THE PROBLEM: The No. 1 issue MSPs complain about is talent acquisition and retention—as in, it’s impossible to retain talent. They say there aren’t enough qualified people, or their work ethic is bad, or people can’t be trusted to do the work.
And the pain is real. You find someone who is trainable and invest a year or two in making that person great, only to have them move on to another job, often not giving you notice. This leads to scrambling to cover the gap. People come and go, the company stays in flux, and this limits growth. Worse, since you can’t find people, you work harder, and end up a slave to your business.
This is the perceived problem that I hear from everyone. The real problem, though, is not the shortage of people. Rather, it’s the failure to identify the right people and create the structures, culture, training, and environment to retain them.
The Real Problem—and What to Do About It
In other words, it isn’t them—it’s you. When you create the right culture, like Zappos or GoDaddy has, people will go out of their way to become part of it. The downside of this fact is that it means you can’t blame others for your retention challenges anymore. The upside is that this issue is 100% in your control. If you make the right changes, you will retain people.
Here are the top three things you can do for your business to address the retention problem:
Clearly define your core values, vision, and mission. Doing this means putting together a leadership group for your organization, even if you only have five employees. Pick a couple of them and put them on your leadership team. Go away for a weekend and do the work to define the ethos of your company. I’ve written a little bit about this in my 2018 book, How Entrepreneurs Thrive.
Create a clear-cut, systematic process for onboarding your staff. Start by reinforcing and indoctrinating people in your core values and then take them slowly through each system, solution, and process in your organization. It may take as long as 90 days to onboard a new hire, but that’s OK. By the time you are done, that person will be an expert in your systems who is also steeped in your culture.
Develop a mentorship program. Having someone responsible for inspiring and guiding each new member of your staff during onboarding will make that process even more effective. It will also create a self-replicating model in which each mentee becomes a mentor for the next person in the organization. Doing this requires you to build a clearly defined mentoring program with goals and outcomes that are focused on each individual’s personal development and career track. You will find, though, that the best investment you can make in your business is a people-centric culture.
One of our clients, UpCasa, successfully put these steps into action. When they came to us, they were a six-person organization that despite their best efforts had a revolving door: Every time they onboarded one person, another one would leave. But after going through the work of defining their core values, vision, and mission, and creating an onboarding process, they were able to grow their team. Within 16 months they had increased to 18 people with consistent values and nearly tripled their top-line revenue.
You have the potential to achieve similar results by creating these foundational structures within your business to attract and retain talent. The talent is out there in the market, but it is your role as a leader to select and train new hires and build them into the team that will take your business to the next level.
JOE ROJAS is CEO and chief visionary of Red Sapiens, a business coaching company for MSPs and entrepreneurs.
