hello my name is Gary Shotton and today we’re going to talk about keeping your employees and you know this is a subject that was posted again when we say to our groups as we’re calling in from America to East Africa we say ask us the really tough questions and again this was a tough one we asked for it how do you keep your employees let me explain a little bit about America and the situation and then the way I understand the developing nations first of all in America we have to be careful to keep our employees it’s for a different reason because our employees typically can get a job someplace else if they’re skilled if we have in our case 65 employees about 40 of them are skilled machinist and the others are skilled in quality and quality inspections and then management so in our situation every one of them can go get a job someplace else so I have worked hard and make sure I keep my employees I don’t want to lose my employees and I will tell you that our plant manager that’s the main person in production has been with us 30 years we have a lady that does part of the human resources and and invoicing she’s been with us 20 years we have many people that have been with us 10 years my assistants been with me 11 years of course my wife’s been with me forever but she’s been there a long time and so very few of our key people have been with us less than five years well how did we get that to happen I hope to share some of those information now in developing nations the situation is a bit different because it seems that people are desperate for a job and they are looking for any reason to improve themselves and sometimes according to this question that they just get trained that’s true around the world and just as soon as you got them trained then they go and work for someone else or go and start competing directly with the company that trained them in that our Christian business leader that’s difficult that’s happened to me now in my particular case it happened more when I had the trucking company with the Moving & Storage because it was a low cost of entering into that business somebody could start like I did with a very little money and get started my current business I have a lot of capital law of equipment and it’s harder for people to do that now but it’s a real problem well the number one thing I think you can do is provide a wonderful place for people to work and I know that to be hard and it’s going to be sometimes parlays or becomes connected with don’t grow too fast don’t take on too many employees but the employees you have you kind of have an obligation to make it a very important goal of yours to be paying very fair not extra but at least fair and on the high end of what other people being paid you got to pay on time that’s part of being a good business person you can’t drag your employees out you need a good work environment that’s where in our case we could easily have people that are cussing and saying bad words or have pictures of half ladies that are not fully dressed and hanging on the walls we don’t allow that we don’t allow things like that we have a great working environment and then of course we make sure that all of our workers have some form of advancement opportunity whether they go to another level inside their own skills in our case we’re always teaching people how to be better machinists or better welders and then we look for ways to advance people inside that a good work environment is the first step pay it’s not everything it’s important but not everything you’ll have to recognize that some people working for you are entrepreneurs some people are more of a manager in my case I have a large host of very dedicated employees and I view them as the gift of administration and in that they’re able to administer their own time able to manage their own time able to manage their machine or whatever they’re doing and so you’ve got to recognize that some people are called to be an entrepreneur and some people are called to be more what I call good workers or a gift of administration it’s not one is better than the other it’s something that is a calling from God and frankly the entrepreneur you’re probably going to have a little problem keeping that person for a long time because inside of them is a desire to be on their own to do something different to be their own boss but most people are not that most people want a good place to work they want to be able to make a fair wage they want to be able to go home and have some kind of an enjoyment at home they want to pay the bills feed their kids have tuition pay for uniforms the things that are appealing to anybody so recognize and kind of think of your employees in that category or this is this a really a person that’s going to be content working for me or do I need to kind of prepare myself that this other person probably is gonna leave me some time because they’re not too preneur then number three I think that the word respect has to be mentioned here it’s a two-way street I cannot hide it I can tell you that I respect every person in my company they’re not all doing the same job they know that I respect them I cannot fool then I cannot act polite and somehow make them think that I have respect for them you see respect is one of those things people pick up by your emotions your heart your the way you say something not just your words and so if you don’t have respect for each and every person they’re gonna probably look for a way to leave at the first opportunity they get and they’re not gonna set under a situation where they’re not heard they’re not they’re not their ideas are not considered they’re not addressed in a respectful manner and that flip is true if if you as the owner need respect also I’ve had people that didn’t respect me I’m the owner and they lost respect for me and I had to sit down in a couple cases and say you know I think it’s time for you to find another job because if you don’t respect me that’s going to turn the whole thing upside down and you need respect for each other then certainly not last is number four new challenges we’ve come into the understanding that people most people do not want the absolute mundane the same thing over and over every day every year some people a few can live with that but we try to create new challenges within our company we don’t have a whole lot of meetings we don’t have a whole lot of parties we don’t have a whole lot of fluff but we try to say to every worker there that we’re going to challenge you to learn more in your own field to learn more about your own profession examples we have people that are in the Quality department that means we have high-level expensive quality equipment and we buy some of those to make sure that we’re on the top edge of our quality provisions for the parts that we make that means each one of our inspectors each person in the quality department gets to learn about that I know for a fact where Quality Manager that’s one of the things he really likes about working at our company is that we’re always introducing the best and newest and not always the most expensive but something that’s challenging him he’s going to a week of classes to learn and prove his skills then every one of our workers that’s out on the machine we especially the young guys I say hey and by the way we have a couple ladies now that with all the young younger machinist we say did you learn anything today and they say well I didn’t think about that and I say well my response as well this is an opportunity for you to learn a great deal about machining about a cross-section of lots of parts lots of types of things to do but the responsibilities in you because we have a work environment that allows training and advancement and and and the ability for people to lose learn new skills and my closing comment with them is listen if you’ll learn these skills I want to keep you but you can move to another state another city I hope you stay working for us but you can take those skills with you no one can ever take away the skills that you’ve learned while working here and we have an environment for you to improve your skills that’ll that’ll work people it’s not a game we’re not tricking people we have in our country the right to work that means a person can walk off our place for no reason at all we have the right to let them go in a similar way but we won’t without a very justified reason there’s no value in scaring somebody don’t ever think that you’re gonna scare someone if you don’t fix this don’t do this I’m gonna fire you don’t do that that’s not gonna work you need to work with them with clear guidelines if they continue messing up sure you can give them a warning that’s well organized and yes we’ve had to have fire people that that we’re not producing at the rate and the quantity we wanted well I hope this is helpful we’re here to help you Inspire Better Business whether it’s in the u.s. in a foreign land keeping your good employees is critical for your long-range success thank you