 Aloha, and welcome to this week's edition of Business in Hawaii. I'm Dalen Yanagida, and I'm here in the ThinkTech studios today. We're broadcasting from Pinear Plaza, sorry, in downtown Honolulu. If you want to tune in live, we are live at www.thinktechhawaii.com, and you may also subscribe to our programs and get on our mailing list at that site as well. The theme of business in Hawaii is to share with you stories of local businesses by local people, and our guests share with us how they were able to build successes in our challenging work environment. We are so excited today to have our friends, our neighbors from the University of Phoenix in the studio. So we have Dr. Summer Van Pelt, campus director, Dr. Renee Green, program chair in the School of Business, and Ty Tynan, COO from Choice Technologies, a bunch of very prestigious titles. I want to welcome you to the show. How is everyone? We managed to get everyone here in a small space. Yeah, we're buddies now. Why don't we start by sharing a little bit of background and your connection to the University of Phoenix, and of course, Ty, we want to hear about Choice Technologies. So do we want to start with you, Dr. Green? Sure. I've been with the University of Phoenix since 2010, but I've been in this position for almost four years. And it's been a great journey to be able to bring inspiration, motivation, and just collaboration between the University of Phoenix, the students, and the community. It's been a great journey, and I'm just so excited. Fantastic. Yeah. So I've actually been in higher education for almost 20 years. 15 of those years have been with the University of Phoenix, and I've actually had the opportunity to be at different campuses. So I was overseas in Asia. We had a military campus over there for about 11 years. And I was recently in the Bay Area in San Francisco, and I moved here in April. Very nice. Well, welcome to Hawaii. Thank you. I lived here too when I was younger, so I was a military child, so I've kind of moved around a lot throughout my life. And obviously, I'd like to continue that path by moving. I'm hoping this will be my final destination here. Very nice. But the journey, as Dr. Rene said, it's just been wonderful being in higher education, having that opportunity to work in a field where you're helping people to change their lives and their perspectives. So it's been such an honor for me to be in higher education. Fantastic. Well, welcome back home. Thank you. I should say. And Ty, tell us about choice technology. Well, I think it starts first with me being from Kalihi. So I'm a Kalihi boy, Keke Okaena, born and raised here. I grew up in housing projects. I got fortunate enough to be accepted to Boston College and got out of the projects, went into management. So I studied finance, marketing and management and all the business sciences. I came back and thought that I'm equipped and ready to go to work and make a name for myself here in Hawaii. And what ended up happening was I was noticing, as my career developed, that people focused on the business side on strategy and putting plans together and not focused on execution of that strategy or the culture of the organization. And so the second chapter of kind of my career was to go back to college, go back to universities. And I went to St. Mary's College. I was in California at the time. And what I had learned there was really about human development and about organizational development and how that science is social science and not business science. And so what we've done is created a company, Choice Technologies, that focuses on that consulting role to be able to help from the technology side, that ultimately has to work with people and has to work with processes. So all three of them end up coming together. And that's what we've been doing. Part of the consulting work that I've done in the past has been on the mainland with very, very large organizations such as McKesson, Walmart and Honda. So bringing back that knowledge or the ikei as we call it in Hawaii, back to Hawaii and now trying to help share that. And I feel very fortunate to be invited by the University of Phoenix and colleagues here because it is a community outreach. The college is focused on gearing up and equipping students. However, the community itself is beyond the school borders and they're opening up the doors wide open to involve the community. And so we're looking at involving leadership from all aspects of Hawaii business and healthcare and so forth to come together and look at ways to improve the engagement, which is not always the end person's responsibility. It is creating the conditions for engagement to happen. Fantastic. You are a true testament to what we as a community want our young people to strive for and that is seeking out your educational opportunities and then coming home and sharing your knowledge and your expertise with the locals again so that we can build our local economy with great resources. We understand that a lot of students may stay away for a little while because they get job opportunities but ultimately to come home and bring all that talent back home. Absolutely. Yeah, I'd like to speak to that a little bit further in the interview here. Absolutely, absolutely. So today, and thanks Ty for leading us into it, but today we're going to talk a little bit about engagement and what that means. And from a higher education perspective, we know that student engagement is very important because it's what keeps students in school till they finish. But the University of Phoenix is unique because you do have a large non-traditional population, non-traditional meaning, sometimes adults, sometimes working adults, sometimes having gone to work full time and then coming back and deciding to go to school. So their experiences are so much different. And people would tend to think that, oh, we don't have to engage them. They've lived life and they know where they want to go, but that's not true, is it? No, it's not. Talk to us a little bit about your students and their engagement experience and how you'd like to see that perpetuate. Right. So one thing I would like to say before I even begin to channel that discussion is that we're really fortunate at the University of Phoenix to have so many students that are engaged. We have a huge military population and we have locals and we have just working adults in general. And one of the things we realize is the importance and value of engagement in the workplace. And what we wanted to do with that is to be able to raise that level of expectation because it starts like my mother used to say at home. So we consider the classroom at home. We teach them, we help groom them and look at opportunities to take it to the next level so that when they get into the workplace, they're really focused. And just kind of chiming back to the previous discussion, it's all about trying to keep talent. And Hawaii, we understand that Kapolei is really building up, you know, their workforce, their hiring, a lot of buildings are going up. But if we have engaged employees in that building, then, you know, it cuts down on additional costs and we can keep people longer and develop that pool of knowledge. Let's talk about the workforce in a little bit. Dr. Van Pelt, I want to ask you, it's probably one of your main goals to maintain student engagement. What do you do? What does a university do to encourage student engagement? As Dr. Omne was saying, a lot of our students do come to us engaged. They're passionate. They've decided, this is what I want to do, whether it's a career change or just learning. So we're lucky in that aspect. We're going to hone in on to that. And for us, our faculty, our practitioners in the field, so they are actually teaching them skills that they can take right then and there and apply them on the job. So that's one of the main things that we focus on. And having those discussions about how the student will impact the environment and what their role is and understanding that they have a larger role than, I'm simply coming to class or I'm simply going to work for a job for a paycheck. But it's really honing into that passion that we have for school and taking that into the workplace and being able to directly apply that. Additionally, we have a lot of events that Dr. Omne, she's established many of great ones for us for the school of business. And we try to engage our communities, such as Tai, to come in and speak to the students and really see the impact that they can have on the community within Kapolei and Hawaii. And one of the things I'd just like to add to that is student-centered learning. So we want our students to get involved. It's not just about us lecturing to them, but it's more so about a facilitation and the students share their knowledge and their wisdom in the classroom and that promotes healthy environment and a robust learning experience. Having come from the field of HR and still currently in the field of HR, we know that the most productive employees are the employees who are engaged. What does that mean? What does that mean to be engaged? I'll open that up to all of you. So engagement is something that's inside the person. It's their passion, it's their drive, it's their desire to want to accomplish something and be a part of something that's kind of bigger than who they are and what they do. So we look at it as something that we don't have to share with people to try to get them motivated, but they're self-motivated. They come in with that energy, with that determination, resilience to really get out there and make a difference in the organization. They're focused. And we all know that when people are focused, things get done. Ty, I know that you have a very successful business and you've been here and you've been on the mainland. Tell me about your experiences in engagement, whether it's lack thereof or an abundance of engagement, whether it's employees or contractors. What does that do for your business? Yeah, well, I guess the one word that comes to mind with all these engagements that I've been doing, engagement, not from engagement in this way, but engaging in actual projects with clients, is that the workers, even though they're not from Hawaii and they don't use pigeon, basically the answer is this place kills fight. I know local people say kill fight, just give up already. And then you just kind of stay there. So I think some of the things to look at maybe might be on the statistics, right? So we got 126 million full-time employees in the United States right now. They're being managed, or management is about 10%. So you have 10% of an organization that has a voice and that has the ability to provide feedback into the decisions that are being made from quote-unquote the top down. And what some of the challenges with that is that when you're looking for cultivating collective intelligence in a knowledge worker world where we're not in the industrial manual labor world where people, you just need their hands. Now you need their heads and their hearts to be a part of the company. Otherwise you're losing 90% of the knowledge base that you have. So there are reasons why that is there. Part of it is to do it the 20th century industrial revolution which is crazy success for the United States, right? However, as of 1990 it switched from an industrial where all 50 states, the majority was manual workers after 1990, it switched up into being more of a knowledge worker. So you have a change but in terms of management practices on the business side, they are still following very old school, quote-unquote old school methods. And so as far as success, really looking at what are the conditions to be created, what are the spaces, what are the resources that are being dedicated to create a new type of process within an organization so that it accounts for collective intelligence, collective passion and collective effort. And not only focused on compliance because compliance is really, I think HR a lot of times becomes referees within an organization. What I've seen at many organizations, the Coupar Consultant, you end up getting all this information from all different companies and you start to see patterns start forming and I've consulted over 100 businesses in the past 20 years, and they're a large one so I get to see, it's almost like it's just the same thing, call in another company and same type of issues are there. Engagement and satisfaction go hand in hand and I spent a lot of time in compensation and HR and contrary to many people's belief it's not pain that brings satisfaction to people. Yes, pain needs to be a factor but there's a bigger picture to that and so a lot of times the question is about why is the company doing a family picnic, why is the company participating in charitable events and it's to bring culture, it's to create culture it's to create a sense of unity pride in the organization because that rolls over to satisfaction, which rolls over to engagement and so we do know that on a student level, on a employee level, on a contractor level and it helps businesses to prosper because their employees want to be there and they want to work hard and they're proud of what they do there. So the work that you folks are doing now, we had Dr. Green on the show previously and University of Phoenix is just loyal, loyal, loyal to our community and they're always finding ways to participate in the community. When Dr. Green was with us the last time, you're promoting a technology event that was open to the public which was getting people in the community talk about technology needs, so that was really great. You guys are doing a lot more of the same. Tell me about your event that you have coming up. Yes, and we're so excited about this event. It's called the hashtag I Am Engaged and instead of taking place over one evening it's going to take place over four evenings. It's from July 23 to July 26 and during that timeframe we had various military and business leaders in the community coming up to share their perspective on engagement. How can we increase the level of engagement? How can we bring the new and the next when it comes to engagement? And how can we let students and employees that are coming to the event know we appreciate what you do but now it's time to take it to the next level and we're just so excited to be able to do that. And Tai is going to be one of our speakers. He's going to be presenting on Wednesday night. Fantastic. Fantastic. So I know this is for the Kapolei community but people from any community are well aware of this. Definitely. We're having it in Kapolei only for the purpose that I know they're trying to keep a lot of their constituents on the west side and it's really growing quickly. Honolulu is growing too so it's really open wherever feels like this is something that can benefit them or their organization the event is free and parking is complimentary so that's something that you need to know because we're excited to have you. Fantastic. We're going to take a quick break but when we come back let's talk more about this exciting event and how you're getting the Kapolei community involved the chamber involved that's so exciting for not only the attendees but for the businesses so we'll talk about that when we come back we're going to take that short break this is business in Hawaii and we'll see you back here shortly. Well I'm Dave Stevens host of the Cyber Underground this is where we discuss everything that relates to computers that's just going to scare you out of your mind so come join us every week here on thinktecawaii.com 1pm on Friday afternoons and then you can go see all our episodes on YouTube just look up the Cyber Underground on YouTube all our shows will show up and please follow us we're always giving you current relevant information to protect you. Keep in you safe. Aloha. Aloha I'm Jay Fardial founder of thinktecawaii and I'm Andrea Gabrielli the host for young talents making way wait a minute this is not a new episode is it Jay? No it's not a new episode you know that show is over Andrea so what are you going to do now? Why don't we have a summer edition of young talents making way where we focus more on education as a mean for our young talents to max out becomes role models and achieve their dreams. What a great idea so when do you want to begin Andrea? July the 3rd 2018 Tuesday at 11am young talents making way summer edition stay tuned Welcome back this is Business in Hawaii and today we have the University of Phoenix and Choice Technologies in the studio I'd like to hear about what led you to being so interested in engagement and I know that had to start with your students so tell me about that well you know as teachers and administrators in the University of Phoenix engagement is so important to us because we want to create the best possible learning experience for our students and recently we had our graduation at the Blaisdell and what stood out to me was a student one of our student speakers stood up in front of the audience and shared it took him 28 years to graduate but he never lost his focus the whole time he was engaged because of you know the people he met in the University his learning team his faculty members everyone kept him engaged despite of adversities that he experienced and on June the 3rd he was able to rise and graduate so that was a huge accomplishment congratulations to him right we know how hard it is sometimes to stay focused and stay the course so with that you folks decided that the community needed an opportunity to bring students the workforce together and the community to talk about engagement so tell me about the hashtag I am engaged event yeah so again it's going to take place over four different days and it's going to be starting from July 23rd all the way to July 26th so I just wanted to share some of the things that would be going on so on July 23rd we thought the best way to do was to bring senior level leaders in the community and both business and the military to share you know why is engagement important you know what is the benefit to you and the organization because we already know that engagement improves productivity it cuts down on the line it improves just students people's retention in the workplace and in the university so that was some of the points that we have so we have a huge lineup of expertise in the community coming out and that's on Monday night from 6 to 7 on Tuesday we're really honored to have Penelope Pinec she's going to be talking about civility and engagement in the workplace so that's going to be huge because you know we have to play good in the sand no matter how engaged we are we have to play good in the sand and then Wednesday night we're going to have Ty Titan and Dr. Rae Brielle from Choice Technologies and just a minute I'm going to let him share and then on the last night we have one of our retired sergeant majors he's working at the Veterans Administration he's going to come in and he's going to be talking about how do we take engagement today to prepare employees for tomorrow and that's going to be huge and really a nice segment to close it out but I wanted to give Ty since he's here today with us an opportunity just to share a little bit high level about what he's going to talk about on Wednesday the 25th for 6 to 7 well you got to come to hear all of it but no mahalo Dr. Green thank you so much and again Dr. Summer for the opportunity thank you so much thank you that's exactly what we're trying to do is retain local talent and bring back the kama'ina that have left there's one of the business news in Hawaii recently put a story together and said that 30,000 residents have left Hawaii and there's a brain drain and there's real issues of critical jobs not being filled and that's here we're not able to retain it and are we cultivating the right talent so that we can have effective workers in the field and two organizations I'm with one is HIMS Health Information Management Society and System Society as well as the HLTs Hawaii Information Technology Council I sit on boards of both and so we get to hear because these councils one of it is volunteering for different communities so we're in the IT and hospitality hospitality is one of the largest ones healthcare is another huge one in Hawaii so I serve on both boards and I get to hear about the various organizational issues in that way as well one of the things that have been brought up by the IT council is that they're wondering whether or not the colleges and universities are preparing the students for the actual job as opposed to maybe the job that was 10 years ago or so forth because what they're finding is the resume looks good then they actually hire and then the person can't do really the functions there's different skills that are needed so we're actually working with to try to figure that and tying in with the University of Phoenix as well as the other colleges in Hawaii universities in Hawaii to be able to help solve that so to give you a little bit of idea there in terms of some of these things where what's the silver bullet what's the quick fix right unfortunately however education and knowledge is the approach and then there are processes that can be put into place the biggest challenge that I found with regards to adopting these practices is that the people that are making decisions come from a different generation and so they're used to what has worked in the past and so those systems are in place the problem with not being aware of the context shifting is what can impact a company and basically go out of business because now you don't have the structure set up for the new world you're still focused on the previous century and that's what we're going to be talking about is what are those processes what are those things that can be implemented that are not secret that can be put into the organization so you will be talking about specific things that businesses can do communities of practice values and how you can assess values how you can assess leadership characters there's over 30 characteristics and behaviors that you can actually assess job fit we're going to talk about personalities of how personalities actually make it so a person engages versus having the wrong job fit so there's a I mean you're expert on this as well as with your HR background so yeah we'll be talking about those things you know and I think that Hawaii is in a challenging situation all in itself with one of the lowest unemployment rates in the nation and then folks needing to find jobs and stay in those jobs and the businesses needing to find them and retain them and then of course the attraction and the lure of whatever is out there across the sea right and how do we keep that together right so tell me a little bit more about the hashtag I am engaged event and how people can reach out to you to get involved I didn't want to add that we are we have some fun things for our students as well throughout the week we do have them involved and Dr. Renee actually came up with this having them hashtag I am engaged but also just writing comments about why they're engaged and we did this during commencement week as well and we had a lot of great responses from our students just to see that passion they have and that's the whole idea of engagement is what is that passion that keeps you going and committed so some fun things and other various activities that we're going to have around the campus during the week and this is not going to be a one time thing we're looking at especially our communication with the leaders we want this to happen on a quarterly basis let's get together let's see what's working what's not and how can we come up with the new and next and maybe it's an opportunity for experiential learning or additional research for the University of Phoenix why don't you tell your audience how they can get involved and sign up to attend the hashtag I am engaged I love the name of the event it's so catchy we'll give that to Dr. Renee she got all the styles tell us how to sign up sure if you'd like to sign up tell us at events.hawaii at phoenix.edu and then we'll provide response and information I'm so excited I can't wait to hear all about the lineup and all that's going on for such a valuable event to the community so I wanted to thank you for joining us today I know everybody is squeezing but thank you that's right Dr. van Pelt and Ty Tynan thanks for joining us we are out of time if you would like to be on the Business in Hawaii show please feel free to email your information to shows at thinktechhawaii.com Business in Hawaii airs every Thursday at two o'clock and we'll look forward to seeing you next week