Talent Acquisition in a Boutique Consultancy with Bob Bell, ITK Consulting

Bob Bell [00:00:00]:
Have a pretty simplistic, great structure. Everybody's a Power Platform functional consultant or a Power Platform dev. That's that's what you are. And then depending on the role and your experience, and you may be doing some client management on a job, you may be doing some, you know, team leadership on a job, but with the exception of directors it gets pretty flat. But part of that career progression means you need to continue to bring people in at the entry level to your company because you've got a three tier rate structure and if everybody as you said is at the top tier rate you're not very price competitive.

Neil Benson [00:00:34]:
Today, I'm learning from Bob Bell, an expert in business administration and the CEO of a boutique technology services firm, ITK Consulting in Canada. Bob shares how his superpower lies in his attention to administrative details, a skill that allows his team to focus on the essential work like sales and delivery. We explore how Bob prioritizes tasks, his strategies for keeping overhead costs lean, and his philosophy on balancing employee and subcontractor roles. Bob also discusses the critical decision of when to bring expertise in house and how his firm approaches talent acquisition and HR functions, aiming to build a robust dynamic delivery team. This episode is packed with valuable insights for leaders navigating the complexities of small to midsize business growth and looking to foster a culture of efficiency and collaboration. Join us as we uncover these practices with Bob Bell from ITK Consulting. So, Bob, you've told me one of your superpowers is that you're strangely fond of all things administrative. Tell us what what that means.

Bob Bell [00:01:40]:
I actually, have an overstimulated attention to detail. So I get bored easy. So I enjoy dabbling in all things that's required to kind of run a business, run operations, whether that be, finance and accounting, legal affairs, human resources, all of those things. And as a CEO for like a boutique, professional services firm, I try to limit our overhead costs.

Neil Benson [00:02:05]:
Right.

Bob Bell [00:02:06]:
And, I've been able to do all of those things to a to a certain degree of detail to ensure that, you know, we have good coverage and it keeps me, keeps me active. So, you know, someone says we need to review this 50 page legal document. I actually actually don't mind doing it. And I will read 50 pages of legal legalese. So over the years, indeed.

Neil Benson [00:02:24]:
So you you leave the rest of the team to focus on, I guess, marketing, sales, delivery?

Bob Bell [00:02:28]:
Yes. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. We we have a sales director who does who does all of our kind of outward facing stuff. I expect, from our business, our consultants to to sell. I think it's part of their job. Right.

Bob Bell [00:02:41]:
Again, and it's not so much that I'm looking for someone out there, you know, shaking hands and kissing babies and writing proposals, but they have the best opportunity when you're at a client to be able to identify new opportunities, new things that might come up and what, you know, the old coffee, you know, water cooler chats, things like that. Right? Yeah. So that is an expectation. You don't have to write your proposal, but I do expect you to say, hey, in a discussion earlier today, I heard they were thinking about this and then allow the rest of the group and and if you're comfortable with it, take it to the next level. But not everybody's comfortable with that. Right? But so yeah. So other than kind of the kind of the sales, we don't really do a lot of marketing to be honest. Our delivery has taken care of that, and we've been very fortunate.

Bob Bell [00:03:27]:
That's amazing. Where we've got good word-of-mouth, from folks, as far as, you know, follow on work. And then the delivery, I've got some great people that, that are fantastic technologists and mechanics that can do all the solutioning. So the last thing they need is me working my way into that. So I stay out.

Neil Benson [00:03:46]:
So whenever you're dealing with everything else, there could be quite a lot of tasks. It's hard to know which one to focus on. You've got you know, you wanna prepare a new edition of the employee handbook. You, you need to write a new onboarding process. Somebody sends you an RFP that with a set of terms and conditions that you need to read through. How do you prioritize all those tasks and know which one to focus on next?

Bob Bell [00:04:05]:
That's a good point. I think, again, as a smaller service delivery organization, client first. I remember learning from, you know, from a from a mentor from a long time ago about, you know, the it's interesting if you could open up and we have to think back. If you open up your filing cabinet next to your desk, you know, what do you see in your top drawer? Right? Do you see a bunch of whole folders about legals and employment contracts and this or should what what you should see is a bunch of stuff about your clients and their issues and things like that. So I tend to focus on client first and then work backwards from there. So client first stuff, project team next, everything we do is about the project team and that's people's first point of responsibility. And then down to the individual, you know, themselves. Because again, as a professional services business, all of our value is in our people.

Bob Bell [00:04:51]:
We don't have a warehouse full of widgets that we sell. You know, in the old vernacular, 95% of our net worth walks out the door at 05:00. Right?

Neil Benson [00:04:59]:
Right.

Bob Bell [00:04:59]:
When people turn off their computers, that's it for the day kind of thing.

Neil Benson [00:05:02]:
So Yeah. I tell our customers we've got a warehouse full of timesheets. How many would you like filled in?

Bob Bell [00:05:07]:
Exactly. Exactly.

Neil Benson [00:05:09]:
I carry out a similar role at Superware. You know, I I try and take on mostly HR, the finance, the operations, and I'm not an expert at any of those. And I, you know, I sometimes just run out of sheer talent. I don't and I have to get we've we've got a pretty good law firm, for example. Mhmm. I just give them a call. We've got a membership subscription with them. I tell them what the issue is.

Neil Benson [00:05:28]:
Here's what we need, and they give us a fixed price, quote Right. For a contract review or preparation of a legal document or something. How do you know when to bring in an expert? Because, you know, you don't wanna get your taxes stuffed up because you tried to do it yourself Exactly. Or or get into an Eagle Minefield. How do you know when to find in an expert?

Bob Bell [00:05:45]:
I think for me, it's always about, also being authentic. You know, from a leadership perspective, I think you need to be authentic and you need to be honest with yourself, right, as to what you can and cannot do. That comes with time. I think by nature, we're all probably pretty self confident type a people and this is what we want to do, but you need to be able to look in the mirror and say, this is not I'm, I'm out of my depth. That said, I think it's important to be able to take it right to that level. So I'm confident that I know enough to at least be able you need to be able to know enough to know when there's a problem. You don't actually have to know the solution. You don't mess it in.

Bob Bell [00:06:19]:
I don't expect it. We've got a great lawyer who does stuff. We've got a great bookkeeper who does all these things. We've got a great accountant who does stuff, but I use them to do what they should be doing as professionals. They don't need to be doing a lot of the busy work, a lot of the, you know, the prep work, a lot of the reading through like a 50 page agreement and say, hey, there are these two clauses that I don't like. I think we're exposed. Would you suggest we change the wording, right? So I think it's more knowing what you know and as important knowing what you don't. And that's a big thing, right? Because that's often what we do with our clients too, right? Where a lot of times clients come and say, this is my problem.

Bob Bell [00:06:54]:
And I'm not convinced that it actually is their problem all the time. It's a symptom. This is happening. And there's maybe other ways that they should other things that they should look at, but trying to kinda get that angle, and trying to get them to focus on what the true issue is. I think that's the kinda secret sauce. It's kinda knowing taking yourselves up to that limit and then say, I gotta have people surrounding me who are professionals, and I just want them to do what they do, not all the other stuff. Because that's where that's where the fees go off, right? When you start to see billable times and a lawyer should spend 2 hours not ten because they have to read through everything and do this. Nope.

Bob Bell [00:07:26]:
And that and that comes with relationships too. Right? We've been very fortunate that you build the relationships. So the the lawyer that we deal with knows this is what my expectation is. This is what I need. I don't want you to learn anything else. I just want you to answer this. Right? And then I'll take it to the next level. Right? And that's and that creates some trust

Neil Benson [00:07:42]:
and you're

Bob Bell [00:07:43]:
gonna have some trust with your with the, you know, the the people you have that arms length relationship with. But get professionals doing what professionals do. Don't try to be your you know, what's the what's the old saying about the, you know, the person with the worst shoes or, you know, the cobbler's kids? So Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Neil Benson [00:07:58]:
Do you think you'll get to a certain size when you we start to bring some of those functions in house and have, like, full time roles for for some administrative team members? Or you guys gonna try and keep it run it lean, invest in delivery folks rather than

Bob Bell [00:08:10]:
That's a good question. You know, I've had experience running I ran, Health Link BC, which was the telehealth service in the province. So had over 400 telenurses and dietitians and pharmacists and all that kind of stuff doing work. And we had a 110 person consultancy that I ran, a privately held one again, you know, that I built up and ran. And there's a certain level I think I would like to take it to. And then beyond that, I think I don't wanna go any bigger than that. So that kind of 45 person, 50 person is probably as big as in certainly in my career that I'd wanna take ITK to. And Doug McLaughlin, you know, my primary business partner and I both have that same kind of kind of perspective.

Bob Bell [00:08:49]:
But I think it's it's really a matter of there's a couple of things where I think you have to get more mature. One of the things that we did recently, we bought in a great guy to do our, he's our talent lead acquisition, like to go out and do recruiting. We did recruiting kind of off the side of our desk and it wasn't good enough. It was fine when you're 10 people. It wasn't good enough when you're 25 growing and having to start big projects. So he's brought a lot of, and what I wanted them to bring is a lot of formality in a good way, a lot of structure, repeatable things. So I think some things like that are good, but I don't think you need as much as people I think there's a it's a crutch sometimes to say, oh, I've got a legal personal department now. I've got this.

Bob Bell [00:09:32]:
And it's an expensive crutch. So

Neil Benson [00:09:35]:
Yeah. I'm keen to dive into that HR and and talent function a little bit more because I had the same recommendation from Kieran at the Factor, one of the Australian partners that we work with. And he said the same thing. The first kind of, in house team member they brought in that had been using an outside contractor floor was an HR and, a kind of people operations Right. Of his business and said it was the best move ever.

Bob Bell [00:09:54]:
Yeah.

Neil Benson [00:09:54]:
He's not got somebody permanently doing recruiting. And even if they're not actively recruiting, they're just, you know, keep catching up with candidates, finding out what they're looking for so that when there is an opening, they're ready to go. They've got a pool of warm candidates.

Bob Bell [00:10:05]:
Exactly.

Neil Benson [00:10:07]:
Yeah. I'm I'm dreaming about bringing on somebody to do the same thing for us. When do you think is the right stage to do that? I I think it was ITK when you hired a talent manager.

Bob Bell [00:10:14]:
So we would have been kind of 20 people as a focus. Yep. But it was it was interesting in in talking about this role with the rest of the management team and saying that we weren't able to be as responsive as I would like to be. And frankly, you know, I was the person who was coordinating all of this and I was doing the fit interviews and all that because, again, I don't really to be honest, I don't get very much into people's resumes at all. I'm you know, I expect the team that we have who are much smarter than me, you know, they start to be able to know whether someone just is is, you know, telling the truth about their skill set and what they do and how they approach things. For me, it was all about fit. Right? And I wanna know about the fit. Because with a small company, you know, one bad apple can definitely spoil the bin.

Bob Bell [00:10:51]:
Right? So, we've we've been very fortunate that way. But for for me, one of the things that I said to this particular individual when when we were recruiting is look, because they had a great question saying, well, what does success look like? And I said, well, frankly, you could hire one person in the next eight months or you could hire five people, and both will be a success. Wow. Because it depends on what we need to, you know, what we need to bring into to resource our projects.

Neil Benson [00:11:16]:
Mhmm.

Bob Bell [00:11:17]:
But I wanna build up a town, a town pool of people that we could call on should something drop because as you know in this business things can drop and you're like, ah, we need five people like next week.

Neil Benson [00:11:26]:
Yep. I'm hoping for one of those tomorrow actually.

Bob Bell [00:11:28]:
Exactly. Yeah. But you also have to balance. We've got the recurring expense when we bring someone on board. Right? So what I suggested as far as putting together this person's, you know, kind of, you know, next year what it should look like is that there's that side of it. But then there's also all the other soft things that I'd like this person to take care of. So things like, you know, formalizing our annual performance review process, Putting in repeatable procedures so people know every year that this is the kind of process they're gonna go through. Career path planning for folks, right? It's important for us, again, as I mentioned, they are our asset.

Bob Bell [00:12:02]:
So how do we invest in them? How can people see their career at ITK, expanding and growing? And frankly, I don't know what the endpoint is. It's up to the individual, right? Some people plateau and they're perfectly happy there. And that's great. Other people are very driven and they wanna, you know, go on to the next, the next, the next thing and, you know, help us put that together. Help us put together a, I was part of when I was in grad school a long time ago, I was part of a co op program and it was fantastic for me. I didn't like book learning. I didn't like lectures. I wanted to learn by doing.

Bob Bell [00:12:35]:
So all of a sudden to be to be able to go to, you know, for four months and work at a business and learn how they do things and how it applies and apply all the, you know, the kind of principles I learned into something was super valuable. So one of their things is establish a, an intern program Right. At ITK. And so create relationships with the universities and colleges in the area. Yeah. Yeah. Get a better name known. So there's a lot more than just a talent acquisition, talent, you know, talent part of it.

Bob Bell [00:13:01]:
It's everything that goes around that. Creating a formal employee handbook. You know, again, we had stuff in notes and Yes.

Neil Benson [00:13:08]:
I've got all this.

Bob Bell [00:13:08]:
Various exactly. And it's like, okay. Now make this something that's repeatable and someone can look back at. And so yeah.

Neil Benson [00:13:17]:
So Yeah. We've got a a SharePoint drive with different folders and documents stuffed in it, like a policy here and a procedure over there.

Bob Bell [00:13:20]:
And I'm

Neil Benson [00:13:21]:
not sure anybody's got access to the SharePoint drive or not. It's

Bob Bell [00:13:24]:
it's been one

Neil Benson [00:13:25]:
of my little projects coming up. Trying to find somebody though who's like, that's two different sides of HR. Talent

Bob Bell [00:13:31]:
It is.

Neil Benson [00:13:31]:
Department is is quite different from HR operations. Have you found somebody who's got a a good blend of both skills? That's pretty hard to find, I would have thought.

Bob Bell [00:13:39]:
We were quite fortunate. So again, this is when I was kind of responsible for, you know, for recruiting. So we put out, an ad on Indeed, pretty broad parameters. We talked about all the different things we were looking for. My God, we've had I think I had over 150 applications. It was insane. And some really, really good candidates. But what I was looking for was more again, first among equals, they needed to have some recruiting chops and have done this in the past.

Bob Bell [00:14:03]:
And but they need to have a bent towards HR.

Neil Benson [00:14:07]:
Okay.

Bob Bell [00:14:07]:
So I wasn't interested in someone who was coming from one of the, I'll call them like recruiting factories where, you know, we would get resumes and someone would say, oh, I in the last quarter I hired 176 people. Yeah. Yeah. You know, you may hire one person at ITK. Right? That's not what I'm interested. I wasn't interested in that kind of factory kind of turning through and going through formal process and checking boxes. I wanted someone who would take the time to get to know people, nurture a relationship. Because maybe you're a contractor, got some great skills, but you're busy right now and you're not interested.

Bob Bell [00:14:38]:
We've pre qualified to use. Who knows when you finish that contract, maybe you reach out and say, hey, I'm available. Has anything happened? Right? So I always wanted to be in a position and we weren't. I wanna be in a position where I had a talent pool that we could call on. So that was the first priority. But the other part was really so you need to be able to even if you haven't done it before, I'm less concerned if people have done a bunch of HR, then they are predisposed to HR. Right? Okay. Because that wasn't the primary focus.

Bob Bell [00:15:05]:
I'll make sure we abide by all the legislation and all that kind of stuff. I just want someone who actually thinks it's kind of cool, and wants to do it as well as do recruiting. So I think that was for us the big thing. I just had to have someone who at least, you know, if you said each other, well, that's not what I do. Well, I'm not looking for a pure specialist to recruit because we're not looking at a hundred people a month. Right? So Yeah. That was that's how we approached it.

Neil Benson [00:15:27]:
I experimented maybe six months ago with a contractor. I think I got on Upwork or, like, a VA agency.

Bob Bell [00:15:34]:
Right. Right.

Neil Benson [00:15:35]:
And I said, look. Here's here's a brief. Here's a pool of we've got this little candidate database. There's four or 500 people in it. Most of us we've got six cofounders. We've entered, you know, friends and family in there, people that we know personally on our network. Reach out. Keep them warm.

Neil Benson [00:15:50]:
Let them know that we've got some upcoming projects. Find out what they're interested in. And, it didn't go well. You know, I don't mostly my fault, not briefing her well enough. But But then I I started to get LinkedIn messages saying, hey. Your recruiter told me that you were gonna arrange a phone call and schedule an interview. I'm like, woah. No.

Neil Benson [00:16:08]:
That that wasn't that wasn't that wasn't that

Bob Bell [00:16:10]:
wasn't the mandate. Yes.

Neil Benson [00:16:12]:
No. And so I'm probably upsetting candidates, setting unreasonable expectations out in the market. And, yeah, that that backfired. So I'm a little bit burned by that experience. I probably won't do that again, but I love your idea of, hiring a full time team member. Maybe you need just a part time team member. You know, maybe it's thirty hours a week or twenty five hours a week or something.

Bob Bell [00:16:31]:
Yeah. They need some dedicated focus to you. To be honest, we initially thought, you know, as I was looking at saying, oh, do we maybe we only need, you know, twenty hours a week and that. And the more I thought about it, it was someone that that I had actually mentored in the past and who was to become quite successful. And they actually said to me, you're crazy. Pay the extra money, get someone full time to do this, have them there. They're always thinking, and if they're good, they're always thinking about you, your success, how does this person that they meet or this person that they source, how do they fit with your mold? And then make sure that they, cultivate that talent pool. And because that's what we're looking for.

Bob Bell [00:17:06]:
We have some fantastic long term subcontractors that we've dealt with for, God, well, ITK was incorporated in 2010. So I think going back to 2012, we're still working with some of those people and they're they're tremendous. Some people are better subcontractors than their employees. That's just how they're wired. And I got no problem with that. We've we've got a good mix. Right? But we needed more people in both buckets, more potential subcontractors with some generalist as well as specific skill sets and then more potential employees that we that we could turn to. And that was kind of the remit to the person is, hey, go out and start building this up.

Bob Bell [00:17:40]:
And I think they've done a they've done a very good job and we're now a lot more, somewhat structured how we do it. So like the, for instance, we just instituted literally. We had a big post that just came down for a broad, you know, cross section of, you know, skill sets as opposed to we're looking for a senior solutions architect, right? We went away from that kind of stuff until look, I just wanna know who's out there.

Neil Benson [00:18:00]:
Yep.

Bob Bell [00:18:00]:
Has the skills in the Power Platform, wants to work with a smaller company, like, isn't interested in, like, the big, you know, the big five kind of experience. And let's start talking to people. So there's been a bunch of discovery calls now. There's he scheduled, some technical, actually, we're just we're talking this morning. What should we call these things? Technical coffee chats. And I thought, well, that makes it sound a little light and not too serious. And so anyway, we're trying to figure all that stuff out, but he's gonna preset into people's schedules. So again, when you're a delivery first organization, it's hard to make time.

Neil Benson [00:18:30]:
Yeah.

Bob Bell [00:18:31]:
And if you don't make time for it, guess what? You're not gonna do it. Yeah. And so now we just book in for each of our, you know, senior managers. They've got kind of four hours a week they commit to. You have to commit to four hours where you could meet and talk to people and have a coffee, have a technical discussion to see if they've got the chops or not. And it's, we're only about six weeks into this, but it's starting to pay dividends that we're just seeing now kind of a constant evolution. There's the people new we're seeing new talent each week as opposed to, oh dear lord, we've got a proposal, we won, how do we resource it,

Neil Benson [00:19:03]:
right,

Bob Bell [00:19:04]:
without stressing our people?

Neil Benson [00:19:05]:
We we, we got some feedback from an opportunity we didn't win recently with a public sector agency that, you know, we're a small business. They thought it was a a big project. We didn't think it was that big, but it would've it would've required five or six people to deliver it. And, they thought we just didn't have we wouldn't have the capacity. Right. Yeah. And ironically, they went to kind of a a national Microsoft partner, who has laid off a number of people because they don't have the work right now. So Yes.

Neil Benson [00:19:29]:
They don't have the capacity either. So, yeah, it's just, I I'd love to be able to confidently say, yes. We've always got capacity. And Yes. We can we can include that in our proposals. Look. Here's what we do. Here's our process for ensuring that we always have capacity for more work.

Neil Benson [00:19:45]:
Here's our talent pipeline and, and be able to to sell that as part of our proposition so that clients can be confident that we're always ready to go.

Bob Bell [00:19:53]:
Yeah. It's challenging because, again, I'm a little on the older side, as, as, as you can tell by the hair that I tell my daughters, they gave me this gray hair. So I I earned my gray hair. It's challenging as a smaller firm in some of the things that I think make us feel that we're attractive, that we are agile, which I know was a favorite word of yours. We're agile, we're nimble. We're we're not cutting edge, but we're upfront, with technology. We can move quickly. We can dedicate time and energy or not a little tiny client to us if because it's a big firm.

Bob Bell [00:20:26]:
But by the same token, that's all great. But then the other side is exactly what you were told. Well, we're just not sure you're big enough. We're just not sure you could scale to do this. And it's kinda like from, again, you know, back in, like, the, you know, nineties, the saying would always be no one gets fired for hiring IBM. Well, again, no one's gonna get fired for hiring Accenture or Deloitte or whoever it could be. But, again, as a smaller boutique firm, we bring a whole lot to the table that they won't because I've been part of those organizations. I know people in these organizations.

Bob Bell [00:20:54]:
They're fantastic. They're very successful. But it's different dealing with a smaller firm. Right? But there's risks we have to understand as a buyer. The other side of the table, sure there's risks. It's harder to go with a firm like yours and mine than it would be for for a big firm because they'll say, well, national partners, they'll always be there for you. Well, you know, you can talk to lots of clients who have had different experiences too on that front. So

Neil Benson [00:21:18]:
I remember one customer in their in their RFP asked, you know, what's the escalation path from from delivery team up to the leadership of your organization? Like, fuck. One of our cofounders is in your delivery team. If you've got an issue, talk to them. That's

Bob Bell [00:21:28]:
it. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Tell the number that's on page 17 of the contract. You'll get me.

Neil Benson [00:21:35]:
Yeah. You mentioned you you've got a blend of subcontract resources and employees. Is that a conscious decision that you've made to to keep that blend? Do you have a strong preference to go one way or the other? And what are the advantages to to having subcontractors versus employees?

Bob Bell [00:21:51]:
Yeah. Definitely a conscious choice. I've been doing, like, in professional services since, like, nineteen to ninety, a couple of forays into some other things throughout the career, but, have always been a big believer in employees because I think it's important to build, culture, build, you know, the ITK way, whatever you wanna call it. I think that's very important and it's becoming more important, with now a distributed workforce and remote, you know, ping pongle remote. So always been a big believer in that. But by the same token, the bigger you build up that fixed cost base, the less able you are to surf markets and surf downtimes and that. And I had been through times when I've had to do big layoffs and it's a horrible experience. I take it very personally.

Bob Bell [00:22:36]:
I've always been the one who said, Look, I will make the offers and I will be there if I have if I have to rescind one and take someone out and it's, I don't wanna do it ever again. So, you know, we're very dedicated to our people. I always try to keep that, I'll call it maybe seventythirty, seventythirty, 25 balance. And we've got some long term subcontractors, like I said, who who are fantastic and they do a great job. But at the end of the day, you know, they're not on my balance sheet. Right. There's work to be done and we've managed to keep lots of folks, you know, very busy for a number of years and have had a great relationship. Like, they all come to our retreats, our destination retreats that we do every year.

Bob Bell [00:23:12]:
We include our long term subcontractors because they're essential to what we do. Yeah. But they also have that there's also that, you know, that other side that should something go wrong, I'm still gonna be able to fall back on. And, thankfully, that hasn't happened at ITK. And I don't see that happening, going forward. But yes, conscious choice to provide some flexibility, conscious choice to ensure you can always have people with some maybe some specific skill sets that you really can't use 100% of the time. And again, I feel that once you if you bring someone on as an employee, you have a responsibility to them. And, you know, I take it seriously and I expect folks to be serious on the other side, have some loyalty to the to the company.

Bob Bell [00:23:52]:
But it's important to have that I'll call it kind of that, you know, ability to kind of flex as well. So, I I'm a big fan.

Neil Benson [00:23:59]:
You you said, for example, long term contractors join your annual annual retreats. Other ways in which they do get treated differently, do you do annual reviews with them? If you're paying for training from your team members, do do you also pay for the subcontractor's training, or or does their kind of price premium in the market mean that they should actually invest in their own training that's that's up to them to take care of?

Bob Bell [00:24:17]:
Right.

Neil Benson [00:24:17]:
How do you draw the line?

Bob Bell [00:24:19]:
That's a good point. So, yes, we do include them in things like all of our social events. You know, traditionally, we've we've started about, oh, four years ago, I guess, doing a destination retreat each year where we take folks. We did Whistler.

Neil Benson [00:24:32]:
Oh, I like the sound

Bob Bell [00:24:33]:
of that. Lovely. We did Victoria, which is where I am from, on the island. Then we did Whistler again, and we kind of go up on a Thursday afternoon. We cover the three nights of hotels and accommodation stuff. We have a one day retreat so that we can write it off, where we do strategic planning on the Friday. And then really it's for people who can bring their significant others and have the Saturday, Sunday themselves. So folks are included in that sort of stuff.

Bob Bell [00:24:58]:
There is an expectation that they come to, like, our our monthly all hands meetings that we basically bring everybody together again over, you know, some most most folks attend in person, but if others can't, and we've got a couple of people in Ontario, you know, who who who dial in for those, but, you know, those they attend. But the distinction would be things like, you know, bonuses. We have an egalitarian bonus plan that we put in place that I'm a big fan of. Myself and Doug, who are the two majority owners, don't share on that. It's a fixed percentage of our net proceeds from operations, and it's paid out equally across the board. Doesn't matter whether you're a senior director or whether you're a new person on the ship after you've passed your three month probation. You participate in that. We're rolling out an RRSP plan, a matching plan.

Bob Bell [00:25:44]:
Again, that will only be provided to, you know, to to employees. The training you mentioned, we we predominantly well, we always pay for the, you know, training for employees. For some of our subs depending on the need for a particular delivery, if we've put them in a position where they need the skill in order to do it and they don't have it, I would cover the cost.

Neil Benson [00:26:06]:
Right.

Bob Bell [00:26:07]:
But there's some distinctions like that. So some of the benefits, bonusing, you mentioned annual reviews, we do, APRs with, all of our employees. We don't do them with the subcontractors. So there's less focus on career path planning, that sort of stuff. But, yeah, those are the, I would say, the primary distinctions. But, you know, we've we've kind of blurred the lines on purpose, but and it served us well, to be honest.

Neil Benson [00:26:31]:
That, a lot of people go contracting because they don't enjoy that career planning annual review process, the bureaucracy of, you know, working in a large organization. And they they wanna get out of it, so they they sell themselves in business. And so, yeah, I'm I'm the same. I don't, ask people to go through that. If they if they want feedback, sure. We'll schedule

Bob Bell [00:26:50]:
Oh, sure. We'll definitely do feedback. Yeah.

Neil Benson [00:26:51]:
Walk walk through that. But, none of our contractors have ever asked for that, but the offer is there.

Bob Bell [00:26:56]:
No. Yeah. Yes. Exactly.

Neil Benson [00:26:58]:
Yeah. We're the same. We we have a we grew quite rapidly at the start with a couple of big projects, and we brought on some contractors to ramp up nice and quickly. And now we're beginning to try and hire more employees, more more of the, you know, early career folks because Mhmm. We realize that with a bunch of contractors and a bunch of co founders, our average, you know, ten years like, ten to fifteen years of experience, that makes it an expensive team. And, you know, not every client wants to wants to shell out that kind of investment. So, yeah, we needed to bring on more early career people. And we wouldn't do that with contractors.

Neil Benson [00:27:30]:
We don't wanna hire contractors who got a year a year's of

Bob Bell [00:27:33]:
experience. Right.

Neil Benson [00:27:34]:
I love your idea too of of the internships, and we're looking at some apprenticeship programs and things to give people a taste of what we do. And, hopefully, we can, you know, after they finish their study, they might consider coming and joining us as well.

Bob Bell [00:27:47]:
Right. And that's as you said, that's that's important. One of the one of the reasons why, you know, we always are, you know, looking for some new talent similar to you. You know, we we have a pretty simplistic rate structure, in how we do things and I'm kind of anti anti title, anti hierarchy, just because you get the whole thing. You're a, you know, a project manager one. You're a project manager two. You're a c no. Forget it.

Bob Bell [00:28:09]:
It's just you're everybody's a Power Platform functional consultant or a Power Platform dev. That's that's what you are. And then depending on the role and your experience, and you may be doing some client management on a job. You may be doing some, you know, team leadership on a job. But with the exception of kind of, you know, the kind of directors, it's it's pretty flat. But part of that career progression means you need to continue to bring people in. I hate I don't wanna use the term bottom, but at the entry level to your company because you've got a three tier rate structure. And if everybody, as you said, is at the top tier, you know, top tier rate, you're not very price competitive.

Bob Bell [00:28:43]:
And frankly, people need to do roll up their sleeves and do whether it's testing or some of the other things, some of the, you know, data migration stuff that maybe isn't that sexy, but it needs to be done. It's a great learning platform. So yeah, I think that you need to continually allow people to grow and but you have to build up the bottom of the funnel or the or the entry level to your funnel so that you can continue to kind of grow talent. And that's why I wanted to look at the whole internship idea because I thought it was fantastic for me many moons ago, and I'm assuming it's the same type of experience, and if I can get someone excited to join ITK as opposed to going down the big five route

Neil Benson [00:29:19]:
Yeah.

Bob Bell [00:29:20]:
That would be great. Right? Yeah. And grow with them.

Neil Benson [00:29:23]:
I was reading the the employee handbook from thirty seven signals, the folks who developed Basecamp and and those kind of applications. They've made their employee handbook public. You can go on and read it.

Bob Bell [00:29:33]:
That's kinda cool. And I

Neil Benson [00:29:34]:
was fascinated to learn. They have, like, five levels in their delivery team. It's like a junior, mid level, senior, lead, and principal. And it's roughly you're expected to to serve about two years and then, and then achieve the next level. And there's kind of milestones you need to be able to prove that you've reached in order to get promoted. But they said everybody at the same level has the same compensation. In fact, they've taken it a step further because they're a completely distributed workforce. They pay you at the same rate regardless of your location, and they try and pay you the top 10% of the San Francisco rates for that role.

Bob Bell [00:30:10]:
Mhmm.

Neil Benson [00:30:11]:
Wow. Okay. Yeah. So I could leave in Kenya or Nepal or, you know, and you'd earn a top 10% San Francisco compensation package. That that would sound pretty good. How do you think about compensation in terms of having a very flat structure? Do you then have people with on different compensation packages even though they're they're the same or different levels?

Bob Bell [00:30:30]:
So the answer I guess is yes. We try to be in kind of the seventy fifth percentile. Again, we're a boutique firm. We're not gonna be paying New York rates or anything like that. We try to be in the seventy fifth percentile from an overall compensation perspective, you know, within the Western Canada, BC marketplace. That's kind of where we, where we aim to be. Again, because I'm not a fan of like, I don't even like using the term senior, because when does that happen? Does that happen after eighteen months? Does that happen after three years? Does it happen? And I'm a senior, you're a junior. Like, no.

Bob Bell [00:31:00]:
You're, it depends on people's path and what they do. So it really to us kind of boils down to there's a range based on skill sets, right? What what what people are good at. You know, client being able to manage a client, has a certain value to it on top of the base skill set. Being able to, you know, lead a project. Being able to lead a project of two people versus being able to lead a project of five people. Those again are on top of being able to put your hands on the keyboard and do the work. So Yeah. There is some variability within within those levels, but we do not follow.

Bob Bell [00:31:35]:
And again, it's because I just I don't believe in it. We do not follow a kind of, union structure kind of after this many months, you go to this level and after this, you go to this level. Because I think some people want to do that in their careers and want to keep moving forward and forward and forward. And other people are very successful and very capable and they reach a level like, you know what, I like doing this and that is brilliant. That's totally okay. There's a place for those folks in our organization, likely in yours as well. And that they shouldn't be, they shouldn't be penalized for that. Right? So when it comes to, so that's at that kind of, we'll call it the annual salary level.

Bob Bell [00:32:13]:
The other things are very egalitarian. So, you know, our, our vacation allotment, the benefits package people get, the bonuses that they're all the same. It doesn't matter whether you're senior director or, or you're getting coming. I may be a little different for, junior people with respect to their vacation coming on board. Sometimes it's only two weeks or three weeks based on just coming out of school versus, you know, we're a little different than in Europe. I mean, we kinda top out at four weeks vacation in North America. That's kind of that's a lot. But I realize in Europe, like, I get seven weeks.

Bob Bell [00:32:44]:
And someone says, like, seven weeks? Good lord. But that's more of a North American thing than anything else.

Neil Benson [00:32:49]:
Yeah. Well, that's funny. You know, funny. Somebody coming out of school might have had twenty weeks vacation, from school. You know, they're coming in, starting working at three. Oh. Exactly. That's a hard landing.

Neil Benson [00:32:59]:
Well, Bob, it's been it's been a pleasure to talk to you. You gave me some, really good food for thought there around, bringing on our first kind of HR talent management role, how we think about bringing people in, promoting them, and and the use of subcontractors. That's been fascinating discussion. Thanks so much for joining us.

Bob Bell [00:33:15]:
Absolutely. I appreciate the time, and thanks for the invite.

Neil Benson [00:33:17]:
Bob, thanks for joining me on Perkulous Leading. I really appreciate it. I share a similar burden to you for getting all the administrative stuff done at Superware so that our delivery team can get on with the most important job of building amazing apps for our customers. As I record this, I've just reviewed a mammoth set of contract documents from a multimillion dollar project. I'm talking to insurance brokers about our next insurance renewal that's due next month, and have upgraded our Microsoft partner benefits plan so the team can access Dynamics three sixty five contact center licenses, you know, all that fun stuff. You give me a couple of, takeaways to think about. In particular, hiring a talent manager. We've just made offers to three new principal consultants and engaged a recruiter to help us find six or seven more team members over the next few months.

Neil Benson [00:34:07]:
Pretty soon, I think we can justify a part time talent manager to help us establish better recruitment, onboarding, and management processes and ensure we follow them, and then help us with our next rounds of recruitment when we next need to expand. I love your advice in that area. Thanks for that, Bob. Balancing contractors and employees. I share a lot of your views on the value of bringing in contractors with specific skills and investing in the careers of employees in their training and bonuses over and above the benefits provided to contractors. Superway needs to continue to find ways to make our business a great place for employees to build a long term career, while at the same time engaging contractors when we need to and recognizing the differences between them and the differences in how they like to be compensated and engaged. Thanks so much, Bob, for joining me. There's a link to Bob's LinkedIn profile in the episode description.

Neil Benson [00:35:00]:
I'll see you next time. I hope you enjoyed this Practicality episode and found it just as inspiring as I did. If you did, please consider sharing it with an up and coming leader in your network. They'll appreciate the recommendation and word-of-mouth referrals are the best way we can grow the show. This helps us attract more amazing guest leaders and experts so that we can share their leadership lessons with you and we can all grow together. Until next time, keep experimenting.