 and welcome to Business in Hawaii. I am your host, Galen Yanagida. My guests and I are live from our home offices on Oahu Honolulu. Oahu Hawaii, sorry, if you want to tune in to any of Think Tech Hawaii shows live, we are at www.thinktechhawaii.com. And while there, please subscribe to our programs and get on our mailing list. The theme of Business in Hawaii is to share with you stories of local businesses by local people. Our guests share with us their expertise, trials and tribulations while building successful businesses right here at home. In the Think Tech studio today is executive director of the Society of Human Resource Management, Hawaii chapter, Karen Smith. Karen, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you for having me. How are you? How are things going? You know, it's been really, really good. I work out of my house anyway. I have a home office. And so for that, it's not been so unusual. But of course, we're all ready to get back and have a meeting in real life again. And you know, I think human resources professionals historically are known as people, people, that will get together and be able to rally a meeting or employees or what have you. So I'm sure, as I feel, that as human resources professionals, we're ready to see each other in person. Yeah, the group's been really great. Of course, everyone's embracing Zoom, right? Everyone's on the video calls. But they've even adopted some of those after hours where we would get together as a happy hour just to debrief and tell each other what's going on informally. So our board's been doing that, and we're reaching out to committees this couple of coming weeks to incorporate them as well. Very nice. Very nice. So Society of Human Resource Management, or SHRM, for short, tell me about the organization. SHRM is a trade association, basically, for HR professionals. They've been around, I don't know, probably 30 years in Hawaii in some way or another. And there's been lots of changes and incorporations. They've, you know, different things have happened. But basically, it's to support the industry so that we have true professionals, and we give ongoing continuing education, that sort of thing. So for our viewers who are not familiar with the field of human resources, tell us a little bit about what human resources does or what human resources professionals do. I guess, you know, it's different things to different people, but it really, they just take care of the people in the organization. And that starts before you even get hired. When you're recruiting, you're bringing in someone, you don't have anyone for the role, straight on through to making sure everyone gets their paychecks, they get their time off correctly, and when they leave the organization to make sure that they get those corporate benefits and everything that goes with coming the transition. So it's kind of a life to death in every organization. Wow, wow. So from recruiting and hiring and firing and all the good stuff in between. Yeah, exactly. It's just taking care of the people, which we all say, and I really do believe in any organization, if you don't have people, you don't, or any company, I guess, the people are the lifeblood, right? And there's so many of, well, I guess all of us for the most part use HR, right? I mean, like that's our experience. I was sharing with you a story previously. Can I tell that story? Yes, please do. I love that story. Oh, I know, I worked for this uber, uber wealthy woman one time and we would fly private jets to Naples and her family just had tons of money. And she was really a little lost. She didn't embrace the corporate, she liked the dress up of the corporate world, but she really didn't know how to plan her day or anything like that. She just really didn't have needs. And finally, it kind of got to be a stressor role entertaining her. So after about a year and a half, I went in and I sat down and I said, let's say her name was Julie. Julie, I have loved working with you and we've gotten a lot done with these different projects, but now that we're in this lull, we don't have a project. And I really feel like I need to go find a project and you need to find a project. And so, and I'm sweating. And I'm like, I've already gone to HR and told them, you know, how this is gonna evolve. And I know she's gonna be furious and she's sitting there, she's smoking. Not paying any, she's like not responding. And, you know, that makes me talk more. So, you know, and I've already talked to them and I've been smoothed out. And I get to the end of my little prepared speech, terrified, she's gonna be, you know, freaked out and she says, I don't know him. I had not talked about a man at all. And probably at the end, she said, HR, I ain't never heard of him. And honey, haven't, but the rest of us know HR. We've all been, kind of like JR, I don't know him. You do that so well, I love that. Exactly. So it's just part of most of our world. You know, if we know, if we want to get a job, we've got to jump through those hoops to get through. So in the spirit of truth transparency, of course for our audience, I am an HR professional myself. And I, you know, it's such an unusual time. I guess I can't say unprecedented because some folks have been through this before with the Spanish flu. I mean, and we've been, you know, we've been talking about that a lot community-wise. But HR professionals now are facing things that they might have never thought that they would be facing during their careers. Can you tell me a little bit about how that hits HR professionals and what have they been doing? I mean, is everyone silent? Are they vocal? Yeah, it's hit everyone a little bit differently. And it's very interesting. During those happy hours, I get to be a fly on a wall of all the different people sharing what's going on in their organizations. Some of them have sent everyone home, they're riding it out. Some of them send people home. They applied for the PPP loan. They got the loan. They've brought people back slowly. Then they have to figure out, you know, because you only get like eight weeks worth of pay. And then what it's gonna look like to send those people back home furlough them. Who do we terminate? It's been very confusing. Laws are confusing anyway. And you don't want me to tell you about them, but I do know that with the EIDL and the PPP, they've been kind of redefining them ongoing as they've happened. And so our professionals are really taxed with pivoting. I know we're all using that word pivot, right? But it's so true to think you have a plan and to put it in place. And then the law gets defined a different way that morning. And then you've gotta figure out what to do by the afternoon to be responsive to someone who is just trying to get a paycheck, just trying to pay the rent. So it's taking, and so many of them have been worried about taking care of their employees, which is so heartbreaking and sweet because they do care about them. Then there's other discussions about some people are paying their people to stay at home, right, just pay them straight out to stay at home. And then others are saying, well, we're doing everything we can to bring them in, give them work to do, but there's a liability to having people in the office and are we taking care, what's sanitation measures, those sorts of things that we have to worry about. So it's a completely mixed plate to use a white term. What's going on right now? So are the decision makers on what to do with that? Normally the HR professional in the organizations, are they making those decisions about, do we pay them to stay home? Do we bring them back under the PPP? Do, and then what happens to them after the eight weeks? So our HR professionals do know the law and so they are being looked to by the executives in the companies. Usually you would have a response manual. A lot of people like with active shooters, right? We had to scramble after the first of those happened and write those response manuals. But for the most part, I would hazard a guess that pandemic response manuals are few and far between in our Honolulu community, right? I just don't think a lot of people have, they might have small guidelines, but completely what's fleshed out. So yes, I think they're looking to our HR professionals as well as the business owners and their insurance agents and you're really having to pull from all resources. What are human resources professionals doing about their employees who are impacted directly with COVID as a health concern? The one, the employees that are in the workplace? The employees who actually are diagnosed with COVID are HR professionals chiming in on how they're managing that? So before coronavirus even hit, Sherm Boy had an amazing conference or talk on it. We've got that together in like a week. And yes, that was one of the things that was covered on how to handle some of the people, but for the most part, people that are diagnosed or being handled, like if they're coming in through the airlines or being hit by that quarantine. So the HR professionals don't have to address that directly, right? Or if they're going to the hospital, there are protocols in place already. So I don't think it's falling on the shoulders of our HR professionals, but definitely they need to be prepared as some people don't always follow guidelines that have been set out for them. So yes, and no. So interesting. Do you find that a lot of companies that are represented by your membership or by your board, whoever are having these conversations, were they prepared to move their workforce remote or perhaps their essential businesses and they're still operating under their specific location Sure. I can't speak to everyone, but from what I've seen, yes, they quickly pivoted, quickly moved their people off. There was a discussion at one of those happy hour meetings about how if you had tried to set protocol and if you had written a manual about how we would move online workers, remote workers out, what would need to be done, it would take six months to a year to get that approved. But there was no time. So that happened in two weeks in March. That's just that, you know, everyone had to be responsive. And I think I have not seen a business in Hawaii be interrupted for the most part that didn't have employees staffing, right? If you call a bank, you get an answer. If you call most companies, the phones are being answered, the services are being provided. So I feel like, yes, I feel like Hawaii's done a good job with that. There are just so many, so many things that I'm sure HR professionals are dealing with right now. And I have a ton of questions for you, but I also wanted to talk to you and ask you about the organization from a nonprofit standpoint and perhaps, you know, how are they impacted and what are some of the things that they are doing to address that. However, we need to go to a short break. So I'll ask you a few questions and we'll return. We are going to take that break now. This is Business in Hawaii. We'll see you back here shortly. Hello, Ha. I'm Lillian Kumi, host of Lillian's Vegan World, the show where we talk about veganism and the plant-based diet located in Honolulu, Hawaii. I'm a vegan chef and cooking instructor and I have lots of information to share with you about how awesome this plant-based diet is. So do tune in every second Thursday from 1 p.m. Aloha. Welcome back. This is Business in Hawaii. With me today is Executive Director of SHRM, Karen Smith. Welcome back, Karen. When we went to break, well, we were talking about a lot of things, but it's a very interesting time to understand what human resources professionals do. And the site of human resource management, or SHRM for short, the Hawaii chapter, is a membership group of human resources professionals. And I was so happy to hear that you folks are coming together and talking about the issues that you folks are dealing with. Is there anything that really stood out to you that just was so unusual? Unusual for the SHRM? For human resources folks, and with a normal conversation. I mean, yes, we're dealing with a pandemic and human resources professionals aren't... We didn't prepare for that, but is there anything that anybody just is absolutely unprepared to deal with or perhaps afraid of having to deal with? Of course, I think one thing that caught people off is with the different changes that came through with the government's funding, that additional $600 a week and unemployment is great for our people, but sometimes the hurdle to get people back to work. I shared with some people the other day, I have a friend in another state, she makes good money and her job offered her her job back at 75% pay, but she was making more on unemployment than to take that 75% pay back. Of course, she took her job back, but it is a little of a hesitation and so I know some of... I have other organizations, they're all business owners and they were saying when the issues hit the first couple of weeks, they were central businesses and even before they said the central businesses can stay in business, they were having trouble with their workers trying to convince them to come back because it seemed like a lot of people, not necessarily from anything other than maybe they wanted just to home with their children, maybe they were afraid for their health and with those additional funds, they could afford to. So there was that little blip that I didn't expect, I guess. So it sounds like human resources professionals are struggling with, of course, needing to bring their workforce back in order to receive forgiveness on, say, PPP loans and then, of course, consenting those workers to come back. That seems like a conundrum, right? I mean, you have the money to bring them back, you're obligated to bring back 100% of your workforce, but then they say no. Do we know what happens? Well, that's the beauty of people, right? Everyone can respond to things in the way that they, it makes sense to them and we don't always, we can't always predict and we don't always know, but we do want to support those individuals and make sure they feel safe and that their family is taking care of. That's the most important point of the employee's right because then if they have that security, then they can be better workers. What I love about our conversation today is that, well, I would love to speak with any business owner or human resources executive about what they've been experiencing and how it's different from their normal day-to-day. What I love about talking to you is, of course, that you are ear to the ground with many businesses and in fact, the other arm to that is that you're also managing a nonprofit and I'd love to hear about how as a nonprofit organization, you've been impacted and perhaps what things you had to do to, again, pivot on that. Right, so yes, actually I'm the president of the Aloha Society of Association Executives and that's all the nonprofits in the community that would belong to that group. So it's an association for associations and of course we're all looking at our budgets that we had, most of this had just approved them in January and then to be hit with this, we have to readdress. For SHIRM, one of our biggest expenses on that budget this year is a executive leadership program that we're trying to implement and coincidentally, it's exacerbated how important this program is. It's basically a cohort of HR professionals who want to take their leadership skills to the next level and nothing was borne out more than this pandemic who had skills and who didn't, who needed them, what companies needed them and what companies didn't have them. And so we hope that this program, we have three consultants who are coming in, it's not written, this is completely created for our organization. We hope to launch it the first of next year and we think it's gonna be a great program but too bad we didn't have it last year to provide for these people right now because they could definitely be using the resources for sure. Oh, but I think that just like you said, it sort of separated the HR professionals from the strong from the weak and where organizations may want to help their human resources professionals develop into those leaders that will be able to guide them through our next, well hopefully not anytime soon next disaster, pandemic, what have you, but I think the timing is perfect and very strategic. That's amazing. Yeah, we're excited. But just like I mentioned active shooting, there's always going to be something that's going to challenge just the nature of the business, right? And so that's why it's so vital to have someone in your organization looking out to make sure that you're protected. Some people think that HR is just writing paychecks and firing people and that could be furthest from the truth, right? So you also represent a number of nonprofits or a association of nonprofits and I know that quite frequently a lot of nonprofit major fundraisers happen probably around this prime of year. Have you seen many nonprofits having to change their plans and what do they do about their major fundraisers and has Sherm experienced something like that? Yeah, definitely. So our state conference committee is one of our largest fundraising events and it's one of our largest educational events every year that people are certified with their Sherm certifications that show that they have skills and they need to upgrade those certifications. Every year that's provided in October at our state conference. So we're planning for that and we've signed contracts and they all say a force majeure or a pandemic response in the contract. But you can't insure against fundraising. You can make sure you don't lose money but it's hard to get insurance that says I will get this money even if I don't have this event. And also for the education component we desperately really need to have that event. And so we're concurrently planning two events. We're planning our live event like we always have and we're planning a pivot of a virtual event. There's a lot of organizations that had to immediately jump on the virtual bandwagon and they've had amazing success. People have really enjoyed what it could be and they're evolving that but there's a limited number of companies that support that in the US and a lot of them are getting sold out. So it'll be a challenge. You know what? We've got a question from a viewer. Okay. This is our lucky day. Okay, so it says although the legislature is not in session right now what legislative HR and workplace changes would you want them to act when they come back? That is a very good question. I am new to SHIRM and new to working with their legislative committee. So I'm not sure, I hesitate to answer that question. So sorry, just because I'm not quite certain. Yeah, an excellent question. Sorry. You know, if I may I think that a couple of things are gonna come back like they always do. So Hawaii is always entertaining a paid sick leave bill. And it comes back in different forms and then in its development, you know, through the legislative process it runs out of time and so they carry it over to next year. So I think that's always something that's gonna come back and I think it may come back a little stronger now especially since we might see some of our workforce with ex extenuating illnesses from perhaps even, you know, COVID related illnesses even into the next year. And so I know that the paid sick leave bill will always come back. And then of course we have FFCRA which expires in December. But I imagine that employers are going to be very motivated to have something permanent written into these laws that would already be in place so that they, some employers know what to expect and what their obligations are gonna be. But you're right. That was a really, a really great question. Karen, I could talk to you forever because I know you do just a ton of things and the great work that Sherm does. But I'd love for people to know how to get in touch with you, how to find out more about Sherm. Can you tell everybody how to find you or how to find Sherm? Yes, for sure. So go to our website, ShermHawai.org is probably the best place but we're also on Twitter, I think ShermHawai50 and then LinkedIn, ShermHawai and Facebook, ShermHawai and Instagram, ShermHawai. Fantastic. And one more plug for a Sherm State Conference. Can you give us some details on that? It's gonna be... Wow. So the conference has not, they've not disclosed. We have an amazing keynote and we have an amazing special guest this year. So really two things that I can't say just yet. They haven't put it out, but it's exciting. Yeah, I know, right? I don't wanna mess up the marketing plan. It's October, and if we're live and in person, it'll be back with the convention center. I'm so excited to hear more about that and I'm sure that everyone will be delighted with your new website that you put in so much work too. So thank you very much. Again, thank you so much for joining me today. I wanted to thank the production staff back in the studio. If you want to be a guest on the Business and Hawaii Show, please email your request or like on the bottom of the screen. The Business and Hawaii Show airs every other Thursday and we look forward to seeing you here in a couple of weeks. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for hosting, Daylin.