Tips to Successfully Onboard Employees and Retain a Strong Team
When Lori asked the Flower Clique Facebook group what everyone was working on this summer, the answers sounded awfully familiar: how do I find employees, and how do I keep them? So this week Vonda and Lori bring back one of their most useful conversations — a rewind of episode 134 on fixing your onboarding — because a year later, they wouldn't change a thing. But first, Lori shares a nugget from a book she just finished that ties beautifully into last week's respect episode.
First, a word on dignity versus respect
Lori just finished Spark the Heart: Engineering Empathy in Your Organization, the newest book from friend-of-the-podcast Nicole Price — complete with a two-hour Zoom book club with the author. Nicole, a chemical engineer who wasn't born with empathy and spent eight years learning it, makes the case that anyone can. The distinction that stopped Lori cold: dignity comes from the Latin for "to be worthy" — every person has it, it's given, and no one can take it away. Respect comes from the Latin for "to look back at" — admiration earned through abilities, qualities, and achievements. You may not respect someone's position in the moment, but you always owe them dignity. Keep that in mind as you hire.
Three assumptions to make about onboarding
The replay is built on an article by Ted Bauer, and it starts by pushing back on "people just don't want to work." Sometimes the truth is harder: they just don't want to work at your place. Three assumptions to build from:
- Your only truly sustainable competitive advantage is your culture. You can't out-pay everyone — as one shop owner admitted, their staff could make the same money or more at Taco Bell. And your beautiful product is exactly that: your product. Aside from an ambitious designer drawn to a reputable shop, people don't join you for pretty flowers. They join — and stay — for how it feels to work there.
- Poor culture fit is the number-one reason a new hire fails. Build fit questions into your hiring so you stop wasting training time on mismatches.
- Effective onboarding is how you reduce bad-hire risk — and how you assimilate people into that culture. This requires ownership: if people keep leaving, some of it is you, or a clique of employees who won't let newcomers in.
Slow down and set weekly markers
The classic flower shop onboarding is a firehose: clock in, vacuum, process flowers, answer phones, here's your stack of orders, watch tomorrow's queue too. By the end of the speech the new hire is already exhausted. Instead, break them in slowly. Set two or three easily attainable goals for the first week — a trick Lori picked up from the owner of Freytag's in Austin — and check in on them, ideally privately, every couple of days. Assign a mentor for the day-to-day, but don't disappear: nothing says "I don't value you" like a manager who's "so busy" on day two. As the article puts it, imagine turning down job B for this and having your manager barely pay attention to you.
Rotate them, teach the money, and invest in their growth
Put new hires in every pocket of the business early — processing, deliveries, the phone — and ask honestly: did you like it? You may discover the salesperson you hired secretly loves processing flowers, or that your chatty would-be designer belongs out front with customers. Something might spark, and an employee who finds their spark doesn't want to leave.
Two more essentials. First, teach them how the company makes money — especially someone coming from order-taking jobs. Offering the higher price point isn't pushy; it's how the shop profits and how customers end up more satisfied. Second, make continuing education part of the culture, from free YouTube tutorials to real investments — Lori's talked with several owners sending employees to SAF's Next Gen summit, and as she says, if a boss valued a part-timer enough to send them, that employee would never want to leave. (One honest note on the hosts' own Sales Prep School: don't park a new hire in front of the computer on day one and call them trained. Pace it.)
Show them, then let them practice twenty times
Lori's favorite lesson comes from Julie Poulter, who taught her bow-tying: in her shop, you'd spend the rest of the day making bows and pinning them to a corkboard, because that's how confidence is built. Show the example, then let them repeat it until it's theirs — bows, processing, phone scripts, role-played dialogues. And define the relationship out loud: who they are, why they're valuable ("you've got a great voice — you're going to be great on our phones"), who mentors them, how long they'll be in each role, and when you'll check in. If day two of processing flowers reveals they'll shine better elsewhere, transition gracefully — just watch the signs.
The bottom line, if you take just one thing: slow it down. Shop owners are superhuman multitaskers who can turn around a forgotten casket spray in thirty minutes — but a new employee watching that pace can quietly conclude "I can't do this." And they won't come tell you. They'll just stop showing up.
Key takeaways
- Culture is your only sustainable competitive advantage — you can't win on wages or pretty product alone.
- Give new hires two or three attainable first-week goals, a mentor, and scheduled check-ins.
- Never lead with "I'm so busy" — perception is everything in week one.
- Rotate new hires through the whole shop and ask what they honestly enjoyed; sparks create stayers.
- Teach how the shop makes money, invest in ongoing education, and let people practice skills until they're confident.