Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Phil Wicks: Small Business NZ Founder on the cost of businesses hiring the wrong staff

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Phil Wicks: Small Business NZ Founder on the cost of businesses hiring the wrong staff · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: The wrong hire could come at a big price tag
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: for small businesses seek recons it's costing Kiwi SMEs over
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: nine hundred million dollars a year, so for an individual business,
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: that's about twenty thousand dollars. Phil Wicks is the director
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: of b SP Advisory and Small Business New Zealand founder.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for your time, Phil.
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: Good morning, good morning, good morning. How are you good?
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Thanks? Hey, how do you know? How quickly do you know?
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Maybe when you've made a bad hire?
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: It normally doesn't take that long. Sometimes it can be,
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: especially if it's an attitude thing. But generally most businesses
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: will know, most business owners will know reasonably reasonably quick.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: So I've done something wrong here.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: So where do the costs come into play when you've
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: made a bad hire?
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: There's going to be things, some obvious things like wages
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: and training and lost productivity and fixings, mistakes possibly, but
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: there are also some hidden costs the owner's time, stress
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: on other staff, sometimes morale, missed opportunities, potentially unhappy customers.
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: So yeah, it is Look, it's a big it is
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: a problem. There's things that owners can do probably better
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: to prevent those problems, but once it happens, it can
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: be quite a long road to correct.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: The mistake is the quality of applicants getting.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: Worse, not that long, It's definitely I experienced this a lot.
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: It is definitely getting hard, especially in the trades to
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: find the right people. And often with businesses there are
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: under a lot of pressure to find people quickly, and
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: you know they have work waiting. They feel that they
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: cannot afford to leave the role empty. But the danger
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: is and trying to solve today's staffing problem, they actually
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: create a bigger problem for the next six to twelve
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: months potentially.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: Because phill We're hearing from people who are looking for
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: work that there are just so many applicants for each job.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: I wonder whether that's a little overwhelming for an employer
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: who might not, as you say, have the time to
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: go through and make a good selection.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: Well, sometimes it depends a lot of it depends on
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: the role that's been advertised. So there will be certain
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: roles where there are a lot of applicants, but there'll
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: be other roles, you know. Like I was talking to
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: a plumbert just just yesterday morning, and he was the
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: first thing I did when I see him, I saw
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: him as he said, Look, I've had this ad going
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: for ages. I'm just trying to find it really hard
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: to get any response to it. And it was a
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: good position. He's offering a sign on bonus as well,
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: but he just wasn't getting sort of he wasn't sort
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: of getting any sort of response. So it's a bit
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: of a it's a bit of a mixed bag. But
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: in general, like I said, with the trades, it generally
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: isn't that easy to find the right people for the
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: right position. And that's where the mistakes mistakes happen, is
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: that desperation takes business owners away from the career process
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: that they should be using.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: Are there any red flags that employers are missing that
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: they should watch out for.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: I think I think, Like I said, I think the
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: thing is that they they through that desperation, they stopped
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: doing what should be a correct process. Firstly, understanding exactly
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: what the job is that's required. You know what the
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: skills are there that are essential, making sure that they're
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: writing even just writing a correct job description and an
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: advert for the position and not just doing something generic.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: Probably one of the biggest mistakes is not checking references
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: and referees properly and asking the specific questions. And you know,
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: I see that happen a lot, and and you know,
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: they just it's a process that where they need to
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: be patient because you know, our vacancy is expensive, but
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: the wrong person is often more expensive.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, Phil, thank you so much for your time this morning.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: For more from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge, listen live
• 4:04
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• 4:07
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