EP 44 - Acceleration Strategy - Impact on Employees

VERN: Hello. This is Vern Dosch and welcome to the fifth in a series of podcasts talking about the acceleration strategy here at NISC. You know, Kari, thinking about it from the standpoint of an employee, you hear the last couple podcasts talking about how this acceleration strategy affects implementations, affects our financials, affects how we support and service our Members. But I don't know; we're all employees. What does this mean for us, Kari? What does the acceleration strategy mean for the existing employees? KARI: I think it means a few things. You know I think there might be some initial thought of "wow - more faces." You know there's a lot of new faces, and I hear occasionally that you know there's people I don't recognize. And we want to provide opportunities for our employees to get to know each other. Relationships are such a key piece of who we are as an organization. And so we've done I think a better job in the last couple of years of introducing all of those new employees, putting a face to the name. We want to make sure we have opportunities for our employees to interact, get to know each other across divisions. So you'll see us promote our socials and other employee events so that we can continue to build those relationships even with the numbers that we have. But I think mostly this is a really exciting thing for our employees in a number of ways. I mean anytime we have growth that reflects a new opportunity for employees, and I think all of us have the chance to continue to build our skills and grow in different ways as we have different solutions and different teams. We want to make sure that we are helping our employees take advantage of those opportunities. So with our Employee Learning Quarter this year we're going to be focusing on employee development and making sure that everyone is aware of the tools that we have available to them and letting them know about some new resources that we're going to be rolling out. And I think also encouraging the dialogue with their supervisor. I think if you're interested in growing in a different way or looking at a new opportunity that conversation is really important, so Situational Leadership will be taught as part of our Employee Learning Quarter this year. I think that'll help us all speak the same language and have even better conversations about career development. VERN: I really appreciate those comments because I think when people think about the acceleration, there is a tendency to get caught up in the new employees. We talked about 50 additional employees over the next 18 months in addition to the 50 that are already in our long-term financial forecast. And I think it's easy to get caught up in that. But at the end of the day for me, one of the most important parts of this acceleration is the focus on the existing employees. I mean you mentioned a number of things, Kari - Situational Leadership, the Leadership Pipeline Institute, Employee Learning Quarter. You've implemented a brand new tool called Cornerstone to help us as supervisors be better coaches and to facilitate those coaching sessions. So this is about focusing on our employees, developing our employees. I mean, Kari, we've had more retirements in the last two years than we probably have in the previous ten. And when we look out over the next couple of years there is a surge of retirements. Now I think we've worked hard at succession planning. I think these tools and these initiatives, these leadership development initiatives that we've talked about, have put us in a pretty good place. And quite frankly I think we've got a ton of great employees who are anxious and ready for the next step in their career. And so the acceleration is saying from a succession planning standpoint we've got a push here to make sure that as these retirements happen, they're seamless, that it provides opportunities for existing employees, but it doesn't negatively impact our Members. Okay. Having said that, the surge acceleration also means adding additional employees. Talk about the discussions within People Services. How are you going to handle the additional requirement expectations that this is placing on your division? KARI: I'll get to that in a second, but you said something that I think is pretty important. That is with the transition of not only some of our senior employees but with the acceleration of all of the projects we have going on, there is a lot of opportunity for employees across the board. And Ed likes to point out that the ABS 1x to 2x conversion project wouldn't have happened without our employees that have been here for just a couple of years. They were instrumental so I think it's important to look around and see the opportunities and put your hand up and say "hey, I can help with that." And I think you know empowerment is one of our values. And there are going to be opportunities across the board. And I think that's true also of leadership. There are employees who are interested in leadership positions, and as the organization grows we have to have more leaders. And so when it comes to leading others and if you're interested in people leadership, I think we've added 10 new team lead positions in the past six months. It's a pretty significant number of employees that are stepping up and saying "hey, I want to coach others. I want to build people here to do the work." And there's also the individual contributor leadership type of positions where people want to lead projects, and they'll have that opportunity as well. You don't always have to be leading others to be a leader in the organization. And so I think there are lots of opportunities with this, but also some challenges as you mentioned. How are we in People Services going to respond and make sure that we get the people we need here? So recruiting has become a big area of emphasis. In fact one of the things we're doing is focusing our team so they can be laser-focused on the recruiting and onboarding effort, and some team members can be focused on just taking care of existing employees. We want to make sure we're doing that as well. So with recruiting certainly you're going to see a number of new positions, even more than we usually have, and we are always looking for employee referrals. Our employees are our best source of candidates and hires so we offer a referral bonus. Right now it's a thousand dollars for each candidate that's hired. But you may see us increase that number as this acceleration moves forward because again it's really the most critical source of candidates for us are our employees. They know the kind of people we need. We also have shared our career fairs on the community so all of our employees can see that. If you know anyone at any of the colleges we will be attending, please send them our way. We're also going to increase our social media presence. In the past we have maintained corporate accounts, and our communications group helps us manage corporate accounts for sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. We want to showcase our employees and let our potential candidates know what it's really like to be an employee here at NISC, so we are working on building out accounts for those social media sites that have more of an #NISClife focus. We'll be sharing some information with you about those as we roll them out and maybe even asking you if you're so inclined to post to those accounts or to tag us so that we can see what it's really like to be an employee here at NISC. VERN: You know, Kari, one of the things that you said about really all of us being involved in recruiting. I think that's so true. And it's going to be all hands on deck. I mean I know that you are strengthening your recruiting team, you're adding to that and that certainly is important, but all of us right are recruiting all the time. It never ceases to amaze me, Kari, as I travel around from site to site. We gather the new employees together that have come onboard since the last time I was there. And I've just kind of made it a practice to say how many of you are here by way of referral. You knew someone here or someone reached out to you and said "hey, you should apply to NISC" and more often than not it's around 50 percent, you know half the people are here. And I'm thinking how powerful that is to have a thousand NISC employees out there always being, you know eyes wide open right, looking for good candidates. And you know our employees know what it takes to be successful here. They know the culture, they know the people that would excel here, and maybe some that wouldn't embrace the culture and probably wouldn't be a good fit. So I always look at an employee referral as being you know a really important factor as we consider these new applicants. I think the other thing that we're going to be really careful of is the priority of taking care and developing existing employees. The second part is to expand our workforce. And when we have an expectation on your division that says "Kari, we're going to need 100 people," I think there's a tendency to rush to the gate a little bit and almost frantically start filling those positions. This is the challenge that I'll extend to you and your people, and that is don't dare compromise the quality. We'd rather go a little short than just bring warm bodies in. Don't compromise the quality of the employees here at NISC. KARI: I think that's a point well taken. You know we can find people, but it's finding the right people and the people that are going to fit our culture that we all want to work with and will share our commitment to service to our Members. Back to this employee referral, I think it's a huge compliment I think to NISC when one of our employees takes the time to let one of their colleagues know that that this is a place they may want to work. But I think it's also an endorsement of that individual if one of our employees says "hey, this person is someone you should take a look