The Microbrewery Handbook

Chapter 19Employee Engagement Q&A: Quint Studer

D.C. Reeves:     If someone reads about you in this book and the work you've done with major hospital systems, they may make the case that, “Hey, I have five or six employees, why does this matter to me?”

Why should a small company follow some of the structure behind your beliefs about employee engagement – 30‐ and 90‐day conversations, transparency, onboarding, and a three‐step hiring process?

Quint Studer:    Actually, the smaller you are, the more vital it is. For example, one of the things I used to say is “If you have five employees and you have one problem employee, 20% of your employees are problem employees.” So, they will actually impact you more than if you had five problem employees out of 1,000 employees. So the smaller you are, the more important it is to do these things.

When I started my own small company, Studer Group, we had eight employees. Even at that time, I hired an outside company to come in and do an employee engagement survey with just those eight. The survey company said they had never done one this small, and I said “Well, I want to do it right now because I don't know if we'll get bigger if we don't do it right.”

One of the biggest things I see with small businesses is they think, “I'll do it when I get bigger.” The problem is, you might not get bigger if you don't do it, because early on you are laying the foundation. Because your third employee is going to learn from your first employee, your eighth ...