Demystifying remote workers and how they fit into agency culture with Noel Andrews

Announcer:

Welcome to the Agency Management Institute Community, where you’ll learn how to grow and scale your business, attract and retain the best talent, make more money and keep more of what you make. The Build to Better Agency podcast presented by White label IQ is packed with insights on how small to midsize agencies survive and thrive in today’s market. Bringing his 25 plus years of experience as both an agency owner and agency consultant, please welcome your host, Drew McClellan.

Drew McLellan:

Hey, everybody, Drew McClellan here from Agency Management Institute. Welcome back for another episode of Build a Better Agency. We are going to have a great conversation today about remote workers and how to make that work. How to find them, how to retain them, how to look at them a little differently than I think we have been doing in this new era of remote work and so, I’m looking forward to that.

Before we get into that conversation, before I tell you a little bit about our guest, I would like very much to remind you that we’ve got some amazing workshops coming up in January. So, in January, we have two back-to-back workshops. One is on a Thursday, Friday, and then the next one is the following week on a Tuesday, Wednesday. So, the Thursday, Friday is January 19th and 20th and the workshop is Build and Nurture Your Agency Sales Funnel. What I love about this workshop is it is based on the book that Stephen Woessner and I wrote, Sell With Authority.

We are going to walk you through how to and literally, walk you through and make you do the work of building out your agency’s sales and marketing plan. You are going to leave knowing exactly what you should do, when you’re going to do it, how you’re going to do it, who’s going to help from the agency if you have to hire folks to help. You’re going to have it all figured out because we know we could just teach you how to do it. But if we just taught you how to do it and then we sent you out back on your own to the office, you would never actually make the time to do it, so we’re actually going to do it in the workshop.

So, we’ve taught this for the last, I don’t know, three or four years and continues to get rave reviews and I will tell you the agencies that implement what they develop during this workshop are crushing it. They are absolutely crushing sales. They have more opportunities, more right fit clients, more profitable clients, so the ROI of this workshop is exponential. And so, we would love to invite you to join us.

And then the following week, we have a brand new workshop from our friends at Mercer Island Group. They, as you know, are the agency search firms, so they see hundreds of agencies pitch and present every year and they know what we do right and what we do wrong. And so, so many of you are struggling with, and you’re frustrated because you write proposals and you don’t move on to the next step or you don’t get the client to accept your proposal. And so, we’re going to spend two days with Mercer Island Group just focused on how to get the written proposal right. Whether it’s a more informal proposal like a referral just asked you for a proposal or it’s the very formal RFI, RFP where you’re following a certain formula, because it’s how it’s been prescribed to you. We’re going to talk about case studies. We’re going to talk about cover letters. We’re going to talk about all the elements that go into a written proposal and how you can get better at it. Increase your win rate. That one is January 24th and 25th.

Both of these workshops are in Orlando, on Disney property. We’re actually the contemporary this time. We’ve never held a workshop there, so I’m excited about that. For those of you that have been to Disney World before, you know that that’s one of the hotels that’s right on the Monorail, so you literally hop on a Monorail and ride right into the magic kingdom, so there’s nothing wrong with that. But anyway, both of these workshops are on the website. Head over to agencymanagementinstitute.com under the “How We Help” tab. Scroll down and you’ll find workshops and you will see both of them there. All right?

Okay, so let me tell you a little bit about our guests. So, Noel Andrews is from Great Britain and he has a company that helps agencies find remote workers, typically in other parts of the world. They do a lot of work at Eastern Europe and other places. I think because one of the reasons why Eastern Europe is such a big market for them is most of the folks that live there speak Great English. And also, because the time zones work, so that you can actually talk to each other in real time.

But we’re not going to talk about that specifically today. What we’re going to talk about is how do you build a remote workforce that is really sticky. How do you make people, whether they are halfway across the country or halfway across the world, feel like a part of the team. How do you approach that employment, even though they probably technically are not employees, but how do you approach that employment for the long term rather than the short term? One of the things I think that we do when we hire people, especially if we hire them from another part of the world is we think of them as somebody we hire to do a specific task and we think of it in the very short term.

And what Noel is going to talk about is again, whether that remote worker, which for many of you is the case today, is just four hours away by a plane ride, but they’re still in your same country or they are actually halfway across the globe. How do you create one integrated team that is effective and works well together? So, I’m super excited about this conversation because I think it’s super relevant for today’s reality that most of us are in. So, why don’t you settle in and let’s jump into it.

Noel, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us.

Noel Andrews:

Hey, Drew. Great to be here. Thanks, man.

Drew McLellan:

So, talk to us a little bit about the work you do. Before I get into asking you all the questions, just tell everybody how you come to know all the things we’re about to talk about.

Noel Andrews:

Yeah, sure. So, first of all, I spent 15 years in the corporate world, variety of tech roles, leading, hiring, building large teams. And then always pretty entrepreneurial by nature from a childhood spent washing cars, mowing lawns, even washed a few planes as well, small ones and it was always entrepreneurial. And so, I did spent a year or so trying to build an interview coaching business, so when candidates are applying for jobs, they’ve never actually been taught how to interview. So, there was a need there, but couldn’t quite scale that. And then had an opportunity to actually buy JobRack.

JobRack is a site that I now own that’s focused on helping agency owners and online business owners hire remote, really great remote team members from Eastern Europe. And so, jumped into that in 2018 and yeah, it’s been an exciting four years. So, it’s that corporate background and then coupled with lots and lots of time with entrepreneurs, with business owners. Small to medium size business owners where giving lots of help and guidance around the challenge that is hiring because hiring’s hard, right?

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. Right, especially when you’re not looking at each other, you’re not in the same city. All right, so you’ve been doing this guiding people, agency folks in remote hiring for the last four or five years. What surprises you the most about all of that?

Noel Andrews:

I think it surprised me probably the most is that it doesn’t matter, like what else is going on in the world. So, in the last four or five years, we’ve gone through a pandemic. We are going through some interesting economic times. There’s all kinds of things going on in the world, but actually, a lot of the things stay the same. And that for me, especially with agency owners, is they’re always under the same pressures. Right?

Drew McLellan:

Yeah.

Noel Andrews:

So, hiring good people, there’s always that big pressure and the surprise has been for me two things. One is how rarely agency owners have been able to get out of this cycle of having to wait until they’re at like 100% or 120% of capacity before hiring. And then the other one is what huge difference it makes when we are able to help them get out of that cycle. And just how much better it is for agency’s clients, for the teams when you can just get ahead and even to get into hiring at maybe like 80% of capacity, the difference is huge.

Drew McLellan:

Well, and for you, part of the reason, so as you know the margins and agencies are what they are. So, a lot of agencies just don’t have the financial capacity to hire someone until they desperately need them. And then by the time they start looking, they desperately need them and they start looking, it takes them a while to especially right now, takes them a while to find them. And so, by the time they find a breathing candidate, they’re all over them because they’re way past the need. But if I understand it right, one of the reasons why you can help your clients hire before they get to that point of desperation is because your candidates are less expensive.

Noel Andrews:

Exactly that. Yeah, so we’ve got a bit of a sweet spot where we can find really, really good people, so you’re not sacrificing on quality or skills, but just at dramatically lower rates. And that’s why I’ve made it a bit of a mission over certainly start at 2022 and heading into next year is I want to help hundreds and hundreds of agency owners to basically have a better life. There’s too many of us. And sometimes, I’m in that boat, very regularly in that boat, myself, working too many hours, not getting the profit margins we want. So, for me, that chance is going to help people. And yeah, one of the big things is that combination of skills and experience, but with that lower cost. That just, yeah, gives that little bit of leverage, which is so often lacking with agencies and agency owners.

Drew McLellan:

So, the pre-pandemic, certainly there were some agencies that had remote employees. Employees that had already been on the team and wanted to move because a spouse had a new job or something like that or they just wanted to hire a skillset that they couldn’t find in their local market. So, we certainly, before the pandemic, saw some remote workers, without a doubt. And obviously in the pandemic for a while, everybody was a remote worker and some agencies have decided to stay in that model and other agencies are certainly back in the office and all of that. But I think hiring remotely is a whole different ballgame. It’s very different than being able to have somebody come in your office three or four times and sit around the conference room with your team. And so, what do I need to do as an agency owner to successfully hire remotely?

Noel Andrews:

The first thing is recognize that yes, you want to hire, but what you really want is to have a successful team that’s remote or that’s maybe hybrid. And the first thing to recognize is you’ve done this. You have almost certainly done this through the pandemic. You made this work and the business didn’t die. Team members didn’t get super unhappy, not because of these reasons anyway. And you were able to keep morale going, have good team meetings, keep your clients happy. So, the thing that for many agency owners is quite scary, the idea of having remote team members, you’ve already done it and you’ve already proved that you can make it work.

So, then it’s just about, well, when you would normally hire or previously maybe higher face-to-face and you can see people’s body language a little bit better. Maybe you are having a coffee with them as part of the interview process that is less available to you. So, then it’s just about saying, “Well, okay, what can we do in the hiring process to really, how do we get to know people and how do we gain confidence that they are the one for us.”

And actually, hiring in general is hard, no matter whether you are face-to-face with people or not, because some people are really terrible at interviews, but they might be the perfect person for the job. Some people are really great at interviews, especially sales people, but they’re not the right person for the job. And so, actually it’s not that this is specific to remote or in-person. I think with remote, it’s just putting that little bit of extra effort, especially around the testing phase, for me, because that’s the thing that really lets you see how are they actually going to do the things that you want them to do.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. And honestly, even for agencies that are hiring locally, I think far too few agencies actually test and run people through some actual activity to assess whether or not they’re good at their job.

Noel Andrews:

Yeah, absolutely. Interviews, it’s really, it’s frankly weird. Interviews are the standard way that we assess whether someone is right for the job, yet, talking about what they did in their past or what they would do in a hypothetical future situation, that’s not part of the job. And it’s still a little bit weird, frankly, that that is the universal way that we try and assess people and choose people. And so, this is where we can take like some tips from the likes of Google or Facebook or Apple who are renowned for 7-, 8-, even 9-stage interview and recruitment processes. Now, I’m not advocating that because I think that’s overkill, but as part of that, they include testing. And it’s just really simple ways that agency owners can build this into their recruitment process without causing themselves lots of extra time or energy or effort, but getting much better results and confidence that they’re making that right decision.

Drew McLellan:

Well, I think that’s a golden rule, whether you’re hiring locally or remote.

Noel Andrews:

Agreed. So, two golden rules for me is number one is test and number two is reference. Please, please, please, anyone listening, do not skip either of those steps. They are just the two key things like never hire someone without that referencing or that testing stage.

Drew McLellan:

Well, and I think referencing is a great example of why hiring remotely is intimidating for a lot of agency owners, especially hiring remotely for someone from another country, because it’s like, okay, I wouldn’t even know how to get a hold of these people who are Bob’s references because they are in the Ukraine or wherever they are. So, I think that adds a challenge for most agency owners who are trying to do this by themselves.

Noel Andrews:

Yeah and it can do. And certainly, I’ve heard that a lot and one of the things that we help with that, it’s part of what we do, but also, the world has got a lot smaller. And so, we find that English is generally very, very good, especially with all the people that we are hiring and that often extends therefore to their references. And we actually mandate that. All of our clients near enough are English speaking, so we say, “Hey, so the candidates, you need to provide English speaking references.”

And we find that actually people are previous bosses or previous colleagues, things like that, are always really, really keen to actually jump on a call and have a quick 5-, 10-minute call. And just, you can ask them specific questions and they tend to be what makes the world go round. They never know in the future when they might need a reference from someone, so we find people do that. And the one to resume these days or teams, there’s so many really quick and simple ways to do that, so you don’t need to think about, “Oh, how much is it going to cost me to call them or how am I going to get a hold of them?” And actually a lot of the times, we actually get the candidates to arrange that call, so they take on the onus of the diary management bit of it.

Drew McLellan:

Right. So, it seems to me that in most cases, if somebody’s hiring remotely, meaning outside of their country of origin, they’re hiring for probably a specific skillset. When I think about agencies hiring somebody from another country, it’s almost always somebody who is good in some aspect of digital that they cannot find here in the states or wherever they are. How important is it to be able to really articulate? So, I think there are a lot of agency owners, for example, who want to hire a developer. They’re not a developer. They don’t know how to assess a developer’s skill. So, how important is it that I, as the owner understand exactly what I’m hiring for and can recognize good versus bad?

Noel Andrews:

So, it’s ideal if you can, but these scenarios happen. So, especially for, let’s say, you are a marketing agency owner and you’ve been doing social media marketing, email marketing, maybe, and then someone comes to you and says, “Hey, can you do a website for me or can you do an app for me?” And actually, there might be a ton of good reasons why you want to say yes, you want to say yes to that. And maybe you don’t want to work with an agency. You want to bring in your first developer and you might not be technical and that happens a lot and that’s where it’s crucial to then get help, frankly.

I’m not a hugely technical person, I can talk to developers, I can read a little bit of code, but I couldn’t assess one. I have people in my team that can do that, including we have our own developers and so, we actually involve them in client recruitment processes where exactly that scenario. We had a business owner here in the UK and he was hiring his first internal developer. He was moving away from an agency and bringing it in-house. We’ve similarly, we’ve got some agencies out in the US that have gone into development or moved away from like white label type operations. And again, that’s where we can help them and that’s where there’s lots of other businesses as well.

And the key thing is get help, especially in that testing phase, because actually as an agency only you are perfectly well-suited to figuring out if they’re the right person for you talking through scenarios and what they’ve previously done and do they want to do, and can they do the work you want to do. So, it’s just really the technical assessment. And there’s lots of really great online platforms that can help with that. You may even know someone. So, do you know another agency owner that has developers that would be willing to do you a favor and then you can return in kind.

And that, I’m a big fan of that like just getting that peer support sometimes. But obviously, there’s companies like mine and others that can help you and that’s the big thing. As an agency owner, hopefully, you’re not doing your own bookkeeping and accounting. Recruitment is in that same bucket. It’s hard. And so, therefore, it’s good opportunity to get some help if it’s not something you want to learn how to be an expert in yourself.

Drew McLellan:

Well, I think that when you say that, it seems so obvious. We pay people to do things that are outside of our expertise. And yet, probably one of the most important things we do is agency owners is hire and yet, we do that even though we’re mediocre. We do it ourselves, even though we’re mediocre at it or we don’t do it in the proper way because we’re in such a hurry or whatever it is. It doesn’t make a lot of sense when you think of it from that perspective.

Noel Andrews:

It doesn’t. And for me, I think the reason is because it’s so often that we are told that one of the top two or three things, any business owner needs to do is hire great people. And then what we do is we misinterpret that and we go, “Oh, I need to hire great people. Therefore, I need to be great at hiring great people.” No, you need to hire great people. The thing for me is that I think an agency owner or the relevant person and agency should be doing the interviews. They should be getting to know their new team member, figuring out what makes them tick with guidance potentially, but that and the new candidate, they want to get to know you as well.

But should you be doing all the hard work, frankly, before that? Like the equivalent of bookkeeping, should you be writing job posts, should you be filtering and reviewing candidates and testing them and basically, doing all of the hard admin stuff of hiring? No, hell no. You’ve got way more important things to do. But the key thing is you are accountable for the result and as a business owner and agency owner, yes, we need to hire great people, but it’s really okay to delegate some of that and get help from people that do enjoy it or that really know how to do it.

Drew McLellan:

It’s interesting how you’re talking about these remote hires, because I think particularly when agency owners think about hiring someone from another country, they don’t always think about them as team members. They think of them as task doers. And I think that’s one of the reasons why it doesn’t work is because that person has no loyalty to the agency other than that they’re getting a paycheck from them, but there’s no connective tissue between that remote worker and the rest of the agency. And oftentimes, unless somebody is directly involved with working in that genre of the business, there are a lot of people on your internal agency team that don’t even know the remote employee.

So, when you talk about it, you talk about it, you keep using the word team member, which I think is interesting, because I don’t think a lot of agencies think of their foreign remote, 1099s, if you’re in the US or somebody you’re paying on a contract. I don’t think they think of them or treat them like team members. So, talk a little bit about that because I know your philosophy is a little different.

Noel Andrews:

Yeah, definitely. And I think, so the reason why that’s the case is because of the rise of platforms like Upwork, like Fiverr, very gig and freelance basis and that’s how we think about it. I use the word team member for two key reasons. So, one is because team members is what you want and it’s what you need. If you want to build a successful business, team members, people that are pulling together. A friend of mine recently used a phrase, he said, “You want people that are going to go to war with you, like alongside you and they’re with you.” And so, that for me is what makes a successful business because otherwise, it’s really lonely, frankly. It’s really lonely, being the one that’s you are doing all the decision making. So, that’s one reason.

And then secondly, because we can’t use the word employee because legally, they’re not an employee. If you’re hiring cross-border, as you said, from a US perspective, it’s a 1099 contractor, they are set generally. If you’re hiring remotely, they will be self-employed. They’re responsible for their own tax and social security and they’ll invoice you each month, so legally, they’re not an employee.

But to all intents and purposes, you want them to feel like one. And that’s where I come in with team member. It’s being a member of the team and what that means is they’re not just tasked to us. They’re involved in your team meetings. They’re involved in… it’s very big in Australian culture to do beer o’clock on a Friday. Whatever things you do-

Drew McLellan:

US culture, too.

Noel Andrews:

Yeah. US culture. Perfect. We do afternoon tea in the UK and that’s something I do with my team. And whatever you do to bring your team together and in an office it might be maybe you have lunch once a week or once a month where you have a team meeting. And actually, it’s really easy to do this stuff over Zoom and bring people together. That is why I use the word team member because actually you make an extra little bit of effort, but the results are like night and day. Literally, just exponentially better results because they do care about you and they’re in it for the long term. They’re in it for a career with you.

And that’s our exclusive focus. We don’t work on project roles or gig roles. Everything for us is about getting team members because that’s what I want as a business owner and an agency owner and I know that’s what makes agency successful. People come and go, that don’t really care, yeah, just don’t care. Whereas when you get people that really care, care about your clients, care about your mission and what you are looking to do, that’s where the magic happens. Sounds a bit cliché, but that is real, absolutely true.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. But it’s interesting because as you were talking, I was thinking that is not the common attitude. The common attitude is I’m hiring this person in a different time zone in a different country to do very specific tasks. And then your point is well taken, then they’re not invested, you’re not invested and I believe it’s one of the reasons why it does work.

Noel Andrews:

And that’s definitely the case. It can be the case. I think, again, some of this comes from the Philippines, for instance, is known around the world, an amazing place. You can hire very task-driven, very common for virtual assistance, data entry, think very, very cheaply. A few years ago you could be getting someone for $3 or $4 US dollars an hour, which is staggering and you could get really good work done. And so, then that then perpetuated a bit of this feeling and thought about it being just task driven.

And one of the things that we focus on and we try and bring to life through case studies and bringing our clients that we work with. We’ve got lots and lots of agency owners across the world and getting them to talk about what it’s like having remote team members that are really committed for the long term and just the benefits they get, so it just changes that. So, yeah, one day at a time, I’m trying to let people know about these possibilities and the clients and agencies that we work with. Once they see that and get a taste of it, it’s really incredible.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. So, I want to talk a little more about how we manage and build a team with people scattered all over different time zones. Let’s take a quick break and then let’s pick it up there.

Hey, there just a quick interruption. I want to make sure that you are aware that you are cordially invited, not just invited, but cordially invited to join our Facebook group, our private Facebook group. All you have to do is go to Facebook and search for Build A Better Agency and you’ll find the Facebook group. You have to answer three quick questions. You have to put in the agency URL, you have to talk about what you want to learn from the group and you have to promise to behave yourself and that’s it. And then we’ll let you in. And you can jump into the conversation with over a thousand other agency owners and leaders.

And there’s a robust conversation happening every day. People are sharing resources and best practices and discussing everything from work from home policies to maternity and paternity policies to biz dev strategies. So, come join us and jump into the conversation. All right? Speaking of conversations, let’s head back.

All right. I am back with Noel Andrews and we’re talking about remote workers and how to make that work. And we were just talking before the break about this idea that I think is foreign, no pun intended. Foreign to a lot of agency owners in that you actually can make your remote employees, who are halfway across the globe from you, an actual team member, rather than somebody you just assigned tasks to that they’re doing it while you’re asleep and then when you wake up, it’s done. But you don’t really have a connection with each other and then you wonder why you’re not their first priority or they don’t stick around for a long time.

So, let’s talk a little bit about what are some best practices, because I think this applies to even agencies who are not hiring somebody from another country. But a lot of agencies are struggling with, they were brick and mortar before COVID, and now, they’ve either decided to be a hybrid or completely remote. And they’re really struggling to create a sense of culture around a team. And honestly, they’re just even before cultural, I want to talk about that, but they don’t know how to manage in this new environment. So, what are some best practices? What are you seeing successful agency owners do to manage a remote team that is spread out over multiple time zones and maybe multiple countries?

Noel Andrews:

Yeah, so there’s two key things for me. So, one is if you can try and keep your team, so that it’s possible without someone being awake in the middle of the night to have a team meeting. Okay, so the ability to have a team meeting, even if it’s just once a month, that actually, it helps the culture side, but it really helps the management side. Because it means people are hearing one message at the same time and it brings people together. So, I think that’s really helpful.

So, when we are hiring, typically, we are looking to try and get three or four hours crossover. If it’s a US agency, let’s say and we’re hiring in Eastern Europe, which is our focus, then we are looking to try and get three or four hours crossover and you can do a lot with three or four hours. If it’s two hours, that’s fine. And a lot of times people will have a bit of flex into their evening, if needs be. If you don’t have any crossover, then it’s difficult, because one of the key things for me if you’re managing someone and you’re going to do it effectively is you’ve got to talk to them. And I’m a big fan of talking to them face-to-face, like on Zoom, on teams, whatever it might be.

Having interaction, getting to know them is super, super important, especially for the long term, because it’s important to understand, well, what what’s important to them. What do they want? What do they want for their career? What do they want for this year, few years’ time? Because then you can work with that and you can play with that and help them get there.

So, being able to get time with them and doing one-to-ones is super, super important. And then the icing on the cake of really good one-to-ones is a scorecard. So, like an employee scorecard, it can be super simple. We just use a Google sheet for ours here at JobRack and it has two tabs on it. And the first is about their KPIs. And so, for every role, we try and have between one and three KPIs that is key performance indicator. What’s the metric that they’re responsible for.

So, let’s say it’s a PPC person doing Google or Facebook Ads then there’s probably going to be something in there around return on out spend for instance. If it’s an SEO person that is focused on building back links, then it’s going to be focused on how many back links have they made or how many messages, outreach messages have they sent for instance. And there’s tons of examples across all kinds of roles.

So, having very clear metrics about what is the output and the outcome that they’re responsible for. So, if they know that, they’ve got half a chance and a good chance of actually pleasing you, ultimately at meeting it. Whereas what so often happens is we write a job description, which vaguely outlines the job they’re going to do, but then someone comes into the role and we don’t actually tell them what we want to do. And if we don’t set expectations-

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, how we are literally and figuratively going to score their performance.

Noel Andrews:

Exactly. And if we don’t tell them that, if we don’t set expectations, the only thing that can possibly happen is that we are going to get disappointed because they’re probably not psychic. So, having this in place, and this is again something that we do a lot of, we help people get this in place even before the candidate has actually started, because that is so powerful if you’ve got that when they start. Like to have one of our scorecard is their metrics and then we just track those each month. We make them as simple as possible to measure because, again, what gets measured gets managed and you don’t want it to take hours and hours each month to pull together.

And then the second thing that we do is in on the second tab is we have a series of questions and the employee, each of my team, answers these questions a couple of days before their one-to-one. And so, every two weeks, we have a one-to-one that’s like a casual catch up. And then once a month, we have a more formal one, where we’re reviewing KPIs and we are reviewing the answers to these questions.

And so, we’ll ask things like, “What are you most pleased about from the last month? What did you struggle with most in the last month? What do you think we could do more of or what should we start doing? What should we stop doing? And then what areas, where do you need most support from your manager or your team over the next month?” And by making the team members think about this and actually put it in writing in advance, their manager and me in a number of cases, I will review those in advance.

And we don’t go through the answers, but we use them as talking points. And that means that one-to-ones turn from these slight annoyance. It’s like, “Oh, I’ve got to do someone’s one-to-one meeting.” It’s not going to be particularly productive, which is very often the case for one-to-ones. It turns them into a really productive, meaningful conversation about what did they struggle with? What do we need to do? How can we solve that? What training or coaching or guidance do they need?

What ideas have they got, like for what we should start doing or stop doing and then where do they need support in over the next month? And people always need support and building an environment and a team where showing conventionally, I’m a big fan of showing weakness is a strength. Asking for help is a strength. So, if you build that into your team, then again, like the pace that you are going to grow, the service you’re going to give to your clients and the rate of the pace of improvements, because everyone is improving things, not just you as the agency owner.

So, again, makes it a hell a lot better, but also a lot less lonely. You’ve got a team and an army that’s with you and just driving with you. So, they’re my top tips around of just a simple scorecard. It can be so, so simple, but just having it means that it drives that just much better discussion.

Drew McLellan:

It’s interesting. So, we are huge proponents of one-on-ones and in fact, way back in Episode 15, we outlined how to do a good one-on-ones. And so after we get done with this, I want to compare what our sheet has with your sheet because I may be able to steal some of your questions to improve our sheet. But I agree. I think they’re critical for all employees, whether you sit across the hallway from them or not. They’re just a critical conversation to have on a regular basis. Yeah.

So, let’s talk about culture a little bit. So, for agencies, a big part of what makes people choose to work at an agency is agency’s culture and the fact that you’re part of this team of eclectic, smart, funny people. And I think most agencies have a baked in their culture a work hard, play hard thing and they socialize together and they do things together. How do you do that with remote workers? How do you successfully build a culture when everybody’s not under the same roof?

Noel Andrews:

Yeah. So, for me, one of the things I realized over this last three or four months and my team has tripled in the last six months, which is quite a pace to move with it. So, this has become hugely important. All of the things that I knew were important before vision, values, culture, things like that I knew were important, but they could wait, because when there’s not too many of you, you can manage it. And then suddenly, you start getting bigger and suddenly, you are not managing all of the team yourself and it starts getting different.

And the first thing I realize is that I can’t go out to create culture. That in itself, it’s this amorphous blob of feeling. And it’s like, “Okay, what I need to do is I need to do individual things.” All of them are pretty small in isolation that will help people feel the way I want to them to feel and that then results in, as being able to say, “Oh, yeah, this is our culture.” So, for me, first of all, about being intentional. Normally, the icing that I say at the end, but I’m going to say it now because otherwise, this gets a bit scary is you can get help with this.

I have my executive assistant, Kat. She’s absolutely amazing. She is like morale champion for us. And what I’m doing is I’m delegating some of the doing. I’m still hugely passionate about creating a really, really great place to work and I’m still right in there, in thick of it, but you can get help. So, as an agency owner, you’re probably out there doing sales and doing marketing. You’re probably out there doing some client stuff and you’re leading the team. So, you can lean on some of your team to help you with these things.

So, specific things I do in a remote side, like said, often you might do a meal together if you’re all together, we do afternoon tea. So, every Friday, 3:00 PM, we get together on Zoom and we have two rules. One, it’s not mandatory. So, if people are really flat out, we’re not imposing this on them. It’s just come along if you want to. Most of the team do. And the second rule is that you don’t talk about work, so no work chat is allowed.

So, we will talk about things, it might just be about what people are doing this weekend. It might be what are people saving up for? What are they saving in the piggyback for? What’s the worst movie they’ve ever seen and why? And how to psychoanalyze your partner, your girlfriend or boyfriend, husband, or wife was a recent one. Because one of my team is a psychologist and that makes for a fascinating conversation.

Drew McLellan:

I bet it did.

Noel Andrews:

So, that is a really friendly, it’s very chilled out. It’s just 30 minutes. It’s not very long and so, it’s great.

Drew McLellan:

Do you actually drink tea?

Noel Andrews:

I sometimes drink tea, but not often that late actually, because caffeine keeps me awake, but people bring whatever. We just called it afternoon tea because I’m British and it was a bit of fun. But I think it can be, obviously, we have to cater for everyone’s taste and whether they drink or not, things like that. But just having something that brings people together on a regular basis, whether it’s weekly, fortnightly, monthly, I like that it’s weekly.

And I like there’s a bit of me like the capitalist/business owner goes X number of people, times, half an hour that’s a lot of time and that’s not billable time. But the benefit that comes from it is huge. Out of it, ROI is massive. So, that’s one thing I do that brings people together. And then the other things that we’ve done, one big thing, so we use Slack within our business to do a lot of internal communication, like a lot of agencies do. And Slack has got some great plugins and tools you can use.

And for one, probably the single best one we use is called Geekbot, so that’s G-E-E-K-B-O-T. And it’s actually free for teams up to a certain size and it’s not very expensive after that. And it automates daily polls or check-ins. And so, you can do a daily standup with it, which can be useful. But what we found is because it was asking the same questions every day, people just get a bit bored of it, so we’ve mixed it up. So, we have Motivation Monday, which it will just say, “Hey, what did you get up to at the weekend? What are you looking forward to this week?” And a few questions, and then we finish with share a photo from your weekend, which is great. People share all kinds of different pictures. And it’s great because we’re like, “Oh, we’re getting to know our team without spending hours and hours.”

I don’t know about you, but for me, when I used to work in a corporate office, I did not enjoy the first 30 to 60 minutes of Monday morning that chat around the weekend, about what we did the weekend, because that, yeah, I just wanted to crack on and that sounds terribly like unfriendly of me, I’m not. But Monday morning was always just a super busy time, so me being able to see it-

Drew McLellan:

Right. You want to get started.

Noel Andrews:

Yeah, exactly. I want to get stuck in, but I still like, I do care about people, so I like loving it seeing it in Slack. We have Wellness Wednesday. So, we’ll have some wellness tips in there and say, “Hey, what’s your tips? How many steps are you going for this week?” But the big one, the absolute, if you only do one thing, if you use Geekbot then is we do Gratitude Thursday. And we say, “Hey, who would you like to give kudos to this this week?”

And honestly, this is the moment of the week that I get like goosebumps down my arms and it is so just frankly emotional reading what people are saying. And seeing how much people are helping each other within the team without me even knowing about it, which is frankly amazing. And then seeing people really being really grateful to help. So, it might be, some examples are when it often happens when we’ve had a new team member, they’re really expressing gratitude for people that have really helped to onboard them and take them under their wing.

We get John on our team. He gets a lot of thanks because he’s always posting great tracks and playlists on Spotify to listen to and people love that. All of our team are getting thanked for different things and actually, we are planning, we’ve got a team retreat coming up in September. And we are going to actually collate all of the thanks that people have received and we’re going to bring it together and each team member is going to receive a little pack of all the kudos.

And I think it’s going to be a really emotional moment because it’s very heartfelt, it’s very genuine, and it’s sounds very, very soft and fluffy, but it is really heartwarming. And for me, as the business owner, the first Thursday, I was quite choked up. I was reading this and I was just like, “Whoa, this is really something.” And that I can literally, as I’m talking about it, I can feel myself like goosebumps. That’s amazing. The power of that as you are letting people express thanks without actually having to phone someone up and say, “Hey, Drew, I really want to thank you for that. That was really good,” because people won’t do that. But yeah, Geekbot in Slack absolutely incredible. I think that’s great.

And then the final tip, I think for me, that we do a lot of, when we have team meetings, I still like everyone getting to say something. I’m not a big fan of meetings where most of the team just sit there and aren’t really part of it. And so, we’ve played with different ways. Do we ask them what they’re focused on this week? Do we ask them what they’re struggling with? Actually, what we’ve started doing is asking fun questions, let’s get to know them. Because what I’m finding is that the more the team get to know each other, A, the happier we are at working together, but also the more able they are to ask each other for help throughout the rest of their work week.

So, this week’s and what I’m doing, because I can’t always think of a good question, I’m now asking the team to suggest a question. So, this week, Hilma, who’s my hiring success manager, she wanted to know. She was like, “What’s the funniest injury you’ve ever had?”

Drew McLellan:

I bet there was some good stories.

Noel Andrews:

It was amazing. Some absolutely brilliant ones. I won’t share them here for sensitivity, but absolutely brilliant and it was really good fun. And you’re getting to know, “Well, this happened when I was a child or this happened two weeks ago.” You’re just getting this little insight into people. Again, for me, connection is huge. If people have a bit of a connection, it makes helping them and asking for help so much, so much easier.

So, these are just some really simple things that then come together to create the culture that you want in your agency. And then the absolute icing on the cake with this is you can then, when you are recruiting, I don’t know. Yeah, what we should all have on our sales pages, when our customers or potential customers come to our sites, we probably all have social proof and some testimonials and case studies on the sales page. because that’s what we do.

When did you last see a testimonial in a job post. And unless you’ve been looking at our job posts, probably never, because it’s really rare, but that’s what we do. So, we do two things. We put case that we put testimonial quotes from our customers and our clients in our job posts to show that what we’re doing is meaningful and people really like it. But the real money is when we do testimonial quotes from our team members, a job-

Drew McLellan:

About how good it is to be on a team, right.

Noel Andrews:

So, if you are applying for a job with JobRack or with the clients that we work with, we gathered this as well, and you read that, “Hey, Hilma says this job has changed my life. I’ve never felt so welcomed by a team. And I genuinely love every week that I work at JobRack,” which that’s actually what the quote says. You are going to be seriously inclined if you’re interested in that job. That’s going to make you feel really good about applying.

And when we are hiring what we want is people that are really interested in applying, not just clicking the apply button and on the 37th in the row of 50 things that we are applying for. So, when you build this culture, A, it helps the existing team, but it also helps you get more great candidates as well.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, no, that’s a great point. You talked about bringing your team together. So, are you physically bringing everyone together?

Noel Andrews:

I am, first time. And it’s quite an undertaking because mine are all across Eastern Europe, I’m in the UK. So, geographically, it’s not that diverse, but it’s still a significant number of people that are crossing multiple borders, getting them all together. It’s not an insignificant expense, but I am very confident that A, it’s going to be an amazing week and B, I can’t wait to get together face-to-face. I’ve only met one of my team face-to-face for just a few hours as our paths were crossing. And it just feels really the right thing to do.

And I’ve spoken to a lot of business owners and agency owners that have done this, that all typically share the same feelings. Before the first one, “Ooh, it’s a lot of money. I’m not sure if that’s what should be doing.” And then all of them go, “Oh, my God, I wish I’d done it sooner.” The benefit that comes off it is just powerful. So, we’re going to mix it. We’re going to do some work.

We’re going to do some work around vision. We’re going to do some work around improvements and almost like a little hackathon type thing. But really, I would say 70% of the time, it’s going to be just hanging out, casual conversation, getting to know each other. And that I have every confidence that’s going to then really help us keep doing what we do, which is helping people get great hires.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. It’s interesting. I’m talking to agency owners every day and in some cases they have a remote employee or two, but most of their team is reasonably local and in other cases they’re completely scattered across either the country or the world. And I find a couple things. Number one, the agencies that are mostly still brick and mortar or hybrid, it doesn’t occur to them or they somehow dismissed the idea of bringing that remote work. When they bring everybody together, that person gets left out or when they’re really scattered all over the country, the agency owner looks at the expense and says, “Yeah, we’re not going to do that.”

And to me, the expenses, you have no connective tissue in the team people, the Zoom is fine, teams are fine. All the things you’ve talked about are fine, but there is no substitute for physically being in the same space and really getting a sense of someone and being able to talk to them and look in their eye and give them a hug or whatever your culture is, but there is no substitute for that. And so, I think it’s very shortsighted to just look at the cost as a short-term thing as opposed to the cost of not doing it as a long-term thing.

Noel Andrews:

Yeah. I agree completely. And as much as I’m going, “Oh, this is a significant expense,” in the scheme of things, it’s really not. I’m trying to think what it’s going to work out to maybe $150. If I was to put $150 a month away per employee, so to speak clearly, that’s not a lot of money that would pretty much cover the entire expense for me to do it every year. It doesn’t need to be expensive. There’s various ways to do it, but depending where your team are just flesh out. And if you look at it and you say, “Hey, this is a couple of hundred bucks a month on employee.” Well, you’ve only got to take them out for some beers and a couple of lunches, pizza lunches, and you’re getting towards that.

And yet the benefit for what you can get for that is a retreat that’s maybe a weekend long three or four days, maybe even a week, depend where you go, and like I said, the ROI, if it’s not 10X, I will be amazed and probably way more than that. And so, that’s what and actually I haven’t done that yet in terms of putting the money away, but after we’ve done this first one, that’s exactly what I’m going to start doing. And just saying, “Hey, we just put this much away per employee each month.”

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, budget for it.

Noel Andrews:

Exactly, budget for it. And we just treat it like it’s on top of their salary, like it’s a benefit. And again, the team are absolutely thrilled. They cannot wait to go and hang in a really nice villa. We’ve got a pool. We’re not far from the beach. We’re actually going to Croatia, which is a beautiful part of the world to be in and they’re really excited to get together. Absolutely, absolutely cannot wait.

Drew McLellan:

So, when someone hires someone from another country, halfway across the globe, is it reasonable to expect that they would get on a plane and come to a retreat either in the US or wherever the agency is based? Is that a reasonable expectation?

Noel Andrews:

So, I think it is, yes. I think there’s a couple of caveats. Some of it depends on their family situation. So, for instance, one of my team has got a 6- or 7-month-old baby. And so in that one, she is going to be attending and I made the offer to bring her husband and the baby and we would’ve put them in slightly separate accommodation, because that’d be right for them. So, there’s certain allowances and accommodations we’re going to make.

So, some people, depending on how big your team is, someone won’t be able to make it. Someone’s passport would have expired. Someone will get sick. That’s just life. But I think for me, is it reasonable to expect it? I think yes, as long as you set the expectation upfront.

So when I’m hiring and I’m talking and I set it out in the job post that, “Hey, this is the job this is.” I say right at the top of a job post, I was like, “There’s a lot of detail here. If you don’t like detail, no worries. This job is not for you.” I want people to get a really clear understanding of what it’s going to be like to work for us. And the same thing when we are talking about what it’s like to be part of our team, what we expect, how we want people to show up, engage with us, this isn’t a do your task and then clock off job.

This is a “We’ve got a vision for you in the role and that your area of the business.” We want you to own it. We want you to drive it. It doesn’t matter whether you are a customer support person or a CFO. Absolutely doesn’t matter to us, the expectation is the same. And so, I think if you set those expectations and in an interview, just say, “Hey, how do you feel about coming to a company retreat? This year it might be in Mexico. Next year, it might be in Croatia.” And not many people are going to be like, “Yeah, no, I don’t fancy that.” And if they do say they don’t fancy that, then you can dig in a little bit and go, “Well, why is that?” And they might go, “Oh, well, I’m not sure I could afford it.” And you’re like, “Oh, well, it’s all paid, so don’t worry about that.” And you dig into it.

But if they’re the kind of person that just doesn’t like socializing and won’t make that effort to get with the team, then question, it’s not a definite note, but just question whether they are right because as much as people can be very introverted, might not feel like they’re going to do well in big group environments, as long as let them know that it’s going to be safe space, they’re going to be supported, I think most people are going to be very, very up for this.

Especially, if you’re hiring remotely from, take for me, Eastern Europe, as an example. They generally love traveling and lots and lots of them have traveled to the US already, but that chance to travel and meet the team, they’re working with. People that care about the job they’re doing and want it for the long term will want to get face-to-face.

Drew McLellan:

All right. So, here’s my last question. I could do a whole hour on just job postings, but we’ll do that another time. But I think most people think of remote workers, especially remote workers from other countries, as being pretty transient. So, what’s been your experience in terms of the stickiness of the people you are helping your clients hire, how long do they stick around?

Noel Andrews:

Yeah. In our case a long time and we’re talking years, multiple years and still going, very much still going. And the reason for that is because, again, we set the expectation upfront that that’s what we’re looking for.

Drew McLellan:

Right, and this is a job.

Noel Andrews:

Absolutely. This is a job. This is a career and this is you’re going to be a team member. And so, we set that expectation up front and we have things like, “Look, if you are looking to have three or four different assignments on a go at time, this isn’t for you.” People might have another part-time thing, that’s okay, but generally this is your main gig. You are a full-time with us. We are your focus. We want your shower thoughts is how we think about it.

And so, we set that expectation and then we talk about it in the interviews. Whether it’s hiring for JobRack for me, or whether it’s we’re screening and filtering candidates for our clients, we’re doing the same thing. We are really digging into what’s their motivations? What’s going on in their life right now? What’s going to be going on in their life in the next 6, 12 months or so? Does it feel like that they’re up for this? Now, something might happen in life, that’s okay. It might change at some stage, but generally, by screening and aiming for that upfront, we do really, really well in keeping people for years and years and years.

Drew McLellan:

All right. I lied, and one more question. One of the big things, at least here in the US and I suspect in most other countries is that we provide our employees, well, especially in the US because of the health insurance thing, which I know is different in most other countries. But we provide our employees with a fair amount of benefits, health insurance, retirement plans, things like that. Is that a big deal to most remote employees and is there a way to provide for some of those things when somebody is in essence again from the US a 1099?

Noel Andrews:

It’s a great question, Drew and it’s one that I’m actually working through right now. So, the standard is that, as you said, they’re self-employed, you pay them a fair salary and typically, paid time off. So, 20 days paid time off is pretty common, which is loosely equivalent into the US having 10 days paid time off and roughly 10 public holidays. So, that’s what I would describe as bare minimum, good salary, 20 days paid time off.

Then you start the next level gets into, all, well, we’re going to have some paid sick, because actually, and we are literally just about to implement this ourselves because if people are sick, I don’t want them working, because they’re worried about the money. I want them to recover. Take the day off, recover and then they’ll be back in a couple of days rather than being sick for weeks. So, that’s the first step of it.

Then we get into, like you said, things like how do they get into public healthcare, 401K or pension equivalence, things like that. And that’s where typically they are going to be responsible for that themselves. But I think as remote business owners, we are going to be take on some of the burden of the cost and just share that with them. And it’s often not a lot of money, especially not compared to like the US side of things. There are some companies that are out there now that can assist with this and act as like a middle person in that payroll side of things.

But actually, what we are finding with our teams is that they can actually get provision for this locally much easier that we can use in international firm that’s taken every health fat margin on it. And so, we are then saying, “Okay, well as part of it, we’re going to do a stipend.” So, we might do a laptop allowance is a good example. That’s something we are looking at bringing in. Because again, we don’t provide equipment because it’s a bit of a pain to have to support it. Home working allowance, healthcare allowance, things like that. So, I’m a really big fan for businesses to try and have parity across team members as much as they can.

Now, if you’re paying thousands and thousands of dollars in the US for an employee’s healthcare, well, you might not give the same amount of money to someone that can buy the same thing. Here in the UK, my private healthcare for, and I’ve obviously got a very good public healthcare system as well. My private healthcare is around $65 a month for full coverage, which this is probably making anyone in the US just be like, “Hang on. What?”

Drew McLellan:

Cry, yeah, cry.

Noel Andrews:

Yeah, exactly. The UK is a different system. But again, so I think it’s having a conversation and trying to understand what’s important for your remote team members. And making sure that financial conversations are just open conversations about what’s important to them. What do they really want? So, for me, it’s good fair salary, paid time off, probably some paid sickness and it doesn’t need to be a huge amount.

And then getting into training. Just train and develop your team and invest in them. And again, not a huge amount of money, but help them progress and grow whether they’re a virtual assistant and they’re doing some social media stuff for you, well, give them time to be doing courses from you to me or digital marketer, things like that. And you also benefit from their learning, so literally, it’s a win-win.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. Again, I think most agency owners probably have never thought about, “I’m going to hire someone from another country. I should think about a benefits package of sorts.” Because again, we think of them as this very transactional remote worker, who’s going to come and go and I’m going to hire them to do a task and they’re going to have five other clients and it’s just a different way of thinking about the relationship.

Noel Andrews:

Yeah, absolutely.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. This has been fascinating. Noel, tell everybody a little more about how they can track you down if they want to learn more about what you do or connect with you and ask more questions that this interview has cropped up. What’s the best way for them to reach you?

Noel Andrews:

Yeah, no worries. So, simply head on over to jobrack.eu/agency and that’s a page focused for agency owners, so that highlights some of the very typical roles that we can fill. It gives you some idea on salaries. And so, to give you an idea, if you are looking for a really senior like PPC specialist or an SEO specialist that can be client facing doing strategy, hands-on doing as well, typical salary for that role is going to be about $3000 to $3500 US a month, which is probably around 50% of what you’d find pay in the US. But for someone absolutely committed on an incredibly high level, operations managers, really great people, super organized again, can be client facing with really great English, $2500 to $3500 a month. And then, we can do software developers of all kinds and really great executive assistant.

So, gives you a good flavor of what roles we can do. So, that’s jobrack.eu/agency. And I’m always happy to jump on calls, chat you through whether you’ve hired remotely a ton of times before or whether people are just going, “Eh, is this for me?” And I’m very happy to walk people through. No pressure or anything like that. We have a good conversation if it’s right and I think it could be right, I’ll be open to tell you. If I don’t think it’s right, I’m going to tell you as well because for me, this is just about helping people and that’s what makes the world go round and yeah, works really well. So, yeah, jobrack.eu/agency.

Drew McLellan:

Awesome. This has been a great conversation. It really, I think is going to get people thinking differently about how they can view remote workers, especially from other countries. So, I appreciate your time. Thanks sharing your wisdom and experience with us. And I’m sure that this will not be the last time that we chat.

Noel Andrews:

Hey, I hope not. I really enjoyed it, Drew. It’s great.

Drew McLellan:

All right guys, this wraps up another episode of Build A Better Agency. A couple of things. Number one, big shout out and thank you to our friends at White Label IQ. As you know, they’re the presenting sponsor for the podcast and they do white label design dev and PPC and are the go-to team for many AMI agencies and podcast listeners. So, head over to whitelabeliq.com/ami if you want to learn more about how they’re helping agencies. And they have a special deal there for you where you can get some free hours on your first project.

Also, I just want to tell you that it feels good to be back in the groove of having guests on the show and one of the things I love about the show and we’re almost 700 episodes, no, we’re almost 400 episodes in. We’ve been doing it for seven years is I learn something every time we have a guest and I hope you do, too. So, I am super grateful that you hang out with us every week. I know you’re busy and I am appreciative of the fact that you make time for this every week. So, thank you for coming back. Thank you for being an active listener. I love bumping into you at conferences and shows and other things and hearing what episodes really stuck with you, so appreciate it.

If you need me, you know how to track me down and I’ll be back next week with another guest. Until then, have a great week. Be thinking about your team. Some of the things we talked about today, the things about culture and one-on-ones, you know that’s not just about remote workers, right? You know that you should be doing that for your regular team, too. So, if you’re not doing one-on-ones, they are a game changer.

So, head over back to Episode 15, a long, long time ago and check out that episode where I walk you exactly through why you do one-on-ones, how you do them. And we actually have a form, although I’m going to grab Noel’s form and see if maybe we can steal some of his questions and update our form. But the form as it is, is pretty good. So, make sure that you check that out.

But culture, values, all of those things super important. So many of you are struggling to find good employees and keep your great employees and I’ll tell you that a lot of that is about the time you pour back into them and the connections you create between them. So, whether you have remote employees or not, domestically or in other parts of the world that is not just fluff, it’s not just softness. It’s a really important part of building and keeping a strong team.

So, all right, with that little lecture, I’m going to let you go. I’ll see you next week.

That’s a wrap for this week’s episode of Build A Better Agency. Visit agencymanagementinstitute.com to check out our workshops, coaching packages, and all the other ways we serve agencies just like yours. Thanks for listening.