Episode 50: How to Safely Return to Work: From an Employer’s Perspective with Lisa Goodman Hughes

Episode #50

Mike O'Neill: Welcome back to the Get Unstuck & On Target Podcast. I'm Mike O'Neill with Bench Builders and we're business coaches who love helping leaders sleep better because they've solved that or tough planning, process and people problems. In this podcast we're talking with thought leaders to get their insights on ways to help you or your business get unstuck. Joining me today is Lisa Hughes. Lisa is the past president of Sherm, Atlanta, and the founder of Resolve HR, a consulting firm that taps into Lisa's 20 plus years of progressive HR experience. But what drew me to Lisa in particular is that Lisa offers several perspectives as a guest. Namely, that she rose from the VP HR role at the Tommy Nobis center to chief operating officer. And so that transition from being the VP, HR to the COO at Tommy Nobis, that's a, that's an important aspect for us to be listening to. So welcome Lisa.. 

Lisa Goodman Hughes: Thank you, Mike, glad to be here. 

Mike O'Neill: For those who are not familiar with what the Tommy Nobis center, I'll read the description and I'm going to ask you to kind of elaborate on that. This is straight from their website and that is. This center serves businesses throughout Metro Atlanta and over 20 states. They help individuals with all types of disabilities enter or return to employment and enjoy productive and independent lifestyles while contributing to the greater business community. How would you elaborate on that? 

Lisa Goodman Hughes: Absolutely Mike, the, the mission of the Tommy Nobis center is to empower people through employment. So the focus of Tommy Nobis center is to assist individuals with all types of disabilities to achieve their maximum potential in the workplace. And that starts off with training as early as high school through the, the, EYES program, the early youth employment services program and all the way up through individuals working on federal contracts all over the country. So that really is focused on empowering people with all types of disabilities through employment. 

Mike O'Neill: I appreciate you kind of clarifying what, what we're going to focus on this podcast is from an employer perspective. And very specifically, we are recording this podcast in early August and a number of companies are, wrestling with the challenges of people returning to work. And that is going to be kind of the thrust of our conversation today. And that is how, from an employer perspective, how can you advise our listeners on how to safely return these employees to work? I know you have experience with the pandemic as it kind of unfolded. And we would love to be able, think that it's winding down, but it's not, it seems to be presenting new challenges every day. And I know that what we're going to be talking about, it's a moving situation that it's very, very fluid. But at this point, as we're recording this podcast, what's going on in terms of what is the CDC advising employers to do? 

Lisa Goodman Hughes: Right. As I was preparing for the session this morning. I was just reflecting upon the fact that I've seen some employers navigating the last few months really well, and I've seen others navigating not so well. So there's really a spectrum of employer response. As you said, this is a very fluid situation and the CDC, you know, even this week, continues to issue new guidance as they see changes in the data. You know, there's not one hard and fast piece of guidance for employers to follow at this point. You know, we're, we're in a space now where we're navigating through new variants of the virus and possible new vaccine requirements may be coming, you know, later in the year as well. So I think from an employer perspective, it's being aware of what's going on with the CDC, the guidance that they're putting out. And then also what are the, the requirements that each state or, and even some cases local cities are requiring. And I think from an employer perspective, you just have to be prepared to pivot really quickly. So, you know, I've, I've in communication with a lot of different labor attorneys and you, their focus is on running your business. You know, you need to do what you need to do to run your business. But we are in a very unique time from an employer perspective and having to navigate those changes as they come up. And, and we don't know what the next week or month or six months may bring. 

Mike O'Neill: Yes. I think I shared with you before we began recording. We have a number of clients that are manufacturers and as such, business has been such that they've had to basically figure out how to manufacture what they're doing, in a compliant fashion from a COVID standpoint, but it had a relatively nominal impact on the core part of the business. But it also impacted those who were not in those direct production roles. So a number of our clients ended up kind of adopting kind of a hybrid approach. There were some employees who were at work every day, some of them that would be working remotely and then even a third group would be, they'd be on site part of the time and, offsite rest of the time, from your perspective, I know that you've talked to clients in a, like, what are you sensing that companies are doing right now?

Lisa Goodman Hughes: Well, I think the, the first piece is, as you were just talking about is what can the employer do? You know, some businesses are such that they can pivot and have individuals work remotely and still be effective and accomplish their goals and objectives. But for other employers, such as those in the manufacturing sector, remote work, isn't always feasible. So, you know, employers really need to look at, you know, what jobs can be handled remotely. What jobs need to be on site. So it's going to be very case specific. And then the employers need to look at what can they do to accommodate those individuals that need to be on site. And I'm in one scenario that I'm familiar with, the individual, some of the individuals are able to work remotely, but some of the team cannot. So then it becomes a question of fairness from the employer's perspective. Of, you know, why can these employees work remotely while these can't? So it's really having to be, be flexible and to look at the specific scenario that you're in and figuring out what is best for your organization to be able to accomplish your goals and also maintaining an environment where your employees understand why you're implementing the policies that you're implementing so communication becomes absolutely critical. 

Mike O'Neill: You know, you're kind of keying in on the nature of the business that you're running and you're also kind of implying kind of the culture of the business. And that is what your point out is that companies had to adapt very, very quickly. Some did a much better job of that than others, but most of these employers that we're talking about have been struggling with this now. 15,18 plus months. Therefore I would probably say that the bulk of our conversation would be on okay, these employers have decided to try to have employees reenter the workforce that is they've had some or all of their employees returning to work. You know, you mentioned, that sometimes it's not fair who got to work from home or not. What might be some of the employee relation aspects when you had some who got to, if that's the right term work from home, whereas others did not. What are you hearing? 

Lisa Goodman Hughes: Right. I think the first thing that employers need to look at when they're bringing people back into the workplace, are the the must do's as I call them are the compliance issues. And from a human resource perspective, it's been a very heavy time over the last year and a half because human resources has been having to guide their businesses through a, a sea of legislation and some pieces of legislation that came out very quickly and needed to be implemented with, you know, not a lot of guidance to know if you're taking the right steps or not. So I think from the employer's perspective is you need to make sure that you're checking off all those compliance boxes first, you know, there, there may be time off requirements if someone is diagnosed or if they're being tested for COVID, they could be being told to quarantine per a healthcare provider. Or they may need to be taken home to take care of someone else who has been diagnosed or as we've seen a lot. And this particularly seems to impact a lot of our female employees is being home for childcare purposes. It was schools being closed and things like that. So there are some pieces of legislation out there too, to deal with that. But then when you're trying to bring your employees back in, it could transition under the Americans with disabilities act, the needing to have someone work remotely may possibly be an accommodation of a preexisting disability that the employer would want to work with that employee on. And then you get into family medical leave possible, you know, intertwining there and then privacy with HIPAA. Employers you know, they can ask they can require employees to be vaccinated if they choose to do so. But if an employee chooses not to be vaccinated, you can ask them, have you been vaccinated? And they give you a yes or no answer, but you cannot pursue why they are choosing not to be that vaccinated. And then you have to determine what's going to be the course of action if that individual chooses not to be vaccinated. And then under OSHA, there's something called the general duty clause where every employer is required to provide a safe workspace for their workforce. So a lot of times with organizations where the employees have been required to come back into the workspace, the employer has really had to think through how they're going to implement that and make sure that they are being fair, you know, to those employees being accommodating, where they can be accommodating, but make sure at the same time that they're providing a safe workspace. 

Mike O'Neill: A number of regulations and, or compliance issues into our friends in HR. This has been a extremely tough time for, for them. I want to come back to that in just a moment and do a little more of a drill down since we're talking about how to safely return employees to work. What are you hearing regarding the overall effectiveness of working from home? Has it worked? 

Lisa Goodman Hughes: I think in a lot of places, it has. I think a lot of organizations have learned that employees can effectively work remotely. They can get the job done. And what a lot of that comes down to is trusting your employees. But at the same time, holding them, holding them accountable to achieve their key performance indicators, their goals, their KPIs. So I think employers have had to go through a shift in how they look at work and say, okay, I don't have to see my employees to know that they're working effectively. If I'm able to be in communication with them. If I see that they are achieving their KPIs, their key performance indicators. That's what I care about is, is the work getting done. But again, that's also going to, to depend upon if the work is able to be done remotely, or if you're in a distribution scenario, a manufacturing scenario, a healthcare scenario where those individuals are not able to work remotely. But I think a lot of employers have really learned through this that, Hey, this is working, you know, we can offer the employees some flexibility. That maybe we had not even considered a pre pandemic. And I think, you know, even with Zoom and Microsoft teams, a lot of employers learned about tools that were available, that they previously had not tapped into. 

Mike O'Neill: You know, we've all learned to. Embrace the Zoom platform, Microsoft teams, and the like. We know that it has some potential drawbacks. What might be some things that you would see happening in the workplace that maybe has forever changed how we interact with employees as a result of this experience? 

Lisa Goodman Hughes: Right. You know, I think just a lot of the ways that we're able to work remotely, we've learned that employees can be sitting in a lot of cases wherever they choose to sit and still get the work done as long as that's conducive for the employer. But I think we've learned that we've got other tools and ways that we can be flexible and interacting with our teams that we really hadn't considered before. I know I've seen employers who had implemented the Microsoft office package pre pandemic that had microsoft teams as an element and I'm not plugging Microsoft teams is just an example, but they hadn't tapped into that. They were using all the other software components of that package. But then when the pandemic occurred last year and they had to pivot very quickly, they found that they were able to continue to operate via remote conferencing technologies very effectively. So I think that we've learned that we can be flexible and we can accomplish some things in new ways that we hadn't previously considered.

Mike O'Neill: You know I mentioned I'd like to come back to this, and this is a shout out to our friends in the HR community. It seems as if they have had an unbelievably heavy burden through all of this, but it kind of raises this whole notion. Much of our conversation has centered around, regulations and compliance. And in many respects you could almost describe it as dealing more with the physical health and wellbeing of our employees, the physical health and wellbeing of our customers, but it as kind of highlighted this whole mental health issue an that is, it seems as if that there are mental health issues that are not limited to just those who have had been working or returning to work. It also applies to those who've been working from home. What have you seen there? 

Lisa Goodman Hughes: I've seen a lot of cases where individuals who began working remotely, that they lost their sense of work life balance. You know, the computer was already, always there. Yeah, you always felt like you had your to-do list right in front of you. And in some cases like HR, for example, the workload got substantially higher and a lot of, a lot of cases. And what I was seeing is that individuals and like the HR space. They would, you know, take a quick break for lunch, go back to the, go back to their home office, wherever that may be, then they would take a quick break for dinner and then they'd be like, say, I've got, okay, I've got four more things I need to do. So they would jump back on the computer because it was there. So in a lot of cases, I actually saw work-life balance decline. Whereas a lot of people think that that's counterintuitive that you would expect it to have been better, but that wasn't always the case because you lost that boundary or you lost those parameters between work and home. Home was work and work was at home. So it was definitely a, a challenging time. I think for a lot of people who began, working remotely. And as we talked about before, you know, there's been a lot of stress and anxiety with people returning to the workplace, but I've also seen cases where there's been a lot of stress and anxiety around people continuing to be isolated, working at home. You know particularly those individuals who maybe live alone. And then when they lost that social aspect of work of going in and connecting with their coworkers, there were a lot of struggles in the mental health space with isolation and people really feeling that they had lost their social community, even if that was provided through work.

Mike O'Neill: I'm trying to remember the source, but I read this yesterday and it was surveying CEOs, what are the issues you're most concerned about when it comes to people? And overwhelmingly their response was what we're talking about right now. And that is what can we do as an employer to assure the mental health of our employees, knowing that the pressure that people have been under has been so intense? You know, when we're talking about mental health options, we have listening, folks who are part of larger organizations that may have robust mental health o fferings for their employees and family. We have listeners that may be working for very small companies when we're talking about things that we should be considering. What are the things that you are suggesting are the must that we as leaders should be paying attention to right now? 

Lisa Goodman Hughes: Right. I think one thing is knowing your employees as individuals and taking the time to say, how are you doing today? And really meaning it, you know, when you pass somebody in the hall and say, how's it going. You know that's more of a courtesy, but really just being aware of your employees and checking in with them to see how they're doing. But then also most employers are many employers I won't say most many have an employee assistance program that they offer. And in most cases they employer provides that employee assistance program known as an EAP, at no cost to the employee and utilization of EAPs has been critical over the last, you know, year and a half and prior for other situations, but they can, the EAP can help with mental health situations it can help with identifying childcare. It can help with financial stresses. If individuals are having a financial crisis during the pandemic. And a lot of times, either your EAP can tap into resources through your medical insurance. Or if you don't have an EAP, a lot of times there are resources within the employer provided medical insurance. Now, if you are in a small employer and you don't have an EAP and possibly don't offer medical insurance, there are free resources in the communities that you can tap into. So those are very community specific, but you can research you know resources that are available, that it would be at no cost to the employer and at no cost to the employee, but making sure that those employees are getting help, you know, navigating the stresses of mental health that we're seeing as a result of the pandemic.

Mike O'Neill: I don't know if this is going to actually play out, but it seems of late our family loves the Olympics and there have been some recent stories in the Olympics by which mental health, has overshadowed the physical health of athletes. Some athletes actually withdrawing from competition because of that, but what's been very interesting about that is the dialogue that that has generated. And personally it's my hope that through COVID we begin to treat mental health with the same concern as we have physical health for many, many years. That may be my own, perspective. You may not share that, but what do you sense? Are you sensing that mental health will become more of a priority for employers?

Lisa Goodman Hughes: Oh, I think so. As you said, you know, we're seeing the mental health conversation come up in a variety of areas. You know, recently this week, as you said, with some athletes on the Olympics. So I do think that that, that conversation is coming up much more frequently than it has in the past, because the goal for the employers to help your employees be as productive as they can be. And, you know, we may focus on the physical health and safety a lot of times, but that mental component is so important. And with tapping into our employee assistance programs, NAMI the national Alliance on mental illness, you know, there's a lot of resources out there where we can help our employees achieve their maximum potential. And I think the awareness that employers are getting now toward mental health is really important. And I'm pleased to see that these conversations are happening. Think we have a long way to go, but the conversations are starting and that is leaps and bounds of where ahead of where we've been in the past.

Mike O'Neill: You know, we, as, as a people have experienced a shared experience and, it's been horrific for, for many, but there are things that as I stepped back and start looking at what might be some of the positives that emerged from this, this is one of those. So can we go back to something you mentioned a few minutes ago and that is you used the word trust. And you just, you mentioned it as if that it's implied, but has trust been hard to establish and maintain over the last 18 plus months as from an employer perspective? 

Lisa Goodman Hughes: Well, and you mentioned the word culture a little while ago as well. I think a lot of that taps into the culture of the employer. I've seen employers where the leadership felt that if the employee was not in the office space and visible that they felt that they were not working. I've seen other employers who have embraced the remote work model a long time ago. That again, focused on the achievement of the work was the work getting done. And if so, that's what they focused on. It didn't, in some cases, it didn't necessarily matter if the employee was working six hours or eight hours, as long as the task got done that's what was important. So I think a lot of it is just going back to the culture of the employer. And, and developing that trust. And I think a lot of people feel like that trust has to be earned, but I've also seen a lot of scenarios where trust has to be given, you know, get trust in your employees and give them the opportunity to prove you right. So I think in a lot of cases, it just takes the employer being willing to look at things a little bit differently than we have in the past. And again, work with our employees, communicate with our employees and then if the work is getting done, that's what you're after, right? 

Mike O'Neill: Yes. All right. That's excellent. I appreciate your clarification there, Lisa. We have talked about. Sherm, but I did not list what Sherms stands for, for those who do not know, Sherm is the abbreviation for society for human resource management. 

Lisa Goodman Hughes: Correct. 

Mike O'Neill: And you are a past president of the Sherm chapter in Atlanta, a large chapter. So this is an organization that HR professionals are part of, and if you're listening and you are in HR or have responsibility for HR, Lisa and I cannot stress how valuable that is to be a member of Sherm. And if you have a local chapter to kind of get plugged in to that chapter, you do not have to be full-time HR to be a member. Much of what we've talked about here equally applies to business owners, business leaders, as well as HR. But it's the Sherm magazine that, that you and I both get. I think it was last month and it made this referenced to something we're hearing more and more about, and that is the turnover tsunami. We're hearing that. Are you sensing that that is taking place? 

Lisa Goodman Hughes: Oh, I'm, I'm hearing it from employers, you know, weekly, if not more often than that. And there's a lot of scenarios that are happening. You know, with the, changes around the pandemic, I'm seeing a lot of scenarios where employees are choosing not to return to the office, meaning the physical space. So if the employers saying everyone has to come back in, you I've seen scenarios where individuals have said, Hey, I'm not comfortable doing that. So they've decided to look for other opportunities where they could continue to work, to work remotely. I've also seen scenarios where employees are choosing not to return to the job while they've been working remotely. They've discovered new opportunities, maybe they've developed and foster new interests while they were working remotely over the last 12 to 15 months. And then we're also hearing a lot about something called the gig economy, where people are going out, they're opening their own businesses because they've identified other passions while they've been working remotely. As I've mentioned prior, there's also been a lot of scenarios where employees have had to resign due to other family needs, that may be caring for an individual who has, has been sick. It could be for childcare, it could be to homeschool. You know, it may be that your school is still having students learn from home. And one of the, one of the parents may need to resign their, their job to be home with those, with those students. And then there's also employer initiated transitions. I mean, if, for example, if your company has implemented a mandatory vaccine policy, if an employee chooses not to be vaccinated, you need to tread carefully through that journey. But there's also been scenarios where there's been realignment of work. Employers have learned that they can get the work done with different team configurations. So there may be, have been some, some downsizings or some realignments of the work itself. And then there's also been changes with regard to the actual changes in the office space. A lot of employers have, have determined that they can work in a much smaller physical space. So, you know, maybe they don't need as many support staff, you know, along those lines to be able to run that office. So I've seen a lot of turnover, both and probably more right now employee initiated, but there is some out there that is also employer initiated as well. So there's, there's a lot of churn in the, in the employment market space right now. 

Mike O'Neill: So, what we saw from a headline standpoint has materialized and the source of this turnover, could be both from the employee perspective. It could be from the employee perspective. I know we have clients that are really wrestling with this issue. They have needs, they cannot find qualified folks and that's been extremely frustrating for them. You know, Lisa, in keeping with the theme of this podcast, would you kind of reflect on maybe an example by which either you or a client got stuck? And if that happened, what did you do to get unstuck? 

Lisa Goodman Hughes: I think one of the ones that, that pops into my mind is a client that I was, that I'm familiar with, that they really struggled with how to pivot to remote work and to pivot quickly. You know, we had to make some really fast decisions last year when you know, the state was issuing, the state of Georgia was issuing states of emergency and putting out a lot of guidance for employers that we had to, they had to shut down some facilities quite quickly and figure out, okay, how are we going to be able to navigate this? And from a financial standpoint as well, because it was a significant financial hit to the organization until some of the government programs started, started coming into play. So it's just been a scenario where I think leadership teams and organizations have needed to really come together. Communicate effectively and quickly and make some really tough decisions about how to navigate the space. Now, fortunately, what I'm seeing now is a lot of those have navigated through those turbulent waters and are starting to come out the other end. But as we said, at the beginning of the session, this is a fluid situation and things continue to change. So I think employers need to continue to be alert. They need to continue to pay attention to guidance from the CDC and be prepared to more decisions quickly should the needs arise, but I hope that we're on the path to getting everybody back to work and moving in the right direction. 

Mike O'Neill: Lisa, we have covered a lot of different topics in relatively rapid succession. So I like to allow a little bit of time here and that is there's some things we've talked about you might would like to elaborate on. So if you have some closing thoughts or takeaways, what might they be? 

Lisa Goodman Hughes: I think just to wrap up our conversation for today, is really, again, just to remind everybody that there's not one hard and fast answer to these scenarios. I think a lot of employees get frustrated when the employer has to change their course of action. But I think it's just important to recognize that new data continues to come in about the COVID virus and with the variants that are coming up it's not a static situation. So I think employees need to understand that employers are navigating a space that's very unfamiliar. It's a changing situation. The employers are going to, in some cases, need to pivot their course of action relatively quickly. And hopefully they're doing a good job of communicating why to, to foster the understanding with their employees. And I think just from an employer perspective is number one is the job getting done, you know, do what you need to do to run your business, do it in a compliant way, making sure that you're checking off all of those boxes of the alphabet soup that I referenced earlier, but then also to say, okay, where can I work with my employees? Where can I implement some employee friendly changes when it makes sense to do so. One employer that I worked with to kind of ease the transition back into the workspace, they implemented a, bring your dog to work, bring your dog to work policy where employees could bring their dog with them. So it was just something because that can help with the mental health aspect as well. But it's really just understanding that things are fluid. And in a lot of cases, employee situations are very individual specific and will require some attention while maintaining consistency where you can. 

Mike O'Neill: You know Lisa I introduced you as someone who had a strong HR background who transitioned to a COO role. And as I've been listening to you, what you've said thus far equally apply from an HR and a COO perspective. But from the very top role in an organization, looking at what we've discussed, is there anything you would add that. Top leader needs to be mindful of that. We should be thinking about? 

Lisa Goodman Hughes: I think that the top leaders need to make sure that they're engaged with their employees in their business. And I don't necessarily mean on a one-on-one basisif they can do that, that's great. But I've seen some CEOs who've been very plugged in, very communicative with their leadership teams, making sure that communication is flowing both upward and downward in the organization. And I've seen other CEOs who've been more hands-off and kind of left it to their leadership teams to determine what the course of action was going to be. But the ones that I feel have been the most successful in navigating this journey are the ones who are the top leaders in the organization be it, the CEO, the COO, even the CFO had been plugged in with the day-to-day needs of the business and making sure that they're navigating this uncertain situation in is effective and is most positive way to ways that they can. 

Mike O'Neill: You know what brought you to my attention is that you're a panelist on a webinar and I was so impressed with your sense of awareness of all the issues. And you have not failed. I've asked some of the questions that were asked before and you, you offer fantastic succinct responses. And I really appreciate your willingness to share your perspective both from an HR and from a key leadership perspective, because there are some nuanced differences. Lisa, if folks want to connect with you, what's the best way for them to do that? 

Lisa Goodman Hughes: The best way to connect with me is either through LinkedIn, you can look up Lisa Goodman Hughes, or you can email me at lisa@resolvehumanresources.com. And in that case, human resources is spelled out lisa@resolvehumanresources.com. 

Mike O'Neill: Excellent. We will also include that contact information you just shared in the show notes. Lisa, thank you so much. 

Lisa Goodman Hughes: You're very welcome. Glad to do it. 

Mike O'Neill: I also want to thank our listeners for joining us for this episode of get unstuck & On Target. Every Thursday, we upload the latest episode to all the major platforms. So if you haven't already please subscribe. You know, life really is too short to let business problems keep you up at night. So you've been listening to my conversation with Lisa and you're realizing that something's keeping your business stuck let's talk. You can go to our website, bench-builders.com to schedule a quick call. So I want to thank you for joining us, and I hope you have picked up on some tips that will help you Get Unstuck & On Target. Until next time.