279: Making HR an Asset, Not a Liability with Kim Ottone Tank
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Summary
What does HR mean to you? Human Resources is all about how we treat the people in our company. Even if you're solo, having an HR mindset helps you treat people well. The pet sitting industry has quite a few challenges when it comes to HR. Kim Ottone Tank, owner of Apronstrings Pet Sitting, shares how to approach the unique nature of HR in pet care. Kim helps us understand why we should take HR seriously and why it's not such a massive burden.
Main topics:
What is HR?
Company culture and HR
Supporting staff
Finding resources for HR
Main takeaway: Taking HR seriously means we're serious about treating people well.
About our guest:
Apronstrings was founded in 1990 by Kim Tank, a registered veterinary technician. Kim is a Certified Professional Pet Sitter through Pet Sitters International. In addition, she has become Fear Free Certified, a program developed to reduce fear, stress and anxiety in pets.
She hired her first employee in 1996, after carefully researching hiring practices in the industry. Her staff have always been employees, covered by her bond, liability insurance and worker's compensation policy. All of her staff receive intensive ongoing training and all are either certified in pet first aid, or are currently enrolled in a class.
Founder and CEO, Kim has always known she was destined to work with animals and has devoted her life to working in pet care. After living in Concord for many years, she relocated her family to Pollock Pines, CA, in 2016, to raise goats and (more) chickens. She has 4 cats and a dog as well. Kim splits her time between the Bay Area and El Dorado County to maintain a close connection with her sitters, her clients and their loving pets. When not working, she loves running, kayaking, mentoring other pet sitters and exploring El Dorado Wine Country.
Links:
Email Kim: Kim@petcarehr.com
Give us a call! (636) 364-8260
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Email us at: feedback@petsitterconfessional.com
A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, sitter, employees, business, hr, pet, pay, hiring, company, hour, law, minimum wage, california, important, payroll, day, visit, treat, states, staff
SPEAKERS
Kim Ottone-Tank, Collin
Collin 00:10
Hello, I'm Meghan. I'm Collin. And this is Pet Sitter confessional and open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter brought to you by time to pet and pet perennials. When I say the word HR, human resources, what do you think? Do you feel like you're in trouble? Do you feel like that just means there's a whole lot of paperwork coming your way? Well, as a business owners Human Resources is an incredibly important topic that we have to consider when we set up everything that we do, even when it comes to being a sole proprietor because how we treat ourselves impacts how we will treat those around us. And so today, we're really excited to have Kim tank owner of apron strings pet sitting. Back on the show, she was previously on episodes 153 and 176. Kim discusses the importance of having a good approach to human resources and how it helps us run a better business. Let's get started.
Kim Ottone-Tank 01:06
My full name on Facebook is Kim. Oh, Tony tank, you're trying to find me. I have been in business over 30 years in California, the main part of my business is in the San Francisco Bay area, particularly in Walnut Creek and Concord in the East Bay. I live up in Pollock pines about two hours away. So I have employees that I rely on quite a bit. AndI have no plans to retire go anywhere. I'm just enjoying my life and enjoying my business. And one of the great pleasures I have is helping people with hiring because it is a very important part of my life. Yes, I've always loved your input on this. And you know, this is a topic that was kind of birthed out of Megan's in my recent hiring process. And then all of a sudden, we were faced with this issue of now needing to communicate to employees and what that relationship was, What's it supposed to be? So from your perspective, Kim, when you when when you hear the word HR, what is that? What does that mean to you? It means the people who are involved in your business, it's funny because I actually did look up definitions because I want to fully understand it's because there's a lot to it. Human resources that that is your people. But human resource is also refers to the management of those people. And there's so much involved in hiring that goes way beyond the actual work done and the actual training and supervising of the work. There is a whole other world that is involved in having people work for you. So it's it involves the recruiting, hiring, the payroll, overseeing that as it pertains to the work. So it's all about the people and the management out of the people. I know, when I think of HR, I generally think of two things. One, I'm in trouble. And B's there's going to be a lot of paperwork. So that's funny, because I I hadn't previously realized how much HR did involve that, that fear of being in trouble to some people, because Oh, yes, you're getting sent to the HR department. There's a problem until I started being on some of the HR forums, I didn't fully understand that fear that people have. But yes, there is some aspect of the discipline as well. And especially if it pertains to company policies, and that sort of thing that are not particularly maybe what they did on the job, but but some kind of rules, they've may have broken within the company, that sort of thing. So yes, yes, it is people can look at it as something to fear. Hopefully not Hopefully, most of HR is going to be a positive thing. Best case scenario. Well, and you know, we're talking about maybe not being in trouble today, but we're talking about accepting this new role as a business owner, right? I think, in pet care, bringing on an intake in removing employees tends to be kind of a loosey goosey thing with a lot of people or it's kind of just taken not very seriously. But there's a lot. There's a lot that's tied up in that not just legally, but also making sure we're still treating our employees. Well. Absolutely. So much of the whole aspect of HR is first of all, following all of the rules. And secondly, though, there's it goes beyond that. It's how you treat your people. It's company culture is very important aspect of HR. So it's it's that combined, and I think when we hire our first person, it's it can be very difficult to pull it all together. You're you're learning everything from the ground up. And that's why I think it's so great now that there are so many places to go for information among the forums about getting set up with your processes. So you do do it correctly. And I know I always sound like I've, you know, am the sitter who walked five miles in the snow to her jobs uphill both ways. But when I started hiring, there were no other people in California that I could find that had employees. So I felt pretty much out in the cold as far as learning the various processes. But I did go to my state Department of Labor, or the EDD here and looked for guidance, as far as all of the legalities how I was going to put that into the petsitter role was something I kind of had to fly by the seat of my pants. And I've learned a lot. So I learned a lot over the years. And now I think that's why I like to help people with it, because I can speed up their process for them. But pets, the pet sitting business is so unique. It's not like other companies, when if you have a retail business, you can hire people to come in for eight hours and work at your brick and mortar store. A pet sitting pet pets in business, excuse me, it's something completely different. How do I pay people for driving around? What do I do if they have to go out twice on the same day, it is so unique. And there are very few models that are just like pet sitting services. So I think that's why now more than ever, as businesses grow, we have to come up with ways to deal with these differences. I like to say I like to learn from other people's mistakes, not my own, it helps me that quite a bit. But you know, that's why I want to have this this conversation. And when we start thinking about HR, is there a point like, when do I need to be start being worried about HR? Is there a number of employees or is it as soon as I'm interested in hiring, as soon as you're interested in hiring, when you're solo, you don't have to worry about anybody but you. So that's not you don't have to worry about any of this, other than paying your taxes and that sort of thing. But once you've got one person, you instantly have to follow all of the rules. And especially in states like California, we're so unique. Like I like to say if you can do it in California, you can do it anywhere. So many of our thresholds are start with one employee, for example. Some states now have mandated sick time that has to be paid California is one of them. Some states, it's I believe after four employees, in California, if you're one person, you have to provide sick time for that one person. When you have workers comp, some states, it's after three people, California, you've got one person who's part time you have to carry workers comp. So that's California kind of says, hey, you've got one employee, you are now an employee, and you have to do your HR stuff. So I think once you've got, you're beginning that process of hiring, because you know, if you hire one, you're probably gonna end up with two or three, hopefully, you'll grow and have more than one anyway. So best to get started off on the right foot from the very beginning, the setup your systems and your processes. Yeah. Well, as a reminder, too, that HR is also overseeing hiring and recruiting, right. And there are there's processes, there are legal things that you can and cannot do and things like, like offer letters and things like exactly right that we have to start from, from the very beginning. Yes, absolutely. And, you know, in the beginning, it's, it's just say you have one person, obviously, you probably don't need anybody, you're not big enough to hire anybody to help with HR specifically. But you've got to be your own little HR department. Now, I will say, though, so many of the payroll services now offer HR services as well. So I think that is a way to have that extra help. And that guidance. I'm not and I can't tell you, you know, cost wise, if it's, you know, if it's included in your basic payroll, or that sort of thing, but a lot of the major companies have an HR component, and they can help you out quite a bit with with those issues. Yeah, and that's an important thing to remember is that because there are so many resources out there that you may already have access to something that you never looked at, because you didn't need it. But now you need it. So you can start asking questions of these people, when your CPA may be able to hook you up with a good HR resource or your payroll service or whatever that looks like. And that just starts by asking some simple questions. Yes, there is. There are many resources out there. But it's important, like I said, but but you're, you're the one who's gonna bring it all together. So yes, it's your job to find those answers to those questions and the There are lots of questions to ask about because you're the hiring, the recruiting, and then you've got to figure out how you're going to pay people, which is, I find to be one of the most complicated things in a pet care service, to follow the law to pay appropriately, to find the sweet spot where you're making a profit, but you also pay enough to attract people to work for you. And it can be very, it's very interesting stuff checked. So and you want to pull from different resources on that you wanna you want to make sure you're following the law, you want to, you know, make sure you're you're competitive, competitively priced, and yet, not necessarily, you want to charge your value. But let's put it that way. There's a lot of talk about prices these days with inflation and everything. So it's a very tricky subject. Again, HR is said to be a little abstract to people. But anytime I see somebody asked a question on Facebook of do I pay per hour or per visit? Or do I cover mileage? It's like, that's an HR question, right? Because, again, we're left solidly following the law. And we're trying to do the best we can by our staff, by our employees. And that's where this is, and that's where this this mindset starts coming in of balancing, running a business and taking care of people. Absolutely. That's why I think, exactly, again, following the law, but but the the ethical moral aspect, and the company culture and the providing for your staff, their support, all of that has to be integrated into a system. And that's why the more we talk about it, the more we discuss this online about what people do, you know, because I think in some cases, I worry about, for example, senators who are rural and have a lot of driving whether or not they can actually support an employee. Because even though I'm very pro employee, and pro having staff, I think there are some instances where it is very difficult to pull all those things together. For example, if someone's driving a half an hour to every stop, and you're not able, you feel in your area, you can't support a high enough price to cover all of that employees expenses, then it's, it's you're in a really rough spot, because you need to follow the law, you need to have people work for you. And yet, your charges are going to you know, if you feel there's a ceiling, then it's going to be difficult. So I like a lot of talking about the subject because it's it's very intricate, and looking at, you know, one of those basic ones of just going is, is what I'm asking my staff member to do. And the rate that they're earning, is that even making the minimum wage for the time that's required to do that, that's one of those first big questions that comes up. I think that's one of the most important things because the drive time has to be compensated for Now, granted, there's all these different things. It invariably comes up with what if someone only has one visit? And technically, the and I asked this question many years ago on the radio was when they had some tax accountant on set, I remember what he said, you know, technically it is commute miles to drive to the visit, to do the work and to drive back. So technically, with only one visit, for example, legally in most cases. And I will always say that because I don't know if there you know, there can be states with various exceptions to things. But in that case, you really don't have to pay for the drive time. But in that case, that's when it's most important to do something for the sitter, if you're only going to pay them for a half an hour at a time. And not compensate them for driving when they only have one visit, it doesn't seem very fair. Whereas but so I just wanted to get that out of the way. However, you know, the way we work it, most of the time, our sitters are doing four or five is in a cluster. So once they get to that first stop their drive time from that point on until they get to their last stop, it has to be paid time. So I know a lot of students like to pay by visit, but it's really important to make sure that once you have included the drive time, they're still making minimum wage. And one thing I always find a little scary is when people say something like an ad, I'm going to pay $10 a visit. So I'm going to advertise it as $20 an hour but it's not $20 An hour unless the house is there next door to each other. If it's a half an hour visit, you know if it's 20 minutes of driving, if you're doing one and a half visits per hour, then they're making $15 Which in some states, that's minimum wage. So you've you're you're right on the edge there. So it's it's a numbers game. And all of this is very an A very important aspect of HR. It's that balancing act, as you mentioned of the business obviously still needs to have money to operate into pay for things but we want to be taking care of people you started off I love that. It's it's about the people in your business and we want to be treating them ethically and sometimes that means
Collin 15:00
means following the letter of the law, because a lot of those laws are meant to make it to make sure people are treated well. But then it's also looking at us and going me as the business owner, what do I want my policies to be when it comes to this? You know, do I go above and beyond this? Am I able to? Those are some of these tough questions that we we get faced with? Yes, yes. And sometimes there is some trial and error. I mean,
Kim Ottone-Tank 15:25
it's interesting, because I feel that I've had a pretty good record with retention. And I think that there are sitters that pay more than I do, I think, so much goes into it. It is not all about the pay. And yet, of course, it's, that's certainly a good chunk of it. But so much that goes into the satisfaction of the worker is the scheduling how how the whole business runs, you know, as the scheduling, how they are trained, what kind of information they are given operation easy, is there a good system for keys, all of that goes into employee satisfaction, I think I've had, I've had a few people. I mean, I've had, you know, over 60 people work for me over the years, because you know, I've been doing this for a while. And I've only had a handful of people, maybe two that quit, because they were upset about something one of them was, I forgot to give her a new alarm code and the alarm went off, because she didn't have the right code. You know, that is super frustrating. And I was really upset with myself. But she was having a pretty bad day and just said, I'm done. I'm not going through this again. And that had nothing to do with the pay or anything. So it is, I like to keep in mind the whole big picture of how we treat them. And that was a failure on my part, that is a horrible way to get treated, to be sent into a home without the correct alarm code. And it's the last thing I want to happen. But I'm human, and things do happen. And it helps if people have a sense of humor. That's one thing I kind of looked for in my staff as well, can they deal with these little foibles? But on the other hand, you know, that's just an example of it's, it's not, there's so many aspects that go into a happy employee pay is very important. But it is not the only thing. But we do need to follow the law, we do need to find that, that sweet spot I like to call it that works for you. And it works for them. And I think in most cases, people can find it. Again, there are some difficulties, I think, with some rural sitters, or if or if they're just playing in an area or some centers are not confident enough to charge the rates, they're really worth and they're going to struggle probably to be able to pay people properly and make a profit. The overnight situation is another big bugaboo that, yeah, that's a problem, because of minimum wage laws and being able to make a profit. I mean, if I were to offer overnights, a 12 hour overnight, we're already going into overtime after eight hours in California, and we're going to double time after 12 hours. So, and our minimum wage is a little bit higher than someplace. So I mean, if I think I would have to charge at least $200, even to make like 20 bucks or something. And I don't want to add the liability of someone being in their home for 12 hours versus a half an hour or an hour a day is so much higher, that it's not worth it for me. I want to make a lot of profit for that risk dealing with that stuff. Okay. So I just I'm kind of glad I didn't get into the overnight realm. And I know it's hard for some sitters that are deep into it, and it's 50% of their business. And I you know, love to say well, you know, you should hire employees, rather than contractors, but that's a difficult, difficult situation. So, a lot of you know, senators are modifying the way they schedule overnights these almost overnight, and I think that's a great idea. It's just, it's something that I've tried to help people come up with solutions, but you know, some things just can't be solved.
Collin 19:18
Well, no, that's a really good example of It's a service that a lot of people offer, and then they bring on staff and they go okay, and it kind of almost without thinking go okay, now you can go and do this. And maybe they're only charging 55 at night or 65 at night. And that's where you start to get into some of these real murky waters of going oh, that was 12 hours of work. There was no overtime there was no this you know, there was no and all those questions are what we have to start thinking about taking one step back and going, huh, this is this is an employee, can I treat them how I would treat myself in this situation? You know, it would I do this with it? Would that happen? What's the law requiring it how I take care of this person. And that's really where we start trying to almost kind of line item in these these scenarios and go, Okay, how would I handle this? How would I hit them up? Have you heard of time to pet Chrisann. From raining cats and dogs as this to say it coming a time to pet clients has been a game changer for us. We can give our pet services clients real time, cloud based information they never imagined they'd be interested in. And most importantly, to me personally, I can better manage my company and look forward to more and not a small thing, time to pet is responsive to my requests for new features, and modifications to existing one, if you are looking for new petsitting software, give time to pet a try, listeners of our show can save 50% off your first three months by visiting time to pet.com forward slash confessional.
Kim Ottone-Tank 20:52
All of this has to be examined, it's it's fine. Because when you're all alone, I've always said when you're alone, you can pretty much do whatever you want. You can you can undercharge and you're the only one that gonna be bothered by it. Or maybe you don't care. But once you bring on even one person instantly, you have all of these issues to deal with. And it's important to know the law. Now, I've made mistakes over the past and things have changed in California as well. I mean, when I first started hiring, there was no mandatory sick time. There was no mandatory mileage reimbursement, although I did start reimbursing for mileage early on to take advantage of tax benefits. But things have changed. So it's important to to keep up with all of this. But I am fortunate I look back and I go well, there were times I look back now and I go you know, I now that I looked at the numbers, I probably wasn't doing some of these things, right. And I'm just fortunate that none of my employees were disgruntled and decided to go make a wage an hour or claim like I when I used to pay by the visit, I realized later on that I was not there were some, there were probably some times that I should have paid overtime when I didn't because I didn't realize it and I didn't realize I was supposed to keep such intricate records. And it's a learning process. I'm not afraid to say I made many mistakes along the way. I am fortunate I didn't result in any issues. But I do know that for some people it does. And it would be awful to start off with one employee and have that particular person be the one person who says I'm going to challenge all of this something's not right. That would be a shame. So we don't want to start off with a vague understanding, we want to start off with a real understanding of how we need to pay people and how we need to treat people. And and the any benefits again. Some of the states now have, you know, it's interesting the various laws that some states have. And I have a list of things. I don't have it right in front of me but things that people need to check and see if it's appropriate in their state. For example, in in California, we have split shift premiums. So if someone has visits in the morning, and then they have a long break and they have visits in the evenings, that's a split shift, there is a premium that has to be paid for that. That is not the case. In most states. I don't even know if there are any other states, I haven't found that there are some states that might have a minimum shift law. Like fortunately, in California, we don't have that I believe there's a state where it might be two or three hours that you would have to pay, which would have a major impact on petsitting businesses because we all know that sometimes people just go out for a couple of hours. It's important to know when overtime begins because like I said California is different in most states, it's over 40 hours in a week, but on Cal in California we have on the daily basis. There are also reporting time loss, which has to do with if you schedule someone for a certain amount of hours, and then you cut back then there may be a minimum you have to pay them for. Now that could be an issue if visits get cancelled. But normally if one visit were to get canceled, it probably wouldn't make much difference. But if their work was suddenly cut in half, you need to check the laws and see if you have to pay them for that.
Collin 24:23
So it's there are a lot of these little things that vary by state. So those are the things that I urge people to take a look at. And make sure that they have an understanding of that. Yeah, and as you said, because the petsitting industry is so weird, right like I've I've kind of tried to distill it down to we earn a living 30 minutes at a time. Exactly. I've said I live my life and half an hour an hour Yes. Nobody else really does that right. I know that's kind of an industry quote unquote standard as far as visits and some people have longer and some people have shorter right it's it's looking at going, Okay, well, how are the HR in human resource guidelines and policies written for a standard nine to five job, right? And then backing out going? Well, how do I make that work for my because as you said, a very common one is we have morning and we have evening visits. And if we're not aware of whether there's a split shift, or whether there's minimum work time, or things like that, you could be operating outside of the guidelines and outside of the law and not even know it. But that's just how our business works. And I'll give you an example. Because I use a very local small bookkeeping service for my payroll. And I mean, I have I'm very happy with them. They do direct deposit, that's my biggest thing is we have to have direct deposit. And I was
Kim Ottone-Tank 25:45
I don't want to get off on a tangent about California, but I'm sure there's a few people listening. And it California is always kind of funny to listen to. It's amusing anyway. But let me tell you about here's how the split chef law works. I'm using the rest of us sit back and watch in horror and I'm getting, right, right, right. So if you're paying someone minimum wage, and let's say, let's say $15, an hour's your minimum, and they work three hours in the morning and two hours in the evening, then you would need to pay an additional hour of 15. However, if they're making over minimum wage, the amount over the total amount over minimum wage for the day, is credited against the $15 hour, split ship premium. Now let me as I know, I have to usually, I have to usually go and say it two or three times for to make any I don't, it doesn't even make sense in my head when I say. So let's say someone's making $16 an hour. So they were five hours total in the day. And throughout the day that each hour they made $1 over minimum wage, so that's $5 for the day. So the split shift premium only has to be $10. Because you can deduct the $5 that they made in excess of minimum wage. Now I'll tell you why this is just kind of funny, because I had to explain it to my bookkeeper. Pre we had some new hires who were at minimum wage, because that's how we start remember, I pay mileage on top of that it's several dollars more per hour. And so during the training period, they make minimum wage because I'm spending more time with them, it is much more costly. They're not producing as much. And they understand that they will will get a raise at some point soon. So for the first time, I had it come up that with these since using this company, I said I need to explain to you why some of the split shifts now are going to be one split shift at $6. One split shift at $9. Because we itemize. Okay, let's back up a little bit. I didn't know you had itemize them as a separate line item on the pay stub. See, I'm still learning some things. And so now when I pay the split ship, I was including it in the hourly but now I realized I wasn't doing it right. There's a prime example of something I wasn't doing right. But it's such a tiny detail that almost nobody even knows about. So I realized I had to give her the split ship premium as a second line on the pay stub. So now I wasn't just paying the minimum wage hourly rate. I was some of the split shifts are $10 some or $12. It depends on how many hours that sitter worked in a day that determined what the split should premium was. So it's just crazy. And she said Thank you, Kim for educating me on this because I had no idea. So and they're the payroll company. So HR, it's an ongoing learning experience. That's what I can say about that. Yeah, it's while I think I have a good handle on it now. It's always fun when I do payroll because I got to add up the mileage I've got to check for overtime. I have to check for split shifts. I love the the sitter's that I just work a few hours a day and I just go boom boom boom but some of it is kind of complicated. On the weekends we tend to do more split shift during the week I have dedicated am and pm people and we split it up because I don't want to be paying split ship premiums every day. All the time. Yeah, I mean, it's a business decision. Right you you have a lot of what we do is calculated around our costs. There's another reason here's another fun California fat. We specifically do work people no more than five days a week on a regular basis for many, many reasons. First of all, it gives them a predictable life. They have set days off and it sounds like you're in employee, I know one of at least one of your employees does as well. They have set days off, so they know which days they're working in advance. So I don't have to ask them about their availability, because I know that unless they've asked for time off, they are available on say, Friday through Tuesday or Saturday and Sunday, whatever their particular days that they work are, this also aids in our scheduling, I don't have to give them their schedules way ahead of time, because they already know they're working, they just don't know where they're going. So it gives me the opportunity to give them their schedule the day before now, this weekend, I have it they all have their schedules through through Sunday already. Today is Friday, we're doing this. But some days, I during the week, I don't have the schedule ready yet. This allows me to be more flexible with my clients on cancellations, it allows me to not have to change the schedule so much. Because you don't want to be sending a sitter a schedule and change it five times over a week, it leads to mistakes being made if they constantly have a schedule that is changing, although not so much with the apps nowadays where they can go on and see their most current schedule, but I used to have to email schedules. And I didn't want to be changing them all the time. So I like to wait as long as I can. So they that is one of the reasons they work five days a week. But another reason is that in California, if they work on the seventh day in a row, they go into overtime, if any of the previous days they have worked at least six hours. Now, on my sitters that I am using that often frequently, they will have six hour days. So it's not practical for us to promise you know, someone's going away for a week, I'm not sending somebody in seven or eight days in a row. First of all, it costs more money. But the bottom line is I don't I think my sitters need the rest, I think rested sitter is a happy sitter, and and not burnt out sitter. So that's the primary reason. But they're also cost associated. And I honestly don't know, other states. I'd like to research that more. But I believe I'm sure there are other states that have issues with the number of days in a row that an employee can work. A lot of them are keyed into the number of hours worked in those timeframes, too. So that's again, yes, it's and what I love hearing about the way you've set up your systems, Kim, is you've looked at the rules and regulations and you went, Okay, how do I make my business work, right? Like the split shift is a great one. Like I don't want to have to paying these split shift premiums every single day for every single senator. So I'm going to have an Am crew and a pm crew. If it's maybe it's another one where you are required to pay mileage and travel time between visits in your in your city and your in your state, well, maybe that means you change your service area size, and you start look changing services to be able to follow that law, that that's where this HR and policies start coming in and impacting our business in how we set up the way the services we want to offer how we want to offer them and the staff and how we get them scheduled? Absolutely. And I do understand how I do things. I'm sure some sitters would be horrified by the fact that we have maybe several sitters on a job, because they're set up with the attitude that they want to have more consistency. And I do understand that. But I think so much goes into making sure that you're doing everything legally. And you may have to tailor your business completely different in order to be able to do that. And I think, you know, I look at the advantages of what we're able to offer our clients, we almost never say no, I just don't say no to my clients, because that's something that's really important to me. So you have to look at what your goals are with the business and how you you know, you want to be perceived by your clients, how you want to be able to take care of your clients. It's we're all a little bit different how we're going to do that. So you know, we've talked touched on the a PE and obviously that's super important and a couple other policies, but in your mind, what other things should we be making sure we take into account from it from an HR perspective now that we're wearing that hat? Well, like we did talk about PE and we talked about scheduling. And I think another thing we have to be concerned with is how we deal with the problems. You know, there are going to be problems, people are going to make mistakes. They are going to have issues with certain things. And I think as much as possible, we need to prepare ourselves for how we're going to deal with that. I have a certain way that I try to go about dealing with issues. For example, if a client were to say, you know, some clients are more gracious than others If there's an issue, and some of them will say, oh, so and so did this at my house, and I'm not happy about. And so rather than going to the sitter, this is just an example of, of a different sort of way I would deal with this, rather than going to sit here and say, Why did you do this, that this house? I would say the client reported this, can you explain what happened? Because the client may be exaggerating, they, it may not be something the sitter did at all, it's the clients perception. And I don't know, if I wasn't there, I don't know what really happened. So I want to give the benefit of the doubt to the Senator and say, you know, she reported a problem, can you tell me what happened? That way, the Senator has the opportunity to say, you know, actually, this is what happened, it really wasn't that way at all. Or they have an opportunity to apologize. But I don't want to go about it, putting someone on the defensive. Because if you say, Why did you do this, that puts someone on the defensive immediately, and then it changes the way you're going to deal with it, it no longer becomes a learning opportunity. It's more of a than you have, you have issues, you have a problem, you have attitude. And it gets in the way of dealing with the real issue. I want to be able to deal with mistakes in a constructive way, and not so much about getting upset with the person for what they did. Now, of course, there are exceptions to everything. I mean, if they, if a senator out now did something that was, you know, blatant, where they
Collin 36:36
blatantly disregarded rules, or were dishonest in any way, that's, that's different. And I have to we have to get right to the point on, right, but general, honest mistakes, we handle very gently, because we want them to be a learning opportunity. And all of that is company culture, and what goes into HR, and again, planning for it, because it's going to happen, they're going to be things. Yeah, well, it also included that is there are proper and improper ways to dismiss an employee and the the evidence, documentation that's required to do that in a lot of cases and how it's submitted and timelines. And all of a sudden, it's not so quote, unquote, simple to just walk in and be like, you're fired, you know, take things off the desk and leave Yeah, like, right. I don't know why, when Brooklyn or whatever, but it's,
Kim Ottone-Tank 37:28
it's, you know, these are again, like, how can I make this constructive? How can I make this a positive experience? How can I get the most out of this? bit, so that, you know, so that this doesn't happen again? Yes. And, and when it comes to, you know, now, now, I think more and more people are documenting things when there are issues. This is one reason I like email so much, because I can document what I have written out to the sitter. And then you can keep it in their file. And then if there isn't, if there becomes multiple issues. You know, I unfortunately, had a senator that was not a rock star last fall. And I tried, because I did want to give her the benefit of the doubt and took every opportunity I could to use her mistakes as a teaching moment. But unfortunately, she kept doing the same things over again. And before it resulted in disaster, I decided that it was time to let go. And I'm fortunate that I have all of the emails and everything documenting the issues. And in case, you know, someone ever wanted to come back and say, you know, you didn't give her a chance. This wasn't fair. No, it was it was more than fair, unfortunately, is very sad to have to do that. That's definitely my least favorite thing. But I have standards, I have to uphold for the safety of the pets, which is really the number one thing.
Collin 38:57
So it's just important to keep, if you keep records of everything that's, you know, half the battle, I think as far as being able to show that you handled things properly. Again, we want to be doing it right by them. We want to be doing it right by the policies. Because there are reasons you can fire somebody and there are reasons you cannot fire somebody and actually having that documentation prevents any gray area where there could be questions for why somebody was fired, versus somebody else. Yes, yes. Our friends at pepper anneals make it easy as 123 to send a heartfelt condolence gift directly to someone with a broken heart. They have this awesome direct client gift service that takes the effort off of us and ensures a thoughtful, personalized something gift reaches your client or employee. All gift packages include a handwritten card, colorful grifter, app and shipping fees across the US and Canada. They also have an array of milestone gifts and greeting cards that can be sent to celebrate birthdays, extend get well wishes and welcome new and rescued pets. At Additionally, there are gift choices in case you need to send a sympathy gift in memory of a special human client, or celebrate pregnancy engagement or wedding of a pet lover. If you're interested register for a free business account to unlock the all inclusive discounted package prices, the service is leveraged on an as needed basis. So there are no monthly or annual obligation or minimum purchases. To learn more, go to pet perennials.com/pages/g P. S, and use the referral code P S C registration to get a unique coupon code to save $2 off any package you said in your first 90 days.
Kim Ottone-Tank 40:36
This has been pretty focused on on our our perspectives when it comes to our staff. Why does Why does having good HR policies and a good HR mindset? How does that actually benefit the people working for us? Well, I think it it's supports them better if the attitude of the employers is one of taking care of the HR properly. I think most of the laws, especially some of the quirky things I've talked about there, they support the employee. It's it is very employee centered. So knowing that all of those are in place is to support the staff. I mean, I'm I, you know, who likes paying all these extra things. But you know what, at the end of the day, when I have made payroll, and I see their checks and and I realized that they're compensated correctly, that's very satisfying, I want to support my staff in any way that I can. So it's really about them. I think, in general, having a proper knowledge of HR is to support the staff. And I think companies that do that are better companies to work for. And again, you know, as pet sitters, we don't mostly most of us aren't going to have an HR department. Like, I see growing companies. And of course, many people use managers. I don't know that there are any companies that have actual departments with several people working. And if there's a pet sitting company that's that large, that's great. But having the knowledge, even just you know, on our own one person is all it takes to support your staff, it's it's really about supporting them, I really tried very hard in my business, to make sure that they know that they are key, a key component to the company, and taking care of them in the way they're treated. And the way they're paid. And following the laws is all all about them. It's for them to put ourselves in their shoes. They know that they have somebody looking out for them. They know that they have somebody with their best interests at heart, because I know many of us maybe have had experiences in the past where we had employers who didn't, right, who made us do awful things or work awful days or, you know, do things that weren't exactly we were questioning is this. Are they supposed to do this like, and that breaks down this trust that they start having? I look back, yes, on a couple of jobs I've had in the veterinary field, because veterinarians can be great veterinarians, they're not all great business owners. And if they don't bring in the proper support, I know I can look back and say Oh, I wasn't paid for that. And I wasn't paid for that. And I didn't get my breaks. And that was Yeah. So I think you know, I wasn't I feel like they weren't taking care of me. And it led me to not feel very appreciate now this is in retrospect that I discovered some of these things. But at the time, I also did get a feeling from the companies that were not as concerned with the breaks and that sort of thing. There was a general attitude that let's just get the work done. And you know, they weren't worried about our satisfaction with our jobs. I had one I had my favorite veterinary hospital I've worked at about I think four plus an SPCA, and the favorite one I ever worked at, I had to leave because we were moving. And that was sad. Those people took great care of me. And that was one of the reasons it was my favorite job. I felt so supported in anything that I needed. And so I look back on that job. And I think that's the way that's the kind of employer I want to be. You know, I look at the employers I didn't care for so much and I'm like definitely not wanting to be like them. So I try to have that attitude and everything with my employees. You know, if they're calling in sick, and you know, I, yeah, it's frustrating. You need people to work, but you've got to, you know, I don't go oh, you know, can you suck it up and come in? That's something I've never and I know that they're probably people that do, you know, it's just, you know, it is what it is you just have to deal with the issues, be prepared. It's going to happen at some point. But to support them, I don't want to make people feel guilty. When they're calling in sick, as frustrated as I am, as much as that might ruin my day, I don't want them to feel guilty about it. Because I want this to be, you know, a supportive workplace.
Collin 45:14
Yeah, well, that's enough. You mentioned earlier, like HR is tightly integrated with our culture of our business, and the whole breaks and time off thing. Like, that's a really great point to bring up. Because I know many of us are aware of companies who kind of the culture is you don't really take breaks, and you eat lunch while you're working. And you do these things. And and do you continue to work that full day. And so instead of eight hours, you put nine hours in and things like that. And that's it that's not written down in a manual, I guarantee it, right. That's not taught in training, but it's just the culture of the people and the managers and the other workers who have been there a while who start bringing in these aspects, and taking a look at how we operate and going, is it you know, what, what am I giving to my staff? And what am I teaching them to do? And is that what's actually best for them?
Kim Ottone-Tank 46:05
Yes, yes. I mean, it's company culture is something I think is more important than we realize. I mean, it's not just a big buzzword, it encompasses so much of how you treat your workers. For example, I, I got a, sometimes people email me questions about hiring, and I got an email from someone we were discussing drive time and mileage and all this stuff. And then she said, Well, I'm gonna be hiring and how do I communicate that to them that this is a job where you really can't call in sick that I really need them. And I have this was just recent, I haven't answered her back yet. But you just you can't do that. You know, yes, you can communicate how much they are needed because of the animals. But as a company, as a business, you cannot tell people that they can't call in sick, you just Yeah, you can't. That's going to not only, I don't know if it crosses any legal boundaries, but that's going to create a culture of, you know, oh, I'm a slave. I'm not really an employee, I gotta show up no matter what. And that's going to lead to them thinking about what other things about this company? What other things? Are they going to say in a similar vein, that is not going to be supportive to me. So I mean, I really do try to look at it. I mean, it helps that I had worked at other jobs, you know, I don't have a business degree, I have never, I have been studying HR, I will tell you, I'm almost done with a certificate course in HR from a community college, but I'm not. I don't have a business degree. I've never owned a company before owning my pet sitting service. I was an employee for for veterinary hospitals, and an SPCA, but what it taught me was, again, how I wanted to be treated.
Collin 47:57
And, and I learned so much from the bosses that I work for. And, and it's it's how I have evolved in, in taking care of my staff. It's that whole idea of being supportive to them well, and again, that that permeates and that's where we take our reflection as the business owner, as the manager as the HR department. Now, how do I how would I want to treat people and you know that that phrase of how do I let them know that they can never call in sick? That's a personal belief that that person that is bringing into that situation, and now trying to apply it to the employee? And that's right, and that's how they believe and they perceive that this is a job like that, not realizing? Well, there may be some other things we need to consider here for the well being and legality of this moving forward. Exactly. It's it's this personal, yes. Such that's such a great phrase, they put their personal beliefs into this. And
Kim Ottone-Tank 48:58
personal beliefs are great to a point, but you have to follow the law and you have to offer employees what they're entitled to. Right. You know, and I did a very small thing recently. So this one California, we do have they earn sick time, one hour for every 30 hours, they work, and there is a cap of 24 hours per year. So and I'm fortunate that people really haven't used that very much. But I decided to go ahead and offer a week's paid vacation for even part time staff. Because right now, everybody happens to just be part time right now. Because I realized that it was like 2% of a whole year, like paying for one week is two, you know, it's 2% of 50 weeks. I know there's 52 weeks in the year. And I looked at the cost and I saw it you know that is something that that's for what they do for me for all the profit that I make from all of their hard work all year. That's nothing He's, and so I decided to just factor that extra 2% into my other costs that I have for employees. And, and it's funny I've my people just don't take time off. But I've had two people leave on very good terms over the last year, and I sent them along with their weeks paid vacation. So it was just something I felt that I wanted to go above and beyond what I had to do, because the sick time is something I have to do. Right. So. And overtime is something I have to do. So it was the one place I could make a choice to go above and beyond what I had to do for them. And it was a small thing. So it just made me feel a little bit better about, you know what it's like to work for me, I want it to be a very positive experience. You know, I do expect a lot from my people, and they come through for me. And I think if they feel supportive, they're more likely to do that. Now, you you've mentioned that you are finishing a certificate in human resources, which I think is really cool. What other kinds of resources are out there for people to learn about this and see how they need to start applying it to their business? Well, I think, and I'm sure I've mentioned this before, on other podcasts that most state department's of labor, you know, they have a website, and a lot of them have great resources for the law. And just in general, having employees. So in particular, California, horses, my state, so I'm very familiar with it, they have online seminar. So because of COVID, all the seminars went online, I don't know if they're ever going to do them in person, again, I've attended over the years, two different ones in person, where they address very specific subjects of employment, law, payroll, all of that. And of course, you know, that's all involved in that. And I believe other states may have that as well, which is a terrific resource for learning all of these things in your own state. And learning about various benefits that you have to offer or things like the sick time, all of that is covered. And that's very important. So I think that's one major resource is for your state specific information to see if they have any kind of seminars or anything. And then, in addition, you know, it's funny is I every time I'm interested in something, I always think, oh my gosh, there's probably a Facebook group for that. Well, sure enough, there's a Facebook group for human resources. And I just joined one of them. There's probably lots of them. And it's interesting, because yes, these are, you know, there's hardly ever a pet sitter on there. But the various issues they're dealing with always caused me to think they bring up issues that I had never thought of before, or some weird problems. There's some funny stories on there about what people do at work sometimes. So that is actually not something I would recommend just to get you thinking about your workers, because you know, we may be pet sitters, but these are employees. And these are real jobs. And this is you know, we've got to be prepared for all of this, though. And again, and there are classes on the community college level. One of them was it was funny, it was on employment law. And it was one of the ones I before they went online, all of the classes have been online in the last couple of years. There's one on employment law that I attended over in Oakland, and I remember they got to talking about ICS and employees, and I'm raising my hand and answering all the questions. And he started asking me questions, and it was really fun. But yeah, there's opportunities for classes. Yeah. You know, and again, online. It's fascinating, because so much of it I already understood, which made me feel really good. Because at first I thought I'm gonna take HR class and be totally over my head. I don't have any, you know, I don't have any business knowledge. But I actually did have some, because I had been soaking it up all of this time without realizing it. Yeah. So. So I was able to keep up some of them, you know, I took some very interesting classes on motivating in the workplace. And Job analysis was another one is fascinating, and how to break down and and write a job description. So these are, you know, and some of the classes are kind of fun, if you have good instructor. So there are many, many resources out there for this sort of thing. Perfect. Yeah. And I never thought about going and taking just a course at a community college or seeing what kind of resources that had. Because that would be something that's extremely beneficial and also just a great place to get connected with other people who are kind of working through the same things you are and even what other additional resources they can bring in to your business. Like you said, it's not always petsitter specific, but I love your phrase there but we are running businesses there. These are real problems. These are real issues. These are real genuine employees, right certified by, right and taxes and stuff. And we need to be taking it seriously enough to look into these matters. Yes. And I think nowadays I do see when people are asking questions they really are aware, and especially if they say, Well, I'm overwhelmed, because I have to worry about all of this stuff. Well, I appreciate that, because they are thinking about it. It's not just finding someone and hiring them and, you know, paying them, their wages, it's all of this goes into it. It's so important. And I see that people are more aware now, yes, that's sitting has, you know, become an industry, just like other industries. And we have to step up to the plate and take this hiring very seriously. I'm not saying that people don't, I'm just saying that it's, we it's important to follow all of the laws. And it's very intricate with, like I said before, with this type of business, that's very unusual. We have issues that other companies do not have. You know, and I think of I think of some companies like we can compare ourselves to like a plumbing company who sends people out in the car driving from place to place all day, but even then, it's still different because we have, so many times we have our split shift issues and that sort of thing, it's just important to soak up as much of this as you can, I don't know, I'm very interested in it, kind of fascinated, but I and I'm sure that for some who don't have much time or don't have the interest, if they can have someone in their company who does who wants to take on this role a little bit more, it could be a solution. As as people grow and get managers, perhaps they can find someone who really specializes in this sort of thing.
Collin 56:45
But it is important as the owner to have at least a basic knowledge of, of the laws and this general idea in your head about your company culture, because you are the owner, and you're going to set the tone for that. Very important. Exactly. Well, I've been fascinated by this discussion. And I'm so thankful for you taking your time out today to discuss this to encourage us to set that culture set that good example, and to start educating ourselves. It's a massive topic, and not many people are looking in depth ly into this. So if they have questions or want to pick your brain or figure out some resources that may benefit them, how can they get connected best with you and start seeing what you've got going on? Sure. My email address that I use for this topic is
Kim Ottone-Tank 57:34
Kim at Pet Care hr.com. And I'm on Facebook, Kim Oh, Tony tank, the it's OTT o n e and then my last name is TA and K and you anyone can feel free to message me. The name of my company is apron strings pet sitting in my website is apron strings. online.com. And I'm always happy to answer questions. Like I said, this is something I kind of enjoy. Sixth sort of way? No, I do.
Collin 58:09
It's a really needed topic. Again, I think this is all part of the industry growing and maturing and cementing itself in a legitimate way. And as our mindsets start catching up with where the industry is headed, like, again, this is a topic that's just this just right for a lot of discussion and movement for it and how we apply it. So I really appreciate all of the knowledge and encouragement that you've shared. And really looking forward to, to seeing where this all where this all goes and how people start implementing these kinds of things in their business. Oh, great. Thank you very much. It was my pleasure. HR stems from making sure that businesses and companies treat people well. It's up to us to decide how we apply those to our business to make sure we are still in line with the rules and regulations set before us. Doing that in the pet industry is hard. As we talked about with Kim, it is difficult, we run a weird business in a weird industry. That doesn't mean we can ignore what is before us, it doesn't mean that we can just push some of these rules and regulations under the rug. It means that we get to be creative to solve the problem of how to form our business to meet the standards and meet the rules and laws that we have to work under. And there are ways of doing that. We talked about many different solutions with him. And they look different for everybody in their business for their services in their state, and the reasons that they're running it and how they want to work with their staff. All of that needs to be taken into account when we form our business. When we think of HR as the foundations of how we treat people and everything that we do flows from that. It means we're running a much better company and people will be happier. In the end. We want to thank our sponsors time pet and pet perennials for making today's show possible. And we really want to thank you so much for listening We hope you have a wonderful rest of your week and we'll be back again soon.
