 Hey folks, welcome to the podcast. So we're doing a special series of podcasts which I'm recording over Google Hangouts. So we're doing audio and video because for some unknown reason people don't want to come see me face-to-face right now. But there's always opportunity and the cool thing is I'm able to now podcast with people from all over the world. So we're going to get an amazing eclectic mix of people from different industries, different perspectives to share their story and tell us you know their thoughts and feelings on what's going on right now and all of that cool stuff. Hope you enjoy it. Please subscribe in all the usual places and enjoy. And we're live. Today I have the pleasure of being joined by Tiffany Olson. And Tiffany is president of Nuclear and Precision Health Solutions at Cardinal Health. Tiffany thanks for joining me. Well thank you, thanks for inviting me. It's really great to have an opportunity to see you and to talk to others virtually. Definitely. We were saying just before we went live that we've spoken a number of times on the phone and I'm not quite sure why we didn't just organize a video call to start with. Yeah you know it's interesting how much popular video conferencing has been. I don't even know if I had heard of Zoom prior to a couple of months ago but I can tell you that I now feel like I am an expert. I have a lot of different virtual backgrounds. I can do all the little hand signals and everything else on Zoom which has been great. So is your background real or is it virtual? This is my home office so this is my background. You know I have worked out of my home actually since my first job out of college and I've had offices but throughout my entire career I've worked both at home and virtually. My team that I manage, my leadership team, most of them are virtual and so I've always had a home office and I know how difficult it is for those who are just starting this adventure and home office especially when you have a family whether it be a husband or children or pets because everybody's got to get trained on the protocol. Yeah it's true. Also like the yeah you're right the protocol also of these video calls. I was speaking to somebody the other day and he has a big call with his team and you know some people switch their videos off because he can't fool someone to share their video with you and he was trying to get his head around how do I keep these people engaged? Am I boring them? Are they just checking their email? They just muted themselves and gone to make a cup of coffee? It's quite a new skill isn't it? So it's like a it's a particular thing to learn. Yes yes it is a very new skill very new skill. Now for me I will do video calls some of the time but not all the time because I'm a pacer when I walk I like to move around I like to maybe sit outside for a bit and if you're videoing it doesn't kind of always lend itself to that plus when you know you have to have good video habits you don't want to do other things when you're videoing so that's true. I'll look forward to more conference calling and live meetings but I think that's going to be a while. It's true actually I'm very fidgety I love getting up and like walking around and it's true and I never sit for so long because I'm always I'm walking around I'm going between meetings I'm in London so a lot of the time you can walk around so different meetings you know so this is a although I've adapted I prefer I think my my London office like routine you know the commute in and stuff. Yeah and you know that's part of the joy of living in a big city so I have two adult children actually both of them are home with me now which has been the gift that I received with COVID because I've you know when else would I be able to spend this type of time with my adult children but they live in Chicago so a very big city here and love getting out using public transportation all the time eating out all the time so it's a very you know it's a really kind of fun energetic mobile lifestyle and now they're in the suburbs with with mom and dad. Right so what are we doing? Right so your your near Chicago suburbs of Chicago? And Indianapolis and it's three hours unfortunately we don't have trains really that that go up there which would be fabulous but it's about three hours to Chicago Nice wow so you've suddenly got four of you living under one roof and you probably haven't done that for a while. I haven't done it for a long time now when my kids were born I worked out of my home and so I always had a rule I always had an office with doors and when the doors were shut mom was at work whether I'm two feet away or 200 miles away the same kind of good general practice is applied and so I've just had that throughout my whole career so I've been very very fortunate um in that uh you know it gets great uh I can usually do my work now I we do correspond with notes on the door so my note on the door is you know quiet on zoom uh versus you know the door is open it's a free for all anybody can come in uh so that that for me um hasn't been something that I've had to adjust to but I know a lot of my folks that work for me that are now at home never been at home and have really really little ones um and you know nobody has daycare right now so there's it's just a whole different way to work and if both adults are are working from home and you don't have an office then you know it's the fight for who gets the kitchen table. Yeah and what do you what are you expecting from from parents specifically with the young kids? I mean are you expecting them to be working a a traditional full day or like mom works in the morning dad works in the uh in the afternoon or something like that what's the kind of scenario? Yeah I would say flexibility is absolutely key so that you know and and for me it is all about flexibility and when my kids were younger I did have to flex my schedule um really around theirs you know it is what you need to do but I will say the one thing that I've noticed with COVID is there is no respect for anybody's time on uh digital devices so I'll get called later than usual, texts, emails, everybody's next to their device and so it's like you have to and what I've actually told my folks too that work for me is you have to develop your own boundaries and stick to them so if you need time away you have to develop that boundary yourself because nobody else has these boundaries anymore where before there was a rhythm people were on planes people were at a hotel sleeping people were you know there was much more of a um maybe a rhythm to the day and uh you know the emails would kind of ebb and flow that way now you know I wake up in the morning I'm at my computer at seven I'll have 35 emails I'm like what are these people doing they need to rest please well you know people are bored at home I mean what else is there to do you know a lot of the time you know I've had to uh you really have to drag yourself away from the computer or from social media and switch off and that means I mean you know if you're not lucky enough to live in a in a nice house or have grounds and how I'm outside space a lot of people in cities are in flats it's hard you know it is it's a very very difficult and here at least in Indiana so we have a stay at home only essential workers uh our grocery stores um you know I'm like an uh old person the mail comes and I'm like yes the mail's here get to run out you know somebody maybe see a neighbor and wave um but you know grocery stores the drug stores those are of course big events now um but uh you know for us um it's just really kind of that staying at home and and trying to trying to social distance or physical distance yeah yeah but what about what's the state of play where you are and kind of a bit more generally in the in the region yeah so uh almost I think with the exception of just a few states in the United States it is definitely stay at home there've really been some hotspots I'm sure on the global news New York California even Chicago Indianapolis the city that I live in in Indiana we're in the very very middle of the United States we've had some hotspots um and I think for me it really came home I have a very good friend of mine I belong to this women's CEO network um that I've been a member of for years and years here in Indianapolis it's a group of us about 35 of us that get together periodically and one of my good friends in the group um owns a logistics company and it came home for me how serious this is when she said that she had gotten an order for five refrigerated semis for the hospitals um and of course that's to help with um people coming in who unfortunately succumb to the disease you know I I'm I'm happy to say that um no one in my immediate family has been impacted at all I do have employees that uh work for me who either themselves or their family some of our customers we know have been impacted but uh so far I think the whole thing on flattening the curve at least has worked here which is which is good keeping the fingers crossed and then supposedly many states starting in May so just next week are going to start lifting we have a lot of hospital customers who are telling us that um they will start doing um optional surgeries so they'll they'll start doing some of these extra surgeries and procedures some of the clinics are going to start opening up again so we'll see then kind of what what happens because people still need general health care yeah and for those that don't know can you just run through what you and your and your team actually do absolutely so um my uh company that I work for is cardinal health so we are really a fortune 15 um uh company we do the wide spectrum of health care everything that we do is in health care I run a division for Cardinal called nuclear and precision health solutions so my particular organization we develop we manufacture we dispense prepare and deliver patient specific doses with radioactivity so doses that would be used for within a pet camera cardiovascular doses are are also very big for us oncology we make products for others also so not just ourselves so we are really the the leaders here in nuclear pharmacy in radio pharmacy drugs both diagnostics and therapeutics awesome and what's been your response then to to covid I mean you're you mentioned summer at home are you still manufacturing I mean what's the kind of the scenario at the moment yeah so as you can imagine we are one of the essential companies that needs to continue to stay open so we took a couple of precautions and we're doing a couple of things so anyone who can work from home is at home um anyone who is not directly involved in the manufacturing of our products and we run 24 7 so uh we have a lot of our people on um in our pharmacies we're located in almost every state in the United States um and so we manufacture because of the nature of radioactivity decaying we uh it's very important that we're close to our customers so in each of our manufacturing facilities we have staff there we've tried to stagger staff so that we don't have everybody at the same time do more shifts in case there is an issue we've upped our cleaning procedures we uh have of course provided personal protective equipment for our employees we've shut our lunch rooms down we've shut most of our conference rooms down um so that employees were asked to stay with that you know six feet away from each other when it's possible to do so um and uh really just making sure that we are taking care of not only each other but doing our best with our customers and I'm also happy to say that some of our customers have uh changed some of their procedures along with some government regulations to make it a little bit easier for our drivers and our customers to exchange product without having to stand in the ER line or just filter through the ER so with the help of customers and regulatory agencies it's it's helped up tremendously that's great and and do you test as well your employees so we are doing temperature checks uh we win in the United States the testing protocol you have to go through a physician to get the test if you are not a health care worker health care workers of course are getting tested all the time and so what we do is we have our employees take their temperature if they are feeling at all ill if they believe that they have contracted it we do have a security office within Cardinal that they contact and then we make sure that they quarantine themselves at home yeah brilliant and and and have you had many that have have become ill like have you seen it spread amongst your group much or have you so I would say overall we have really for the big numbers of of employees that we have globally we have over 50 000 employees we have had a small percent that have contracted the disease and so right now I think our precautions of what we're doing has really worked we also right now as far as what we know people are either self-quarantine because someone that they know outside of work has been impacted or they think that they've contracted it outside of work so again that's been you know really really good good for us and brilliant amazing and this and just also really interesting I mean this is obviously extraordinary times and I mean certainly in my lifetime I've never seen anything like it how how is your how have you had to adapt your leadership style for this I mean it's so many different plants going on how have you how have you adapted to it yeah well so I think that whenever there's a crisis and you have a lot of people who are very nervous being calm is one of the best leadership practices that you can do so it's being calm it's asking questions and it's making sure you have a plan so for me I individually will uh if I'm anxious about something if I have a plan and I know what I'm doing and I feel good about where I'm going whether it's whether it's something that's very difficult to do or something easy to do it's that plan that provides me the ability to be able to function and so for me one staying calm my direct leadership team we have check-in calls three times a week Monday Wednesday Friday we're just gonna start now going to two days a week these are one hour of getting everybody together we start with what is our hot list so what are the items that really have to address immediately and then we go around and it's 15 people and then we go around the phone and everybody has an opportunity to talk about the covid issues that they're experiencing and we start with first tell me how you yourself are doing because mental health is extremely important at this time tell me how your family's doing and tell me about the business so those are the three things and our practice that we start with and then it's really the plan um so it's uh you know then we can execute the plan and then they cascade that down also so it's staying calm even when there's that crisis and like you had mentioned before Lewis it's about being flexible it's about the flexibility that then you need um to give people because it is very unusual circumstances that people find themselves in definitely the mental health aspect is crazy I mean I don't know how accurately stats are but I heard that um that suicide for mental health in America has been up 400 percent and and calls to helplines 1500 percent yes you know it's it's it's a big issue and you know it was an issue before but I think I guess when when you can see someone face to face you can read their their nonverbal communication right when someone's at home maybe they're on their own they're not fortunate enough to to have kids and and a partner and stuff like that um you can't again you can't read it as well you know you can't get a sense of are they how are they feeling are they doing all right um how have you is there anything you've been you've been doing to kind of make sure that your people are okay or yes and actually thanks thanks for asking this so I am um one of the ambassadors with our human resource department on mind matters and we just launched this two weeks ago and it's really about making sure that people understand that mental health is about just how you're feeling um it's about if you're feeling anxious it's or angry or those types of things and during these times people that maybe normally wouldn't think that they need to seek help um may benefit by uh phoning in by having a conversation so it's part of launching um the helplines that we have the benefit lines where to go if you are immediately distressed so unfortunately the suicide rates are up um and you know as you can imagine during these times it's even more difficult for people who are struggling prior to uh they probably feel more isolated especially as you said if you're home alone um if you've lost your job all of these triggers that normally are difficult for people to transition are challenging in people's lives um even become more so with the increased deaths that are occurring um people that are individually impacted I had um an employee just this week whose father passed away um you know they can't have a proper funeral at this time so that grieving process it's it's very very difficult um to go through so we really want to make sure that our folks know where the resources are um and that it's okay it's really about taking the stigma away I also have been the um executive sponsor for our disability advocate network group for many many years and we've worked on trying to take the stigma out of you know mental health uh challenges but everybody has them the other thing that uh we encourage um there's really a couple of apps that provide help with the calm app which is my new favorite app that uh that I use it has sleeps so what it's so what is it so is it okay CALM yes CALM it's called calm and it is a app that uh uh has meditation on it it has sleep stories at night uh it has um music you know sound music um that you could have so I I utilize it all the time because I'm not a good sleeper to begin with and then you know just when I lie down that's when my mind starts whirling that's slowing down so it teaches people like me uh a little bit better habits and we also um as an organization as Cardinal provide the mind space app for people which is also a meditation app um and uh they just have to click within our website and they can get that I want to take up being like because it's it's it's from from people like speaking it's getting more and more popular is mindfulness you know just taking five ten minutes just to you know meditate calm your your head and have you seen the take of these up really uh increase yes yes definitely and uh even someone as skeptical as I was um and now you know the sponsor the office for for these apps so um I've been trying to push them on my family they won't do them but uh I'm like here listen listen it's a really great sleep story tonight well I've been you know I've been I've been beating the drum for um like good nutrition regular exercising good sleep for well to anyone who'll listen really and and for for my mental health um the exercise part um well all three are important but but when I exercise and I've I've up my exercise since I've been home I'm doing almost every day I'm doing something some movement that it gets the chemicals in your brain going you feel good and even if it's 20 minutes a little online yoga session or I do CrossFit online it's really it really ups my it really ups my happiness levels um it's it's great and so and then the other thing is is it's a good diet I've I've tried I think I'm eating more healthy now because we're getting like we're fortunate in that in London all the supermarkets are stocked and a lot of local ones are doing fresh produce so you eat fresh fruit fresh vegetable quality food and it really helps me you know it makes me feel good and then my mind's better and you know it's a good it's a good food and I've also been as well and I don't know about the US but again with with who's kind of taking back to COVID a little bit um you know if you if you do have a good diet and exercise when the sleep well your immune system will be better able to cope with you know with these viruses if you if you get it yes exactly exactly and you know it all goes together your mind which is that mental health and your physical um and what you're putting into your body all make a difference and I think it's it's it's hard when you're you know think of you know your life four months ago you're busy you're running around you don't always have time to eat well you're not next to a refrigerator you might buy fast food or you know candy bar instead of lunch or with lunch um and all of those things you know so um it is you know I I look at this as maybe taking an opportunity to reset some of those things too yeah yeah thank you mother nature for keeping us on our knees for the last you know a few months what really has gone up though if I'm honest is my coffee consumption I yeah because I me and my team love coffee and so I I bought them all a subscription to a nice uh speciality coffee bag they get it once a month which is really nice you all feel all drinking the same you know same coffee it's it's nice it's nice to receive a nice bag of coffee as well um but I've actually like just realized how much coffee I'm drinking I need to maybe cut down but it's crazy what have you found the the economic impact to to be because it feels like here and I know that that that Donald Trump is is being discussing as well we're at the kind of spot in in the world now where it's like the the economic impact versus versus staying at home what have you seen kind of you know local businesses national businesses and the effects that this has had yeah well we have um our unemployment rate which was at an all-time low prior to this is I think yesterday it was close to 12 percent which is really unfortunate because um you know as we all know the higher the unemployment rate the the harder the uh families have uh economically so we've seen um and I I have a friend who runs a restaurant where they've had to unfortunately let some people go they're trying to keep people as busy as possible that actually and they said um would rather do delivery because it keeps one of our people that much more busier so um you know we try to matter of fact we're having lunch um from their restaurant so ordering and then having it having it delivered but it's it's really difficult in um in that way I have a another very close friend who runs the united way here in central indiana which is I united way is global I don't know how familiar people outside of the us are with it but they help um many many non-for-profit groups and help with funding those groups well right away when this happened the city of indianapolis put an 18 million into a fund gave it to united way and united way is dispersing that fund really one is child care for people that are still working whose child care is no longer around and that's going to be an issue when people come back to work um is when do schools and child care happen after school care those types of things um also for just basic food some of our food banks here have done things where instead of having people come into the food bank they have the drive up they set a table outside people are driving up or walking up and they are going into the neighborhoods that that need them the most um so I think that uh hopefully as the economy and businesses start to come back that we'll see that unemployment drop um but I think that there are some businesses who probably can't recover from this um and unfortunately uh you know it always takes time then to look at what other businesses are propping up and need help um and uh you know hopefully the economy will will come back I think it'll come back in in step changes not in a huge not in a huge way yeah so maybe I mean one school's open and I I don't know about the US I'm really hoping end of May in the UK which is our half term um I mean I I really hope although I mean I don't think that many people agree with me on that so but I'm really hoping so because you kind of they get to a bit of a tipping point because you know in a really bad recession a lot of bad things happen you know yes yes and so I'd like to see a start open up and I spoke to a lot a lot of uh big companies here and they're talking about you know giving staff you know you can work two days from the office three days from home someone else does another two days and yeah you know mixing up and it feels like we'll get back over a period of time um what's fascinating is how the post-covid era will look like um you know what will we be going back five days a week to the office will we'll off basis shrink I mean it's going to be fascinating to see what happens yeah I think you know I have always been a believer in virtual virtual teams um you know I I am the I considered myself the conference call queen I could do a conference call from anywhere in the world um I think more people are now discovered that that is a possibility that you can have a virtual team and be productive um you don't always have to be sitting in the same office and so I think there'll be a lot more of that type of thing it'll be interesting to see what happens with commercial real estate um and what businesses shrink which ones you know distribution type businesses where you've got warehouses maybe those grow um and uh it's it's going to be interesting I think too flexibility in just things like childcare daycare schools um uh you know there there I think will have to be more flexibility from employers on what that looks like and and how to work with uh with individuals yeah you might even go more we have this thing in in the UK and the gig economy you know like the uber drivers or but people and so I mean you're already seeing the trend where people are opting for a number of of gigs a number of pieces of work rather than a traditional a traditional job and this seems to have given these some of these trends a big shot in the arm you know just really accelerated it and so I think we might you might see that you know more people opting for gigs versus uh versus permanent roles yes yes yes I I would agree I would absolutely agree and I think that this also could be a time where our huge cultural changes not only just kind of the work changes but the cultural changes on what people think are important to them how people use technology how they don't use technology uh how people want to work versus not you know versus leisure time that type of thing so I think all of those things are really going to change and uh you know you look at the retail stores many of them might not be able to make it but people still need clothes and they still need you know retail type goods but what is that going to look like in the future you know before COVID a lot of places especially department stores were kind of suffering with what does it mean to be more digital and all online they've probably had to now go through oh so this is what it would mean and now what is it going to look like for them in the future it's I think that'll be interesting to see what happens definitely it feels like this COVID has basically accelerated the amazonification of the world I mean I've heard 175,000 extra jobs or something that I mean you know as if they needed more sales so you are absolutely right absolutely right yeah it's funny and I know one one big issue I've heard a lot and you know from speaking to business leaders around the world is is is they all feel like they need to to quickly learn new skills now um because you know how they led before uh it's it's maybe it's changing a lot now you're gonna they're gonna have to manage you know virtual teams remote workers you know people coming in and out I mean it's a very different skill set I think you'll need in the future yes I would absolutely agree absolutely agree and you know you just think the logistics of getting a large office back to work we have Cardinal has our global headquarters in Dublin Ohio and uh you know the campus is very large we have several thousand people how do you get people back in when do you open up your your lunch rooms or your cafeteria logistically as as you said maybe some people are there two days others three and vice versa how does that look what what do you need to do and what kind of benefits do you need to give folks that might be different in the future than they are today and the training and what type of training now do we need to make sure to give our supervisors and the managers and the leaders in this kind of new way yeah and also if you're entering the workforce now I mean wow you know I mean because I'm always quite an advocate of um you know I'm into obviously flexibility and and all of these things but I feel that when you're entering the workforce from uni you don't know how to work right you've gone to school you've been told to you've gone to college university you've been told to suddenly it's like wow how do I actually work and so I've always been an advocate for you know like join join join a leader or manager not not the job you'll learn more from from then than you will from the actual task probably yeah you might not even see your manager now as it is a young person you might have to try and work out how to be productive sitting at home I mean yes yeah I think one of the one of the struggles actually it's something that I'm personally working with right now is how do you onboard a new person that's new to your organization that you hired during this COVID period of time so we have one instance where a gentleman had been interviewing with a lot of people not myself but a lot of other people I was doing some of the final interviews had to do them all virtually and now he will start in a virtual environment so how do you the onboarding of that the introduction the culture how do you get your culture across virtually so all of those things it's it's going to be new so that that's that'll be a new learning for me no it's really interesting because I've heard of companies that have you know cancelled offers that they've made to people and some aren't so keen just to do the full process with video others are it's a very uh you know it's very mixed um the onboarding process absolutely almost maybe it might be more personal I mean they get to see you in your home environment you know versus it gets a more formal work environment so that's that's quite interesting yeah yeah you know I also um I was just thinking too on kind of the onboarding so my children have a friend one who was supposed to sit for the CPA exam which of course is postponed and another one who is going into her third year of med school and they have a big exam between year two and year three that's been postponed so when those will occur when those will happen so you have this whole generation of these large tests you know you think of SAT tests or other college entrance tests that are need to get postponed and whatever that means or however that's going to look in the future it pushes back a whole group of people um later either in their career or in their ability to take the next step it's a shame they can't do it online there must be a nice uh you know nice platform it's a real shame it's a real shame there's a guy I spoke to uh a few weeks ago actually he just graduated as a doctor in the UK you know so it takes was it six years he'd done a he'd done a degree before he's been studying for nine and his um his graduation was on zoom and he wore a dustbin bag you know the black dustbin bag it's a it's a graduation cap he's got to make do I mean he's got to be adaptable and you know it's uh it's definitely a crazy world well it really really lovely to speak to you thank you so much for joining me and uh you know you guys seem to be doing some great stuff and yeah be great to meet face to face when all this is over absolutely absolutely they stay safe and healthy thank you you too bye now thank you bye bye