Talent Report+THRIVE

Talent Report: Build Your Talent Supply Chain

Description: Jim Morgan, Vice President of Workforce Strategies covers the February edition of MRA’s Talent Report. If you aren’t familiar with the monthly Talent Report, Jim Morgan gives an up-to-the-minute review of what is going on in the world of business with an emphasis on talent, which is based on input from CEOs, CFOs, and HR leaders from MRA’s 3,000+ member companies, 1,000 roundtable participants, and subject matter experts!
Key Takeaways:
To attract talent, more companies are investing in producing and publicizing videos on their websites to have in their career section
As employers develop new and emerging leaders, they are focusing on emotional intelligence, the ability to set clear expectations, assigning responsibility, supervisory skills, and the ability to execute effective performance reviews.
HR Departments are using more metrics to demonstrate the time, effort and cost that go into hiring a new employee. 
Resources:
Talent Report + Webinar Series  
Talent Report + February 2023 
MRA Membership 
About MRA 
Let's Connect:
Guest Bio - Jim Morgan 
Guest LinkedIn Profile - Jim Morgan 
Host Bio - Sophie Boler 
Host LinkedIn Profile - Sophie Boler 

Hot on the Hotline: FMLA

Description: FMLA is a hot topic for every organization. Amy Weyker, MRA HR Advisor, is here as your FMLA expert to make sure you know the regulations, proper notification, and frequently asked questions related to Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA).
Key Takeaways:
Federal FMLA provides certain employees with up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave per year.
FMLA applies to all public agencies, all public and private elementary and secondary schools, and companies with 50 or more employees.
Employees are eligible for leave if they have worked for their employer at least 12 months, at least 1,250 hours over the past 12 months, and work at a location where the company employs 50 or more employees within 75 miles.
Resources:
MRA's 24/7 HR Hotline 
FMLA Toolkit 
FMLA Made Simple - Training 
Supervisor and the Law - Training 
Let's Connect:
Guest Bio - Amy Weyker 
Guest LinkedIn Bio - Amy Weyker 
Host Bio - Sophie Boler 
Host LinkedIn Profile - Sophie Boler 

Romance in the Workplace: Should You Fall in Love at Work?

Description: Because we spend so much time at work, it is not surprising that we meet romantic partners, and sometimes future spouses, at the office. MRA's Maureen Siwula, HR Advisor, is here to clear up your curiousity and be transparent on everything romantic in the workplace. 
Key Takeaways:
In the top 5 places where you meet your significant other: Work! 
Every organization, no matter what their purpose is, should have a conflict of interest or business ethics or a relationship policy with guidelines.
Tip for employers: Teach, mentor, guide by example, and have solid, clear policies and education for your employees. Don’t make assumptions that they know and understand. 
Tip for employees: Keep yourself very professional, and keep yourself engaged in the work. And if you do meet somebody, do it the right way according to the policies and procedures
Resources:
Romance in the Workplace Guide
Workplace Harassment Toolkit
Preventing Workplace Violence Toolkit
MRA's 24/7 HR Hotline 
 
Let's Connect:
Guest Bio - Maureen Siwula 
Guest LinkedIn Profile - Maureen Siwula 
Host Bio - Sophie Boler 
Host LinkedIn Profile - Sophie Boler 
 
Transcript:
Transcripts are computer generated -- not 100% accurate word-for-word.
00:00:00:02 - 00:00:23:03
Intro
Hello hello, everybody, and welcome to 30 minute THRIVE, your go-to podcast for anything and everything HR, powered by MRA - The Management Association. Looking to stay on top of the ever-changing world of HR? MRA has got you covered. We’ll be the first to tell you what’s hot and what’s not. I’m your host, Sophie Boler, and we are so glad you’re here. Now it’s time to THRIVE.
 
00:00:23:14 - 00:00:43:18
Sophie Boler
Hello everybody. Thanks for taking the time to spend part of your day with us here today. I’m excited to introduce our guests and our topic for today. And it’s February, the month of love, so you know what that means. We’re going to be talking about romance in the workplace with Maureen’s Siwula. She’s our HR
 
00:00:43:19 - 00:01:10:20
Sophie Boler
advisor here at MRA. But part of her role is working on our 27/7 HR Hotline. So Maureen has over 40 years of HR experience and has worked in both nonprofit and profit positions in health care, education, service, philanthropy, and manufacturing. So she comes with a ton of HR knowledge and hopefully some workplace romance knowledge too. So I’m excited to talk to you today, Maureen.
 
00:01:10:20 - 00:01:22:01
Sophie Boler
We can dive into the first question.
 
Maureen Siwula
Sure, Sophie.
 
Sophie Boler
So I’ve heard that work is quite a popular place to find your significant other. Is this true? I’m curious what you’re hearing.
 
00:01:22:14 - 00:01:44:07
Maureen Siwula
That’s not only what I hear and see in the workplace, Sophie, but it’s also researched. If you institute a study of ways people meet each other, the most popular ways that people see their partners, and in the top five is the workplace. So it’s something that’s kept me pretty busy in my career is dealing with workplace relationships.
 
00:01:44:08 - 00:01:52:23
Sophie Boler
Absolutely. So I guess I’m curious to know what are some of the challenges of a romantic relationship in the workplace?
 
00:01:53:09 - 00:02:15:08
Maureen Siwula
The challenges are many. The romance is not the challenge because who doesn’t love a romance story, right? As long as everything works out well. It’s when things go awry, when things get troublesome, when people don’t follow policies or rules, or you hear it through the grapevine or rumor mill, or you see something that’s inappropriate—that’s where things get very challenging.
 
00:02:15:18 - 00:02:22:12
Maureen Siwula
And employers and coworkers can become rather involved in situations that they really don’t need to be involved in.
 
00:02:23:01 - 00:02:34:18
Sophie Boler
Just going off of what you just said there, should every business have a policy on workplace romance, or can you really not make any strict rules and relationships?
 
00:02:35:00 - 00:03:04:20
Maureen Siwula
Based on the kind of company you are, you can have strict or less strict rules, but I do think every business, every organization, no matter what your purpose is, should have a conflict of interest or a business ethics or a relationship policy with guidelines. You don’t have to be as strict as absolutely no dating whatsoever because that might be just really very limiting for people and you might lose people because of that, but you should have parameters around the how to’s and the why to’s
 
00:03:05:05 - 00:03:23:09
Maureen Siwula
so there isn’t a perception of a conflict. You can understand in the supervisor/employee relationship, if somebody has more power over you in a role and it begins to become a relationship that might look like favoritism or it might be perceived as harassment. So this is where it gets challenging.
 
00:03:23:22 - 00:03:34:15
Sophie Boler
Absolutely. And just talking about your personal experience, have you ever had to deal with a workplace romance as a manager in your career or heard any calls on the hotline?
 
00:03:35:01 - 00:03:55:21
Maureen Siwula
Well, absolutely. Why do we call it the “hotline”? Because we get a lot of information that is from employers that they’re dealing with that very challenging. Absolutely. In my 40 years, I’ve seen everything from things go into sexual harassment, discrimination and seeing people happily ever after marry in the workplace. And we like that last story.
 
Sophie Boler
Oh, absolutely.
 
00:03:55:21 - 00:04:30:17
Maureen Siwula
But when employers call us, or when I’ve been a leader in an organization or challenged, it generally is because somebody is not telling the truth, not being transparent, not following the policy. Example would be—and this really did happen—is the coworkers of an employee started a rumor rising that, I’ll call her “Sally,” was dating “Bob,” and they saw them in the tavern after work and then they saw them at work in the car and people were talking and gossiping.
 
00:04:31:04 - 00:04:56:08
Maureen Siwula
And there was a policy about conflicts of interests. And Bob was Sally’s supervisor, so there definitely was a conflict. Then all of a sudden, Sally’s getting the preferred shifts and she’s getting the preferred projects. So what would have been best in that situation is for Bob or Sally to work within management or the human resource department, follow the policy which says you need to disclose any conflicts of interest.
 
00:04:56:21 - 00:05:07:04
Maureen Siwula
And what should have happened in that case is that if they truly wanted to have this relationship that was healthy and good, Sally would have been transferred to a different department.
 
00:05:07:12 - 00:05:20:18
Sophie Boler
For sure. And kind of going along with that, let’s say you do have two employees who just began a romantic relationship at work. What are their next steps, or do they go right to HR and tell them? Do they tell their teams about it? What’s your advice?
 
00:05:21:06 - 00:05:45:07
Maureen Siwula
Well, my advice is one thing. The practicality of what’s really happens sometimes is another. But the best thing to do always is think with intention about this relationship before you engage in it, if you can. You have a job first. You took this job first; meeting somebody at work came second. What’s the most important thing is for you to continue your job in a healthy way.
 
00:05:45:14 - 00:06:10:19
Maureen Siwula
So understand the policies, understand the rules, and be in this relationship in an honest way to say we can’t go any further with this because the policy says that we have to disclose this to HR. So we need to do that. I can do it alone. You can do it alone. But that’s, really need to do that if we’re going to be visible with our relationship, and then see what advice is given to you.
 
00:06:11:05 - 00:06:42:12
Maureen Siwula
If it’s a consensual, healthy relationship, it doesn’t conflict with anything in the business ethics, you’re you’re good to go ahead. But if there is a conflict, that power struggle once again, harassment or discrimination, or let’s say you meet a vendor that comes in and replaces cartridges in the printer or something and you, this is another person. Well, that’s also a conflict because the business has a relationship with that vendor for money and you don’t want to perceive as being involved in that situation.
 
00:06:42:20 - 00:06:48:02
Maureen Siwula
So it’s not just your coworker that this stuff can happen, but it can be people who enter into the business.
 
00:06:48:10 - 00:06:53:21
Sophie Boler
So would you recommend that couple telling their team?
 
00:06:54:20 - 00:07:21:10
Maureen Siwula
No. I have, recommend they tell HR or their manager first. Keep it at a high level and I would keep it relatively professional and private until you do get some advisement. Now, if your company doesn’t have a policy, let’s say you’re pretty small, right? Think about the consequences. Make a policy for yourself. Do you want to be seen as a professional individual contributing to work, or do you want to be seen as that person who dates at work?
 
00:07:21:10 - 00:07:35:19
Maureen Siwula
You want to be seen as a professional. And so even in the absence of policy, check yourself. You know, be sure that you want this relationship, but you also want to keep your job and be very healthy and professional about it.
 
00:07:36:10 - 00:07:53:01
Sophie Boler
Absolutely. So some research that I’ve seen have shown that office romances are actually frowned upon. So what really should HR be cautious of when one partner’s in a higher position at the company, kind of like you mentioned—Sally and Bob.
 
00:07:53:01 - 00:08:20:06
Maureen Siwula
Right. Right. Yeah, some companies do frown upon it and maybe even have a zero-fraternization policy that says there’s no dating in the workplace here. And that could be in a situation that is a very confidential product line or something. And employers have the right to make strict policies if it makes sense. You know, you want to be sensible about these things. But most of them have parameters and not the strict policy.
 
00:08:20:06 - 00:08:31:21
Maureen Siwula
There are some companies that absolutely, they’re too small and they just can’t tolerate what comes as a result of the drama of the workplace relationship. But the parameters are a better way to go.
 
00:08:32:13 - 00:08:40:08
Sophie Boler
And are there concerns on work performance when two people are in a relationship at work?
 
00:08:40:09 - 00:09:04:04
Maureen Siwula
Absolutely. If you get too distracted and you’re not contributing and not being that professional contributing individual, maybe you’re starting to show some public display of affection. Maybe, you know, there’s more times than not. And that’s a disciplinary measure whether it’s a good relationship or a bad relationship. If you’re spending too much time on break with one person, you need to be coached and counseled and redirected.
 
00:09:04:13 - 00:09:10:01
Maureen Siwula
But check yourself—what are you doing to make yourself look good for your employer?
 
00:09:10:01 - 00:09:17:00
Sophie Boler
So how things really change in the workplace when it comes to workplace romance? How has it all evolved?
 
00:09:18:08 - 00:09:51:17
Maureen Siwula
It has evolved immensely, like many things in the workplace have, you know. Sophie, when I started working, I didn’t really even have a computer, so and now I have, you know, many of them. So evolution in the workplace is everywhere, particularly on relationships and professionalism. The laws that have evolved around sexual harassment and the education we have had since the #MeToo movement and other things, discrimination makes us much more cautious and careful about how it is that we treat our workplace and our employees.
 
00:09:52:03 - 00:10:16:01
Maureen Siwula
So it starts with an employer. When you hire someone, you need to teach them the rules of the road and you need to set examples. So years and years ago there weren’t a lot of policies and procedures in place. And I don’t love the policy up for sake of policy, but we all need rules, don’t we? We all need some parameters and education, and it starts with the education at orientation.
 
00:10:16:01 - 00:10:37:11
Maureen Siwula
What kind of workplace culture are we? Okay, so I have read—I think it’s true—that at Google and Facebook they have a rule about dating. If you ask a person out once and they say, no, you can’t ask them again. So that’s very strict, right? But that’s what their rule is. Others just put it in the conflict of interest.
 
00:10:37:11 - 00:11:13:04
Maureen Siwula
Relationships need to be free of conflict, and then give some examples such as dating a supervisor, having illicit, not illegal but illicit affair, you know, having a unhealthy relationship. So the policies have evolved to support an employer, to teach their employees and hold them accountable to good behavior. So it’s through policy development, education, and accountability. So employers need not to be afraid or scared to call somebody into the office to coach them if things are not looking good or feeling good.
 
00:11:13:22 - 00:11:24:15
Maureen Siwula
I don’t know about you, Sophie, but if somebody was rumorizing about me that I was dating somebody at work and I truly was not, I would like to know that people are talking about that.
 
00:11:24:18 - 00:11:25:01
Sophie Boler
I would too.
 
00:11:25:01 - 00:11:39:13
Maureen Siwula
Yep. Exactly. And so when we say things that are not true, it hurts people very much so. And so see something, say something is what kind of our culture has become in the workplace, as well as in life.
 
00:11:39:22 - 00:11:50:07
Sophie Boler
So going along with that, you would recommend that an employer should be completely transparent on their workplace relationship policies right at the start?
 
00:11:50:13 - 00:12:10:12
Maureen Siwula
Right at the start. Just like when you get the handbook, and it says something like, you know, you can’t sleep on the job or you can’t steal from your employer, you can’t have an unprofessional, conflicted relationship within the workplace. Makes sense to me. I came here for a job, I didn’t come here for a spouse or partner, but that could be a bonus.
 
00:12:10:17 - 00:12:13:16
Maureen Siwula
Absolutely. If I’m doing it according to the rules.
 
00:12:14:08 - 00:12:21:22
Sophie Boler
So should that. should the couple have a plan in case it doesn’t work out? Or what happens when it doesn’t work out?
 
00:12:22:10 - 00:12:42:05
Maureen Siwula
Well, usually they don’t have a plan if it doesn’t work out. People want their relationships to work. But again, check yourself, be professional. What is going to happen if we don’t tell somebody? What is going to happen if all of a sudden we’re fighting at work and before we were dating? Plan B is always, always good to have, right?
 
00:12:42:13 - 00:13:02:11
Maureen Siwula
Plan A is it all works out, but Plan B, it all works out and we still can work together and be decent to each other. So yes, having a backup plan is the same as when your computer crashes. You want to have a backup for that as well. So if this romance crashes, we can survive it, right? Because we’re professional contributing employees.
 
00:13:02:21 - 00:13:33:18
Maureen Siwula
We can get through this. However, sometimes intervention needs to occur, and I’ve had interesting calls on the hotline once again about when a relationship goes bad. Example: factory, two coworkers that relationship not power driven, perfectly somewhat healthy right and they’re dating and it’s going along fine, it’s not bothering anybody at work. Well, Monday they come into work and apparently they had a terrible weekend.
 
00:13:34:02 - 00:13:49:15
Maureen Siwula
They got into a disagreement over the weekend and it continued in the workplace on Monday morning. They punched in next to each other. And before you know it, I’m getting a phone call on the hotline because he took his lunch box and hit her up inside the head. So that’s when it could get really bad.
 
00:13:50:06 - 00:14:08:11
Sophie Boler
Yeah, well, you mentioned healthy relationships at workplace, and that didn’t seem too healthy.
 
Maureen Siwula
It wasn’t.
 
Sophie Boler
What about when it’s not a healthy relationship, and when there may be affairs in the workplace that are seen or talked about—do you have anything to comment on that?
 
00:14:08:17 - 00:14:54:18
Maureen Siwula
Yes, unfortunately, those are really difficult, sensitive issues. And sometimes it starts with a shoulder to lean on with a coworker or your assistant. And maybe you’re talking about your marital difficulties and all of a sudden you’re in a relationship with this person. Those are not good situations for anyone. And so, once again, if it’s being brought forward not by you or the other employee, we’re going to get into the rumor mill and we’re going to have unnecessary drama, and so in that situation, it’s the manager’s job and the leader’s job to talk to those people about this cannot happen in the workplace.
 
00:14:55:06 - 00:15:18:00
Maureen Siwula
And many times I would refer the employee assistance program, which is a benefit that most employers have. If they don’t I strongly encourage it because they can seek counsel or help for the situation. The person who is having marital difficulties should be seeking a doctor’s advice or a therapist’s advice, not your coworker. It’s just not the right place or time for those things.
 
00:15:18:07 - 00:15:30:10
Maureen Siwula
So lots of coaching. Compassion is really important in those situations, but firmness too. I mean, if people don’t want to listen to you and don’t want to stop, the next action is discipline and maybe even separation.
 
00:15:30:13 - 00:15:33:12
Sophie Boler
Yeah, it’s a tough topic, but it’s real.
 
00:15:33:12 - 00:15:34:01
Maureen Siwula
Very real.
 
00:15:34:02 - 00:15:43:12
Sophie Boler
Yeah. So as we do wrap up today, do you have any last thoughts or pieces of advice you can share with our listeners?
 
00:15:43:12 - 00:16:07:20
Maureen Siwula
Advice number one for the employees: Keep yourself very professional, keep yourself engaged in the work. And if you do meet somebody, do it the right way according to the policies and procedures. Don’t cause drama for yourself or for your employer. It’s not necessary. You can have romance in the workplace, but not always and not under all conditions.
 
00:16:08:18 - 00:16:35:13
Maureen Siwula
And then for employers: Teach, mentor, guide by example, have solid, clear policies and education for your employees. Don’t make assumptions that they know and understand. Don’t make the assumption that every employee walks into your organization knowing your rules because your rules, look at Google. I would never think I’d have a rule like that in my workplace, but I understand and respect why they do that.
 
00:16:36:05 - 00:17:00:18
Maureen Siwula
I wouldn’t walk in there assuming that that’s what the rule is. We have to know and understand what our employers expect of us. And always deal with people, you know, in a compassionate, understanding way and fair and reasonable. I think the days of top-down punitive management don’t work, understanding people where they’re at and getting them to a place that they need to be.
 
00:17:01:06 - 00:17:11:23
Sophie Boler
Those are all great points. So I thank you for being on 30 minute THRIVE today and really sharing your knowledge, expertise, advice on romance in the workplace. Fun topic.
 
00:17:12:00 - 00:17:15:01
Maureen Siwula
It was! Thank you, Sophie, I enjoyed it.
 
00:17:15:10 - 00:17:38:05
Sophie Boler
But if you liked our chat or topic today, I encourage you to leave a comment or review. Share this episode and consider joining MRA if you aren’t a member already. We have all of the resources available in the show notes below for you, including Maureen’s email and LinkedIn profile. So if you’d like to chat with her today or connect with her, those are also available to you in the show notes.
 
00:17:38:16 - 00:17:42:21
Sophie Boler
Otherwise, thank you so much for tuning in today and we will see you next week.
 
00:17:43:12 - 00:17:44:02
Maureen Siwula
Thank you.
 
00:17:44:10 - 00:18:06:15
Outro
And that wraps up our content for this episode. Be sure to reference the show notes, where you can sign up to connect for more podcast updates. Check out other MRA episodes on your favorite podcast platform. And as always, make sure to follow MRA’s 30 minute THRIVE so you don’t miss out. Thanks for tuning in and we’ll see you next Wednesday to carry on the HR conversation.’’’

Biggest Benefits of HR Business Partners

Description: As an HR professional, you have a lot of roles and responsibilities. You also have many daily activities that take valuable time away from focusing on the larger and more impactful strategic planning and HR work. Jillian Jordan, MRA HR Business Partner, is here to tell you the biggest benefits of HRBPs to your company.
Key Takeaways:
HRBPs, as it says in the title, really are designed to be a partner with the member organization
Some of the areas MRA’s HRBPs specialize in: Payroll, benefits, compliance, record keeping, employee relations, process improvement, project management, working on strategic initiatives, change management, handbooks, compensation, investigations, and more
HRBPs can help or provide guidance to make you feel more confident in times that you may be unsure, or overwhelmed, or you want to avoid feeling overwhelmed and plan for an HRBP to be there to support you through planned transitions, projects, whatever it may be.
Resources:
Learn more about MRA's HRBPs! 
Let's Connect:
Guest Bio - Jillian Jordan 
Guest LinkedIn Profile - Jillian Jordan 
Host Bio - Sophie Boler 
Host LinkedIn Profile - Sophie Boler 
Transcript:
Transcripts are computer generated -- not 100% accurate word-for-word.
00:00:00:02 - 00:00:23:03
Intro
Hello hello, everybody, and welcome to 30 minute THRIVE, your go-to podcast for anything and everything HR, powered by MRA - The Management Association. Looking to stay on top of the ever-changing world of HR? MRA has got you covered. We’ll be the first to tell you what’s hot and what’s not. I’m your host, Sophie Boler, and we are so glad you’re here. Now it’s time to THRIVE.
 
00:00:26:18 - 00:00:57:05
Sophie Boler
Hello everyone, and welcome to this episode of 30 Minute Thrive. We're excited you're here with us and I'm excited to introduce our guest for today, Jillian Jordan. She's a human resource business partner at MRA and is about celebrate her one-year anniversary. So congratulations on that very much. But Jillian has had 17 years of leadership and HR experience under her belt, and I just want to mention some of the different areas and industries that you've worked in.
 
00:00:57:12 - 00:01:10:12
Sophie Boler
It's been agriculture, food manufacturing, aerospace engineering, logistics, construction, retail, auto sales and the service industry. So it seems like you've done just about anything and everything.
 
00:01:10:22 - 00:01:11:17
Jillian Jordan
A lot of different things.
 
00:01:12:20 - 00:01:32:23
Sophie Boler
But today I'm really interested in learning more about your current position as an HRBP or human resource business partner here at MRA. So I’ll just dive into that right away. So many companies are enhancing their HR department by hiring an HR business partner. What exactly is an HRBP?
 
00:01:34:10 - 00:02:04:14
Jillian Jordan
As simple definition of that would be just an HR business partner that comes in and partners with an organization to help them with their HR Business needs, for instance. It's pretty straightforward in the title, but if you want to expand that into what would like an MRA business partner, you’re really looking at a much broader range of solutions that we can provide because you've got not just that person that's coming in and helping with business solutions and HR
 
00:02:04:14 - 00:02:15:01
Jillian Jordan
Solutions, but you have the support of the 200 plus professionals that we have at MRA supporting. So I think that that's just such a cool part of what MRA does and can provide.
 
00:02:16:12 - 00:02:16:18
Sophie Boler
For.
 
00:02:17:03 - 00:02:18:09
Jillian Jordan
Our business partner.
 
00:02:18:11 - 00:02:23:18
Sophie Boler
For sure. So who does an HR business partner primarily work with?
 
00:02:25:08 - 00:02:51:12
Jillian Jordan
So I guess if your question is about like the size of the company,  really any size, you know, small, midsize, large, you're going to be looking at different solutions depending on the size and structure. If you're looking at if the question is implying like what kind of people do we work with, it could be HR Managers, it could be with the director level, could be management level, could be at the tactical administrative.
 
00:02:52:12 - 00:03:05:08
Jillian Jordan
You know, transactional level. So we really pride ourselves on being flexible to be able to work with any level of individual that's in the company and really any kind of size company.
 
00:03:05:08 - 00:03:13:15
Sophie Boler
Oh yeah, that's great to know that you have that flexibility of who you work with. Yes. So what does success really look like to an HRBP?
 
00:03:15:03 - 00:03:44:06
Jillian Jordan
I think that's such a good question to ask, because every company really is different. I think that success for us means the success of our member, and that's something that is something I really enjoy being able to go in and talk to our members, understand what is their mission, vision value, and really tailor what we provide to what their needs are, and asking that question, What does success look like for you?
 
00:03:44:06 - 00:04:00:23
Jillian Jordan
Is it three months thing? You know me out of here and you have this project done or is it the support for long term smaller amount of hours supporting that? So I think it really is something different for every company.
 
00:04:00:23 - 00:04:17:20
Sophie Boler
And I like how you worded that is like your success is the success of the company. Yeah. So you talked about also working with small companies, midsize companies and large companies. So how do you really determine how many HR HRBPs are needed for a member?
 
00:04:18:11 - 00:04:42:21
Jillian Jordan
What we do is utilize our member relations team along with the HR HRBP manager and we want to assess the business needs to find the right fit for the organization. So whether it's like culture, whether it's the specific skills that are needed for that project or as a project. But, I mean, it could be, it could be a number of things that we're doing.
 
00:04:43:06 - 00:05:01:15
Jillian Jordan
So I think we really work as a team to make sure that the right person is is out into the into the right place. So the HR Business partner also feels successful, right, that they are being able to successfully put in, you know, hey, this is my best work and I’m really feeling like I’m making an impact to this member.
 
00:05:01:23 - 00:05:20:05
Jillian Jordan
So I think that that's just a big part of that. And I know my manager does a really good job of recognizing the things that I like to do. And so I excel in it, making sure that I know the places I go are a good fit for my skill set and my personality and those kind of things, Definitely.
 
00:05:20:18 - 00:05:33:12
Sophie Boler
So we're really learning more about you and your specific responsibilities, but I'm also interested to know about the team of HRBPs you work with every day. So can you really describe the team you're on?
 
00:05:34:18 - 00:06:06:20
Jillian Jordan
Yes, I love talking about my team. Everyone is so friendly. I've really enjoyed I mean, you said I've been here almost a year now. I'm getting almost to a year. And I do feel like everyone has really welcomed me. I feel like everyone is really, really friendly. And when you think about, you know, when we meet regularly, I feel like we have such a diverse group of individuals who have experience from different backgrounds, different industries, and I just love learning from them.
 
00:06:07:08 - 00:06:32:17
Jillian Jordan
I don't feel like we have that like competitive nature. I don't think. I guess I just feel like everyone's so supportive of my success and invested in, you know, how are you doing? Like what classes are you taking? Oh, yeah, I took that OD last year. Last year? That was really good. Did you like it? You know, I think that people are just genuinely interested in your growth as a professional.
 
00:06:32:17 - 00:06:55:17
Jillian Jordan
The things that you're interested in here at MRA. So I feel just so fortunate to be able to have been surrounded by people who are just so, so friendly, so nice, and are there to learn from and grow from. We just don't have that, you know? It's just nice to know that you have people that have your back.
 
00:06:56:00 - 00:07:14:23
Jillian Jordan
You have people that, oh, I'm going to call this person because I know they're really good at this, or I'm going to call my BFF up and say, Hey, how did you do this? Or what would you suggest for that? There's no shame in not knowing. the answer, right? Is we're all just here to learn and grow from each other and to be better professionals.
 
00:07:15:10 - 00:07:18:07
Sophie Boler
That's great that everyone's truly a team player.
 
00:07:18:07 - 00:07:19:12
Jillian Jordan
Yeah, I do feel like that.
 
00:07:19:18 - 00:07:27:18
Sophie Boler
So just kind of diving deeper into the life of an HRBP What initiatives does a HR BP take on?
 
00:07:27:22 - 00:07:28:08
Jillian Jordan
Yeah, I.
 
00:07:28:08 - 00:07:28:23
Sophie Boler
Guess the list.
 
00:07:28:23 - 00:08:07:04
Jillian Jordan
Is busy. All of are, Yeah. So try not to fall asleep while I go through this. But I mean, it's really so many things. It could be like payroll benefits, compliance, recordkeeping, employee relations, process improvement, project management, working on strategic initiative, change management, some of our most frequently requested services, though I would say our working out handbooks, providing an extra set of hands-on reviewing job descriptions, compensation like the comp and class studies and performance management, assisting with HR
 
00:08:07:14 - 00:08:34:13
Jillian Jordan
Optimization and performing investigations, which I think is such a great service that we provide being able to take that third party perspective and really interview people and provide data and fast so that, you know, our members can look at that information and, you know, make good decisions about their, their practices for sure.
 
00:08:34:13 - 00:08:34:19
Sophie Boler
Yeah.
 
00:08:35:22 - 00:09:01:22
Jillian Jordan
So I think a part of that so those are kind of like a list of what we do. But essentially what we want to do is, you know, I’ve said this a little bit already, but we really want to get to know the business, right? So we want to understand what matters to you. We want to understand how can we really minimize the transactional tasks that we can focus on partnering with the business and and HR
 
00:09:01:22 - 00:09:14:12
Sophie Boler
Strategic needs. So you just mentioned transactional and strategic. Can you explain a little bit the difference between transactional versus more tactical and strategic? Yeah.
 
00:09:14:12 - 00:09:54:08
Jillian Jordan
So your transactional items are going to be those day-to-day task oriented, somewhat administrative tasks. And then when you look at the strategic initiatives, you're really taking your strategic plan and looking at what are all the tactical things you need to make that happen. And so when we say we're minimizing the transactional, it means we're taking a look at your process, seeing where you could be trimming it down so that you are spending less time and on those transactional items and that you are really focusing on your strategic needs.
 
00:09:54:08 - 00:10:15:05
Jillian Jordan
And I think that there's a lot of business partners HR professionals out there who are looking at, you know, how am I going to get to these strategic needs? And if I am so bogged down by administrative tasks and I would say, you know, in my many years of working in HR there’s never been a time where you may wish that we had more administrative tasks to do.
 
00:10:15:05 - 00:10:27:05
Jillian Jordan
And, you know, you're always thinking about how can I further the department, how can I really get to these other very strategic and tactical things without spending so much time on the transactional?
 
00:10:28:09 - 00:10:36:04
Sophie Boler
So how do an HRBPs responsibilities really differ from other HR roles in an organization.
 
00:10:36:09 - 00:11:09:12
Jillian Jordan
I'm going to twist your question a little bit and just kind of talk about kind of the roles that just an example. So a couple of examples of what we could be doing. So we could be working with like a smaller organization and we have a management individual who is performing some HR tasks but really wearing a lot of hats and feeling like they don't have, you know, they don't always have the right amount of time to spend on HR because these are professionals now is kind of up in the air.
 
00:11:09:12 - 00:11:29:14
Jillian Jordan
What am I going to be doing? I have this plan, I have these things that I have to get done. But you may have an investigation come up. You may have a disciplinary action come up. And it is really great to be able to assist members like that and allow us to be flexible and I say flexible a lot because we really are meant to be able to support them in whatever their needs are.
 
00:11:29:14 - 00:11:53:20
Jillian Jordan
So that's one example. You know, the small, small company with somebody wearing a lot of hats, it could be like a mid-sized company where maybe the team needs more support. Right? They've had these lists of projects that they've been wanting to do for a really long time. And they’ve just never seemed to get to them because your day-to-day things, the tasks, they really take up the majority of the time.
 
00:11:54:05 - 00:12:15:00
Jillian Jordan
And we want to make sure that we're supporting the work life balance initiatives that our members have right to support our H.R. teams, the internal HR. teams that they have. So I think that is more a little bit of a generic answer of like kind of the areas that you can see us coming into and helping just as like a couple of good examples.
 
00:12:15:20 - 00:12:29:16
Sophie Boler
So I know you've mentioned just throw out the podcast the responsibilities of an HRBP, but I'm curious to know some of your specific projects that you have worked on or are currently working on for companies since you joined MRA.
 
00:12:30:03 - 00:13:11:21
Jillian Jordan
Yeah. One project that really stands out that's been really fun is working on a recruiting project. So actually we, you know, we come in and we try to minimize the task of the transactional. And really what I've been able to do is work with the team. So it's definitely not me just doing all the work. It's a testament to the great teams that I work with, the great members that I work with, and we're able to look at the process, see where we can trim things down, specifically, maybe add some definition for some steps in the process, because there may have been, you know, we did this for years, but do we know why.
 
00:13:11:21 - 00:13:45:07
Jillian Jordan
You know, I always ask, why are we doing this? Does this add value to the process? Right. So it can lead to challenging conversations, maybe not challenging conversations, but really honest conversations about like, why do we do this and what can we do better? And I've been able to see that process evolve and just how much pride the team has in them believing in this process and understanding why we do each thing that we do and in order to really even sell themselves as an HR
 
00:13:45:07 - 00:14:11:04
Jillian Jordan
Unit to the rest of the organization, because that's essentially who we're servicing, right, is we're servicing our employees. We are helping them achieve their goals. So when I look at the recruiting project that I've been on that it's really exciting to see how far that things have come and just how much more excited people are about the process knowing why we do things.
 
00:14:11:05 - 00:14:13:13
Sophie Boler
So yeah, it's got to be a rewarding job.
 
00:14:13:13 - 00:14:22:10
Jillian Jordan
Yeah. And understand the value is that a lot. But I really want people to understand why are we doing things? And I think that's a huge part of it.
 
00:14:22:10 - 00:14:29:00
Sophie Boler
Yeah, we just talked about having to have some challenging conversations sometimes. Are honest ones.
 
00:14:29:00 - 00:14:29:09
Jillian Jordan
Yeah.
 
00:14:29:12 - 00:14:35:06
Sophie Boler
So what are some of the challenges that you may face as an HRBP?
 
00:14:35:06 - 00:15:11:19
Jillian Jordan
I think that in general HR. Is really challenging. Anyone who's been in HR or even just people that I’ve worked with said I would never want to do your job. It's so challenging. I love it. And i think that what we do specifically at MRA is the biggest challenge of being an MRA business partner would be exactly what we do is we have many different industries, many different size companies, many different personality types that we're working with many different levels of people that we work within the organization.
 
00:15:12:04 - 00:15:32:16
Jillian Jordan
But I think that's why we excel at that, because we recognize that challenge, we prepare for that, and we have designed our business model to be successful at that. So it is one of the most challenging parts. But I think when you know what you're up against in any challenge of HR. I would say that is a really challenging situation.
 
00:15:33:03 - 00:15:43:09
Jillian Jordan
But we're prepared for it, right? We know what we need to do and we can come at that challenge with confidence and just know that we did the right thing.
 
00:15:43:09 - 00:15:45:15
Sophie Boler
You're ready for the challenge. You bring it high.
 
00:15:47:01 - 00:15:47:06
Jillian Jordan
Well.
 
00:15:48:07 - 00:15:53:07
Sophie Boler
Kind of flipping that question, what is your favorite part as an HRBP?
 
00:15:53:07 - 00:16:23:08
Jillian Jordan
My favorite part is definitely the members. I really love working with the members, getting to know each individual that works for the member. I really have been very fortunate to have been welcomed onto these teams. They share their successes. They share snacks, they share lots of great things that we experience. Being on site with members is just understanding their mission and their value.
 
00:16:23:08 - 00:16:44:21
Jillian Jordan
And I say that a lot because I've been so inspired by the members that I work with. I mean, there's been times where I've been like, this is so like almost in tears, just like what we do for the communities. And I think that's something that we do well as an HR business partner team is recognizing we're part of the communities.
 
00:16:44:21 - 00:16:55:09
Jillian Jordan
We are not just this business, we are these many businesses that we work with and the impact that we have on the community is like, I feel like it's immeasurable.
 
00:16:56:02 - 00:16:59:11
Sophie Boler
And you have a very dedicated team and you are very dedicated and.
 
00:17:00:14 - 00:17:02:02
Jillian Jordan
Try to be.
 
00:17:02:02 - 00:17:07:21
Sophie Boler
But just before we wrap up here, do you have any last thoughts to share with our listeners today?
 
00:17:09:07 - 00:17:36:19
Jillian Jordan
I think I kind of covered all of my points. I definitely appreciate you allowing me to come and talk about this role. I think me personally, I have been I've actually worked at companies where I was a member, right? And I use the services, learning and development and the RBI trying to think some of the other areas that I've utilized, so many areas that have helped me, the hotline, etc.
 
00:17:37:10 - 00:17:58:12
Jillian Jordan
And I guess the one thing I hope that HR. Business professionals take from this is that, you know, I’ve been where you're at and I sometimes I’ve asked for help, and it's been the best thing that I’ve done. Sometimes I haven't. And so if I can encourage anybody else who maybe is struggling with, you know, just don't have time for this project or.
 
00:17:58:23 - 00:18:24:18
Jillian Jordan
Yeah, this process just really, really tough. And I just don't have the scope or the ability to understand where I can fix this. Please call us. Please let us know how we can help because I just I that's the goal is for us to help you with your business needs. And I hate for other people to be out there just trudging through it and suffering through just too much workload or things that you're just not that confident in
 
00:18:24:18 - 00:18:26:11
Jillian Jordan
And we can help with that.
 
00:18:26:11 - 00:18:52:09
Sophie Boler
Oh, yeah. Hopefully if you needed a little push to ask for help today was your was helpful. But thank you so much for joining us today and sharing a little bit about what you do and some great benefits of HR BPs. But to our listeners, if you liked our chat today and liked the topic, make sure you like the episode, share the episode, leave a comment or review and consider joining MRA as a member.
 
00:18:52:09 - 00:19:16:12
Sophie Boler
If you aren't a member already, we’ve got all the resources you need in the show notes below. And we have ’Jillian’s email and her LinkedIn profile in the show notes. So if you want to get in touch with her or have a chat or ask her more HRBP questions, I'm sure she'd love to answer those. Otherwise, thank you for tuning in today and thanks Jillian, for your expertise and we will see you all next week.
 
00:19:16:17 - 00:19:39:00
Outro
And that wraps up our content for this episode. Be sure to reference the show notes, where you can sign up to connect for more podcast updates. Check out other MRA episodes on your favorite podcast platform. And as always, make sure to follow MRA’s 30 minute THRIVE so you don’t miss out. Thanks for tuning in and we’ll see you next Wednesday to carry on the HR conversation.
 

Talent Report: Make HR a Strategic Partner

Description: MRA’s Talent Report is an up-to-the-minute review of what is going on in the world of business with an emphasis on talent. This month, MRA’s Jim Morgan, VP of Workforce Strategies, and Alicia Kiser, VP of HR of member company M3 Insurance, cover recruiting & retention innovation, talent thinking, HR creativity, and more.
Key Takeaways:
Work/life balance: Are your people “blenders” – those preferring a work-life blend, or “splitters” – those who prefer work and life to be separated entirely?
“Talent Mobility”: Enabling employees to move within the organization is becoming an area of emphasis for many employers
With the varying generations in the workplace, HR professionals are spending more time helping with communications including coaching people to avoid statements like “all young people…” or “all old people…”
Resources:
Become an MRA Member!
Talent Report + Webinar Series 
Let's Connect:
Guest Bio - Alicia Kiser
Guest LinkedIn Profile - Alicia Kiser 
Guest Bio - Jim Morgan 
Guest LinkedIn Profile - Jim Morgan 
Host Bio - Sophie Boler 
Host LinkedIn Profile - Sophie Boler 
 
Transcript:
Transcripts are computer generated -- not 100% accurate word-for-word.
00:00:00:02 - 00:00:23:03
Intro
Hello hello, everybody, and welcome to 30 minute THRIVE, your go-to podcast for anything and everything HR, powered by MRA - The Management Association. Looking to stay on top of the ever-changing world of HR? MRA has got you covered. We’ll be the first to tell you what’s hot and what’s not. I’m your host, Sophie Boler, and we are so glad you’re here. Now it’s time to THRIVE.
 
00:00:23:14 - 00:00:50:16
Sophie Boler
Hello everybody. Thanks for taking the time to spend part of your day with us. I’m excited to introduce our topic and our two guests for today. We’re going to be covering how to leverage HR for critical business decisions. So we’ll be talking about the current best practices for HR and building strategy. So good thing I have two experts here with me today to really debrief this topic.
 
00:00:50:23 - 00:01:19:06
Sophie Boler
And that is Alicia Kiser, vice president of human resources at member company M3 Insurance, and MRA’s Jim Morgan, vice president of workforce strategies. So Jim and Alicia really make a strong duo for today’s episode, really based on their expertise and HR background. Alicia  started at M3 insurance as an HR business partner back in 2011 and has climbed the ladder to VP of HR, where she is now.
 
00:01:19:06 - 00:01:48:05
Sophie Boler
And Jim Morgan has an extensive background in business development, HR strategic planning, and he’s a keynote speaker on those topics, most recently being on his monthly Talent Report+ webinar. So he’ll be sharing some ideas from that as well. So I’m excited to talk to you two today. Thanks for being on the show. I want to really kick off our conversation today with what’s happening in the recruiting and retention world.
 
00:01:48:18 - 00:01:53:05
Sophie Boler
So, Jim, do you want to start us off with what innovations you’re seeing here?
 
00:01:53:18 - 00:02:20:14
Jim Morgan
Sure. And I’ll back it up just a little bit with the Talent Report, because this was something that we started putting together for our 3,000 member companies. One of the values of that and one of the things we can bring back to our members is having the chance to steal some best practices from different organizations. And M3 being one of those leaders who shares what they’re doing and some of the ways they’re getting around some things to be more effective than the ways they used to do it.
 
00:02:21:02 - 00:02:44:07
Jim Morgan
So we really are, we put the Talent Report webinar together to talk about what’s timely, what’s happening now, what are the best practices. And so the thoughts and ideas that I’m going to share with you are, you know, this is what we’re hearing right now, this is what some of the companies are doing. And Alicia will be able to dig into that a little bit deeper and talk specifically from a company’s point of view, some of the things that that they’re doing.
 
00:02:44:07 - 00:03:02:13
Jim Morgan
So in the last month, here’s a couple of things that we heard in the whole recruiting and retention area. One of the most fascinating things that I found was there was a survey done by Gallup and they were looking at how people manage work-life balance. And they found they really fell into two groups of people that they called splitters and blenders.
 
00:03:02:22 - 00:03:19:17
Jim Morgan
And the splitters were the people that were able to just divide their world, like, “Look, I’m working from 8 until 5 and then I get home and that’s it. Now I’m on life balance time,” and others that were more blenders that were like, look, I’m working and I’m, you know, and I’m doing my life at the same time.
 
00:03:20:03 - 00:03:47:09
Jim Morgan
And what was interesting is some of it fell by industry and some of it fell by job type. But the one that was the most interesting to me is when you got into people that were managers of people, it was almost a 50/50 split between blenders and splitters, which I found interesting. But the point in the whole thing was you need to know whether your people are blenders or splitters when you’re talking about benefits. You might be giving more hours and that’s not what somebody wants.
 
00:03:47:09 – 00:04:13:06
Jim Morgan
Or you might say, “You can leave a little bit early” and they’re like, “I don’t leave early. I never leave. I’m always working,” and truly understanding how your people are managing. That whole work-life balance really made a difference. The second one that we learned a little bit about was just everybody’s focused on learning. And I know Alicia can talk about this and the learning development they do at M3, but companies are really now starting to say, Look, we have to have somebody in charge of this.
 
00:04:13:06 - 00:04:55:17
Jim Morgan
We can’t accidentally do our learning and development here. It’s got to be more conscientious. It’s got to be more specific, and especially with a lot of the younger workers, that career path and development is really a big deal for them. And the last one that we spent some time on was when I called “catch ’em young.” And I think manufacturers have done this for a long time, going back to when the skill sets of skilled technology people, skilled tradespeople, carpentry, masonry, IT, things like that, they weren’t finding the people they needed, that they realized that they had to really go back, almost into the middle schools, and start saying, these are jobs that are available.
 
00:04:55:17 - 00:05:30:07
Jim Morgan
So don’t rule them out because people have said certain things. And then in high school, getting on the advisory councils for the tech department and making sure people know and at the tech colleges and universities and there we’ve seen just a huge growth in co-ops, youth apprenticeships and internships that companies are starting to realize that we gotta be the first ones to get in there and find these kids and university students and young adults, and not wait until they’re 18, 22, 23, because by then everybody’s looking for them.
 
00:05:30:15 - 00:05:42:10
Jim Morgan
So just the strategies that companies are starting to put into place now that say this talent supply chain starts much earlier than the age of 20, and we’ve got to figure out how to get in there a little bit quicker.
 
00:05:42:10 - 00:05:58:23
Sophie Boler
Absolutely. It’s kind of crazy to think that companies are targeting as young as middle school. It just sounds crazy, but that’s what’s happening. Alicia, Jim mentioned about work-life balance, so I’m curious to know what M3 is doing around work-life balance for your employees.
 
00:06:00:08 - 00:06:22:07
Alicia Kiser
Yeah, absolutely. But first of all, Jim, I need you to send me that report on blenders and splitters. That’s fascinating. I’m definitely not a blender. I’m a splitter. If you’re a  splitter and you have a team of blenders, I could certainly see how that would bring about some conflict. I think that’s really fascinating and a great topic for us to plug into.
 
00:06:22:07 - 00:06:46:12
Alicia Kiser
So kind of in that vein, you know, work-life balance—so we, M3 has chosen to have a hybrid approach to where people work. So what that means for us is that we, and we actually kind of branded this, right, so we could help people understand it with a nice flashy one-pager and did some all-company meetings about it.
 
00:06:46:12 - 00:07:17:03
Alicia Kiser
But what that means to us, what hybrid means to us, is that the office is primary and from there we just ask M3ers to work with their team to figure out when and how often they’re in the office versus not in the office. And to us not in the office could mean working from home, but for us, because we are, really revolve around our clients that could also be in the marketplace meeting with prospects and clients in the marketplace.
 
00:07:17:03 - 00:07:39:17
Alicia Kiser
And so and for us, it’s really not about butts in seats. I like to talk about that because I think there’s a difference in an organization’s posture, if you’re talking about butts in seats versus being in the office for the right reasons. And we went so far as to define here are some specific instances where we feel like being in the office is a must.
 
00:07:39:22 - 00:08:15:18
Alicia Kiser
So when you’re onboarding a new person to your team, when you’re having performance issues or communications within your team, you know, during, we are we’re in the insurance industry. And so there are certain times of the year where being on the same page and collaborating and connecting is extremely important, maybe more than others. And there are many, many others, but we want to define what are those kind of moments that matter, where being together, physically together is super advantageous and really help
 
00:08:16:17 - 00:08:18:10
Alicia Kiser
M3 stand apart from the rest.
 
00:08:18:18 - 00:08:36:02
Sophie Boler
So I mean, you just mentioned being a hybrid workforce, which is great. So can you dive in a little bit deeper on how you’re really handling that to ensure that all your employees, your customers, and M3’s needs are being met?
 
00:08:36:02 - 00:09:10:06
Alicia Kiser
Yeah. So: trust. We are not tracking fob swipes or we don’t have someone walking around taking attendance every day. We work really hard in whatever we roll out not to manage to the exception. I think it’s easy to think about, well, what about, you know, all these people that are going to take advantage of us and, you know, do 2-hour lunches in the middle of the day or do their laundry while they’re working from home, and we try to really kind of center around let’s not manage to the exception.
 
00:09:10:23 - 00:09:44:10
Alicia Kiser
Let’s focus on the majority and deal with the exception as it comes up. And so that’s our philosophy around the hybrid work, the hybrid workforce, but just generally most things  at M3. And I think that that bodes well for us from a recruitment and retention perspective. The hybrid, as we’ve been recruiting, we’ve had a lot of success in bringing people onto our team whose companies have said, Hey, we aren’t going to come into the office until we don’t know when.
 
00:09:44:10 - 00:10:08:23
Alicia Kiser
We’ve also had a lot of success in hiring and bringing people onto the team whose companies have said, like, Hey, we want you to be in the office, butts in seats, every day because of our approach. And I would say as the weeks and the months go on, I am seeing more and more people in the office because I think the kind of excitement or novelty around working from home is wearing off a little bit.
 
00:10:09:12 - 00:10:16:22
Alicia Kiser
But just to have the option and feel like you have the freedom to make a choice, of course, in working with your team, I think goes a long way.
 
00:10:17:12 - 00:10:39:18
Sophie Boler
Oh, absolutely. And I like how you brought up the whole trust aspect because that is so important. I mean, some employees, like we’ve seen, Jim, they like to work at 9:00, 10:00 at night, and you almost just have to put that trust into them, like they’re getting their work done when they feel most productive. And that might mean working at different times depending on the employee.
 
00:10:40:04 - 00:10:41:12
Alicia Kiser
So the blenders, right, Jim?
 
00:10:41:12 - 00:10:47:01
Jim Morgan
Yeah, the I get at 3:00 in the morning are the ones I don’t respond to.
 
00:10:47:12 - 00:10:50:08
Alicia Kiser
Yeah. So you’re, you’re not a blender then.
 
00:10:50:08 - 00:10:53:06
Jim Morgan
I think I am just not between 1 in the morning and 5.
 
00:10:55:01 – 00:10:55:22
Alicia Kiser
There are boundaries.
 
00:10:56:08 – 00:11:09:18
Sophie Boler
I would say I’m a blender, but. Well, moving on, another topic that I’d really like to discuss is what’s going on in the talent world. So, Jim, do you want to talk a little bit about what you’ve been seeing here?
 
00:11:09:18 – 00:11:39:23
Jim Morgan
Yeah, we had three things that we discussed in the Talent Report. The first one was the imposter syndrome, and that was the title that’s been given to the 2 years of COVID for employees and college students. And really what it relates to is if you think about those students that lost their junior and senior year in college and what happened in those 2 years, or you think about the people who came out right before the pandemic and their first 2 years of work
 
00:11:40:09 – 00:11:58:03
Jim Morgan
were right in the middle of COVID, that they missed out on a whole bunch of experiences. You know, for the kids in college, that’s where you sometimes get your internships. You get to go work for people. You didn’t have those opportunities. For those that had started work, you know, how do you figure out the culture? How do you figure out who your mentors are?
 
00:11:58:04 – 00:12:19:16
Jim Morgan
Who do you get to go talk to when you’ve got questions? Those things got disrupted and companies are now starting to realize things got missed during those couple of years and we may have to back up a little bit and say, you know what, We didn’t really get a chance to onboard them the way we like to onboard them or set things up the way we like to because we just couldn’t because of the circumstances.
 
00:12:20:00 – 00:12:42:15
Jim Morgan
And so that’s been an emphasis for some companies now to say what got missed out on and what blanks do we have to fill in now. Somewhat related to that was one that I called “Got Onboarding?” kind of after the “Got Milk?” campaign. But the whole onboarding process as companies now are moving from the, just the endless search for new employees and recruiting—
 
00:12:42:16 - 00:13:05:10
Jim Morgan
We got to find 10 more and then 10 more and then 10 more—stopping now and saying, well, that’s part of it. But once we get ’em, we got to figure out how to keep ’em. And that first week, month, 6 months of the job is just so critical. And so just like in the learning and development area, companies are now looking at onboarding and saying, we really need somebody to look at this strategically.
 
00:13:05:10 - 00:13:26:12
Jim Morgan
Not we got to check these seven boxes, but at the end of it, are people feeling welcome? Do they have a feel for the company and the culture? Is this a place they want to come back to? And I was in M3e just a week ago, and Sean LaBorde, the president, was saying, “You know, we’re trying to be a magnet for people,” which I found really interesting, that we want to have spaces
 
00:13:26:12 - 00:13:56:03
Jim Morgan
they want to come to and they want to have conversations they want to be a part of, and then they’ll want to be here. And I think that’s another part of this whole onboarding and building that culture is creating a spot that’s inviting and that that’s a place that I do want to be. And then lastly, a discussion on talent
 mobility and again, trying to hang on to people and looking at it from, you know, some companies are very passive and they say, Wow, Sophie’s a great employee.
 
00:13:56:09 - 00:14:12:11
Jim Morgan
We should figure out how to make her happy and keep her. And they just look at Sophie and say, Wow, we can give her an opportunity here or have her do this and have her do that. And it’s a great plan for you to hopefully help you understand your mobility within the organization and your chance to rise in it.
 
00:14:12:21 - 00:14:31:22
Jim Morgan
But it’s not really active for the organization. It’s not the organization saying, well, not just Sophie, let’s find all of our high performers. Let’s find everybody and see how do we move them, how do we give them different opportunities, whether it’s lateral or up and down. And so then we get into, okay, let’s be more active about it.
 
00:14:31:22 - 00:14:53:14
Jim Morgan
Let’s put a plan in place that gives people opportunities to figure out what they want to do. And then leading up to ultimately, how do we make this strategic? How is this mobility part of our succession planning of making sure we’ve always got the next person up so they can get their job done? And talking with companies about where are you with that.
 
00:14:53:14 - 00:15:13:07
Jim Morgan
Because traditionally or historically, I think it’s been more of a, well we find a person, let’s make sure we hang on to them versus an organization-wide opportunity to say strategically, we’ve got to look at people and figure out how can we keep moving them up in over 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, and no longer have it be:
 
00:15:13:13 – 00:15:36:13
Jim Morgan
“Well, Alicia, if you stay here for 27 years, here’s the opportunity for you to maybe move up a little bit”. So a lot of work on talent, mobility and helping both the employee find their niche and what’s going on and the employer making sure that they’re not only have the butt in the seat, but that they’ve got the right people in the right seats so they can be as effective as they possibly can be.
 
00:15:37:11 – 00:15:48:11
Sophie Boler
I love that example, Jim. And just talking about talent mobility, Alicia, is that really a thing at M3? And if it is, what have you really implemented around this?
 
00:15:49:19 - 00:16:16:01
Alicia Kiser
Yeah, so I’m a huge fan of this topic. I actually started my career at a very, very large organization in a role, like a leadership development type program where every 18 months we rotated from one kind of department or discipline to the next, like think operations, HR,, logistics, customer service and while working for a very, very large organization wasn’t my cup of tea—
00:16:16:07 - 00:16:51:00
Alicia Kiser
I’m certainly happier at a midsized organization—I learned a lot. I would never take that experience back and, you know, the reason why is because I think that it really helps you understand, it helps you build your business acumen. It helps you learn about each of the functions of an organization in that particular industry and in that particular organization and the different levers that can be pulled to produce certain outcomes within that organization or that industry.
 
00:16:51:09 - 00:17:26:16
Alicia Kiser
And without getting the perspective from lots of different disciplines, it’s not as easy to do that. And I also think it helps you appreciate what your team, what your peers and coworkers are doing every day. And I think it allows you to have more empathy but just work better together on the softer side of things. And so specific to M3, I would say we are kind of in the early stages of this or working to find more opportunities to infuse talent, mobility, into our development efforts and into our roles.
 
00:17:27:00 - 00:18:07:17
Alicia Kiser
Right now we are absolutely doing it with our internship program, kind of our sales accelerator and sales development program. And, you know, per the reasons that I cited and why I think it’s so valuable, we’re certainly seeing, you know, those, that work pay off in those particular roles. The other thing that we’ve done to your comment, Jim, about college students who have lost their junior and senior years potentially entering the workforce: So in our internship program, I mean, we rotate and give them exposure to the different parts of M3.
 
00:18:07:17 - 00:18:32:03
Alicia Kiser
But we also started to partner with our insurance companies that we partner with. M3 is a broker. So we work with hundreds of different insurance companies and you know, those who have offices where we have offices, we’ve done intern swaps, and that is a fan favorite amongst our interns and interns from our carrier partners, because again, it gives you different perspective.
 
00:18:32:03 - 00:18:51:21
Alicia Kiser
And I think our perspective and our career partners perspective has been, you know, because one could say, well, what if they like that internship program better than this one? It’s like, well, we’re you know, the rising tide floats all boats, right? We’re gaining exposure and excitement and engagement throughout the industry. And, you know, we’ll all win in that way.
 
00:18:51:21 - 00:18:55:14
Sophie Boler
Mm. I love that example of intern swapping.
 
00:18:56:13 - 00:19:02:17
Alicia Kiser
It was it’s fun. And we’re just because it is such a fan favorite looking for more opportunities to do things like that.
 
00:19:03:04 - 00:19:20:23
Sophie Boler
Oh yeah. And even when I was younger or in college, job shadowing companies in their different departments was something I loved to do, to just get exposure of what each department is doing. And then I could find what I like doing and carry on from there.
 
00:19:20:23 - 00:19:38:08
Alicia Kiser
Yeah, as a young person, you kind of know what you want to do, but until you gain those experiences, I don’t think you really know and you’re secretly building up this business acumen that will for sure to your advantage in the future that you’re not even aware of at that time for sure.
 
00:19:38:11 - 00:19:55:05
Sophie Boler
Absolutely. Well, you know, more than ever, we’ve seen businesses needing to pull together some creative plans when it comes to some of the topics that we’ve discussed today. So, Jim, I’m curious to know some of the top creative HR strategies that you’ve been seeing.
 
00:19:56:08 - 00:20:04:06
Jim Morgan
Well, first I have to react to when the host of the show who I think is, you know, in her mid- to early 20 says, “When I was young ...”
 
00:20:06:05 - 00:20:07:05
Sophie Boler
I knew you would say something!
 
00:20:10:17 - 00:20:36:07
Jim Morgan
In the creativity area, a couple of things are happening. We have a lot of companies, especially manufacturers, that English is not the first language for a lot of their workers. And so companies have been spending a lot of time on helping those employees learn English as a second language. But now we’re seeing it work the other way, too, and expectations of supervisors and managers to learn the language of the people who are working for them.
 
00:20:36:07 - 00:20:57:09
Jim Morgan
And they’re sort of looking at this as if we come at it from both sides, we’re going to improve the communications one way or another. And so we’ve got a lot of people becoming bilingual, both as the worker and as the supervisor, as they try to figure out ways to make sure everybody is communicating as accurately and easily as possible.
 
00:20:57:09 - 00:21:18:10
Jim Morgan
I had an interesting experience in a manufacturing facility where they’re always trying to motivate the people that are running their machines, helping them know that, you know, the value they bring to the organization, which is fantastic. And also trying to subtly remind them occasionally that this is a $27 million machine you’re running here. So let’s make sure, you know, we’re taking good care of it.
 
00:21:19:00 - 00:21:39:02
Jim Morgan
And they had actually put the price tag of each machine right on the machine, saying that this lathe is worth this much money or this manufacturing piece is worth this many million dollars. And they said they do it as a way of saying to the people who are operating them, we’ve put this much trust in you, that we think that this is fantastic.
 
00:21:39:02 - 00:22:12:02
Jim Morgan
You’re a skilled operator and that’s wonderful. At the same time, you know, saying let’s not get sloppy here because there’s a lot at stake. And sometimes people sort of take that for granted. Now that I just made fun of you as a young person, generational diversity is one that we’re seeing, you know, popping up more in everyone’s diversity, equity and inclusion, especially as we have a whole bunch of younger people coming in and a pretty big generation of people still there but on their way out and the HR
 
00:22:12:02 - 00:22:31:22
Jim Morgan
people really having to spend more time with people helping them understand that sentences start with, “Well, you’ve been here so long, you probably don’t know that” or “You just got here. You’ll eventually figure it out.” That you know, the harm that’s done in a lot of these assumptions of saying, “Well, you’ve only been here for 2 years, what could you possibly know?”
 
00:22:32:08 - 00:22:59:21
Jim Morgan
And one example here where someone said, Yeah, somebody just said to me, “Well once you’ve been here longer you’ll figure it out.” And your reaction to that is, “Why would you have me figure it out over the next 5 years and keep making the same mistakes? Why don’t you just tell me what you know and we can both learn, you know, together,” that there’s a lot of things that are kind of taken for granted in the age compartment that, “Oh, that’s just a joke” or this “Everybody understands that, you know,”—not so much.
 
00:23:00:05 - 00:23:25:03
Jim Morgan
And so as the generations have very different communication styles, very different ways of communicating, very different life experiences, more time being spent on helping, you know, millennials and Zers understand boomers and Xers and everything in between that we’ve all done different things. We all bring great assets to the organization. And some of the stereotypes are in the way of that.
 
00:23:25:03 - 00:23:54:04
Jim Morgan
So spending a little bit more time on generational diversity. And then one last one that we had is people have been churning folks like crazy. And an HR department was having a hard time explaining to people that when we get these people in and they stay for 3 weeks and they walk out the door, that’s a lot of time and effort wasted, and trying to develop a corporate strategy that says this is HR and the recruiters and the hiring managers and the other people that they work with.
 
00:23:54:04 - 00:24:14:07
Jim Morgan
All of them have to do this together in order for us to hang on to these people. And so they decided to use an all-staff meeting as an example. And they had churned about 30 percent of their people in the past year. So they had talked to 30 people in advance and they got up and said, We’re trying to visualize here how much work we’re doing, trying to hang on to people.
 
00:24:14:15 - 00:24:43:17
Jim Morgan
And so we’re going to give you an example right now of this is how many people walked out the door in the last year and 30 percent of the audience, which was about 100 people, got up and walked out of the all-staff meeting to try to help visualize for people: Do you see how much work this is? And so that was their creative way of saying it is kind of everybody’s job and we would really like your help because otherwise we have to go fill those hundred jobs who just walked out the door in the last 35 seconds.
 
00:24:44:00 - 00:24:48:11
Jim Morgan
So I thought that one was a pretty creative way for people to try to get everybody on board.
 
00:24:48:20 - 00:25:06:07
Sophie Boler
Yeah, that is a creative way to show the impact. So Jim talked about generational diversity here. Alicia, how is M3 really handling diversity, equity and inclusions in general and how are you dealing with the whole generational diversity specifically?
 
00:25:08:01 - 00:25:44:03
Alicia Kiser
Yeah, it’s certainly ongoing. And I will say we are definitely not an expert in the space, but man, are we grinding. And so I actually co-lead, we have a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee, which is a cross-functional group of some leaders, some individual contributors from across the organization, from all of our offices. I work with our CEO to put a strategic plan, if you will, together around diversity, equity, inclusion.
 
00:25:45:05 - 00:26:38:21
Alicia Kiser
And our committee is charged with education and awareness. But we really look for our leadership team to be accountable for and live out within their respective areas, helping M3 move the needle on all things diversity, equity and inclusion. And it’s been fun to see how, as we kind of, I recently saw a continuum of an organization’s DEI efforts from compliance to committee to leadership owned and then being a truly inclusive organization. I would say we’re moving into that leader owned phase of DEI and it’s been fun to see our leadership team find their own ways to lean into DEI work.
 
00:26:38:21 - 00:27:08:15
Alicia Kiser
And it’s been very different, but it allows them to own it and feel comfortable in leading on it with their respective teams. And so that’s been, that’s probably been the most notable and most fun thing for me to see. One of the things we moved away from when we were in that committee phase putting the organization’s DEI efforts on a committee, a cross-functional committee is a lot and that’s a heavy load to carry.
 
00:27:08:22 - 00:27:36:18
Alicia Kiser
And it’s tough too because this is this is like not a project, not an initiative. It’s a long game, it’s a marathon. And it can become discouraging when you’re not seeing maybe the immediate results that you want to see. And so when we made that, when we kind of articulated flipping the switch from, Hey, hey, committee, you’re actually not, this is, the responsibility for this work isn’t on your shoulders, but we’d like you to lead on education and awareness.
 
00:27:37:01 - 00:28:04:22
Alicia Kiser
This, the responsibility and accountability is on the leadership team. That was a big game changer, I think a big moment for us in moving our efforts forward. So maybe that’s that’s what I would say from a DEI perspective. There’s certainly other things. I mean, one thing we’re really proud of and I’ve had an opportunity to talk about with MRA in lots of different forums is our Women’s Business Resource Group.
 
00:28:04:22 - 00:28:30:14
Alicia Kiser
So it’s essentially an affinity group. We have over half, over 60 percent of our overall population is female. And so that was kind of a natural place for us to start is with women at M3, and especially with all the stats that you’ve seen kind of within COVID and post-COVID about women exiting the workplace, our focus is keeping M3 women in the workplace.
 
00:28:31:00 - 00:29:02:03
Alicia Kiser
And we started that group in 2018 and just have had a lot of great evolution in terms of providing development opportunities for women at M3 up to giving them opportunities to lead in ways or have more global involvement in work at M3 outside of like the key area that they’re focused in from a day-to-day basis, which allows them to get exposure amongst leadership and other people throughout the organization.
 
00:29:02:18 - 00:29:43:08
Alicia Kiser
But it is also a professional development opportunity as well. So those are just a couple of things maybe I would mention. And then as it relates to generational diversity, we’re hearing more and more about this in terms of M3’s interest in learning about how to navigate through generational diversity—certainly a hot topic. One of the things I’ll talk about that we’ve had a lot of success with and are trying to do more of is finding more natural ways to get different generations to collaborate and build relationships and respect for each other.
 
00:29:43:17 - 00:30:43:09
Alicia Kiser
And so, for example, we’ve got an overall mentorship program throughout the organization, but we also have mentorship in different pockets. Like, for example, we have a shareholder development program and are really intentional about how we match people up. I think that’s one way that we’ve supported generational diversity, but also going back to your comments, Jim, about onboarding and our development efforts, career planning, career mapping, we as much as possible with so much institutional knowledge with some of the folks that are nearing retirement, we try to lean on those individuals to facilitate our development sessions, training sessions, you know, use their expertise to educate other M3ers and obviously they’re not
 
00:30:44:01 - 00:31:07:09
Alicia Kiser
professional speakers or facilitators, or and they don’t have that expertise. But our talent development team works to provide the framework for them to share their knowledge, whether that be in-person or on demand, using our learning management system. So really like organize that and deliver it in a way that can be impactful for M3ers of all generations.
 
00:31:07:09 - 00:31:16:03
Alicia Kiser
And so that’s maybe a little bit more indirect way of navigating that generational diversity topic.
 
00:31:17:00 - 00:31:28:06
Sophie Boler
I like that, and I like how you brought up mentors. I think mentors are, can, I don’t know, lead to huge impacts on the organization and the employee too. But as we really wrap, oops sorry go ahead.
 
00:31:28:13 - 00:31:52:14
Alicia Kiser
Oh no, sorry. I was just going to say I was just on a call this morning with our CEO and he said, “You can’t rush wisdom.” And so I think that’s very true. And the more that we can get these folks working with each other, I think, you can’t rush wisdom. But the more we can help infuse and ensure that that moves from one generation to the next.
 
00:31:53:04 - 00:32:15:05
Sophie Boler
And like you said in a natural way. I like that. But as we do wrap up here, Alicia, Jim has mentioned to me your role at M3 and not only in HR leadership, but just as a leader at the company overall. So what advice would you give to HR professionals trying to move from a tactical position to more of a strategic one?
 
00:32:15:05 - 00:32:21:06
Sophie Boler
And Jim, feel free to offer your thoughts and advice as well.
 
00:32:21:06 - 00:33:17:18
Alicia Kiser
Yeah. So thanks for asking this. I would actually go back to my comments earlier about business acumen. I think, ,and I recently was reflecting on this with my coworker, my colleague, our HR director, and we both agreed that the, our early exposure to an ability to build business acumen was one of the key things that I think helps make that jump from I call it like taking off my department hat on and putting my M3 hat on and I think what that has allowed me to do is, of course, truly understand the business and the different levers that make the business work, but also helps me to be viewed as a more valuable partner
 
00:33:17:18 - 00:33:45:16
Alicia Kiser
to the other leaders throughout the organization, and helps have my opinions and perspectives validated because I’m not necessarily just approaching it through my department’s lens, but trying to frame it in a way that considers all lenses. And I certainly so. so I just I would go back to that business acumen. I think that’s a really big one.
 
00:33:47:04 - 00:33:54:10
Sophie Boler
Jim, anything to add? 
 
00:33:54:10 - 00:34:13:12
Jim Morgan
I would say that’s the biggest one. And I think the advantage right now is with the talent issue being what it is, you all of a sudden are one of the most important people in the decision-making process because they can find land, they can find a building, they can get a loan. But at the end of the day, somebody has to say, well, where are we going to find people to do it?
 
00:34:13:12 - 00:34:36:06
Jim Morgan
And that is the HR person. And the second one is with all of the HRISs out there and all the data that’s being collected in the HR department now, you also become a data analyst, and you can provide information on an awful lot of things that’s very business related. So I think both of those go right back to what Alicia said is that you’re not making HR decisions.
 
00:34:36:06 - 00:34:42:20
Jim Morgan
You’re making business, strategic business decisions, and that immediately elevate you to a different level.
 
00:34:42:20 - 00:35:14:06
Alicia Kiser
And if I could if I could summarize, I would say I always view myself—and I think this can apply to any department, whether you’re marketing, finance, HR, customer service—I consider myself a business person first, and HR just as the discipline or the way that I choose to channel my business skills, and I think if we think more like that, making that jump from tactical to strategic becomes, it becomes easier and fun.
 
00:35:14:16 - 00:35:37:09
Sophie Boler
And that’s some good advice. Yeah. Well, I want to thank both of you for being on the 30 minute THRIVE podcast today and sharing your knowledge on the latest of using HR as a strategic partner. So if you liked our chat and topic today, I want to encourage listeners to share this episode, leave a comment or review, and consider joining MRA if you aren’t a member already.
 
00:35:37:14 - 00:36:00:15
Sophie Boler
We’ve got all the resources you need in the show notes below, so take a look at those and we have linked Jim and Alicia’s email and LinkedIn profile in the show notes below. So if you’d like to get in touch with them or just chat about whatever, they’re available for you. Otherwise, thank you so much for tuning in today and thank you both for the great info and we will see you next week.
 
00:36:01:01 - 00:36:02:00
Alicia Kiser
Thanks for having me.
 
00:36:02:13 - 00:36:03:07
Jim Morgan
Thank you, Sophie.
 
00:36:04:01 - 00:36:26:08
Outro
And that wraps up our content for this episode. Be sure to reference the show notes, where you can sign up to connect for more podcast updates. Check out other MRA episodes on your favorite podcast platform. And as always, make sure to follow MRA’s 30 minute THRIVE so you don’t miss out. Thanks for tuning in and we’ll see you next Wednesday to carry on the HR conversation.’’’
 

What’s Hot On MRA’s Hotline?

Description: Whether it's HR best practices for critical compliance topics, providing a sounding board for complex employee situations, or just the latest information on an HR issue, you can count on MRA's experienced HR Advisors to lend an ear and provide answers. MRA's HR Hotline Manager, Nicole Morehouse, is here to give you an overview of this widely-used resource! 
Key Takeaways:
MRA's HR Hotline Advisors each have 15+ years of HR knowledge. 
99.9% of questions asked on the hotline are answered the same day.
The hotline is a member exclusive benefit, so membership is definitely encouraged if you want to use the hotline!
Resources:
MRA's 24/7 HR Hotline  
Let's Connect:
Guest Bio - Nicole Morehouse
Guest LinkedIn Profile - Nicole Morehouse 
Host Bio - Sophie Boler 
Host LinkedIn Profile - Sophie Boler 
Transcript:
Transcripts are computer generated -- not 100% accurate word-for-word.
00:00:00:02 - 00:00:25:08
Intro
Hello hello, everybody, and welcome to 30 minute THRIVE, your go-to podcast for anything and everything HR, powered by MRA - The Management Association. Looking to stay on top of the ever-changing world of HR? MRA has got you covered. We’ll be the first to tell you what’s hot and what’s not. I’m your host, Sophie Boler, and we are so glad you’re here. Now it’s time to THRIVE.
 
00:00:26:08 - 00:00:48:00
Sophie Boler
Hello everybody, and welcome to this episode of 30 minute THRIVE. We are so glad you’re here and joining us today. And today we’re really here to introduce you and give you an overview of a great resource we have at MRA, and that is the HR Hotline. So luckily, I’m here with an expert today, Nicole Morehouse, our manager of the HR Hotline.
 
00:00:48:00 - 00:01:14:05
Sophie Boler
And Nicole has had over 20 years of experience in just about every area you could think of in HR. So she’s really passionate about what she does, and I’m excited to talk to her today. So thank you for being here today, Nicole. I’m excited to learn more about the hotline and hear some insight from you.
 
Nicole Morehouse Thank you.
 
00:01:14:16 - 00:01:22:04
Sophie Boler
Absolutely. So like I mentioned, one of our most widely used resources here at MRA, is our 24/7 HR Hotline. So could you explain what the hotline is to someone who has never heard of this resource or isn’t too familiar?
 
00:01:22:14 - 00:01:50:02
Nicole Morehouse
Yeah. What is the hotline? The hotline is the most phenomenal resource. So you’re right. I mean, it is widely used by the members. Picture this: It’s 6 p.m. You have an issue. You want to hear some guidance from a knowledgeable person. You can call the hotline and the phone call is going to get picked up by someone that has 15-plus years of experience, like myself, to help you out.
 
00:01:50:09 - 00:02:04:08
Sophie Boler
Awesome. So you mentioned the hotline operates 24/7. What does that exactly mean and what happens if someone were to call in at 2 a.m. if they were up all night thinking about something or maybe on Christmas or a holiday?
 
00:02:04:16 - 00:02:24:01
Nicole Morehouse
Yeah, it truly is 24/7/365. So the hotline doesn’t rest on holidays. A member certainly could call any day of the week, any time of the day. It’s not often that a member needs something at 2 a.m., but I mean, if you do, right, it’s good to know that you have a resource available.
 
00:02:24:15 - 00:02:35:02
Sophie Boler
Okay. So going along with that question, how responsive are our hotline advisors to calls? I mean, do they pick up right away and answer? Would they put you on hold for a little bit?
 
00:02:35:21 - 00:02:48:11
Nicole Morehouse
Yeah, hopefully no putting on hold. Your call’s answered very quickly, usually within a matter of seconds. So if you’re calling in during normal business hours, it’s just a matter of seconds, then you’re connected to an advisor.
 
00:02:48:17 - 00:03:01:22
Sophie Boler
Okay. And you also mentioned this is a great tool to use for our members, but can nonmembers also use the hotline? Can they call in? Who really is this resource available to?
 
00:03:02:08 - 00:03:10:05
Nicole Morehouse
Yeah, the hotline is a member-exclusive benefit. So membership is definitely encouraged if you want to use the hotline.
 
00:03:10:09 - 00:03:19:04
Sophie Boler
Okay. And could you give us a good explanation of really a day in the life of a hotline advisor? What is your day in the life?
 
00:03:19:07 - 00:03:39:20
Nicole Morehouse
So I mean, during the day, right, you know, see picture during business hours, we had several advisors working and we get numerous calls that come in or sometimes emails. I remember a particular day where we had an advisor that had 40 calls, if you want to call them calls. So that’s a combination of phone calls and emails and requests from the website.
 
00:03:40:06 - 00:04:00:21
Nicole Morehouse
Those can be from, for numerous different reasons. So it could be something very simple, like asking for a sample policy or a sample form or maybe something super complex. So like newly implemented regulations or a disability accommodation or something like an employee relations scenario.
 
00:04:01:12 - 00:04:20:06
Sophie Boler
And you just mentioned a couple of reasons why people call into the hotline. I think some people are also pretty hesitant on calling just because they don’t want to ask a dumb question or look bad. So could you tell us more about what people should be calling about and how should they be using the hotline as a resource?
 
00:04:20:11 - 00:04:42:15
Nicole Morehouse
Yeah, that’s a great question. There really isn’t a dumb question. There’s no dumb question to call in for. So even the most experienced HR professionals call us sometimes. Sometimes they just want to talk through a scenario with another professional that’s on a level that they are at, and then sometimes it’s somebody very new to HR that might be, you know, they don’t have a lot of resources internally.
 
00:04:42:15 - 00:05:07:03
Nicole Morehouse
Maybe they’re a solo HR practitioner and then they want some guidance. A lot of times we save HR practitioners a lot of time because they will need certain things or certain information. They have to run off to a meeting. We’re there to answer or provide. And then when that person gets back to their desk, they have an email or the information that they were looking for in a particular topic.
 
00:05:08:03 - 00:05:18:11
Nicole Morehouse
You know, it’s all under the umbrella of human resources and compliance. But if you’re in HR, you know that anything that touches people really qualifies as HR.
 
00:05:19:13 - 00:05:28:16
Sophie Boler
And talking about some of those questions that people ask. Do you have any memorable or crazy stories from the hotline that you can share? Just had to ask.
 
00:05:28:18 – 00:05:55:04
Nicole Morehouse
Yeah, I thought you might ask me that. And that’s kind of a hard question because there are lots of memorable moments. I just was catching up with one of our advisors before I came in here and we chatted about a half a dozen of them—and not from our members per se, but from our experience as HR directors. And there are a lot of memorable moments, but we keep that very close to the vest.
 
Sophie BolerRight.
 
00:05:55:04 - 00:05:57:02
Nicole Morehouse
When you call us, you’re calling in confidence.
 
00:05:57:18 - 00:06:15:22
Sophie Boler
I guess that’s a good thing. We won’t hear it today. So our hotline advisors like you must hear a lot of different questions on a lot of different topics. So where do you and the other hotline advisors really get all the information they need to answer the question correctly and thoroughly?
 
00:06:16:05 - 00:06:38:20
Nicole Morehouse
The criteria to be an advisor you have to have amassed a tremendous amount of experience, even to be an advisor. So right from the get-go, based on your experience, you probably have a lot of knowledge that’s required for answering calls that come in. In addition to that, we know exactly where to find regulatory information.
 
00:06:39:10 - 00:07:03:18
Nicole Morehouse
We get regular feeds on the information. So hopefully we know about information before the member does and have that all at the ready to go. So and we also produce content that relates to the types of questions that we get. So if members call in on any particular topic repeatedly, you know, we’re going to make sure that we have resources that the member can get quickly, get in their hands from the hotline.
 
00:07:05:14 - 00:07:15:22
Sophie Boler
So as we begin 2023, I’d really love to go over some stats from 2022. So how many calls did you receive on the hotline last year?
 
00:07:16:07 - 00:07:22:04
Nicole Morehouse
Over 24,000. So 24,386 calls last year.
 
00:07:22:04 - 00:07:22:13
Sophie Boler
That is crazy.
 
00:07:22:13 - 00:07:38:06
Nicole Morehouse
Most of those do come, about half or so come in through the phone, right? But we also get emails and then people contact us through the website. So the phone is the most popular way. It’s very interactive. And like I said before, you get answers within seconds.
 
00:07:38:10 - 00:07:53:03
Sophie Boler
Wow, that’s crazy. Well, you’re very successful here. And I’m sure out of all those calls, there were a huge variety of call topics on that. So can you narrow it down to maybe the most called upon topic from 2022?
 
00:07:53:13 - 00:08:20:07
Nicole Morehouse
Leaves of absence. And I experienced that myself. So if I’m on the hotline, you know, leave of absence, some other reasons that someone might call in are accommodating disability scenarios, definitely compensation, interpreting market data, maybe they participated in the survey and they have the survey and they want to use that data. So they might contact us about that.
 
00:08:21:01 - 00:08:47:18
Nicole Morehouse
Definitely employee relations. So performance management, discipline situations, situations that involve terminations, the step of termination, wage and hour compliance, a lot of our members have expanded in the last couple of years and they’re in locations that they’ve never been before. And so we get a lot of questions on mobile compliance in new physical locations where maybe they don’t have experience yet.
 
00:08:48:07 - 00:08:58:05
Sophie Boler
Sure. Well, we’ve been talking a lot about the hotline, but I want to know more about your role. So what is your favorite part on working with a hotline, with your team?
 
00:08:58:06 - 00:09:00:09
Nicole Morehouse
Okay, now you give me an easy question.
 
 
 
00:09:00:12 - 00:09:19:03
Nicole Morehouse
It is the team itself. So I mean, it’s a wonderful group of professionals. They’re very uniquely qualified. So just when I think I couldn’t be impressed more, they impress me. Yeah. I mean, it’s just the knowledge that they have and the skills that they have to do what they do is just beyond impressive.
 
00:09:19:06 - 00:09:26:22
Sophie Boler
Absolutely. The hotline team I feel like, is always like, ready to go, ready to give you an answer. They’re also excited about it, too.
 
00:09:26:22 - 00:09:32:16
Nicole Morehouse
Right. And they really, truly enjoy working for the member. And so they really value that relationship.
 
00:09:32:16 - 00:09:41:16
Sophie Boler
Well, just before we wrap up, do you have any lasting comments or thoughts to share with our listeners before we go?
 
00:09:41:16 - 00:10:08:15
Nicole Morehouse
Thank you for showcasing the hotline today. That’s greatly appreciated. And then if you haven’t used the hotline before or if you’re not a member and you want to use the hotline, I strongly encourage you to go through that process—become a member, or if you’re a member already, contact the hotline to get a couple of calls underway so that you can see the benefit that you have available to you.
 
00:10:08:15 - 00:10:31:07
Sophie Boler
And so when you start getting more comfortable calling and calling and you can’t stop!
 
Nicole Morehouse
Right, exactly.
 
Sophie BolerWell, thank you so much for joining us today, Nicole, and thank you to our listeners for joining us today. We learned a lot about the hotline today, and I hope you can use that. So if you liked our chat today and want to get more involved with MRA and want to consider membership, I highly encourage you to do so.
 
00:10:31:20 - 00:10:52:14
Sophie Boler
We have all the resources in the show notes below for you needed. And then we’ve also included Nicole’s email and her LinkedIn profile. So if you want to get in touch with her or learn more about the hotline, she’s here for you. Otherwise. Thank you so much for tuning in today. And Nicole, thanks for all of your hard work and for joining us today.
 
00:10:52:14 - 00:10:54:15
Sophie Boler
We will see you all next week.
 
00:10:55:19 - 00:11:18:01
Outro
And that wraps up our content for this episode. Be sure to reference the show notes, where you can sign up to connect for more podcast updates. Check out other MRA episodes on your favorite podcast platform. And as always, make sure to follow MRA’s 30 minute THRIVE so you don’t miss out. Thanks for tuning in and we’ll see you next Wednesday to carry on the HR conversation.’’’
 

2023 Business Outlook With MRA’s CEO, Susan Fronk

Description: Join us as MRA's President and CEO, Susan Fronk, shares advice and insights to help you start the new year right! 
Key Takeaways:
You need to find a balance between personal customer care, face-to-face care versus an automated, lower cost, more repeatable option 
What elements of your business cycle can you speed up and automate, and which ones do you need to really personalize?
Since there is a people shortage and not just a talent shortage, you have to be flexible and creative in finding skills that might transfer and that you could develop.
2023 comes with a lot of uncertainty in many areas. Make sure you have a plan, and have a plan B and C as backups. 
Resources:
MRA's Talent Report + 
Let's Connect:
Guest Bio - Susan Fronk 
Guest LinkedIn Profile - Susan Fronk 
Host Bio - Sophie Boler 
Host LinkedIn Profile - Sophie Boler 
Transcript:
Transcripts are computer generated -- not 100% accurate word-for-word.
00:00:00:03 - 00:00:23:04
Intro
Hello hello, everybody, and welcome to 30 minute THRIVE, your go-to podcast for anything and everything HR, powered by MRA - The Management Association. Looking to stay on top of the ever-changing world of HR? MRA has got you covered. We’ll be the first to tell you what’s hot and what’s not. I’m your host, Sophie Boler, and we are so glad you’re here. Now it’s time to THRIVE.
 
00:00:26:10 - 00:00:57:02
Sophie Boler
Hello, everybody. Welcome and Happy 2023! We’re so excited you’re here and joining us today. And we’re excited that Susan Fronk, MRA’s president and CEO, is also joining us today. And she’s going to be sharing some advice and insights to help you start off the new year right. So while researching for today’s podcast, it really dawned on me just how much information and resources, research, and data is out there, but it’s all kind of conflicting information at the same time.
 
00:00:57:17 - 00:01:04:08
Sophie Boler
So I guess my first question to you is really how and where do business leaders and HR professionals start?
 
00:01:04:21 - 00:01:30:20
Susan Fronk
At MRA I’ve always felt fortunate because we get to look into 4,000 companies a year in the Midwest—more than any media outlet, more than any newspaper article, more than any periodical I could pick up and read about or listen to or podcast. I’ll believe our members, because that’s real. That’s what’s happening now, and I get to hear the leaders of all of those companies talk about how they’re planning for this year.
 
00:01:31:05 - 00:01:52:25
Susan Fronk
So I’m not an economist, I’m not an expert, but I am a great listener and I feel fortunate to hear from all of our members, and I can bring some of those insights to bear for our podcast today. For example, MRA is part of the Employer Associations of America, the EAA—not the Experimental Aircraft Association. That’s a member too.
 
00:01:52:26 - 00:01:53:05
Susan Fronk
Don’t get confused.
 
00:01:53:05 - 00:01:54:22
Sophie Boler
Don’t get confused.
 
00:01:55:00 - 00:02:20:03
Susan Fronk
We do something very different. But those employer associations, or EAs, across the country represent tens of thousands of member companies. So we’re all listening to our members about how those organizations are planning for 2023. And we did a business trends survey on a national basis this fall. And so I can bring some of those facts to the table that might help plan for the year ahead.
 
00:02:20:18 - 00:02:54:26
Susan Fronk
For example, the EAA Business Trends Survey was almost 1,200 respondents, 1,200 companies that talked to us about what their concerns were and how they viewed the year ahead. Not surprising, the top three concerns are pretty much the same as 2022, but the strategies that employers are using to deal with those have changed a bit. So let me tell you some of the data.  Inflation is the number one concern of employers today and inflation drives wages.
 
00:02:54:26 - 00:03:26:19
Susan Fronk
So coupled with that is the HR reality of finding and keeping talent, which is the number two concern. Those are related. In the short term, meaning 1 year look ahead, 2023, 58 percent of respondents were saying inflation was the number one concern. Longer term, which we identified as a 5-year horizon, 51 percent were concerned. So still a majority of the respondents, but it is mitigating somewhat.
 
00:03:26:19 - 00:03:53:14
Susan Fronk
So inflation is believed by the leaders who responded to mitigate a bit, diminish a bit over the next few years, but still be a concern. And then number two, as I mentioned, talent acquisition in the short term, 58 percent. This year, it’s still going to be a primary concern for most employers that responded and longer term, 50 percent. So not a lot of change.
 
00:03:53:14 - 00:04:30:02
Susan Fronk
There are still half of the respondents believe that finding and keeping people is going to be a problem over the next 5 years. Quite honestly, I agree with that and would underline that with an exclamation point at the end, because it isn’t a talent problem, it’s a people problem. There aren’t enough skilled people to go around. That’s not going to change in the next 5 years. Actually, with baby boomers retiring, people choosing to work differently, there is going to be a people shortage, which just exacerbates the talent shortage.
 
00:04:30:15 - 00:04:54:16
Susan Fronk
That’s not going to change. Which then, number three, the concern is retention. So getting talent, yes. Finding what you need, yes. Wooing them to your organization, yes. But then the care and feeding of employees, the engagement, the culture development, the skills development, the way that you’re going to bring them along in their career. All of that is critically important.
 
00:04:54:16 - 00:05:32:29
Susan Fronk
And in the short term, 48 percent—maybe less than I would have expected to see—but  employers are feeling a bit better about turnover this year. That shows that maybe 2021 and 2022 coming out of the rodeo that was COVID, people changing for the sake of change, just wanting a different set of problems—maybe that has abated somewhat or, and/or probably, employers are understanding the kind of communications and the kind of culture and the kind of flexibility that employees are looking for.
 
00:05:32:29 - 00:05:48:12
Susan Fronk
So again, 48 percent in the short term, 45 percent in the long term—it’s not too much difference between the short-term and long-term views on all three of those top three concerns of employers in this National Business Trends Survey.
 
00:05:48:16 - 00:06:25:14
Sophie Boler
Absolutely. And thank you for covering all of that. There’s a lot of great data that you’ve just described, but I’d like to dive a little bit deeper into each of those top three concerns that you just described. So let’s start with inflation and the economy—one of the most uncertain aspects of them all. We recently polled more than 100 participants in our Talent Report+ webinar and the results showed that 19.74 percent believe that there will be a recession in quarter one, 39 percent believe there will be a recession in quarter two, 14 percent believe there will be one in quarter three.
 
00:06:25:14 - 00:06:41:18
Sophie Boler
Zero percent believe that we will end the year in quarter four with a recession. And that leaves about 26 percent believing that there just will not be a recession. So overall, maybe quarter two or maybe no recession at all seems to be their majority really.
 
00:06:41:18 - 00:06:45:01
Susan Fronk
What that tells me is that nobody knows.
 
00:06:45:03 - 00:06:45:22
Sophie Boler
Nobody knows.
 
00:06:46:22 - 00:07:10:19
Susan Fronk
And that doesn’t mean we’re not educating ourselves and reading as much and listening and learning and doing strategic planning. But who does know? And that’ll lead to a point I’d like to make later in the podcast about how we prepare. But when people talk about the new normal, I talk about the “no normal”: N-O.
 
00:07:10:29 - 00:07:30:19
Susan Fronk
And as leaders, we need to prepare for something we’ve never seen before. The fact that maybe Q2 is the most common response for a recession if there is one those are still very evenly spread, including no recession. So people really don’t know, and that is uncertainty, wow.
 
00:07:31:10 - 00:07:58:24
Sophie Boler
And in November, MRAr actually hosted our Economic Outlook event with Dr. Chris Kuehl, an expert economist, so he was able to describe a little bit more on what we’re seeing this year and we are on the verge of a downturn. But he would describe that it’s depending on how the consumer handles their spendings and extra savings. They could spend their way out of it or they could really hold onto their savings to plan for what’s coming for next year because they’re worried.
 
00:07:59:21 - 00:08:17:19
Sophie Boler
So really, how realistic is a serious downturn? How bad will inflation be? Those are all the key questions people are really asking today. So, Susan, what are some of the current key economic takeaways you consider of value to business leaders for this upcoming year?
 
00:08:17:23 - 00:08:51:16
Susan Fronk
Sure. Again, I’m not an economic expert, but synthesizing and distilling the information that I hear from hundreds and thousands of member companies knits together a pretty strong quilt of information. And that practical information underlines the fact that inflation drives wages, and especially in a year like 2022, where there was high turnover and people were leaving employment, moving to different employment, moving out of the workforce, deciding to do something completely different with their career,
 
00:08:51:27 - 00:09:16:29
Susan Fronk
companies were scrambling to try to A) for the right reasons, altruistic reasons keep their employees whole and help them keep up with inflation, where a loaf of bread or a tank of gas costs so much more than it did a year or two before, and second, stay in business … One of the things that MRA has is a thousand people registered and enrolled in our roundtable groups.
 
00:09:17:07 - 00:09:42:23
Susan Fronk
So we have 70 roundtable groups and those are peer discussions that really dive in professionally facilitated with a specific topic. And the economy has been a specific topic that we’ve covered a number of times. Our CEO and CFO roundtables have talked about the fact that the business cycle has speeded up so much where inflation is concerned. So you know that old adage, I don’t like, it do more with less.
 
00:09:43:24 - 00:10:10:20
Susan Fronk
We have to do things differently and we have to do things using technology and we have to determine where on that spectrum of personal customer care, face-to-face care versus an automated, lower cost, more repeatable option for whatever your customer service issue is probably service. And we have to decide for what segments of our business do we need to be on which part of that spectrum.
 
00:10:12:14 - 00:10:54:03
Susan Fronk
I was part of the bomb cyclone of December 2022, slept in a couple of airports, had six flights, made it home in time for Christmas. And that may be a bad example, but automation is good until it isn’t. And you have to give customers options. So allowing customers to choose when I want to self-serve, when I want to download something from MRA’s resource center and I don’t need to talk to somebody versus when do I have a really thorny employee relations issue and I need to talk to somebody with a lot of years of experience and I want to take an hour and do that and come up with options on how to solve my problem.
 
00:10:54:14 - 00:11:22:26
Susan Fronk
Whatever your product or service is, whether you’re making widgets or cars or a law firm or a marketing agency, what elements of your business cycle can you speed up and automate versus which ones do you need to really personalize, not leave that touch, make sure that your customers can choose to get out of being on hold for 7 hours while you wait in line.  They just won’t stand for it.
 
00:11:23:07 - 00:11:43:00
Susan Fronk
And we’ve seen automation in all aspects of our world, of course, that’s nothing new, whether it’s ordering fast food or how we build a car, but making it right for your business. What are you going to be known for? If it’s customer intimacy like we are at MRA, you better not automate everything.
 
00:11:43:04 - 00:11:43:27
Sophie Boler
No robots here.
 
00:11:43:27 - 00:11:50:13
Susan Fronk
No robots here, not yet. Unless it’s like to deliver our lunch. That I would like to do.
 
00:11:50:13 - 00:11:50:27
Sophie Boler
All right.
 
00:11:51:20 - 00:12:17:06
Susan Fronk
But Dr. Kuehl said a number of things. You know, if inflation drives wages, most of our CEO and CFO roundtables are talking about the fact that that will moderate this year, that last year they were doing double merits or they were doing more frequent merits, or they simply boosted people’s wages because they knew what was happening in the employee’s personal lives and they needed to make sure they kept pace.
 
00:12:17:19 - 00:12:43:14
Susan Fronk
So if it was 6 or 7 percent on average last year, this year they’re looking at probably 3 or 4 percent. So moderating to what we would consider to be a more traditional curve. But I think employers need to be very tuned in and aware of the economic signals for their own industry because it isn’t that skills are somewhat transferable but not always transferable.
 
00:12:43:14 - 00:13:06:29
Susan Fronk
And so if you need a specific kind of engineer, you might need to do something very different for that engineer than you do for the rest of your team. And HR has always been hesitant to not be consistent, to treat you different than you. And I say the time has come when you need to be custom, you need to go small.
 
00:13:07:11 - 00:13:37:01
Susan Fronk
We need to know what Sophie wants and thinks is important versus what Sarah thinks and wants is important versus what Jeremy thinks and wants is important. So harder for human resources, but more effective if we’re going to go small and customize. That’s not going to happen in the blink. That’s a trend I see happening. And it’s not just with employee benefits, but with customer selection.
 
00:13:37:22 - 00:13:40:01
Susan Fronk
What do how customers want what you do?
 
00:13:40:15 - 00:14:05:21
Sophie Boler
And that’s a great point to bring up and the EA survey actually showed that 93 percent will be replacing staff due to voluntary turnover, whereas 71 percent will be hiring due to newly created jobs. So if business is good and hiring is high, let’s talk about talent and the workforce shortage. So not only is it hard to find people these days, but it’s also hard to keep them.
 
00:14:06:07 - 00:14:13:13
Sophie Boler
So do you have any insights to share to our listeners today in finding and recruiting workers today?
 
00:14:13:24 - 00:14:41:09
Susan Fronk
Good question. It is a big question and I’m always inspired by our members because there’s lots of creative, innovative things going out there. So there’s dozens of different things we could talk about, but I would kind of group them into two big buckets. One I’ll call human resources is actually sales and marketing, and the other is creativity and flexibility and skill utilization.
 
00:14:41:09 - 00:15:08:17
Susan Fronk
So some of you listening might know that my husband is a human resource director and so he’s recruiting all the time. Let me give you a real anecdote. He’s very creative and he’s a great sourcer. He’s led some employees to us as well. But one Sunday recently he said, “I’ve just got a few, I just got a few phone screens to do and I’ll be done in time for the Packer game.”
 
00:15:08:28 - 00:15:35:19
Susan Fronk
Great. So I hear him on the phone in the office. He steps out and he goes, “I think I’ve found our new great specialty, blah, blah.” I said, “Wonderful.” He didn’t look happy. So what’s the problem? He said, he has 12 interviews this week. This is someone who had gone on LinkedIn, checked 17 applications, applied to 17 jobs. Twenty-four hours later, had 12 interviews.
 
00:15:35:21 - 00:15:36:00
Sophie Boler
Oh.
 
00:15:36:10 - 00:15:43:10
Susan Fronk
But here’s the difference. He said only two of those interviews were a human being who called and talked to me.
 
00:15:43:16 - 00:15:43:28
Sophie Boler
Really?
 
00:15:45:17 - 00:15:50:19
Susan Fronk
You can set yourself apart with the personal touch in an automated world.
 
00:15:50:28 - 00:15:51:06
Sophie Boler
Absolutely.
 
00:15:51:12 - 00:16:15:24
Susan Fronk
You might need to use technology to scale and to reach and to find. But then how you serve up, we call it at MRA warm bread. I got that from a human resource professional who worked here, and that’s what they did at church. Somebody visited them, sign the visitor’s book, and then a committee, a warm bread committee, was assigned to make that person feel welcome and invited back again.
 
00:16:16:10 - 00:16:35:19
Susan Fronk
So at MRA, we talk about warm bread. Once we find a candidate that we’re interested in, who’s going to email them? What photo are we going to send them? What link to a video that describes who we are? What little swag bag are we going to deliver into their house to say, “We want you here and this is where you belong”?
 
00:16:35:24 - 00:16:36:11
Sophie Boler
I love that.
 
00:16:36:20 - 00:16:47:02
Susan Fronk
Yeah. So all different kinds of warm bread. It doesn’t have to be expensive. Once I took a picture of somebody and then Photoshopped the new candidate’s head on there. I said, “Picture yourself here, at MRA.”
 
00:16:47:05 - 00:16:48:01
Sophie Boler
I love that. That’s creative.
 
00:16:48:01 - 00:16:50:11
Susan Fronk
He said yes. So it worked.
 
00:16:51:08 - 00:17:14:07
Susan Fronk
Mm. I’ve dropped little things off at people’s house. You know, you have to be careful that you don’t look like a stalker. If they’re expecting you and they know you’re going to drop something off, it really sets you apart. So human resources is in sales and marketing, and people like to know that they have attention, that they’re going to be treated differently than a number.
 
00:17:14:26 - 00:17:38:13
Susan Fronk
And so back to the story at hand. My husband was successful out of 17 prospective applications and 12 interviews in getting this individual to join their team. It doesn’t always happen. Sometimes you’re a competitive payer and somebody just outpaces you by many thousands of dollars. All right. But you’re going to win more often than you lose.
 
00:17:39:01 - 00:17:39:27
Sophie Boler
And you’re going to keep them too.
 
00:17:40:06 - 00:18:02:17
Susan Fronk
You are going to keep them, too. So sales and marketing, it’s not just the interaction with the candidate, it’s the supports that human resources have that tell that candidate or potential candidate who you are and how you operate and what your behavior is, as an organization. So I would say be a secret shopper.
 
00:18:02:29 - 00:18:31:10
Susan Fronk
Ask somebody on your team—because if you’re close to it, you think what you have online is great, you think your application is great, you think your process is great—to have somebody who you trust kick the tires, go through that process, find out how long it takes to get back to that individual, see what is the look and feel and culture that is described by your company website, by your candidate experience page?
 
00:18:31:20 - 00:18:58:03
Susan Fronk
We really have to be in sales and marketing, and human resources I think gets that and they’re embracing it, but it is a different skill set, or at least an add-on skill set. And so the second thing is flexibility and creativity. Since there is a people shortage and not just a talent shortage, you have to be flexible and creative in finding skills that might transfer and that you could develop.
 
00:18:58:19 – 00:18:59:03
Sophie Boler
Absolutely.
 
00:18:59:07 – 00:19:32:20
Susan Fronk
So I guess companies that say, Here’s someone with a military background and they were in administration and database. All right. First of all, I love hiring veterans. But second of all, that’s a rigorous skill set that you understand that person has the aptitude and the interest to learn what you need. Maybe you don’t actually need that specific software package or background.
 
00:19:32:20 - 00:19:46:14
Susan Fronk
You could look 6 more months in natural that position, or you can have 6 months with someone who’s leaning in, who’s saying, “I can learn this. I learned that.”
 
Sophie Boler
Exactly.
 
Susan FronkAnd they can be a great employee by the time you might find the perfect employee.
 
00:19:46:27 - 00:20:04:14
Sophie Boler
And we just had a podcast on nontraditional candidates and all of the great things they can bring to a company. So you just talked about skilled workers. So what about those younger, somewhat unskilled workers? How do you get them? What do you do with them?
 
00:20:05:01 - 00:20:39:14
Susan Fronk
What do you do with them? Well, they’re our future. So I would say you do everything with them. You didn’t quite ask the question this way, but something that I love to see and something that I’ve been told helped me in my career: All feedback is good, so all feedback is good. If you believe that you’re working for a manager who not only wants the company to succeed, but wants you to succeed, then embrace that feedback.
 
00:20:39:21 – 00:21:11:03
Susan Fronk
Good or bad, constructive criticism or “atta girls” and “atta boys.” Embrace that because it helps shape your development and what you’re going to do next in your career. So if you have a coach, be the best player you can be. And that is to say, I would seek out feedback. I would go to someone—my boss, a different person, a colleague—and I would say, “I just gave that little presentation at the management meeting.
 
00:21:11:03 - 00:21:39:15
Susan Fronk
What could I have done better? How did you think it went over? How did the message land? What could I have, what could I have done differently?” If you’re waiting for feedback, hopefully it’s happening regularly, but asking for feedback and asking for development and asking for coaching and not just the applause. Younger workers, newer managers, that’s really, really helpful.
 
00:21:39:29 - 00:22:00:17
Susan Fronk
Think about it. It changes the timber of the conversation. If you and I were a direct reporting relationship. You’re my boss and I’m coming to you maybe doing a performance review. You’re saying, “Okay, Susan, there’s there’s five things you do well, and there’s a couple things I’d like you to improve upon.” Right away I’m like, Whoa. Right? Even if it’s internal.
 
00:22:01:14 - 00:22:22:24
Susan Fronk
But if you flip that and you’re my boss and I come to you all the time and say, “Hey, Sophie, that presentation that I gave or that report that I made, what feedback do you have for me?” then I’m leaning toward you and you’re leaning toward me, and I’ve asked for that feedback. It changes the whole conversation.
 
00:22:22:24 - 00:22:23:26
Sophie Boler
That’s great advice.
 
00:22:23:26 - 00:22:26:26
Susan Fronk
Yeah, it’s really kind of the number one thing.
 
00:22:27:00 - 00:22:28:16
Sophie Boler
That’s great advice I can use too.
 
00:22:29:27 - 00:22:30:23
Susan Fronk
When you’re my boss.
 
00:22:32:05 - 00:23:05:19
Sophie Boler
Companies are also utilizing the strengths of younger workers in areas like technology, including software programing, integration, drones even, in gaming, and younger workers are really taking the lead on social justice, social media platforms as well as public presentations, like you mentioned. And in fact, one of our most downloaded podcasts was talking about emerging leaders with Kate Walker and how to really help upskill them and prepare those new emerging leaders.
 
00:23:06:02 - 00:23:17:25
Sophie Boler
So I know you covered this a little bit, but do you have any other advice for upcoming and emerging leaders? And what did you yourself take advantage of when you were an emerging leader?
 
00:23:18:19 - 00:23:45:10
Susan Fronk
Yes, well, what we talked about with feedback. I really tried to be a great player, not a perfect player. You’re going to make mistakes. I’ve made plenty, but always saying, “I want to be the best, help me be the best.” Second, it’s a phrase I’ve used before many times in management meetings and all staffs and things. The world is full of problem identifiers.
 
00:23:46:08 - 00:24:16:01
Susan Fronk
It’s rare to have problem solvers, and as a young or emerging leader, you want to make sure you understand what’s the problem to be solved. For example, if you’re in human resources, you may think your goal is to write an employee handbook. That is a step toward the goal. To understand, you need to say, What does a handbook do for the company?
 
00:24:16:01 - 00:24:45:17
Susan Fronk
So what? Well, a handbook should improve communications, decrease turnover, increase employee engagement, allow the human resource department to be more efficient and spend more time on employee relations things and culture instead of just answering questions. So you have to look beyond, especially as a new leader. But this goes for people of all ages, for all levels. Some people say, “Here’s my list of things that I did.”
 
00:24:45:17 - 00:25:18:00
Susan Fronk
So what? What did those things do? So that insight to say if I did this, if I wrote the best handbook and communicated it well and that was the best job you ever saw, what would you be experiencing? What would the company be experiencing? Positive and negative? What would make that the best handbook you ever saw? Now, that’s a small example because it’s a handbook, but it goes to, it goes to understanding the importance of the business and not just a task. Does that makes sense?
 
00:25:18:00 - 00:25:42:19
Sophie Boler
That makes sense. That’s a good example. And we also have other great resources to address the talent concerns out there. For example, MRA’s Talent Report, Monthly Talent Report, is just a monthly publication that really shares workforce information and innovations. We also have the Talent Report+ webinar series and we have linked both of those in the show notes.
 
00:25:42:23 - 00:25:54:28
Sophie Boler
So you can go check those out after this podcast. So we really talked about recruiting. Now let’s focus on retention. What matters most to employees, on retention?
 
00:25:54:28 - 00:26:22:24
Susan Fronk
Sure. Hearkening back to the National Business Trends Survey, again. The top three, no surprise, are number one: competitive pay: 86 percent. So that was important. I can’t imagine it wasn’t 100 percent because competitive pay, the table stakes. To me that’s not unless you’re going to be in the top 10 percent, unless you’re going to be that company in your market that everybody knows pays more than everybody else.
 
00:26:23:08 - 00:26:53:08
Susan Fronk
It’s just table stakes. You have to be competitive because it’s a dissatisfier, or not a satisfier. Our competitive pay are just table stakes. If you don’t pay competitively, people will leave. If you do pay competitively, that doesn’t mean people will stay. It just is a ticket you have to punch. So spending time to make sure that you’re competitive on pay, very important to most employees. Second is work-life balance.
 
00:26:53:08 - 00:27:29:05
Susan Fronk
Seventy-six percent of respondents said work-life balance and again, I don’t know why it wouldn’t be 100 percent. Well, I suppose some people don’t want work-life balance, but I don’t know who those people would be. But work-life balance. People just want, I think this translates sometimes in news outlets to work-life balance, meaning people want to work less. That could be true for some people, but work-life balance to me and how I see it played out in our hundreds and thousands of member companies is that employees want flexibility to do what’s important outside of work.
 
00:27:29:15 - 00:28:04:27
Susan Fronk
Their work still needs to get done and maybe they have no problem working 40 or 50 hours a week, whatever their job requires, but they want to be able to provide childcare. They want to be able to attend a school recital. They know they have elder care issues. Life is very fast and very complicated, and the trust bridge that’s built with employees to say, I understand you’re going to give 100 percent to your job, but some flexibility in how you get that is what they’re looking for today.
 
00:28:05:28 - 00:28:38:26
Susan Fronk
And that’s tied to the third one, too, about flexibility and how people work. That doesn’t mean just remote work. I look at it this way and how I’ve seen it borne out in our members. It depends on the position. Some positions can’t be remote, some are performed better in a team environment and some employees, it’s a privilege to work remote versus, you know, if that isn’t a top performer or if they’re a brand-new employee, maybe they need to work in the office, maybe they need to work with their colleagues to learn their business.
 
00:28:38:26 - 00:29:02:25
Susan Fronk
So I look at that as a wonderful conversation to have, preferably before somebody is hired, to say what are your expectations and what can this organization provide to you? But it doesn’t stay static. This should be an organic, ever-changing conversation that an employee is having with their manager because life circumstances change.
 
00:29:03:28 - 00:29:21:26
Sophie Boler
And you have some, it depends on the person too. Because it was funny, I was having a conversation with my boss and she’s, “Why are you emailing me at 10 p.m.? 11 p.m.?” But it’s sometimes people like working those hours. Maybe you don’t work at 6 a.m., but maybe I’ll be on my computer at midnight giving you what you need.
 
00:29:22:13 - 00:29:46:08
Susan Fronk
You know, you just busted me. I thought you were talking about me. But, what I’m very clear about with everybody I work with is that just because I choose to work that way doesn’t mean you need to work that way. And I try to remember to hit delayed deliver to tomorrow morning at 8:00. But honestly, that takes an extra 5 seconds.
 
00:29:46:15 - 00:30:02:26
Susan Fronk
And so as long as I have this trusting, open communication with everybody who works with me, I say just because you get pinged at 10:00, don’t respond. And even when they respond, I say, please don’t respond. And I know that they really do understand that this can wait.
 
00:30:03:05 - 00:30:14:08
Sophie Boler
That’s that’s just something I’ve seen nowadays. People don’t need to be working the typical 9 to 5 or 8 to 5. They work when they feel the most productive.
 
00:30:14:21 - 00:30:32:29
Susan Fronk
As long as the results are there. In fact, we have a great example of that. And I won’t use her name because I didn’t ask permission to. But we have a new manager here who’s worked with the company for 23 years. She worked in the office for her first 6 months to learn the ropes. So this is 23 years ago.
 
00:30:33:26 - 00:30:48:07
Susan Fronk
She worked for 6 months, learned the operations of the business, became a high-performing employee. We knew she could be trusted, knew how to solve problems, was really great at her job. Then she became a remote employee for 20 years.
 
00:30:48:14 - 00:30:49:01
Sophie Boler
Really?
 
00:30:49:05 - 00:31:13:21
Susan Fronk
Yes. We’ve had remote workers for a long time, but they earned that privilege and they proved their stripes. So when it became time to promote someone from within, she threw her hat in the ring and said, “I’ve raised my children. I’ve needed that flexibility. Now I’m ready for a different stage of my career and I’d love to be considered as a manager.”
 
00:31:14:14 - 00:31:15:10
Susan Fronk
That was so perfect.
 
00:31:15:22 - 00:31:17:28
Sophie Boler
She was prepared.
 
00:31:18:03 - 00:31:39:06
Susan Fronk
Yes, right. So that conversation should be ongoing and organic and as custom as it can be. If you’re a manufacturer, there’s a process, there’s a workflow. People can’t just decide to stay at home if they’re needed for that kind of workflow. But to the extent it can be, I think that’s going to be the way of the workforce.
 
00:31:39:24 - 00:31:47:24
Sophie Boler
Okay. And with that in mind, what are the best suggestions you have for employers to encourage a culture that is fully engaged?
 
00:31:47:28 - 00:32:33:00
Susan Fronk
Yes, well, there’s a thousand things that we could talk about. I will end with one that is universal and specific. So not this big revelation, not this golden key of member of employee engagement, but universal. Email has become the bane of most people’s existence. Getting through your emails, figuring out why am I copied on this email, figuring out what action do I need to take because of this email, and also wishing several times a day, Why didn’t this person just pick up the phone and call me?
 
00:32:33:00 - 00:33:01:04
Susan Fronk
So human beings for thousands of years have been relational. You see expressions, you break bread together, you grab a cup of coffee on a Zoom call, you maybe take a few moments for chitchat before you jump into the meat of the meeting. But I see employees—and not just young or new employees—I see employees of all career levels using email as a dodge.
 
00:33:01:29 - 00:33:28:11
Susan Fronk
They send an email because it gets it off their desk. It puts the monkey on your back, and I don’t have to think about it until they respond. That isn’t the way things work best. So pick up the phone, reduce the email clutter, copy people with specific requests. “Sophie, I need you to do this. Sarah, would you respond to this?
 
00:33:30:05 - 00:34:09:26
Susan Fronk
John, please note the green highlights below, that’s what I need you for.” Help them move business along and everybody … “A” players want to be surrounded by “A” players. So let’s help everybody be the best they can be. And I think one way to do that is to make it personal and to not hide behind emails so that we’re all trying to declutter our email inbox and get through the day as fast as possible and a personal conversation … How many email strings have you got that have 10 things and people say, Read from the bottom up.
 
00:34:09:27 - 00:34:27:21
Susan Fronk
I will see below and I will read from the bottom because I like you and you asked me to. But far better would have been if you just picked up the phone or call a 15-minute meeting—I love 15-minute meetings—and say, “We’re going to knock this out, we’re going to solve this whole problem by having a conversation.”
 
00:34:27:27 - 00:34:34:04
Sophie Boler
And I’m sure you can do more that way than trying to read the email for 10 minutes and figure it out and respond.
 
00:34:34:04 - 00:34:39:28
Susan Fronk
Ten people reading the email for 10 minutes.
 
00:34:39:28 - 00:34:52:00
Sophie Boler
So that’s a good ending point. We’ve really talked about so much here today, and you shared some great ideas. Do you have any parting thoughts for our listeners today as they go on to this new year?
 
00:34:52:05 - 00:35:16:08
Susan Fronk
Well, most companies think 2023 is going to be a good year. Maybe not the breakneck year that 2022 was, but supply chains, computer chips are still a problem, but supply chains have moderated a little bit, the supply chain bottlenecks. There’s still growth projected by the majority of companies. Companies are still hiring. The majority of companies are hiring.
 
00:35:16:18 - 00:35:43:09
Susan Fronk
So I think 2023 is going to be a really good year. Whether a recession comes, whether it doesn’t come, whenever it comes: Companies would be well advised to have a plan B and every good leader I know does, because being agile in the face of changing economic conditions is what it’s all about. No one, not even Dr. Kuehl, can project if there’s a recession, how deep it’s going to be, how long it will last, what industries it will affect.
 
00:35:43:25 - 00:36:07:19
Susan Fronk
So business leaders would be well advised to say, here’s my plan, but here’s my plan B, and even plan C if this doesn’t happen. So agility in the face of changing conditions and rewarding people who are problem solvers and can flex and change—that’s really what’s going to be very important for business in 2023.
 
00:36:07:19 - 00:36:18:21
Sophie Boler
Well, thank you for all that advice and your leadership. There’s a lot to think about this year, but hopefully this helps set you up for success this year. And we’re here for you too always.
 
00:36:18:21 - 00:36:19:09
Susan Fronk
24/7.
 
00:36:19:09 - 00:36:24:16
Sophie Boler
Always. So Happy New Year and thanks for joining us today. And thank you, Susan.
 
00:36:25:14 - 00:36:26:17
Susan Fronk
Thank you.
 
00:36:26:17 - 00:36:48:24
Outro
And that wraps up our content for this episode. Be sure to reference the show notes, where you can sign up to connect for more podcast updates. Check out other MRA episodes on your favorite podcast platform. And as always, make sure to follow MRA’s 30 minute THRIVE so you don’t miss out. Thanks for tuning in and we’ll see you next Wednesday to carry on the HR conversation.’’’

No Degree, No Experience, No Job? Tap Into Non-Traditional Talent

Description: Now is your time to start tapping into non-traditional candidates! We sat down with a non-traditional candidate herself, MRA Recruiting Business Partner, Amanda Derks, as she gave complete insight into how non-traditional talent can be your greatest company assets, develop and improve business processes, and build a community of inclusion.
Key Takeaways:
With the right candidate, anything can be taught. The top goals to finding the best candidate are their willingness to learn; be loyal to your company, customers, and goals; and most of all, fit within your team in the group that they’ll be working with.
According to Business North, an estimated one in three Americans have a criminal record. That’s approximately 70 million people. These individuals of the 70 million have a 27 percent unemployment rate. That's a huge portion of the potential workforce that isn’t even tapped into yet.
Top five skills any successful candidate needs: confidence, positive attitude, communication skills, adaptability, and dependability. 
Resources:
Amanda's article on DEI and the benefits of internal and external motivation for companies 
Let's Connect:
Amanda Derks Bio 
Amanda's LinkedIn Profile 
Transcript:
00:00:00:02 - 00:00:23:03
Intro
Hello hello, everybody, and welcome to 30 minute THRIVE, your go-to podcast for anything and everything HR, powered by MRA - The Management Association. Looking to stay on top of the ever-changing world of HR? MRA has got you covered. We’ll be the first to tell you what’s hot and what’s not. I’m your host, Sophie Boler, and we are so glad you’re here. Now it’s time to THRIVE.
 
 
00:00:23:14 - 00:00:46:14
Sophie Boler
Today, we’re really going to chat all about the nontraditional candidate and the benefit of tapping into them as true talent. So luckily, I am here with an expert on that topic because she’s a nontraditional candidate herself.
 
00:00:47:00 - 00:01:11:18
Sophie Boler
She’s had just about every diverse experience you could think of from working in the Department of Corrections to an admissions counselor to a teaching position, to now working as a recruiter. Amanda’s broad experience really fits the description of a nontraditional candidate, and she’s here to tell you more about it. So thanks, Amanda, for joining us today. I’m excited to learn more from you and chat with you today.
 
00:01:12:07 - 00:01:15:14
Amanda Derks
Thanks for having me. I’m excited to talk about my experiences as well.
 
00:01:15:19 - 00:01:26:15
Sophie Boler
Absolutely. Well, before we get started, let’s start with a couple fun questions first. So I guess I want to know what you’re currently binge-watching on TV or Netflix.
 
00:01:27:19 - 00:01:45:02
Amanda Derks
Well, I’m constantly searching for the next great thing, right? So I recently just finished binge-watching “The Handmaid’s Tale” on Hulu, and that was really dramatic, really a lot of twists and turns in the story and I can’t wait for the next season to come out.
 
00:01:45:02 - 00:01:50:16
Sophie Boler
Oh, good. I’ll have to try that one out. What’s that one about or what like genre does that fit under?
 
00:01:50:18 - 00:02:10:00
Amanda Derks
I would say drama and kind of like a maybe sci-fi, but a little bit different than that because it’s not like aliens or exploration of space, but more of a nonfiction, governmental, huge change.
 
00:02:10:04 - 00:02:24:20
Sophie Boler
Oh, well sounds interesting! I’ll have to check it out. My second question for you is a this-or-that question. So and that is: coffee or soda? How do you, how do you get yourself caffeinated in the morning or throughout the day?
 
00:02:25:12 - 00:02:39:20
Amanda Derks
In the morning, I definitely prefer coffee and I have a specific coffee that I like. It’s only sold at Costco. So that’s the reason for my Costco membership, so that I can purchase my silver Colombian Kirkland brand coffee.
 
00:02:41:03 - 00:02:57:11
Sophie Boler
That’s funny. Let’s dive into our topic for today, and that’s nontraditional candidates. So we know that you are currently working as a recruiting business partner here at MRA, but you have a lengthy background of diverse experience prior to this position. So can you talk a little bit about your background?
 
00:02:58:06 - 00:03:29:11
Amanda Derks
Sure. So I’ve always really had a great passion for working with people and making a difference in people’s lives and working to improve the communities that I’m involved in. After high school, I went to college. I got a bachelor’s degree in administration of justice from Marian University in all disciplines at the institution. I’ve always been an advocate for attitude and work ethic
00:03:29:18 - 00:03:52:09
Amanda Derks
over time, in a seat or a role. And, you know, when I found myself in the position where I’m like I am like a subject matter expert in like everything I’m doing with the Department of Corrections. I feel like I know this from back, and I just was like really wanting more. And I started looking into my past and I realized that I’ve really kind of always been all over the place, like a jack of all trades.
 
00:03:52:09 - 00:04:23:18
Amanda Derks
And I think that really puts me in a position where I can highlight that I’m adaptable and I’m able to move and transition and be successful in any position that I’m in. And recruiting seemed like a natural fit for me to transition to because of my personality, my positive attitude, my ability to build relationships with people from all backgrounds and all positions, and my take-no-prisoners attitude, pun intended.
 
00:04:25:04 - 00:04:46:06
Amanda Derks
And so, you know, when I’m reaching out, I found this opportunity with MRA, and I just decided I was going to go for it. And I really sold my transferable skills. And luckily for me, the manager at MRA that hired me saw my sparkle and recognized the value that I would bring to the recruiting team and MRA as a whole.
 
00:04:46:18 - 00:05:21:10
Amanda Derks
And I’ll forever be grateful for her, for believing in me and giving me a chance to prove myself as a HR professional and being able to shine for all MRA members. And that being said, when I look at filling vacancies in any company that I’m working with, it’s essential for  me to convey to them to focus on those transferable skills—attitude and the drive and passion and ambition—as opposed to a specific number of years of experience or time in a role.
 
00:05:21:18 - 00:05:37:12
Amanda Derks
Because with the right candidate, anything can be taught. The top goals to finding the best candidate is their willingness to learn; be loyal to your company, customers, and goals; and most of all, fit within your team in the group that they’ll be working with.
 
00:05:37:13 - 00:05:55:12
Sophie Boler
Absolutely. I like what you just said at the end where it’s like skills can be taught but positive attitude and drive is, that can’t be taught. That’s like an inside motivation thing, so I really like that. But how has being a nontraditional candidate really helped or hindered you in the workplace?
 
00:05:57:06 - 00:06:32:01
Amanda Derks
Most of all, I believe it really humbled me. I’ve learned so much and gained so much confidence in myself and the value that I have to offer as a professional. And I have to admit that I have more knowledge and expertise in recruiting than I even thought that I had before I started working in this field. Look at me now—I’m doing a podcast! I do have a little bit of imposter syndrome sitting here, but when I think about it, I really am a subject matter expert in the area of working with nontraditional candidates
 
00:06:32:01 - 00:06:51:07
Amanda Derks
and second-chance work force, as I have 13½ years with that population and working to rehabilitate them, supporting them through programing to gain skills and knowledge and become better, more productive citizens when they release from incarceration. And ultimately, that helps promote and reduce recidivism.
 
00:06:52:01 - 00:07:01:01
Sophie Boler
Absolutely. And we’re hearing more and more that employers should really consider and turn to nontraditional candidates. So why is this?
 
00:07:02:03 - 00:07:37:22
Amanda Derks
I mean, bottom line, nontraditional candidates offer new perspectives, a diversity of thought, skill, experience, and ideas. This is one of the greatest assets any company can tap into for development and improvement of business processes and for building a community of inclusion. I just worked with another recruiting business partner, Maddie Davis, and we just wrote an article on DEI and the benefits of internal and external motivation for companies, and that was just published in the November issue of MRA Edge.
 
00:07:37:22 - 00:07:40:08
Amanda Derks
So go check that out for more information on DEI.
 
00:07:40:09 - 00:08:09:00
Sophie Boler
Oh yes, I will. But kind of going along with that, as we’ve been saying and we’ve mentioned this in past podcasts, but we’re in a “Great Sansdemic” time, where employers are really struggling to find candidates. So they need to be kind of extra creative in the way that they’re recruiting. So do you have anything to comment about this as a recruiter yourself and being in a Great Sansdemic era?
 
00:08:10:08 - 00:08:53:20
Amanda Derks
Yeah. So a nontraditional candidate is somebody that is not going to fit into a traditional job description or something that you would be searching for typically, based on education and experience. These candidates could be from backgrounds in other fields, like in the industrial production setting, somebody with welding or fabrication experience, they might be looking to transition to a CNC career. Also, a nontraditional candidate could fall into the category of somebody that is looking for a career change like I was, taking transferable skills and refocusing them into a new industry.
 
00:08:54:18 - 00:09:06:03
Amanda Derks
Or it could be somebody that’s returning to the workforce after some time away, like a stay-at-home mom or somebody that was recently incarcerated and looking to build their life back up in a more positive way.
 
00:09:06:10 - 00:09:13:10
Sophie Boler
Mm hmm. So you definitely recommend that employers should start tapping into this group of people?
 
00:09:13:22 - 00:09:45:07
Amanda Derks
Oh, absolutely. Especially in these times where it’s so hard to find candidates that check every box that you’re looking for. That would have been typically very easy in the past where you would have, you know, tens, hundreds of applicants that are overqualified for a position  applying, across the board that’s not the case right now. So opening up to looking at candidates that might have a different background than you would traditionally look for is absolutely a great way to start to find some qualified people for the position.
 
00:09:45:15 - 00:09:59:18
Sophie Boler
And you just tapped a little bit into this now, but do you have any other advice that you can give to employers who are really struggling to find candidates, maybe they’ve considered nontraditional candidates, but are still, you know, struggling with that?
 
00:10:00:20 - 00:10:25:08
Amanda Derks
Absolutely. My best advice would be just to really think big picture. So you want to be at 10,000 feet. It’s really easy to get hyperfocus just because you’re getting questions and a lot of pressure from all areas of business, from managers, from teams looking to field roles, emails for updates, you know, comments and the need for more labor is never ending.
 
00:10:25:11 - 00:10:51:07
Amanda Derks
So, you know, when we’re hearing things like, where has everyone gone? And there used to be people lining up for these jobs. You know, overall, it appears that there is a workplace shortage. There’s a labor shortage, and there are people out there that are people looking for jobs. There are people in positions looking to accelerate their career or change careers, or reenter the workforce.
 
00:10:52:19 - 00:11:01:15
Amanda Derks
And those categories of candidates just really, I find, are not being tapped into like they could be.
 
00:11:01:17 - 00:11:02:09
Sophie Boler
Absolutely.
 
00:11:02:19 - 00:11:37:10
Amanda Derks
And also, when employers are considering, you know, tapping into candidates who are currently in or recently released from the custody of the Department of Corrections, there are tons of factors to consider, especially if you’ve never employed people from this category before, okay? So really have a discussion with, you know, a top-level, your team hiring managers and decide will this population of candidates add value to the company and why? What’s the reason?
 
00:11:37:13 - 00:11:59:08
Amanda Derks
Why do we need this? Is this the direction where we want to go? Because when you when you do that, you might have to revisit policies that you have in place, SOPs, training programs. You may need to develop new training programs because you’ll be accepting people that might not have the exact skills, check every box that you’re looking for.
 
00:12:00:12 - 00:12:30:10
Amanda Derks
You know, and you have to think about flexibility in the options because people from the second-chance workforce are going to often have commitments to the Department of Corrections still, whether if they’re on probation or parole. So they would have treatment groups, meeting with their probation/parole officer, you know, other types of requirements and guidelines that part of their, you know, their probation and parole rules and agreement.
 
00:12:30:10 - 00:12:54:17
Amanda Derks
And how are you going to support that? Are you going to offer, you know, flexible scheduling? Are they going to be able to make up hours that they would miss because they have these appointments and are then is that going to entail extra steps in the hiring process? Are you going to require extra references, creating a contact and starting a relationship with probation officers or staff in the community corrections offices?
 
00:12:54:17 - 00:13:29:21
Amanda Derks
And how is this going to affect your current workforce? What types of support, what type of information are you going to share with them? Obviously, when you would hire somebody with a criminal history, they don’t come in with a sign on their back. But as people start to talk, they might see a trend. And, you know, sometimes concerns might come up and you need to preplan and be ready to respond, to be consistent with your response, to communicate down to, at all levels, to know what expectations are in those situations.
 
00:13:29:21 - 00:13:57:09
Amanda Derks
You know, and with that being said, in order to tap into this workforce, you could start building relationships with local community corrections offices, staff and employees, also with local jails that are close to your facility. You know, build that relationship. You could even start to employ workers through Huber program before they’re released from county jail or work-release programs,
 
00:13:57:09 - 00:14:23:11
Amanda Derks
before they were released from prison. You know, and there are a couple of resources that we can share with any listeners that might require that through the Wisconsin Department of Corrections page, there’s a resource of a list of all the probation/parole offices and also the Wisconsin Center System Information and contacts, where you can look at people to start promoting and building those relationships.
 
00:14:24:07 - 00:15:08:14
Amanda Derks
Also, there is a federal income tax credit that is available for companies that do employ people from nontraditional candidates. So, you know, if they’re convicted of a felony and released from prison for that felony within 1 year, the data hire, you’re eligible for this tax credit. Then there’s a long list of categories for the nontraditional second-chance workforces, you know, such as families that are receiving temporary and long-term assistance, veterans, people in a vocational rehabilitation program, food stamp recipients, SSI recipients, and people that are on long-term unemployment benefits.
 
00:15:09:05 - 00:15:21:23
Amanda Derks
So it’s really just, it’s really important for employers to be connected to these resources as well as the candidate so that there is a way for them to meet in the middle and get connected to increase employment.
 
00:15:22:05 - 00:15:51:17
Sophie Boler
That’s some great information and great advice for employers. And here at MRA, we do have volunteer opportunities through our DEI group I lead to volunteer on doing mock interviews with incarcerated individuals, which I think is just a great opportunity and great volunteer opportunity. And you kind of mentioned some of those. But we did talk about advice for employers.
 
00:15:51:17 - 00:16:07:06
Sophie Boler
But now I want to move to any advice you have for the nontraditional candidates themselves. So do you have any motivation or words of advice for nontraditional candidates to really boost their chances of getting the job they want?
 
00:16:07:06 - 00:16:40:05
Amanda Derks
Absolutely. You know, like I just mentioned, take advantage of all the resources that are available to you. Make connections with local job centers, search for programs and grants for a second-chance workforce, nontraditional workers. Look at the employers that are in your target or demographic that are part of these programs and reach out to them. Look into tech college programs and grants. There are bountiful amounts of trades careers right now that are just begging for people.
 
00:16:40:05 - 00:17:14:11
Amanda Derks
So if you could get in and get some education to learn some of some skills that would benefit employers, that’s going to make you more valuable in the market. And as you mentioned, participating in mock interviews—that is so important. I mean, being able to be confident in what your strengths are, what you would need to work on, and knowing specifics about your employment history and being able to talk about what you’ve done and what you can do and what you want to do.
 
00:17:14:11 - 00:17:31:11
Amanda Derks
I can’t tell you how many people that I talk to that they can’t remember where they worked or when or what they you know, they might remember a little bit about what they did there. But before you’re going to actually participate in an interview, practice, practice, practice. Know what you’re going to say because people are going to ask you the same thing.
 
00:17:31:11 - 00:18:07:06
Amanda Derks
If they want to hire you for a job, they want to know what have you done and what can you do for us. So at minimum, be able to be confident in your response to that? Put yourself in a position to be successful, Be honest, be candid with interviewers and employers. Most employers do background checks. So if you’re coming from a previous incarceration or you have a criminal history, just be comfortable talking about that because— and know that that’s okay.
 
00:18:07:06 - 00:18:35:11
Amanda Derks
There is, there was an article posted by Business North in October of 2022, and it stated that an estimated one in three Americans have a criminal record. So that’s approximately 70 million people. These individuals of the 70 million have a 27 percent unemployment rate. So that is a huge portion of the potential workforce that isn’t even tapped into yet.
 
00:18:35:18 - 00:19:04:16
Amanda Derks
So if we can get word out to this workforce and get them ready and eager and wanting to work and put forth effort to be a good employee and maintain stable employment, that’s going to be a great asset to this, the vanishing labor force that we’re  in right now. And with that, you know, you can, like I said, look for programs.
 
00:19:04:16 - 00:19:26:09
Amanda Derks
So there’s a Pathway Home 2 grant. And this program starts working with incarcerated individuals that have 20 to 180 days left to serve in home, incarceration, jail or Huber. So that’s just another example of a program that employers can look into and candidates can look into to get connected.
 
00:19:26:22 - 00:19:40:12
Sophie Boler
It sounds like there’s a lot of great resources that they can really get connected to, like you said, and take advantage of. That fact that you said, by the way, it’s very shocking. It’s like a very, I don’t know, eye opening.
 
00:19:40:14 - 00:19:41:04
Amanda Derks
It is, it is.
 
00:19:42:00 - 00:19:55:08
Sophie Boler
But as we wrap up here, I guess just kind of looking at nontraditional or not, what are the top five skills that any successful candidate needs today? I mean, we see the recruiting world changing every other month.
 
 
00:19:56:18 - 00:20:00:00
Sophie Boler
So what is your top five skills that you think are the most important?
 
00:20:00:20 - 00:20:32:13
Amanda Derks
So these top five skills, attributes that I’m going to share I think are important for anybody, whether you’re interviewing for a production line position or the CEO of Fortune 500 company, right? You need to have confidence—confidence in yourself, confidence in your ability, and confidence to do a job and make a difference. Positive attitude. Being positive, smiling, and having people feel welcomed when you’re around.
 
00:20:33:08 - 00:21:03:14
Amanda Derks
It speaks volumes and that’s what employers are looking for. They want somebody that is going to create a culture of inclusion and positivity. Communication skills, being able to communicate day-to-day functions, being able to communicate issues and problems that you may be having that would affect your ability to come to work or do work, changes in your situation, and being able to communicate with coworkers, supervisors, everybody.
 
00:21:04:02 - 00:21:37:21
Amanda Derks
So important. Adaptability and flexibility. So the only constant in this world is change. So being able to embrace that, see the positive in things, and move forward is absolutely a necessary trait. And strong work ethic and dependability go hand in hand, in my opinion. If you show up for work and you work hard and you produce results and you’re being productive and helping out your employer, that’s always going to be noticed and it’s hopefully appreciated.
 
00:21:38:09 - 00:22:01:19
Sophie Boler
That’s a great list of five. I feel like we need to like, pin that on the wall. But we’re running out of time for today, unfortunately. I wish we could talk about this for hours, but thank you so much for joining us today and really sharing your story, your expertise, and your advice to employers out there, and nontraditional candidates when it comes to nontraditional candidates.
 
00:22:01:19 - 00:22:23:08
Sophie Boler
So if you liked our chat and topic today, make sure to share this episode, like, comment, or leave a review. We really appreciate that. Amanda’s email and her LinkedIn profile are in the show notes, so if you’d like to connect with her, I really encourage you to do so. I’m sure she’d be happy to chat with you.
 
00:22:23:17 - 00:22:29:09
Sophie Boler
Otherwise, thanks for tuning in today and we will see you next week. Thank you again, Amanda, for joining us today.
 
00:22:29:09 - 00:22:31:02
Amanda Derks
Thank you for having me.
 
00:22:31:02 - 00:22:53:08
Outro
And that wraps up our content for this episode. Be sure to reference the show notes, where you can sign up to connect for more podcast updates. Check out other MRA episodes on your favorite podcast platform. And as always, make sure to follow MRA’s 30 minute THRIVE so you don’t miss out. Thanks for tuning in and we’ll see you next Wednesday to carry on the HR conversation.
 
 

Culture Is King! How Do You Reign?

Description: What do leadership, quiet-quitting, and employee engagement have to do with the company culture? We sat down with Lisa Pook, MRA's Organization Development Director, to find out the answer and so much more.
Key Takeaways:
Leadership plays a huge role in sustaining a positive culture. They articulate the values of the organization, which drives that culture. They have to model the behaviors they want to see in the organization as a whole. 
During conflict within a team, a manager needs to ask themselves why their team is not working well together and what they need to do to fix that.
Employee engagement goes hand-in-hand with company culture. The biggest driver of employee engagement is the relationship between the supervisor and the employee. An employee who feels their supervisor cares about them as a person is more likely to feel they are a part of a positive culture.
Let's Connect:
Lisa Pook bio  
Lisa's LinkedIn Profile 
Transcript: 
00:00:00:02 - 00:00:23:03
Intro
Hello hello, everybody, and welcome to 30 minute THRIVE, your go-to podcast for anything and everything HR, powered by MRA - The Management Association. Looking to stay on top of the ever-changing world of HR? MRA has got you covered. We’ll be the first to tell you what’s hot and what’s not. I’m your host, Sophie Boler, and we are so glad you’re here. Now it’s time to THRIVE.
 
00:00:23:13 - 00:01:00:14
Sophie Boler
Hello everybody and welcome to this episode of 30 minute THRIVE. Today I’m joined with Lisa Pook. She’s our director of organizational development here at MRA, and just a pleasure to work with, so I’m really glad you’re here today, Lisa. But Lisa’s focus is really helping members build an organizational culture that helps engage employees while also achieving business success, whether it’s working on talent management strategies or change management, facilitating workgroups to improve teamwork, coaching individuals and everything you can think of,
 
00:01:00:14 - 00:01:07:00
Sophie Boler
Lisa really focuses on all of those. So thank you for joining us today and talking about culture today.
 
00:01:07:01 - 00:01:11:04
Lisa Pook
I’m delighted to be here with you, and you are just a delight to work with as well.
 
00:01:11:05 - 00:01:27:12
Sophie Boler
Thank you, Lisa. Before we get started, we like to really kick off the episode with a couple of fun questions. So I think the first thing we can talk about is about books. So is there a book that you’re currently reading or have just read that you would recommend to our listeners today?
 
00:01:27:14 - 00:01:51:18
Lisa Pook
Sure! My book club that I belong to, this month’s book is “The Red Tent” by Anita Diamant, which is an older book. But it’s interesting. It’s a kind of historical fiction taking place in biblical times. So that’s just kind of interesting. And it just focuses a lot on relationships between women, I think is one of the things that I took out of the book.
 
00:01:51:18 - 00:01:52:18
Lisa Pook
So I really enjoyed it.
 
00:01:52:21 - 00:02:12:05
Sophie Boler
Okay, well, that’s good recommendation. I’ll have to check it out. And then the other question we have for you is a this-or-that question? So this morning, I mean, walking to my car, it was a little cold out and I’m still a little chilly today. So our this-or-that today is: winter or summer? What kind of person are you?
 
00:02:12:19 - 00:02:18:15
Lisa Pook
Summer.
 
Sophie Boler
You are?
 
Lisa Pook
Yeah, but maybe like later summer toward fall. I like that time.
 
00:02:18:20 - 00:02:19:09
Sophie Boler
That’s a good answer. It’s like where it’s not too hot and you’re kind of transitioning.
 
00:02:23:10 - 00:02:27:08
Lisa Pook
And not like a 90s kind of a temperature.
 
00:02:27:08 - 00:02:39:11
Sophie Boler
That’s too hot. Thanks for answering. But all right. Well, let’s dove right into our topic for today and that’s culture. So my first question for you is what impact is leadership have on company culture?
 
00:02:39:11 - 00:03:08:10
Lisa Pook
It’s a huge impact because leadership of the organization, I think, first of all, is the group that articulates what the values are of the organization, which drives that culture. So they’re articulating it. They’re also in the position that their behaviors, they have to model the behaviors and their behaviors are very visible. Others with The words that they use are really important and have an impact on how that culture is sustained through the organization.
 
00:03:09:09 - 00:03:21:01
Lisa Pook
And I think it’s also really important that leaders are giving a consistent message. So you’re hearing the same thing. You’re seeing the same thing. You’re observing those values throughout that leadership.
 
00:03:21:04 - 00:03:42:09
Sophie Boler
And I think it’s just important to note that culture stretches so much more than just your leadership team. They are the ones giving you examples, you wanna, they’re leading by example, but it comes down to so much more than leadership. So do you have any advice for leaders to just, around culture in general?
 
00:03:43:06 - 00:04:09:04
Lisa Pook
I think it’s really, really important for leaders to be very closely tuned in with the people that they’re leading. So whatever level you are in the organization, I think leaders need to make a point of asking questions and listening and really paying attention to what their employees are telling them or maybe not telling them.
 
00:04:09:06 - 00:04:19:12
Sophie Boler
Absolutely. Yeah. So we’re hearing more about the employee value proposition, EVP. Can you talk a little bit more about what this means?
 
00:04:19:12 - 00:04:46:19
Lisa Pook
Yeah. So when we’re talking about employee value proposition, it’s really the it’s what the employee gets from the employer for being an employee. So culture, I think, is a part of it, a piece of the value proposition. It’s probably an important piece of it, but it’s not everything that the employee is getting from the employer. I think it makes sense to pay attention to that.
 
00:04:46:20 - 00:04:54:18
Lisa Pook
And it’s certainly something that can help new employees, you know, make the decision that they want to come and work at your company or not.
 
00:04:55:07 - 00:05:05:22
Sophie Boler
So I’m not too familiar with what exactly is employee value proposition. So how would you explain it to someone who doesn’t really know what that phrase means?
 
00:05:05:22 - 00:05:37:23
Lisa Pook
Yeah. So it’s kind of the what the company is saying to the employee that says this is what you’re going to get by working here. And so I’ve heard it described also as externally it’s the company brand. That’s the external message. But the internal message is the EVP, or the employee value proposition, and that, really smart companies are listening, asking and listening to their employees.
 
00:05:37:23 - 00:05:43:20
Lisa Pook
So it’s really something that is created based upon what employees are telling them is important to them.
 
00:05:44:13 - 00:05:44:21
Sophie Boler
Okay. Thanks for clarifying.
 
00:05:44:21 - 00:05:45:21
Lisa Pook
Sure.
 
00:05:46:09 - 00:05:55:22
Sophie Boler
So another issue we’re hearing about is quiet quitting. That’s kind of been the buzzword for a while now. So how is this really impacting culture in the workplace?
 
00:05:55:22 - 00:06:23:12
Lisa Pook
Well, you know, I think that the idea of quiet quitting is wrapped up with employee engagement. Right? And so that whole, people started talking about quiet quitting as kind of this way that people are doing just enough. They’re doing their job, but they’re not necessarily volunteering for above and beyond or going the next step or maybe not even looking at, you know, how can I be more creative or innovative or things like that.
 
00:06:24:05 - 00:06:59:13
Lisa Pook
So, you know, if we take a look at employee engagement, we say engagement is maximizing the time and your effort for the company, using that time in that discretionary time and effort towards your company. Right? So if now we’re seeing that people aren’t necessarily looking at that and just doing what’s required of them, I think that now has an impact on the culture overall because again, culture is the stuff that you’re observing, the look, the feel, how we do things around here.
 
00:06:59:16 - 00:07:27:05
Lisa Pook
So probably has an impact like that. I think ultimately though, I was reading a couple of articles that were talking about quiet quitting and what one of the articles said, in essence, quiet quitting—that whole label might be more of a thing that management has labeled. This author kind of suggested, it’s kind of a cop-out to say, you know, my team isn’t working well because they’re quiet quitting.
 
00:07:27:15 – 00:07:47:08
Lisa Pook
And I think a manager needs to say, my team is not working well together. What do I need to do about that? So I think it’s kind of, maybe an interesting thing to explore, but I don’t know that we necessarily are capturing all the things that’s important with it.
 
00:07:47:12 - 00:07:58:07
Sophie Boler
That’s some good advice. I feel like I’ve seen that word and that phrase so much even over social media and articles, like you said. It’s like, what really is this and why is it happening?
 
00:07:58:07 - 00:08:19:07
Lisa Pook
Well, and I don’t think employees say “I’m quiet quitting.” It’s employees’ managers saying, “Don’t know what you’re doing. We’re going to call it quiet quitting.” You know, again, that goes back to this whole idea of we know that the biggest driver of employee engagement is that relationship between the supervisor and the employee. An employee who says, my supervisor knows me and cares about me.
 
00:08:19:17 - 00:08:26:22
Lisa Pook
That’s going to engage me more. And that has a piece of the overall culture of the organization.
 
00:08:26:23 - 00:08:40:15
Sophie Boler
Absolutely. Well, it’s certainly something, like, maybe we will start getting more comfortable with or learning more about, like you said. But so culture in the work environment, how can we enhance the workplace that contributes to a positive culture?
 
00:08:41:07 - 00:09:03:16
Lisa Pook
So you’re talking about work environment, like just the physical work environment, right?
 
Sophie Boler
Right.
 
Lisa Pook
Things that are … and I think it’s nice to come to a place that’s comfortable, right? And it’s nice to move into a new building, perhaps, or have new, have it remodeled. And I think that sends a message to employees: We care about the environment that we’re in.
 
00:09:03:16 - 00:09:28:23
Lisa Pook
We want you to feel stimulated or we want you to feel good about where you’re coming. So I think that has a that has a big impact on it. It’s that visual that that makes us feel like, hey, it’s a comfortable place to be working, you know, and I know there’s there’s the examples of the companies that have the ping-pong tables and things like that.
 
00:09:28:23 - 00:09:45:13
Lisa Pook
I mean, I guess for some people that appeals to them and that’s part of something that’s going to be fun or energizing or whatever for employees. So I think that it has an impact on it. I don’t know that there’s one that you say across the board, this is what an environment needs to look like.
 
00:09:46:20 - 00:10:10:19
Sophie Boler
Yeah, exactly. And going off of that, Lisa, about how you said the ping-pong tables and I think even just speaking for MRA, we have a very open work environment and we’ve got some cafes and that just helps the open work environment, helps with collaborating with team members and kind of drives the point that culture is more than having ping pong tables.
 
00:10:10:22 - 00:10:13:19
Sophie Boler
I don’t know if you have anything to add on to that, but.
 
00:10:13:20 - 00:10:36:14
Lisa Pook
Well I think that’s just a good point. It’s not, the culture isn’t, you know, just having some activity place or having the, you know, the free lunches or all of those kinds of physical things. Those are nice. And it certainly makes people, can make people feel really good about working in it. But culture is much more sophisticated than that.
 
00:10:36:16 - 00:10:37:14
Lisa Pook
It’s not just things.
 
00:10:37:17 - 00:10:55:12
Sophie Boler
Absolutely. And as we see more companies kind of transitioning to a remote environment, a virtual environment, how does that come into play with culture and, you know, not having people physically in the office—how would that affect culture?
 
00:10:55:14 - 00:11:29:01
Lisa Pook
Yeah, I think companies are feeling the effects of that and trying to figure out what they want to do or how they maintain some of those values. I think it’s hard with remote workers—remote relationships are hard, right? So culture, a lot of culture depends on those interactions that we have with others, whether they’re coworkers or colleagues in a different department or with my manager or with senior leadership.
 
00:11:29:01 – 00:11:56:16
Lisa Pook
All of those interactions and relationships are important. So when you have people who, when you’ve got people working in areas where it’s harder to make those casual interactions, we gotta figure out ways to make those happen. Now, we’ve got companies all over the place that have multiple sites, right? And so there are people who technically work remotely from each other all the time.
 
00:11:56:16 - 00:12:12:04
Lisa Pook
And that works. That works. But I think when you’re talking about teamwork, we probably have to put a little more effort into structuring some of those remote interactions, particularly when people are completely remote, where there’s no opportunity to get together.
 
00:12:12:04 - 00:12:42:18
Sophie Boler
I did a capstone project on remote work and coworker relationships, peer relationships, and that’s what I found was that it’s, it’s not like you have to force the conversations remotely, but it’s, you have to put in more effort on maybe we don’t talk about work 100 percent of the time we’re on the call. Maybe I try to get to know this person and maybe we do a group activity where it’s a game or something where you might need to put in a little more effort, but it’ll be worth it.
 
00:12:42:23 - 00:12:54:15
Lisa Pook
Right. And I think I think that’s what teams are finding, that you do have to put a little structure around it. And yeah, the you know, the, the opportunity to just talk about stuff.
 
00:12:54:15 - 00:12:55:01
Sophie Boler
Yeah.
 
00:12:55:01 - 00:13:17:21
Lisa Pook
So and it can be awkward when we’ve got six people on a screen and I want to talk to you, Sophie, but everybody else is in the room too. So I’ve also had examples of, you know, some managers will even use the breakout rooms so that you can have a little bit of more one on one or a couple of people to communicate that way.
 
00:13:17:21 - 00:13:30:11
Lisa Pook
And then coming back to the whole group, doing the round robin. You know, the question, like I loved your this-or-that question or the book question, just some of that type of stuff to get people to share, I mean, that’s important.
 
00:13:30:15 - 00:13:41:05
Sophie Boler
Absolutely and kind of going off that, technology is playing a big role in this as well. So how can technology help with creating a culture, helping with company culture?
 
00:13:41:05 - 00:13:44:03
Lisa Pook
Well, I think technology can make things efficient for us.
 
00:13:44:06 - 00:13:44:09
Sophie Boler
Yeah, absolutely.
 
00:13:45:12 - 00:14:18:20
Lisa Pook
So in terms of culture and efficiency, helping me do my job better and more easily is huge. And I think the other thing is, you know, maybe this goes along with that the whole environment when it’s, when it, when we see that our company is investing in things that make our work better, that says something about what the company values.
 
00:14:19:01 - 00:14:33:13
Sophie Boler
Absolutely, completely agree with that. So the next question revolves around measuring culture, which I know sounds like maybe that’s not doable in measuring employee experience. So what can you comment about that?
 
00:14:34:07 - 00:15:11:21
Lisa Pook
I struggle with that because some of our members come and say we want to do, we want to measure culture. And I think culture, you need to know what questions you’re asking. What do you want to know, which isn’t necessarily measuring the culture. I don’t know that you can actually do that. I think we can observe the culture and we can ask questions and we can listen and we can go to our employees and ask them what makes it a good or not-so-good place to work and act on those.
 
00:15:11:21 - 00:15:35:23
Lisa Pook
And that’s the qualitative way of measuring culture, right? When we take that information and do something with it. I think if you want to do surveys of employees, then what you need to ask is what is it that we want to know? And I don’t think you can survey people with kind of broad cultural questions. I think you’ve got to be thinking about it.
 
00:15:35:23 - 00:16:05:01
Lisa Pook
So if it’s employee engagement, if it’s satisfaction? We can measure those things. If it’s something around diversity and employees’ perceptions of diversity and inclusion initiatives in the organization, we can measure that. We can ask those types of questions. So I think organizations that are looking at their culture and want to have some sort of measurement data need to really look inside and decide what their questions are.
 
00:16:05:05 - 00:16:32:18
Sophie Boler
Absolutely. I think it’s harder to survey culture, like you said. A statement I’ve heard is, “Culture is something an organization has” or “Culture something in organization is.” And I agree with that “Culture something in organization is” statement. So I think that just statement kind of says it’s more it’s a natural thing. It’s not something you can really force upon people.
 
00:16:32:18 - 00:16:39:09
Sophie Boler
You can’t just have a culture. It’s the people, other things that you’ve mentioned make up a culture.
 
00:16:39:22 - 00:17:06:11
Lisa Pook
And I think you can influence that. Absolutely, you can influence it. I mean, it goes back to your leadership question. That’s where, you know, that’s a real strong force and management, employer-employee relationships is a strong way of influencing culture. And we all know examples of bad cultures, right? And we can go back and say, well, what influenced that? Was it relationships?
 
00:17:06:11 - 00:17:29:00
Lisa Pook
Was it all sorts of things that forced us to that negative culture? But I think you’re right. You can’t take it in exclusion of everything else, right? It’s very, you got to look at the whole system. And once you start messing or tweaking parts of it, it’s going to it’s going to shift everybody else too.
 
00:17:29:00 - 00:17:33:23
Sophie Boler
It’s a bigger thing than most people think. Culture influences everything.
 
00:17:34:02 - 00:17:35:06
Lisa Pook
Yeah, absolutely.
 
00:17:35:06 - 00:17:42:20
Sophie Boler
Yeah. So as we just kind of wrap up our time for today, do you have any lasting thoughts to share with our listeners today?
 
00:17:44:11 - 00:17:45:00
Lisa Pook
Sure.
 
00:17:46:06 - 00:17:47:04
Sophie Boler
That’s a hard question.
 
00:17:48:04 - 00:18:28:12
Lisa Pook
No, I think, I think if we are really concerned about the culture of our organization, then leaders in our organization need to listen to employees. And I think employees on that end need to constructively and clearly give feedback about what’s working and what’s not working. I think good conversations give you a lot of information about where the culture is, the current state of it, and if things need to change, that’s where you’re going to get your information as well.
 
00:18:29:00 - 00:18:54:04
Sophie Boler
That’s some great advice. So thank you, Lisa. But thank you again for joining us today and speaking on the workplace culture topic. It’s something that really makes a business unique and it affects all aspects of business too. So, happy to have heard your input and your advice on this. But make sure to connect with Lisa. We have linked her email as well as her LinkedIn profile in the show notes along with some resources.
 
00:18:54:04 - 00:19:13:22
Sophie Boler
So if you’d like to continue the conversation or ask her any questions I’m sure she’d be happy to connect. But other than that, make sure to leave a comment or review if you like the episode and found it beneficial. Next week we will be discussing the nontraditional candidate and recruiting, so you won’t want to miss that.
 
00:19:14:08 - 00:19:35:22
Outro
But other than that, thank you again, Lisa. It was a pleasure talking to you. And we will see you guys next week. ’’’
And that wraps up our content for this episode. Be sure to reference the show notes, where you can sign up to connect for more podcast updates. Check out other MRA episodes on your favorite podcast platform. And as always, make sure to follow MRA’s 30 minute THRIVE so you don’t miss out. Thanks for tuning in and we’ll see you next Wednesday to carry on the HR conversation.
 
 
 
 

Your Path to Success: Is It a Ladder or Lattice?

Description: This week, MRA's Vice President of Human Resources, James McDevitt uses his 25+ years of HR knowledge to discuss what it takes to create your path to success! He covers career ladders vs. lattices, core competencies, employee development tools, and more. 
Key Takeaways:
Employees are generally more engaged when they believe their employer is concerned about their growth, provides opportunities to reach individual career goals, and allows them to contribute to the company’s success.
Some paradigms have also shifted, making career paths even more important. Workers value job enrichment, flexibility, and career development more than job security and stability.
Frame the career path discussion to include regular development conversations within the performance management cycle!
Resources:
Developing Career Paths Publication 
Let's Connect:
James McDevitt Bio 
James' LinkedIn Profile 
Transcript: 
00:00:00:02 - 00:00:23:03
Intro
Hello hello, everybody, and welcome to 30 minute THRIVE, your go-to podcast for anything and everything HR, powered by MRA - The Management Association. Looking to stay on top of the ever-changing world of HR? MRA has got you covered. We’ll be the first to tell you what’s hot and what’s not. I’m your host, Sophie Boler, and we are so glad you’re here. Now it’s time to THRIVE.
 
00:00:23:14 - 00:00:46:03
Sophie Boler
Hello, everybody, and welcome to this episode of 30 minute THRIVE. We’re so glad you’re here and joining us today. And today, James McDevitt is also joining us today. He’s our vice president of human resources here at MRA. And he’s really here to discuss, give advice on career paths. So thanks for being here today, James.
 
00:00:46:04 - 00:00:47:00
James McDevitt
Thank you for inviting me.
 
00:00:47:00 - 00:01:05:23
Sophie Boler
Excited to talk with you. But before we get started, we really want to start with a fun question. And as our listeners know, we’re located in Wisconsin, and we had our first true snowfall yesterday, which was crazy. So I want to ask you what your favorite thing to do in the winter, wintertime activity is.
 
00:01:05:23 - 00:01:25:21
James McDevitt
I actually love taking my wee Westie, our little pet West Highland Terrier, out for a walk in the snow. He loves the snow. He’s white, so you can’t see him very well. But he loves when it’s really deep, and  he’s only got little legs. He jumps across the snow and he loves hunting deer and squirrels and whatever’s out there.
 
00:01:25:21 - 00:01:27:03
James McDevitt
He just has a great time.
 
00:01:27:06 - 00:01:31:06
Sophie Boler
That’s just funny to hear—a small little Westie hunting a big deer.
 
00:01:31:08 - 00:01:33:01
James McDevitt
Oh, yeah. Yeah, for sure.
 
00:01:33:02 - 00:01:33:22
Sophie Boler
Small but mighty.
 
00:01:33:23 - 00:01:34:15
James McDevitt
Absolutely.
 
00:01:34:21 - 00:01:48:14
Sophie Boler
Well, that’s great. But let’s dive into our topic for today, and that is career paths. And we’re going to start a little broad. So can you tell me what the difference between an organizational career path and a personal career path is?
 
00:01:48:20 - 00:02:24:10
James McDevitt
Sure. Great question to start with. They’re definitely related; however, as the name implies, organizational career path is more work related than personal career path. It’s more personal related. So you’re looking at, for a personal career path, you’re looking at development skills, sorry, skills that you need to develop for yourself. Maybe the softer skills, maybe time management skills, maybe dealing with people, managing people, leading people, getting people motivated, engaged, etc., whereas a traditional organizational career path would be more job related.
 
00:02:24:12 - 00:02:43:19
James McDevitt
How do I want to, maybe I want to be CEO one day. How do I become CEO? What jobs do I need to do? What skills do I need to learn? So the personal career path also would include what do you enjoy doing? What do you like doing? Do you like working with people? So you may want to consider a career with people that would help enable that.
 
00:02:44:03 - 00:02:52:22
James McDevitt
Do you like building things? Do you like working with computers? These are all different things that you would bring into either a personal plan or an organizational plan.
 
00:02:53:03 - 00:02:58:04
Sophie Boler
Absolutely. And I would imagine that those two plans would kind of overlap at some point.
 
00:02:58:06 - 00:03:03:08
James McDevitt
They would. They’re absolutely intertwined. They’re not mutually exclusive at all.
 
00:03:03:19 - 00:03:10:22
Sophie Boler
Sure. Can we also talk about how you can find and really define your career path? How do you get started?
 
00:03:11:06 - 00:03:37:11
James McDevitt
So this is unique to everybody out there in podcast land. Everybody is different. Everyone has their unique talents, objectives, interests, personal circumstances. And the best way to start really is to think about what interests you, what gets you out of bed in the morning, what excites you. And as I said earlier, if you love working with people, then you’re going to think about a career within that field that enables you to do that.
 
00:03:37:18 - 00:04:03:15
James McDevitt
If you like building things or analyzing data to find patterns, then to each their own, everybody’s different. So every career path by definition will be different depending on the individual. And then once you find what excites you and what interests you, research the types of jobs that are in those fields that will enable you to fulfill that passion. Know the requirements and know the requirements for the roles.
 
00:04:04:06 - 00:04:09:07
James McDevitt
Do you need a degree, for example. If you do need to college certificate, a college degree, what in?
 
00:04:09:17 - 00:04:10:01
Sophie Boler
Right.
 
00:04:10:14 - 00:04:35:06
James McDevitt
Is an associate’s degree sufficient? Do you need a full bachelor’s degree? Do you need a postgraduate degree? What about certifications? What about experience? These are all the things to think about. It’s all great. I love working with people—yay! —but what does that actually mean? And what do I need to do to build my experience to make me employable in that field?
 
00:04:35:22 - 00:04:54:15
James McDevitt
And the other thing I would say is you can do it at any time in your life, at any time in your career. We’re not all defined by what we decided to do when we were 14 and met with our school careers counselor. Some people just drift into work and drift into school and they find a career and they land on their feet and everything’s fine.
 
00:04:55:04 - 00:05:18:03
James McDevitt
So other people do that, and then 5, 10, 15 years later they go, “I don’t really want to do this anymore.” And that’s okay. You can change your career at any time. You can define your career path at any time. I actually did something like that in my mid- to late-20s where I wasn’t particularly satisfied in the role I was in.
 
00:05:18:12 - 00:05:34:15
James McDevitt
And I sat down and thought about what do I really want to do when I grow up? And I decided what I wanted to do, which was different, I decided I did the research well, what do I need to get into that field? I needed to get some qualification. So I went to night school. I got the qualifications, I switched careers.
 
00:05:34:15 - 00:05:37:03
James McDevitt
And here we are a number of years later.
 
00:05:37:06 - 00:06:02:10
Sophie Boler
Yeah, that’s a great example to bring up. And I like how you kind of emphasize that a career path doesn’t have to be set in stone. It can change. Absolutely. And it’s unique to everybody, you know, depending on what they like to do and maybe something they want they want to test out. But moving on, can you talk a little bit more about core competencies and how this really relates to career paths?
 
00:06:02:11 - 00:06:21:10
James McDevitt
Absolutely. So core competencies are really the key skill sets that you need to do a job, whatever they may be. They can be technical by nature. I need to learn a skill to do a specific task, or they may be a little bit softer, such as the ability to do a podcast for MRA.
 
00:06:21:10 - 00:06:23:05
Sophie Boler
I think that that’s a pretty tough skill.
 
00:06:24:08 - 00:06:51:22
James McDevitt
In a previous organization—and I think it is a good example of how core competencies work—in a  previous organization, which was a research facility, we identified core competencies for our technical staff and we have different types of research required, different type of skills. But we identify four key core competencies that if you’re a technician, if you need if you learn how to do these four competencies, you could actually work in any of the research fields.
 
00:06:52:13 - 00:07:12:15
James McDevitt
And so we established the four key competencies and everybody was trained in those four key competencies, core competencies. So that meant that they could work across the organization as and when needed, which made it more interesting for them because they were not doing the same thing day in and day out and from an organizational point of view made it much more flexible.
 
00:07:13:14 - 00:07:35:03
James McDevitt
We then identified further key core competencies in each of the specific research fields. So if you were going to specialize in research X, then you got training on the additional core competencies next. So that helped develop someone’s skills, someone’s expertise, and obviously met our, at that time, our customer needs by having skilled technicians work on that project.
 
00:07:35:10 - 00:07:45:03
Sophie Boler
Absolutely. So we talked a little bit about career paths in general, but what about nontraditional career paths? Is there anything else you want to address with that?
 
00:07:46:11 - 00:08:14:10
James McDevitt
So the nontraditional career path could be defined as something that is traditionally filled by a specific gender. So, for example, engineering is traditionally identified as a male profession. So if a woman wanted to go into engineering, that would be considered a nontraditional. Likewise for men in nursing, nursing is considered a traditional female profession. So if you are a man wanting to be in nursing, that would be a nontraditional role.
 
00:08:15:14 - 00:08:49:05
James McDevitt
They also expand beyond that, could be an individual who decides to follow their passion in a different way. So instead of working in finance or working in HR, you might want to do something completely different. And especially with the younger generations these days and the advance of the internet and technologies and the gig economy, etc., there’s a lot of people out there following nontraditional career paths, being an influencer, traveling the world and recording video and getting sponsorship, and all that kind of good stuff.
 
00:08:49:05 - 00:09:01:05
James McDevitt
So not everybody needs to be in finance or HR or be an engineer. There’s certainly these days a lot of nontraditional career paths out there for people. But the key, again, is to find what find what interests you.
 
 
00:09:02:03 - 00:09:02:14
James McDevitt
Follow your passion.
 
00:09:02:14 - 00:09:19:12
Sophie Boler
Yeah. And we actually have a nontraditional candidate podcast coming up in just the importance of tapping into those nontraditional candidates. So can you talk a little bit about the difference between career paths and career ladders?
 
00:09:19:23 – 00:09:49:14
James McDevitt
Sure. So a career ladder—we’ll start there—is the traditional, very specific, like the rung of a ladder. You go from 1, 2, 3—technician 1, technician 2, technician 3, for example—fairly straight, as a ladder is, and so very linear. A career path is broader, broader by definition. It can include a comprehensive career path, may include promotions, but also lateral moves.
 
00:09:50:18 - 00:10:11:06
James McDevitt
And we’ll touch on this in a minute. But a previous organization I worked with was very keen on promoting broad career paths. Which meant so you’re not necessarily going to go from 1 to 2 to 3. You’re going to be looking at what skills do you need to learn in order to progress within the organization, in order to add value to the organization.
 
00:10:11:14 - 00:10:23:07
James McDevitt
And that may mean a lateral move. It may mean a temporary assignment somewhere learning a different part of the business. So a broad career path is much broader than a much more strict career ladder.
 
00:10:23:18 - 00:10:30:10
Sophie Boler
And then going off of that, what is the difference between the career ladder, which we just talked about, and a lattice?
 
00:10:30:17 - 00:10:50:14
James McDevitt
Right. So a new term for me anyway, recently. But it’s pretty much like what I said in terms of a broad career path. I think many people think a linear career path, as I said—1, 2, 3. But the lattice is more of a zigzag approach. You can go sideways in order to move forward. You can go sideways.
 
00:10:51:01 - 00:11:12:08
James McDevitt
You can learn new skills within the organization. As I said, in the previous organization I was in, that was the way to advance yourself. It was very few people went 1, 2, 3, now that’s it, you’re good. You really were encouraged to learn different parts of the business. You were encouraged to learn different skills. Temporary assignments were encouraged. It was a global organization.
 
00:11:12:08 - 00:11:40:14
James McDevitt
Overseas assignments were encouraged. Now that model is clearly easier to carry out in a larger organization where there are multiple opportunities; however, in a smaller organization we should think about that as well because it’s harder to do—you’re not going to send somebody overseas if you’ve got three locations in Wisconsin— but at the same time, you can also be thinking about those three locations if they’re different products, for example, or different services they offer.
 
00:11:40:23 - 00:12:09:01
James McDevitt
Well, if James is potentially a high-talent individual with a goal to be a successor to a leader one day, well, sending James to the facility in the other part of Wisconsin for a year to learn that business could be a really good move. It won’t necessarily be a promotion, it won’t necessarily be more money. But I would be learning something valuable for the organization and developing my skill set at the same time.
 
00:12:09:12 - 00:12:30:12
Sophie Boler
Absolutely. I think, like you just said, it depends on size of the company, your career path, your personal career path, your goals and intentions, whether you take a more lateral move or you do a ladder like you talked about. So how does making employee development a priority benefit the organization as well?
 
00:12:31:01 - 00:12:53:18
James McDevitt
I think this is a, it’s a no-brainer, really, from an organizational point of view. The cliche is true: If an organization doesn’t develop and doesn’t grow and doesn’t evolve, it will eventually stagnate, probably die. And there’s lots of companies out there that we could quote that unfortunately have carried out that business cycle. So how does a company evolve and how does a company grow organically?
 
00:12:54:00 - 00:13:23:23
James McDevitt
It grows through its people. And if the employees grow and develop new skills, improve their experiences, bring new ideas to the organization, whether they learn internally or they learn from external means, they’re bringing those ideas to the organization that can lead to new product development. It can lead to new, efficient, more effective processes. It can improve the bottom line and could improve the commercial side of the organization, and the company continues to evolve
 
00:13:23:23 - 00:13:28:09
James McDevitt
as the employees continue to evolve, the two go hand in hand. It’s a bit of a no-brainer.
 
00:13:28:20 - 00:13:42:18
Sophie Boler
And I think in terms of just attracting employees, too, I think speaking of the young, the younger generation side, I think employee development is something that is just very attractive when it comes to picking an organization.
 
00:13:42:18 - 00:14:05:06
James McDevitt
It is. It is. Some people are very happy coming in and doing what they do and going home again and that’s fine. I mention if you want to be a CEO earlier— not everybody wants to be a CEO and that’s completely fine. However, for many people, they’re looking to maintain that interest. They want to come, again they want to have a reason for getting out of bed and coming to work in the morning and doing the same thing day in and day out doesn’t float too many boats.
 
00:14:05:21 - 00:14:28:07
James McDevitt
So we’re looking for employees to have an interest, learn new things, be curious, to develop their skill set, to sharpen their soul. And that’s where personal development comes in. And the win for the businesses, as I said, if you’re developing new skills and you’re thinking of new ways of doing things, you can you can improve a process and save time and money to get the product out the door.
 
00:14:28:07 – 00:14:46:11
James McDevitt
You can bring in new product development, new ideas to go to market, different ways to market things. And that’s not some entity known as the corporation. That’s people who do that. It’s the people that work for you who are developing their skills, who are bringing new ideas and bringing new products to market. And that’s how the company works.
 
00:14:47:00 - 00:14:59:02
Sophie Boler
That’s a great point to bring up. So you are vice president of HR here at MRA, like we said. So what role does HR play in helping develop their employees and their career path?
 
00:14:59:04 - 00:15:21:05
James McDevitt
Absolutely. So HR among other groups such as the employees’ manager, we all have a role to play. We are the coach with a mentor. We can we can explain some of the things that the employee may not know about. But the key point I want to emphasize is that if we’re thinking of a bus, we may help change the tires on the bus, or we may advise where the bus should, you know which direction—
 
00:15:21:05 - 00:15:37:15
James McDevitt
if you want to go there, you may want to go there first. But the driver of the bus is the employee. The employee is responsible for their own personal development, their own career growth. As I said earlier, everybody’s different. Everybody’s unique. I wouldn’t expect you would want me to tell you what you should do with your career. That’s your choice.
 
00:15:37:15 - 00:15:59:16
James McDevitt
That’s your decision. And it’s based on your interests and your experiences and what you want and what you want to get out of life. My role is to support you with that. Sometimes I can help you think of things you may not have thought of. Sometimes I can advise you that you may want to think about that instead of this in order to achieve your goal, like the zigzag approach you know. “I want to be CEO tomorrow.”
 
00:15:59:16 - 00:16:24:18
James McDevitt
Well, let’s think about that for a second. And that’s where HR can be, HR and managers; managers, supervisors play an essential role in this as well. And you should be having a conversation with you manager and your supervisor. Where do you want to go? How do you want to get there? What interests you? What skills do I want to learn? Because the relationship between manager and employee is the most important relationship of any relationship.
 
00:16:25:01 - 00:16:43:06
James McDevitt
HR are there to coach, to mentor, to guide, to give additional information, to provide resources and help you think about things you may not have thought of before. Sometimes you may come and say, “I want to be, I want to do this. Any suggestions on how I can get there?” And that’s where HR can help.
 
00:16:43:12 - 00:16:56:20
Sophie Boler
I love the analogy of the bus. I think that’s a really good way to put it. And you just mentioned resources. So do you have any tools out there that can really help an employee?
 
00:16:56:20 - 00:17:18:18
James McDevitt
There’s a lot of tools. Some are self-evident. This traditional SWOT analysis, for example, is a tool that can be used. You don’t have to go online to do it. You can just do it yourself. You don’t have to pay anybody to do it. What are your strengths, weaknesses, etc., etc. Think about what you like to do. That’s a thought process, that’s a tool.
 
00:17:18:18 - 00:17:39:15
James McDevitt
Do a pros and cons list. What I mentioned before when I was younger and I thought, “I don’t want to do this anymore, what do I want to do?” I didn’t do a SWOT analysis, but I did a pros and cons list. “What do I like doing? What don’t I like doing?” And I went through the process and it was very helpful to help formulate, well what do I really want to do?
 
00:17:39:22 - 00:17:59:22
James McDevitt
And then the next step of the process was, well, what kind of jobs would help me do what I want to? And then the next step of the process was, well, what education, experience, qualifications do I need to have in order to do that? And as I said before, I went to night school for 2 years, got a qualification and I and I took my career in a different direction.
 
00:18:01:03 - 00:18:21:23
James McDevitt
Having said that, there are tests available, quizzes available online. Your organization may have access to some of those personality tests. You may have done them already. They’re helpful. They are useful. They can help identify personality traits that you’re strong in, maybe a little something that you may need a bit of development in developing certain parts of your skill set.
 
00:18:22:10 - 00:18:42:18
James McDevitt
So those are always helpful. And again, you can ask your HR department, is there any test that we have or quizzes or tools that we have within your organization that you can do to help formulate and really build, help with the conversation? “I think I’m good at this. I just did this test and it shows I actually I am.”
 
00:18:42:18 - 00:18:46:17
James McDevitt
Oh, yeah. So what does that mean and how can I move forward with that?
 
00:18:46:21 - 00:19:02:00
Sophie Boler
Right. Well, you’ve given some great advice this episode as we wrap up here. Do you have like a top three list of tips that you would give someone just starting their career journey or creating their career path?
 
00:19:02:07 - 00:19:31:18
James McDevitt
Sure. I’d start off by saying again what I said before. You can start or restart your career path at any time, and I’m an example of that. I was doing what I was doing. I didn’t want to do it anymore, what do I want to do? And I went off and did something else. So I know someone who at the age of 11 wanted to be a lawyer and she is now, she made herself be a lawyer and she is a lawyer and she loves it and she wouldn’t do anything else. Good for her.
 
00:19:32:10 - 00:19:49:20
James McDevitt
Not everybody’s like that. Not everybody knows what they want to do at the age of 11 or 12 or 14. And some people drift into jobs. Some people realize, actually, I drifted into this, but I quite like this. I enjoy this. And that’s great. And some people, as I said before, might wake up one day and say,
 
00:19:49:21 - 00:20:08:10
James McDevitt
“I don’t want to do that anymore.” That’s all fine. As I said before, everybody’s different. Everybody’s unique. You can start or restart your career path at any time. So my advice would be, don’t just think because you’ve invested 10, 15, 20 years in this career that you’re kind of stuck. I don’t believe that to be the case.
 
00:20:09:08 - 00:20:26:09
James McDevitt
The second thing I would say, and again, repeating what I said before, figure out what you like doing. What you enjoy doing again is a bit of a cliché. If you enjoy what you do, is it really work? Well, it probably is work.. You still got to get up in the morning and you’ve got deadlines and all the rest of it.
 
00:20:26:09 - 00:20:42:13
James McDevitt
But at the end of the day, if you enjoy what you’re doing and you feel passionate and you like the outcome of what you’re doing, that is so much better. It’s so much better. And if you feel you’re someone that wants to make a difference in the world and you can go home at night and say, “You know what, in my small way I did,” that is a good thing.
 
00:20:43:10 - 00:21:07:02
James McDevitt
And last and by no means least, enjoy yourself. You know, life is too short. If you can find something you like doing, enjoy yourself, learn new things as you go. Continue to be curious. Ask questions. No such thing as a dumb question. Ask lots of questions. Learn as you go. Progress your career and who knows where you’ll end up.
 
00:21:07:09 - 00:21:09:01
Sophie Boler
And you’re the driver of your own bus.
 
00:21:09:01 - 00:21:11:06
James McDevitt
And you’re the driver of your own bus.
 
00:21:11:06 - 00:21:12:02
Sophie Boler
That’s great advice.
 
00:21:12:02 - 00:21:15:00
James McDevitt
And you know what? You get to put the destination on the front of the bus too.
 
00:21:16:09 - 00:21:17:06
Sophie Boler
Change the map.
 
00:21:17:11 - 00:21:21:12
James McDevitt
Or you decide, I don’t want to go there anymore, I want to go somewhere else. That’s fine too.
 
00:21:21:12 - 00:21:45:00
Sophie Boler
Absolutely. Well, that’s a great wrap-up, James. So thank you so much again. That’s all the time we have for today. But we have linked James’ email as well as his LinkedIn profile in the show notes. So shoot him a message if you’d like to connect. If you like the episode or found it beneficial, we do encourage you to leave a review, leave a comment or subscribe on our website.
 
00:21:45:16 - 00:22:04:07
Sophie Boler
We would really appreciate that. Otherwise, we will see you next week when we’re talking about organizational culture with Lisa Pook, so you don’t want to miss that. But thank you again, James, and we will see you guys next week. And that wraps up our content for this episode. Be sure to reference the show notes, where you can sign up to connect for more podcast updates. Check out other MRA episodes on your favorite podcast platform. And as always, make sure to follow MRA’s 30 minute THRIVE so you don’t miss out. Thanks for tuning in and we’ll see you next Wednesday to carry on the HR conversation.
 

Generational Differences: The New, The Now, The Experienced

Description: The most multi-generational workforce in history currently exists. Five generations are working together today. Pretty eye-opening, right? Jim Morgan, Vice President of Workforce Strategies at MRA, is here to discuss how, contrary to what some believe, the presence of five generations in the workforce is not a problem; it is an opportunity.
 
Key Takeaways:
One size does not fit all across generations or within generations! And that becomes a big headache for employers because it’s a lot easier to say, “Everybody comes in at 8 and leaves at 5."
 It really is a matter of being intentional with people and adjusting according to each employee's needs. 
 
Resources:
Generations of Stereotypes
 
Let's Connect:
Bio - Jim Morgan
Jim's LinkedIn Profile
 
Transcript: 
00:00:00:02 - 00:00:23:03
Intro
Hello hello, everybody, and welcome to 30 minute THRIVE, your go-to podcast for anything and everything HR, powered by MRA - The Management Association. Looking to stay on top of the ever-changing world of HR? MRA has got you covered. We’ll be the first to tell you what’s hot and what’s not. I’m your host, Sophie Boler, and we are so glad you’re here. Now it’s time to THRIVE.
 
00:00:23:13 - 00:00:32:21
Sophie Boler
And I’m joined with Jim Morgan, our vice president of Workforce Strategies here at MRA. It’s good to have you back, Jim.
 
00:00:33:03 - 00:00:33:15
Jim Morgan
Good to be back.
 
00:00:34:01 - 00:01:00:15
Sophie Boler
Well, we talked last episode with Jim on the demographic problem or “the Great Sansdemic.” But today we’re here to really continue that conversation and talk about generational differences in the workplace. So a few podcasts ago, we actually talked about the candidate experience and you touched on how generational differences really plays into that experience. In fact, I recall that you grilled me on a few questions …
 
00:01:01:00 - 00:01:01:23
Jim Morgan
“Grill” is kind of a harsh word.
 
00:01:03:02 - 00:01:28:00
Sophie Boler
… On how I would approach a job search based on my interests and my generation. So we’ve brought you back today so I can grill you on this topic. But it is a good one and I have seen reports that talk about the fact that there are now five generations in the workforce. So potentially today’s workers could be working with a range from 20-year-olds to 70-year-olds.
 
00:01:28:00 - 00:01:48:04
Sophie Boler
So there’s a big gap there, but that has potential to have a huge impact in the workforce. So how can we make it all work? How can an employer expect us to work all together? Well, Jim is here to share some insights with us today. So let’s just mention the fact that between you and me, there are four generations.
 
00:01:48:04 - 00:01:51:23
Jim Morgan
Ouch! Well, welcome to you too!
 
00:01:54:01 - 00:02:11:18
Sophie Boler
We’re really looking at five different generations in the workforce, which include traditionalists, baby boomers, Generation X, Generation Y or millennials, and Generation Z. So, Jim, what does the generational makeup look like in the workforce right now?
 
00:02:12:08 - 00:02:39:20
Jim Morgan
Right now, the millennials are taking over. They’re at about 35 percent of the workplace. The Gen Xers are at about 30 percent. My group, the baby boomers, are slowly going out the other side, so we’re down to about 23 percent. And the young kids coming up, the Gen Z’s—your group—is making up about 12 percent. And there’s still a little sliver of that traditionalist, probably less than about 1 percent right now.
 
00:02:40:01 - 00:02:59:16
Sophie Boler
Okay. And I know you’ve been tracking this topic for most of your professional life. And we’re really here to hear about a number of stories on how employers are managing these generational differences. So what leads to generational stereotypes or how do we come up with these generalized opinions of each other?
 
00:03:00:05 - 00:03:24:16
Jim Morgan
You know, I think people first have to understand that every single generation has been stereotyped. I joke I’m part of the ponytailed, no-good, anti-war generation of never going to amount to anything. And now we own everything, so good for us! And it doesn’t really matter who you are, it’s just a matter of, you know, everybody thinks the next generation is basically going to be the end of the world as we know it.
 
00:03:25:07 - 00:03:48:17
Jim Morgan
So far, that hasn’t been true. So we’re all just trying to figure this out as we go along. But the stereotypes usually come along because either there is some consistency in pattern and behavior based on what’s going on in the world. And sometimes it’s, you know, okay, we’re going to make fun of each other. And I’ll give you an example from my generation, the “hey boomer,” you know, everybody saying, you know, what’s wrong with that?
 
00:03:49:19 - 00:04:10:07
Jim Morgan
But, you know, they ask questions like, you know, how come you’re walking around with cash and 10 credit cards? Why do you always shout every time you’re on Skype or on your cell phone? Why do you print out emails? My gosh, it’s right there in front of you. Why can’t you figure out for yourself how to take a Word document, make it into a PDF?
 
00:04:11:00 - 00:04:31:02
Jim Morgan
You know, and I could say, Oh my gosh, that’s not me, what are you talking about? But I also am smart enough to watch other people my age walk around and do exactly those things. So I think it just becomes a matter of some repetitive behaviors by some folks which are judged by different generations as, you know, what are you doing?
 
00:04:31:02 - 00:04:37:16
Jim Morgan
So those are some of the things that people say about the boomers. So I’m sure you heard some things. What are the ones that bother you a little bit?
 
00:04:38:13 - 00:04:59:03
Sophie Boler
I think we always get related back to technology, always, no matter if it’s in the workplace or outside of it. And it’s always just kind of like consumes our generation and also about the short attention span, I feel like you can’t keep us, I don’t know, engaged for more than 5 minutes. It’s got to be fun. It’s got to be,
 
00:04:59:10 - 00:05:00:16
Sophie Boler
Why is it worth my time?
 
00:05:01:01 - 00:05:02:13
Jim Morgan
You’re the goldfish generation.
 
00:05:02:13 - 00:05:03:11
Sophie Boler
Absolutely.
 
00:05:04:02 - 00:05:12:03
Jim Morgan
Anyone who’s ever had a goldfish, if you tap on the side of the bowl, you can hold their attention for 7 or 8 seconds. So that’s your, that’s your stereotype.
 
00:05:12:08 - 00:05:23:04
Sophie Boler
Well, let’s actually talk about the different values of each generation and how that affects each different generation as an employee. So I’m sure you have lots of stories to tell with each of those.
 
00:05:23:08 - 00:05:43:01
Jim Morgan
Yeah. And this gets to your stereotypes because even the one that we just talked about, you know, we’re saying, oh, you have no attention span or that’s what people say to you. It’s not an attention span thing. It’s this is how fast the world moves now. And there’s a reason that Twitter has 240 characters and TikToks can’t be more than a minute or two long.
 
00:05:43:01 - 00:06:01:21
Jim Morgan
And it’s just the way that that things go so that that happens. So I think you got to look at, you know, as a couple of different examples. I mean, anyone who, probably in your case has a grandparent or maybe a great-grandparent, who might still be around that lived through the Depression. Well, that has serious impact on folks in terms of I’m going to hang on to every dime I’ve got.
 
00:06:02:02 - 00:06:21:23
Jim Morgan
I don’t trust credit cards because the bank failed me. I’m just going to have cash and that’s that’s how I’m going to do business. So little things matter. So if you look at, for example, the family and what did the family look like 50 years ago? And it was Mom staying home, Dad going to work, you know, 3.7 children and a dog.
 
00:06:21:23 - 00:06:58:13
Jim Morgan
And that’s what a family was. And over time, that’s changed as a result of divorces, merged families, of same-sex families. I’m not saying anything is right, wrong or indifferent, but the definition of family has changed over the course of the of the generations. So that has an impact on people. The issue of education, which was out of reach for people for a long time, for my generation, it was like an expectation that we get to go to college, to people starting to question the value of college and now people are saying, “Hey, it’s going to be free.”
 
00:06:58:21 - 00:07:18:16
Jim Morgan
You know, and again, I’m not judging that saying right or wrong or indifferent, but when things like that happen, it has an impact. And so whether, you know, for my generation it was civil rights issues. For current generations, it might be school shootings. You had 9/11 in there to affect the generation we have. Now we’ve had a pandemic.
 
00:07:19:01 - 00:07:29:13
Jim Morgan
All of those things shape people in terms of who they are and how they function, and that sort of leads to, okay, there are differences among the generations because their experiences have been so different.
 
00:07:30:09 - 00:07:46:12
Sophie Boler
And now that we know what to expect from an employee side, let’s take it a step further and really examine how leaders interpret the generational differences in the workplace. So can you talk about the different leadership styles of each generation?
 
00:07:46:12 - 00:08:05:16
Jim Morgan
Yeah, you know, I don’t know so much that it’s the leadership style. I think it’s just the way that the world has changed that you’ve got to understand the people that are working for you. And in our case, one of the cases you’re in our internship program and we asked all of you, you know, what’s one of the biggest things that you want from your boss?
 
00:08:05:16 - 00:08:21:04
Jim Morgan
And it was “I want their cell phone number so I can text them.” Okay. Well, that’s your preferred method of communication. And I can guarantee you those Gen X and boomer bosses probably are like, “There is no way in the world I’m giving you my cell phone number so you can text me all day long.”
 
00:08:21:04 - 00:08:21:20
Sophie Boler
Right?
 
00:08:22:09 - 00:08:42:05
Jim Morgan
That’s not you being nosy or you wanting personal information—it’s your preferred method of communication. So, you know, how do we figure that out? So it goes back to when we talked about the candidate experience and what you’re expecting differently. So as a leader, I need to understand how you want to function and how you want to do get things done.
 
00:08:42:10 - 00:08:59:11
Jim Morgan
So that’s a little bit on me as a leader. As a leader, I need to be looking out for what are the benefits that are of interest to you. You may say, “Hey, I came out of college with $20,000 in student loan debt. That means more to me than anything,” whereas someone else might be saying, “I want to a 401(k).”
 
00:08:59:11 - 00:09:23:05
Jim Morgan
Someone else might want health care. But if I’m listening to what the needs of the people are that that work for me, I’ll begin to understand some of those things. If I know how you want to work—remote, in person, you like being with people, do you not like not like being with people. It’s not so much, I would say in that case, the generational we all are different in every generation and these generations have 80 million people in them.
 
00:09:23:05 - 00:09:45:08
Jim Morgan
So it’s not like everybody’s the same. But your expectation of you’re not going to be faxing anything, I can pretty much bet on that. You don’t want paragraphs of information, you want bullet points. So I’ve just got to understand how you function and what’s the right way for you. I learned that by doing performance reviews because, I mean, you’ve worked with me.
 
00:09:45:12 - 00:10:02:13
Jim Morgan
I’m not a real detail-oriented person. I’m not about, what are your five things? What are you going to do? What are you going to measure? I’m more about asking you, So what do you think’s important? And we’ll write them down and say, Okay, that sounds good, let’s go do that. That doesn’t work for some people. They want to know, “What are the three things I’m supposed to do?
 
00:10:02:13 - 00:10:23:16
Jim Morgan
How are you going to measure them?” And so you have to even look at the performance reviews and saying, “Okay, what are Sophie’s expectations?” And those might be different than someone else and someone else. So I’d say for the most part, it’s really getting to know the people that you’re working with and personalizing things to the extent where maybe you can understand where they’re coming from.
 
00:10:23:16 - 00:10:48:15
Sophie Boler
Yeah, absolutely. I totally agree with that. And I think you mentioned about the flexibility, the flexibility to like, for example, I think a lot of people in my generation, if let’s say you had a meeting at 8:00, they might show up at 8:01 or 8:02. So maybe just, you know, changing how you approach those meetings to fit each generation and maybe it’s a Zoom call or something like that.
 
00:10:49:19 - 00:10:57:15
Sophie Boler
But can you share any insights on how the different generations might respond to these different leadership styles or even different generations?
 
00:10:58:00 - 00:11:16:12
Jim Morgan
Well, I mean, you just mentioned a couple of them. So I think people misinterpret, “Okay, we’re going to have a meeting at 4:00 on Friday afternoon” and an old-school person might be like, “yeah, that’s my way of making sure everybody’s still here at 4:00 because we work from 8 until 5. And I want to make sure that you’re there.”
 
00:11:17:00 – 00:11:34:07
Jim Morgan
Well, I’ve had people who work for me that are texting me at 3:00 in the morning, you know, saying, “Hey, I finished the project.” And that’s great. I’m not reading it at 3:00 in the morning, but they’re working at 3. They might work on weekends, they might work at night. You know, they’re getting the work done. So part of it becomes, are they getting done what you want to get done?
 
00:11:34:15 - 00:11:51:20
Jim Morgan
It’s not really so much my interest as to when you get it done or how you get it done. I just want the product. So we’ve got to figure those things out. We also have to look, I think at, you know, what are the goals of the different generations because that’s changed so much in terms of what their career might look like.
 
00:11:51:20 - 00:12:07:21
Jim Morgan
Historically, you know, your career defined who you were like that was your life, and that began to change. And people thought, you know, no, I’m not going to let it define who I am, and I’m not just going to have one career for 30 years, and I am going to move around a little bit. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
 
00:12:08:12 - 00:12:22:19
Jim Morgan
50 years ago, if you lost your job, it was like, oh you’re a failure, what did you do?  Now it’s almost a badge of honor. Like, yeah, no, I quit that job. I wanted to go do a different job and I’m going to switch jobs every couple of years because that’s how I think I’m going to build up more information.
 
00:12:23:03 - 00:12:35:22
Jim Morgan
Whereas my generation was afraid to leave their job because I thought, well, that would be a step backwards. I’m climbing the ladder here. If I step out, I’m going to have to go down a couple of rungs. You look at it more like the more ladders I can be on, the better off that I’m going to be.
 
00:12:36:07 - 00:12:52:20
Jim Morgan
So again, know those are just examples of how different generations are going to look at leadership and say, don’t give me a 12-year plan because I may not be here for 12 years. I want a plan, but I’d like it to be 2 years or 3 years. And then we can we can update it.
 
00:12:53:18 - 00:13:10:12
Jim Morgan
But I’m going to keep moving. I’m going to keep my eyes open, not because I’m disloyal and not because I don’t necessarily like the organization, but it’s just the way that I function my whole life. I don’t stick with things for 30 years. I kind of look at that as being crazy and I look at switching a job every 2 years like you’re the one who’s crazy.
 
00:13:10:12 - 00:13:16:09
Jim Morgan
Well, maybe we both are, or maybe neither one of us. I don’t know. But, you know, people just approach things very differently.
 
00:13:16:14 - 00:13:37:09
Sophie Boler
Yeah. And speaking to my experience, I definitely like to know, like, what’s my plan for the next couple of months? Like, what are my growth opportunities? Can I explore this area? Like, I like to know that I have a variety of different things coming my way, but I also want to make sure those are in place. And someone has a plan for my development basically.
 
00:13:37:14 - 00:13:56:03
Jim Morgan
And that I will say that’s one of the things that we’ve seen with the last two generations, more than anything else, is what’s my career path look like and what’s my learning and development program? So I want to know what is it going to take for me to get to the next level? How are you going to help me get to the next level and what does that next level look like?
 
00:13:56:13 - 00:14:12:11
Jim Morgan
And again, if you tell me that plan is, it’ll be 5 years before you truly understand, I’m going to look at you like, you know, no, it’s not. Either I’m going to figure it out in 2, or I’m not going to be here anymore. And so I think we’ve had to do a lot of adjustments there as well.
 
00:14:12:15 - 00:14:33:14
Sophie Boler
Exactly. But we also want to talk about how generational differences in the workplace can be a good thing. I feel like we’ve talked a lot about the challenges, but I’m sure you have a few stories around this, and what are some of the opportunities and other challenges that you’ve seen when there are multiple generations in the workplace at the same time?
 
00:14:33:21 - 00:14:54:02
Jim Morgan
Yeah, that’s a, and there are a lot of positives to it. Everybody always picks on the stereotypes and things, but I think there are a lot of positives. And one of the things I get to do at MRA is run roundtables and one of them is for CEOs. And I threw basically that topic on the table to say, okay, let’s talk about the emerging leaders and the next generations coming up.
 
00:14:54:10 - 00:15:16:04
Jim Morgan
And it was really fascinating because a couple of the I’d say more progressive companies, the more progressive CEOs that were in the group were talking about everything that your generation and maybe in the one before you brings to the workplace. And I had sort of introduced the discussion saying, you know, when I started working, I brought nothing.
 
00:15:16:04 - 00:15:55:03
Jim Morgan
I don’t mean it like I was an incompetent buffoon, but everybody who came before me could do the things that I could do. Your generations—and I don’t want to stereotype you with the technology—but you’ve learned so many things that you walk into the workplace with more knowledge than a couple of the generations above you. And so the CEOs picked up on that and said, you know, we’ve been spending time trying to figure out what is it that the people under 35 know that we could use to our advantage, and few of them across the list were, you know, the communication skills, your ability to communicate across a multiple platform, whether that’s social media,
 
00:15:55:09 - 00:16:15:17
Jim Morgan
whether that, you know, verbally, whatever it might be that you you’ve got a skill set there. You’ve also got a level of confidence because basically you’ve been on film since you were born, you know, and you’re not uncomfortable sitting in front of a camera. And, you know, I mean, you’re 22 years old and you’re running a podcast and there’s a camera running.
 
00:16:15:17 - 00:16:35:10
Jim Morgan
Yeah. Good for you. You know, but I know a lot of people that are my age are just sitting down with the camera would be enough to freak them out and it would take us 50 takes before we got through the introduction. So you’re comfortable with all those things. You can adapt to new challenges. People can throw you a curveball because your whole life has been sort of a series of curveballs.
 
00:16:36:00 - 00:17:02:01
Jim Morgan
You understand social media better than anyone over the age of 40. And I’ve got lots of stories there that I could tell, but you understand it and you understand how the platform works and you understand how people utilize it and where someone my age might be freaking out because something got posted, you’d understand that that’s going to be buried in about 2 seconds and this is going to be gone and no one’s going to see it again or this is where you stop the conversation.
 
00:17:02:08 - 00:17:26:09
Jim Morgan
Don’t try to entertain someone on social media. You know, it’s not going to be a logical conversation. So all of those things that we’re talking about saying, this is what these folks are bringing. So maybe rather than looking at a 25-year-old saying, oh, we can’t put them out on the road as the face of the organization to say maybe they should be the face of the organization because they understand the technology that comes with presenting.
 
00:17:26:14 - 00:17:46:12
Jim Morgan
They’re comfortable in front of people. They don’t mind having cameras in front of them. So maybe age isn’t the defining factor in what that should be. On the flip side, I would argue, you know, people that are my age are, we do have some experiences and yes, you’ll get some stick in the mud that’ll be like, wow, we tried that and it didn’t work.
 
00:17:46:22 - 00:18:04:21
Jim Morgan
And now we’re trying it differently. But we’ve seen a lot of things. And one of the issues we have right now with a lot of our member companies as emerging leaders in that, I got to watch other people make a whole bunch of screwups because I wasn’t going to be taking over anything till I was 40 or 45.
 
00:18:05:05 - 00:18:25:09
Jim Morgan
Now you’re taking it over at 25, 30, 35. So you’ve got to be prepared to do those things. You’ve got to be ready for those things. So that’s where I think, you know, maybe some of the baby boomers may be able to help you with experiences that you haven’t had the opportunity to see yet. So every generation brings its strengths and weaknesses.
 
00:18:25:09 - 00:18:41:22
Jim Morgan
And again, I think it’s, you know, who can do this and who can do that. And again, you can’t stereotype 80 million people, but there are tendencies within groups. And I think I can pretty safely say that, you know a lot more about technology than I do because you’ve just had to do it for 25 years.
 
00:18:42:01 - 00:18:44:19
Sophie Boler
But, you know, a lot of things that I don’t know.
 
00:18:44:23 - 00:18:59:02
Jim Morgan
Yeah, I’ve got to figure out which ones are valuable so I can share them with you. But so yeah, there’s a everybody brings something to the table. I think it’s a matter of finding that out, whether it’s by their, their just their personality type, it’s by their generational experience or what it might be.
 
00:18:59:13 - 00:19:15:23
Sophie Boler
And I think we can definitely learn from each other too, based on other generations’ strengths. But do you have any departing words of wisdom for for listeners today or employers for what we like to call the now and the experienced worker?
 
00:19:16:16 - 00:19:22:06
Jim Morgan
That whole question sounds like, all right, old person, can you tell me what it is you’ve got to offer to the young people here?
 
00:19:22:08 - 00:19:22:23
Sophie Boler
I didn’t mean it like that.
 
00:19:24:16 - 00:19:47:06
Jim Morgan
You know, I think as much as we get into these generational differences and I think that they matter because they matter if your generation wants to text their boss, that matters. Because if that’s your preferred method of communication, I’m not saying it’s going to be right or wrong, but you and your boss have to both understand, is that the way we’re going to do it or not? Because someone’s going to have to make an adjustment.
 
00:19:47:16 - 00:20:06:15
Jim Morgan
And people have to understand that while you might work differently, it doesn’t mean you’re not working as hard. And so, again, a lot of people who look like me will be, well if you’re not in the office, I don’t know what you’re doing. I can make it pretty good argument that I’ve seen people in the office and I’m not sure what they’re doing, so I’m not sure that that’s the measure.
 
00:20:07:00 - 00:20:27:17
Jim Morgan
But it’s more are we clear on what the goals and objectives are? Because whether you get it done on the road, at your apartment, in your house or wherever you might be, it doesn’t really matter so much. Now, if there’s a customer portion of it where you’ve got to be somewhere—completely understood. But that pandemic changed everybody’s paradigm.
 
00:20:27:17 - 00:20:52:04
Jim Morgan
And so it was, you know, we had companies who, for years were trying to go remote and couldn’t do it. All of a sudden they did it in 2 weeks because they had to. So all of those things are starting to change. So we’re all different. We’ve all had different experiences. I think it’s really the employer’s job to figure out what motivates whatever the person might be, how do we engage them in the organization?
 
00:20:52:04 - 00:21:14:08
Jim Morgan
Because if they’re engaged and they’re motivated, they’re going to do more for us. And one size does not fit all across generations or within generations. And that becomes a big headache for employers because it’s a lot easier to say “Everybody comes in at 8 and leaves at 5. That’s the rule. We’re done.” But if half the people are unmotivated by that rule, then you’re not getting the most that you can out of.
 
00:21:14:08 - 00:21:33:12
Jim Morgan
So now we’ve got to figure out how do we set up policies and procedures that let people do things the way that that they need to do it. So I guess I would just say that it really is a matter of being intentional with people. It’s trying to figure out what does Sophie need and how is that different than what Jim needs and how can we all sort of live in harmony here?
 
00:21:33:21 - 00:21:57:10
Jim Morgan
Even if you’re never here and I am here or I’m never here in your area, you are here that we both understand that we’re getting our stuff done. We’re just doing it in a very different way. But the company benefits if we’re doing it in the way that we can do it the best. So it’s hard. It’s not simple rules anymore, but I think if we’re for taking the individual into consideration, that’s sort of where you have success.
 
00:21:57:20 - 00:22:18:19
Sophie Boler
I was going to say it seems like a very individualized process.But that takes up just about the time we have for today. So thank you for joining us today and continuing that conversation. And it looks like we can learn a lot from each other on how to really close the generational differences gap. So we have added Jim’s LinkedIn profile.
 
00:22:18:19 - 00:22:38:23
Sophie Boler
You’ve probably seen it a couple of times by now in the show notes, but if you haven’t yet, make sure to connect with him and if you have any questions on today’s episode or really just want to chat with Jim and follow up on his expertise. I’m sure he’d love to have a conversation with you.
 
00:22:38:23 - 00:22:41:06
Sophie Boler
But otherwise we will see you our next episode.
And Jim, thank you for joining us again.
 
00:22:41:09 - 00:22:45:06
Jim Morgan
My pleasure. It’s always great to be with MRA Nation.
 
Sophie Boler: Always.
 
00:22:45:23 - 00:23:08:05
Outro
And that wraps up our content for this episode. Be sure to reference the show notes, where you can sign up to connect for more podcast updates. Check out other MRA episodes on your favorite podcast platform. And as always, make sure to follow MRA’s 30 minute THRIVE so you don’t miss out. Thanks for tuning in and we’ll see you next Wednesday to carry on the HR conversation.
 
 

The Great Sansdemic Is Here

Description: If you didn’t know we are in a labor shortage, now you do! In this episode, MRA’s Vice President of Workforce Strategies, Jim Morgan stresses the extent employers must go to to get talent nowadays, and that you’ve got to start finding people before they’re even looking. Employees, not employers, are the ones calling the shots.
Key Takeaways:
Welcome to the “Great Sansdemic”. Sans means “without” and demic means “people.” So, this really is “without people”.
Shortages in the workforce in the past have been caused by more economical factors; We didn’t have the right mix of people. This time around it’s demographic--there’s just not enough people, flat-out.
When you don’t have people and that’s what’s controlling your growth because you can’t add a third shift or you can’t build another plant, you’re going to have to get pretty creative in what it is that you’re going to do.
Transcript:
Transcripts are computer generated -- not 100% accurate word-for-word.
INTRO | 00:00:00:02 - 00:00:23:03
Hello hello, everybody, and welcome to 30 minute THRIVE, your go-to podcast for anything and everything HR, powered by MRA - The Management Association. Looking to stay on top of the ever-changing world of HR? MRA has got you covered. We’ll be the first to tell you what’s hot and what’s not. I’m your host, Sophie Boler, and we are so glad you’re here. Now it’s time to THRIVE.
Sophie Boler | 00:00:23:13 - 00:00:55:08
Hello, everybody. I’m All over the Midwest, employers and human resource professionals are really grappling with attracting, developing, and retaining talent. And Jim has been working on that issue for 30 years. He helps employers understand the demographics that are driving their troubles and provides solutions for talent acquisitions based on best practices.
Sophie Boler | 00:00:55:18 - 00:00:58:18
So thanks for joining me today on the show, Jim. I’m excited to talk to you.
Jim Morgan | 00:00:59:01 - 00:01:01:17
It’s my pleasure to be back with the MRA Nation.
Sophie Boler | 00:01:01:19 - 00:01:08:04
Oh, of course. But as we dive in, is this really something new? What is this problem?
Jim Morgan | 00:01:08:11 - 00:01:30:02
It is different because I think people who have been around for a while have seen shortages in the workforce before. They’ve had a difficult time hiring people. But I would argue in the past those have been more economically challenging times. We didn’t have the right mix of people. This time around it’s demographic, and by that I mean there’s just not enough people, flat-out.
Jim Morgan | 00:01:30:02 - 00:01:47:21
And as we go through the next 20 minutes or so, I’ll sort of lay out what happened there. But this one is different. And I think employers maybe didn’t see it coming or they knew it was coming, but didn’t really think about what the ramifications of it would be. And now it’s here and they’re pretty severe.
Sophie Boler | 00:01:48:10 - 00:01:51:04
And what caused this situation?
Jim Morgan | 00:01:51:20 - 00:02:16:11
There’s a lot of things at play and the upper Midwest is different. Most of our members are in Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, and Iowa. The upper Midwest is actually a lot like the Northeast, and we’re the ones that have a lot of things working against us. First of all, we’re aging out relatively quickly, meaning we’ve got a lot of old people in our four states and they’re sticking around.
Jim Morgan | 00:02:16:11 - 00:02:37:19
And just as one example, in Wisconsin between 2010 and 2040, so that’s just a 30-year period, we’re going to more than double the amount of people over the age of 65, going from about a little over a million to over 2 million. And you think, okay, well, is that a big deal? Well, yeah, that’s a big deal because that’s a lot of people to take care of.
Jim Morgan | 00:02:38:11 - 00:02:59:08
That’s a lot of health care. We have to figure out a lot of things and those are a lot of people on fixed income. So those folks are pretty much out of the out of the workforce now. We have decreasing fertility rates. And, you know, not to get personal with everybody, but quite frankly, you need about 2.1 children for every female in order just to hang even.
Jim Morgan | 00:02:59:17 - 00:03:19:03
And the United States hasn’t hit that number in 49 of the last 50 years. So basically we’ve got more people dying than we do kids being born. And so as a result, we’re losing there. So now we’re getting older, we’re not having enough children. Then you look at, okay, well what about migration? Where can we get people from?
Jim Morgan | 00:03:19:12 - 00:03:46:19
And we have a little bit of international migration, but not nearly enough. And domestic migration really is winners and losers, that people are moving out of the Midwest and to the Southwest or to the Southeast. And we’re not winning in that battle either. Then you look at, okay, well, what’s causing some of that? And this is all a very long answer to your question, but it’s really trying to help people understand what just happened.
Jim Morgan | 00:03:46:19 - 00:04:19:01
So if you look at the upper Midwest, this is not a destination for people. You know, kids in South Carolina or Texas aren’t thinking, “Boy, I want to move to Minnesota, I want to move to Wisconsin,” because their perception of that is, one, it snows 11 months out of the year. You know, it’s somewhere near Canada. And I joke about Wisconsin because every single time that there’s a football game in January, some guy who weighs 400 pounds takes his shirt off, puts a cheese wedge on his head and, you know, people look at that and say, “Yeah, that’s where I want to go.”
Jim Morgan | 00:04:19:12 - 00:04:44:18
So we’ve got all of these things working against us. And then lastly, there’s a diversity question because the upper Midwest is not a real diverse area. You know, Wisconsin is close to 80-some percent Caucasian. It’s similar in Minnesota. It’s even more so in Iowa. And one of the maps I have when I’m doing this presentation is to say, in what year did that state match the United States in terms of diversity?
Jim Morgan | 00:04:45:02 - 00:05:09:01
What does that mean? Well, Wisconsin looks like the U.S. did in 1974. Iowa looks like the U.S. in 1930. So if I’m a person of color and I’m trying to decide where I want to go, I’m not real sure that going to 1930 would probably be my destination. So all of these things are in play in a way that they’ve never really been before, and that’s what gets us to okay, what caused it?
Jim Morgan | 00:05:09:10 - 00:05:18:15
We have about six or seven things working against us, especially in the upper Midwest and the Northeast. And so that’s what’s gotten us into what we’ve got right now.
Sophie Boler | 00:05:19:09 - 00:05:31:19
And I know when you give these presentations, you usually have slides that come with maps and it’s easier to look at visually. But can you try to describe what the movement in the U.S. looks like?
Jim Morgan | 00:05:32:02 - 00:05:50:03
Okay, I’ll try to do this one simpler because I don’t have pictures. And that’s a good point because like I said, when you can see six or seven maps and say, “Okay, wow, this is all coming together, I see what’s happening,” the migration is actually a little bit easier. You could basically take an arrow in Maine and draw it down to the lower part of California.
Jim Morgan | 00:05:50:03 – 00:06:13:17
That’s basically the movement, that people are leaving the Northeast in the north and they’re moving to the South and the Southwest. And that’s sort of that’s the migration pattern. And then you also have the immigration issue that you’ve got more people coming in from the South. Obviously, if we had a great invasion from Canada, that would certainly help us in Minnesota and Wisconsin.
Jim Morgan | 00:06:13:17 - 00:06:38:22
But that’s not happening right now. And one of the things that we still haven’t figured out in the United States is a common-sense immigration policy that says, we need people so how do we figure out a logical way to bring them in? And I’m not sure we’re going to figure that out in my lifetime, but we’re going to have to pretty soon because we’re just not going to have the folks so it’s really a, it’s basically a Northeast, the Southwest with a little bit of band on either side of that arrow.
Sophie Boler | 00:06:39:13 - 00:06:43:11
So when you say that, who is really winning and who’s losing?
Jim Morgan | 00:06:43:11 - 00:07:04:21
The big winners right now are Texas. They were net about plus 310,000 in 2021, and that’s you know, they’ve got Austin and they’ve got Dallas and they’ve got Houston. And those are popular places, especially for younger folks. And if you want to know where a 25-year-old wants to go, it’s where the other 25-year-olds are.
Jim Morgan | 00:07:05:05 - 00:07:34:14
And so Texas has picked up big there. Florida has had a lot of growth. And so they’ve also picked up. Now some of that is a little bit older. But there a net 200,000 people up, and Arizona and North Carolina are both about 100,000 people. Arizona is becoming very popular. Year-round weather, yeah it gets hot, but people seem to tolerate hot a lot better than cold. And North Carolina is kind of becoming a cool place for people to be.
Jim Morgan | 00:07:34:14 - 00:07:59:20
It’s got a good climate, it’s got a lot of universities, there’s a lot of energy around it. So they’re pretty popular as well. Georgia, South Carolina, Utah are a couple of others. The big losers in the game are New York, which is down about 320,000 people. I think a lot of that has to do with New York City perhaps itself and crime and people wanting out and it’s an expensive place to live.
Jim Morgan | 00:08:00:16 - 00:08:26:06
California is No. 2, losing about 260,000. Same thing there. It’s a very expensive place to live. And I think the pandemic for a lot of people gave folks in New York and California some flexibility to say, “I can still do this job and maybe even keep this level of pay, but I can move someplace else.” And especially with California, you can see the growth in the states that are around it,
Jim Morgan | 00:08:26:06 - 00:08:49:09
and that was a little bit of a migration out. And then in third place is Illinois, losing about 100,000 people. And I think Illinois just has a lot of it, has a lot of policy problems. It has a lot of fiscal problems. Chicago is getting its share of bad news. So the bigger cities in those three states I think of have been a result of them losing some people.
Jim Morgan | 00:08:49:09 - 00:09:04:00
But again, the movement of the younger folks, they’re willing to go anywhere. And with a pandemic, I can work from anywhere. So I’m probably looking for what’s a low tax state, what’s a good climate, what’s a fun place to be? And those are the type of places that people are going to.
Sophie Boler | 00:09:04:04 - 00:09:13:05
Absolutely. And we’re calling this “the Great Sansdemic,” which sounds like it would last for a long time. But how long do you think it’s going to last?
Jim Morgan | 00:09:13:09 - 00:09:33:12
Yeah, a good altar boy had to learn Latin. So sans demic, for those who didn’t have the pleasure of learning Latin, sans means “without” and demic means “people.” So this really is “without people.” And I think the problem that we’re seeing with employers, again, especially in the upper Midwest, is they think, “Well, if I just duck and cover, this thing will go away.”
Jim Morgan | 00:09:33:21 - 00:09:52:22
And in the presentation that I make, one of the maps that I’ve got, or the graphs, is really it’s from the United Nations. And they did 60 different samples and they tried to predict out, all right, what what does it look like? And so they looked at the working age population, which is 15- to 64-year-olds, the folks that are doing the work.
Jim Morgan | 00:09:53:10 - 00:10:19:09
And that peaked in about 2007 with about 66 percent of the population. So two-thirds of the population was in that working age number. And for the next about 50 to 60 years, that number just goes down. And out of 60 samples, they all go down and they took it all the way out through 2090 and it drops down to about 58 percent.
Jim Morgan | 00:10:19:09 - 00:10:42:08
And you might say, all right, well, 66 to 58, that’s no big deal. But each percentage point is about 2 million working-aged people. So you’re talking about losing, you know, in 8 years, 16 million possible workers. And this is at a time where we’re starting from a shortage. So this one isn’t going away. And then people start to say, well, how in the world can you predict out to 2090?
Jim Morgan | 00:10:42:17 - 00:11:12:04
And, you know, I’d say part of it is just looking at your generation and the decisions that you make. People aren’t getting married until they’re 30, 32, 34 years old. So they’re not having five kids. They’re having two kids. And those who aren’t having kids are having dogs, you know, and that’s all going to sort of take effect here, that if we go from averaging three or four kids  a family to two kids a family or no kids a family, they can look at those trends and say, you know, this is going to be with us for a while.
Jim Morgan | 00:11:12:12 - 00:11:18:16
So this is not a duck and cover for people. This is really going to be we’re in it for the long run. We got to figure out some different things to do.
Sophie Boler | 00:11:19:06 - 00:11:30:07
And as people take everything you’ve said into consideration and kind of process it and think about what they can start doing, I think the big question is what can employers start doing?
Jim Morgan | 00:11:30:19 - 00:11:50:06
Yeah, and this is admittedly where it gets pretty tough. One, you can become the employer of choice in your own area. And what do I mean by that? You’re the place that people want to go work, whether that’s because of your culture or your pay or your benefits. But you know, especially in a smaller town, there’s usually this is where you want to get to,
Jim Morgan | 00:11:50:06 - 00:12:09:10
this is where you want to work. The problem with that is that’s a net sum game that if people are moving from company A to company B, that means company A now doesn’t have enough people and pretty soon there’s nowhere left to grab from. So, you know, one is it doesn’t solve the bigger problem by you just saying, “I’m going to be the place that people want to work.”
Jim Morgan | 00:12:09:20 - 00:12:27:12
After that, you really have, you know, three choices. One, you’re seeing a lot more automation. You’re seeing, you know, maybe machines that can do the work of three or four people. And at one point that was looked at as a bad thing, like, oh, you’re taking away jobs. That’s not even the case anymore because there’s no one to fill the job.
Jim Morgan | 00:12:28:04 - 00:12:47:18
And now you need a higher-level employee to work with that technology. So you can you can automate. I think we’ve seen companies get smarter. They’ve figured out how do we work more efficiently with the people that we’ve got, whether that’s just looking at lean processes or quality control, how do we just get better at what we do?
Jim Morgan | 00:12:48:07 - 00:13:05:13
Or the third one is you simply go to where the people are, and that could either be within the United States or someplace else. And I think this is where people have to figure out if we don’t figure out a way to get more people into the United States, folks are going to have to go someplace else. So those are tough decisions for employers.
Jim Morgan | 00:13:06:02 - 00:13:18:20
But really, you know, when you don’t have people and that’s what’s controlling your growth because you can’t add a third shift or you can’t build another plant, you’re going to have to get pretty creative in what it is that you’re going to do.
Sophie Boler | 00:13:18:21 - 00:13:30:06
And I think you’ve wrapped up a pretty big problem in a short amount of time, which is impressive. But do you have any last thoughts or pieces of advice you can give to our listeners today?
Jim Morgan | 00:13:30:14 - 00:13:57:18
You know, I usually leave folks when I do have the slides and it’s even more impressive. Yeah, but you know, to say there are short-term and long-term things that people can start doing right now., You know, short term, they get all of their employees helping them look for folks. They’re paying spot bonuses. They’re trying to become that employer of choice, they’re trying to do all those things that, I got to grab all of the people that I can possibly get. The longer term one
Jim Morgan | 00:13:58:00 - 00:14:23:06
and I think the companies that are doing quite well right now are the ones who figured this out early and said, we’re going to start having internships, we’re going to start doing co-op programs, we’re going to start doing youth apprenticeships. And I know you and Courtney talked a little bit about the internship program. That’s part of what folks are doing now, that the sooner that I can get my hands on someone before everybody else sees them, then I’ve got a better chance of hanging on to them.
Jim Morgan | 00:14:23:06 - 00:14:44:19
And so the long-term strategy is get into the high schools, get into even the middle schools to explain what some careers are. And certainly the technical colleges, the community colleges, the universities. Using you as an example: I mean, you come here, you do an internship before your senior year. You like us, we like you. We figure out how to take care of you in the next 9 months,
Jim Morgan | 00:14:44:21 - 00:14:59:16
stay in touch with you. And if you’re going into your senior year and you already know, “Hey, I’ve got a job,” that takes a lot of pressure off your senior year. It prevents you from looking other places. And then we end up with a really good employee because we have the chance to see you work for 3 months and bring you back.
Jim Morgan | 00:14:59:23 - 00:15:13:17
So I think that’s what a lot of employers now are trying to figure out: What’s the long game? How do I get in there? Because I’ve got to have that steady talent supply chain working for me as I as I go forward. So I think that’s the biggest strategy is you got to be the first one to the people.
Sophie Boler | 00:15:14:06 - 00:15:27:18
And then to your point for me, knowing that I had a job before senior year and then I could kind of tell my friends like, “Hey, I already have a full-time role,” like that, and that makes them kind of interested. And you know, the process just goes on and on.
Jim Morgan | 00:15:28:08 - 00:15:43:17
Yeah, and it makes a difference. And you can see the companies that are doing a lot of that, you know, where if they have 30 or 35 or 40 interns and all those people are going back, you know, those are usually companies that have 50, 75, 100 openings. So they’re like, “Oh, you know, and hey, here’s the person that you talked to.
Jim Morgan | 00:15:43:17 - 00:15:53:08
Tell them, you know me, I worked there this summer.” Those are all ways for employers to just sort of get the word out there for free and let younger people know about what they’ve got to offer.
Sophie Boler | 00:15:53:18 – 00:16:19:02
Exactly. Well, Jim, thank you so much for joining us today and really making “the Great Sansdemic” apparent to employers and advice on how to help with this issue. But we’ve added Jim’s LinkedIn profile to the show notes below, so make sure to connect with him and send him a message if you’d like to continue this conversation. Otherwise, we’ll be continuing this conversation next episode,
Sophie Boler | 00:16:19:02 - 00:16:24:12
when we dive into generational differences with Jim. So thank you again for joining us.
Jim Morgan | 00:16:24:15 - 00:16:25:03
My pleasure.
Sophie Boler | 00:16:25:09 - 00:16:27:00
And we’ll see you next episode.
Jim Morgan | 00:16:27:01 - 00:16:27:21
All right. I’ll be there.
OUTRO | 00:16:28:18 - 00:16:51:00
And that wraps up our content for this episode. Be sure to reference the show notes, where you can sign up to connect for more podcast updates. Check out other MRA episodes on your favorite podcast platform. And as always, make sure to follow MRA’s 30 minute THRIVE so you don’t miss out. Thanks for tuning in and we’ll see you next Wednesday to carry on the HR conversation.