so much fun. But these these things in talking to you it’s so much fun because motorcycle riders if You’ve been out and you really love that kind of stuff. There’s these these roads that just just like a burn laser burning down your head, and it’s quite a deal. But yeah. I could talk about this for a while, because we were talking about effective human resources management. And you know, and Todd, I just I appreciate you stopping by today and explain it because I think this is one of these things that just like anything, I think back to the beginning, we’re talking, you know, how you’d like to help people.

And just from from the the 22 companies you had on the list on that piece of paper and being able to drop that off with people I like to share, share people I know their story, their resources. Yeah. Because all a lot of business owners don’t even know they’ve got this option. Exactly. Yeah. And that’s, that’s what I hope we’ve done today is be able to do that. I know that people can reach out to you, Todd, and Todd, what’s the best place to get a hold of you? What do they want to do to get hold

 

Todd Russell  51:02

of you that you know what, I’m always connected with people on LinkedIn. Okay, so Todd Russell? Yep. I’ll be on this. Right. Yeah. So that’s the best way and then my email is T R, U S, S, E ll at Oasis pe o.com. Okay, and so I’d love to connect. And I would say, you know, one thing that I’ve got like a 4070 PowerPoint slide, if I can show that. Kidding. The one point I wanted to make on this, I think we’ve talked about it, and in general we did, but better HR delivers better business results. And that is so key to every business, no matter what size the business is. It doesn’t matter what industry they’re in.

 

Damon Pistulka  51:47

Yeah, it is. It is it’s about you know, the the the Better Work, the better fit. Yeah, for the people, you can put it in position. And then the better workplace that you can create to allow them to be more successful, and then engage them and get their mind their heart, their body in the whole thing. the better off you’re going to be.

 

Todd Russell  52:10

Exactly. Man, David, I appreciate you bringing me on today.

 

Damon Pistulka  52:13

Yeah. Thanks so much, Todd. Welcome. Just just appreciate you being on thanks so much. Yeah, and thank you. We’ll have to come on and talk about motorcycles again sometime because I don’t think it is. It is a great, great topic, in my mind anyway. But thanks so much, everybody else to Mike and John and Gary and God who else we have Cheryl, others that are listening. Thanks so much. We’ll be back again next week with with some more guests on the faces of business talking about life business, and hopefully some topics that help people out. Thanks, everyone.

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