 bingo we're back four o'clock rock what a happy day i'm jay fidel think tank and we have a show new show working together k and uh... our host is uh... sheryl grozier garcia she's professor of human resources uh... at h p u which is nearby where we are studio is welcome to the show thanks jay thanks for having me great to hear it great to have you here and uh... we're calling this episode let's let's meet sheryl well it's i'm pleased to meet all of you so tell us about your you know your role in h p u tell us about how you got there tells about your career so far okay uh... well i'm a local girl i was raised in waipahu uh... third generation plantation kid uh... i attended public school in waipahu augustarn's elementary and then waipahu intermediate waipahu high school go marauders uh... you heard it here that's right i went to i attended college on the mainland any at college in ohio any i've very good school that explains me there yeah you always want to have a job i went up going to a city school in new york queens college all that's okay i can sing the song for you but we don't have time for that's okay um... anyway so undergraduate degree from anyok and then i came back to honolulu and i was a member of the first graduating class of nb a's here at white pacific college uh... and then i had a uh... career in corporate hr for a number of years here in hawaii with consulting work on the mainland uh... and in other countries and uh... finished a phd at walden university in two thousand three and then worked my way up the academic ranks from instructor and now i'm full professor and since two thousand two i've been program chair of the master's program in hr at the top of the top of the arch right there yes so you know but uh... how did you when did you first sort of understand that human resources was your thing uh... and why well um... there've only been two things i've ever wanted to be in my life the first was an actor and i wanted to be that from the time i was teeny tiny uh... until i got to college and management professor told me that i was wasting my talent and i should get into business and so then i thought well i don't i took accounting courses didn't really like those i took marketing classes they were okay but they seemed a little limited and then i took a class in personnel management it was called personnel uh... back in the early jurassic period thank you so uh... i took that class and i went these people spend their days reading books and talking to people i can do that and so from that point as a the twenty-year-old kid i decided i was going to get into hr and that's the only business field i've ever wanted to be because you're a people person okay yeah so yeah i think so okay what is human resources of personnel now evolved into you what is it exactly human resources management deals with the acquisition development management and retention of talent in an organization if you were to picture you mentioned a pyramid so picture an organization as a pyramid with senior leadership at the top and the majority of workers down the bottom uh... your hr department is responsible for moving people into that pyramid around it where it needs to go and then maybe out of the organization so uh... okay you're talking about organizational style but i i want to i want to go into one thing human resources really management connects with the workforce yes uh... ergo recalling this working together right and so you are in the best position you could be in to see exactly what kind of talent we have and how maybe we want to change and shift and train and palpate that talent into a better workforce for the community that we live in yeah that i think that's important first i am an optimist about what i see in hawaii it's hard to be an optimist today in election day but you go ahead well i voted this morning so so yes i'm hopeful but i'm an optimist about the talent i see here in hawaii and and what we are capable of accomplishing if we get out of our own way uh... i think a lot of times uh... not only companies but individuals don't think big enough or have a realistic appreciation for who they are what skills they have uh... and how they can really use those skills and their identities in order to uh... support their families in the way they would like to contribute to their communities in ways they believe important solve some of the social issues and some of the other problems that we have as a community uh... one of the things since you bring up the election one of the things that this election has taught me is that we don't have enough faith in ourselves ourselves individually or ourselves as a country all of the above you know if you if you have confidence in yourself you are more likely to see talent in others and not be challenged by it but if you don't think that you have what it takes within you to be competitive to be successful uh... however you define success uh... then you're going to be threatened by what you see around you that's really a profound point really profound you can't possibly feel that you have a role in the landscape in the in the economy unless you have some confidence in yourself that's right and if you don't have confidence and you don't have a role you're isolated and unproductive that's true however uh... while i agree uh... and support the idea that there is a circular relationship between confidence and accomplishment that is the more confidence we have the more we're capable of accomplishing i also think that confidence needs to be tempered with realism and with the fair dose of humility i mean i think that's the other thing we've seen in this election uh... we've seen humility where no no no we've seen people who who have more confidence than is warranted by the amount of talent they exhibit for the jobs that they see it's like one of the great insults of the world is when you say this person always confident sometimes right that's true anyway uh... you know this is all really interesting in in terms of uh... the role of the of the human resource manager you know i think we've been led or i've been led to feel that a human resources officer in a given corporation represents the corporation this is an inherent conflict here represents the corporation and yet when i as an employee come to see you that's that's not exactly what happens you actually also represent me you're helping me individually and career-wise so how do you cope with that you go schizophrenic on that or what you could or you can keep your goal in mind and work to that goal whatever strategy or tactics you have to use to maintain it so say for example uh... you come to me uh... i'm an hr person you are an employee and you come to me saying that you would like to know what opportunities are available for upward growth in the company you like what you see you're happy with your job you like your co-workers but you would also like to improve uh... your position get a promotion put uh... position yourself for more money whatever those things are so you come to me and ask me the first thing i'm going to do is i'm gonna try to figure out quickly what kind of skills you already have and what you need to be ready for that promotion or want you to get the promotion absolutely i don't really inform you're advocating for me you're advising and consulting with me to help me that's right and then i'm going to my peers and my superiors in higher levels of the organization and i'm saying jay fidel came to talk to me today and he's interested in becoming general counsel he's been working on these kinds of things i am going to advise him that he should continue his professional training in these areas can we start to mentor him with some project work or with some special assignments or other temporary gigs replacing people on vacation or medical leave or whatever it is to give you a taste of those positions so that you can decide whether or not you really want to do this is so valuable uh... but i have to be fully go to the next question i have in my mind i i want to just ask you suppose you conclude on the basis of your conversation with this employee he's not up to it that he can't do it he doesn't have the skill and the talent of the aptitude what happens then you're not going to advocate for him you're gonna have to tell him hopefully you know in certain terms that this is not exactly what's in the cards for you today but if i advised you listen in order to do this job that you say you want you need to have a bachelor's degree you need to have some level of experience all of those kinds of things to meet the specifications for the job so i'm gonna pull out the job description and say show me which ones of these you already have and which ones of these you still need then you can decide for yourself whether or not you'd like to pursue it if you're still interested you may pick up the phone and call uh... the local university and say hey have you got a night program for me or talk to professional development agencies within your own profession whatever that is and say hey i'd like to do some continuing ed and i'm never going to tell you no but i will tell you that you'll need more training than what you currently have you're never going to say no you are advocating for me you are my counselor uh... and you know to the extent that you could possibly conceptually see this as a conflict really i think you know your job is to represent me that's your job represent me help me in my career but also my job to represent the organization and to say in order to be successful jay in the position you want you need to have these skills these this knowledge these abilities these traits and this kind of experience and if you have all of those you position yourself for the upward move that you want not a flip side is an executive of the company this hypothetical corporation comes to you and says Cheryl you know we got a guy here he's not cutting it counsel me advise me helped me deal with that either by fixing him or getting rid of him uh... that's another side of that same conflict well the first thing to remember is there's no such thing as a bad employee there's only a bad fit okay between the employee and the position between the employee and the people with whom he or she works so my first question to the supervisor is what do you mean he's not working out what does he's not working out look like to you show me in the job description the specific areas where this is going to complicate this with real facts sure not real facts but facts granularity he's not working out Cheryl because i really comes in every day i smell alcohol on his breath and i believe that he's either drunk or under the influence of some kind of you know illegal substance i also find that he's looking at the window and not concentrating on anything uh... what do i do shall help me get get get him organized or out smells of alcohol you sure that's not just cheap cologne okay he got me maybe i'm jumping to conclusions well but if you suspect something like that can you document it staring out the window doesn't necessarily mean he's not working he may be thinking about how to solve a particular problem you're a total optimist aren't you i have to be i really i you to be in hr you have to be kind of an optimist you have to believe in people well and you have to believe that there's a good spot for everyone you ever see the movie dave yes yes today is wednesday and everybody works on wednesday that's kind of who you have to be um... this is think tank it's it's actually tuesday and we're going to take a short break we have charl grozier garcia she's the president of human uh... make that a professor of human resources management at ht u here on her show working together and today we're meeting charl we'll be right back aloha i'm carl campania i hope you please visit us this summer it's a wonderful summer it's actually a cooler summer than we're used to but i hope that you come back and visit us and watch our show education movers shakers and reformers here on think tank why it's a new every wednesday aloha my name is denilia d a n e l i a and i'm the other half of the duo john newman we are the co-host of keys to success which is live on think tank live streaming network series weekly on thursday's at eleven a m aloha aloha aloha i am red baker and i am the host of business in hoi with red baker we broadcast live every thursday from two to two thirty in the think tank studios in downtown aloha we highlight successful stories about businesses and individuals and learn their secrets to success i hope you can join us on our next show on thursday at two o'clock until then aloha then go with that i told you to come back share with me your back that's a share of our seo roger garcia a professor of human resources we're talking about let's not use names for the case involving a local business which is similar to the crazy fact pattern i threw out before talk about it sure uh... there was i did have someone come to me once and tell me so-and-so smells like liquor first thing in the morning uh... he's got to go so my first thing was are you sure it's not cheap cologne and he said i'm pretty sure it's not cheap cologne and my second question was are you sure he's not just overusing the mouthwash and as it turned out this guy was so worried about having bad breath that every time he turned around he would see he would um... gargle with the really strong medicine e type mouthwash and so and that stuff is like eighty proof and so he was constantly smelling like not to get the can make any assumption no you really can't so i have two stories i want to tell you and see how you react okay the first is a story about let's call them dan dan is from the mainland dan uh... had a great business education mb a type education in a in a ivy school and then came out here to work in a big company and then was here maybe a year when dan and his wife they all picked up and left why because he believed that the training program that this particular company was giving him was a training program to know where that he would never actually get up to the executive washroom uh... and uh... for me knowing him knowing the company i won't mention uh... it was a good of a turning point i began to believe that it was very hard to get into it to find a training program an executive training program in the state of Hawaii even in big companies who could afford to do that and actually succeed through the training program and if i look around now today with with my limited experience uh... i do not think there's a lot of companies around that have such programs uh... and or there's a lot of people around who are in them and who have any level of confidence that they're going to succeed in them thoughts well there aren't a lot of companies uh... that have the dedicated uh... executive training or or professional development for young executives or young managers coming up that's true but even when they have them a lot of times they don't adequately dedicate resources they don't spend time with the folks that they're mentoring they don't create a set of expectations for what the trainees obligated to do and what the company will do for them as part of that process and then there's no end game insight that is to say if you go through the training program uh... where we're going to put you after once you're successful where will you go and so it it's sort of an amorphous uncle unconnected sort of well-designed yet not well-designed and not carefully thought out and that does happen tell you my second story okay uh... the acronym with e t f and i i think it stood for educational training fund yes i remember and it was adopted in the middle of late nineties and you could if you were an employee of a company to participate in this thing uh... you would have a five thousand initially a five thousand dollar lifetime fun from the state which you could apply toward training yourself right you know and you could go to computer training course any number of courses in order to be uh... a better employee a better person and so forth and the first thing that happened is that was pushed back by a lot of it it cost the employers some modest amount of money not much uh... was pushed back from a lot of employers uh... uh... the second thing that happened is uh... they reduced the five thousand to three thousand something like that and the third thing that happened is they defunded the program and it went to put over the side and now there was no more e t f what i took out of that i'm interested in your reaction your comment on what i took out of that is that in hawaii uh... local employers uh... do not really care to train their people they do not support their people training themselves as opposed to say for example the military where everybody gets trained every day there's so much training going on in the federal establishment it's ridiculous maybe too much sometimes but in the local business you know community um... everybody including sam slum he's the one who opposed this thing sam slum the guys running right now today a nice man uh... but he opposed to be opposed the cost imposed on the employer because he said it was a tax and with enough of that kind of complaint the program and over the side and never replaced uh... your thoughts i got money from e t f i sorted out so so i took computer classes to up to upgrade my skills through e t f and i was grateful for the opportunity to and those are skills i still use today to and so in that perspective it must be related maybe we are maybe we're maybe we're twins i wouldn't go that far but it's possible it's possible um... so i got you got we benefited from the training um... and certainly i can understand where sam's coming from as far as calling it a tax however um... you only get what you pay for if you want a dedicated workforce with talent you've got to be willing to put the resources into training that talent um... and i think it's important to remember you know you say companies are really interested in training their people i don't think that's true i think companies are very interested in training their people but they don't know how and there aren't sufficient resources available they don't even know what they don't know in terms of what kinds of skills does my employee need to have you know it's funny i just flashed on one of those uh... computer training school schools that existed back at that time and the one i went to maybe you went to it also and it occurs to me that's not there anymore it went away because that it was dependent on this ETF process and for the lack of students with some funding it didn't happen you know i i guess i would ask you um... this is our final area of discussion today and it's really what i've been driving at is is what kind of workforce do we have uh... in business downtown the office environment that you and i both familiar with but also you know the off the plantations the current modern today workforce in hawai we know it's not manufacturing there are very few people involved in technology there are tons of people involved in education one kind or another and i suppose uh... there's a lot of miscellaneous out there but how would you define describe our workforce here today in hawaii now i think we've got a lot of raw talent i think there has to be um... along with that raw talent a sense of accountability each person is counting on a job to support themselves and their families economically has got to be clear about what they want to do in their life what skills knowledge abilities traits and experience they need to do that successfully and then they have to be willing to go out and get that training and sometimes they can get it on the job but sometimes it means education and sometimes it means the right kind of education i hate to say this because i work at a university but the reality is not everybody needs a four-year degree or a master's degree or any other specific kind of academic degree i mean if you're a plumber you're not going to use that but some knowledge of hydromechanics and how to weld pipe perfect so get the right training for the job that you want and then don't let people tell you can't do it because frankly if i had let people tell me that i wasn't a good candidate having come from waipahu high school i wasn't a good candidate to go to university i wasn't a good candidate for a master's degree here now we wouldn't be having this conversation so this man had a leak in his house under the sink and he called the plumber to come down and the plumber came down and slid under the sink and he hit the pipe a couple of times and fantastic he fixed the leak and uh... the man said gee that's incredible you came you slid under the under the sink you hit the pipe a couple of times you fixed it uh... i'm really impressed what is that going to cost me and the plumber said it's going to cost you fifteen hundred dollars and the man said fifteen hundred dollars i'm a brain surgeon i don't make that kind of money for you know five minutes work that's ridiculous but people aren't leaking when they come to see you and the plumber said you know that's true when i was a brain surgeon i didn't make that kind of money either you know a lot of my students we go around the room the first night of class why do you want to be a manager why do you want to get into hr and uh... it's not unusual for people to say because i want to high-powered high-paying management job and i said well if you really want to high-paying job you're in the wrong place you gotta go to trade school and get into either air conditioning sheet metal or plumbing well you know it sounds to me like somebody out there should be counseling and consulting our workforce and how they can get best place best trained and best best hired uh... it i don't think people i mean not only here but everywhere they don't really get that kind of advice and i think that advice is more see if you agree is more important now because things are changing you know technology is changing our society is changing so when i go with i'm saying high school kid maybe they have counselors at high school i don't know they do or college where i go to get straight on this and you know make my skills my aptitudes work for this job market well in terms of a shameless plug you could call into the show all were on tuesday from four to four thirty every other thursday and you can ask us and we can talk about uh... what those skills are and where you can best get them um... but the other thing i'd say is find somebody you admire who's doing what you want to do and ask them how'd how did you prepare for the career you have now uh... what school did you go to what did you study i actually learned that uh... from a man you probably remember uh... he's no longer with us but his name is jack lord and he was an actor on hawaii five oh the real hawaii five oh not the one that's on now i got some summer work as an extra on five oh back in the day yeah that is in the days when you want to be an actor that's right in the days when i wanted to be an actor and one day i balled up all my nerve and i want to talk to him and i said oh mister lord you know i really want to be an actor when i grow up can you tell me what to do and he spent a half an hour talking to me about the schools he had attended the directors he had worked with the kinds of uh... things that he had done in his early days to really uh... hone his talent as an actor and i learned tremendous amount from that half an hour of his time and i think that people that are respected in their fields are willing to take that time yeah talk to people and they should be willing to take their time i mean they should be willing to present themselves in schools or in a counseling environment and talk to people and answer their questions and furthermore kids young people looking for answers they should not be shy about that that's right you cannot have shame in your game because if you do you're not going to get the information you need to make the best decisions that's Cheryl Crozier Garcia no shame in her game no none at all shy either a professor of human resources management at hpu working together and you will see her every tuesday from now on at four o'clock to four thirty just like she says and she will solve your problems i hope so