6 Things People Need To Do To Plan For A Job Change

 Today, companies are having to sit down and go through and really see what's important to their employees and maybe work from homes number one, flexible benefits, student loan forgiveness. They're going through a variety of factors to see what's best for their employee population. But I think a lot of people are quitting because they feel as though maybe their employer's not listening to them, they're not appreciated. Many people are finding they are under compensated from a cash standpoint and they're raising their hand and no one's listening. But I think folks, I think right now employers are starting to listen because it's so difficult to get quality employees and to help join your business and drive what's going on. Hey everyone and welcome back to another intentional money matters with Harry Stout and Caleb Williams. This is the Better World podcast and today's episode we're going to be talking about the great resignation. This is something that many of you have seen and we've talked a lot about job opportunities and people leaving and people being really intentional with their time and how they make their money. I believe there's a lot to talk about here. With that said Harry, I want to tee this up and talk about the current landscape of this and where we are as a country. And then I know that you've done quite a bit of research to bring this all together to make this a really powerful episode for people to have some clear call to actions as they're listening wanting to be a good employer, be a good team member and do what's best for their family. Yeah, absolutely Caleb. Thank you and great to be with you today. When you look at this, it's really kind of shocking. And I delved, I was delving into it a little bit more just to kind of frame it in my own mind if you will. And I'll give you some of this information. I don't mean to number you to death here, but first off, we have about 163 million workers in our country. Think about that 163 million workers. We've got 11 million open jobs right now. 11 million open jobs. And over the last number of months, we have over 4 million people per month resigning their job. 4 million people per month. You annualize that. It's 48 million people out of the 163. It's over 30% of the workforce on an annualized basis. So that really kind of tells you something. I think that tells you something. The other thing I found was as a result of the pandemic in this whole situation, about 3 million people retired early. They decided, I'm kind of done with it. And I need to, it's too much uncertainty, too many things to deal with today. I think I've saved enough money. I'm going to go. So we'll see what goes on. But when you look at this, it's a massive change in what's happening. And it's just significant when you look at it. So I call it the great resignation. It's almost to me the great renegotiation. I think one of the podcasts called it the great, I don't want to attribute that to our thoughts and it's theirs. But it could be the great resignation, the great renegotiation, the great reset. So it's really significant. Yeah, it very much is. And when you start throwing out numbers like 4 million people a month. Now, how long has that been? Is there, is there research to show that that's going to continue? Because that's a lot of people. I mean, that's almost insanely. And do they just recycle? Or are they just, are they just saying like, screw this? Like, I don't, I don't want anything to do with the job. Or they just trying to get a better job. Like, what does the research show? Yeah, the research is showing people are moving to improve their economic situation. So let's go back to your first question. Over the last three months, we've got an excess of 4 million per month. So it's really started to hit home and we'll have to continue to follow it every month. But right now, so over 4 million a month, they're doing that. But people are changing because, and there's a lot of reasons too. If you ask like, why are people quitting? I mean, first off, a lot of people are sick of their job in the sense that they don't make enough money. And if you really spend time looking at the average wage that we pay so many people in our country, you can see why people don't make enough to live. Caleb, and we've talked in prior episodes about the, you know, the six killers, the cash killers for 2022, inflation is impacting people. The cost of living is impacting people, cost of housing, cars, whatever. So when you look at that, you know, people are just kind of fed up. And I think the ups and downs of the pandemic, mask on, mask off. I don't know where you are today, mask on, mask off. I think any workers are stressed and they're just kind of fed up with it. So I see that number one. Also, and I found this very interesting, the number of people that are applying for employee identification numbers to set up new businesses, is it record levels. A number I picked up, I think was five million new employee identification numbers in the last 60 days. That tells you that people are saying, I don't want to be in this corporate world anymore. I want to be an entrepreneur. I want to be off on my own. And so you see that. I think another thing that's going on is people are saying, look, you know, I've liked this working from home. Yeah. I really do. It's changed my life. I can, I can see my kids more. I can see my, my partner more, a lot of things that I can do. And I don't have to worry about running to daycare or running to child care. And many people have dependent care. They're looking after elderly relatives or someone else in the family who's ill. And they're saying, you know, this gives me more flexibility. So I think this worked from home. And I said this and I'm, it's going to be part of what we do going forward. I think we found you can run businesses on a remote basis. And, but I think a lot of folks are saying, I want to work remotely. And if you don't let me work remotely, there are 11 million jobs out there. I'm going to go ahead and find someone else. And one of the other things that came to my mind is you're absolutely right is you kind of get the bug when you're like, oh, this is all possible. And I've saved two hours a day because I'm not in traffic and running all around. And, and while I think working from home, there's some inefficiencies. There's definitely inefficiencies being at the office. So it's not like a 100% either way. But the other thing is people save more money, I believe, when, when this whole thing happened. And so potentially, and I don't know if this is accurate. That's why I'm asking you is potentially with a little bit of savings. And we teach this a lot like you have a lot of control when you have savings because you, you have the freedom to potentially, you know, start something, start a project that might take a couple months to take off for a couple of years kind of deal. And so those are all maybe like attributes that go into this, you know, great renegotiation. I really like that actually from a standpoint of like people saying, hey, like I got one life, I this, they're starting to think differently. So I think it's, I think overall it's positive. I also want to play devil's advocate being a business owner myself because, you know, we're saying, you know, more wages, more wages, more wages. And what do you do if a business owner is like, hey, listen, we haven't, we had our hard year last year, like we're, we can afford to give three to six percent raises across the board. And so I don't know if it's this episode or another that we talk about maybe creative ways for, if you do, if you are an entrepreneur, how you can stay on a team and create a win-win scenario, or as a business owner, how you can keep good people. And, and maybe be creative with that because I'm sure a lot of people are feeling on both sides business owners and people that are a part of the team are all trying to figure out the best way for them and their families. Yes. And we'll talk about cash needs in a minute. But I think what companies are doing is trying to find ways to keep their employees in a lot of its flexibility. Correct. And now, if you can, and I believe even in your, you've got a couple of situations where you've made, you have people who work on a flexible basis within your organization. It's a way to work. Let's give this example. We have unlimited vacation. And now, nobody on the company takes advantage of it. It's not one of these things where it's like, yeah, you know, John Smith, who doesn't work for us, is going on vacation every other week and not getting his stuff done. That wouldn't be, that wouldn't, we wouldn't tolerate that. But I don't want to be the company that's needing you to ask off or, or God forbid, like, you know, two or three months in advance, you have to talk to your manager, can you take a day off or all the stuff. So we just are like, we want to have a culture where people get their stuff done, but it's very entrepreneurial within better wealth. And we have unlimited vacation days. No one has taken an event or no one's abused it. But there's a freedom that says, like, hey, I have a lot of flexibility. And I have a team that is not micromanaging me and looking at my time sheet, but they're valuing the output of what I'm actually doing at work. I totally agree. My daughter works for a tech company and that's what they have also, you know, it gets down to building a culture that people feel comfortable with and they want to work and they want to be part of that culture. Compensation, cash compensation is part of it, but job flexibility, recognition from peers, how they're treated. One of my key rules in managing businesses over the years, and this got me in a lot of trouble, Caleb, was treat people like adults. I just treated people like adults and you have adult conversations. And that's just that's part of life. And so if you do that and people understand, okay, so Harry, you're not going to lie to me. No, I'm not going to lie to you. Harry, you're not going to, so if something's going bad with the business, you'll tell me, yes, I will do that. So I think today, companies are having to sit down and go through and really see what's important to their employees. And maybe it worked from homes, number one, flexible benefits, student loan forgiveness. They're going through a variety of factors to see what's best for their employee population. But I think a lot of people are quitting because they feel as though maybe their employers not listening to them, they're not appreciated. Many people are finding they are under compensated from a cash standpoint and they're raising their hand and no one's listening. But I think, folks, I think right now employers are starting to listen because it's so difficult to get quality employees and to help join your business and drive what's going on. I think companies are really starting to listen and make you to keep priority. And that's what they should do. One of the things that I know that we're doing is is looking in and really implementing a profit share like plan in our company. I really do believe that this is going to be the future of companies because it's one of those things where you have the power of being an entrepreneur, but there's pros and cons to that. And statistics are not on your side if you're going to go, quote unquote, do a business. And there's a lot of upside and a lot of freedom that comes with that. And so one of the things that I see coming and going to be more popular is if you want the if you want the best type of people that are willing to work within a team because some people are just not cut out for that. But if you have if you can create upside as like an owner and give them the the benefits of being an owner while still the efficiency of working with a team, that is something that is really important to us a better wealth because we want everybody, everybody to think like an owner. And it's one way it's one way to say that, but it's another way to incentivize how can we create a system where everyone wins when the company wins and when the company is not doing well, everybody's sacrificing for the good of the people. Now totally great. And I was just I listened to a presentation from a Dutch company. It's a small little marketing firm, 10 employees. They went to value-based pay. So everyone they just decided to and they asked people to turn around and tell us, what are you worth? What's the value you bring? And everyone had to come in, justify their value. And they adjusted compensation accordingly and they kept all of the group. And I think of the their 10 employees, they had one major problem with one employee and where they had to have a group of people sit down and determine whether or not that was true value that that employee was bringing in. But ultimately they agreed and they kept that person. And it was interesting. It was someone in the in the creative department that did presentations and materials. And that person justified the value that they brought. So, but you and I are talking about the conversations that are happening today, but they're they're happening in an environment where there are a lot of jobs out there. And people have options. So I think if you look at it, the balance of power is shifting from the companies to the employees. So the employees have more say today than they've had in in in in prior years. And as a result, that's the the dialogue that's going on. And hopefully it's a healthy dialogue getting to the point where I totally agree with you. If the businesses are making money, there's you can't pay everyone, you know, huge huge huge sums. So it has to be tied to value profitability and what that business is accomplishing. So that's what's that's that's what's happening. But Kayla, by think is you look at this, if you're if you're one of your listeners today is planning on a job change, I think one of the things you really have to think about is looking before you leap. And and I'll as we go through a couple things, I'll share with you some personal experience. I've been I mentor a couple of young people and I'll talk to you a little bit about some of their information, not mentioning A's, but just to give you some ideas, some what people are dealing with. But but first off, when you when you think about it, if you're looking to make a change, I think one of the first steps you got to do, you got to make sure you got the cash to make the change. Yeah. And you know, in our industry, we always talk about having an emergency fund and the importance of the emergency fund. When I rename the emergency fund to the freedom fund. So how many how much money do you have such that if you want to change jobs, how much cash do you have on hand? Can you pay your total expenses for four months, six months, nine months? So that if you wanted to, you could make a change. You could take it to go to a different company company. You could take another entrepreneurial exercise, but you have to have you got a plan. You just can't you got to be aware of your cash position. And what it's going to do to your household, if you change, you know, if you change jobs. So cash is having that cash balance is important. Freedom fund, I think, is something people ought to think about. Yeah. No, I love it. And I think one of my one of my favorite books is the psychology of money. One of the concepts in that book is the ROI of of 0% savings. And in other words, like a lot of entrepreneurs will look at a money in the savings account and be like, oh, like that's horrible. Like you can get a better investment. And and but but the challenge to that is, okay, what is the output that you're able to do in business? How you're able to sleep? How you're able to maybe have integrity and not not feel like you're a month to month. Like there's other value that that needs to be tied to maybe money sitting at zero. And that's that's the same thing that I would say for whoever you are is I'm not recommending you stuff a ton of money and a zero percent savings account. I'm saying we have to truly value assets and and savings. And sometimes it's more than just the rate of return or the two two percent interest that I got last month for my savings account. There's more benefits that are tied to that. And I think it goes back to the freedom fund and it goes back to options because what is the ROI of getting a 40% change in salary by just having the freedom to be able to maybe go two months with with no pay? Like those are the kind of things that we just need to be thinking and it's funny because the same conversation that we have for entrepreneurs really really is the same advice that I would give someone who's in the position of trying to find better options. Oh absolutely because if you're an entrepreneur you always need cash on hand to take advantage of that opportunity that comes along. Because you just never know which one's going to come your way and to have that that's really important. So I think having the cash to make sure you can make this the job change if you're contemplating it and so many Americans look like they are you ought to do that. I think secondly and I this is an old adage but I think it's a really good one for many people is easier to find a job if you have a job. And so a lot of times people don't have the discipline to have that year of savings around. They really need to be able to bridge from one job to the other job without a huge time gap that in order to keep themselves financially secure and their families in good shape. But so I kind of think unless you if you're risk adverse you understand what you're doing by starting a business you I'm not not risk adverse but you're willing to take the risk to start the new business you know you need to know what you're doing and you know look I've got enough cash I'm okay I can pay my bills for the next number of months until I get up and running I know what I need to do and hopefully you've planned it you fought about it and so on but for others if you're less if you're more risk adverse having a having a job and then getting a new and making that transition is it might be better for you might give you a better piece of mind. Yeah I don't know about you but we all I I would say we all know someone who maybe there's a little bit I wouldn't say prideful but maybe optimistic and and would leave a decent situation and then find themselves wishing they would have done that differently um and so that that's number one the other thing that I'll tie is in sales when you're when you're selling anything it's very very important for people to trust you one of the things that undermines trust is like this neediness or this like what are like why do they are so pushy or like why do they want that like what's in it for them right no and so you eliminate a lot of that in sales when you truly can be when you can give pros and cons when you when you don't feel when you don't pressure people and the same thing goes with with a job you you tend to be more attractive when you don't necessarily need them because then you it's just that that's more of the attraction we we don't want to be with someone that is truly needy we want to be with someone that we choose to be with and so again I'm not giving relationship advice I'm not giving uh sales advice but it's funny how this common theme is across the board in multiple different areas of our life oh yeah and I totally agree they're totally agree the third the third thing I think pops up too Caleb is when you're changing jobs you're contemplating contemplating changing jobs you ought to know where you stand from a benefit standpoint many companies have stock options today you might have a 401k match coming you might have certain other payments that are do you for work that was done maybe project bonuses or so on and you really need to make sure you understand those and not walk away from them uh I had I had a young person I was working with that his company had a employee stock ownership plan and he found out that he he needed to wait another four months to fully vest and I think it was $20,000 to him and that was significant and he had worked there for a while but it vested in four months so as as he began to plan his exit he agreed that he wasn't going to exit before that money came due it was he he it was sizeable amount to him and it was really important so uh just make sure you're aware of those things and uh don't just don't not be because that can all come along and impact you um the next thing I think you need to know and you'll it just goes back to something we were saying earlier I think you need to know that new employer and you've really got to spend some time so many people today I I'm surprised at this as they go in for an interview they don't fully do the research on the company yeah and they're and understand that company's values and work style well enough maybe that's a great maybe they're advertising your great opportunity at a great level of compensation but those other items that are much more important in the intermediate and long term they don't fully understand so making sure it's a it's a match I mean you know the you're taking a job today joining an organization you want there to be a match of values and such that it's such working together and I think that's more important today than it has been in decades I I agree and if you actually start doing the math and how much time you spend at work compared to the people that you choose to uh love uh it's it's insane and and yet um and I think this is becoming more and more popular that um that values and and being in a culture that you enjoy like again let's put a rate return on that if they're if company A will pay you a little bit more and you're miserable and company B will pay a little less but you love it there is we have to factor in the love for work and I'm not saying one you just have to have a factor and that has to go into into account um couldn't agree more and that's that's one thing if you're if you're a business owner you're someone that's trying to compete with maybe the bigger companies that are paying more think about other ways that you can create a culture that is is something that people want to wake up every every day being a part of a greater mission and a greater culture oh no totally agree and I think as you look at this one I think it's part of this if you're taking that new job you really got to drill down and understand the details of that job I mean I I I encourage folks get a copy of the employee handbook they'll they'll give you a link that you can read it see get some understanding understand understand the company understand the benefit plans understand when some of those benefit plans kick in when will you be when will you be eligible for coverage under the health insurance plan various things now it's interesting at a practical situation in the last 10 days where a young person I was working with was looking to change jobs they were totally totally destroyed at the company they were with they needed they I want to get out of here Harry I'm going to go from A to B I'm going to do it and I said okay that's great so let's think about this for a second and I didn't know this but they have a health condition and they and the prescription that they're taking for that health condition was nearly $4,000 a month and their existing health plan they had qualified for that coverage and the and the company was paying I think it was costing the person $400 a month or something for those meds and they found out that if they and they had identified another job but the coverage wouldn't kick in for 90 days and they're going oh I you know I got an issue now I don't know how that got resolved by the way I don't but we identified it and we saw it and I don't know if they eventually got the the new company to agree to cover or not but those are those are issues I mean you need to understand those things when is my 401k meant it's going to kick in oh oh by the way we love to have you here but unlike better wealth you may not get vacation for six or nine months and you know well how do I do that and work effectively I need that I need that mental release I need some time off so I think that those are all things that you need to do you need to nail down and really worked on to make sure you're doing that before you leap and take that new job and and I know no one's going to criticize you for that that's just reasonable due diligence on your part to see you know what that new company is all about yep very similar example had someone that is near and dear to you know my life and they're they're thinking about different scenarios and and cancer is in the families you know current cancer bite is in in the in the midst and so it was one of those things where it's like hey that has to be factored in because at your current scenario that you have that's a lot of it's being covered and there's a lot of unknowns and so it's you know whether you like it or not it is it is one of those things where not not all pays created equal you have to look at the benefits and you have to look at especially if you struggle with pre pre existing conditions that that is a huge factor and I'm really grateful that that made the list yeah and I'll give you two I'll add two others to your the conversation one is I mean do you have life insurance I mean your only life insurance coverage may be just group group life from your existing employer and and you're going to lose that I mean you're you're going to lose that will well your new employer have that benefit for you you may be without life insurance and depending on your own planning your health you can qualify or not qualify so I think that's that's really important I mean you need to make sure you've got coverage on both sides of the equation and the other thing is you're many people have a 401k plan they're using that as part of their saving strategy understanding what the new plan is and how you can exit from the old plan if what issues are involved how you make that transition from one to the other so these are all part of this process of deciding do I take the new job and and how do I make that new job work successfully so when you look at these issues issues Caleb some of them are money issues I mean it's preparing I got enough cash to tie myself over until until I get the new job others are all right I understand who I'm going to work for what they stand for their values okay I've got the I see who I'm working to work for I see the job description I've been through the handbook you know you've done enough due diligence and maybe you go to glass door and see how employees are writing the company you do a variety of things like that so you feel comfortable about making the change and then I think that lessons the risk that the change is not going to be successful for you and you want that to happen and with so many people today they want to be in a better environment a better culture earning more money so those would be the key key points I would I would say to people as they look to to to participate in the great resignation the great renegotiation those are items to look at and one last thing for you recently a number of employers are coming back and saying you look you know we do need to reset your salary we do need to we do need to to pay you more than we were paying you and we're we're we need to we'd like to keep you and that is an interesting conversation to have also because if you made the decision to leave sometimes when you tell them they're maybe they're shocked maybe they didn't really let you were overlooked or whatever so that is a possibility that will pop up for people and one you need to prepare yourself for yeah can I can I throw a bonus bonus Caleb thought into please do yes so and this is more of a discussion but let's say you're working for a company that you like and you're thinking about doing making your own business the the mistake that I see people making is they have the assumption that you know this money and time are going to be something that comes quick like oh I'm going to knock this out money is going to come yeah and so here's my professional question the ask or encouragement is before making the leap I'm not saying not make that leap I think it could be one of the best leaps that you could make and I'm not even saying like don't cut the tie is because there's there's many people that that's why they were successful as they had to be sick they had to make it work but just really be aware of of of your surroundings don't ever put yourself in a situation where your integrity is going to lack because you need to do xyz and just always know that everything takes more time and money and obviously it's not an absolute across the board but almost every initiative that I that I've gotten into I've always factored in okay we think it's going to cost this let's multiply that by 1.2 but we think it's going to get done in six months all right you know and it's like we still we still try to get it done don't get me wrong but it's like we're not if it goes over a little bit or if it goes over budget we're not in trouble and that's why one recommendation and you do have any thoughts on that no I just add to that totally great I was listening to a young lady the other day who was making the transition from being part of a corporate marketing department to a contractor she was going to set up her own consulting business because people loved her and she did great work and she said the biggest surprise in her life was she had to pay for her own health insurance and when she sat down to figure out what the cost was of that so she hadn't really thought through some of these issues and you and I told so you need to make sure you got a cash cushion that's going to help you get for May to be now in this case in her family they had financial resources to tie her over but she was totally shocked at how much she was going to have to pay for her health insurance outside outside of her her partners plan absolutely I got a selfish ask for the watchers and listeners if you found this episode helpful I think there are many people that come to your mind and I would encourage you sharing sharing this with them share this with maybe your employers hey we need to have a conversation but listen to this beforehand or maybe you know somebody that's thinking about starting a business or or leaving I really believe this pot this one show this one episode can really equip and give you tools and make sure that you're best prepared to live intentionally and so selfishly please share this with with people that you love the most and also also if you have thoughts or questions or maybe something that we missed commenting below if you're watching on YouTube it's super appreciated we're continuing to try to grow this this message of intentional living and also Harry if you want to share a little bit about your show in your books I would love for them to be a part of your community and actually that's what I do within the financial verse and the financial verse podcast I try to point out the practical aspects of life that where you can make better or more intentional decisions about your money on a day to day basis and it's the sum total of the little decisions adds up to something that can be very large for you and very impactful for your wealth and your security so that's what you can find out the financial verse and it complements all the the great work that goes on at better wealth