San Diego Women Leaders Association Chapter Meeting: Hiring and Managing Morale
Wendy Papera of Woodward Animal Center shares her best practices for hiring and managing morale at the San Diego Women Leaders Association Chapter Meeting.
Transcript
All right. Okay. Great. Great. Well, Wendy is going to be speaking on hiring and managing morale in the postcoavid era. Uh this is this is going to be a great topic. Um as you know, we've we've all had a lot going on for the past few years and uh even Mark talked about, you know, just adjusting to to this uh climate to everything that's going on. I'm looking forward to to hearing what Miss Wendy has to share with us. Uh Wendy has been re a human resources professional since moving out to San Diego from the Florida panhandle in 1995. She's worked in many different industries and in companies of all sizes, learning CA labor laws, collective bargaining, contract negotiations, payroll law, and more.
She currently serves as the director of human resources for Helen Woodward Animal Center since 2013. And as a part of the center, she also offers courses in HR management through the cent's educational seminars called the business of saving lives. Without further ado, I want to hand it off to Wendy. Thank you so much for being here with us today. Thank you. And um and I just wanted to say thank you to Mark, too, for some really wonderful information. and and I'm actually really glad to follow Mark because so much of what he said really resonates in this presentation as well. Um, one of the things that, you know, when Mark started his presentation, um, he he basically told us that, you know, the the one thing that remains the same is change.
And so with that, that's that's really a great way to to kick off this presentation because what's the biggest change that's happened from 2019 until now? Um, you know, the only thing that that everyone seems to be talking about all over the news and all over HR and is COVID. Um, so how did hiring become such a crisis management issue? Well, when COVID hit California in March of 2020, it it sort of created this perfect storm of events. Parents have children at home now. Companies were moving to remote work. Companies were having to figure out like like again how Mark was mentioning adjusting the business to be able to do remote work and and basically the world just kind of shut down.
um no one quite knew what we were dealing with or how to control it or really how to keep their employees from getting and spreading it. And so that's kind of a big thing that that created fear. Um and and that like I said brings us back to March of 2020. Um, so now we're in this we're in this cycle of fear and illness and we we don't know what's happening. And regardless of what we know now, back then we just didn't know who was at risk, who wasn't at risk. So for most of us, our principal belief system took over. And I probably should have asked Britney to advance the slide now. I'm so sorry.
Um, so like I said, for for most of us, our our our belief system took over. And when you think about it, our belief system is the core of each of our personalities. It's it's what drives us. It's what tells us right from wrong. It is the strongest fiber of our constitutional beings. You can never mess with a person's belief system. And people didn't know what to believe. So this created kind of a a a panic where everyone's worlds were sort of turned upside down. Emotions are what we used to create the vivid imagery in our minds and our emotions at that time were overpowering. Um, and I'll just give you an example of a story that was published not that long ago in the LA Times about a 121 person choir in Washington State who gathered for a choir practice one night.
45 people got infected and then two died. All of a sudden, singing was dubbed a super spreader. Now, when you think about the logistics of that, well, people don't often think about the logistics of that. You know, you don't often hear a horrible story and think, well, you know, how much does this really occur? You hear these stories and think, I don't want this happening to me or my family or at my work or my place of business. So, the imagery was very clear. Wait a minute. 121 people got together and 45 of them got sick and two died. Oh my goodness, what do we do now? So that's sort of the the fear that was instilled.
Um we learned that, you know, as information came out, there were some people who were at higher risk than others. We learned that it was really contagious. We learned that mask didn't work. Then we learned that mask did work. Then it just depended on which news outlet you were watching. So this really affected you know millions. I mean this affected and I'll just stick with a whole country but we all know I think a whole world. Um and so here so many people worried about you know what what will happen to my family if I contract COVID. So many many people opted not to go to work at all. Um, so you know, is this all the result of logic and critical thinking skills?
No. But does that even matter at this point? No, not really. So, we come back one year later to March of 2021 and even still, as more and more people went back to work, a year later, we still had 8 mill 8.4 4 million fewer people working than we did a year ago. Now half of those so over 4.2 million people cited CO as the only reason they refused to work. So CO is has been you know a sort of a a universal organization killer. I mean, you know, I I know we we turn on our different news organizations and and we hear what we hear and it depends on well, you know, if you're watching this station, you're hearing this and if you're watching this station, you're hearing that.
And it's been extremely, and this is the part that I cannot stress enough, divisive. So now you've got this culture of fear going on in your workplace and it's become a culture of fear, a culture of politics, a culture of, you know, of all of these things that that that we simply don't go to work for. So co is not a Republican or a Democrat. It's it's not a liberal or conservative. It's but it's been a an extremely divisive virus. So as news started spreading information really fast and each different outlet was reporting the virus differently. So even today, let's fast forward another year. So now we're in March of 2022. A lot of people today still can't necessarily determine fact from fiction.
So this confusion spreads and creates difficult working environments. So now every HR is faced with two very distinct issue. Well, and I and I say two knowing that it's two and then about four billion sub issues. But um you know our issues now are how to hire when the pickings are slim to none and how to keep these employees that are in this hectic, you know, fear-mongering environment um when they have options like they've never had before. And I'll just kind of give you an example. We are not a remote work facility um because what we do is so interactive. We take care of animals, you know, we take care of those pets. Um, we actually have to physically be there.
I've never seen someone who can zoom in and clean out a kennel. It just it doesn't it doesn't work. So, we're in an environment, you know, where we don't have that that opportunity. And I know a lot of retail, same thing. um you know whether it's retail well and a lot of companies you can certainly go clothes shopping on the internet but you you can't go out to eat on the internet um so you know things like that there's always going to be companies where this face-to-face interaction must must must happen and and then on the other side of that are the potential employees saying well how can you guarantee I'm not going to get sick.
So, you can't. So, what are some of the things that we can do in in in an environment like this? Um, and if we could go to the next slide. Thank you. Oh, perfect. So, now you're hiring and you're hiring in, like I said, this this really feardirected environment where I don't want to go to work today. I don't know if I'm going to get sick. Um, I don't, you know, you've got fewer people who are applying for jobs. You have fewer people in the workforce. So, how do you do that? How do you attract good talent while you're while you are continuing to battle, you know, the the issues in front of you. Um, and one of the ways that that I really want to talk about is rethink your strategies.
um where are you posting your positions right now? Where are you doing all of your recruitment? And then how can you expand on that? Um maybe you maybe you post your job ads on Indeed and now you want to think about okay I'm now not getting the kind of responses that I used to get. Um so what now? Well, depending on on what you do, um, and I'll just Mark, I'm going to use you an example once again in the Boys and Girls Clubs, that's a you've got many, many front-facing, frontline positions that can't be done remotely. So, you've got to hire these people in to come into to your facility to, you know, work with the children at the facility and things like that.
So maybe let's just say that the Boys and Girls Club only uh recruits on Indeed, but now we're going to have to rethink that because you're simply not getting the same number of applicants. So now maybe we want to reach out to, you know, UCSD, um, San Diego State, maybe they have job boards for some of their college students. that might be a great, you know, frontline opportunity for those who are interested in working with children or have um, you know, um, educational development majors in school. Uh, we do that as well. We we now for our, you know, our veterinary assistants, we reach out. We've partnered with um you know Puma which is a a vocational school that works with you know nursing degrees and veterinary degrees and things like that.
Um so we now have kind of a a flow from them. Um I also recommend research pay studies. You know, I saw uh a a a really interesting statistic that came out that said um that we're at a 13% inflation rate now. And I don't know where they've come up with that because let me tell you the gas is what 77% more expensive. Food has in some cases become 120% more expensive. So, I'm not sure what this 13% inflation number is all about because I I I feel like what I'm seeing is well, I feel like what I'm seeing is about a,000%, but in reality, it's it's it's still very up there. So, what are you paying now?
And I we all know that California just went through, you know, our big uh pay increase where we increased the minimum wage. um you know starting back in oh I believe 2015 and coming all the way up until this year um where California state minimum wage is $15 an hour and in some cities more. Um so research those pay studies. Are you are you paying you know market wages these days? Um looking for new ways to attract talent. Um, now we've we never had done uh job fairs and things like that out in the past. Um, and now we're looking to things like, you know, participating in job fairs, participating in in different, you know, avenues to to attract talent.
Um, rewarding ads. When I first started at the company, our our um our job ads were basically taking the job description and sort of copy and paste. And that's something that we did for years. And now we're looking at that and saying, 'Well, wait a minute. That that doesn't make me excited. That sounds like a job description.' And what you want is an ad that explains why you want to work here. Why is your company the best company in the world? And you must believe that because you're working there. So, find ways to to reward the, you know, your job ads. Um, and I'll just give you an example of something we've done just recently is we are looking for what we call an animal services manager.
And I had posted it like that for the longest time. And we just didn't get much feedback. And finally, as I'm reading through one day, it occurred to me, you know, what is an animal services manager? Most people probably don't think they're qualified to be an animal services manager. And when you read through it, I said, 'Hey, sounds a whole lot like an ops manager to me that just happens to be in an animal field.' And she said, 'Well, yes, that's that's actually a lot of what it is.' So, we rewarded that ad to from animal services manager to operations manager of an adoption facility. And we more than quadrupled our um our incoming apps and resumes.
So, don't be afraid to, and again, this go speaks to so much of what Mark was saying, don't be afraid to change it up. Don't be afraid to get in there and take a look at what you have. And I I love that he talked about the flexibility because be flexible, you know, um look at what you're doing and how you could do that more, faster, better, how however it is that you need to to get your people in. Um and I think, you know, we've all seen it. Every restaurant I walk in, every Home Depot, they're all hiring. They're all hiring. And what I see is not now hiring. I see now taking applicants away from Helen Woodward Animal Center.
And I'm going no. So, you know, we're all in that same boat out there. Um, one of the other things that I would say is don't settle. And I can't stress this enough. And if you'll notice, it's the only bullet point that has an exclamation point after it. Please, please don't settle. you will regret that down the road. A warm body now is not a competent employee later by definition. So, no matter what, no how bleak it looks in the moment, don't settle because that's where um you're going to short sell yourself and you're going to now put yourself in a position where your job is now putting out fires and cleaning up messes because you settled on your hires.
So, no matter what, I if there's nothing else that I get through to you today, please please don't settle. Um, if we could go to the next slide. Thank you. So, how do you keep your team engaged when you're out there looking for, you know, more uh more applicants, more employees, and for the moment your team is suffering the burden of not having a full staff? Well, the the the first and simplest and easiest thing that I just want to say is thank you notes are not dead. If you have an employee and you see them going out of their way to do something kind, how long does it take you to write a thank you note?
If you don't have a stack of thank you notes sitting on your desk, and many of us don't, a thank you email works almost just as well. I mean, anything people absolutely respond to acknowledgement. We have a um what we call a supervisor survey as part of our onboarding process and we ask the employees on day one to fill out the survey and it's basically how I like to be managed and we ask questions like you know things that motivate me are um and and I got to tell you I don't think that there is one survey out there in our 170 employees that doesn't say, 'Tell me thank you every once in a while.' So, that is, like I said, the easiest thing you can do.
It doesn't cost you a bunch of money. It It's the simplest and really one of the most noteworthy morale boosters that I could give you. Um, another one is go out of your way to acknowledge good work, good deeds, good behavior. Um, and and then I'm going to jump down to the bottom really quickly for a minute and say even acknowledge it publicly. Um, do you have a a an employee of the month? Do you have an employee of the quarter? Do you have a wall of fame? Do you have a a social media presence? Uh, we we do. And we have, you know, we have with 170 employees and over 800 volunteers, we have a lot of praise to give.
So, we get on our our Facebook, our Instagram, our all of those. Luckily, we have a social media department because I am not the most Instagram savvy. But um yes, have your you know have your marketing or your social media department acknowledge your your employees publicly on social media or have a put up a little wall of fame somewhere in your um organization. Um, another one, if you do have a small budget, and I I say that because as a nonprofit, believe me, I understand not having a large budget, but if you have a small budget, bring in some bagels or muffins every once in a while. You know, I I am dying to to read research on this because I cannot tell you how much food works.
I mean, it can be a candy bar. It can be coffee. I It almost doesn't matter. No, it doesn't almost. It doesn't matter what the food is. You make people so happy. Um, every once in a while I'll just run to a Smart and Final, pick up some of those, you know, giant boxes of like 50 assorted potato chips. You bring those in, take them into the break room, and toss them out on the counter. And let me tell you, your workforce is banging. I mean, and I, like I said, I have yet to understand it. I am fascinated by the psychology that if I bring you a candy bar, you bring me all kinds of happiness and productivity.
But for now, we are riding on the high that it just works. Um, another one is find motivational writings. one that that I listed was five key factors that uh motivate employees more than money. One thing I'm going to tell you about that is that's just there are a whole lot more than five. Um and just to give you an idea of some of the things that motivate people, being recognized for their hard work, which we touched on already, um working in a positive company culture. So you you want to do everything you can to make your organization just that a positive company culture. Um people are motivated by feeling a sense of meaning and purpose in their work.
I can promise you that firsthand because in a nonprofit and again gosh I I feel like Mark is my bff on this. I think he can probably agree with me that when you go to work at a nonprofit, it's not usually your get-richqu scheme. It's because you feel a sense of purpose in the work that you do. Um, autonomy, you know, challenges. Um, these are all what motivates employees other than money. Uh, inclusion, belief, encouragement. I mean, I could go on and on about these things all day long because there are a whole lot more than five factors, but that was one article that you can research on the internet and pull up in about two seconds.
Um, so find motivational tidbits and use that um use that, you know, for for your employees. Um, and then I think um, next slide. Okay. And we've got about five minutes left and if you have any questions, I am happy to take them.
Thank you, Wendy. Thank you so much. I love that presentation. Insightful, fun. Uh, again, great uh, tools, great things uh, that our audience can apply. I know they've taken some great notes. Um, so I'll actually go into our first audience question here. Let me pull it. There we go. All right. So, our first a question from the audience is, how have you all attracted, retained, and developed employees with leadership potential?
So, that can be answered in so many different parts. Um there's first of all just how do we attract and retain employees and then how do we develop that leadership potential. So I I think we you know we went over a lot of the different ways. I'll tell you something. Some of the things that we do is when we um write our job ads we post them directly on our website. Now, we have an applicant tracking system that we work with. And this applicant tracking system, they'll go in and send the, you know, the web crawlers. In my mind, they're like little robotic spiders, but but they call them web crawlers. They go in and they send these little web crawlers and they pick up your job ads and then our applicant tracking system pushes them out to places like Indeed, Zip Recruiter, Monster, um all the major job boards like that.
Glass Door I believe is one. Um and so that's one of the ways that that we have been attracting talent. Um, like I mentioned, we recently started rewriting all of our job ads. So instead of saying this position will be responsible for, and by the time I get to sentence number two, all you hear is WW, instead our job ads now read like, 'Do you have a passion for saving lives?' You know, and and it gets your attention. It's now not three paragraphs. it's more like five or six sentences because what we're realizing is you don't need the entire job description just to apply. Um so that's one of the ways. Another of the ways that and again we discussed was reaching out.
We've now developed relationships with a lot of the colleges. Um you know we we work we even get into a lot of the military job fairs. Um so we're we're doing a lot of that kind of thing. to try and attack attract talent. Now, what do we do with that talent once it gets here? Well, leadership is is something that if you're not walking in the door with, it's developed over time. So, you know, for for us, we have um and I try and do leadership sort of seminars. I will tell you, let me see here. My next leadership seminar is it's going to be at the end of this month and called seven things every new manager should do in the first month.
So I would empower my HR team to put together, you know, little internal seminars like that. And if you do have someone that's just been promoted to supervisor or manager, you could send them to your HR seminars. Um, you know, we have other seminars that that we'll share, you know, throughout over the months that um might be transitioning from manager to leader or um one of my favorites is dealing with difficult employees. Um, and along those lines, conflict resolution. you know, we we do all kinds of little mini I'll call them mini seminars uh that that go over and that's one of the ways that we develop our leaders. Another way is simply I mean they once they have really learned their job they're instilled with that confidence and then you simply build upon that confidence and I say simply like it's just this super easy thing to do and anyone can do it and I think we've all we've all been around long enough to not take my word simply to heart too much um because it's it's not an easy task you know you're taking human beings things and building them into leaders.
And gosh, I feel like once again I I I'm just going to refer back to I'm going to call him my twin Mark and say, you know, I think if he went back to his military days, y'all built leaders there and and that's and that's how you do. I mean, you you've really got to to build people up and give them the confidence and empower. And I don't think I can stress that word enough. Empower your employees. Um, and that's how you build leaders. I know I I'm I'm already over my time by a minute, so I don't want to ramble anymore and I'm I'm going to turn it back over to you. If you have other questions, I'm happy to answer.
Yeah. Or we can go offline. I love that. I love that. um uh that you you even referred back to Mark, but there was something you mentioned about um Oh gosh, I just drew a blank that quick. I drew a blank that quick. Building our military leaders. Yes. And and the fact that you know that that's that was a place or is a place where they're constantly building building leaders and um it was something else you said too, but I'll I'll go to this last uh audience question here. they uh which ties right into what you were saying um in and development. How can you teach the soft skills that seem more and more necessary to leadership now?
Things like empathy, emotional intelligence, flexibility. How can you teach those soft skills um to leadership? That is a great question. Um and and I'll be honest, that's a question I'm still working to answer. We do we we have techniques and I don't think that there's one right or wrong way. I actually have a a a series of books that I've purchased. Um one of them is the leadership challenge. Um, but it's I think more than anything it's just being real and being honest and talking to your your future leaders about, you know, treating people in a manner that you yourself would like to be treated. Um, what I do, and and I'm not saying that this is the most efficient way.
It's just what we're doing right now, is I'll sit with managers while they're um giving performance reviews, while they're giving disciplinary reviews. um I will sit with these managers and and then at the end of it go over with them hey it it really impacted me when you talked about this but when you discuss this area so we actually have kind of real time feedback going on um I I recognize that that's not feasible in in every organization and to be honest some days it's not feasible in this one either um So, I like to once you have a a great leadership team, um, and I'll call it your senior leadership team, empower that team to also mentor your junior leadership team a lot of times.
And I I do it myself. I find myself sort of almost mimicking the the actions and the verbiage and things like that of my boss, which is our CEO. And so it it's a trickle down. I mean, you're going to treat your people the way you've been taught to treat people. So, you really want to um especially the your your I'll call them your younger leadership, your inexperienced leadership. You really want to get in front of them and and talk about that and talk about, you know, the importance of of honesty, but not brutal honesty. You know, there are differences. There's um and there's saying things kindly, and then there's way sugar coating to where now I don't even know exactly what you're telling me I've done wrong.
So soft skills, you know, they really need to be managed on both sides. Um, so it's gosh, I don't think it's something that we're ever going to perfect, but I think it's something that we just we bend and we twist and and and I'll just say seer gumby right up until right up until it fits our needs. So that's my encouragement. Yeah. Lead by example and and be open with your knowledge. Share your knowledge because your your junior leadership. They need that. That's so good. That's so good, Wendy. And I I've remembered what I was going to say, the many seminars. I love that you all are doing that within the organization. Um I think that's awesome and you included that in your bio.
So, I'm glad you uh expounded more on that on that concept and what you all are doing. Mark, did you I was I'm feeling like you had something to say there. Did you want to chime in before we uh before we log off? There you're good. Okay. All right, Wendy. Man, it was so great hearing from you today. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom, your experiences, and I I love this last slide here, too, with the little kitty. Thank you, Britney. Thank you so much. And thank you to Mark and to all of the panelists. And thank you to to everyone who's, you know, if you're in HR right now, you have one of the toughest jobs in the world.
So to all the HR professionals who are braving through it every day and still coming in to work despite whatever happened yesterday, God bless you and keep it up because we need more of you. Yes. Like I said before, you guys are the unsung heroes. Uh Wendy, can you share where folks might be able to follow you or get in touch with you after this after this session today? I am on LinkedIn and probably not as much as I should be, but uh I I am on LinkedIn, so you can uh you can reach me there. Awesome. Awesome. Well, again, thank you so much for such an insightful presentation. The information was valuable in uh invaluable really and I'm I'm just so grateful that you all were here with me.
We had some great speakers. We had some great panelists today, guys. Um and I'm gonna I'm gonna conclude. I'm going to close us out, but again, thank you guys for being here. All right. Thank you so much, Britney. Thank you, Wendy. Um well, San Diego, we're at the conclusion of the HR leader summit. I want to say thank you. Thank you. Thank you to our speakers, to our panel. We had such an awesome panel and then two amazing keynote speakers. They shar shared so many wonderful nuggets. Um I know you guys are out there taking notes. Make sure you that you use those notes. You put them into practice that you don't just leave them in the notebook.
Don't forget about them, but actually apply them. You know, we um thank you to our listeners as well. Without these events, these wouldn't be or without you, these events wouldn't be possible. So, so you all are an integral part of these sessions. Let's all continue to support, improve, and develop HR leadership and learn from one another. Thank you everyone for taking the time to be with us today. Hope you've enjoyed the summit as much as I have. Don't forget to go to the website in a few days. If you'd like to listen to this summit again or any of our previous discussions, they're there. They are there for you to access them whether you're driving in your car, you're in your office and you um want to to learn more to continue um filling your mind with more concepts of HR to improving um improving your day-to-day tasks.
Make sure you check that check that monthly monthly schedule online and we hope to see you next month. Make it a great a evening. Thank you for being here and I'm Britney Williams signing off. San Diego HR Leaders Association. Have a great night.
She currently serves as the director of human resources for Helen Woodward Animal Center since 2013. And as a part of the center, she also offers courses in HR management through the cent's educational seminars called the business of saving lives. Without further ado, I want to hand it off to Wendy. Thank you so much for being here with us today. Thank you. And um and I just wanted to say thank you to Mark, too, for some really wonderful information. and and I'm actually really glad to follow Mark because so much of what he said really resonates in this presentation as well. Um, one of the things that, you know, when Mark started his presentation, um, he he basically told us that, you know, the the one thing that remains the same is change.
And so with that, that's that's really a great way to to kick off this presentation because what's the biggest change that's happened from 2019 until now? Um, you know, the only thing that that everyone seems to be talking about all over the news and all over HR and is COVID. Um, so how did hiring become such a crisis management issue? Well, when COVID hit California in March of 2020, it it sort of created this perfect storm of events. Parents have children at home now. Companies were moving to remote work. Companies were having to figure out like like again how Mark was mentioning adjusting the business to be able to do remote work and and basically the world just kind of shut down.
um no one quite knew what we were dealing with or how to control it or really how to keep their employees from getting and spreading it. And so that's kind of a big thing that that created fear. Um and and that like I said brings us back to March of 2020. Um, so now we're in this we're in this cycle of fear and illness and we we don't know what's happening. And regardless of what we know now, back then we just didn't know who was at risk, who wasn't at risk. So for most of us, our principal belief system took over. And I probably should have asked Britney to advance the slide now. I'm so sorry.
Um, so like I said, for for most of us, our our our belief system took over. And when you think about it, our belief system is the core of each of our personalities. It's it's what drives us. It's what tells us right from wrong. It is the strongest fiber of our constitutional beings. You can never mess with a person's belief system. And people didn't know what to believe. So this created kind of a a a panic where everyone's worlds were sort of turned upside down. Emotions are what we used to create the vivid imagery in our minds and our emotions at that time were overpowering. Um, and I'll just give you an example of a story that was published not that long ago in the LA Times about a 121 person choir in Washington State who gathered for a choir practice one night.
45 people got infected and then two died. All of a sudden, singing was dubbed a super spreader. Now, when you think about the logistics of that, well, people don't often think about the logistics of that. You know, you don't often hear a horrible story and think, well, you know, how much does this really occur? You hear these stories and think, I don't want this happening to me or my family or at my work or my place of business. So, the imagery was very clear. Wait a minute. 121 people got together and 45 of them got sick and two died. Oh my goodness, what do we do now? So that's sort of the the fear that was instilled.
Um we learned that, you know, as information came out, there were some people who were at higher risk than others. We learned that it was really contagious. We learned that mask didn't work. Then we learned that mask did work. Then it just depended on which news outlet you were watching. So this really affected you know millions. I mean this affected and I'll just stick with a whole country but we all know I think a whole world. Um and so here so many people worried about you know what what will happen to my family if I contract COVID. So many many people opted not to go to work at all. Um, so you know, is this all the result of logic and critical thinking skills?
No. But does that even matter at this point? No, not really. So, we come back one year later to March of 2021 and even still, as more and more people went back to work, a year later, we still had 8 mill 8.4 4 million fewer people working than we did a year ago. Now half of those so over 4.2 million people cited CO as the only reason they refused to work. So CO is has been you know a sort of a a universal organization killer. I mean, you know, I I know we we turn on our different news organizations and and we hear what we hear and it depends on well, you know, if you're watching this station, you're hearing this and if you're watching this station, you're hearing that.
And it's been extremely, and this is the part that I cannot stress enough, divisive. So now you've got this culture of fear going on in your workplace and it's become a culture of fear, a culture of politics, a culture of, you know, of all of these things that that that we simply don't go to work for. So co is not a Republican or a Democrat. It's it's not a liberal or conservative. It's but it's been a an extremely divisive virus. So as news started spreading information really fast and each different outlet was reporting the virus differently. So even today, let's fast forward another year. So now we're in March of 2022. A lot of people today still can't necessarily determine fact from fiction.
So this confusion spreads and creates difficult working environments. So now every HR is faced with two very distinct issue. Well, and I and I say two knowing that it's two and then about four billion sub issues. But um you know our issues now are how to hire when the pickings are slim to none and how to keep these employees that are in this hectic, you know, fear-mongering environment um when they have options like they've never had before. And I'll just kind of give you an example. We are not a remote work facility um because what we do is so interactive. We take care of animals, you know, we take care of those pets. Um, we actually have to physically be there.
I've never seen someone who can zoom in and clean out a kennel. It just it doesn't it doesn't work. So, we're in an environment, you know, where we don't have that that opportunity. And I know a lot of retail, same thing. um you know whether it's retail well and a lot of companies you can certainly go clothes shopping on the internet but you you can't go out to eat on the internet um so you know things like that there's always going to be companies where this face-to-face interaction must must must happen and and then on the other side of that are the potential employees saying well how can you guarantee I'm not going to get sick.
So, you can't. So, what are some of the things that we can do in in in an environment like this? Um, and if we could go to the next slide. Thank you. Oh, perfect. So, now you're hiring and you're hiring in, like I said, this this really feardirected environment where I don't want to go to work today. I don't know if I'm going to get sick. Um, I don't, you know, you've got fewer people who are applying for jobs. You have fewer people in the workforce. So, how do you do that? How do you attract good talent while you're while you are continuing to battle, you know, the the issues in front of you. Um, and one of the ways that that I really want to talk about is rethink your strategies.
um where are you posting your positions right now? Where are you doing all of your recruitment? And then how can you expand on that? Um maybe you maybe you post your job ads on Indeed and now you want to think about okay I'm now not getting the kind of responses that I used to get. Um so what now? Well, depending on on what you do, um, and I'll just Mark, I'm going to use you an example once again in the Boys and Girls Clubs, that's a you've got many, many front-facing, frontline positions that can't be done remotely. So, you've got to hire these people in to come into to your facility to, you know, work with the children at the facility and things like that.
So maybe let's just say that the Boys and Girls Club only uh recruits on Indeed, but now we're going to have to rethink that because you're simply not getting the same number of applicants. So now maybe we want to reach out to, you know, UCSD, um, San Diego State, maybe they have job boards for some of their college students. that might be a great, you know, frontline opportunity for those who are interested in working with children or have um, you know, um, educational development majors in school. Uh, we do that as well. We we now for our, you know, our veterinary assistants, we reach out. We've partnered with um you know Puma which is a a vocational school that works with you know nursing degrees and veterinary degrees and things like that.
Um so we now have kind of a a flow from them. Um I also recommend research pay studies. You know, I saw uh a a a really interesting statistic that came out that said um that we're at a 13% inflation rate now. And I don't know where they've come up with that because let me tell you the gas is what 77% more expensive. Food has in some cases become 120% more expensive. So, I'm not sure what this 13% inflation number is all about because I I I feel like what I'm seeing is well, I feel like what I'm seeing is about a,000%, but in reality, it's it's it's still very up there. So, what are you paying now?
And I we all know that California just went through, you know, our big uh pay increase where we increased the minimum wage. um you know starting back in oh I believe 2015 and coming all the way up until this year um where California state minimum wage is $15 an hour and in some cities more. Um so research those pay studies. Are you are you paying you know market wages these days? Um looking for new ways to attract talent. Um, now we've we never had done uh job fairs and things like that out in the past. Um, and now we're looking to things like, you know, participating in job fairs, participating in in different, you know, avenues to to attract talent.
Um, rewarding ads. When I first started at the company, our our um our job ads were basically taking the job description and sort of copy and paste. And that's something that we did for years. And now we're looking at that and saying, 'Well, wait a minute. That that doesn't make me excited. That sounds like a job description.' And what you want is an ad that explains why you want to work here. Why is your company the best company in the world? And you must believe that because you're working there. So, find ways to to reward the, you know, your job ads. Um, and I'll just give you an example of something we've done just recently is we are looking for what we call an animal services manager.
And I had posted it like that for the longest time. And we just didn't get much feedback. And finally, as I'm reading through one day, it occurred to me, you know, what is an animal services manager? Most people probably don't think they're qualified to be an animal services manager. And when you read through it, I said, 'Hey, sounds a whole lot like an ops manager to me that just happens to be in an animal field.' And she said, 'Well, yes, that's that's actually a lot of what it is.' So, we rewarded that ad to from animal services manager to operations manager of an adoption facility. And we more than quadrupled our um our incoming apps and resumes.
So, don't be afraid to, and again, this go speaks to so much of what Mark was saying, don't be afraid to change it up. Don't be afraid to get in there and take a look at what you have. And I I love that he talked about the flexibility because be flexible, you know, um look at what you're doing and how you could do that more, faster, better, how however it is that you need to to get your people in. Um and I think, you know, we've all seen it. Every restaurant I walk in, every Home Depot, they're all hiring. They're all hiring. And what I see is not now hiring. I see now taking applicants away from Helen Woodward Animal Center.
And I'm going no. So, you know, we're all in that same boat out there. Um, one of the other things that I would say is don't settle. And I can't stress this enough. And if you'll notice, it's the only bullet point that has an exclamation point after it. Please, please don't settle. you will regret that down the road. A warm body now is not a competent employee later by definition. So, no matter what, no how bleak it looks in the moment, don't settle because that's where um you're going to short sell yourself and you're going to now put yourself in a position where your job is now putting out fires and cleaning up messes because you settled on your hires.
So, no matter what, I if there's nothing else that I get through to you today, please please don't settle. Um, if we could go to the next slide. Thank you. So, how do you keep your team engaged when you're out there looking for, you know, more uh more applicants, more employees, and for the moment your team is suffering the burden of not having a full staff? Well, the the the first and simplest and easiest thing that I just want to say is thank you notes are not dead. If you have an employee and you see them going out of their way to do something kind, how long does it take you to write a thank you note?
If you don't have a stack of thank you notes sitting on your desk, and many of us don't, a thank you email works almost just as well. I mean, anything people absolutely respond to acknowledgement. We have a um what we call a supervisor survey as part of our onboarding process and we ask the employees on day one to fill out the survey and it's basically how I like to be managed and we ask questions like you know things that motivate me are um and and I got to tell you I don't think that there is one survey out there in our 170 employees that doesn't say, 'Tell me thank you every once in a while.' So, that is, like I said, the easiest thing you can do.
It doesn't cost you a bunch of money. It It's the simplest and really one of the most noteworthy morale boosters that I could give you. Um, another one is go out of your way to acknowledge good work, good deeds, good behavior. Um, and and then I'm going to jump down to the bottom really quickly for a minute and say even acknowledge it publicly. Um, do you have a a an employee of the month? Do you have an employee of the quarter? Do you have a wall of fame? Do you have a a social media presence? Uh, we we do. And we have, you know, we have with 170 employees and over 800 volunteers, we have a lot of praise to give.
So, we get on our our Facebook, our Instagram, our all of those. Luckily, we have a social media department because I am not the most Instagram savvy. But um yes, have your you know have your marketing or your social media department acknowledge your your employees publicly on social media or have a put up a little wall of fame somewhere in your um organization. Um, another one, if you do have a small budget, and I I say that because as a nonprofit, believe me, I understand not having a large budget, but if you have a small budget, bring in some bagels or muffins every once in a while. You know, I I am dying to to read research on this because I cannot tell you how much food works.
I mean, it can be a candy bar. It can be coffee. I It almost doesn't matter. No, it doesn't almost. It doesn't matter what the food is. You make people so happy. Um, every once in a while I'll just run to a Smart and Final, pick up some of those, you know, giant boxes of like 50 assorted potato chips. You bring those in, take them into the break room, and toss them out on the counter. And let me tell you, your workforce is banging. I mean, and I, like I said, I have yet to understand it. I am fascinated by the psychology that if I bring you a candy bar, you bring me all kinds of happiness and productivity.
But for now, we are riding on the high that it just works. Um, another one is find motivational writings. one that that I listed was five key factors that uh motivate employees more than money. One thing I'm going to tell you about that is that's just there are a whole lot more than five. Um and just to give you an idea of some of the things that motivate people, being recognized for their hard work, which we touched on already, um working in a positive company culture. So you you want to do everything you can to make your organization just that a positive company culture. Um people are motivated by feeling a sense of meaning and purpose in their work.
I can promise you that firsthand because in a nonprofit and again gosh I I feel like Mark is my bff on this. I think he can probably agree with me that when you go to work at a nonprofit, it's not usually your get-richqu scheme. It's because you feel a sense of purpose in the work that you do. Um, autonomy, you know, challenges. Um, these are all what motivates employees other than money. Uh, inclusion, belief, encouragement. I mean, I could go on and on about these things all day long because there are a whole lot more than five factors, but that was one article that you can research on the internet and pull up in about two seconds.
Um, so find motivational tidbits and use that um use that, you know, for for your employees. Um, and then I think um, next slide. Okay. And we've got about five minutes left and if you have any questions, I am happy to take them.
Thank you, Wendy. Thank you so much. I love that presentation. Insightful, fun. Uh, again, great uh, tools, great things uh, that our audience can apply. I know they've taken some great notes. Um, so I'll actually go into our first audience question here. Let me pull it. There we go. All right. So, our first a question from the audience is, how have you all attracted, retained, and developed employees with leadership potential?
So, that can be answered in so many different parts. Um there's first of all just how do we attract and retain employees and then how do we develop that leadership potential. So I I think we you know we went over a lot of the different ways. I'll tell you something. Some of the things that we do is when we um write our job ads we post them directly on our website. Now, we have an applicant tracking system that we work with. And this applicant tracking system, they'll go in and send the, you know, the web crawlers. In my mind, they're like little robotic spiders, but but they call them web crawlers. They go in and they send these little web crawlers and they pick up your job ads and then our applicant tracking system pushes them out to places like Indeed, Zip Recruiter, Monster, um all the major job boards like that.
Glass Door I believe is one. Um and so that's one of the ways that that we have been attracting talent. Um, like I mentioned, we recently started rewriting all of our job ads. So instead of saying this position will be responsible for, and by the time I get to sentence number two, all you hear is WW, instead our job ads now read like, 'Do you have a passion for saving lives?' You know, and and it gets your attention. It's now not three paragraphs. it's more like five or six sentences because what we're realizing is you don't need the entire job description just to apply. Um so that's one of the ways. Another of the ways that and again we discussed was reaching out.
We've now developed relationships with a lot of the colleges. Um you know we we work we even get into a lot of the military job fairs. Um so we're we're doing a lot of that kind of thing. to try and attack attract talent. Now, what do we do with that talent once it gets here? Well, leadership is is something that if you're not walking in the door with, it's developed over time. So, you know, for for us, we have um and I try and do leadership sort of seminars. I will tell you, let me see here. My next leadership seminar is it's going to be at the end of this month and called seven things every new manager should do in the first month.
So I would empower my HR team to put together, you know, little internal seminars like that. And if you do have someone that's just been promoted to supervisor or manager, you could send them to your HR seminars. Um, you know, we have other seminars that that we'll share, you know, throughout over the months that um might be transitioning from manager to leader or um one of my favorites is dealing with difficult employees. Um, and along those lines, conflict resolution. you know, we we do all kinds of little mini I'll call them mini seminars uh that that go over and that's one of the ways that we develop our leaders. Another way is simply I mean they once they have really learned their job they're instilled with that confidence and then you simply build upon that confidence and I say simply like it's just this super easy thing to do and anyone can do it and I think we've all we've all been around long enough to not take my word simply to heart too much um because it's it's not an easy task you know you're taking human beings things and building them into leaders.
And gosh, I feel like once again I I I'm just going to refer back to I'm going to call him my twin Mark and say, you know, I think if he went back to his military days, y'all built leaders there and and that's and that's how you do. I mean, you you've really got to to build people up and give them the confidence and empower. And I don't think I can stress that word enough. Empower your employees. Um, and that's how you build leaders. I know I I'm I'm already over my time by a minute, so I don't want to ramble anymore and I'm I'm going to turn it back over to you. If you have other questions, I'm happy to answer.
Yeah. Or we can go offline. I love that. I love that. um uh that you you even referred back to Mark, but there was something you mentioned about um Oh gosh, I just drew a blank that quick. I drew a blank that quick. Building our military leaders. Yes. And and the fact that you know that that's that was a place or is a place where they're constantly building building leaders and um it was something else you said too, but I'll I'll go to this last uh audience question here. they uh which ties right into what you were saying um in and development. How can you teach the soft skills that seem more and more necessary to leadership now?
Things like empathy, emotional intelligence, flexibility. How can you teach those soft skills um to leadership? That is a great question. Um and and I'll be honest, that's a question I'm still working to answer. We do we we have techniques and I don't think that there's one right or wrong way. I actually have a a a series of books that I've purchased. Um one of them is the leadership challenge. Um, but it's I think more than anything it's just being real and being honest and talking to your your future leaders about, you know, treating people in a manner that you yourself would like to be treated. Um, what I do, and and I'm not saying that this is the most efficient way.
It's just what we're doing right now, is I'll sit with managers while they're um giving performance reviews, while they're giving disciplinary reviews. um I will sit with these managers and and then at the end of it go over with them hey it it really impacted me when you talked about this but when you discuss this area so we actually have kind of real time feedback going on um I I recognize that that's not feasible in in every organization and to be honest some days it's not feasible in this one either um So, I like to once you have a a great leadership team, um, and I'll call it your senior leadership team, empower that team to also mentor your junior leadership team a lot of times.
And I I do it myself. I find myself sort of almost mimicking the the actions and the verbiage and things like that of my boss, which is our CEO. And so it it's a trickle down. I mean, you're going to treat your people the way you've been taught to treat people. So, you really want to um especially the your your I'll call them your younger leadership, your inexperienced leadership. You really want to get in front of them and and talk about that and talk about, you know, the importance of of honesty, but not brutal honesty. You know, there are differences. There's um and there's saying things kindly, and then there's way sugar coating to where now I don't even know exactly what you're telling me I've done wrong.
So soft skills, you know, they really need to be managed on both sides. Um, so it's gosh, I don't think it's something that we're ever going to perfect, but I think it's something that we just we bend and we twist and and and I'll just say seer gumby right up until right up until it fits our needs. So that's my encouragement. Yeah. Lead by example and and be open with your knowledge. Share your knowledge because your your junior leadership. They need that. That's so good. That's so good, Wendy. And I I've remembered what I was going to say, the many seminars. I love that you all are doing that within the organization. Um I think that's awesome and you included that in your bio.
So, I'm glad you uh expounded more on that on that concept and what you all are doing. Mark, did you I was I'm feeling like you had something to say there. Did you want to chime in before we uh before we log off? There you're good. Okay. All right, Wendy. Man, it was so great hearing from you today. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom, your experiences, and I I love this last slide here, too, with the little kitty. Thank you, Britney. Thank you so much. And thank you to Mark and to all of the panelists. And thank you to to everyone who's, you know, if you're in HR right now, you have one of the toughest jobs in the world.
So to all the HR professionals who are braving through it every day and still coming in to work despite whatever happened yesterday, God bless you and keep it up because we need more of you. Yes. Like I said before, you guys are the unsung heroes. Uh Wendy, can you share where folks might be able to follow you or get in touch with you after this after this session today? I am on LinkedIn and probably not as much as I should be, but uh I I am on LinkedIn, so you can uh you can reach me there. Awesome. Awesome. Well, again, thank you so much for such an insightful presentation. The information was valuable in uh invaluable really and I'm I'm just so grateful that you all were here with me.
We had some great speakers. We had some great panelists today, guys. Um and I'm gonna I'm gonna conclude. I'm going to close us out, but again, thank you guys for being here. All right. Thank you so much, Britney. Thank you, Wendy. Um well, San Diego, we're at the conclusion of the HR leader summit. I want to say thank you. Thank you. Thank you to our speakers, to our panel. We had such an awesome panel and then two amazing keynote speakers. They shar shared so many wonderful nuggets. Um I know you guys are out there taking notes. Make sure you that you use those notes. You put them into practice that you don't just leave them in the notebook.
Don't forget about them, but actually apply them. You know, we um thank you to our listeners as well. Without these events, these wouldn't be or without you, these events wouldn't be possible. So, so you all are an integral part of these sessions. Let's all continue to support, improve, and develop HR leadership and learn from one another. Thank you everyone for taking the time to be with us today. Hope you've enjoyed the summit as much as I have. Don't forget to go to the website in a few days. If you'd like to listen to this summit again or any of our previous discussions, they're there. They are there for you to access them whether you're driving in your car, you're in your office and you um want to to learn more to continue um filling your mind with more concepts of HR to improving um improving your day-to-day tasks.
Make sure you check that check that monthly monthly schedule online and we hope to see you next month. Make it a great a evening. Thank you for being here and I'm Britney Williams signing off. San Diego HR Leaders Association. Have a great night.