Latest / The Inspired Stories Podcast / Mike Garrett’s Evolution from career change to COVID to AI to the box behind door number three

Transcript

Mike Garrett’s Evolution from career change to COVID to AI to the box behind door number three · The Inspired Stories Podcast

0:04
Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast,
0:08
where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from
0:12
their successes and be inspired by how they've overcome
0:15
adversity. My name is Anthony Kotaspodi and
0:18
today's guest is Mike Garrett. He serves as the Vice President
0:23
of Human Resources at American Healthcare.
0:25
They specialize in short term rehabilitation and senior care
0:30
and their goal is to offer a nurturing environment and expert
0:33
services that help individuals recover and thrive.
0:38
Now, Mike has been a key part of the organization since March of
0:42
2016, bringing years of human resources experience to help
0:47
shape a positive workplace culture.
0:50
Before joining American Healthcare, he held roles as
0:54
human resources manager at Roe Furniture and assistant manager
0:58
of human resources at Virginia Transformer Court.
1:02
On top of his extensive background, Mike earned the SHRM
1:06
Senior Certified Professional certification in December 2018.
1:11
This achievement underscores his commitment to continual learning
1:15
and growth within his field. Under Mike's leadership,
1:18
American Healthcare maintains a strong focus on supporting both
1:22
its staff and its patients. I'm excited to learn more about
1:26
how he tackles challenges and drive success at every level.
1:31
And before we get into that good stuff, today's episode is
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today at adbackbenefits.com. All right, back to our guest
2:15
today, the VP of HR at American Healthcare, Mike Garrett.
2:19
Thanks for making the time to Share your story today.
2:22
Thank you, Anthony. Happy to be here.
2:24
OK. So Mike, you started your career
2:25
in manufacturing at Roe Furniture.
2:28
And when I say in manufacturing, I don't just mean at a
2:31
manufacturing company in HR you were doing the manufacturing,
2:35
you were on the factory floor. Can you walk us through how
2:39
you're you first got started there and then how you
2:42
eventually ascended into a leadership role in HRI?
2:46
Was working at Burger King and I was a night Porter.
2:52
I worked well before I was a night Porter.
2:54
You know, I worked the register. I did drive through and then I
2:59
evolved into the night Porter. I was working from 11:00 at
3:02
night till about 8:00 in the morning, cleaning the
3:04
restaurant. And I was at a Labor Day party
3:08
and I had a bunch of friends there having a good time.
3:12
And I needed to leave to go to work.
3:15
And I was wondering why they weren't leaving to go to work
3:19
because, you know, you got to go to bed and get a good night's
3:22
sleep before you start on Monday morning.
3:24
And they said, well, we get a holiday tomorrow, Labor Day.
3:28
And I thought, well, how in the world do you do that?
3:29
And he said, well, at Rowe Furniture, you get paid
3:32
holidays. Burger King didn't provide that
3:34
to me. So I needed to go work somewhere
3:37
where I could get a paid holiday.
3:39
I went to Row Furniture. I applied.
3:42
I was hired on September 19th of 1983.
3:46
You remember the date. Yes, I do.
3:48
I was hired to be a cushion stuffer, so all these nice
3:54
cushions that we sit on and back against, I could tell you how to
3:58
stuff those. And then I eventually evolved
4:01
into running the bandsaw where you cut these big foam.
4:05
They call them buns of Poly, which are just about as big as
4:09
the rooms you and I are sitting in.
4:11
Buns of Polly. Buns of Polly and you would use
4:16
mathematical equations to cut this huge bun of Polly down to a
4:22
5 inch 6 inch 7 1/2 inch cushion.
4:25
It would be 21 by 27 inches or you know, whatever the metrics
4:32
of this is the. Stuffing that goes inside.
4:34
Yeah, yeah. So I ran that bandsaw for a
4:36
while and in 1985, the company wanted to do something called
4:41
employee involvement. They wanted to have our folks to
4:45
have a voice on the floor for how do we improve productivity,
4:49
quality and the employee experience.
4:52
So they launched teams in every department, in the stuffing
4:56
department, the upholstery department, shipping department,
4:59
every department across Roe Furniture had employee
5:02
involvement. And the teams grew and grew and
5:05
grew. And they needed to have an
5:07
employee involvement coordinator and they hired someone to do
5:11
that. And then they needed
5:13
facilitators for every meeting. And I wasn't shy at the time.
5:19
I was doing singing telegrams. I was singing in a, in a
5:22
rock'n'roll band. And I said sure, you know, train
5:25
me how to be a facilitator. And I learned how to define a
5:29
problem, root causes, band aids, possible solutions and follow up
5:36
and go through all that. And then the teams continued to
5:40
grow and they needed an employee involvement assistant.
5:43
So I became the assistant EI coordinator.
5:47
Eventually the EI coordinator left and I became the I went
5:51
from assistant to the official EI coordinator.
5:56
I was working with everybody in the factory.
5:59
And actually we had two factories.
6:00
We had a frame factory that supplied the frames for
6:04
upholstery. So there were two different
6:06
companies I was working for at the time and I knew everybody.
6:11
And the HR manager at the time asked me if I'd be interested in
6:16
learning a little bit about human resources because I was
6:21
becoming more of or less. You were kind of already
6:24
involved with some of that. I was an employee relations guy
6:28
and I could talk about, you know, the language of the floor
6:32
and what's going to play well and what's not going to play
6:34
well as far as a new benefits program or a policy or a
6:38
procedure. Then they brought me into the
6:40
office. Just a real basic thing about
6:42
answering the telephone. And then this is what the files
6:46
look like and this is the computer and this is, it was an
6:50
HRIS system back in 198089 at that point, which was a whole
6:57
lot different than what we work with.
6:58
We're all DOS based, huh? But that's how I got my foot in
7:02
the door in HR. Yeah, it strikes me that this is
7:05
one of those kind of classic I started in the mailroom kinds of
7:09
stories. I'm curious, did you have any
7:12
idea that a path like this might unfold when you started there?
7:17
Or you're just like, hey, I'm tired of working nights and not
7:21
getting paid holidays, I'm just going to go somewhere else.
7:24
My job at the time was just a job to pay the bills.
7:29
My passion was doing the singing telegrams and singing in a band.
7:33
I was in a band called Spellbound and we played just
7:38
about every weekend. We played in the Roanoke area
7:44
around Virginia, North Carolina, West Virginia.
7:47
So I really just hadn't had the, the job to pay the bills,
7:52
insurance for my family. And as more and more things
7:56
became apparent that this HR thing was working out, shifted
8:04
more toward my energy to HR instead of rock'n'roll.
8:07
Because I, you know, we, we weren't ever going to write
8:10
original music. We were a cover band and it was
8:12
just something to do, but it was fun.
8:15
What kind of tunes were you covering?
8:17
Well, we did Van Halen kiss, Mötley Crüe, that was the
8:23
heavier side and we would go back and do the Temptations,
8:26
we'd do Smokey Robinson. Yeah, you guys had some range.
8:29
Yeah, I've got sunshine on a cloudy day when it was gonna
8:34
cold outside. I got the month of May.
8:37
Now you sing Hi Kiss. You OK?
8:41
That that'll ruin the show. I was going to ask if you'd be
8:43
willing and I I thought that would be a little awkward, so
8:46
I'm glad you just jumped in with it.
8:48
Nah, name that soon and I'll I may not do it well, but I'll
8:51
give it a shot. What?
8:53
What were the singing telegrams like?
8:56
Well, it was where you would go to a restaurant or a home and
9:04
you would dress up like a character.
9:08
You could for a kids party, you would dress up like a superhero
9:11
or a clown for a a woman's birthday, you may dress up like
9:17
Tarzan or a Chippendale. And you would go to the
9:20
restaurant and you know, you are my sunshine, my only sunshine,
9:24
and do that kind of a thing and pin a sash across them, give
9:28
balloons and you know you're in and out in 20 minutes.
9:32
Oh, that sounds like a lot of fun.
9:35
It was, but before we get back to business, Sammy Hagar or
9:40
David Lee Roth. Well, it depends on it depends
9:44
on you. I'm a David Lee Roth guy back to
9:49
the beginning because he was the original guy.
9:53
Sammy Hagar today probably is better quality than David Lee
9:57
Roth. But coincidentally, my daughter
10:01
and I are going to see David Lee Roth on August the 6th and in
10:05
Bristol on his present tour, so I I like both.
10:10
So he's touring, he's got his own gig, his own band.
10:14
Is it? Yeah, you can go.
10:15
By the like, is he the headline name David Lee Roth?
10:18
He is. Oh, that's fun.
10:21
OK, so let's see, you worked in HR at Roe Furniture for 17 years
10:27
and, you know, after 17 years in a company that kind of, you
10:31
know, brought you up through the ranks and, you know, kind of
10:34
allowed you to to advance your career, there had to be like a
10:39
lot of comfort there. You know, like you, you, you
10:43
just you, you feel some stability.
10:47
Was it a hard decision to move into a completely different
10:51
industry, move away from the company that you've known for so
10:54
long? Yeah, it was tremendously
10:57
difficult. You know, one of the the bits of
11:01
adversity I had was around 1996 and employee involvement had
11:08
taken me off of the factory floor and it had gotten me into
11:12
human resources, but it wasn't a full time human resources gig.
11:16
I was really more or less the EI employee involvement guy.
11:20
Management had changed and evolved and the people that had
11:23
brought me into EI weren't necessarily proponents of EI.
11:27
My A gig was going to go away, so I looked outside of the
11:31
company and I went to Virginia. Transformer was hired as an
11:34
employee relations specialist. After I was there for a short
11:39
period of time, they promoted me up to the assistant HR manager.
11:43
So I was there from 96 to 98. But I got a call from Roe again
11:48
in November of 98. Management had evolved again and
11:54
they said, look, we want to reinstall employee involvement
11:57
and you were the guy, you were the expert.
12:00
But this time we don't want to just do it for these two
12:02
facilities. We want to do it for all four of
12:04
the facilities. So we had two in Virginia, 2 in
12:08
Missouri. We want to bring you back not as
12:10
the employee involvement coordinator, but the employee
12:12
involvement manager. And you would have a corporate
12:15
job and you would travel out to Missouri probably every other
12:20
week, once a month, however you need to.
12:22
And you would work on employee involvement plans out there.
12:25
So I'd left Virginia Transform and went back to Roe, just like
12:30
you said. I was comfortable, felt good
12:32
about it. And I stayed with Roe until
12:35
2016. My, my aunt passed away in
12:40
January of 2016 and I was at the, the visitation.
12:47
And one of the people at the visitation was my cousin's
12:51
husband, who happened to be the chief operating officer here at
12:55
American Healthcare, who I had known for years.
12:58
And I would see him at family gatherings and we would always
13:02
talk about business. And I would say, you know, how's
13:05
life in the nursing home business?
13:07
And he would ask me, how's life in manufacturing and furniture?
13:10
And we would, you know, share stories.
13:13
And at the the visitation, he pulled me off to the side and he
13:16
says, hey, look, we've got an opening in human resources for a
13:20
director of HR. Do you know anybody?
13:24
And Anthony, I just, I didn't know he was talking about me.
13:31
Honestly. I just said, I'll think about
13:34
it, you know, because it was an odd place to be approached.
13:39
So I didn't think very much about it.
13:41
The next day we were at his home after the funeral.
13:48
Pull me off to the side again. You know, talked to you about
13:50
this yesterday. Do you think any more about it?
13:53
No, I, I really haven't. So two days later was a Friday
13:58
and I happened to have a pickup truck.
13:59
And we were going to my aunt's place where she had lived and
14:03
unloading all of her personal items in the truck.
14:06
And finally during that time, he just pulled me off to the side
14:09
and he said, I'm asking about you.
14:13
And I said, what do you mean asking about me?
14:15
He says, would you be interested?
14:18
I said, no, I I've been doing manufacturing for for decades.
14:22
I don't know anything at all about healthcare.
14:24
I'm flattered, but but no, no thanks.
14:28
He said, well, look, if anything changes, this is the guy and you
14:32
gave me a business card. This is the guy to send your
14:34
resume to. Let him know or let me know and
14:38
we'll see where we go. All right.
14:40
Appreciate it. Thanks.
14:42
So was it Planet Fitness on a Sunday working out?
14:47
And I started to think, you know, you know, you only get so
14:50
many doors of opportunity in your lifetime.
14:54
And I'm wondering, you know, is this a door that's about to open
14:57
for me? And I'm never going to know
15:00
unless I submit this resume. I thought it's not going to cost
15:05
me anything. So I I texted and I told him.
15:08
I said, yeah, I think I'm going to do it.
15:10
So I did. I submitted the resume.
15:13
And about a week later I had a phone interview.
15:16
Week after that it was at their office.
15:18
And about a week after that I had a job offer.
15:21
Wow. And how did these two companies
15:23
row in American Healthcare Compare in size in terms of
15:27
employee headcount? Row had about 850 people at the
15:34
corporate office I was working at in Elliston, Virginia and
15:40
Virginia Health. Excuse me?
15:41
American Healthcare has over 2000 employees.
15:46
OK. All across the state of
15:48
Virginia. OK.
15:50
And this was a a step up in terms of responsibility because
15:54
this was a director position. You're you're head of the
15:56
department now. I'd be going from a manager to a
15:58
director. Yes, Sir.
16:00
OK, so let's talk. You know, I kind of touched on
16:03
it in the intro, but tell us in your own words and more
16:06
specifically about the services that you offer there at American
16:10
Healthcare. We do long term care and rehab.
16:14
So if a person happens to have an accident, they can go into
16:18
therapy and we'll, we'll help them get back to a healthy spot
16:23
in their lives. And then we have folks that,
16:25
that live in the nursing home. It's their actual home.
16:28
So we do nursing, we do rehab and we, we, we offer our, our
16:35
motto is our family exists to care for yours.
16:38
So we offer a home for no matter who's with us.
16:43
OK. And how many different
16:45
facilities are we talking about? 16.
16:48
All across the state of Virginia, yes.
16:51
What sets you guys apart from other facilities in the state?
16:58
How are you guys different? We have divided up into
17:04
sections. So in the northern part of the
17:07
state, there's Leesburg Front Royal, King George, southwestern
17:13
part of the state, Clintwood, Big Stone Gap, Grundy Wise.
17:19
And on the one hand, you know, you, it's a, it's a, it's a
17:23
nursing home, a long term care facility where you're going to
17:26
see nurses, Cnas, people in the kitchen.
17:31
But depending on the facility and then the part of the state
17:34
you're in, you're going to have a different vibe.
17:38
So when you go to the Southwest, as an example, if you're there
17:43
for a lunch, you'll probably have a prayer before you eat.
17:49
When you're in some of the other facilities, you may or may not
17:52
have a prayer. But if you do have a prayer, it
17:55
may be a prayer that's in a different language because we
17:59
have people in, as an example, in Leesburg.
18:02
We have a lot of different cultures there.
18:05
I guess our overriding thing going back to our family exist
18:08
to care for yours is I know from where I'm at, I'm here in in
18:15
Roanoke and we call it the Resource Center.
18:17
And I work for a really great guy, our president, Tommy East.
18:22
And I know the decisions that come across his desk.
18:26
And I know what he asked me asks of me, as far as, you know, if
18:32
we're talking about a person's career, what are we going to do
18:36
with that person? Decisions aren't made very, very
18:42
quickly. We think about things, let's
18:44
sleep on this. Are we evolving?
18:47
Are we involving the key people and all of these things because
18:51
we want to make sure that we're doing it right for, you know, a
18:54
number of reasons. There's there's legal reasons,
18:57
compliance, and then there's just are we doing it right?
19:00
This person's worked for our company for a long period of
19:03
time. You know, everybody goes through
19:05
ups and downs. They may have made a mistake.
19:07
Do we give a second chance? Do we not thinking about if this
19:12
was your, your son or your cousin or your nephew or your
19:16
wife, how would you treat them in a similar circumstance?
19:20
That's that's how we manage the business.
19:23
I like what you just said there. I didn't realize that that was
19:25
kind of a tagline. Our family exists to care for
19:28
yours. And then what you just described
19:30
there, I mean, very much, you know, kind of embodies that, you
19:35
know, hey, if this was your son and this was your daughter, you
19:38
know, a close relation of yours, like, how would you handle it?
19:40
How? How would you want them to be
19:42
treated? That's exactly what we do.
19:45
That's you know, you've, you've got the template, you've got
19:48
your, your handbook, you've got your code of conduct, your
19:51
policies and the procedures. Then you've got the person.
19:54
How long have they worked for the company?
19:56
What are their strengths and weaknesses?
19:58
You know you you want to. Try to be equal, but you can't
20:02
really be equal. But you can always be fair.
20:06
Yeah. And that's when, you know, you
20:08
really have to take the human element into account.
20:10
And yeah, here's the rule book, OK.
20:13
But, you know, let let's be human beings here and actually
20:16
look at the person and actually look at the situation and
20:19
evaluate it like, you know, we would want to be treated sort of
20:22
golden rule kind of a thing. And I think it's important to
20:24
point out that of all your facilities, all but one of them
20:28
is under the Heritage Hall name. And in fact, the website
20:33
peoplecanfindyou@isheritage-hall.org. Am I right, Mike?
20:39
That's yeah. That's correct.
20:40
Heritage-hall.org So you have all but one of the facilities
20:45
under the Heritage Hall name and then what?
20:47
What's the other facilities name?
20:48
South Roanoke Nursing Home. OK.
20:51
And can that be found on the same website?
20:53
Where does it have its own? OK.
20:55
So I'm curious, you know, you mentioned your hesitation about
20:59
moving from manufacturing into healthcare.
21:03
You know, initially like, no, I don't have any idea As you made
21:07
that transition, what was the biggest difference that you
21:11
noticed as it pertains to HR leadership?
21:15
It would be the the laws, the rules, the regulation is an
21:20
example in manufacturing. You don't have to really deal
21:25
with abuse and neglect. Now you do have to deal with
21:29
harassment. You have to, you know, follow
21:31
the the rules there. But in a nursing home, if I were
21:35
to say a curse word to a resident, raise my voice, do
21:41
anything physical, that's that's abusive and that's something
21:46
that, you know, you really have to be able to train people
21:49
because it's hard in this line of work.
21:53
It isn't just the medical part where you're taking care of a
21:57
person who is ill. There's emotional things that
22:01
we're talking about as well. So our people have to be skilled
22:05
in handling the, the residents emotions and their own emotions
22:10
because sometimes residents, they can't control what they're
22:14
going through in their lives. And if somebody were to, to yell
22:19
at you or to, even to curse you, it's difficult to have that
22:23
restraint sometimes to, to say, well, you, you said that to me.
22:28
I'm going to say that to you. We can't do this in our line of
22:31
work. And our folks are just really
22:33
gifted as far as having to to do that on a daily basis to show
22:37
that restraint. Yeah.
22:39
Say more about what it takes to be a caregiver in this kind of
22:42
position. I mean, you've talked about sort
22:44
of the, the restraint is one element, but paint, paint more
22:48
of a picture for us there, Mike. Well, you may have a resident
22:52
that, and, and first of all, the, the residents are our
22:55
customers on the one hand, but on the other hand, it, it could
22:59
be a, a person that's become a friend of yours.
23:02
And you may go in and you may be offering personal care.
23:06
You may be helping them to, to brush their hair.
23:09
You may be helping them to find the outfit they're going to wear
23:12
for the day. And then you're going to shift
23:14
into another part where you're going to talk about taking their
23:18
temperature to get in an IV, you know, dispensing meds.
23:22
Then you're going to get into another part where they're
23:24
tearful, especially during COVID, they couldn't see their
23:29
families because they were in the nursing home and the
23:32
families may be on the other side of the window there.
23:35
And they're having an emotional reaction to why won't you let me
23:41
out? Why won't you let them in?
23:42
And having to be able to support those residents emotionally was
23:47
another key skill that our folks had to have.
23:51
Say more about COVID because this was a hard time for
23:54
everybody but from everyone I've talked to in all different kinds
24:00
of lines of work and everything that I've read, my suspicion is
24:05
that your environment was the most challenging for some of the
24:08
reasons that you just touched on, right.
24:10
You have people who are at their most vulnerable emotionally and
24:13
physically. And when you're in that stage,
24:17
you want contact with the people that are familiar, are loved
24:22
and, you know, bring you comfort.
24:24
And, you know, it was sort of like bringing down this Iron
24:27
Curtain that separated people from the outside world.
24:30
Say more about what that was like for you and your team
24:33
members to kind of manage through.
24:37
This is an N95 mask. Now, if I were to talk to you
24:44
wearing this, my communication with you is going to be
24:48
affected. My bread and butter is being
24:53
able to listen to you and then you listen to me.
24:57
If you're an employee of ours. One of the toughest decisions I
25:03
had to make personally was in May of 2020.
25:08
This was right at the very, very beginning of COVID.
25:12
I think it was March actually, when the country shut down and
25:17
there was all of these horrible things that were taking place.
25:21
You know, people kept getting sick and people kept passing
25:25
away. And we have one of our nursing
25:27
homes on the the Eastern Shore that was having a really, really
25:31
tough time. And I believe the Eastern Shore
25:34
area itself, 60 to 70% of the people there had COVID.
25:39
And that part of the Eastern Shore, well, that's where our
25:44
nursing home was. And the management, that nursing
25:48
home was being really, really overwhelmed.
25:50
And they reached out and they said, we need some help.
25:53
Can can you come help talk to our people?
25:56
And I, I got a call from the president, Tommy East, and he
26:01
said, Mike, they want you to go there, you know, and, and bring
26:04
a fellow that works with me named Dickie Linkous.
26:08
He says, you, you don't have to go.
26:10
I know this is a big decision, but they, they've asked for your
26:14
help and they need your help. But I understand if you, if you
26:19
don't want to do it, you know, and Anthony, at the time there
26:23
were no vaccines. The protection was the, the
26:27
goggles and the N95 and the, the mask.
26:30
And I thought, man, I'm, this could be a death sentence for
26:35
me. But you know, I'm the vice
26:38
president of human resources. I'm not worth my salt if I'm not
26:42
able to go. But I expect you as an employee
26:45
of the company to be there and to work.
26:48
So I said, sure, I'll, I'll do it.
26:50
And I reached out to Dickie, no problem at all.
26:54
And the hardest thing was telling our families, calling my
26:58
wife and saying that I'm leaving tonight to go here because what,
27:04
what Tommy said, what I what I said to Tommy was I said, yeah,
27:07
I'll do it. I'll, I'll pack up and you know,
27:09
we'll leave first thing in the morning.
27:12
He said no, I need you to be there first thing in the
27:14
morning. And this was about 2:00 in the
27:18
afternoon. I think we had had the
27:20
conversation, which meant that I'd have to go home, see the
27:25
family, pack up, get there maybe about midnight and say there I
27:32
think we stayed there 7 or 8 days.
27:35
So we got there and the very first thing that happened was,
27:40
you know, they gave us the, the lay of the land.
27:44
Here's the mask, here are the goggles.
27:46
This is what you can do, what you can't do.
27:50
And then it's like, go to work. Well, what do you need me to do?
27:55
Well, we had people that were working that were, they were
27:58
scared, but there were two types of, I guess maybe three types of
28:02
people. There were people, our employees
28:05
that had not gotten sick. We had some of our employees who
28:09
were sick and they had the symptoms, and then we had some
28:13
of our employees who were positive, but they really didn't
28:17
have the symptoms and they weren't sick.
28:20
That group of people really didn't want to work because the
28:24
other groups of people weren't working.
28:26
And if you didn't have the help, it made your job more difficult.
28:32
So they said, look, we need you to talk to this person and this
28:36
person and this because they want to go home.
28:40
So how do I do that? You know, because I went out on
28:44
the unit to find them. And, you know, everybody's got
28:48
their gowns and their masks. And it's like talking to, you
28:51
know, somebody in a radiation suit.
28:53
And I, I figured, I can't do this.
28:55
And what we were able to do was I said, look, go up, let's meet
29:00
outside because there was a picnic table, a break area
29:03
outside. And I knew we could talk 6 feet
29:06
apart. So they went outside, I went
29:09
outside, we took our gear off and we both became human again.
29:14
And I just said, talk to me, tell me what's going on.
29:18
And I did a lot of listening. And then I, I requested, you
29:23
know, can you listen to me? These folks have no one else.
29:28
It's you, it's me, it's all of us here.
29:31
If we abandoned them, what are they going to do?
29:34
This is our family, our family just to care for yours.
29:36
And I know, I know, you're scared, but we need you.
29:40
You were uniquely qualified to help us through this time.
29:43
Please do it for us. And that's what you did each and
29:48
every time. And thank God we made it
29:50
through. Most people responded in a
29:54
positive way to that message. Many did, some people didn't.
29:59
We've had some people that said this, not for me, not my line of
30:04
work, and they left. But we had a lot of people that
30:07
did. We had a lot of our people that
30:09
worked in different parts of the state so that it descended on
30:13
this facility to help because this part of the of the state
30:18
had really been decimated with with COVID.
30:20
How did you find the words in those in those moments to talk
30:24
to those people? How did the words come to you?
30:27
He just listened. If they said they were scared,
30:32
you acknowledge you're scared. I have.
30:34
I'm scared too. I don't want to.
30:36
I'd rather be anywhere else than here.
30:38
But I've got to be here. It's my mission.
30:41
And you got into this to be a CNA or a nurse or work in the
30:46
kitchen or sweep the floor. For whatever reason, you're
30:50
here. If you leave here, no matter
30:55
where you go work, you're going to have COVID there too.
30:58
You've already established relationships with the
31:01
residents, with the people that you work with.
31:03
You know what you do, You're good at your job.
31:07
I need you to get back in there and get to work.
31:10
And you can do it and you will do it.
31:14
And that worked sometimes. Sometimes it didn't.
31:18
Have you always been a good communicator, Mike?
31:21
The experiences along the way where you feel like they kind of
31:24
shaped you and your ability to deliver difficult messages.
31:30
I guess, Anthony, it goes back to the band.
31:33
If you're playing music, you may have a set list.
31:37
All right, For the first hour, we're going to play this and
31:40
this and this. We're going to do a slow song.
31:42
We're going to do this and this and this, going to do a slow
31:44
song. But when you come out and you
31:46
read the crowd, if you've got a crowd that's on fire and they
31:50
don't want a slow song, you look back at the guys and you say,
31:53
we're going to do this, let's do money, Money, Billy Idol go.
31:57
And you go to it. You read the crowd.
31:59
You see what the room, the the energy of the room is.
32:02
So I guess it started there. That's really cool.
32:07
I love that, you know, there at American Healthcare, you guys
32:11
really emphasize a, a nurturing environment and you focus a lot
32:15
on the expert care. When you're going through kind
32:18
of the interview process, the the recruiting process, How do
32:22
you find and identify the right talent?
32:25
And then once you've got them on board, how do you develop them
32:29
and retain them? What's kind of your secret sauce
32:32
to both recruiting and retention?
32:36
It's easier if you're, if you're talking to someone who's worked
32:40
in long term care before, that's worked in a nursing home,
32:45
because they're, they aren't going to be shocked when there's
32:49
somebody walking around and their gown is open as an
32:53
example. They won't be shocked and they,
32:57
they understand this is, this is what we do.
33:00
This is the environment. We're going to help people out.
33:03
If Mr. Jones, you know, we need to help him tuck his shirt in or
33:07
his hair's messed up or you know, you go into all sorts of
33:11
other examples, that's easier when you have someone that maybe
33:17
has worked at a convenience store or even manufacturing and
33:22
they've never done long term care.
33:25
They need to be exposed and say, look, you're going to be dealing
33:29
with a lot of unpleasant things. You're dealing with people
33:32
during the most vulnerable time in their lives.
33:37
It's got to be more than a paycheck to you.
33:39
You have to be able to commit that you're going to help folks
33:43
out when it's tough and you're going to ask for help when it's
33:47
tough, tough and you're going to offer help when it's tough.
33:51
And no matter what job you're in now, it's retention is is
33:58
really, really difficult. So you give people an
34:01
opportunity based on what you get in the interview and
34:04
hopefully they're going to deliver for you when they are on
34:06
the floor. I'd like to hear about any
34:10
unique programs or training initiatives that you've
34:13
championed as a way to help those people kind of acclimate
34:17
your your new hires and, and what impact that's had.
34:21
Well, you know, the way we're set up, Anthony, we're, we're
34:25
called the Resource Center. So sometimes people refer to us
34:31
as the corporate office, but we're the Resource Center.
34:35
So there's some things we'll do where they're they're non
34:38
negotiable. You've got to be able to follow
34:41
the Department of Labor's rules. You have to be able to follow
34:46
the handbook. You know, all of these things
34:48
are something that handle, it's global for all of our
34:51
facilities. But something that works in
34:55
Tazewell, VA may not work in Dilwin, Virginia.
34:58
Something that works in Blacksburg, VA may not
35:01
necessarily work in Lexington, VA.
35:05
So each of the facilities is different and each of them may
35:07
have their own, well, they do. They have their own culture and
35:11
they have their own way of doing things.
35:14
So for my role, we offer a lot of suggestions about what you
35:20
can do and what you can't do. And what tends to be pretty
35:23
successful is when you do a pilot in one of the facilities
35:27
and it's successful and then they ask you tell me how you did
35:31
that, give me more and more and more.
35:33
One of the things we did do that was global was on demand pay.
35:39
And it was around 2021 and we started looking at this and
35:44
there was a company called Daily Pay we started working with.
35:49
And I had seen I think at one of my SHERM conferences, people
35:55
speaking about on demand pay and this is the future and you need
35:59
to to get onto this or you're going to be left behind.
36:02
Because we live in a society right now where if I wanted to,
36:05
I could be really rude and watch a movie on this phone right now.
36:10
If I wanted to, I could go to ChatGPT and ask any number of
36:14
questions about how to fix my gutter at home that that's
36:18
broken right now. I can do that because I had the
36:21
expectation that those answers are going to be right there for
36:24
me. So people now have the
36:26
expectation I just worked 8 hours.
36:29
Why can't I be paid for the time I worked?
36:32
So this company Daily Pay worked with us and it, it really took a
36:37
while to get into, maybe not the culture of our people because I
36:43
knew our people would want it. But it was tough for the, our,
36:47
our management because you have to literally expose your, your
36:50
payroll to an outside company. And they come in and they get
36:54
under the hood and they wire everything from American
36:59
healthcare to Daily Pay and they plug it in.
37:01
And then this gives, it's a, a mechanism for our folks.
37:04
It's really to have a, a new bank.
37:06
Daily Pay operates as a bank for them.
37:09
So if I worked 8 hours right after my shift, I could go on
37:14
and pay a small fee and be paid a percentage of those hours I
37:19
had just worked. We did that.
37:21
Back when does daily pay pull the money from you guys?
37:25
Is it also on a daily basis or are they floating that in
37:28
between? I can't answer that specifically
37:33
because there's two different things.
37:35
We have one for salary people and we have one for hourly
37:38
people. The the deposits are made like
37:43
you would on a regular basis to your employees bank.
37:47
Daily pay is really floating the money to these folks.
37:50
So we're just paying the bank, the employees bank like we
37:54
normally would and the employee works with daily pay as far as
37:58
borrowing against the expected. Earnings.
38:02
What percentage of your employees would you guess are
38:05
taking advantage of the daily pay service?
38:08
50%. Holy cow.
38:10
It's make sure I got my stats correct.
38:14
I think it's usually on a Tuesday or a Wednesday, people
38:17
will withdraw. I think it's about a average of
38:20
$130.00 each time. And they use it for gas, they
38:25
use it for bills, they use it for clothing.
38:28
It's, it's just the way people are adapting and evolving with,
38:34
you know, how they get paid and, and it's offering a lot of
38:37
options. You know, one of the reasons we
38:39
looked at this is we knew people were going to these, these loan
38:45
companies and paying as much as 300% and they would have their
38:49
car title and, and put out. We thought, Oh my God, that's,
38:52
that's horrible. We had situations where, you
38:55
know, people said, I can't come to work tomorrow because I don't
38:58
have enough money for gas. So we started to think this
39:02
through a little bit. And what daily pay does now is
39:05
if you need money for gas, you can go to the app and you can
39:09
advance yourself whatever you need.
39:11
And it's it's worked for us. It's been obviously well
39:16
received by your employee base since such a large number of
39:19
them have taken advantage of it. It, it, it is.
39:22
And you know, it's a recruiting tool too, because one of the,
39:28
the things we like to do is we have something called a call
39:30
back list. And if there's somebody that
39:33
worked for us, I don't know, three months ago, six months
39:36
ago, a year ago, three years ago.
39:37
And we'd love to have them back. We'll text them, we'll call them
39:41
and say, hey, you know, would you be interested in coming
39:44
back? We have, and it could be, you
39:47
know, some sort of different circumstances.
39:50
We have new management now or we have new benefits because what I
39:54
know Anthony, in people's lives, people like choices.
39:59
So I may be happy at my present company, but if somebody else
40:03
calls and they say, look, we we really miss you.
40:07
The training wouldn't be very, very long.
40:10
You would understand what to do. You understand our culture.
40:14
Why don't you come in and just work PRN?
40:16
Why don't you give us a shift once a week?
40:19
Just, you know, put your, your, your toes in the water and, and
40:23
see what you think about, you know, the company since you
40:26
left. And you can earn some extra
40:29
money for a vacation or Christmas.
40:31
And if you really like it, maybe you go from PRN to part time.
40:35
And if it's working out for you, come back to us full time.
40:40
No, it's pretty cool. Something else interesting I I
40:42
want to dive into with you, Mike, is I know that you
40:45
implemented an innovative approach to job recruiting that
40:51
really reduce costs and improve the applicant quality.
40:55
Can you walk me through how you discovered this solution and
40:58
what made it so effective? It was just, it was dumb luck,
41:02
to be honest, Anthony, you know, the, the thing that it probably
41:06
takes most of my time is sorting through emails, sorting through
41:10
emails. And every now and then there's a
41:13
golden nugget in the e-mail. And I guess it just depends on
41:17
what I'm looking for or what you're looking for and how it's
41:20
written. But there was one particular day
41:23
I saw this e-mail and they asked, are you frustrated with
41:26
the amount of money you're spending on your job posting
41:29
platform? And they hit me at a time where
41:32
I had just had a bill. Yeah, I think we were spending
41:35
about $10,000 a month, which was terribly frustrating, but it's
41:41
what it cost. And this job posting platform
41:45
had consultants that would work with us and they'd say, hey, we
41:49
we got something brand new, we're going to do this and that.
41:52
But it wound up costing more money and you had less exposure,
41:55
less postings. And I thought, man, there's got
41:58
to be something. There's got to be an answer out
42:00
there. And we discovered this company
42:03
called Pathways out of Phoenix, AZ.
42:07
And their, their superpower was they understood the algorithm.
42:12
That was one of the things they understood, but they also
42:15
understood how you put it out there to make a job attractive
42:20
to an applicant. Traditionally, you know, I've
42:24
been doing this for decades and back in the day, you know, you
42:27
had your job description that you would make into a job
42:31
posting and it goes into the Sunday paper and it's in in the
42:35
Sunday paper for, you know, for whatever for a period of time
42:38
and you have applicants. That's that's how you do it.
42:41
What we were taught to do was to take the job description, but
42:46
maybe focus a little bit more on the empathetic part of the job
42:52
and why we need people at this facility that's located in the
42:57
beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains. And that this is a calling for
43:01
you. This is something where you're
43:02
helping other humans. You're not building widgets.
43:06
This is what the job would be. We'd love to have you come by so
43:09
we could talk to you. So the the wording wasn't as
43:15
hard and cold and sterile. The wording was more warmth.
43:19
And then there's these ways to look at the algorithm as far as
43:24
when you post the job, when you take the job down, when you
43:29
spend sponsorship money, when you don't spend sponsorship
43:32
sponsorship money. They walked us through all of
43:35
these different techniques and we went from, I don't know,
43:38
10,000 a month to maybe 1500 a month on job sponsorship.
43:44
That's dramatic. Yes, and.
43:48
What was their fee like? They had AI think it was 400.
43:53
No, I think about they got a percentage, I think 30.
43:58
I may be off on the numbers, but it seemed like it was about 30%
44:00
of whatever savings we were spending on the job platform
44:03
before we still came out way ahead and we were able to target
44:07
better applicants as well. Do you have any stats on sort of
44:13
that part of it, like the improvement in the quality of
44:17
the applicants? I don't know if it's probably
44:20
harder to measure like number of people that you interview that
44:24
you hire versus maybe how long they stayed or anything like
44:28
that. I I don't have all those stats.
44:30
But you do know that just from experience, from having gone
44:34
through it, you were getting better quality applicants using
44:36
this approach? We, we were so much so that we
44:40
decided to pursue another layer with this company Pathways where
44:45
we, we did it for a year. And then we talked about, all
44:48
right, how do we grow our people more?
44:50
How do we help them to be better?
44:53
Because we were purchasing a service.
44:55
But what we wanted to do now was transfer this line of thinking
45:00
to our 16 different facilities. So they understood how to use
45:04
the algorithm, how to do the job postings in a different way.
45:08
So that's where it shifted and it became, instead of just one
45:12
company doing this for us, you now have 16 people.
45:16
And it, I don't know, it took us about six months to do the
45:18
training. And we, we still have to monitor
45:21
and, and work with new, new things as things are evolving as
45:25
the algorithm evolves. But we gave that training to our
45:29
folks so that we have it now in Inside.
45:34
You know, I always love advice that once you hear it, it's sort
45:37
of like, duh, like common sense, but you just needed somebody to
45:42
point it out to you. And like, this group pathways
45:44
that you're working with, they're telling you, you know,
45:46
how to write job descriptions that are not so kind of cold and
45:50
sterile, and you're really appealing to the heart and the
45:54
human element. I mean, yeah, once you hear
45:57
that, you're like, oh, of course.
45:58
Like why weren't we doing that all along?
46:01
And that makes a lot of sense why you would be getting much
46:03
higher quality applicants from that.
46:06
Yeah. And that's exactly what we did.
46:08
We just listened to to somebody else that had a different
46:12
perspective and it's worked out for us.
46:15
What's a big obstacle that you face while streamlining HR
46:21
processes across multiple facilities and and how did you
46:25
kind of work through that? Well, we're not.
46:28
Once again, we're not quote UN quote the corporate office.
46:30
We're the Resource Center and each of our facilities has an
46:34
administrator who's very good at what they do.
46:39
And if Ioffer them an idea, then they may or may not take it.
46:45
And I'll I'll give you 1 where I've had to adapt and evolve.
46:49
I thought I had a great idea. I had been in McDonald's, going
46:53
through McDonald's and I was sitting in drive through waiting
46:57
for my large mocha frappe that I love.
47:01
And I saw in the back they had this.
47:03
It was a stop sign that said no quit, no quit policy.
47:09
And I looked at it and I took my phone out and I took a picture
47:13
and what it said was, you know, you can't quit.
47:15
We have a no quit policy here. You need to talk to your
47:19
supervisor or somebody in HR before you can quit.
47:22
And I thought, oh, that's, that's kind of, kind of clever.
47:25
So I decided I was going to do that here.
47:28
And I, you know, I had spoken to, to somebody in operations
47:32
and one of the, the regionals and I asked her opinion and she
47:34
said, yeah, let's give it a shot.
47:37
So I sent it out to all 16 facilities and I spoke about it
47:40
and I said, we're going to do this.
47:41
No, quit. And this is how it works.
47:43
And boom, bada, boom. And I didn't get any feedback
47:48
for a week or two. And I thought, well, I'm going
47:50
to resend the e-mail. Maybe something got
47:53
misconstrued. I resent the e-mail still
47:57
nothing. And I finally wound up I was in
47:59
an operations meeting and I said, hey, let's talk about
48:02
this. What are you hearing?
48:04
And they said, well, it's, it's created some problems.
48:07
So what, what, why? Well, it came across a little
48:12
bit strong. And then people are asking how
48:16
can you just implement a, a policy without going through the
48:19
policy and the procedure committee and we're an AT will
48:24
state how you can't prevent people from quitting.
48:29
What are you doing here? You know, you're, you're making
48:31
people uncomfortable. And I thought that's, that's
48:35
not, that's not the intent. No, the intent was just just
48:39
let's, let's talk about it. So after we talked about it a
48:43
little bit, that's evolved into something.
48:45
Let's talk before you walk because it really, you know,
48:49
Anthony, it's not about me convincing you to stay.
48:53
It's about giving you the opportunity to make the choice.
48:57
But hopefully you see that I cared enough about you to listen
49:02
and, and talk to you about how valuable you are.
49:05
And Are you sure you you want to leave.
49:07
And I, I really don't want to lose you.
49:10
But if you do decide to go, text me after you're there for a week
49:15
and let me know how you're doing because you may want to come
49:17
back and let's talk it through a little bit.
49:20
So I thought I had the great idea that everybody could use.
49:24
But, you know, once again, I, I guess I'm comfortable that there
49:27
was the push back where folks say, look, it's not working, you
49:31
need to change it so that we're, I can't give you any results
49:35
right now 'cause I mean, literally this is a, a fresh.
49:39
Yeah. OK.
49:41
I'll be interested to hear how this plays out because I
49:44
understand your intent. And then I can also hear how the
49:47
message was received on the other side.
49:50
And so it'll be interesting to see if you can kind of smooth
49:52
that out and help people understand, you know, where
49:55
you're going with this or if it is something that you're just
49:58
going to have to completely pull back on.
50:00
Time to tell. As you look forward, what kind
50:04
of emerging trends, whether it's in senior care or human
50:07
resources or a combination of the two, that you think you're
50:10
going to help shape the future of American healthcare?
50:14
It's going to be artificial intelligence.
50:17
OK. I was in San Diego at the Sherm
50:23
conference and I think the guy's name was Alan Whitaker, who is
50:28
head of AI for Bamboo, Bamboo HR, and a brilliant guy talking
50:36
about artificial intelligence and how you can use it within
50:39
your company. And one of the questions that
50:41
came up was, is AI going to take my job?
50:46
And he said, no, it's not going to take your job, but somebody
50:49
else that understands AI better than YouTube may take your job.
50:54
And I thought, wow, that's pretty profound.
50:58
So I thought, you know, in my role here, I need to be a leader
51:03
in understanding how this whole thing works.
51:06
And I need to make sure our people understand how this whole
51:09
thing works. Because since I came back, you
51:11
know, informally, I'm asking folks, you know, do you use AI
51:14
for anything at all? And some people say, no, it
51:17
scares me. I don't use it for anything.
51:19
And then there's some people that really are into it.
51:22
They could be either using Claude or ChatGPT or Gemini or
51:27
Copilot. And what we're actually doing
51:30
in, in August is we're having an HR payroll conference here in
51:34
Roanoke. And I'm going to be talking
51:36
about an introduction to artificial intelligence.
51:39
And I'm going to work them through some exercises, you
51:42
know, something really basic where you've got a job
51:45
description and you have a resume.
51:47
How do you use AI to find out if that applicant is good for our
51:51
company by using AI, how can it save some time?
51:55
How you can take a spreadsheet that you've created with maybe
51:59
one graph and then you've got 16 sets of numbers here.
52:03
How can you attach both of those spreadsheets and ask AI to help
52:07
you duplicate this with a graph for these 16?
52:12
Whereas it may have taken me 4 hours in the past, I can do this
52:16
now and it's here. And you're going to present
52:20
this. How did you get up to speed on
52:22
it? Just by, you know, the best
52:27
thing you can do with AI is to use it for personal things
52:31
first. So, you know, like I mentioned
52:34
earlier, I've got a gutter that's broken on my house and
52:38
I'm going through. Yeah.
52:39
Well, seems like it's easy enough.
52:41
You put this piece in and you put a screw and there's glue.
52:44
But it didn't work for me. So I type in what are my
52:48
alternatives? What should I do?
52:49
And I wound up you hire a handyman.
52:51
So I do it. But but it's little things, you
52:57
know, like that, whether it's a toilet repair or it's a gutter
53:02
or you're trying to train your dog or you're going to go on a
53:06
vacation. What AI is doing is it's putting
53:11
its arms around everything that you know, Google has had in the
53:16
past. It's it's right there for you.
53:20
You know, I love the message that you shared from that Bamboo
53:24
HR exec AI isn't going to take your job, but somebody who
53:28
understands AI well, and this was probably two or three years
53:32
ago kind of when the what was it ChatGPT 3 point something or
53:37
other came out. It was sort of the the first
53:39
time most of the public kind of knew about it.
53:42
One of my old employees, a a copywriter, a creative person
53:45
that had worked with me, she contacted me just all in a panic
53:49
about how, you know, this was the end of the world, end of her
53:52
career. She was really nervous about it.
53:54
And I kind of had a similar conversation, you know, that
53:57
that had the same kind of message that the Bamboo HR
54:00
executive. I said, hey, listen, it's not
54:02
going away, like hiding from just putting your head in the
54:05
sand and hoping that it doesn't come into your part of the world
54:09
or, you know, that it won't become what everybody thinks
54:12
it's going to become or that somehow you'll be immune to it.
54:14
That that's not going to work. You know that that's the wrong
54:17
way to approach it. Instead, jump in two feet, learn
54:21
this thing, like understand how it works.
54:24
And she went away for about 3 or 4 weeks, didn't hear from her.
54:27
And she came back, she was so excited, like she was like, oh,
54:30
I, I know how this is going to help me do my job so much
54:33
better. I'm going to be able to do so
54:35
many more things, offer these different services, tie things
54:38
together. And it was just, it was kind of
54:40
that, that mindset shift that she needed.
54:44
And and it's the same kind of message that seems like, you
54:47
know, you're going to be delivering here in that upcoming
54:49
meeting. That that's exactly right, you
54:51
know, and some of the people I've spoken to feel like it's
54:54
cheating and I'm explaining to them as a look, if AI didn't
54:58
exist and I ask you to put together a presentation on
55:01
public speaking in the past, you would have gone searched a
55:05
number of different websites. You would have gotten your your
55:08
content from there. You would have maybe taken some
55:12
images and copied and pasted and put them into a, a PowerPoint
55:16
presentation. This is no different.
55:19
You're not cheating at all. All of the information has just
55:22
been bundled together for you because you're really doing the
55:25
work. You have to write the question
55:27
in the way that AI is going to respond positively to you, to
55:32
give you what you want. That's where you adapt and
55:35
evolve your your new way of creating is how do I work with
55:39
this partner to ask what I need and make sure that I get what
55:43
I'm requesting? And then in my experience, don't
55:47
just copy and paste the results, right?
55:49
The AI is going to give it to you and maybe 80% of it is what
55:54
you need. You know, maybe you need to put
55:55
it in your voice. Maybe, you know, there's some
55:57
kind of an edit that needs to be made.
55:59
And so I like how you put that work with it as a partner.
56:04
You can't take it 100%. You know, you have to.
56:07
You have to trust it to a degree, but you have to verify
56:10
that the information that it's providing to you is, is
56:13
accurate. So you, you take it, you use it
56:18
after you've make sure that you're, you're comfortable with
56:20
it and you move forward and, and it's not a, a perfect process.
56:24
You're going to make mistakes, but that's how how you learn.
56:29
All right, Mike, now time for my favorite question.
56:32
I would like to hear about a serious challenge that you've
56:35
overcome, whether it's personal or professional or if they're
56:38
too intertwined. How did you get through it and
56:41
what did you learn? And in 2000, I was working as
56:48
the employee involvement manager for Roe Furniture.
56:52
And at that time the once again employee involvement with Roe
56:58
Furniture had gotten to the point where it was really,
57:02
really hot. And then it would go down.
57:04
Then it got hot again and would go down.
57:07
And this is one of those phases where it wasn't really working
57:12
like we needed it to. And my job was possibly on the
57:17
line, but I had an opportunity. And that opportunity was to go
57:23
out to Missouri and instead of being the employee involvement
57:27
guy, you would become the human resources manager in Poplar
57:31
Bluff, MO. So the good and the bad, the
57:35
good promoted to the HR manager instead of EI.
57:40
But I'd have to uproot my family and move 12 hours away to a
57:45
place that I'd visited a number of times.
57:50
But my wife had not ever lived there or visited and my kids
57:54
hadn't. And we had a lot of soul
57:56
searching. So what we did is we decided I
58:00
was going to accept the job and I went out, I think February of
58:06
it was, I think it was around December of 2000.
58:10
I found this out and I went out in February of 2001 and they put
58:15
me up in a little apartment and they allowed me, they're very
58:19
nice to allow my, you know, my kids to, to work through school
58:23
in May. And then they were going to
58:25
relocate in May. So every other weekend I would
58:30
drive back home, make that 12 hour drive to be with the family
58:35
and then I'd go back to work. You know, they and they were
58:38
really accommodating. I would leave like on a Thursday
58:40
afternoon from Missouri, probably drive to Nashville,
58:44
spend the night. Then I'd get back to Roanoke
58:46
about noon on Friday and then Sunday, Sunday morning I would
58:51
leave and get back to Missouri Sunday night.
58:55
Wow. And that went on from what did
58:58
you say December or February that?
59:00
Went on to February until about June of that year.
59:04
And at that point, you were able to get your family moved over
59:06
with you. Yeah.
59:08
And I had a tough time really adjusting to the culture of of
59:15
that facility because when I was in Roanoke at the corporate
59:18
office, you'd go out to lunch, you'd have an hour lunch.
59:22
We even had a facility, a fitness center in our facility.
59:26
And I thought, well, that's, you know, that's what you do at
59:29
work. Well, in the Poplar Bluff plant,
59:33
they didn't have all of those bells and whistles.
59:36
Now they had a, a gym that was about 10 minutes down the road
59:40
you could go to. And I did that during lunch.
59:43
But then I, I noticed I really wasn't fitting in.
59:48
And what my problem was, was everybody else was taking a 30
59:52
minute lunch and I'm the new guy showing up and I'm taking an
59:57
hour and I wasn't sitting at the table with all the other
59:59
managers and I. Needed to adapt and evolve.
1:00:04
So that that was the toughest part because I wasn't accepted
1:00:09
until I made the change. And I remember one day I showed
1:00:13
up and I sat at the table with them for lunch and they're
1:00:16
looking at me like, what are you doing here?
1:00:18
So look, I'm part of the team and they accepted me because I
1:00:23
recognize I was in the wrong and I wasn't going to be accepted
1:00:27
and I wasn't going to be effective until I understood
1:00:32
life in that facility. Did somebody bring it to your
1:00:36
attention, or were you aware enough to realize that I'm sort
1:00:41
of sticking out like a sore thumb here?
1:00:44
A little bit of both. You know, I would, I would find
1:00:48
out like if, if a meeting was set for 12:30 instead of 1
1:00:52
o'clock, you know, right in the middle of when I was going to
1:00:54
have my workout, right when their lunch was ending.
1:00:58
Kind of kind of hinting, you know, you need to be here.
1:01:03
And you took the message. What was it like for your family
1:01:06
making that transition? I mean, they're without husband,
1:01:09
they're without dad most of the time during the week.
1:01:11
And now they're relocating to another part of the country
1:01:15
where they don't know people. That's that's a hard transition.
1:01:19
It, it was the, the good part is we met some of the best people
1:01:23
we've ever met in our lives out in Missouri.
1:01:27
Just fantastic folks. We really, really enjoyed those
1:01:30
relationships that we were able to to to put together when we
1:01:34
were there with them. How did you meet those folks?
1:01:37
Was it through work? Was it through a social club?
1:01:41
Part of it was just neighbors and part of it was and the
1:01:45
neighbors went to a church and then the church welcomed us and
1:01:50
we got involved in that church and Co workers, you know, just
1:01:55
all of that, you know, come on over for we're having a fish
1:01:59
fry. And that's what you do, you
1:02:01
know, and you introduce your family to other either work
1:02:06
family or church family or neighbors, and you start your
1:02:10
new life. Mike, what's your superpower?
1:02:16
Well, if you see behind me, I've got the Batman up there.
1:02:23
And I've always been a a Batman fan.
1:02:27
I, I, I enjoyed the comics from, you know, when I was a kid and I
1:02:32
enjoyed the movies. And then it kind of dawned on
1:02:37
me. One of the things that's helped
1:02:38
me in my career was not being Batman.
1:02:43
I can't be Batman. But you know, Batman's got that
1:02:45
yellow belt around him that he wears.
1:02:49
It's his utility belt and if he's going to go into a
1:02:53
situation with Catwoman or the Joker or the Penguin, he knows
1:02:58
which of those weapons to take out of the utility belt to deal
1:03:02
with the situation. So one of the, I guess my super
1:03:06
superpower is the ability to adapt, evolve, and strategize.
1:03:12
So when I work with an administrator as an example, and
1:03:17
they have a situation where they're about to terminate an
1:03:20
employee, and this can be a, it can be a sloppy termination,
1:03:27
we'll say, because they haven't necessarily documented
1:03:30
everything and all the TS aren't crossed and the IS aren't
1:03:33
dotted. But they want the person
1:03:36
terminated. And it's, it's a tough one
1:03:40
because I can push to a degree and then they're going to push
1:03:43
back. But looking at the utility belt
1:03:47
thing, you know, one of the things we could do is roll the
1:03:49
dice. Let's see if we can terminate
1:03:53
them without them getting upset. I don't really like that idea.
1:03:56
But what if you did this? They've got X amount of PTO.
1:04:01
What if we said, look, we'll pay you your PTO for a voluntary
1:04:05
resignation. We'll give you a neutral
1:04:08
reference. Nobody wants an involuntary
1:04:11
termination on your record. If you're going to go work
1:04:15
somewhere else, you want to be able to explain, you know, why
1:04:17
you left that company and you can look your new hiring manager
1:04:22
in the eye and say, look, I just with the drive was too long or I
1:04:25
just wanted something new I needed to change.
1:04:29
So just trying to give our managers choices of how they
1:04:32
deal with difficult situations, I think is my superpower.
1:04:37
Different options in that utility belt.
1:04:40
Yeah. How about a resource that you
1:04:43
might recommend to our listeners?
1:04:46
A book, a podcast, a course, something that's been really
1:04:49
helpful for you in your career. I guess, Anthony, I go back to
1:04:54
the seven habits with Stephen Covey.
1:04:58
You know, I can't quote everything, but I remember parts
1:05:02
of it and parts of it would be to sharpen the saw is an example
1:05:09
because you want to make sure that you know you want to get
1:05:12
there, but you don't have time to stop and get gas.
1:05:15
But if you don't stop to get gas, you're going to run out of
1:05:17
gas. If you're not physically
1:05:19
healthy, you're going to get in a situation where you can't do
1:05:23
your job to the best of your ability.
1:05:25
So try to stay in shape. The part about listening and
1:05:33
understanding others before trying to be understood.
1:05:36
That's really helped me a lot. So if if I'm a person in the
1:05:43
middle, if I'm a mediator and Anthony's on one side and
1:05:47
there's somebody else on the other, I need to be able to make
1:05:52
sure that you feel like I'm a neutral party and I let you
1:05:57
speak and then I contribute and let them speak and they
1:06:01
contribute. But if it's Anthony and Mike, I
1:06:05
want Anthony to go first because I know in your mind, if I'm
1:06:09
going first, it's just la, la, la, la, la, la because you're
1:06:14
waiting for me to stop so you can get what you want to say in.
1:06:17
So if I just listen to say, all right, if I'm the sponge, tell
1:06:20
me what's going on and I take the time to respect you and
1:06:26
write down and write down and write down and ask if there's
1:06:29
anything else we need to cover. Then if I go, then I can say,
1:06:34
well, the first let's address the things that you brought up.
1:06:38
And we go through those things and then I'm able to to
1:06:42
introduce my side of the story. I like that a lot and Stephen
1:06:48
Covey is a good one. If you know it, it's a classic.
1:06:52
And if if folks haven't had a chance to absorb that in some
1:06:56
format, e-book, audio book, it's it's a really good one.
1:06:59
A lot of great foundational things in there.
1:07:02
How about some daily habits, Mike, Either that help you get
1:07:06
your day started, keep you centered, keep you on track.
1:07:12
Well, it's the old To Do List. I usually work sometime on the
1:07:19
weekend. I don't, I don't live too
1:07:22
terribly far away. There's a car wash nearby.
1:07:27
I go to that, go to a gym that's not too far away.
1:07:30
So it's it's kind of convenient. So I'm not going to spend, you
1:07:33
know, all day and Saturday and Sunday here, but it's a, it's a
1:07:37
chance where the phone isn't ringing, I'm not getting the
1:07:39
text or the emails and I can take time to look at all right.
1:07:43
What did I not get done last week that I need to carry over?
1:07:47
And I create a brand new sheet like this for my marching orders
1:07:54
and then also send something to our COO and CEO and I call it
1:08:00
the HR overview for the week ending X.
1:08:03
So this one will be the week ending July 25th.
1:08:06
And I've got my journal where I take all of my notes from what
1:08:14
took place during the week and then I put it in the computer.
1:08:19
So going back, you know, years now, if I have a situation that
1:08:23
took place in 2020 during the COVID, I can go and I can search
1:08:29
a name or I can search a subject and it it's a diary of
1:08:33
everything that's taken place in the past.
1:08:36
So that that's how I do it. How are you logging that in the
1:08:39
computer? Like individual Word documents.
1:08:41
It's an e-mail. I'll send an e-mail to to Brad
1:08:44
and Tommy, COO and CEO, send them an e-mail every usually
1:08:49
goes out on Saturday or Sunday. And I've just got, you know,
1:08:52
this big string of sent emails. I like that.
1:08:57
An interesting strategy. Just got one more question for
1:09:00
you, Mike, before I ask it. I want to do 2 things.
1:09:03
First of all, for everybody listening, I want you to pause
1:09:06
just for a second. Go to your favorite podcast app
1:09:08
that you're listening on now, hit the like or follow button so
1:09:12
you continue to get more great interviews like we've had today
1:09:14
with Mike Garrett from American Healthcare.
1:09:17
Mike, I also want to let people know the best way either to get
1:09:19
in touch with you directly to follow your story or that of
1:09:23
American Healthcare. What would that be?
1:09:26
For American healthcare, it would be the, the website
1:09:29
heritage-hall.org. For me, I'd honestly, Anthony, I
1:09:34
try to fly under the radar. Really.
1:09:36
I was conflicted about doing this podcast with you today
1:09:39
because I thought I, I just don't need to be out there.
1:09:44
And if you look at my my LinkedIn, there's not a lot
1:09:47
there. It's pretty plain, but I did it
1:09:50
because I figure I need to have a LinkedIn.
1:09:52
But even if you looked at my my personal Facebook page, I've got
1:09:56
pictures of me and my wife and my family, my dogs.
1:09:59
And you're not going to see a lot of political commentary or
1:10:03
very much of it's, it's pretty vanilla.
1:10:06
I mean, I fly under the radar predominantly.
1:10:10
Well, I'm for one really honored and thankful that you agreed to
1:10:15
spend time with us here today and Share your story.
1:10:17
I know that a lot of people are going to get benefit from it.
1:10:19
So last question for you, Mike, you and I reconnect a year from
1:10:24
now and you're so excited you're celebrating something big.
1:10:27
What's that thing that you're celebrating one year from now?
1:10:31
It's the people in our facilities that have embraced
1:10:34
artificial intelligence, the job posting technology, and it's
1:10:41
made their jobs so easy that they're able to spend time on
1:10:46
the floor talking to our people into our residents where they're
1:10:50
getting the face to FaceTime and they're not behind the desk.
1:10:54
They're not anchored to having to do the reports like they have
1:10:58
to do right now. They're able to, to to work
1:11:01
smarter, not harder. And they're using the best skill
1:11:06
they have, which is their themselves, their personalities,
1:11:09
their listening skills using saying, you know, I saw Jason
1:11:15
Sudeikis in San Diego at the Sherm.
1:11:20
And one of the things he talked about was having big ears.
1:11:24
And he was talking about this in relationship to Ted Lasso and
1:11:28
how he he does the show and the different people on the show.
1:11:33
And, you know, maybe he discovers one of the actors used
1:11:35
to be a musician or they used to be a cook or they used to be,
1:11:40
you know, whatever in their previous lives.
1:11:43
And he listens to that. And then as they're creating
1:11:46
episodes going forward, if somebody had played guitar in a
1:11:50
band previously, they work it into an episode where they get
1:11:53
to play guitar or they get to cook.
1:11:56
That's what I want our folks to be able to do, is use their big
1:11:58
ears and remember a person's work anniversary or their birth
1:12:03
date, or their child's graduating from school, or their
1:12:07
child had a softball game last night, All of these different
1:12:10
things. Because that's how you create
1:12:12
the real connection and you create better relationships.
1:12:18
Mike Garrett from American Healthcare, I want to be the
1:12:20
first to thank you for sharing both your time and your story
1:12:23
with us today. It's been a pleasure.
1:12:24
I really appreciate it. You're welcome.
1:12:26
Thank you, Anthony. Folks, that's a wrap on another
1:12:29
episode of the Inspired Stories podcast.
1:12:31
Thanks for learning with us today.