 Hello, everyone. Welcome to Working Together on Think Tech Hawaii, where we discuss the impact of change on workers, employers, and the economy. I'm your host, Cheryl Crozier-Garcia. Please join in the conversation with your comments or questions. You can call in at area code 415-871-2474 or you can tweet us at at thinktechhi. Today we're going to discuss one of the most common challenges managers face, engaging all members of the workforce. Today's workforce is one of the most age-diverse groups in human history. Coupled with massive changes to technology, societal norms, and age-specific expectations that workers have about their work environment, those age differences mean that managers have got to change the way they mentor, engage, and reward employees. Today's guest has a wealth of experience and success with managing an age-diverse work team. Please help me welcome Larry Moreno. Hi, Larry. You spent a long time in the military, and so through that experience, I'm guessing, you had the opportunity to meet workers, colleagues, from all age groups. Tell me about why the people in the military seem to be able to work together far more cooperatively maybe than folks in the civilian community do? I believe that it's probably the structure of the military. We're brought up, as you can per se, we're brought up to do what we're told, or else, basically. There's a lot of ways to get in trouble, and soldiers don't want to, because they know exactly what will happen. So, you know, I think that is a big difference compared to the civilian workforce, because you have what I'd like to call a middleman, which is HR, and they tend to take a lot of the brunt of whether the managers come to them, or the employees come to them. In the military, you have leaders. You have plenty of leaders all the way up the chain. So, the soldiers have a lot of people to tell them, stop what you're doing, and so they keep them out of the trouble. So, I think the organization structure is probably the difference. And those safeguards, that is to say, managers, as we go up the chain of command, who really are in a position to correct immediately behaviors that they see is lacking in our current civilian business environment? I think, mentally, it's not lacking. I think that maybe some of the managers fear what could happen if they take certain actions against employees. HR is there to protect them. And I think if managers learn how to use them properly, ahead of time, they could set good presidents. They could set good examples, and employees will know from the beginning. And I think that's important in itself. If the employees know from the beginning what they're expected to do in their job, house rules of the office, and as long as they follow the policies of the company, then they should be okay. Yeah. I have to say that I appreciate that shameless plug for HR professionals because, well, because we as HR folks are often perceived as the enemy. We stand in the way of managers correcting substandard behavior for their employees. And we're perceived to stand in the way of employees getting the justice they think they deserve or need whenever there's conflict between employee and supervisor. So I'm glad to hear that you advocate using HR as an asset. Absolutely. Yeah. I think so too. Yeah. When I first arrived there, my predecessors seemed to not like them too much. I don't know if it was a hassle or maybe they weren't getting what they needed. When I took over, it wasn't a hassle. We just got to make the phone call. And every time I called, they were happy to hear from us. So I began my part just by asking them questions. Can I do this? Can I do this legally? And take some of that fear away from the managers. Right. So when you counsel your employees at the beginning with the expectations, you can let them know, here's our house rules. And I can do it because HR, you know, of course be humble and nice and stuff, but don't beat them down and make them scared. But let them know that they're, you know, these are the rules. And if everyone follows them and you're fair with all the employees, the office will run well. Now you had an experience where you were hired into a civilian position. And that's what I wanted to talk to you about because I found your story just so compelling. But you had been hired after you retired from the military to head up the auditing department. Auditing? Fraud. Fraud. In one of Hawaii's major corporations. And when you walked into that position, you experienced a bunch of challenges. Can you tell us the kinds of challenges that you experienced without giving any names, of course, and how you overcame them? Because that is just, for me, it's a wonderful success story. The probably the largest challenge was the turnover. I already knew when I got there that the turnover was very high. They were probably 200% for at least a year at one point. I was there probably about a month and I could kind of see why. The management style wasn't very nice. It was kind of, it was pretty rough, pretty tough. I could see the tension in employees. So I spent my first 30 days watching this and then trying to learn the job at the same time. One of the things I noticed there wasn't any counseling that were done. Or at least they weren't on paper. So I watched, while I was there the first two years, we had about four people leave. One of them actually left right after a counseling. And it wasn't a very, good, it was a decent counseling. She just couldn't accept it anymore and left at lunch. So they left us in a bind. Of course we had some normal turnover, which was military spouses. So we knew we were going to lose them. So we were kind of prepared for those. But what I found after my predecessor retired was the efficiencies in the office were just not there. They were still Stone Age. They were using typewriters to do massive amounts of work. What year was this? Which we could use technology for. So they were, their hardware was kind of old. So I took, for example, I bought, I made sure everyone had double monitors so they could open more programs at one time. Because we had to go into multiple systems at one time. And I trained everyone, including the senior staff, who had been there 30, 40 years, didn't know technology all that well. I taught them how to do mail merge, which took one of the processes down from two to three days to 30 minutes to an hour. And it just, they loved it. Even the one senior guy who didn't want to look, he didn't even want a second monitor. But I convinced him and said, you will love it. Just give it a chance. And he loves it. Now you mentioned two things that I found just in relating the story here that I find interesting. The first thing you said was that management was hard and it created a tense environment. So for someone with a military history to view a particular manager's style as being tense or stripped or hard, that must have been just not the most pleasant environment to work in. That's first of all. And secondly, you mentioned that there were people who could not respond well to counseling. Had there been a history of counseling being considered punitive rather than developmental? Maybe in their minds, it was perceived that way, in the employee's minds. I don't think it was ever put out that way. But don't get me wrong, I love the military. It did really good things for my life, my family. I think what helped me was I was never one of the kind to say Hua all the time. Now, those were the soldiers. They walked by Hua Sergeant, but I just couldn't never get myself to do it unless I was made to do it, like in basic training. So it kind of kept me grounded for when I came out to the civilian side. What made that part difficult on the transition was I couldn't tell you or else anymore. I couldn't say you have to do this or else. I couldn't raise my voice. Those are the kind of things that you couldn't do on the civilian workforce side. That's true. So without HR. Getting on your back. Getting on your back. No, no, no, not the enemy. But we would offer some developmental mentoring to make sure you know that yelling is not acceptable. They worked well with me and it was great. As far as the counseling, when I started them, you know, as I'm speaking to you now is exactly the way I speak to the employees. Explain to them, talk to them and look them straight in the eye to make sure they understand and to make sure they understand that there's no fear coming from me. That what I'm telling you is the best thing to do for this office. And it worked fine for the two years that I took over. We didn't have any turnover. Thank you. You know, and the one that did leave was replaced immediately because he was leaving for upper movement. That's awesome. And that's the kind of departure and turnover we want, right? We want people to move into positions that are better trained. Stick around for a minute, can you? Because we're going to go to break and do some housekeeping. Share with you some of the great programming on Think Tech Hawaii and we will be back in just a minute. This is working together. Aloha. My name is Richard Emory and I host Kondo Insider. We talk about issues facing the Kondo Association throughout Hawaii and talk about solutions. When you think about it, about one-third of our population lives in some form of common interest real estate. We broadcast every Thursday at 3 p.m. Please tune in. Tune in and thank you. Aloha. I've got the Beagle Sisters here with a healthy tip. We encourage you to enjoy the food you eat this holiday season and keep it local and healthy. Yeah. Eat the rainbow. Eat the rainbow and if you need any produce, come to the red barn on the north shore. Hey, everybody. It's me, Ian Davidson, host of a new show here at Think Tech called On the Go. What are you going to get during that show? I can't tell you. I can only tell you that it's going to be fun and it's going to be sometimes and I'm going to have a good time and I hope that you do too. There's a bunch of stuff here at Think Tech. This is just another one. Take a chance on it. See how you like it. Thanks for watching. Welcome back. This is Working Together on Think Tech Hawaii. That's Larry Moreno. I'm Cheryl Crozier-Garcia and we are talking about how to engage a multi-generational workforce. Larry, before the break, you mentioned that you had had some pretty good experience with being able to mentor the younger folks into being able to assume greater positions of authority in the organization. I think we can both agree that keeping the best talent in the organization is, in the long run, best for the organization. What we want to do is find positions where that talent can be used in the best possible way. You also mentioned that some of the, shall I say, your kupuna employees, the ones who were very, very senior had been there a long time, were extremely resistant to change. They didn't want to get computers, and then when they got computers they didn't want to have two screens so that they could look at a bunch of things. How did you convince those very senior people who were very set in their ways that what you were suggesting was something that would make their life easier? Well, I'd like to look at it as getting my hands dirty. For me, technology, software, hardware, it's easy. I'm kind of fortunate that I could still go back to the old school because I grew up with that, so I know both sides. What I had to do, and which was not a problem for me, is I would grab my chair, I'd roll it over to their desk, and I would sit with them. Whatever duty they had for that day, the other person would do it if it wasn't a major duty. I would show them how to do it, and let them do it hands-on. Don't move the mouse for them, and let them do it on their own. And once they would see how quick it was, how fast it was, they were just amazed. And they were like, oh, especially with the tickets. If you imagine a ticket about this size, typing on it a bunch of data, 90 to 120 times. And all roughly the same information? The same, you just have to line by line, and it was taken two to three days. And the information already came out of a database in an Excel spreadsheet, so all you had to do was merge it. So I built the ticket for them in Microsoft Word, showed them how to merge it, and then just print it out on the computer, on the printer. And they were just amazed at that. How is it that something as basic as that? I mean, I recall using mail merge in the last millennium, literally, 20 and 30, I shouldn't even say it, because I'm only 19 really, but a long, long time ago to do these administrative functions very, very quickly. So how is it that one of Hawaii's major employers, biggest corporations, owning huge chunks of the market in their specific industry, how did they not automate decades sooner than they did? You know, that's a question I asked too when I first got there. Why would you put yourself through this when you have all this technology? And it was already there. So what it comes down to is the manager. Either the manager did not want to, therefore couldn't train the employees, or just wouldn't, or send them to training. And there's plenty of training. You just have to give up some of your time. Sometimes I would do production work while they went to training, or it's the same as if they were on vacation or not there while they're sick. You still got to do production. So if you treat it that way, you can train them. But I think maybe one of the strengths that you had in your favor during that time was that you were willing to be seen as a person who, although you had a leadership position, you were willing to get in there and do what everybody else was doing in order to free them up for activities that would broaden their horizons. And I think that's a kind of a shortcoming in leadership these days. We often don't see folks anymore who are willing to lead or manage by example. And that's in a lot of ways a tragedy. And I think particularly with our younger workers, I've had younger folks say to me when I was in the corporate world, they would say things like, wait a minute, why do I have to come in on time when supervisor comes strolling in whenever she feels like it, leaves early, takes long lunches, etc. And my response to them was, here's what you didn't see. What you didn't see was that from six o'clock to eight o'clock, she was taking a long distance phone call at home so that she could talk to mainland suppliers and clients. And then that's why she came in late. She went to lunch, but it was a sales meeting with six or seven other potential clients whose business we could really benefit from. And then she left early because she has a conference tomorrow say with folks from Japan, Thailand and Singapore. And the call starts at 3 a.m. She's got to get in on the call. So they only see the very surface aspects of the leader's job. And they think that leadership means come in when I feel like it, go for lunch however long I feel like it, leave when I want to, and let everybody else put in the time. When in reality they're not seeing the work that is so challenging that occurs literally in an outward facing position. I think a good question to ask them when they wonder that is if they can come in and help you on a Saturday or Sunday. They won't. You sure? They won't. And I mean, if you ask them that, especially the younger groups, they're going to say no. And we say, okay, we work the weekends with no extra pay. Right. So that's why we can do those things that you think we do, and you don't know what we're actually doing. But we're also 24 hours on call. Right. That's true. Although there does seem to be, I think with our millennial generation, generation Y, more of a thing of everybody should be the same. And I deserve the same breaks, the same benefits, the same rewards, as everyone else does, even if I don't have seniority, even if I haven't proven myself capable of handling the responsibility, et cetera. I deserve a medal just for showing up, because as kids, they got medals just for showing up. And so now they expect that. And that's a good point. One of the challenges there, when I got there, when I brought in the new younger group, was the Kapuna already had set schedules that our predecessor gave them. They were given time to do personal things before the normal getting off of work time. Right. A couple of the young ones brought that up. And before I did anything, any councillors with anyone, I called HR. Okay. What HR tell you? And I said, if the older general, if something's already set for them and the other folks are complaining, what do I do? Can I tell them no? Or do I have to tell the Kapuna they can't do it anymore? So they said, it's your discretion. You just, you may want to consider certain things, which we did eventually. But when I took them into the counselling, I said, one of them has a father who's very old and she takes care of him once a week. The other one is, has medical conditions and requires therapy or chiropractic work. And it's only a certain time. So they're allowed to do that. So we let them go early. They make up their time. I said, if you can give me something, show me some proof that you really need to leave early, then I will do that. Other than that, I'm not going to. So eventually we allow them every other Friday to leave 30 minutes early. And they were happy with that? They were happy with that. Such a little concession. Wow. I would not have thought that half an hour every other Friday would be a big deal. Well, here it is, especially with traffic. Well, yeah, that's true. But then again, 4.30. Isn't that any different than five? That's true, too. But it's the perception that you are actually being flexible, that I think has the true value for those younger workers. What about now keeping that workforce engaged? You don't want your Kupuna employees to leave or retire without having the benefit of their experience and their mentoring of the younger folks. And so what they would require or view as a benefit is something that might be very different from what your younger workforce wants. So how do you keep everybody happy without creating an appearance of discrimination or preferential treatment or adverse selection or things like that? What I noticed there is the 30 to 40 year senior staff were pretty much set. They were going to come in, they're going to do their jobs, they're going to have fun. And frankly, I think I'd probably be the same way. I don't want to be at home. I want to work when I get that age. I'm not going to want to stay at home and do nothing. The younger group, to me, they are eager to work. They are eager to learn. The one thing that I kind of noticed because I have children that age is they want to do it on their time. And they don't want to be told what to do. That's kind of how I perceive it. But if you give them the training, if you show that you're willing to teach them, they're going to stay longer. And they did. They didn't leave, but they did ask because that office is a place you don't want to spend your entire career in. So I trained them to leave. That's what I did. Yeah, prepare them for their next position. That's true. We've only got about a minute, 30 left. So Larry, give some advice to our viewers about how they can more fully engage their employees to get the maximum work out of them. I think if you know exactly what everyone does, they'll feel comfortable if they're out sick or if they have to go on vacation. The other people that have to stay there and do their work will feel comfortable that you can help them. Talk to them a lot. Get to know them. Humanize your employees. They're not robots. They have families. They have problems. They have medical conditions. All of this has to come into play on how you treat them, what their future is going to look like for you. You know, put yourself in their shoes. Pursue as if it's your own person that you want to do. What would you want to do? And just engage. If you want them engaged, engage with them. And they'll come around. And that issue of engagement I think is probably a good place to end our conversation right now because we're almost out of time and our viewers need to engage with their lives. So we will be leaving, but thank you. I'd like to have you back some other time to talk more about this issue. And you know, for those of you out there that are either just embarking on a career or winding down and approaching the days you've been saving up for all these years, just remember that you need to stay engaged in what you're doing as long as you can because that helps keep the workforce vibrant and productive. I will see you in two weeks on Working Together on ThinkTek Hawaiʻi. I'm Cheryl Kerzer-Garcia. See you soon.