Put Your Money in the Pockets of Your People

Episode 046 Full and Widescreen

Ben Walters: [00:00:00] Ben with SuperPumped Business podcast talking about the kinds of bonuses you can give. 

Ben Walters: So last time I talked about signing bonuses suck, they are very ineffective. They will not help you slay the turnover dragon. In fact, they will encourage it 'cause they're gonna piss off your current employees and they're gonna leave. 

Ben Walters: And the people who you give the signing bonuses to are just gonna run from signing bonus to signing bonus to signing bonus. And they're not gonna help you, either. So that's a bad idea. Let's stop wasting our time with signing bonuses. 

Ben Walters: But I wanna talk today about referral bonuses. Referral bonuses are a great tool to recruit great people. 

Ben Walters: First off, when you give referral bonuses to your existing employees, they know your culture. They know what you expect. They know maybe the boss is a hard charger, or the boss is a little bit laid back, or creative, or whatever your vibe is in your business, so they're gonna recommend people who fit that vibe versus if you're just putting ads out there on Monster, or Indeed, or even LinkedIn, you don't really know what you're gonna get culturally, right? 

Ben Walters: So [00:01:00] referral bonuses, you get vetted people. That is awesome, number one. 

Ben Walters: Number two, when somebody recommends someone for your company, they are gonna be a resource for that new hire, but they're also going to put a little pressure on that person. I recommended my son to work for a friend of mine, and do you know what I'm doing? I'm saying, are you doing a good job for Barry? Are you doing what you need to do? That helps him be a better employee. That puts a little bit of pressure on him to perform because he doesn't wanna let me down as his dad. Or if you referred a friend or maybe your sister to a job, you wanna make sure they perform. And if they're struggling a little bit, guess what? You're gonna serve as a resource to them. If they're like, yeah, I'm having trouble with this or I didn't quite understand that in training you can ask that referee and they're gonna help you get over that hump. So it's like having an extra, bonus trainer and a little bit of internal pressure, which for me is a good thing. So that's the second thing.

Ben Walters: But then the third thing is this is going to put your money, you only have so much of it, in the [00:02:00] pockets of your people. 

So you are going to be rewarding not some new person off the street, which is what you do with a signing bonus and devaluing your existing people. This is giving your existing people more of that recruiting budget to go to them versus going to Indeed or Monster or those types of job boards.

Ben Walters: So think about it.  If you don't have a great referral program in your business,  and if it's not robust, don't give 'em 20 bucks or a gift card to Kroger. Come on. You can do better than that. We know how much you're spending on the whole process. 

Ben Walters: Start putting some real money, some real zeros behind your referral bonuses. You will have a happy workforce that's gonna stay with you, and you'll get the great employees, slay the turnover dragon, and create your SuperPumped Business.

 Ben Walters: Thanks for joining me today on the SuperPumped Business Podcast. If you enjoyed today's show, I have two quick next steps for you. First, subscribe or follow us on Apple [00:03:00] Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. And second, jump on over to superpumped.com to find out all the incredible ways we can help you launch your SuperPumped Business.

Ben Walters: Keep well and I'll see you next time.