This transcript is auto generated
00;00;00;00 - 00;00;23;20
Tom Godar
Welcome to Blackwell’s Labor Law Insider podcast. This is your host, Tom Godar. I've been practicing in the labor law sector for more than 40 years, and I can tell you that in no time of my practice has labor law had greater changes than in the last five, six years. We began the podcast in May of 2021, following the election of President Biden.
00;00;23;25 - 00;00;49;12
Tom Godar
And the elections have consequences. And under the Biden administration, a new National Labor Relations Board with the new general counsel reshaped labor policies. And they were very consequential. During that time because it was so important to stay on top of liberal issues, the family of Hirsch Blackwell labor law counsel more than doubled in its coast-to-coast reach to assist our client.
00;00;49;15 - 00;01;18;11
Tom Godar
Well, we’ve since had another election. In January of 2025, President Trump was inaugurated to his second but non-continuous term. And once again, we’re seeing significant changes in how the National Labor Relations Board and its appointed members, the GC right now an acting general counsel, and the board members are going to interpret the National Labor Relations Act and its associated laws.
00;01;18;14 - 00;01;51;11
Tom Godar
So once again, we’re continuing a wild ride of labor law. That’s not likely to change soon so buckle up and enjoy the Labor Law Insider podcast. I want to welcome you to part two of our really special Labor Law Insider. We’re talking not about a court case or appointments to the NLRB, although those are important. But we’re talking about how an excellent leader in this case, Liz Filter, the CEO of VARC Incorporated, a Wisconsin based organization with activities throughout the state.
00;01;51;13 - 00;02;22;25
Tom Godar
How they do things well. And frankly, some of the confessions that Liz offers about how they have to continue to reinvent themselves to stay on that trajectory. Liz Filter is my guest. And as we begin this episode of the Labor Law Insider, I'm asking Liz a little bit about how she’s treating employees, how they are integrated into and stay, if you will, sticky to the organization while the organization itself flexes and grows.
00;02;22;28 - 00;02;46;22
Tom Godar
Yesterday I had some young folks over and I was talking to a younger woman, about 30ish, maybe, and she worked for a fortune 20 company whose name won’t be mentioned. And I said, so tell me a little bit about how you know what your next steps are, where you might be able to grow within this mega corporation that you're part of, how you learn about where their interests in you are.
00;02;46;22 - 00;03;07;19
Tom Godar
Who do you express that to? And she gave me sort of a blank stare and said, well, we don't do that at XYZ. At least I’ve never done it. How do people get that idea of where they might grow, how they might grow within the the world of work, whether it's in the headquarters office or it's in one of your many centers around the state.
00;03;07;21 - 00;03;35;17
Elizabeth Filter
I think the last several years of our merger activities have demonstrated some of the growth opportunities that a number of our employees have been able to engage in. And while it might not always be through the venue of our merger, we are growing faster sometimes. Then I realize, I think, and the infrastructure of the organization grows along with our new locations and our new divisions and our new customers that we're acquiring.
00;03;35;25 - 00;04;12;22
Elizabeth Filter
So I think that’s been a really healthy way in which people have seen opportunities and have been accelerating through some of the roles and advancing through some of the roles fairly quickly. So that served us pretty well to be able to open those doors for leaders who are looking to be a part of something that's growing with their capacity and with their capabilities and in today’s environment, leveraging things like technology and innovation, people want to be a part of that, and we’ve been able to afford some of those opportunities because of that growth.
00;04;12;24 - 00;04;38;14
Tom Godar
You talked earlier when you talked about onboarding, that you've crafted a video touch that you have with all of the new employees. How do you, during the regular pattern of a year, have you or others in your organization? How do you touch and keep people informed about growth plans? And there's bad news out here, not just good news that today has changed this or a reimbursement rate, that or whatever it might be.
00;04;38;17 - 00;04;47;29
Tom Godar
How do you share that information on an ongoing basis so people feel like they know what the heck is going on. That's just what they're doing from minute to minute, hour to hour and day to day.
00;04;48;02 - 00;05;20;20
Elizabeth Filter
Yeah. One of the challenges I think that's posed here is the accessibility to all employees for a couple of reasons. One, we’ve we’ve got a unique set of employees in that not all are users of systems and computers and a large group are so finding mechanisms to reach both of those categories of employees has been challenging, although technology and some infrastructural changes have allowed for that over the last few years.
00;05;20;23 - 00;05;48;21
Elizabeth Filter
We want people to be getting and accessing news and updates and engagement at the same time and real time as much as possible. But we also know that that is limited. A computer user who's on teams and has access to outlook and seeing live messages has information a lot sooner than someone who is working on our production line and only a couple times a week.
00;05;48;23 - 00;06;16;01
Elizabeth Filter
Access is one of our hub site locations on the floor. So we want to be careful not to overuse technology, to be communicating with our large group of employees, and also be leveraging the leaders within the organization and have team meetings and grab assemblies together so that people are getting information as quickly as possible. That's relevant for them and keeps them engaged, keeps them informed with what's happening in our organization.
00;06;16;04 - 00;06;37;01
Elizabeth Filter
To answer your question on how we engage people to help define what that growth might look like and engage them, and what that might look like, at the risk of, I guess, a death by survey, we try to design simple data loops of feedback that all employees are invited to engage in. They have to know about it. So that’s really critical.
00;06;37;01 - 00;07;07;03
Elizabeth Filter
It’s generally optional, but we want to communicate that. What you see out there on the floor in the community, doing your work is really valuable to leaders to be informed on so that we can understand the landscape of each of the communities in Wisconsin, that we're serving the landscape and and the feedback from our customers and our clients and our family members that we're serving, so that we know where there are opportunities for improvement, opportunities for growth, needs for expansion.
00;07;07;05 - 00;07;28;21
Elizabeth Filter
So that can really help inform us of the direction that we need to go. But we have to rely on employees to be able to fuel that. So we do that through some surveys. We pulled all employees together this year, for example, all locations closed down for the day, pull them together, did some strategic exercises that will help inform our next three year strategic plan.
00;07;28;23 - 00;07;47;09
Elizabeth Filter
That’s fueled by the hundreds of employees who participated in that real time through that activity. And that's really valuable information and can really produce some significant results as it relates to how we plan and what the direction of VARC is going to look like over the course of the next 3 to 5 years.
00;07;47;12 - 00;08;09;20
Tom Godar
But while those are big investments, I mean, you not only talked about how you're communicating out, but inviting communication, and you talked about how you actually took a day away. And I hate to do the math, but there’s a dollar sign that the past, all of that quote, lost activity. And it’s not just your time and your team's time to prepare for that, but it's everybody's time to walk into that training.
00;08;09;22 - 00;08;34;04
Tom Godar
That’s pretty exciting. But with all of that, sometimes one person wants this benefit or want that advance. They think that they should have gotten this time off and all that. How do you deal with when things go bump the tonight just expectations that are frustrated or sometimes misconduct? What kind of systems do you have in place and what are people's expectations when things inevitably don’t go exactly as planned?
00;08;34;06 - 00;09;14;01
Elizabeth Filter
Clarity on the front end is really critical so that expectations are clearly defined. Outcomes related to an employee not adhering to those expectations are clearly defined, and that supervisors and management employees, certainly directors, are very clear on the steps in which they need to take with regards to accountability for misconduct and are empowered to be able to take those steps quickly and appropriately with the support of other team members and or human resources or myself.
00;09;14;01 - 00;09;40;27
Elizabeth Filter
To be quite honest or external parties that we might need to engage yourself or otherwise, for example. So I think being clear about it on the front end, acting quickly and appropriately to mitigate any waver from our expectations is both for that employee and for the rest of the organization. Good practice, retaining confidentiality when appropriate around what the circumstances were around.
00;09;40;27 - 00;10;06;25
Elizabeth Filter
Misconduct is necessary, but at the same time it also communicates to people where the threshold of tolerance is, which is very low here for any related misconduct, especially as it relates to the quality of our services provided to the people that we serve. And we see it very infrequently. And I think it’s because we talk about it a lot.
00;10;06;25 - 00;10;40;26
Elizabeth Filter
We talk about what our code of ethics are. We review that as a leadership team frequently. We put those topics at the top of agendas for team meetings. We require that teams get together and huddle together. We audit to make sure that those happen, that those conversations are happening. We document if anybody gets close to the line, we review that with the employee so that it doesn’t breach that threshold where it's not acceptable conduct and act swiftly when it does appropriate, kindly, matter of factly and enforce things strictly.
00;10;40;29 - 00;11;06;26
Tom Godar
You know, Liz, nothing of what you said. While it’s all brilliant, the perfect was shocking or surprising. That is the kind of regular old blocking and tackling we’ve got to establish and rigorously contend with the policies. We can't one day say, well, you can do it this way, and the next day we’re going to say, well, we had a policy that said, you shouldn’t have done it that way yesterday, but we’re to start enforcing it now.
00;11;06;28 - 00;11;30;01
Elizabeth Filter
Yeah. I think one of the things I learned from you a long time ago, Tom, was that having a written policy on a number of topics and areas is better than not having one. However, it's only as good as informing and educating employees on what that policy is so that they can be held accountable. I can write policies all day long and keep them stored away and not share them with anyone.
00;11;30;01 - 00;11;39;00
Elizabeth Filter
And if we don’t record that people are adequately trained on what those expectations and policies are, they’re not very effective.
00;11;39;02 - 00;12;08;28
Tom Godar
And the National Labor Relations Board reminds us that we have to write policies in a way that our congruent with their enforcement of violations of activity that is appropriately engaged in, by and among employees. And that changes. We'll see it changing only at the new board intact. But generally speaking, if we have policies that we think are effective, we just have to continue to engage in informing people and then sometimes look and say, do we really want to test for XYZ?
00;12;08;28 - 00;12;31;24
Tom Godar
I mean, I know a lot of clients have said we’re not going to test for C for marijuana usage and so forth, because just doesn't work for us. So then you can change policies. Are there any, by the way, specific sort of I don't know if you’d call it benefits or ways in which you do things that your employees and or your supervisors really think are pivotal and or different, or is it just doing what you do?
00;12;31;24 - 00;12;33;03
Tom Godar
Well.
00;12;33;05 - 00;13;18;21
Elizabeth Filter
It’s a tough question. I think some of the feedback that we’ve received, I don't know that It’s necessarily a benefit, but it’s cultural norm to provide a fairly high level of autonomy to those who are responsible for the cultural dynamic within their departments or divisions, and responsible for a number of employees. We really value. And don't just tell them that we value, but demonstrate that we value their decision making process and their ability to have some judgment on things like hiring and things like decisions within their department that impact the organization.
00;13;18;24 - 00;13;43;03
Elizabeth Filter
But what that means is that we have a high level of responsibility to ensure that they can follow correct paths and conform with the correct policies and processes and procedures. High volume of training is needed from a leadership perspective so that we can afford them that autonomy. But I think a lot of folks, a high number of folks really value that.
00;13;43;03 - 00;13;46;19
Elizabeth Filter
As a supervisor department head within our company.
00;13;46;21 - 00;14;22;18
Tom Godar
Yeah, the ability to have some sense of control of your environment and input and responsibility for it. My dad was a flier in World War II, and he got shot down twice, was in a prisoner of war camp and the loss of lives and casualties for people who flew airplanes in World War II was huge. Yeah, they seem to be more optimistic when they were given that kind of testing than those who or marching in the Army, even though the casualty level for those who are marching was much smaller than the infantry, and it had a lot to do with people's sense of control or their opportunity to affect the environment in which they were
00;14;22;18 - 00;14;42;15
Tom Godar
asked to engage every day. And I always thought that that was a really important lesson, not the horrors of war, but the benefit of giving people the opportunity to make decisions that have consequences. Sometimes, I suppose I have to make wrong decisions in order to learn, and then it's got to be tough for your managers and for yourself to say, whoops, that's not something we want to do again.
00;14;42;17 - 00;15;22;19
Elizabeth Filter
Right? And we have a fairly thorough corrective action process that many organizations have specifically in the manufacturing industry. But we’ve broadened that out to be inclusive of our service provision or client service provision, as well as any of our administrative practices with a culture of see something, say something. And when something is not meeting our quality expectations, whether it’s in your department or not, create a culture where it's okay and it’s acceptable to bring that to somebody’s attention and that it’s for the sake of improving the quality of what we do, not for the sake of calling somebody out or getting someone in trouble or any of those things.
00;15;22;19 - 00;15;46;16
Elizabeth Filter
It’s really for the benefit of the employee improvement of program and quality improvement. But that’s a cultural shift, because when people traditionally hear corrective action, it means somebody did something wrong and someone’s in trouble, and there's going to be a disciplinary thing that follows. And we’ve had to turn that into something that everybody can engage in and benefit from, rather than fear.
00;15;46;19 - 00;16;10;15
Tom Godar
You know, Liz, this conversation has helped me better appreciate why you started with the very sound base, but under your leadership and direction, you be able to grow pretty rapidly. And I expect that I’m going to see that continued growth in the next decade, and that you've also been able to maintain a pretty stable workforce where I think one of the hardest roles is people having to reengage, retrain, rehire and so forth.
00;16;10;17 - 00;16;24;25
Tom Godar
That’s a tough thing to keep the people engaged, but that is what you really talked about, engaging people to do their very best. And I really appreciate that. They really do appreciate your sharing some of this time with us on the Labor Law Insider. Any last thoughts you want to leave us with?
00;16;24;28 - 00;16;50;19
Elizabeth Filter
No, it’s it’s been a pleasure. I love talking about our organization. I think the biggest lesson I've learned in this role as a leader and working for Mark over the last 25 years, and something that I think is allowed us to grow is that we continue not to aim for perfection, but we do require that everybody aim for excellence, and that has served us well.
00;16;50;20 - 00;17;01;13
Elizabeth Filter
Our servant leadership lens leads us in the right direction. We’re here for it and excited about the future of the organization. So I appreciate you letting me chat a bit about it today.
00;17;01;17 - 00;17;18;10
Tom Godar
No, it’s been our pleasure. I’m sure it’s been a pleasure for our listeners, for those who have tuned in for this kind of unusual sort of change in the seasons, they rely insider, where we talk about good stuff and things that are positive rather than the last thing that went bump in the night. So Liz, thank you so much for joining us.
00;17;18;10 - 00;17;25;17
Tom Godar
And thank you for joining us on the Labor Law Insider.