Welcome to our new series called Chamber Conversations: Trusted Advice in Challenging Times. Chamber Conversations are direct, simple conversations between the Frederick County Chamber of Commerce and experts in various industries for the purpose of providing valuable information and insight to our community.
Our guest is Amanda Haddaway of HR Answerbox who discusses with us human resources challenges and situations associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.
In this interview, Amanda discusses…
-
- Tips for being a strong leader during the Covid-19 Crisis
- Best practices for communicating with your team
- Preparing for furloughs, layoffs, and workforce reductions
- Maintaining employee engagement and retention efforts
- Why everyone needs Human Resources (HR)
Transcription edited for readability:
Rick: Today I’m really excited to introduce Amanda Haddaway. Amanda is the managing director and lead consultant and trainer for HR Answerbox. Amanda has nearly 40,000 hours of experience in Human Resources and she specializes in resolving difficult employee relations situations, designing and facilitating interactive training solutions and advising small businesses on how to effectively manage their human capital. In 2019, Amanda was recognized as The Most Influential Woman in HR Training – USA by Acquisition National.
She holds the two highest professional certifications available in the human resources field, SPHR and SHRM-SCP, as well as a Master of Jurisprudence degree in Labor and Employment Law from Tulane University Law School, a Master’s degree from George Washington University and a Bachelor’s degree from James Madison University. So it is my great pleasure to introduce you to Amanda Haddaway. Thanks for being with us!
Amanda: Thanks Rick! I’m excited to have the opportunity to chat with you and all of our Chamber members today.
Rick: Everyone I talk to, from Fortune 500s to mom and pop retail on Market Street, is worried about their workforce. Everyone wants to be protecting their workforce and doing the right thing by the people who have helped build their investment into something meaningful. So I just felt like this was a great topic and I couldn’t think of a better person to talk about it with.
Now that most people, including our whole Chamber team, are working from home these days. What are some tips for managers who are attempting to lead teams right now? Some things they should be thinking about, worrying about, and providing for?
Amanda: It’s definitely a challenging and interesting time for managers and employees alike. My biggest tip for managers would be to communicate, and to over-communicate because what’s happening is we’re all feeling kind of disconnected. This is a weird and uncharted territory for all of us, and employees want to hear from their managers on a more regular basis. We don’t have the luxury to stand up, walk down the hall, and have those collaborative discussions that we’re used to in the traditional workplace, so managers need to make an even more concerted effort to communicate with their teams.
Not everything has to be a Zoom Webinar either. I know we’re all feeling a bit inundated with that. So pick up the phone, send them an email, figure out when it’s a good time to get everyone together for a conference call or an informal chat. It doesn’t matter what it is as long as you’re having those regular and disciplined checkpoints.
The other thing managers can do is be available. Were all adjusting to new schedules and new realities, if your organization is setting core work hours, that’s great. The expectation is obvious that you’ll be working during those core hours. If your company has more flexibility and people are fitting in work where they can, as a manager you need to make sure you share with your team when you’re available to be pinged with questions, when you can take calls and when you can meet. This way things can still move forward and the manager isn’t creating an unnecessary bottle-neck to someone’s productivity.
Finally, be flexible. That pretty much goes without being said because that’s the reality of how we have to be right now.
Rick: All awesome advice, exactly what we knew we would hear when asking you these questions.
So the next question has to do with best practices, and we’ll start with ours. We purchased the “licensed seat” version of Zoom for more web security, due to all the different things people have been experiencing. We are also using an app called Slack. So in addition to twice a week Zoom meetings, Slack gives our organization the ability to chat as a whole group and check-in twice a day on what we’re accomplishing. So how about some other best practices you’ve seen or heard?
Amanda: So I’ll echo what you said about Slack, it’s a great tool and there’s not really any implementation, you just sign up and create your different channels. I actually use Slack at HR Answerbox. I have a virtual assistant and that’s where we go to collaborate and file share. It’s a lot easier to streamline instead of sending attachments back and forth via email.
But I think we need to pause and think more big picture and start thinking about where we go from here. It’s likely that in all our businesses, myself included and I’m sure with the Chamber as well, we had goals set out for what we wanted to achieve for 2020. Most of us have found ourselves on some other planet where all those goals, dreams and things that we thought we were going to make happen have now really evaporated or have gone into a different galaxy. So a lot of us need to go back to the drawing board as leaders, as managers, even as individual contributors. We need to take a hard look at what we are working on and what the priorities are going to be moving forward.
This may be an adjustment of goals, it’s certainly going to be an adjustment of financial goals. Unfortunately, a lot of us aren’t going to make as much money as we thought we were going to make and that’s just the reality of the situation. We have to adjust and make those small changes to shift what our business is going to look like going forward. But we also need to think about our employees because many of us don’t have a business without them.
Now is not the time to take your foot off the pedal when it comes to things like employee engagement and retention efforts, because we are going to go back to business and we are going to continue to do whatever it is we do. Whether it’s a product or service, we’re going to need people to help us do it, so now is the time to really appreciate and make sure that your employees who are those key people are productive and engaged and know their value. That way when we get this thing turned around those are the people that are once again the superstars within your organization.
You also wanna think about training. A lot of your employees didn’t have the ability to fully convert their position to a remote working position. You don’t want them to check out because we’re all going to go back to work at some point. So if you have the ability to train people then now is a great time to do that. Training doesn’t have to be super expensive, and there are lots of free and low-cost options, but if you do have the funding available it’s a great time to invest in long term training initiatives.
Rick: For the business owners that are the leaders of their brand out there, what’s the right way to go about the stuff that you have to do, and pray you never have to? My intuition is just looking at our membership, that we have a significant measurable part of our small business infrastructure that may not be able to protect that workforce the way we wish we could just because of these circumstances. So what’s the right way to go about that?
Amanda: So sadly I’ve had a lot of conversations around that topic over the past several weeks since many of the businesses had to close down since they were not listed as essential. So I’ve been talking with my clients as well as some people who aren’t clients that just know me through the Chamber or our community, and it’s not a conversation that you ever want to have.
No one sets out to go into business or to run a business and have to make the difficult decisions about laying people off or downsizing staff but that’s what has to be done in a lot of cases to keep the business solvent until we can start making revenue again. So my rule of thumb is to treat people with as much respect and dignity as you can, and as a leader sometimes your job is to communicate information that is really difficult.
Now is the time to be transparent in your leadership and in your communication style. It’s important to let people know you’re doing absolutely the best you can and this is not a reflection of their performance or anything that they’ve done as an employee. It is simply a result of the crazy terrible situation that we are all in.
In the event that you have to furlough or lay off people, or do some kind of reduction in force, prepare for that conversation. Your employees are going to have questions, typically the questions that I first get asked when I’m conducting those types of meetings are:
- When am I going to get my last paycheck?
- When are my benefits going to end?
- In the event of a furlough: are my benefits going to continue?
- Am I eligible to apply for unemployment benefits?
- How do I apply for unemployment benefits?
If you can do your homework as a business owner, be prepared to give your employees that information (most of it is online and easy to access, and I can certainly help folks if they’re struggling with that). That shows even though this is a terrible decision you had to make you’re still helping them to facilitate what they need to do next
Rick: It certainly seems like the human value and compassionate thing to do if you find yourself as a business owner at that point is to take the extra step go to DLLR and do the enrollment process as the employer so it’s less of a burden on your workers if that’s a path they have to walk on even temporarily
So let’s say we’re able to go the happier route and we don’t have to face layoffs or downsizing or furloughs or terminations, and we want to make those people who are working from their kitchen or spare bedrooms feel connected and valued. Are there some ways out there to recognize and value the people who are struggling just like we are, just with a little bit of a different perspective?
Amanda: Absolutely. Again, this is a time where you do want to ensure your employees still feel valued as an important member of your staff and your organization as a whole. Never underestimate the power of a ‘thank you’; it’s free, it takes two seconds and it really goes a long way.
Reach out to your direct reports, acknowledge that this is a weird time, and acknowledge the specific things they are working on and contributing that you really appreciate. That goes a long way. I’ve also seen a lot of really cool ideas come out during this time.
I work with an organization that has staff meetings and after staff meetings they all eat lunch together. They are still having these staff meetings during quarantine. In fact, one day the CEO arranged to have pizzas delivered to every staff member’s house.
Rick: What a cool idea!
Amanda: Yeah and obviously there’s a cost associated with that and it may not be feasible for a lot of organizations, but for this particular organization, it was. A lot of staff members were discussing how much it meant to them and it really helped provide a sense of normalcy because that’s a regular part of their workplace culture.
Another thing that could incentivize folks or make them feel valued- a lot of people aren’t used to working from home so they might not have the office supplies we need. So what if you grabbed a couple of pens and a pack of post-it notes and sent it to their home address? Maybe that’s not in the budget either but could you afford just a stamp? Write and send a handwritten note to say thank you. Don’t underestimate the power of a simple verbal thank you but also a handwritten note. People hang on to that because we don’t really get those anymore.
Rick: Those are great suggestions. Now earlier in the conversation you said something I really want our viewers to take with them and that is as we all pivot. All of us have to pivot in the current environment and whatever happens, once we’re told that it’s safe to return to the new normal, is to communicate the basis of that pivot. Why we’re doing it, what we’re going to do, and how as we do it we take into account everyone’s unique fears and uncertainties.
When I talk about how we are shifting away from face to face communication and business to business networking, to the use of online tools, conversations and chats like this, it’s really important to make sure everyone on the team is being considered. Taking into account all of our team’s uniqueness and differences to make sure everyone is comfortable with that pivot.
Now I’m going to ask you a question I didn’t prepare you for because you’re the perfect person to answer this.
Amanda: I’m ready!
Rick: I’ve heard CEOs of small businesses and COOs of really large businesses, and even entrepreneurs who are starting businesses say “I’m not really sure it makes sense for me to invest in dedicated HR resources.”
Could you talk about this myth, and then talk about how what you do fills that void so we don’t have businesses out there in a terribly complicated environment making terribly bad decisions simply because they didn’t know there were professionals out there for them to ask?
Amanda: I often joke no one ever calls me because they’re having a good day. A lot of times I first engage with a client because they don’t have a dedicated HR person and now they have this tremendously large HR problem and no idea how to solve it. So, you know I’m happy to jump in during crisis mode and help business owners and organizations through that but my preference obviously is to take a more proactive approach to HR rather than a reactive one.
HR is an essential function of a business whether you have one hire one or one thousand hires. Now for the smaller businesses, which is the market I typically serve, what I find is it’s not cost-effective to have a full time in house HR person. The metric is typically the fifty employee mark where it makes sense to bring someone in-house. Until an organization hits that mark they can work with me. Our company provides HR advisory services so we are able to answer those compliance questions. We have a very good understanding of employment law and what the regulations are on the federal, state, and local levels for the business. We also help advise on employee management and employer relations issues, as well as a whole host of other HR-related functions, and then we provide training as well.
Rick: That is fantastic. Amanda, your expertise and counsel has been a critical part of my own evolution as a leader. In times like these, having a trusted advisor who can teach the value of a workforce, the personal and professional changes a leader can make, and the processes and practices that should be put in place to ensure a productive workplace is literally invaluable.
What you don’t know will cost you dearly, so my admonition to all my fellow CEOS out there whether it’s a small nonprofit like the Chamber or a large life sciences employer in Frederick County; connect with that trusted advisor.
I wanna really thank you personally and behalf of our entire membership for your willingness to share your wisdom, and most importantly for your friendship.
Amanda: Thanks Rick, I really appreciate the time.
Frederick Chamber Insights is a news outlet of the Frederick County Chamber of Commerce. For more information about membership, programs and initiatives, please visit our website.