Welcome to the fifth blog post of many where I go into each and every interview from the Empowered Petpreneur Interview Series, where I chatted with pet industry experts and business owners all about how to feel at ease while confidently running and growing a successful pet business.
For those of you who missed the series, I still wanted to share with you a snippet from the interview, some of the important takeaways I learned from each interview, and some other things you can learn by watching the rest of the interview!
This blog post will go into Jamie’s interview on how to keep employees happy and long-term in the pet industry, as many of us know the turnover can be extremely high!!
This post is part of Pet Marketing Unleashed’s Blog Series on The Empowered Petpreneur Interview Series. Click here to access the full interview series.
Interview 5 - Jamie Migdal from FetchFind On...
How To Keep Employees Happy & Long-Term
Jamie is the founder of FetchFind, a company that provides staff training, engagement, and other business solutions to pet care service and pet-friendly companies around the globe. After owning multiple pet care companies, Jamie learned a thing or two about not only hiring, but how to keep employees happy, motivated, and present!
Something I’ve heard from many clients of mine is the trouble that is involved in keeping employees around. The turnover struggle in the pet industry is REAL. That’s why I asked Jamie if she would be willing to hop on an interview with me to chat about how to help lower turnover in your pet business.
Watch this two-minute snippet of the interview:
The Major Takeaways
1. One Bad Apple Can Change Everything
As Jamie says, one bad apple can take your whole business in a different direction, so it’s essential to identify the good candidates up front by investing in a hiring process that makes sense for your business. It’s about finding the RIGHT people.
2. Use Education For Good
According to Jamie, education is the answer to the hiring problem, at least when it comes to finding the people that will stay around. She says it’s the ‘the vehicle/experience that creates longevity in an employee.’ For example, with her software, FetchFind, they put all of the education into micro-lessons because that’s how most people learn best. We can only pay attention for so long, so it’s really about adjusting the education and making it purposeful and realistic for people to digest and learn.
3. Spoil Your Employees
One of the best things you can do to keep your employees around is to spoil them! Reward them, even for the little things. Maybe they caught something irregular on a cat sitting visit that the owner didn’t catch. Did they cover a shift that they didn’t expect to work? Anything!
Consider all of the ways you can reward your employees. Jamie mentioned vacation time, meals, feeding what they love the most (allowing them to do more dog walks, talking with clients - whatever it is), etc. The bottom line is...it’s not about the rewards or vacations. It really boils down to TRUST.
Do you trust your employees? If not, maybe it’s time to reevaluate your hiring process because who you hire (99% of the time) is on you. If you’re hiring from a place of trust, support, and ease, you’ll notice a HUGE shift in your business. Many pet business owners hire from a place of fear, desperation, and urgency that they begin to ignore the red flags! Those red flags are important and they can be more costly than not hiring them and having to say no to a new client (we talk about this in Kristin’s interview, too, for more information).
The rest of this interview goes into:
The secrets behind the pain points of hiring as a pet business owner
Her best practices for solving the disconnect between pet business owners and potential candidates
The costs that are involved when you lose an employee
If you want to watch this interview AND the other 19, click here.
Follow FetchFind on Instagram at @fetchfind. And, hey, while you're there, follow me, too - I’d love to connect!
