 And welcome to Work Reimagine, streaming live on Think Tech Hawaii, brought to you from Honolulu, Hawaii. My question is why do we need to reimagine work? Well, as you know, we're facing massive disruptions to our labor markets, and this is due to automation, of course, now the pandemic. So on Work Reimagine, I talked to innovators and entrepreneurs who are creating innovative solutions that help us navigate the effects of these disruptions while making a positive social impact in people's lives. I'm Ruby Menin, your host. And my guest today is Jamie Alexis Fowler, founder and executive director of Empower Work. This is a nonprofit that helps workers get professional help with work issues. So did you know that 80% of workers have nowhere to turn to when they're facing challenges at work? And if you've ever had a problem at work and wished you had somebody to talk to, Empower Work offers a really innovative solution. They created a confidential chat, text line, and a web chat to connect you with a trained peer counselor who can help you navigate these work issues. Their services are rooted in the belief that every person should have an advocate to support their professional journey while equipping them with the skills to handle complex work challenges. I'll be talking to Jamie Alexis about the organization's mission to create more equitable workplaces by changing the way that workers are supported. So Jamie Alexis, I'm so happy that you're able to join me today and I'm excited to learn more about you and how you created such an innovative solution that provides workers access to these counselors when they need help navigating their work issues. So Aloha and welcome. Thank you so much Ruby I appreciate it's great to join you. You know, I was when I started researching your organization we got connected through a mutual friend, and I was thinking of all the times in my past HR career. When I had wished there were people I could talk to you know because when you're in an HR position and you're you know in a director level, it's kind of lonely at the top and there's not too many people you can reach out to and talk to. Maybe you know I had sometimes I had access to an executive coach or had to go hire somebody. But then I was thinking, what about the people who are in regular worker be positions you know who the people who are supporting the organizations those who are in all the admin positions and different different types of positions that are not management have access to this. And this is why I was just so energized and so excited about what you're doing with empower work because you've just democratize and given access to such a valuable solution such a valuable service for people who need this type of professional help to navigate their work lives. So, I'm excited to dive in and usually what I like to do is to get a little sense of your career background and how that shifted you and navigated you towards the work that you're doing with empower work. Well, thanks for the question and I love that you said democratize access because I think that's a lot of what we're doing with empower work, and really at the core of what we're doing. And what brought me to the work and doing this was really this, this driving desire around making access more equitable, and I've done that throughout my career and a variety of workplaces, mostly in the social change sector. And I think that I see myself as a recovering academic, because I left academia, thinking that research and teaching was going to be my path to larger change, and I threw a challenge that I experienced there landed in the social sector, and working on thinking about the intersection of technology and impact. And so a lot of the work that I was doing previous to empower work really fueled this question around, how can we meet people where they are when they're facing these challenges. How do we build something that addresses a core core challenge, which is that 40 million working Americans lack access to resources when they're facing an adverse situation, and that has a ripple effect on their lives, emotionally, economically and so many different ways. So you came from a communications background. And so this seems so different. How has that journey been for you in terms of navigating your, your career path into this, this new area. So here to starting a power work I ran marketing or communications for a variety of organizations, and typically in, you know, senior leadership positions, where I was really focused on how do we build healthy teams internally. And so through that and through my career, I had always been sort of a go to for folks who were facing some kind of challenge and after one particular conversation one night, a young woman had connected to me through her larger network. And so here's the heck out of like friends of friends of LinkedIn to connect. And what she experienced was so challenging and so overwhelming. And I left a conversation thinking you know what she needed was it much closer and proximity to what she had gone through. And she didn't have access to that. And as a result, here she was, you know, first in our family to go to college to join the tech industry, and to be really thinking about lifting her family into the middle class, and maybe beyond. And this situation she'd experienced had thrown all that off. And so I turned to my husband and I was like, you know, there's got to be some sort of crisis text line for workers, and there wasn't. And so the question became, well, why not. And does there need to be and sort of following that question of, what do people need at these critical moments. And I think that drew on some of my experiences in marketing and communication around listening deeply and the need but it also pulled in a lot of my experience working with organizations like Code for America, where you're thinking about, you know, really rooting an approach in a community or, you know, user depending on if you use the text word, or persons need. So let's unpack a little bit about how this this service works, because that's one of the things that I found so unique. I mean everybody walks around with a phone in their pocket right I mean it's like an appendage almost now that nowadays, and you've made it very accessible so maybe you can walk us through the user experience like how, what exactly do they do they do how do they get access to appear counselor maybe a little bit on the back end like because you've got to two sets of users right you've got your peer counselors who are answering the calls or the text, and you've got the, the person who needs the help who's going through your service so maybe you can kind of paint a picture of how all that comes together. Sure. So if you think about, let's walk through, maybe a particular person. Let's say you're, you know, a vet tech in rural Alabama and you run through a situation you run into, you know, your boss who's the vet in the clinic is yelling at you and treating you really poorly. And you're kind of inconsolable and you don't know where to turn. Well, you might pick up your phone and text a friend or you might go on your browser and look up you know bullying boss or a bad manager or something like that. The way that typically people find us is they're at this critical inflection point, and they turn somewhere that they trust whether it's search or a friend. And they come across in power work, and they text us either through our text line or through a web chat depending on what they prefer. And we built that model specifically because as we were doing deep user research before we started, we found over and over again that where people turned was their phone. And part of that was that they're at work, and they don't want to be overheard in their work environment, or they're on their way home from work or to work on the bus, and don't want to be overheard. So we, we built it really intentionally to create a safe space that made sense in terms of accessibility. There's nothing to download. There's no, you know, there's not an app to download you're immediately able to connect. And what that means is that everyone gets connected to a real life person in under a minute. So we tell people that they'll get connected with under with about two minutes, but that ends up being about 60 seconds. And so through our back end, we're able to route someone to a real life counselor, who's gone through 25 hours of training, who then create space to through the situation with the person. So what's going on, what's at stake for the person, which might be, they're terrified of losing their job. They don't want to, you know, they're worried about paying rent, which are very real aspects to any situation that's happening at work. And then a potential path forward. And so that might be, you know, for some people. Oh my gosh, I've got to start the job search I've got to think about what's next for others it might be. Hmm, maybe if I have a conversation with this coworker. I can, I can give them feedback and we can adjust what's happening here. And for others it might be, you know, gosh every time this happens I know I need to just like take myself for a walk around the block. I think what we say is we, you know, we route the approach in what's happening for the person, and the person who reaches out is the expert in what's happening to them. And we create the space for them to really find a path forward that works for them. I'm curious because one of the things that you know when you start talking to somebody about something that you feel a little vulnerable about there's always a trust factor. I'm curious about the trust issue in general like do people feel comfortable just anonymously texting and not knowing like who's on the other end and have you have you discovered that there's any education or something that you've got to do around the whole trust model and being able to convince people that it's safe and secure and all of that. Right, who's and who's on the other end. Yeah. So we find that, you know, for the most part people are very trusting part of that we build into the process and the introduction. We share, you know what in power work is how we work so that there's there's a level of trust building part of that is built into our process so that as part of the training volunteers learn how to establish trust really early in a conversation. And part of that has to do with marketing and information on our website so we do see that folks, you know, connect in with us whether they come from a friend or, you know, a workforce development partner or a community partner or just a Google search. People do do their research ahead of time. And so in that user research that we did in building our site. We try to answer questions like who are the volunteers on the other side ways that you can meet the volunteers you can read blogs about their experiences so that you have a sense of. Okay, I know roughly who's going to be on the other end of this and I know that they've gone through training. I know that they, you know, have support from the power work staff and the organization to make sure that they're vetted and trained and supported. Now there's the whole other side which obviously are your volunteers and one of the things that you were saying is that they're trained for 25 hours, which is quite a commitment. So, tell me a little bit about this training and what's the experience for your volunteers. And just making sure, you know, anytime I think people volunteer there, there's always this aspiration of wanting to do some, you know, good and all of that. And then life happens right and then you start to get churn. So I was wondering how you also manage all of those types of issues, especially with such a rigorous training program. So it's a commitment and what we find is that our training is a pretty unique combination, the training and the volunteering in that you get this opportunity to give back in really powerful ways so in real time, you know, people have this sense of, oh my gosh I just changed a life. You know, because, you know, there was a someone that a volunteer was helping someone a couple of years ago and at the end of the conversation, the person who was being helped said to the volunteer, are you a fairy godmother for work. And the volunteer said, oh my gosh, you know, you make me feel like one. And, you know, we see these incredibly deep connections that are made in a 90 minute, anonymous chat conversation, and that really resonates and makes a difference for the volunteers. That sense of giving back and seeing that the change in real time, combined with the training so the training helps folks who are providing that support on the line. It also has a ripple effect professionally so we see that folks come back and who have been volunteering and they'll say, you know, I just got a promotion or I just got a new job because of giving back and the skills that we build through the training and through the volunteering, have a direct line into how folks are going to work. And so even, even some of our volunteers who are seasoned coaches or who are longtime managers will say, oh my gosh I learned something new that I hadn't thought about before or I'm seeing things in a different way, or I'm navigating across difference with a with a tool kit that I didn't have previously. And so it's, it's a unique approach where we're investing in the folks who are reaching out to us but we're also investing in the volunteers. And so we're trying to give back and build their own professional skills to which is, we think a pretty unique combination. And then once they've gone to the training program how long is their commitment to stay on as a volunteer. We ask for a six month commitment of about two hours a week. And what we find overall is that volunteers on average, stay with us for over a year. And people kind of, it kind of gets in, they get into their rhythm of like, oh, you know, Fridays at three is when I volunteer I have a block on my calendar and, you know, we have volunteers who's like, Hey, I'm here and that's their, that's the time that they let want to do for, you know, a year and a half, two years, and we have some volunteers who've been volunteering for over three years. So it's pretty amazing. So what's your vetting process for the volunteers or do you have one I mean like can anybody just sign up or do you have like some things that some criteria that they have to pass or what's that like. We do so volunteer sign up on our website it's just empower work.org slash volunteer. And there's a pretty simple application form that asks questions about how this fits into your life right now. And what we vet for really is, is this a match for you right now so we know a lot of volunteers are drawn to our work and our mission because they've had a personal experience. And that's really, really meaningful. We also talk about the fact that you have to have your own oxygen mask on before you help someone else get theirs on. And so, sometimes volunteering is the right time and the right fit for your life and sometimes it's not, and that's totally okay. So we screen around, is this the right time in your life to be doing this. We screen around empathy around professional experience we do ask that everyone has work experience. Because you know we're rooting our support in a workplace so we want all of our volunteers to have had some degree of work experience. So everyone has has at least that, and then they go through an interview process with our team and of course the 25 hours of training. So do you find that you have enough volunteers like I'm thinking now with the pandemic people are going through some serious mental health issues. And, and, you know, I'm wondering if you're getting any calls beyond people who are, or, you know, text messages for people who may be not working who lost their job. Have you found that with the pandemic, your profile of your user base has shifted at all in terms of the types of needs that there are in the community now. I would say absolutely the stress and strain of what we've seen has increased, typically when folks are reaching out they're at a bit of a breaking point. And what we've seen is that that breaking point has become in a lot of ways even more dire, where, you know, when folks are reaching out pre COVID, we were seeing this combination of impact that was happening from a financial perspective from a mental health perspective. When you add in COVID, you're also adding in a health perspective. So, you know, we've seen issues where an employer isn't providing PPE or let's say a manager doesn't believe that COVID exists and so doesn't want any of the staff to wear masks but someone has a pre existing condition, or a medical condition that puts them at high risk. And they're really having to make the decision of, do I advocate for mask wearing? Do I decide to leave my job? Do I put my health on the line? And so really this confluence of I need the job security, I need to pay rent or I need to, you know, feed my family. I also need my health. And that really adds a complexity and depth to the conversation that makes conversations longer, more intense, and certainly more fraught in a lot of ways. Interestingly, as we saw that increase over the past year, our completion rates and our positive impact actually went up. So one of our questions had been, you know, as these conversations are getting more complex, are we meeting that need? And we looked at the data, the overwhelming answer was yes. The one area that we've seen that's really dramatically changed is unemployment. And, you know, not surprisingly we've seen this across headlines that are raging in almost every state across the United States where the system is under strain. And the tech and the infrastructure that has been there for most states was not built for the volume that we've been seeing. And we're certainly seeing that in our text line where people are reaching out distraught because they're unable to access unemployment. They're not getting information about why their benefits haven't been paid or why something was denied. And typically the way to get around that previously, if you weren't able to navigate the online system is to connect in with a person, but every state has been overwhelmed and they can't meet the call volume. And so we're really seeing this intersection of dire need around benefits around getting support and the brokenness of that. And we can create space and talk through the situation with folks we can offer suggestions. It's one of the areas where we feel less effective because we don't have an ability to wave a magic wand and fix the call volume issue that's happening across states or the information that's presented through the back end system. So it sounds like you have seen your call volume increase then during this period. Is that is that correct. And do you have then the on the other side you have enough volunteers to fill the need or do you need to have recruit more people how's that been working for you. Well, we're always excited about having more volunteers so someone's watching and they're like I want to I want to volunteer and say yes we would love to have you. That would be so great. We do balance our load volume of sort of volunteers and folks who reach out at any given point. And we've been pretty successful in that because we have partnerships with a lot of companies for employee volunteering opportunities which provide an ongoing opportunity for recruitment and people to tap in and meet commitments around that. We've also seen that just organically, whether it's covered or not, folks are typically looking for some sort of way to give back at any given point and so we have a pretty steady volume of volunteers who sign up and are going through training and folks who are reaching out, and they roughly match. So we're growing on average in terms of people served anywhere from 15 to 35% a month. And the same is true on the volunteer side. Now have you seen that you have to address some additional training needs for the volunteers to deal with some of these new issues that emerging because you mentioned that you know people are having a difficult time navigating benefits and, and you know the frustration of not being able to to reach somebody done employment. Is that something that you've had to address and like give additional training around or how are the volunteers equipped prepared now to deal with these additional issues that have been coming up as a result of the co of co lid. Great question. One of the benefits of the way that our training is structured and I really credit our training director who's actually revised our entire training curriculum in the past year, which is incredible. But one of the things and co designed it with volunteers which has been incredible. But the, the piece that we find most valuable is that the core aspects of our training remain the same across issues. So you're listening deeply to what's going on for the person you're creating space for them you're asking powerful questions and across issues across challenges that are coming up. Those core pieces really remain the same. The difference I think that you're speaking to around the issues that we've had to address are really around resources. So, and that's less about training and more about the back end, in terms of what we provide to volunteers. So at any given point if someone reaches a decision, let's say, gosh, I don't know how to file for unemployment, how do I, how do I do that, we have a resource database that volunteers can tap into and provide information for the person and so really the onus has been on our team around getting those resources, putting them into the database and then being able to surface them for volunteers, as opposed to training our volunteers we want our volunteers to be focused on the human piece on listening deeply on really creating that connection. And we can use technology and other tools to not have to worry about like how do I train someone on walking through unemployment when there are 50 states with different systems like not a good you know not a good use of training or time or human resources. Absolutely. I was curious, you mentioned that I wanted to talk a little bit about your funding profile. You're a nonprofit so I'm assuming that you're writing grants and things like that. But it sounds like you're doing some other things also with corporate sponsors so can you kind of get a picture of like, how do you navigate all of the funding issues so that you guys can continue to provide the service for free. Yeah, great question. So we are structured as a nonprofit because our goal is to provide support freely for vulnerable workers. So most of the folks that we support are marginalized underrepresented in some way in their workplace, and often financially constrained. As a nonprofit we're supported very generously by organizations who believe strongly in our mission by individuals who chip into help and say yes I believe in this change as well. And then we have folks who donate after use of our service even if it's, you know, $2, which is really you know which is which is meaningful and makes a big difference. We have corporate sponsorships for employee volunteering programs which have been tremendous so a lot of companies are looking for ways to develop skills for their employees and offer engagement opportunities for their employees to give back. So we're a great partner for that. We also offer aspects of our training to companies as part of our earned revenue so we don't provide our service to companies. We don't provide our text line, but we provide training so the same skills that we help volunteers build. We also work with companies who want to provide those skills to their teams as well. So you're working with HR departments to be able to implement some of these training programs is that usually the route that it goes through. It depends on the company sometimes you know depends who the decision maker is maybe it's somebody who's a product manager who wants to deploy the training for their team maybe it's an HR leader. So it just depends kind of, if folks want to build these kind of key coaching and support skills on their team. Who the person is who wants to make that decision. Oh, that's really cool. And are you finding the most of your corporate partners are in California or are you reaching outside into different states. They're really across across the US. So we work with companies like Verizon or Atlassian or Salesforce as part of their as part of their employee volunteering opportunities through their platforms. Wow, that's really, that's amazing. I mean I put us to these companies that are interested in teaching their managers these types of skills. Obviously with something I had to deal with a lot when I was an HR was teaching managers how to be managers. And, you know, so it's nice that they're putting the, the actual with the creating that that space for them to learn these skill sets because they are super valuable because a lot of times being a manager is all about coaching. You know, having those same type of skill sets the empathy the listening. And not so much the tactical, I mean the tactical has to be there but there was the humanity also. And sort of where's the training around being human, we sometimes say, because I think you know a lot of people think oh it's it's the workplace like I can't be emotional I can't bring myself to work I can't show up authentically and as a result you lose this opportunity to connect to connect and really hear what's going on for someone and that humaneness is really absolutely fundamental to relationships to success to moving things forward for a company organization. So one last question before unfortunately we're going to have to wrap. I wanted to find out with COVID has those partnerships. Are they still pretty much intact or have you seen any type of slow down or how's that impacted your, your participation with the with the corporate sponsors. There's actually have increased which has been great a lot of companies have stepped up and said, this is a time when we want our employees to volunteer and remote volunteering opportunities are more important than ever so that's been fantastic. I think the challenge has been previously. We had support through their new training I mentioned as well as people donating after use and very normally in economic recession that became a challenge for us so we used to have about 15% of folks donate after use, and that basically went to zero with COVID. And, you know that makes a big difference and some of our philanthropic partners from a foundation perspective, really focused on some of their existing portfolio instead of expanding amidst COVID. And so that was a little bit of a challenge as well I know a lot of nonprofits are going through that. And I think one of the challenges for for so many is that the need has grown astronomically. And we've certainly seen that across in power work and so our goal has been rising to meet that need. So we've been really focused on how do we support as many people as possible how do we engage and train as many volunteers as possible how do we take the insights that we're seeing from our data from the trends and surface those for larger change, and really just go all systems go at that. And, and thankfully, a lot of folks who care about our mission has stepped up to provide support to help us do that. That's really amazing because I mean this type like you said this is such a needed service, especially now with, you know, just all the uncertainty that's going on and humans don't do very well with uncertainty. Jamie I wish I could speak with you for at least another hour so this is such a fascinating topic and there's so much to unpack around this. So if people want to learn more about you they can go to www and power work.org. Are there any other places where people want to connect with you that you'd like to share. That's really the best place I would say our website is place you can get help volunteer make a donation connect with our team. Awesome. Okay. So, we're out of time we'll need to wrap it up. I'm Ruby men and and this is work we imagine on think tech Hawaii. And thank you all for being here. Please check back for our next show that will be on Wednesday, February 24 at 3pm. Next time, please be safe. Take care of one another and Jamie thank you again for being with me today. Aloha.