Recruit, Engage, and Retain Leaders

ROUGH EDITED COPY

EHDI

PACIFIC SALON 6/7

"RECRUIT, ENGAGE, AND RETAIN LEADERS"

PRESENTER: LISA KOVACS

3/15/16

3:00-3:30 P.M.

REMOTE CART/CAPTIONING PROVIDED BY:

ALTERNATIVE COMMUNICATION SERVICES, LLC

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* * * * *

(This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.)

> LISA KOVACS: I'm going to steal one extra minute. I've got about an hour's worth of content in 30 minutes.

Hello, everyone, I'm Lisa Kovacs, thanks for being here. I'm the director of Hands and Voices programs. I oversee the advocacy support and training and that is advocacy -- special education advocacy specific to deaf and hard of hearing kids. But what I'm going to talk to you about today is actually recruiting, engaging an retaining leaders, so at Hands and Voices we've had tremendous growth over the last 20 years. We're 42 chapters strong with five states in the provisional status which means they are almost approved and two in start-up, so we're close to 49 chapters. With that kind of growth, of course one thing we have to work on is sustainability, and it's important for everyone. My husband and I talked about this with his work. So I thought it was a topic important whether you're a chapter leader and coordinator or own non-profit, your own organization, this would be a topic worth discussing. So first of all, we have a microphone in the back, which is going to help me. We're going to do a group, retaining, engaging and recruiting, retaining and engaging leaders. We're going to share wisdom from our group. I have a survey from our Hands and Voices leaders with this idea about was important to them, and that might help you.

So generally let's talk about recruiting.

So has anybody ever pulled a position out of desperation and looked back and said, gosh, I wish I would have spent a little more time exploring who was a good fit?

Yeah, and really costing you twice the amount of time and struggle based on the mistake you made. So it's worth spending tile and effort on recruiting. We know when there's a good match and good engagement of that employee or that volunteer, bringing to an organization, and retention is more likely when they're engaged.

So a new experience with recruiting.

We've got a mic in the back.

Yes.

> So part of the fallout of getting the wrong person out of desperation was that person carried kind of a reputation with them, so when we went to fill other vacancies, folks who would have been really well-qualified said, no, I'm not working with him. So that was a significant challenge. Maybe it could have been resolved by not getting the first person there, but even if that person was skilled, there's no guarantee that wouldn't have been a challenge too.

> Or how to get the word out to the right people. I never know where to put it. I can't get the people to come answer those ads or the right people to do that. I don't know where to do that.

> LISA KOVACS: Great.

> Well, funding is always an issue. I think we can all agree with that. But also along with funding is actually the salaries being given, because sometimes they can make a lot more money in another area like IT or whatever so sometimes it's trying to engage the right people but helping them understand why it's important that they're not getting paid the big bucks.

One more.

> I always get confused on when to use people that are kind of already in the field of either different programs and I don't want them to come in and have an agenda on coming into our ours. So trying to weed those folks out

> LISA KOVACS: Annoy people. No one mentioned time, but also it takes time. It takes, you know a significant amount of time to recruit the right person. So from our survey we did with Hands and Voices we asked what initially attracted you to get involved in Hands and Voices either board member, a coordinator or parent guide. Some are volunteer positions and some are paid positions. And some of the answers we found was first of all who we were as an organization. So that's what attracted them, is the mission and philosophy of Hands and Voices.

Others it was the parent to parent support and then others wanted to be able to give back for the kind of support that they received. They wanted to give to others.

So there's a connection, and that's what I want to highlight the most, is they saw the connection. So it's not Hands and Voices and we put it into your organization, how can we make that person feel like they had some kind of connection. So it's not about salary but something they seem connected to and the work that you do.

The other question we ask was name three qualities you look for in other Hands and Voices leaders. In your organization, what are qualities that would attract somebody to work at your organization.

The ones that were big were, you know, the vision, the caring, people being kind, tenacity, open minded, unbiased had a big rating here. Energetic, desire to actively be involved, engaging, empowering. So this might be some questions that you might want to ask. Why do you want to work for us? What kind of team are you looking for to be a part of?

So thinking about some of the challenges that you guys mentioned. First of all we talked about recruiting announcement. What is important to have in that announcement? What do you think is going to attract people to your organization? So if you can ask some of those questions, actually going back and asking some of the people who work for you currently. What was it that attracted you to this position so that then maybe you could use that information to put in your recruiting announcement?

Identifying good recruiting partners. Think about who out there, what other organizations might be a good resource for you to help spread the word and how could you meet with them and collaborate with them and ask for their help and support in recruiting people to your organization.

Even when there's not open positions, we should always be thinking about who is the next person as you're meeting them? Always, you know -- not that we're trying to replace the people we currently have, but always recruiting so that we're not hiring once again out of desperation but we're hiring because we remember that person we met who we put in the back of our mind thinking they would be perfect if a position opened up.

Having a good application process, I think, is really important as well, so, you know, being able to sometimes vet people even through the application process. Having some standard interview questions so that you can really compare, you know, person to person as they're interviewing. And then having a candidate rubric. Designing a rubric so whoever your interview team is, people are being, you know, rated fairly based on the same rubric of the quality that you're looking for in someone, so that when you talk about your candidates, everybody is working off of the same rubric.

And we mentioned this, never fill a position just with...

What about you? What has worked for you when you're recruiting? What have been some good resources that you used?

This is going to be great. Nobody is talking!

Anything that you can think of.

Once again, always thinking about recruiting. I always have information on you, business cards in my person or, you know, just wherever I go, you just never know when you might be out meeting somebody that you want to make that connection.

> I'll get the ball rolling for you. Referral services.

> Excellent.

> Sorry, I met a lady, actually a parent in the line of a movie theater.

> Great.

> My husband was standing right in back of her, so I gave her my business card and stuff and she got really involved.

> And I love your idea of using who loves their job.

> We make recruiting videos showing the culture of our organization, and we direct those videos and we do direct mailings to specific people that might be interested in working for us.

> Love the video. Fabulous. Anybody else?

> The importance of networking and being involved in the community that you're trying to reach out to.

> Absolutely. So let's move from recruiting and think about engagement. Engagement leadership that is making sure that they are committed in their work and as much as benefits the organization.

So that organization is benefitting. They have to feel good about what they're doing. I had to put this cartoon in. If you saw this morning, I walked into the session with one cup of coffee and then a cup of coffee...

I thought this was funny.

> Time constraints.

Get your steps in for you.

> I find that people are excited at first but then they lose momentum.

> Excellent, how to keep them in the game.

> Or the fact that most of our board members are volunteers and not paid and we expect things from them and they don't do it and then, you know, we can only ask so much of their time when we're not paying them

> LISA KOVACS: What is going to drop off the list is something that is a volunteer position.

> And I'm in the same position where we can't provide any financial incentive for our board members, so then I think they start to feel like I'm not helping you guys that much so I'll just drop off. So we get people and it's great and then we lose them because they feel like they're not doing anything but really just having them there is helpful to have an opinion or perspective or something.

> LISA KOVACS: Acknowledging that they take on more work.

> Getting a setback. Sometimes we see people come in and it's like, here is this cause and then we didn't get the whatever it was that we were trying to get to that year. And now they're frustrated and thinking it's not worth their time.

> LISA KOVACS: Right. So three different types of employees. When you think about engaged employee, working with passion, right? They're passionate about what they do. They feel a profound connection to their company or the organization and they drive innovation and move the organization forward. So those are the benefits of spending time to keep people engaged.

A not engaged employee essentially checked out, sleep walking through the workday, putting in time and energy but there's no passion into what they're doing.

And then this one, actively disengaged employee or just unhappy at work. Busy acting out unhappiness.

Every day they undermine what the engaged workers are doing.

They make other people feel not engaged. So that just tells us once again, as leaders ourselves we want to invest time and energy in making people feel engaged so that we don't start having this one sour apple. I see a hand up.

> I had a situation where principal of my school resigned two weeks before the school year started this year because she got a better offer in the public school system. We couldn't meet the package that she got and I couldn't find someone in two weeks that would have been insulting to my employees at the school. So I started to implement something called the distributed leadership plan that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funded research on this, and basically took the time to analyze the jobs that needed to be done and every employee's sweet spot, what they were passionate and good about and assigned them with the idea within three months wasn't working we would look at a different model. It's now spring. They're actively engaged instead of disengaged and they're actively supporting one another and showing amazing leadership and collaboration and problem solving.

> LISA KOVACS: Can you tell me the title?

> Distributed leadership plan and it's information out of learning forward. Learning Forward is public school education organization.

I happened to have gone to a conference. I think it was divinely inspired I had gone because I had to solve a problem immediately. But they have taken such an interest. They run the meetings, I don't. They solve the problems once a month. We meet and everyone is responsible for reporting out what they're doing and what they're responsible for. They also had the option of changing their assignment and none of them have. So just an interesting. It did work in some cases in the public schools but only in the schools where the principal or the leader was willing to not micro-manage. It did not work and the research showed that if that person in charge was the kind to micro-manage everything.

> LISA KOVACS: Thank you for sharing that. And I this I you're talking about this being implemented in the school setting, but I think in my work in non-profit, there's an open leadership position, there's that gap being able to identify. I think that's a fantastic idea. Thank you for sharing.

All right. What did the Hands and Voices survey say about keeping leaders engaged?

So one thing they said that was great value to them is that we take time and we have a commitment to training and guidance. So that was very important to them. They just weren't thrown in positions but we showed investment in them.

There's knowledge that came from supporting them and there was the spirit of everyone working together. I think it's very important to connect with others that do the same thing you do. It can feel isolating but the regular meeting and conference calls help.

So, you know, we're pretty much a virtual organization.

We are all working in our homes and sometimes in our pajamas. I said that earlier today, I have a visual of you in your pajamas.

We work in different locations, so it's important for us to think about how we stay connected, a part of the big picture.

Someone who gives you feedback. They want feedback. I think sometimes leaders of organizations are intimidated to provide feedback to their employee or people that they're working with. And actually it's the exact opposite of what -- they wanted to know things they're doing well.

Monthly conference calls, once again, staying connected and they want clear communication. I think we can agree that's an important piece. Again, teamwork, commitment of the leadership.

So I think all of those can carry over outside Hands and Voices organizations to other organizations that will be helped.

They asked what other types of support would you like in your role? Whatever that role might be. Some people were board members and some paid positions. They say regular check-in, supports, network person. That way if I get overwhelmed, a little pushback. They want regular check-ins. They didn't want to be micro-managed, but also didn't want to be left out on their own.

And then someone said they wanted more interaction to get to know fellow board members, get to know strengths and weaknesses, so actually this tells me they wanted to know a little more about each other, so they could know each other's strengths and weaknesses and work together better as a team.

Financial support. Of course, it's hard to do a lot of work when there's not financial support behind it. And then there's an additional fund for staff and then more time to work through problems and needs. You know, I think most important here is just really good clear communication, doing check-ins. I think sometimes my husband works at a really large organization and I believe that every level the leadership there is investing time to check in with employees. Although it takes time, I think it goes a long way to check in on a regular basis.

So engagement resources, communicate well and often. Stay focused on the organization's mission... I'm sorry I keep standing in front of you.

Clear expectations. Provide contests and incentives. These don't have to be big money things. Sometimes it's about the recognition more than it is actually what they're given. It could be more of a certificate.

Leadership development. Once again showing that you're investing in them. Conducting interviews. Asking them, what is it? What is working for you? What keeps you engaged right now and what can we do better to keep you engaged? Showing that you do care and that you want to have a group of people who are motivated to continue to strive to be an organization that is working really well together.

So what else? What can you think of? What can you do to keep people engaged in the work you do?

> Just a couple of things. One thing that you touched on that is absolutely critical is communication, and where I worked before we started at something called Line Up, which is for five minutes every day in between shifts we would just talk about the pertinent things of the day. Initially it was met with resistance, don't have time, but it turned out that if I didn't show up for Line Up they were looking for me so they could share information, like who is a difficult patient of the day or what was the issue. That was a hot spot for that day, and as far as conduct stay interviews, I went to a Ritz Carlton in-service, if you will, and really they talked about rehiring your employees on a stay basis to continuously do things that make people feel as if they're valued and that you rehire them continuously, whether it's no tone, thanking them for a job well done or letting people know that you would love to rehire them again. So as part of your engagement, I think it's great.