Your Team Expects Raises You Can’t Sustain

00:00:04 –> 00:00:13
Narrator: You’re about to listen to an episode of What the Hell Just Happened? Join Paul Edwards and his guests as they discuss interesting topics and solve some of our listeners’ submitted questions.
00:00:14 –> 00:00:24
Paul Edwards: And occasionally I’ll go off topic to talk about whatever I want. Think barbecue, space exploration, growing your business, and things that interest all of us.
00:00:25 –> 00:00:43
Paul Edwards: We’ve got a pretty good question. That question boiled down is, I need to reset my employees’ expectations around raises. For the last few years, expectations have been high. And for one reason or another, we’ve been kind of giving larger raises than we would normally in the past.
00:00:44 –> 00:01:06
Paul Edwards: Now we find ourselves in a position where we’ve tightened our belt as much as we can, and our employees have more stress on them than they’ve ever had before as prices are rising on them as well, how do we meet in the middle? How do you reset expectations? How do you tell someone they’re just going to get a cost of living raise? How do you tell someone that the merit raises that you were able to give out, or needed to give out the last three or four years, you can’t do this year.
00:01:07 –> 00:01:19
Paul Edwards: So I don’t know that we have a perfect explanation, but we’ve got a spirited conversation. I’ve brought CeCe in so that she can bring her HR knowledge in, and hopefully you guys will enjoy the show.
00:01:21 –> 00:01:25
Paul Edwards: Hey everybody, Paul Edwards here from What the Hell Just Happened? And I’m joined by
00:01:26
CeCe Delgado: CeCe.
00:01:27 –> 00:01:28
Paul Edwards: CeCe what?
00:01:28 –> 00:01:29
CeCe Delgado: Delgado

00:01:29 –> 00:01:41
Paul Edwards: Okay, great. She’s been hyphenating and stuff. So I’m just wondering what her last name is today. CeCe and I are going to talk about what the hell just happened, which is employees like raises. Go figure.
00:01:42 –> 00:01:43
CeCe Delgado:They do. They love them.
00:01:44 –> 00:02:25
Paul Edwards: And I like raises. A lot of employers are talking about this right now. We’re having to pay more. We’re trying to budget for it. When I say pay more, we’re paying more for everything. We’re paying more for every service we get. We have to pay more to bring in better employees as we’re bringing in, you know, as we’re bringing in new people. And so you know, we work in healthcare, obviously, you know that. CeCe but for everybody who’s listening out there, if you didn’t know your first time on the show, um, we work in healthcare, so we’re working with dental offices and we’re working with physical therapist offices, and veterinarian offices, etc. And you know, what’s been happening to everybody in the United States, is that we have seen the price of everything going up.
00:02:26 –> 00:02:46
Paul Edwards: I think we put on the podcast not too long ago, we actually gave a little extra stipend every month. We already do something for internet because a lot of our employees get to work from home, even though we’re a centralized group, but they get to work from home a couple days. So we’re giving them a stipend for internet. And we just added some for fuel, for gas for their cars so that when they’re coming in, you know, we’re trying to help any way that we can.
00:02:47 –> 00:03:08
Paul Edwards: So I mean, nobody’s going to argue between the tariffs and everything else that’s going on. We did that American Dental Association survey and Dennis said one of the biggest things that was hitting them was the cost of supplies. And, you know, just everything’s going up. CeCe, this is more your area because I mean, you moved into the COO position here from HR.
00:03:08 –> 00:03:09
CeCe Delgado: Lot of years in HR.
00:03:10 –> 00:03:20
Paul Edwards: You have a lot of years in HR. You have a lot of years of people coming to you for wanting more pay. I think you probably have a lot of years of wanting to pay somebody more, and not being able to find enough in the budget to give them more, and being concerned you’re going to lose them.
00:03:21
CeCe Delgado:Yes.
00:03:22 –> 00:03:23
Paul Edwards: You know, I know you’ve been through that
00:03:24
CeCe Delgado: Tale as old as time.
00:03:25 –> 00:03:31
Paul Edwards: It is a tale as old as time. Yeah, yeah. But I think it’s harder right now. It feels harder.
00:03:32 –> 00:04:01
CeCe Delgado: It does feel harder. I think, especially in dental, because of the issue with hygienists, which we won’t get into specifically right now. And then the economic pressure on top of it. And I think we say this with almost every issue, but there’s an aspect of people are talking more on social media about this stuff. And so then they’re influenced by what they see other people talking about.
00:04:01 –> 00:04:13
CeCe Delgado: I can’t tell you how many times I’m on some sort of social media platform and there’s a question of, what did you get for a raise this year? So there’s that implied like, oh, I should be getting a raise every year, sentiment on social media too.
00:04:13 –> 00:04:53
Paul Edwards: Right. I generally see two different kinds of raises. I see a cost of living raise and I see merit raises. And we have a third one we call a difference maker raise. Difference maker raise for anybody who’s listening, is you have somebody who’s started work for you or been working for you and they just all of a sudden just shine in some area. And oftentimes it’s not even the area that you hired them for, but they just really take off and you all of a sudden realize, I really got a difference maker here. You want to hold on to them, you want to reward them. And it’s easy to do that because, I mean, let’s we’re in business. They’re making you more money. And so you want to do more for them because you don’t want them to go anywhere, right?
00:04:53 –> 00:04:54
CeCe Delgado: Right. You want to keep their skill set.
00:04:55 –> 00:05:08
Paul Edwards: I mean, in dentistry, it’s case acceptance people. People who can explain the dentistry or what needs to be done and get other people, you know, get the patients to agree to those things. You know, that’s a big deal to find somebody who’s good at that. Just to kind of give an example.
00:05:09 –> 00:05:14
Paul Edwards: So anyway, going back to the other two, the other two types, there’s cost of living and then there’s kind of merit based.
00:05:14 –> 00:05:14
CeCe Delgado: Sure.
00:05:15 –> 00:05:27
Paul Edwards: You’re not just doing good. Employees doing very, very well. I think, you know, typically well what do you see in that area? Like how do you think about that?
00:05:28 –> 00:05:40
CeCe Delgado: Well, I think, the most common is what you’re calling cost of living. And it’s, here’s the standard raise that anybody who’s performing up to par.
00:05:41 –> 00:05:42
Paul Edwards: If you get to stay here, you get this raise,
00:05:42 –> 00:05:56
CeCe Delgado: Then you’re going to get this raise. And maybe it’s a small range, you know. So if you’re, if you’re doing pretty well, maybe you’re getting this percent. And if you’re doing great, you’re going to get this percent. But maybe it’s just within a one or two point range, right?
00:05:56 –> 00:05:57
Paul Edwards:It’s two to three percent.
00:05:58 –> 00:06:10
CeCe Delgado: Sure. I think less common is the you’re doing great, so here’s a merit increase in, especially in smaller companies, because usually you’ll see that in a larger company, like a promotion or something like that.
00:06:10 –> 00:06:12
Paul Edwards: More responsibility, that type of thing.
00:06:12 –> 00:06:32
CeCe Delgado:Yes. But I do think that probably some of our members and such are doing the merit based increase where it’s like, maybe I gave you a goal last year, or you got a new certification, or you’ve achieved some sort of milestone that’s going to give you extra beyond the cost of living.
00:06:32 –> 00:06:53
Paul Edwards: Yeah. We’ve talked a lot about cutting and efficiencies and doing more with less and getting, you know, people being able to do more because you introduced technology, you introduced all sort of things. After a while, you’ve got a great team, you have almost enough people, and people get so exasperated like, we’re going to stop trying to hire. We’ve spit out like four people. We’re just going to take this on ourselves. We found a more efficient way to do it, or whatever that looks like.

00:06:53 –> 00:07:09
Paul Edwards: So as the manager of the or the owner, you naturally think to yourself, well, they’re doing more work. They’re working extra hard. Some of them are, you know, maybe, uh, properly exempt employees, but they’re now they’re putting in regularly fifty hours a week. And you’re like, I want to give you a better raise.
00:07:10 –> 00:07:23
Paul Edwards: So I think in a lot of ways, a lot of employees out there, particularly in healthcare, have come to expect a little bit bigger raises. Like they maybe I should say they have experienced it.
00:07:23 –> 00:07:41
Paul Edwards: Once you experience it, then maybe it becomes an expectation if that’s been how you’ve been operating. Do you need to change it? How do you change it? Because you cannot sustain year-over-year seven percent raises. Every time somebody comes around for review, which, by the way.
00:07:42 –> 00:07:48
CeCe Delgado: I was gonna say that’s one of the biggest ways you get people to expect it, right, is by tying it to some event.
00:07:48 –> 00:07:59
Paul Edwards: Yeah. Tying it to event, which is always the yearly review. People are like, when am I getting my review? Not because they’d like to come in and hear how they could improve, because that’s the point in time where they get
00:07:59 –> 00:08:00
CeCe Delgado: Not cause they want their goals.
00:08:00 –> 00:08:20
Paul Edwards:Yeah, they want their goals and they want to hit and they want to get and they want to get a raise. By the way, more so than ever. I mean, you know, gas at four dollars an hour, four dollars an hour for four dollars a gallon. Look, we give this advice every now and then, and I don’t think we’re in integrity. Do you know what I’m about to say?
00:08:20 –> 00:08:21
CeCe Delgado: I do, yeah
00:08:21 –> 00:08:23
Paul Edwards: What am I about to say? Tell them what I’m about to say.
00:08:23 –> 00:08:27
CeCe Delgado: We do that. We tie raises to

00:08:27 –> 00:08:46
Paul Edwards: Here at CEDR, when you come in for your annual review to talk about your goals, you almost always get a raise. But I see this advice given out all over the place. And I got to tell you, we could probably find it in some of our literature where we say, do your best to avoid tying a raise in the annual review together.
00:08:47 –> 00:08:49
Paul Edwards: Should we probably stop saying that?
00:08:50 –> 00:09:06
CeCe Delgado: Well, I don’t think we have to stop saying that, I don’t think it’s a bad thing. But, I’ve seen it backfire on us many times. And so, without going too in depth about the ways we’ve screwed up.
00:09:07 –> 00:09:08
Paul Edwards: No, no, no, I don’t mind sharing.
00:09:09 –> 00:09:50
CeCe Delgado: Yeah. You know, there were several years where, whether it was because maybe we were doing well or because we saw wages across the board increase. And so to remain competitive, we would have to offer a higher starting salary. So then we increased the existing people to, you know, meet that new market entry rate. Or if it was because we just saw a need and had an ability to give a higher increase than was maybe typical in the past. And then that became the new normal because we did it a couple of years in advance or in a row.
00:09:51 –> 00:10:05
CeCe Delgado: So, you know, then the third year when we were not able to offer that, I you know, I had several conversations with people where like, does this mean that I did a worse job this year?
00:10:06 –> 00:10:14
Paul Edwards: Right. And, it’s hard to say no. You were absolutely fabulous. And here’s half of what you got last year. Aren’t you happy about that?
00:10:14 –> 00:10:19
CeCe Delgado: Yeah. So, it’s a hard conversation no matter what once you’ve gotten to that point.
00:10:20 –> 00:10:46
Paul Edwards: Well, this is like a good time to introduce this. The thing that spurred this episode is a round up question. For those of you who don’t know what a round up question is, a couple times a month, we take questions that come in to our community from all different kinds of directions. There’s thousands of them that come in and we pick the ones that we see are common, that are happening more and more often. And we’ll generally rephrase it so it covers more. But I’m not going to read the question.
00:10:46 –> 00:11:25
Paul Edwards: What the doctor was saying is, look, I have kept my belt tight. I’ve done everything I can to keep costs down. And over the past year, year and a half, I have been raising fees. I have had to raise everything I’m doing. And to the employees, they see that we’re making more money. They see that our fees have gone up because they, you know, people are like, what the hell? How come it cost, you know, two hundred dollars for a cleaning now? And so, the appearance is that we’re raking in the cash and people don’t really always understand because they’re not involved in it.
00:11:26 –> 00:11:44
Paul Edwards: Look, for the last five years we’ve been tightening belts. We’ve also been doing our best to give the best, you know, pay the right market value or where we should be in our pay bands. And the reason why we’re doing good. And remember, we gave more for healthcare or healthcare went up, our contribution had to go up and we’re raising our fees.
00:11:45 –> 00:12:02
Paul Edwards: But just because that’s happening doesn’t mean that we have extra money right now. I got to trim back a little bit on this expectation that there’s going to be six and seven percent raises. How do I do that? CeCe you’re the HR expert. Give them the answer and I’m going to go. I’m going to go have a I’m going to go just I don’t know. I’m going to go have lunch.
00:12:03 –> 00:12:08
CeCe Delgado: Okay. I mean, like all HR issues, there is no one answer, but
00:12:09 –> 00:12:13
Paul Edwards: That is not what the listeners want to hear CeCe. I promised these people an answer.
00:12:13 –> 00:12:33
CeCe Delgado: You know, I think that one of the best things you can do as a business leader is to not be afraid to be as transparent as you can be about that stuff. So if you’re never having conversations with your team about man, it is costing more and more just to keep the doors open.
00:12:34 –> 00:12:47
Paul Edwards: Can I say constructive conversations? Not, complaint sessions, not always complaint because people can’t hear complaining. They can usually hear data. Okay, continue. I’m sorry.
00:12:47 –> 00:13:30
CeCe Delgado: No. Good point. Thank you. But if you’re not regularly having those types of conversations at a high level, obviously don’t bring out your bank statements and stuff. But, it’s okay for the team to understand that just like you’re being impacted at the grocery store, at the gas tank, you know, everywhere we are too. And here’s what that looks like. But I am aware of how you’re being impacted. And so we’ve done X, Y, and Z things for you all. Because we value you. You make the business run, whatever you want to say. But the reality is, this is what we have to do this year.
00:13:30 –> 00:13:40
Paul Edwards: Or what we can’t do this year. I’m going to say this. And you agree or disagree. Always a cost of living raise.
00:13:41
CeCe Delgado: Mhm, absolutely.
00:13:42 –> 00:14:29
Paul Edwards: If the cost of living is rising, always some kind of cost of living raise. Goals, I think are a good way. When we hit our goals, it makes it easier. But it’s on you as a leader. If you’re going to have goal based incentives, then you need to make sure that your team can hit those goals. And those goals result in you having the cash flow and the ability to be able to give out better raises. I mean, I think this is why we see in some industries, bonus structures and commission structures which incentivize employees to accomplish certain goals. And those are really effective. And I’m not against them. I’m also sometimes not for them, if not structured properly, if not curated really well, those programs, y’all, they don’t run on their own.
00:14:30 –> 00:14:54
CeCe Delgado: They don’t, and you have to really be careful that they’re not sucking more out of your business than they’re feeding into it. And that can sometimes be a difficult balance to achieve. But a lot of times they can be a really good incentive for people, or they can be a mechanism to create reasonable expectations.
00:14:54 –> 00:15:09
Paul Edwards: Yeah. What are the components that need to be in place so that you can better tie raises and salary increases with expectations and most importantly, with what the hell just happened the last year, right?
00:15:10 –> 00:15:15
CeCe Delgado: Yeah. Well, they should be data driven. So it’s not, you’re getting a raise because
00:15:15 –> 00:15:17
Paul Edwards: Speaking my love language right there, you said data driven.

00:15:17 –> 00:15:59
CeCe Delgado: Yeah. I mean, it can’t be. It should never have been. But it can’t be going forward if you have been. We did your review. So here’s your raise. We did your review and you met these three goals in that year. So here’s your raise. Or you know, there has to be some sort of metric or achievement. It’s not just an automatic, even if it is cost of living. I think proactively communicating. This is what we’re looking at for our range this year is always a good thing. And then if you have those incentivized, you know, bonuses so that it doesn’t breed resentment if you’re not hitting those numbers, everybody should feel personally tied to it.
00:15:59 –> 00:16:01
Paul Edwards: They should see the disaster coming too.
00:16:01 –> 00:16:18
CeCe Delgado: Absolutely. But they should feel like they have influence over whatever it is. And if they don’t, then it’s probably not a good metric anyway. If people don’t feel like they are in some way influencing the success or failure of that metric, then it’s probably not a great metric.
00:16:18 –> 00:16:36
Paul Edwards: Yeah, it’s probably not a great metric. So we talked to a lot of different categories of people. We have new doctors. We have a ton of doctors that are starting to come in through our HeadStart program who are opening their first practice. They’ve been an associate for a while. They’re just getting out of college and they’re opening their practice.
00:16:36–> 00:16:37
CeCe Delgado: What a time to do that.
00:16:38 –> 00:17:00
Paul Edwards: I know, or taking or taking over their family’s practice. You know, we do we have a lot of that that goes on. What do we tell that new, I’m opening my practice for the first time. What is there, any little couple of nuggets we could give them and say, don’t make this mistake. Ah, I know, I know, see, we don’t queue up every question and answer in here.
00:17:01 –> 00:17:31
CeCe Delgado: Well I think one, one way would be to, when people hire on with you, part of that initial onboarding after they’re out of there getting to know you period, getting acquainted period, establishing goals so that when you get to that first year, you’re not just going, here’s your cost of living. And now let’s move forward in a different way next year. So you have to establish the expectation.

00:17:31 –> 00:19:02
Paul Edwards: That we set goals here. And we have, part of our values is that we set goals here and we try to hold ourselves accountable around those goals. And the money doesn’t come from a magic place. I mean, I was an employee for a long time. I didn’t know where the money came from. I worked for people. I did the work. I heard they were getting paid. My paychecks came in. I had no connection to how that work goes. And I think that’s a vast majority of Americans, I mean, that are out there. But in healthcare, people are a lot more closely tied to us seeing the income and what comes into the practice and how well it’s doing. So lesson number one is set goals. Even if they’re not, you don’t got to tie them to money. Now, in the back of your mind, you might be saying the reason why we’re going to get better at patient recall here is because it causes the schedule to be more full, and that causes more income to come in. And that’s not something you need to hide from employees. But, you know, setting a mindset of goal setting and accomplishment and talking about why we didn’t hit the goals, I think is a very healthy way to also be able to fold that into what you’re going to do when it comes to compensation. And things come to me. You can tell if you’re listening to me right now, I’ve got one more thing. CeCe not everybody’s going to get it, even though you’re being clear and transparent and most of your employees will get it. Some employees will not connect all these dots together even though you’re doing the right thing.
00:19:03 –> 00:19:18
CeCe Delgado: Yeah, of course not. No. But they won’t. I mean, that’s across the board for anything, right? And it’s the same conversation that we have. Not every place is for everybody. And so if they don’t want to be in a goal driven environment, that’s okay.
00:19:18 –> 00:19:27
Paul Edwards: In my business, if you don’t want to be in a goal driven environment, then you have to take a role that is not goal driven. And we have a few of those here, but for the most part, we kind of all have goals set for us.
00:19:28 –> 00:19:31
CeCe Delgado:Yeah, I mean, everybody gets their individual goals, at least for the year.
00:19:32 –> 00:20:02
Paul Edwards: So, okay, you’re just getting started. Make sure that you create kind of a goal driven, data driven sort of system. How do you introduce this? You’ve been in practice for ten or twelve years. Everything’s been fine. But you just went through the last five years just like we described. And now you’re like, I this is I can see some disappointment out there and I don’t really have anything set up. We see the patients, we do the thing. We’re very busy. We’re a successful practice. But I feel like something’s missing. How do you introduce this?
00:20:03 –> 00:20:08
CeCe Delgado: Transparency and communication. I mean, like any other change, right?

00:20:08 –> 00:20:09
Paul Edwards: Set some damn goals.
00:20:10 –> 00:20:23
CeCe Delgado:Yeah. Set some expectations. Tell people the why. I mean, if you just come in and you’re like, this is what’s changing. That’s not super helpful. It’s the context around it. Why is this change happening?
00:20:24 –> 00:21:19
Paul Edwards: What could we improve? What do you guys think we could improve and why and how? So having some of those conversations in your morning huddles. You know, trying to get your team involved in it. If you can’t get your team involved in it. Look, sometimes teams don’t know how to do this. Sometimes you as the leader have when you can’t get your team to go, oh, I know what’s wrong here. I have some thoughts on it or they don’t feel comfortable maybe telling you. You know, part of my thoughts are you’re spending way too much time with patients. And if you would shut up and get to the next patient, we would do better. A very common complaint. You got to come with some ideas about ways that you could improve and make the patients lives better, your life better, the practice life better. So that’s for the ones that are going to start out. We’re saying, look, you got to again, it comes down to data and setting some goals. Start somewhere, I think start small.
00:21:20 –> 00:21:39
CeCe Delgado: Yes. And it sort of ties into what you were just saying. But there’s this really cheesy term that, especially you’ll find in larger organizations, “change champion”. Like the people who you can count on to rah rah the change and be super excited about it.
00:21:39 –> 00:21:40
Paul Edwards: And not be the blocker.
00:21:41 –> 00:22:25
CeCe Delgado: Yes and get all those people who don’t want to do it on board or keep it top of mind. Yes. But I think that in our smaller organizations, in the settings that we’re in, it’s not necessarily somebody, especially when it’s a change like this where no one’s going to be like, isn’t it awesome we’re getting less raises this year. Like that’s just not realistic. But you can have the person who you seed with like, these are the responses that I want you to give. If you’re hearing complaints or you’re hearing frustration around this, and it’s the things like, well, what ideas do you have to help it, help make sure we get to the goal.
00:22:26 –> 00:22:37
Paul Edwards: Well, don’t weaponize that. I just want to make that point. That’s like the thing. Well, if you don’t have something constructive, say, well, well, you give me a good idea, then. You got to be really positive about this.

00:22:37 –> 00:23:21
CeCe Delgado: Yes. And there can even be some commiseration. I know that sucks, but maybe if we team up, we’ve got some ideas. We can get everybody on board, and we can make sure that we meet these goals so that we get that bonus, or we get whatever the thing is. So not necessarily the cheerleader, but the, you know, they’ve got some like you’re in a leadership role or you’re a senior member on our team or whatever that looks like. And here’s how I want you to help me keep team morale up and help them be constructive about this change and not just feel defeated. Because I want to give you guys this at the end of the year, I want us to achieve the goals so that we can earn this.
00:23:22 –> 00:24:41
Paul Edwards: Yeah. And then the last category is the one we started with. Look, I’ve maybe I’ve screwed up a little bit, although I don’t ever want to frame like giving people a good cost of living raises and that stuff that’s not screwing up. I have given all I can give. I’ve done it all based on the data I’ve been squeezing. Insurance companies certainly aren’t paying more. I don’t have any way to make more money other than through efficiencies and maybe improving in a few areas. I’ve set some expectations have been set for me and I have met those expectations, but now the realism has set in for this coming year and probably for the next, I think actually for the next two or three years. I’m just going to say to everybody out there, this may cause a poop storm. I think we’re going to see interest rates go to nine or ten percent before they come back down. I’m really concerned about it. I’m looking at some early economic indicators that are really concerning. If that happens, we are really going to be in a state of austerity as far as small businesses are concerned. What do we do? What does an employer do in that position right now where they’ve got to trim back and they really have to settle back into cost of living raises?
00:24:41 –> 00:25:09
Paul Edwards: I want to say one thing before you answer that question. If you have done pay bands and you were at the middle to the top of your pay band, you are in a lot better shape than if you were trailing everybody in the market. And you’re paying the lowest in the market. And if you don’t know what a pay band is, we have episodes. In fact, I’m going to ask my team, put a link to the episode where we talk about pay bands and any of the articles that we have in it. Okay. CeCe, solve this problem for them.
00:25:11 –> 00:25:15
CeCe Delgado: I mean that there’s definitely no simple solution.
00:25:15 –> 00:25:16
Paul Edwards: Come on. Fix it.
00:25:18 –> 00:25:38
CeCe Delgado: I mean, like we talked about earlier in the episode, there are some creative ways to still help people out. Give them a little bit more without the strain to your budget that a big raise can be, but it can still be meaningful. It can still impact people’s lives. It can still make them feel like, you know,
00:25:39 –> 00:25:41
Paul Edwards: They’re valued and they matter because they do.
00:25:42 –> 00:26:19
CeCe Delgado: And the, the, the pulling back on the raise is truly in good faith. I’m not trying to keep something from you. This is just what we have to do to get by this year. There’s also I think, it is underrated the impact that doing like a total compensation statement is. I know that sounds like a big thing that only bigger companies do, but it doesn’t have to be, but it’s the reminder of these are the things that you get as an employee here. This is why it’s great to work here. Your salary is not the only cost to the business. You know, there’s all these other things that.
00:26:19 –> 00:26:21
Paul Edwards: Let’s not forget everybody else works on Fridays and you don’t.
00:26:22 –> 00:26:23
CeCe Delgado: Yes, yes, whatever that looks like.
00:26:24 –> 00:26:31
Paul Edwards: We are closed at four thirty and we are out of here by five. Those can be valuable things.
00:26:32 –> 00:26:51
CeCe Delgado: Don’t forget, we added this on top of your salary this year. We added for insurance. Whatever that looks like. But that can be a powerful tool and a reminder of some of the less tangible things too, that they’re getting as your employee.
00:26:52 –> 00:28:09
Paul Edwards: Misery loves company. Everybody’s belt is tight right now. Everybody’s paying more for gas. Nobody’s getting more reimbursement than you are for the same work that they’re doing. You know, so you can take some solace in that. Look, it’s what’s happening. You’re constantly having to deal with this, these types of things. The question that originally came in is my employees really are expecting bigger raises because of what’s been going on in the last four or five years, and I can’t do it. I just don’t see how I can do it. My CPA says you can’t do it. I don’t see how I can do it. There’s no place for me to get that money from. I’m already not taking more from the practice and working, you know, working as hard as I can work. You know, it’s going to be hard to just cold stone sober. Just say we never talked about any of this. We never talked about goals. We never talked about raises, we never talked about these things. And now I’m just going to give you a cost of living raise and tell you you did a good job. And I hope you’re happy here. It’s going to be hard. Maybe if you’re halfway through the year with some of your employees, that’s usually how it is because heaven forbid, you have everybody on January first to talk about how they did. What a sad day that would be. Maybe if you’re halfway through the year, you start introducing some of these concepts. That’s it. That’s the solution.

00:28:09 –> 00:28:10
CeCe Delgado:There’s the solution.
00:28:10 –> 00:28:57
Paul Edwards: If I kept running my mouth, it would come to me. No, seriously, think about what CeCe and I talked about today. If there’s some of that that resonates with you and you’ve been busy and you haven’t been able to do any of this, now would be the time to maybe sit down, if you’ve got an outside practice manager, they’ve already been talking to you about this sort of stuff, but that’s what they’re there for. I mean, if you’re out there with any of those, we work with some just wonderful practice management coaches. Tell them that you’re having this problem. They have seen it all before, and they may have some good solutions within their systems that you guys could take advantage of. Yeah, we’re sending them back to their practice managers. I like this idea. Not it. How about that? Any closing thoughts CeCe. I always put this on my guest.
00:28:59 –> 00:29:19
CeCe Delgado I mean, I think it all comes back to communication. Be as transparent as you can constructively. Like you said, communicate with people and, and tie things to the context or the reason or the data or what, tie it to something. So it feels less like it’s just, this is how I feel today.
00:29:20 –> 00:29:47
Paul Edwards: Okay, so what the hell just happened is CeCe and I could not come up with a solution to this problem. We hope this episode helped a little bit, everybody. We’re all going through it and we’ll probably do a couple more episodes on it. You got to just start somewhere and you’ll, and, and you’ll figure it out. I sound like a parent. You’re going to be fine. You’re gonna be fine. Alright. Thanks. CeCe, I always appreciate you so much on the show.
00:29:48 –> 00:29:48
CeCe Delgado: Thanks, Paul.
00:29:49 –> 00:30:00
Paul Edwards: Yeah, man. I guess that’s it. We’re gonna see you guys on the next episode. We’re in the middle of a season of recording. We’ve got a lot of really great subjects to talk about, so I’m kind of excited. Thanks.
00:30:01 –> 00:30:29
Narrator: Thanks for joining us for this week’s episode of What the Hell Just Happened? Do Paul and yourself a favor and please share the podcast with your network. If you have an HR issue question or just want to add a comment about something, Paul said, please record it on your phone and send it to podcast at WTHjusthappened.com. We might even ask if we can play it on the show. You can also visit WTHjusthappened.com to learn more about the show and join our community. Don’t forget to like and subscribe and join us again next week.