SuperManager Podcast: Improving the Hiring Process

Christine: You’re listening to super manager, the podcast for people who manage people and business with ideas, friends and expert interviews to help you be a super manager.

 

Sam: Welcome to SuperManager Podcast. We’re going to be talking about emotional wellness, employee emotional wellness and how it affects performance. And I have my team of SuperFriends with me today. We have:

 

Tara: Tara Gregor with BreakWell, workplace well being resource and partner.

 

Rick: Rick shore with Legal Shield, business solutions.

 

Rod: Rod McCann with McCann Consulting, dealing with self-funded employee benefits.

 

Vicky: Vicky Wors, Wors Consulting, human resources.

 

Sam: Samantha Naes with CN Video Production. So we do summer internships here at CN Video and I had an intern a couple of years ago. Seemed like a very bright person, really liked her a lot, but we had a little bit of a communication problem. I would explain to her how to do something. She seemed to get it, but then when it came time to do it, it wasn’t done right. I stepped it up to “I’m going to explain this to you, but if you don’t understand, let me know”. That didn’t help. I would ask her if it made sense and she’d say, “Yep”, and then I’d say, “Okay, explain back to me what you just heard” and she would respond with, “Maybe you should explain it again.” I also noticed that she was spending a lot of time just staring at her desk. She would be working on something that should take maybe a half an hour and six hours later she’s still struggling and staring at it. I got a phone call from her advisor at the university wanting to explain the situation. Apparently she was going through some personal issues at home and the problem was a lack of focus and concentration. She was just mentally distressed. I’ve been through situations where, you know, going through divorce, I locked my keys in my car and locked myself out and did stupid things that I don’t normally do. That’s what we’re going to talk about because that can really affect an employee’s ability to perform.

 

Tara: We know that $300 billion a year is lost due to stress to employers. One word that’s been thrown around a lot lately is presenteeism versus absenteeism. And we know that presenteeism actually costs companies more than absenteeism does, but it’s harder to track because when somebody’s absent, you know that they’re not there. But presenteeism, they might be there staring at their computer for six hours.

 

Sam: You said $300 billion. How do they get that number? $300 billion? What?

 

Tara: I believe that $300 billion is coming from the absenteeism and the lost productivity. But again, with the presenteeism, it’s harder to track the impact of it because somebody might be present at work, but they might be suffering from a medical condition or an illness or other stress in their personal life that they may not be telling their employer about. So they physically might be at the workplace, but their mind is not there.

 

Sam:  And so it’s really kind of the difference between productivity of somebody who is a hundred percent and productivity of someone who isn’t.

 

Tara: Absolutely. And they’re saying that sometimes it’s better if they’re just not there that day so they can recover and come back at a hundred percent.

 

Rick: Well, and to contribute to that point, people have to work on their personal problems during business hours.

 

Tara: Oh yeah.

 

Rick: Because that’s sometimes the only time they can get ahold of the individuals that they need to.

 

Sam: Well if they’re not working on it, they’re thinking about it. Yeah.

 

Rick: So, Harris did a poll that showed 34% of the employees spend two to three hours at work every day working on personal issues.

 

Vicky: Well, I think that leads to our lack of paid time off so that people can address their personal issues. They can’t afford to lay out of work, but to go take care of a legal issue, to go take care of a doctor’s appointment, to take care of a financial issue. Along those lines.

 

Sam: I wonder if it’s the word “vacation time” that contributes to that, because I know when I’m not emotionally fit to be at work, I don’t really consider a vacation day. Now I have before taken a sick day, where-

 

Vicky: Or you could call it a health day.

 

Sam: Exactly. But people don’t think to use vacation time. You know, when they’re going through a personal crisis.

 

Vicky: Well, in the United States, our managers, our CEOs, our top individuals that establish policies and procedures grew up in an age that you are to be at work. They don’t understand the younger employee values their personal time. There’s a cultural conflict that’s going on. However, we also have just a need to be out there taking care of business and especially people who are single and do not have a spouse to go take care of those things for their family unit. It’s a real issue.

 

Sam: Not being single can cause additional stresses that-

 

Rick: Yeah, yeah.

 

Sam: Exactly.

 

Rod: You not only talk about that, but Erica Johnson, of Modern Health says millennial’s are now the biggest sector of the workforce, but also highest rate of depression. So you bring in a real health issue that coincides with that in the younger population.

 

Vicky: They’re coming to work with $100,000 in debt for their college. Can’t get there-

 

Rod: That would depress you, wouldn’t it?

 

Vicky: Well, I mean that’s the equivalent of a mortgage. And it will and it is affecting the U.S. economy because these young family units that we look to in the past can’t form. They can’t marry, they can’t have children, so it’s going to impact us.

 

Sam: That brings up a good point. What are some of the top offenders when it comes to causing stress in employees? Financial stress?

 

Rick: Most of us can agree that that can be probably very common. And it adds an incredible amount of stress because it’s sometimes something you can’t control.

 

Sam: So we are talking about student loans or health issues that cause you to go into debt or a spouse losing their job or…

 

Rick: So, just another statistic, the Lynch Workplace Benefit Report in 2015, you know it’s a couple of years ago, but that was 40% of American workers are unable to pay for an expense of $400. They don’t have $400 of disposable income, if something would happen. A refrigerator breaks, you know the dog has to go to the vet, the child gets sick. Those are issues.

 

Sam: Yeah, I know divorce can also be a contributor. I’ve worked with people that you can just tell that they’re not as capable as they normally are and they say, “Oh, I’m going through a situation with my husband, or I’m going through a situation with my spouse.” Things like that can really take it out of you, I’ve personally been through situations like that. Going through divorce where you’re frustrated with yourself because you know you can do better, but you’re just not able to. It’s like you’re not firing on all cylinders.

 

Vicky: And on that note, I experienced widowhood and was a young widow. That’s pretty stark in realizing the plans that you made, they’re not going to come to fruition.

 

Sam: How much time off did they give you for-

 

Vicky: Three days.

 

Sam: Three days?

 

Vicky: Typically. You’ve got financial issues all over the place, finalize with the funeral home, you’ve got family issues and just the very fact that you are numb from what has happened.

 

Sam: So it sounds like additional time off when needed could really help. It may feel like you’re giving them paid time off. But if they’re not productive when they’re in the office anyway, better, they should take some time to get well and then be back at 100%.

 

Tara: Exactly. I think you have to compartmentalize your life right now. So it’s personal life and professional life. We’re not able to do that as humans. And what’s happening is, so you get three days off to grieve for the death of your husband, and-

 

Sam: And then back to work!

 

Tara: And back to work and how are you supposed to be present with that? So employers are not creating that space for employees to focus on their own individual emotional well being.

 

Sam: I had a similar situation when my mom had cancer and, I’m in St. Louis and she lived in Oregon, and they got the call- basically there were no more treatments and they sent her home with morphine and my dad called and he needed help. He wasn’t coping very well. And I remember talking to my supervisor at the time and I said, listen, my dad needs my help out in Oregon. I don’t quite know how to say this, but I don’t know for how long. I mean they say she has a week, two weeks, three weeks, a month. There’s no telling it could be tomorrow, it could be next month I’m going to need to stay until, you know, as long as he needs me. And my supervisor said, well, here’s how much vacation time you have, here’s how much sick time you have. And then after that I can give you X amount of leave and then after that you can take as much non-paid leave as you need and your job will be here for you when you get back. And that made it so much easier for me.

 

Tara: Yeah. Did you feel valued after that?

 

Sam: Yeah. Yeah, I did. It increased my loyalty to the company just knowing that, that they were there for me.

Vicky: That’s really big.

 

Sam: Yeah.

 

Rod: And also having a health and wellness program at your employer so that you have access to going to a therapist or something of that nature. And if you need medication to be available to you there so that you’re also compliant within that medication because you can have these programs or compliant going to the therapists, going through these steps that will help you in the emotional wellness. Because it’s a situation where if you don’t deal with that, it’ll be all consuming and you’re not going to become healthy and get back in to being productive.

 

Sam: When I went through my divorce, I mean I was disappointed in my productivity. The company that I worked for had EAP- employee assistance program. And I was able to go talk to a counselor and that helped, it got me back on target. It gave me a means to focus on what I needed to focus on when I needed to focus on it and enabled me to stop forgetting things and locking myself out of my apartment. And-

 

Vicky: One issue with EAP, being a consultant for human resources, I’m in and out of a number of companies. And one of the things I have discovered is most companies do not communicate to their employees their benefits. That’s a shame because if you’d understand that the employee benefits package to accompany amounts to about 40% of return on investment, and we don’t manage that properly. So communicating to employees what’s available to them really gets short shrift and the employees don’t know they have it.

 

Sam: So somebody might be really struggling and they’ve got an employee assistance program and counseling, medicaid, things that they have access to, that they’re just not aware of.

 

Rick: Well, Vickie, do you think that there’s a possibility that they might not want to engage in that benefit because of fear that somebody knows that they have some, I mean, is there some hesitancy?

 

Tara: And the vulnerability side of it, of the employee?

 

Vicky: Well, typically they’re kind of a clearing house of what’s available in the EAPs and they’ll tell the employee what the issues are, so they refer them to the professional help they may be needing. They don’t actually do it themselves. And as an employee or a human resources person, I would only receive a report that says a female employee between the ages of such and such. Took advantage of our program.

 

Rick: So it’s confidential.

 

Sam: If you’re a larger company. Now here I would kind of have an idea of who that was.

 

Rick: So that might cause some reluctancy on their part.

 

Rod:  It may be obvious that you’re struggling and going through some things anyway. So at a certain point you do need to reach out. Because somebody may approach you as opposed to you taking the steps to reach out.

 

Sam:  Yeah, I would rather know that my employees are taking steps to get better to get past it. Than like with that intern, I had no idea what was going on. I thought what is wrong with her? I know she can do better than this.

 

Tara: But sometimes the issue is also time. So if you’re at work all day and then you immediately, even in my situation then I have small children and I’m a single mom, so like there was no time for just me then to be able to receive that type of help if I couldn’t do it between those two things.

 

Rick: So what do you all think about making people take their vacation time or demanding that they actually do take breaks during a given year versus compiling it and adding it up and being the workaholic and never really taking that time off?

 

Sam:  I disagree with people getting paid for their vacation time. I worked at a company where they would, at the end of the year, they would just give you a check for the number of days of vacation time you didn’t use and people would go, “Oh no, I’m not going to take vacation. I’m going to get the money. I’m going to get the bonus at the end of the year.” Definitely not a good idea.

 

Rick: I agree.

 

Vicky: The issue there is so many companies travel lean and mean these days and employees do not want to take vacation because when they get back to work, it’s double the amount of work to make up for the time they’ve been gone. I hear that more than usual. I’d take vacation, but it’s just not worth the work that’s going to be waiting on me when I get back.

 

Tara: I totally lived that. I took one week of vacation in three years. Granted, it led to me burning out, but there was never a good time. Our company was going through an acquisition, so there was the back end of that company and then the front end of a new company and in my position I was that direct report of my department so I couldn’t leave. Plus I was having my own transition through my department, so there just wasn’t a good time.

 

Rick: How do you take off work today? I mean you’re tied to it with your cell phone.

 

Tara: Right.

 

Rick: Basically. Electronically, you’re tied to it. I mean, I’ll never forget being at Disney World with my kids. I had a Pluto hat on with the ears and I’m on a pay phone. This was before cell phones and there’s a picture of me on this pay phone and I’m thinking to myself now, what in the world was so important that I had to make sure I was in contact with my office when my kids are with me at Disney World.

 

Sam: Back when I was working solo, there was nobody to do the work while I was gone. And one year I wanted to take some vacation time and I just simply contacted my clients and said, I’m going to be on vacation this week. Or somebody would say, hey, can we do something this week or can we have a meeting this weekend? I would say, no, I’m on vacation that week and nobody complained about it. Everybody just waited until I got back. It’s important to understand that with employees as well, when they’re on vacation, they’re off the clock. You shouldn’t be calling them with emergencies. They’ve got to have a backup. If something goes wrong, you should not be calling that person. Gotta’ have somebody else that can help out with that.

 

Rod:  But you also have that employee that says, okay, if you’re in a position of sales, say, well, if something comes up and you need this assist, “don’t hesitate to call me so that we can deal with it.” Walk it through, and those that may be taking over what you’re doing in the office. This is something that he wanted me to call, which probably could be pushed off to the next week, but then they make they make that call and pull them in.

 

Vicky: Well there’s going to be another question that’s kind of a legal ideal in the legal lane here. So if someone is constantly on the clock, per se, and they’re really on vacation supposedly, what does wage and hour have to say about that?

 

Sam: The one podcast when we don’t have an attorney here with us. It seems to me like a lot of the things that we’ve been talking about with stress in the office and I mean there’s no doubt having stress will cause a lack of productivity and it seems like taking the time off to take care of what you need to take care of, taking the time off to get the help that you need to get it taken care of. I think trust and communication, as a supervisor, letting people know that they can talk with you if there’s a problem, they can come to you and say, hey look, there’s something going on in my life. I need a little bit of time off being open. Letting your employees know, like my supervisor was when I had that situation with my mom. He was understanding and came up with a solution, so.

 

Vicky: Well it gets down to trust, yeah. Are you willing to expose yourself so explicitly in front of a supervisor that you may or may not have built trust with? In the book by Stephen M. Covey, The Speed of Trust, once a manager or supervisor spoils the trust between themselves and an employee, it is very, very difficult to ever rebuild that trust just to get it ground zero, let alone build even more than what is initially between an employee. So if you have a real issue, do you want God and everybody to know about it?

 

Sam: As supervisors, we have to build and maintain that trust with our employees to.

 

Vicky: And it’s not easily done.

 

Rod:  Well, it also could be of a health issue that everybody may know about it. I knew of a manager that had an employee that had a heart attack and had a stent placed in. So it was a physical situation, but it’s also an emotional situation for that employee. The boss, the supervisor had an appointment in another state and another facility said, here, meet me there and let’s take a trip and helped get that person back on the road. So to get past that emotion or that mental part of it, trusting the physical part of it. So that’s a situation where the trust was there and it built even more with that supervisor.

 

Sam: Sounds to me like the consensus is that, for supervisors, actually building that trust and taking the time to give the time to create solutions actually ends up being more profitable. Really caring about the problem can really help solve it.

 

Sam: Have employees you rely on so much that it’s hard for them to take time off? We can help you capture their knowledge on video to help train others. Contact us at 314-843-3663. That’s 314-VIDEO-ME.

 

Christine: Thanks for listening to SuperManager by CN Video Production. Visit our website at cn-video.com for additional episodes and lots of SuperManager resources, or give us a call at 314-VIDEO-ME.