The Secret to Staff Retention

After years managing businesses for others who didn't value employees, Diane Kelly started LL Solutions with a simple plan. To test if a company built entirely on kindness could work. Six months later she was inundated. Five years later, she had over 40 staff. Her crew came mainly from self-employed backgrounds, who valued security without micromanagement, Diane’s exceptionally high retention rate and zero cold-calling. Today, as Ireland's only fully female-led property maintenance company of this scale Diane shares her story.THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUT Nobody here is a number: knowing staff stories enables understanding bad daysNon-credit company paying as you go eliminates surprise bills devastating cash flowSeventy percent crew came from self-employed backgrounds valuing security without micromanagementRecruitment changed: no interviews, just coffee conversations, mostly recommendations from current staffHome to Hope documentary fixing five severely sad homes before Christmas nationwide GUEST DETAILS Diane Kelly is co-founder of LL Solutions, Ireland's only fully female-led property maintenance and refurbishment company operating at their scale. Diane leads with fairness and hands-on involvement, giving full trust from day one.https://www.linkedin.com/in/diane-kelly-0bb56921ABOUT KINOREKinore is an award winning and innovative online Chartered Accountancy service that takes away the worry and headache of running your own finance and related business services functions. Kinore’s services include: Accountancy ServicesAnnual Compliance & Year-EndOnline Bookkeeping ServicesVAT ReturnsPayroll ServicesManagement AccountingXero Conversion & TrainingCompany Secretarial ServicesCompany Formation IrelandCompany SecretarialVirtual OfficeBond for Non-EEA resident DirectorsRegistration Of Beneficial Ownership https://kinore.com/Our podcast is produced by dustpod.io  ABOUT YOUR HOST The host of this podcast is Larissa Feeney, CEO and Founder of Kinore, an award-winning online accountancy and business services firm based in Ireland. Lasissa’s journey is notable, starting in hospitality before transitioning to accounting, where she qualified as a Chartered Accountant. Driven by a vision to challenge traditional accountancy and leverage technology, Larissa founded Kinore in 2015, establishing Ireland's first online, remote-first Finance and Business Services company. |Under her leadership, Kinore has received numerous accolades, and Larissa herself has been recognised with awards like 'Accountant of the Year'. QUOTES We try to hold value in every person that we deal with every day. From a staff perspective, for us, kindness is knowing all of their stories so that when one of them has a bad day, we may understand why. Nobody here is a number. - Diane KellyAbout 70% of our crew have all come from self employed backgrounds. We offer them security. We pay them well. We treat them like grown adults. We don't ring them every five minutes asking where they are or why they pulled in for 10 minutes. We let them do their jobs, and it's working brilliantly. - Diane KellyAt the end of every single health and safety meeting, I stand up and I always say: don't confuse our kindness for stupidity, or don't confuse it for weakness. - Diane KellySigning up with yourselves was taking maybe 30% of the budget that we had, which was still great value—our budget was just really low. But for me, it was non negotiable. - Diane KellyKeywords: #kindnessInBusiness #nonCreditCompany #HomeToHope #propertyMaintenance #femaleLeadership