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Ryan Englin on People, Process, Then HR Tech: The Hard Truth About Hiring and Retention in the Trades

on People, Process, Then HR Tech with Beekeeper ·

Key takeaways

  1. If someone leaves in the first 90 days, it is a hiring problem. After 90 days, it is a culture or leadership problem. The fix depends on knowing which one you have.
  2. Frontline employees give up time with family, friends, and fun to come to work. If the workplace does not replicate some of that connection, they will leave for someone who provides it.
  3. Question 10 on the Gallup Q12 survey asks if you have a best friend at work. People who answer yes are six times more likely to be engaged. Create opportunities for real friendships, not just team assignments.
  4. Recruiting is a marketing activity. Give it to the marketing team. They already know how to put the right message in front of the right people at the right time. HR will sing hallelujah when you take it off their plate.
  5. HR is built for compliance: payroll, benefits, open enrollment, legal protection. Expecting that same team to also build culture, run recruiting, and design the employee experience is how you burn them out and get none of it done well.
  6. Stop telling your team what to do and hiding what you are struggling with. Frontline entry-level people see things leadership never sees. Embrace every level of the organization if you want to scale.

I sat down with Sid Kon and Emily from Beekeeper on their People, Process, Then HR Tech series to talk about what it actually takes to hire and keep great people in the trades.

We covered a lot of ground. The big theme that ran through the whole conversation: your people are your product. In a service business, you're selling time and expertise. The more you build up your people, the more effective your business becomes. That's the starting point for everything.

I told them the story of how I got here. Growing up in a blue-collar family, watching my dad grind it out as an entrepreneur in the trades. I thought his problem was customer acquisition. It wasn't. It was employee acquisition. He couldn't attract, hire, and retain people he trusted to take care of his baby the way it deserved to be taken care of. That realization changed the direction of my entire business.

We talked about the fishing metaphor, which is core to how I think about this work. I don't fish for my clients. I teach them how to fish. That means you own the whole process. You own the marketing, the recruiting, the delivery on promises. When you hand recruiting off to a staffing agency, they sell someone on your company. That person shows up, looks around, and goes "what did I get into?" Because nobody taught you how to deliver on the experience they were sold. You have to do both.

On turnover, I broke it into two categories. If someone leaves in the first 90 days, you have a hiring problem. Full stop. Look at your interview process. What did you miss? What expectations did you fail to set? If they leave after 90 days, that's a culture or leadership issue. And the biggest driver of that post-90-day turnover in frontline work is simple. People give up three things to come work for you: time with family, time with friends, and time doing things they enjoy. If you can't replicate some of that connection at work, they will find someone who does.

I brought up Gallup's Q12 survey. Question number 10 asks "do you have a best friend at work?" People who say yes are six times more likely to be engaged. Six times. We are the most connected generation in history and also the loneliest. Creating real friendships at work is one of the simplest, fastest ways to drive engagement and retention. Not ping pong tables. Not pizza parties. Real relationships.

We got into employer branding and I made the point I always make. Stop copying what Apple and Google do. They're not in your industry. The people drawn to an employer of choice in the trades are different. Be yourself. Be authentic. Be intentional. When you do those things for the right people, more of the right people show up. And they fight to stay.

I shared the story of a controller who quit after years because the owner never said thank you. His response was "I shouldn't have to thank her, I'm paying her." That attitude set his business back six months. I also talked about a woman whose first day was so disconnected that nobody even gave her a tour of the office. She didn't know where the restrooms were. She grinded it out for six months before she left, but she quit in her heart on day one. People quit twice. First in their heart. Then when they tell you.

Then we hit one of my favorite topics. Recruiting is a marketing activity, not an HR activity. HR is about compliance. Payroll. Benefits. Open enrollment. Dotting I's and crossing T's. Those are important functions. But we've thrown everything people-related at HR and expected them to also build culture, create employee experiences, and run recruiting. That's not fair to them and it's not effective. Hand recruiting to your marketing team. They already know how to put the right message in front of the right people at the right time. And start thinking about having a dedicated employee experience leader on your team, someone who knows how to engage and nurture relationships. That is not what HR was designed to do.

The through-line of this whole conversation is one I come back to constantly. Your employees are your number one customer. When you think about their needs first, when you invest in their personal goals and not just their job performance, when you make them feel like they belong before you teach them to do the work, everything else gets easier. Turnover drops. Engagement goes up. The business scales.

If you liked this conversation, I go deeper on onboarding, employer branding, and the full hiring system on Titans of the Trades.

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