How I feel About Firing Someone

Published Jan 7, 2025, 1:00 PM

It's our first bonus episode of 2025!!! Britt is kicking off the year answering your juicy questions.

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Host:
 Brittney Saunders. 
Senior Producer: Xander Cross
Managing Producer: Elle Beattie

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Hi, I'm Britney Saunders and welcome to Big Business, the place where business is far from boring. And today I'm recording on a wobbaicle land. Now, this episode in particular that you're listening to is coming out during the Chrissy Slash holiday break, and some podcasts take a break during the Christmas break, but there's no break for me when it comes to Big Business. I'm coming out with these episodes, but I thought I would mention I'm recording these from home and the quality may not be exactly the same as when I'm in the studio, but hopefully it will do. In today's episode, I'm going to be answering some juicy questions that you sent through. I did little question box on my Instagram story and by the way, I thought I would also mention I have a podcast Instagram page for Big Business, So if you look up Big Business podcast on Insta, I mean, feel free to give me a follow on there, or you don't have to if you don't want. But if you ever have a question for me and you would like me to answer it on the pod, or maybe you've got like a sona or you want advice on something I love doing these kinds of episodes where I'm quite literally answering the questions or scenarios or dilemmas that you have for me. Send me a DM on that account because I don't get anywhere near as many messages on that account as I do on my main one. So if you've ever got a question, slide into my Big Business Podcast dms and let me know, because I love giving the listeners what they want. Question number one, Are you against your staff discussing their wages? Absolutely not. They're more than welcome to discuss whatever they want with one another. And I have heard I have heard stories like I don't like. I'm sure they're true, but I've heard stories that some companies have written it into their contracts that they're not allowed kind of thing. And I don't know is that legal or not. I don't know, but we've never had any type of conversation like that with any of our team members. It's not written anywhere. They can do whatever they want, they can talk about whatever they want. And I think that's another thing too. People are going to talk like coworkers are going to talk, especially when they become friendly with one another, and you can't really stop that, And I mean, I don't know about the companies that have written it into their contracts, like you must not discuss your wage with someone else, But like I think people are still going to talk regardless. So no, that's never been an issue for us, and we've never had any issues with that. And do our staff talk about their wages with one another? Most likely, I'd say, but that's fine by me. We've never had to have that conversation or thought. But it's a very good question. The next question comes from the same person. Shout out to this person, you were sending me very juicy questions, And this question is how many people have you fired? And was it hard or easy? If I had to go back and think, I want to say like less than five or it could be like less than three. In my experience what I've personally found, and I don't know if I can for every other business owner, but when you're dealing with a staff member who is heading down like the wrong kind of way within your business, oftentimes in my experience, they'll leave before you have to terminate their position. I think just because like they would be aware of whatever's happened or what's been going on, kind of thing. So a lot of the time, you know, I find that they kind of take themselves out of the company anyway. So we've definitely experienced that quite a few times. But when it's come to actually like actually firing people, like I want to say, three times over the seven years I have along, we've been gone for now, like it's really not many. But in saying that, like, what we have dealt with more than firing people is just like dealing with little like conflicts and you know, having to issue warning letters or just having like you know, a non disciplinary meeting like if something is popped up, and like I want to say that, like that is harder than actually having to terminate someone's position. Now, I'm not the best person obviously to talk about firing people because I really don't have that much experience compared to some people who I don't know work for huge companies and they fire people every left, right, and center, every second day of the week. I don't know, So I feel like I'm not the best person to give full advice on it. But I can definitely talk to the point of like having to have tough conversations and the times that we have had to terminate people's positions. I feel like the word fired is so harsh, Like it's so harsh, I'd rather say, like, terminate your position with us. It's definitely not it's not easy. It's not fun. Even just on the topic of like having to have a non disciplinary meeting with someone, like, it's never fun. Like everyone can feel nervous. And most of the time people when they're being offered one of those meetings, you know they know so what you're going to be talking about, because maybe something's happened in the workplace. You need to sit down and say, look, like this has happened, and here's how we're going to move forward. They're never easy, But in my experience, I will say what I have been surprised by is when you do have a hard conversation. By the way, one of my favorite sayings of all time is hard conversations, easy life. Easy conversations, hard life. Like that is my life fucking motto. You've just got to have a hard conversation, even if it feels like makes you feel sick and you can't sleep the night before. As soon as you have that hard conversation, you'll have an easy life. And if you just go through life and through business, having easy conversations all the time, aka avoiding all those things that you need to talk about, you're going to have a hard time. And that's definitely what I've learned. But in my experience with just like having those awkward conversations, you know, in previous years, I'm always like pleasantly surprised by people and how willing they are to come to the table, even if you're like I don't want to talk to this person because this thing has happened, and you know, emotions are high. But I think if you approach a meeting in the right way, maybe you have to talk about something that's happened that someone's upset about or whatever it may be, like nine times out of ten, like everyone's really understanding, and especially if you're approaching the team member from like a friendly angle, Like anytime we've ever had to speak to someone, like I'm not going in to yell at them and say this, that and the other, you know, like I'm always just super friendly and I just want to like talk about everything that's happened and honestly like come up with the solution so that we can all continue working together. And you can usually work it out so that it doesn't have to get to that point of ever needing to terminate someone. And when it comes to terminating someone, like if they're a full time worker or part time. Don't quote me on that, but you've obviously got to do everything correctly. You know, people have to be given multiple warnings before you even get to the point of like needing to think about terminating someone. So we've definitely done a few of those over the years, like handing out a warning letter, which is not fun. And like I've said that in those instances, like, look, this isn't fun for me, and I don't want to be doing this, and I know it isn't fun for you. But again, like I come to those experiences like wanting to turn it around and wanting to move forward and work together, you know. But again I have only dealt with this like less than a handful of times, So I don't think I'm the best best person to talk about it. But maybe one day I could get a guest on this pod who is like really experienced in like the whole firing and tough conversation side. But yeah, it definitely is a great character building experience to deal with hard times with staff within your business, you learn a lot about yourself, you learn a lot about your business, and you learn about what you can improve on and fix or tweak to ensure that those things never happen again. So yeah, there's my answer to that question. That was a good one. The next question is just a change of pace. It's a really fun little one. Would you employ older women in your stores? Absolutely? I would love that. We don't have an age range. I mean, I don't think you can. I don't think you can specify an age range when you're looking for a staff member. I'm pretty sure that would be illegal or something. I don't know, but I would love to have people of all different ages working at Fate and that's something that we are definitely not opposed to. Do you want to apply, by the way, we always advertise our positions on SEK, just thought I would give a shout out there. I don't think we have any openings at the moment, but we have a Sikh profile and you can check out our listings and openings on there anytime we post an ad. The next question goes back to staffing. I feel like this is a staffing themed Q and a so someone's asked two questions, what are your top tips for small businesses hiring staff for the first time, And do you think it's best to hire someone with zero experience and train them up or with experience. That's a good one and a tough one. I'm pretty sure I've done a bunch of episodes over the year where I've talked about hiring. It's so hard when we do so many episodes, I feel like I'm going to repeat myself every now and then. My top tips for a small business hiring staff for the first time. Jeez, if I could go back and do my business all over again, I would do everything differently. When I first started Fate, I was super young. I was in my early to mid twenties. I mean, I'm still young now, but I would honestly chuck up and add online. Or I would put a little photo on Instagram saying we're hiring. I would get people's resumes, I would meet them once and say you're hired, and usually I would base that off how well I got along with them, which just isn't the right way to hire. Obviously, you want to make sure that you're going to get along with this person. If you're going to be working with them. But I think I was seeing it more personally than I should have been. I was like, yeah, you're great, You're fine, we laughing, Jogan, You're hired. And I think every business owner goes through that. You just go for like the easy higher that seems fun, and most of the time it doesn't work out. So my top tips would be obviously put up an ad somewhere, go through people's resumes, do a zoom call with them first or Google meet whatever, and then do a second interview in person. People can be completely different on a call than they are in person, so it always advise doing two interviews. And my final piece of advice is if you have any inkling of doubt, even just one little thing that you notice in the interview that makes you like, question, oh, I don't know because they said that one thing and it was weird, don't go ahead with the higher like because most of the time, like when you get a little feeling or your gut feeling, it's always bloody right. Call reference checks if you have to. I mean, I think that just depends on how big of a role it is. And if they're just coming in through you know, a casual employment, maybe you don't need to call their references. But if it's kind of more of an important role, or they're going to be working five days a week and like running your business, maybe you will want to call a reference check and just ask great questions in the interview. I think it's good to have a balance of personal questions so you can get to know them a little bit better, and also more like role and business focused questions, and always end your interview asking if they have any questions for you. I think it's always a really good indicator when you're interviewing someone if they come prepared with a question for you, I think that says a lot about someone. That's what I think anyway. I love it when someone finishes an interview and then they've got a couple of questions up their sleeve for us as well. On to the second part of the question, do you think it's best to hire someone with no experience and train them or hire someone with experience? Again, it's hard to say because it depends on the type of business. I can see that you're messaging me from a nail business, and maybe you're a nail salon, So for that, I mean it depends because I don't own your business. But for me, like I would want someone definitely who has experienced, especially if you're doing nails. But then again, I know, like when it comes to the service industry, you can teach these skills to people and then you can teach them exactly how you want it to be done. But I think if it's if it's like a casual position and you're quite a small business, I think if you've got the time to be able to train someone maybe they've only got a tiny bit of experience, get them in and teach them yourself. Because what can happen as well as if you hire someone that is like overqualified for the role. They can come in and kind of say, well, this is how I do it, and this is the way we did it at my last work or whatever, and that may cause a little bit of a problem as well. But as for me, with Fate and like our business and the way that we are, we always are hiring people with experience. In the first few years of Fate, I hired people that had no experience at all, and that worked for us at that time because we were smaller, we were less busy, you know, I could apply myself to training people a lot more, Whereas now, because we're such an established company, we don't have time to be training someone from the ground up. We want to get someone who is going to come in and they've got experience, let's say in retailer, whatever it is, and then we train them the way that we do things. But we're not training them from you know, the ground up. So that just really depends on you and your business. But I hope this helps. I'm gonna end this episode with a fun question. Someone has asked, what is your office pet peeve? Okay, I've got two straight away that I think of. The first one, I mean, this isn't just limited to an office, but when someone leaves the last like one sheet of toilet paper, like just sitting on top of the roll because they couldn't be bothered to fricking change the role over, that does my head in. I never say anything like I just change it over myself, but it makes me want to go out into the opics and be like, oh the fuck, what did the toilet last? Why didn't you just change it? Oh? So that's that's one of my pet pet peeves. But I think it's funny and I'm always like, who did that, lazy shits. And my other office pet peeve, I would say, is like noises in general. This is probably just a personal to me thing, but just like tapping of feet, like tapping of pens, someone chewing chewy, like all different noises really like bug me. And when I'm hearing noises, I can't unhear them. It's like, you know, as soon as you notice someone's tapping their foot or someone's chewing chewy with their mouth open, that's all I can bloody hear. And we work in an open office, like I just sit with everyone, so there's always little noises happening. But we do have music playing out loud in the office every day, and I do have my headphones on my desk as well, so if I'm ever feeling like overstimulated by a little tapping noises, I'll just chuck my headphones on and be like, if anyone needs me, just yell out to me or throw something at me to get my attention. But I would those are my office pet peeves. There's other ones too, like fucking you know, leave and dishes in the sink and whatever, but like that's just life. Isn't it. But anyway, thank you so much for your questions. There is so many more, and thanks for listening to another one of my bonus Chrissy period episodes.

Big Business with Brittney Saunders

Seven years ago Brittney Saunders started a business in her garage. Today it’s grown to an 8-figure  
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