July 2020 - Dodge Digital Marketing, LLC

With Unemployment Soaring, Your Disengaged Employees Won’t Quit

Amanda Dodge Management July 15, 2020

At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March, millions of workers were temporarily furloughed as states shut down and businesses were forced to close. Now, as more cities and companies re-open, some employees won’t be welcomed back. In some cases, employers took hard financial hits from lost customers and needed to cut their staff. In other cases, companies were looking to “trim the fat” and the pandemic provided a convenient opportunity. Either way, unemployment numbers remain high.

One study released in May by the University of Chicago predicted that many of the temporary furloughs will become permanent layoffs. Meanwhile, other companies have issued hiring freezes until economic stability returns.

All of this proves that it isn’t a great time to enter the job market. Millions of Americans are clamoring for any job they can get, while human resource teams are flooded with applicants on every job post.

What does this mean for your team? In short, the disengaged employees who would otherwise quit when they are unhappy are going to stick around, and this will have serious implications for the success of your company in the future.

Employees Are Less Likely to Quit in a Bad Economy

In 2001, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) began tracking the quit rate, aka the share of people who left their jobs on their own accord – as opposed to getting fired or laid-off. This rate plummeted during the recession (around 2009 and 2010) when jobs were scarce but steadily increased over the years, reaching the highest rates since before 2008 in the fall of 2019.

Quit rates serve as a pulse for economic security in the United States. High quit rates indicate that people feel confident in their ability to find work – or at least to sustain themselves while they look for a new job.

“The rate at which people quit tends to rise when the economy is strong and workers are confident they can find another job, often one that pays better,” Jeffry Bartash writes at MarketWatch.

Additionally, there are two signals that determine whether or not people are likely to quit: the labor market and wage growth.

“A stronger labor market means employers must fill more openings from the ranks of the already employed, who have to quit their jobs, instead of hiring jobless workers,” Nick Bunker writes for Indeed’s State of the Labor Market report. “Similarly, faster wage growth in an industry signals workers that opportunities abound and they might get higher pay by taking a new job.”

In a strong, healthy economy, employees feel confident quitting their jobs. Their spouse or significant other might earn enough to support them or they feel like they can get another job within a short period of time. Employees are also more likely to “job hop” or try different jobs in hopes of raising their salaries and positions. During this time, recruiters actively have to lure employees away from their current positions to try new ones.

However, we aren’t in a healthy economy anymore. Employee uncertainty is peaking as unemployment rises. If one spouse is laid off, the other won’t quit his or her job because they need at least one form of steady income. As jobs are perceived as being increasingly scarce, employees are going to stick around.

Disengaged Employees Weigh Down Your Company

At first glance, these lower quit rates might seem like a good thing for some employers. Lower turnover means businesses can save money and keep that industry expertise within their walls. After all, turnover is notoriously expensive.

As a general rule of thumb, it costs a business six to nine months’ salary to replace an employee. These costs come in the form of general HR (recruiting and hiring) costs, lost productivity while other team members pick up the slack, as well as training and onboarding costs. If an employee earns $50,000 annually, it could cost $37,000 to find a replacement and bring them up to speed.

However, disengaged employees come with their own costs. They cause a “slow bleed,” where they keep siphoning company funds as long as they stay on staff.

Justin Warner at DecisionWise found that each disengaged employee costs $3,400 for every $10,000 in annual salary. This means your disengaged employee who makes $50,000 annually could cost you $17,000 each year that they stick around.

While turnover costs are significant, they can be mitigated if the replacement you hire stays with your organization for several years. A disengaged employee keeps costing you year-after-year.

Furthermore, companies with engaged employees grow profits as much as three times faster than their competitors. Yes, employee turnover costs money. However, disengaged employees cost money as well. It’s up to you to determine whether the hit to your productivity and profits from keeping these employees on staff is worth the savings of low turnover.

You Don’t Want Disengaged Employees Sticking Around

Not only are disengaged employees costly, but they are bad for morale. If disengaged workers don’t feel like they can easily find work elsewhere because of an unsteady economy, they are going to keep doing the bare minimum just so you don’t fire them.

A 2019 report by Achievers found that only 35% of employees planned to look for another job in 2019; however, this doesn’t mean that most people are happy where they are. Only 21% of employees are “very engaged” in their work, leading Achievers to believe employees are sticking around just for the paycheck. They call this The Complacency Effect (also the title of their report) because employees aren’t at breaking points where they want to leave the company, but they aren’t invested and working to drive the business forward.

“Employers that ignore this complacency are at risk of losing customers, high-performing employees and profit, and lack a team actively working toward the company’s vision,” they write.

Lisa Earle McLeod, author of Selling with Noble Purpose, calls disengaged employees who refuse to leave “quit and stays,” or employees who mentally check out of their work but stay with the same company.

“If people are quitting left and right, you have a retention problem,” McLeod writes. “If your good people are the ones quitting, you have something worse; you have an engagement problem. High performers won’t stay in a low engagement culture.”

If they do, they will become low performers – increasing your number of quit and stays.

Consider EmploymeE Engagement During the COVID-19 Pandemic

So far, we have looked at employment and engagement from a macro-level. However, these insights can get drilled down to the micro-level within your organization.

How you treated your employees during the spring of 2020 (and the rest of this year) will affect how engaged they are in 2021 and beyond. You already know they aren’t going to quit because of the economy, so the question remains: are they quit and stays? Are they staying in place to collect a paycheck and get by doing the bare minimum?

Consider how Florida State University (my alma mater) sent out a memo telling workers that they, “will no longer allow employees to care for children while working remotely,” as COVID-19 cases soared in Florida and schools were out for the summer. Many parents didn’t have any childcare alternatives this year. They had to care for their kids and work at the same time. (This memo was later backtracked, but the damage to the university’s reputation was done.)

Remember how Publix banned employees from wearing masks and gloves back in March? They didn’t want to scare shoppers with the optics of an employee in a mask. This raised alarm bells for many workers who felt the company was prioritizing PR over their safety. Today, the idea of shopping without a mask seems ridiculous.

Long after these stories leave the headlines, the employees who work there will remember how they were treated. And Publix and FSU aren’t alone. Hundreds of companies have put their employees in unsafe situations and let them know that they were welcome to resign if they didn’t like the new policies.

“Not only is it a safety issue, it’s a business issue,” Mark Cuban, billionaire entrepreneur, tells CNBC. “How companies respond…is going to define their brand for decades. If you rushed in and somebody got sick, you were that company. If you didn’t take care of your employees or stakeholders and put them first, you were that company.”

Many consumers have a bad taste in their mouths when they think of certain companies now, and so do the employees who work for them.

You Can Still Turn 2020 Around

It may be July, but there is still time to reverse your current disengagement trends. If you mistreat your workers through the pandemic and beyond, you won’t motivate them to work harder. Instead, they will look at the job market and decide if it is safe to quit or if they should just skate by on the bare minimum for a few more years.

You can create a company of deadweight or you can engage your team members to do their best for you. It all starts not with their attitudes, but with your treatment of staff and the employee policies that you have in place.

Image by VIN JD from Pixabay

Book Recommendations: Check Out My Library Virtual Tour!

Amanda Dodge Get to Know Me July 13, 2020

I am taking a break from our regularly-scheduled digital marketing programming to make a few book recommendations.

Reading is something that has always brought me joy. I am an avid writer but a dedicated reader. When I don’t have a book near me (or the book I am reading isn’t good), you can easily notice my high levels of crabbiness and general discomfort. I read to learn about other people and use both fiction and non-fiction to develop a better understanding of the world.

This past Sunday, Tiffany Razzano of Wordier Than Thou asked me to share the contents of my library and highlight a few books that I love. Check out my top book recommendations and find out how you can order them in a way that supports our local literary non-profit.

Find My Video on Facebook

To see the full virtual library tour, check out Wordier Than Thou on Facebook. Here is a link to my video, but you can also see what other authors read and learn why they love the books they do.

Tiffany started these library tours at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, along with other author readings and virtual events. This has been a way to allow authors to promote themselves as in-person events were canceled while providing much-needed distractions to audiences from the stress of closed businesses and rising case numbers.

If you love the books on your shelves or want to share your writing with our community, check out some of our events. We host regular open mic nights specifically for authors to share their best work, or even just a few pieces they are trying to workshop and improve on. (I am using the first-person plural here because I sit on the board of Wordier Than Thou.)

My Top Book Recommendations (Right Now)

Arguably, the phrase, “you are what you eat,” could be adjusted to say, “you are what you read.” A person’s reading choices and reading habits are as diverse and personal as their music preferences. To prove this, just ask any reader whether or not it is acceptable to dog-ear a page in a book – or tell a Hunger Games fan that the movies were better.

So what am I reading now? What books do I hold near and dear to my heart? Here’s my current top-five hit list:

Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah This has been one of my favorite books for years. Noah does a great job of presenting difficult concepts (like growing up during Apartheid) in a light, approachable way. Readers can enjoy his stories while still understanding the horrors of growing up under such overt racism.
The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator by Timothy Winegard History nerds (aka my people) will love this book. It is dense but incredibly informative. As a whole, we have done a terrible job of handling pandemics and disease since the dawn of time. It is humbling to see how much more we need to learn.
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi I have recommended this book left, right, and center. It is moving, it is informative, and you find yourself worrying about the characters and thinking about their lives long after you put the book down.
Typhoid Mary: An Urban Historical by Anthony Bourdain This is one of Bourdain’s lesser-known books, which is why a copy can cost more than $80 online. However, the taciturn chef had a tremendous amount of respect for Mary Mallon, both for her skills in the kitchen and as a survivor in the early 20th century. You can access this ebook easily and enjoy Bourdain’s flowing words and trademark snark.
The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson This is another lighthearted book. If you need a mental break or read to escape, relax knowing that this family isn’t yours.

Most of the books on this list have stood the test of time as my favorites. However, I will always have another book up my sleeve that I want to talk about.

How to Buy the Books I Recommend

Amazon may be your go-to place to buy books, but there are other options! Support your local library! Share books with others. Look for gently-used bookstores. Shop local. In the St. Petersburg, Florida area, I highly recommend both Tombolo Books and 321 Books.

Another option is Bookshop, which describes itself as, “an online bookstore with a mission to financially support local, independent bookstores.” They give over 75% of their profit margin to local booksellers, authors, and literary organizations. You can also choose which bookstores, in particular, you want to support.

(Note, that is NOT an affiliate link. I just enjoy the service they provide.)

Tiffany created a tab from Wodier’s Bookshop page with my book recommendations from the library tour. Not only do I recommend reading these books, but I also suggest reaching out to tell me what you thought of them – and whether or not you think my taste matches yours.

Reading is a major part of who I am, but the books I pick up also make me a better writer. I am reminded of unusual words that I can start using and I pick up on grammar nuances that I otherwise wouldn’t notice.

Plus, in times of stress, you can always find solace in a good book.

The Art of Self-Editing

Tiffany Razzano Content Creation July 13, 2020

Whether you’re a freelance copywriter tearing through contract gigs at home, a journalist working out of a newsroom with an increasingly shrinking editorial staff, or somewhere in between, it should go without saying that self-editing is an important part of your writing process.

But I still have to say it because it’s so easy to forget how necessary self-editing is.

It’s also the most difficult part of the writing process for many people. Personally, it’s my least favorite task – my adult ADD can’t handle reviewing the same content multiple times. Still, I know it’s important.

Here are my secrets. Check out a few things I do to make self-editing a less tedious chore.

Edit as You Write

I read through my intro to this piece more times than I would have liked (and I should probably read through it again), but proofreading content as you write it is one of the easiest ways to ensure tight, well-written copy.

Not many people will want to do this from the start. Admittedly, it’s easy to get stuck in the mires and never move on. But I tend to edit my work section by section, finishing one before moving on to the next. You still need to proofread the entire piece once it is completed, but it makes for less work than if you never looked at it until that moment.

Outlines Keep You on Track

Before I begin writing any piece, I start taking notes and outline each blog post or article.

This keeps my work on track and makes life easier later. If I don’t know what to write about or if I get stuck, I can easily move on to the next section.

When self-editing, if I focus on each section, rather than the piece as a whole, I can determine if my writing has met the goal of that specific section. When each section meets the needs that I wrote in the outline, then the article as a whole will start to come together.

Read Aloud to Yourself

Hands down the easiest way to determine if something you’ve written is garbage is to read it aloud to yourself. (I just read this to myself and moved a few words around.)

If you stumble over something as you read it out loud, assume your reader will have the same problem.

This has always been the best, fastest, and easiest way to find mistakes. If it sounds awful when you read it to yourself, then it’s not well-written or useful copy.

Ask Someone Else to Look It Over

Whenever possible, have another pair of eyes look over your work. Because you’re so close to what you’ve written, it’s going to be hard for you to find typos and other problems.

Again, I say whenever possible. I know it’s hard to find people available to give your work a proofread, whether in-depth or cursory, exactly when you need it. But if you can, ask a friend or colleague or loved one to give your content a quick once over, especially if that’s the final stop before publishing something.

My girlfriend loves looking over my work and finding mistakes. (In fact, she just read through all of this.)

No matter what you’re writing, it’s hard to catch your own mistakes.

Never Fully Trust Spellcheck

Notice that I didn’t say not to use spellcheck. I use spellcheck (and Grammarly) all the time and so should you. I just disregard most of the changes it tells me to make.

Before using it, you need to be knowledgeable about grammar. Sometimes you might have specific style guides to follow. So, you need to know which suggestions to ignore.

At the same time, spellcheck has highlighted some massive mistakes, including spelling and grammar errors. Modern technology means these tools are constantly learning and improving. (Somehow it knew I spelled Instagram wrong earlier today. I didn’t know it even knew what Instagram was.)

There are other useful websites out there as well, including Grammarly and Hemingway Editor, that help with self-editing and readability. Again, some cautionary advice: you might not agree with all of their suggestions for your particular project.

If your publication has a style guide, make sure it’s available in advance. If there is no style guide, create an informal one for yourself including any specific spellings or irregular grammatical rules your publication uses.

Create a Self-Editing Checklist for Yourself

Before you write anything, create a self-editing checklist. Depending on who is publishing your work, you might want to create a checklist for each outlet as they might have different requirements.

Things to consider include:

Your headline. Does it immediately create a sense of what you’re writing about and invite readers to learn more?
Your introduction. Does it get straight to the point?
Your subheads. Do you cover everything you need to? How is your formatting? Do you have enough visual breaks?
Your conclusion. Do you wrap it all up succinctly?

If you create a checklist for the things you want to consider before hitting submit, you’ll end up with a better piece.

Preview Your Post

You’re probably already doing this, but make sure you give your article one final read before submitting it. If you’ve done a lot of work to it after the first draft, you might find an errant word or two.

Hopefully, these suggestions bring you through the self-editing process which can help you to create a more polished piece.

Tiffany Razzano is a journalist and copywriter living in the Tampa Bay area. For the past 8 years, she served as an editor at Tampa Bay Newspapers. She also writes regularly for La Gaceta, Watermark, The Free Press, and Creative Pinellas. She’s the founder/president/creative director of the literary arts nonprofit Wordier Than Thou, which supports Florida writers and readers through community events, publishing projects, and educational opportunities.

Dealing With Difficult People While Leading a Nonprofit

Tiffany Razzano Marketing July 1, 2020

As the leader of a Florida-based literary arts nonprofit, I’ve said on more than one occasion, “The hardest thing about working with the community is having to work with the community.”

That might sound curmudgeonly, but people can be difficult. They can be self-involved, ego-driven and entitled, and when you throw a bunch of artists into the mix, this can sometimes be amplified.

Now, I’d like to stress that 99.9% of the people we work with are lovely, talented, creative, friendly, and appreciative individuals. I’m sure this is the same for many nonprofits.

But that 0.1% can sour the work that you’re doing, especially in the nonprofit world, when you’re giving your all to build up your community. This is particularly true in the case of grassroots organizations like Wordier Than Thou, which is completely volunteer-run. Nobody is making any money. We’re doing what we do purely for the love of books, publishing, and Florida writers.

For this reason, unless we’ve made a mistake (and trust me, we’ve made missteps and always hold ourselves accountable) I tend to embrace a firm, take-no-crap stance when it comes to handling complaints and difficult people. I know I’m not going to win any customer service awards, but I’m ok with that.

Here are a few situations I’ve encountered over the years while leading a nonprofit and how I handled them. These approaches might not work for everyone, but they worked for us.

But Her Emails! Stand By Your Organization’s Values

Within the legal bounds of our nonprofit designation, we don’t raise money or campaign for political candidates. That being said, we also don’t shy away from tough topics and we don’t restrict anyone’s creative expression. We know that addressing certain issues might alienate some of our followers, but we do so because we’re privileged to have a platform that allows us to shine a light onto some of the injustices and issues in the world. Art can be many things and we firmly believe that it can be an important form of activism.

When Donald Trump announced he was running for president in 2015, he immediately stood out as a problematic candidate to us. We thought it would be a short-lived campaign, though, one that would make great fodder for satire. Around Halloween, we asked writers to imagine what his presidency might look like and organized a reading of these stories at an event called Dawn of the Donald.

Assuming he would drop out of the race, as he had in past elections, we thought that was that. When he was selected as the Republican nominee and then elected president, we organized another reading of these fictional pieces on the evening of his inauguration. We later published these stories in an anthology by the same name.

dawn of the donald book Wordier than thou

Along the way, some of our more conservative followers asked me why we didn’t host a similar event or publish a similar anthology inspired by the Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton.

I explained to these individuals that as a racist, homophobic, misogynist, xenophobe, Trump represented a growing division in our country and we saw the potential for him to wreak havoc on our democracy if elected. (Fast forward a few years and the stories in our collection are strangely accurate.)

One individual pushed a bit further that we should also skewer Clinton with an anthology, because fair is fair and we’re a community organization that needs to appeal to all beliefs. I politely suggested they publish such a book and that was the last I heard about it.

A few of these individuals started coming to our events less frequently after that, but the relationships weren’t entirely severed, as they still come around now and again. Even if those relationships were irreparable, it would have been worth it for staying true to our values.

Sometimes You Can’t Help People If They Won’t Meet You Halfway

In February, we hosted our Tampa Bay Publishing Conference, a four-day event that focuses on the business of books. This conference features panels on various topics as well as authors sharing their personal publishing journeys.

By December, our lineup was mostly complete and looking strong. We were excited about the slate of authors joining us for our third annual conference, which has grown each year.

Enter Entitled Author.

Entitled Author, traveling from outside our region the Tampa Bay area had participated in a small way at a previous conference.

In January, they emailed me asking why I hadn’t invited them to be a featured author this year. They’ve been writing and publishing for decades, they informed me, and felt their accomplishments spoke for themselves. I didn’t know this person well, but based on previous interactions, they came across as high maintenance, so I never dreamed of inviting them to speak at our conference. Why add more stress to an already stressful weekend?

Still, I didn’t want to completely alienate them. Gritting my teeth, I messaged an apology for overlooking them, the schedule had been set for months, we’ll keep them in mind for next year based on our needs, etc.

I took it a step further and told them there was still time to submit a panel for this year’s event. I just needed a short description, title, and the names of at least three individuals who would join them on the panel.

They shot me down, saying they didn’t know any other writers they could invite to be part of a panel. I mentioned that there was room on a handful of panels I’d pulled together if they wanted to join one. They told me they most likely couldn’t get a ride to the conference, though we were more than a month out from the event.

At that point, I knew there was nothing I could offer that would make the author happy. If they didn’t try to meet me halfway, there wasn’t much I could do for them, and by being so difficult, they pretty much guaranteed that I won’t invite them to participate next year.

Know When to Go Above Their Head

Last year, Wordier Than Thou hosted an event at a nonprofit venue we often used. We pre-sold advance tickets and were also selling tickets at the door.

When I arrived, two volunteers scheduled by the venue wouldn’t let me work at the ticketing table by the front door, even though I have always worked the door at our events in this space.

They rearranged the items I set up on the table. They interrupted if I tried to answer questions from guests. They wouldn’t let me handle the cash box and created their own system for tracking ticket sales. They let people who weren’t on the guest list in for free. And I found out after the event that they didn’t accurately keep track of door sales, so I never knew the exact number of people in the audience.

Even worse, while I and other audience members were standing just a few feet from them, they loudly criticized the event and turnout. (We had about 50 people come out on a Sunday evening, not that it makes any difference.)

Their behavior was off-putting enough that the next day I emailed venue staff about it. The venue apologized, and while they couldn’t necessarily fire a volunteer, they could ensure that these two women never worked at one of our events again.

Don’t Give in to Bullies

A few years ago, we hosted a literary program through an online radio station. The station offered a good mix of local programming and syndicated shows from around the world.

The host of one of the other local shows had a reputation as being pushy, abrasive, and self-involved. They were nice enough to me at first and I usually recorded my program right after theirs, so I’d run into them often.

Then, I booked an author friend on our show. A few days later, this other host informed me they had also just booked the same author on their show and that I would need to cancel my booking. When I refused, they went off on me. I was selfish and rude and clearly should let them have the interview.

The author and I explained that the two programs would discuss different topics. Not only that, but the programs would air sporadically on the station and be available for download. There would be hardly any overlap in listeners.

This other host – despite booking this author well after me – still insisted they had the right to the interview. I never backed down, though. They complained some more to anyone who would listen and then they hit the unfriend and unfollow button on Facebook. Good riddance to bullies, I say.

Not Everyone Who Asks for a Refund Should Get One

Over the past few years, I’ve added a no-refunds policy to most events to make our lives easier.

During a recent Fiesta Day street festival in Ybor City, we organized a children’s book fair for the event. We offered booth space to authors for $50, a fair price considering this is one of the area’s largest annual events with around 10,000 people visiting the Historic District for it each year.

In the week leading up to the event, one young adult author emailed us just about every day with questions and expressing her excitement for the festival. She even contacted us the evening before with last-minute questions.

The next morning, she emailed me an hour-and-a-half before the festival started saying she woke up with a high fever and it was probably the flu. Later that day, she emailed me asking for a refund.

I politely denied her request, pointing out the last-minute nature of her cancellation and the fact that all the vendor information stated that the fee was non-refundable. Trying to be nice, I offered to let her use that $50 towards a future event, though.

She told me that “theft is a crime and a sin” and that she would never attend any of our events. That’s fine. She still isn’t getting a refund.

Our nonprofit has a small budget and we use funds from ticket sales and vendor fees to pay for the next event. If people aren’t able to attend something as they had originally planned, barring an extreme circumstance, it isn’t fair to ask for a refund, especially when all event descriptions include our no-refund policy.

That said, I know there are times to make exceptions, so we do evaluate each situation. This spring, our Harry Potter-themed drag show fundraiser was rescheduled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

A ticketholder emailed me and said they were available for the new date in September, but they were worried about the impact the coronavirus might have on the economy and their personal funds. I didn’t hesitate to offer them a refund given the unprecedented situation caused by the pandemic.

Know When You’ve Made a Mistake and Apologize

It is important to recognize when we make mistakes. I’m always quick to apologize and to take accountability.

I’ve apologized for a lot of things lately, such as moving a virtual event to a different date when I realized the original booking didn’t work with our schedule. I had already set up the event page and began promoting it before realizing I needed to change gears. I know moving things around can be irritating to authors trying to fill their calendar and apologized profusely.

During another recent virtual event, I didn’t realize that the link to the Zoom meeting room had expired a few days earlier. I got frustrated while fielding frantic emails and Facebook messages asking how to enter the event. I apologized profusely for my mistake and worked with the author to find another date that suited them.

Ultimately, handling complaints and responding to tense interactions with creative collaborators and event guests comes down to assessing individual situations. While we believe in making amends when we make mistakes, we also don’t believe in simply giving in to difficult people. I know that not every nonprofit leader will embrace this attitude, but I’m not interested in letting jerks detract from my passion or our mission of supporting Florida’s writers and readers.

Monthly Archives: July 2020