3.14.21

Ep. 113: All About Team Care

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Shawn Premer, HR officer at Consumers Credit Union, Amy Ritsema of On-Site Wellness, Grant Fletcher of Bronson Healthcare, and Carrie Yunker of Bell's Brewery as guests on Consumers Credit Union Podcast, "Money, I'm Home".

Listen in to a special recap from part two of a three-part webinar series called CARE is a Four-Letter W*rd, focusing on team care. 

 

[transcript]

0:00:06.7 Lynne Jarman-Johnson: Money, I’m Home, welcome in. I’m Lynne Jarman-Johnson with Consumers Credit Union, and we’re going to be listening to part two of our series on CARE is a Four-letter Word. Today’s focus is perfect for you. It’s all about team care. Maybe you serve on different committees or in your work, you lead teams. Today we’re going to focus on how you can lead those teams very well during times of change. Let’s listen in.

0:00:31.4 LJJ: We are now going into our second year of living each day in a pandemic, and we’re seeing some light at the end of the tunnel, but it’s not quite there yet. What suggestions do you have for engagement if all of a sudden it feels like we’re just doing the same thing over and over again as we go into the second year? Any ideas?

0:00:55.2 Shawn: I think it may seem tiresome to you, to stay the course, engaging with your employees, but I think the best thing you can do as a leader is simply ask them. And I will just go back to that 100% of the time, because you hear the old adage, people don’t leave companies, they leave managers. And I think if you’re the leader in that organization and you feel tired by it, see if your employee also feels tired by it, because they may not, or they may and then say, “Okay, how can we mix this up?” Also, I think that guide, the 80 Employee Benefits Ideas for Remote Workers, there are some fun ideas in there in how to engage people in new ways, but I think you have got to stay the course and it may feel tiresome to you, but keep in mind, it’s likely not tiresome to the people that you serve. And if you look at your employees as people you serve, and then simply ask, I think that’s step one.

0:01:51.7 LJJ: Carrie, what were you going to say?

0:01:53.7 Carrie: So one of the things we challenge ourselves to do is to start with a blank calendar. So as we got to a point, I believe it was this winter, so as we were heading into the dark winter and really became concerned about our employees, we went through an exercise where as the whole team, we looked at our calendars and said, “What really makes sense now?” Not just, “What am I continuing?” We had gotten to a point, but what really makes sense for us now? What meetings and who do we need to talk to to drive the business? Not, am I a part of the HR team so I must have an HR meeting, at what cadence and why? And I think that really helped us to do that deliberate exercise of what am I getting value out of, what could be a report or an email versus a meeting, who… And then ask the question greater of who else could I bring into this meeting? Like, whose voice am I missing? And that was a pretty simple exercise for us, but it fundamentally changed my calendar to becoming less reactionary in the middle of COVID and becoming more deliberately looking forward.

0:02:58.2 LJJ: Well, I’ll tell you, we have heard such wonderful ideas and the discussion is so open and exciting, let’s do a little recap. If each one of you could tell us just a recap of final thoughts before we wrap up today. I thank everybody for listening in today. It’s been a joy. Shawn, why don’t we start with you?

0:03:19.6 Shawn: Well, first of all, my first recap is, I’m on this call with some amazing people. You forget about your tribe of connections until you hear them speak, and then I’m like, “Why are we not talking more?” So that’s the first thing. But what I will say is, as many things as I think we do well, we all have areas we can learn, and I have learned so much listening to both Grant and Carrie and Amy, but also I loved the ideas about Grant saying, we have this program and we’re really trying to figure out where people are and what their perspective is, and then how can we use that inclusion, I think we could implement that. And then the click poll thing, I think that’s amazing. So I’ve just learned so much myself. I’ve got a whole page of notes here, and I’ve been doing what I do for 27 years. So I just want to thank everybody for the perspective that they’ve shared, and you guys have helped me tremendously today, so hopefully, I think… Hopefully, our callers feel the same way.

0:04:13.7 LJJ: Thank you, Shawn. Amy, let’s head to you.

0:04:18.8 Amy: Well, I think the theme that I kept hearing, I think all of us mention, and the thing that I had written down before this call even started today was ask. Ask your managers. Ask your people, what do you need? How are you doing? Listening with an empathetic ear. I said this at the end of the last webinar, I kind of mentioned it again, and that’s everybody’s in their own boat rowing through this storm. And we all have our own challenges, and as we continue, just like the last question, it’s like, here we are a year in and looking forward and how do we continue this? And I will just continue to say, ask, ask, ask because how I’m feeling is not maybe the same as somebody else. And listen. Be that servant leader and listen and ask. How can I help?

0:05:23.5 LJJ: Thank you, Amy. Grant with Branson. Take it away. What’s your final thoughts?

0:05:26.8 Grant: Well, so I have thought what Carrie was talking, and at the risk of getting a little too Scandinavian or socially democratic, I have realized over the course of the last year, especially with all this remote work that I and others around me are getting more done in a smaller period of time. And time, as I’m sure we’ve all learned, is maybe arguably the most valuable resource any of us have available, and I wonder if it might be time to think about giving some of the time back to people, especially as we come out of that just dreadful dark period of the year and that the things are going to start blooming and people are going to want to get to the beer gardens, maybe half day Fridays or something, I think we should think about. They’re not all the way to a 30-hour work week, but just a step in that direction.

0:06:14.3 LJJ: That sounds awesome to me. I’ll meet you at the beer garden, Grant. Carrie, what have you found? What’s your final takeaways?

0:06:19.7 Carrie: Well, first of all, I’ll hire Amy and Shawn any day to come bartend. The sun will come out on March 22nd, my friends, so I will be happy to see all of you, socially distanced, of course, in masks. I guess my real final thoughts are to find the small wins. I don’t know that if I’ve mentioned that, but that is something… Find something you’re grateful for, share that, but find those small wins and share them at nauseam. That is one of the biggest… in my mind, one of the biggest ways that we combat all the challenges, all the doubt, all the things that our employees and ourselves frankly face is find those small wins and share them.

0:07:02.0 LJJ: I love that, Carrie. This in itself has been a big win for us and the community, and I cannot thank all of you enough, Shawn and Grant and Carrie and Amy. Also Adrianne is our producer. She’s amazing. She just does wonderful work; so she’s behind-the-scenes there. But thank you, Adrianne. We have had a wonderful series so far, first on self-care, then on team care. And Grant mentioned time and giving that time back, and we can smile and say, “Let’s meet at the beer garden,” which is a wonderful way to celebrate people and be together. The other way is through community, and what is it that we can do all together to advance our wellness by helping listen what the community is feeling and needing in your own neighborhoods, and it might just be your neighborhood that we’re talking about. So we’ll see you next week for community care. Just a final thank you to our wonderful panel. It is wonderful to see smiling faces, but it’s even more exciting to hear just the passion and excitement that we have for continuing wellness in our own organizations and in our lives.

0:08:13.6 LJJ: Thank you so much for joining us. You can listen to the entire webinar and watch it at consumerscu.org/events. I’m Lynne Jarman-Johnson with Consumers Credit Union, Money, I’m Home.

[music]

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