I run a small company in the medical field, so I'm owner but also manager. I could work alone with no admin support and make good money but I want to be with a team so I've hired people and staff to support them. And I can't get anyone to actually work a sustainable amount of hours. I'm not talking about 30 or even 40. I'm talking about 10 a week. We pay the highest in the area ($78-90 an hour usually, based on insurance, we don't set it). We provide free training in what they want. We advertise and schedule for them. We've given people a break with covid and even given them stipends or advances to help. They don't have mandatory schedules, they can take off what days they want. I just ask that they bill enough to cover expenses, and I give them months to get there.
But we get to a certain point and I'm like, hey we've invested all this and I need you to get up to this number of clients….and they quit. Full time in our field is 20-30 client hours, I'm not asking for even half that. We're so severely in the hole at this point, I don't even know what to do. I read a lot of the antiwork stuff and agree, I've been there, but we've tried to do all we can and it feels like we just keep getting taken advantage of. It's gotten so bad that I have to pay the next set of hires, if we can get them, less because I physically can't see anymore clients myself to pay the admin and we can't invest anymore without some return. But I'm worried changing the compensation package will keep us from being able to hire.
I'm posting here because I can commiserate with small business owners elsewhere but that doesn't help me figure out what to do. Are we just hiring the wrong people? Is there something we can do?