 say welcome. Thanks to all of you that have joined us today. Really excited to have you all here. I'm even more excited because today is my Friday. Tomorrow we're taking I'm taking the day off. So I'm getting to spend a pseudo Friday with if you joined us in the green room, one of my new favorite people, Michael Reese, with Potiri talent, director, professional development. Michael's here to talk to us or I like to say nerd out with us about designing a workplace for the human experience. Before we jump into this conversation, Michael, and I'm eager to do that, we have to honor our co host Julia Patrick, CEO of the American nonprofit Academy. Rumor has it she is attending an in person event this morning that is a fundraising breakfast here in our community. So thank you Julia for serving and representing out in our community. I'm Jared Ransom, your nonprofit nerd, CEO of the Raven Group. And Julie and I want to say thank you to all of our presenting sponsors. 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So go ahead and queue up the nonprofit show so that you can find Michael Reese here live now, but on any of these platforms that you just heard. So again, Michael Reese is joining us, director, professional development of Poetiri, which has been a really hard name for me to say, Michael. So first of all, welcome. Second of all, where the heck is his name from? So and you did an excellent job, by the way, Poetiri. So nicely done. We are Poetiri. And it's an Italian word that has to do with like, being able to do something. And so we think about like our organization and helping others to become or to do. It really fits, you know, what we do. And so Poetiri talent, we do everything HR related from recruitment to, you know, exiting employees out of the organization, if that needs to be done and everything in between. So but great job on the name. Well, thank you. I think that's the first time I've ever said it right. In the 90 days that I've known you. So I've been, I've been practicing. And as we start off on this conversation, Michael, I feel that you don't only work with nonprofits. So you work with for profits too. Is that correct? Yeah, I've had the opportunity to actually I worked for a nonprofit for a significant amount of time, a couple of years way back when I was out of just well, actually going through college. And then I worked for Blue Cross Blue Shield, which is actually a not well, there's multiple Blue Cross Blue Shields, but I worked for one that was a not for for profit as well. And so I've got some experience with that. My experience with most of it has been smaller organizations and I've worked for profit smaller organizations as well. And so I think I've seen some similarities in that small organization group, both nonprofit or for profit. So I think we can talk about that today. That that's fantastic. And the slide that I just pulled up again, I know we have viewers and we have listeners, but let's talk about how the nonprofit staff is truly an asset. What does this mean? Well, so this came directly from our website. And when I saw it, I was like, I don't know if I love the word asset. And so let me explain that for a second. So when we say asset in my mind, and I hadn't thought of this before, you know, I'm looking at it kind of with this new lens. And when I think of asset, it's like an inanimate object or something to be positioned and taken, you know, sort of manipulated. And so I think I'm going to change that, but it has a similar context, which is your staff is a blessing or a gift. And I think that's how they should be treated. And so so that may change it asset a little bit, you know, and but for me, it's just how I the context I put behind asset. So but I think your, you know, your staff is truly a gift or a blessing and they need to be treated that way. And so Jared and I had the opportunity to talk a little bit yesterday. And I was talking about like, what is the traditional HR? And when I think about traditional HR, what we've done over the last 20 years, and I'm, I'm pointing the finger at myself, I am I'm HR. And so I'm not picking on anybody else, right? This is me. But over the last several years, I've noticed that HR is very much about making sure everything's legal. You know, we're doing everything legal. We're treating everybody the same way. Everything is safe. Everything is, you know, just we do we treat everybody the same way. And that doesn't sound bad. Like to treat everybody the same way doesn't sound like a bad thing necessarily. But by doing that, you really are taking the human element out of it. You're treating everybody now like this one single organization, as opposed to end of life individualizing the experience for them. And so, you know, guilty HR, like, and people often come to me like, can we do this? Is it legal? And I'm like, well, it is legal. But maybe that's not the question we should start with. Maybe it's a question somewhere down the line, right? And so I always start by saying, well, what's right for the employee? What's right for the situation? Then after we determine that, let's make sure it's legal in addition to that. You know, when you said that yesterday, Michael, that really hit home for me because that is is so accurate. And the nonprofit staff, and you said, you know, asset may not be the right word, which I have a feeling your website might get a quick update is, you know, really that gift and blessing. And I feel that way too, with our volunteer workforce, because we truly could not fulfill our mission without both workforces, our staff as well as, you know, the volunteers that give so generously of their time. So here in this conversation and contacts, we're really looking at the staff as a gift as well, you know, as that blessing. Now, again, looking at your website and kind of everything that that we saw for Potiri, there was a 70% rule of disengagement. Are you telling me 70% of our staff is disengaged? Yeah, possibly. So this this varies widely, depending on the organization, the industry, things like that. So I think the hopeful news here is that there's a good chance that in a in a nonprofit setting that your disengagement may be lower than that. So it may not be that high, but across the board, that is a stat that comes out. And and so what that's saying is that by and large, employees are not all that into their jobs these days. And I think there's a parallel here between what happened with 9 11 and you know, I I happen to be old enough that I can remember 9 11 still remember exactly where I was, but I was in HR at the time. And so for the year that followed, there was this huge shift in this this culture that was pretty normal to like to climb the corporate ladder and to put in extra hours like that didn't matter, put in extra hours, put in extra effort. And family kind of came second. And then all of a sudden 9 11 happened and people were hyper focused on their families, right? Like they wanted more of a work life balance. And I think that's where the term work life balance really started to take it on like an actual meaning as opposed to just kind of lip service. And so I think something similar happened with with COVID and with people spending time at home. And they've realized there was like this huge realization that you know what, I kind of like this extra time at home. I don't necessarily want to be in the office. Interesting, divorce rates went up. So so maybe not everybody was so happy with it. Let's be honest, divorce rates were high anyway. That's right. It's not just because of COVID. But but so that's, you know, when you think about like this shift and how people are thinking and feeling about work now. So all of that leads to this disengagement. Now I'm like, I have this epiphany like, do I really want to be working at this organization? Do I really want to be working in a Fortune 500 company? Do I really want all of these kind of traditional values that people are starting to question? And so so this disengagement, you know, it's a natural result of I think a lot of what's going on with COVID. I think that's helping to drive disengagement. So I don't know if you want to jump into this now, but there are some like things that you can do really to kind of eliminate or to reduce some of that disengagement. Please do because if I'm doing the math right, there's 30% 70 80 90 100 right 30% of people that that maybe are engaged. So how do we shift that 70% more to the 30% so we can increase that number? So let's do let's let's talk about how do we reengage the disengaged? Yeah, well, so here's here's the great news is that engaging individuals, a lot of it is free. So it doesn't cost money. Like the first thing that companies want to go to or HR department sometimes is they want to like how can we throw money at this problem? Right. And in the reality is that a lot of this stuff doesn't cost money. So this this first one is going to sound like basic common sense. But the first thing you can do to engage employees is to make the job fun. And now when I say that I'm not talking about adding ping pong tables or or a weasball. I mean, that's not bad. Like that's fun. I worked for a company that had like an open beer keg, you know, like an open tap. And I was like, well, that's cool. But it doesn't necessarily engage people. So when I talk about making the job fun, I'm talking about like the job itself, like what you do on a day to day basis. And so I mean, if I go in and I'm doing, you know, I'm an HR advisor, but every and I have a free beer. That's cool. But like if I hate my work, then I'm not going to be engaged just because of the beer. And so making the job itself fun is like, well, that's a critical component. And how you do that is by giving employees autonomy. So giving them the ability, like setting like the expectations, these, you know, here's what you need to meet overall. But now you have an opportunity to figure out, like what's the best way to do that? Like I'm going to be your manager, I'll be here to provide support. I'll provide brainstorming. But really, you've got autonomy to figure out the best way to do your job, like we're going to make and that will make the job more fun for individuals. So this idea of making the job fun, the other thing you can do to make a job fun a lot of times is to have a team component. So if you've got someone that works largely independently, adding some help or some support in terms of a team, so people that they can talk to collaborate with that makes the job fun, as well as allowing time for employees to to get together and talk about things that are not work related. Those are all those will all go to a funner job itself. So that's one thing you can do. Yeah, those are great ideas. I want to throw this one out, Michael, because we have talked about this and it doesn't cost anything. But in the nonprofit sector, so many individuals are enticed by their title. So I don't know if that falls under the category of fun, but maybe it falls under the category of consideration for the disengaged. Would you would you share some of your thoughts on titles? Yeah, look, I mean, I love titles are free. So anytime you can do something free that helps to motivate individuals. So what that falls under is this category that's called potential. And so that's where employees, maybe they don't necessarily love their job, but they can see that there's something, you know, out there that they can work towards. And I think a lot of times with with a job title, that's exactly what it does. So, you know, the job may not really it may not equate to a director level role all the time. But by adding that director level title, now the employee goes, I've got something really good on my resume, it will help me to, you know, in the future should I need it, I've got this potential. So that's where that that job title absolutely helps out. In that category with potential, the other thing that can really help is supervisors developing their employees. So again, it's this idea that the employee is able to see like what is the path forward. I know another thing we've been working on Jared is some pay structure type items that help employees to see, okay, this is this is where I am but I've got this potential to, you know, move up in the organization. If I want to go to higher pay levels. There's these titles that are associated with that and I can do that to to move up in the organization. All of this goes around the idea of potential. And when people when employees can see potential, it's a huge motivator so huge impact on that disengagement number. All of that is fantastic. And I really do know that we could talk for hours. And I'm so grateful that we do get to on occasion. You had mentioned investing in your in your staff. And I just would like to ask you to seed your leadership program if you don't mind because that is a leadership program you offer. I don't really know the structure of that. But whether individuals are interested in contacting you Michael here with you know, Potiri and the leadership program are to see that as an investment for other staff. Would you mind kind of sharing about your leadership program and how that builds into maybe the disengaged or the reengaged? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So training is another way training development is a huge way to to to build on that potential category for motivation and full disclosure. I wasn't finding on talking about this. I wasn't intending to come and like I'm plugging a product or anything like that. So I threw you a little a little softball over there. So I just want you to talk about it. Yeah, so I've done a lot of research on on successful leadership principles. And so like, you know, books like you've got the seven habits or you've got speed, the speed of trust or you've got the five dysfunctions, you've got all these leadership books that are pretty popular. And as I was looking at them or reading them, I'm like, you know, there's a lot of these common foundational principles on all of them. And so like you've got this communication aspect, you've got this team aspect, you've got this motivation aspect. And so I started gathering all that data together. And I put together a leadership program that really builds on these foundational principles. So now instead of like, you know, a lot of companies love the color color codes or like these these programs that you go, Okay, if I know what color you are, now I know how to best respond to you. The the idea behind this leadership training is that I don't need to necessarily know who you are or everything about you. But if I kind of practice these foundational principles, I can have a really meaningful conversation with you. And we'll get things done. And so I try to focus on those foundational principles. During this leadership training, it's an eight week course. We meet every week over the course of eight weeks. And then there's micro assignments in between that people can, you know, it will help remind them of what we talked about. And they can practice some of those things that we talked about every week. So and if you want to know more, be happy to talk more about it. So absolutely. And I know, you know, I'm just privileged to know that that's an opportunity you offer. And again, whether individuals are able to check out Michael and his program, or perhaps others in your area, or something else just know that that is an opportunity to engage some of the potentially disengaged. One of the words we've heard a lot and it's been coined is this, you know, truly looking at the, well, now I forgot the word resignation, the great resignation. I think I've been trying to erase it from my brain. I saw it on LinkedIn recently, Michael as the great reshuffle. And I thought that was really cool, the great reshuffle. And I feel like that talks about, you know, what we have on the slide here is new and future demands of talent in the workforce. I'm kind of aligning that with this reshuffle with the resignation. And I'm wondering, you know, if you see it that way and how you can talk to us about the new and future demands. Yeah, so I would say my eyes have been open over the last couple of years. I've had a couple of children who are graduating from high school over the last few years. And well, what exactly does that have to do with the future of work? Well, I've noticed that that a lot of children now that are graduating from high school are less interested in going to college. Like it's it's become more optional. When I graduated from school, there was no option. Like that was what you did. And people who didn't go to college like they were in for like a really hard life. They're making some really poor decisions. But now it's like I've got all these different options. In fact, if you're only going to pay me minimum wage, I can go drive Uber, Uber eats or whatever. And I can make I can make that money in like half the time. Not to mention make your own schedule. Work when you want to work, you know, very flexible way or what you want to wear. Yeah. Yeah, it's awesome, right? And so so now that's part of what, you know, these employers and I think particularly small employers, which I think a lot of nonprofits fall into this smaller organization category. That's what you're competing with, right? So if all you do is try to compete on money as a small organization, and when I say small, I'm talking usually less than 150 employees. So I think a lot of nonprofits fall into that category. If all you're trying to do is compete on money, you're gonna you're likely going to lose, right? It's you just don't, in most cases, don't have the budget to compete on money or even compete with maybe an Uber eats. But you've got something that is like so much more powerful than money, like, and that is the the purpose of the organization. And we got around to two of the potential motivators, which is, you know, the job being fun and showing the employees that there's potential in it. But the last one is is connecting them to a purpose, hugely motivating. And that's something that you as a nonprofit, you're able to compete on that like way more than most for profit organizations. But unfortunately, I often see that it gets missed, right? Like in the interview process, we maybe don't talk about it enough. Our policies become more corporate, like we don't really focus on it. Our supervisors maybe don't take every opportunity to connect and employ with the purpose of the organization. And so we're not always capitalizing on that. But I think that's probably one of the biggest advantages you have as a as a nonprofit that you could take advantage of and compete, not with money, but with that, you know, that culture and that purpose. I have a question. Devil's advocate here. Do you think that working remotely plays into the disconnect of that purpose and that mission tie? For me, I love being in the office and seeing the clients, seeing the program delivered firsthand. Those days that I'm working from home, they're equally important for me. I don't believe in a work life balance. So I'll throw that out there. I believe in a work life blend, right? Like I think it's blend. So for me, you know, I love getting a load of laundry done. I love being able to pet my dog on that day that I'm home. But I also love seeing the client. So are you seeing like a connection of the disconnection with that mission moment? Yes. So you talk about remote work. That's probably one of the most polarizing topics right now. And people like it's in most cases, it's like all in or all out, you know, and and then you get some that are like this more blended. But so I I started remote work actually moved a group of about 1,500 employees to remote work about almost 10 years ago. This is when technology wasn't all that great, right? So it was before most people are zoom. Yeah, before zoom, right? Yeah. So we had like Microsoft had like there was some video, but most people would tape off the camera on their on their, you know, their laptop, because they didn't want people like intruding into their exactly. So so we've come a long ways. But but I even back then I used the same criteria that I use today is first of all, it can can the manager handle remote work. The manager has to be able to manage remotely. The employee has to be able to work remotely. And the job has to be a good fit for it. And whenever you try to fit like a job, I had a friend that was talking about his administrative assistant that was working from home. And and it didn't work for he was not a good manager for remote work. The position was not a good fit. Now, she was a good fit. The employee was a good fit. She loved working remotely. She she felt like she could stay active and help. But but the manager wasn't a good fit. The job wasn't a good fit. It's not going to work. And so this all or nothing like in an organization, I'm like, I don't think organizations should say like we are just going to go full on remote work or we're just going to do full on from the office. I think it really needs to be individualized to the person, the job and the manager. Yeah, back to that blend. Yeah. Yeah. All of this has been super fantastic. And and I really don't want to stop talking with you. Is there any other as we look at wrapping up today show any other demands of talent in the workforce that you've seen or you said your eyes have been open for a long time now. Anything your crystal ball is showing in the future? Yeah, so the only other thing I can and this is like trying to predict the weather a little bit. But the the economy has been for a long time. It's been a buyer's market. It's been the employee's market like they can kind of pick and choose and and with Uber Eats and different things that they can do on their own. I think some of that's going to continue. There's for some amount of time. The economy can change that almost overnight. So, you know, watching kind of the geopolitical things that are happening right now and trying to predict what that will mean. You've got some analysts that saying the economy is going to keep growing as it has some are, you know, indicating a recession might be a possibility. Then you know, so it's hard to predict. But if the economy starts to turn, it becomes a it becomes more of a employer's market. You're going to get more talent. You're going to have access to more talent. There's going to be a temptation then that we can we can stop doing all those great things that we were doing to recruit and to retain employees because now the market's on our side. But just know the market's always it's always fluctuating at some point. It's going to turn again. It's going to be the employees market again. And everything you do during that, you know, employer market timeframe is going to help you as the market turns again. So that's my maybe my closing thought. No, that's fantastic. I think of the housing market, the employer market. I mean, there's so many changes and you're right. The only consistent is change, right? Like it will continue to change. And I think that's that's really important for all of us to know and to keep in mind again, Michael, fantastic. You're one of my favorites. Michael Reese, director, professional development with Potiri. I've now learned how to say the name. So I'm just going to keep saying it. Potiri, Potiri, Potiri. But do check out the website here. You're going to have some changes because Michael already admitted during this episode that word asset is going to be removed and changed to gift or blessing. But Potiri talent dot com. Again, for those of you listening, that's P O T E R E talent dot com. And thank you for nerding out with me. You are just, you know, so wise and experienced seasoned as I've called you before. And I'm just really grateful to have your skill set, your talent and truly your dedication to the community at large. So thank you, Michael, for for all that that you've done and all that you've done for me as well. Thank you to Julia Patrick as co-host. She created this wonderful platform. Again, going on 500 episodes plus plus strong. I'm Jarrett Ransom, your nonprofit nerd. Now's a great time to check out our sponsors. So again, do look up Blumerang American nonprofit academy, fundraising academy, nonprofit nerd. That's me, your part-time controller, nonprofit Atlas, nonprofit thought leader, as well as staffing boutique. These companies exist for one purpose and that's you, your mission. So please do check out these companies. And as we end every episode, and we mean this so very much, not only for all of you, but Michael, for our guest on myself as well, please stay well so you can do well. Thanks everyone. We'll see you here tomorrow.