Money Matters Episode 5- 2013 Gulf Coast Symposium on Human Resources issues

Christopher Hensley  0:00  
Chris Hensley is a registered representative of Cambridge Investment Research Inc, a broker dealer member of FINRA cippic. Investment Advisor representative Cambridge Investment Research advisors Inc, a registered investment advisor, Cambridge and Houston First Financial Group are not affiliated.

Speaker 2  0:25  
He's the Midtown chapter of the Society for financial awareness presents money matters with your host, Christopher Hensley.

Christopher Hensley  0:48  
Good morning, everybody you're listening to money matters on KPFT Houston. And if you're listening to us, you found us by going to keep EFT that org and clicking on the HD three, Link. We are streaming internet radio. You can also find us on the Libsyn network. If you want to listen to any past episodes, we've got the podcasting archived over there. I'm Chris Hensley. It's about 1010 o'clock this morning on Friday, we have a great show lined up for you today, I've got

really cut the topic for today is going to be coverage from the 2013 Gulf Coast HR symposium. So we were invited out there want to say two to three weeks ago back in May to cover that event. So we're going to give you some some really good discussions with both the President and the executive director of HR Houston, and also some attendees to give you a flavor for what the event the symposium was really like when we went out there. Before we do that we're going to start for any first time listeners with just a brief introduction about sofa of the Society for financial awareness who we are and what we do. We've got a lot of information to cover. So we'll only take just a few minutes for that and then go right into the interviews as soon as we're done there. So sofa we are a nonprofit 501 C three educational speaker's bureau. And our mission is to fight financial illiteracy. And we do that by going out to different organizations, different groups, different companies really anywhere people already congregate and provide financial education seminars, as well as health and wellness workshops. How do we do this Usually this is done by a brown bag type Lunch and Learn seminar at an employer's at a for profit business, usually during the lunch break, or maybe at a different time during the day. But all of this is done pro bono at no cost. It's put together by a group of financial financial experts. And we go out to the different companies and help them fulfill their 404 C requirements. And if you are interested in learning more information about sofa you can contact us by going to our website, which is www. Houston Midtown sofa dot o RG we also if you're interested in finding and getting a financial wellness program at your workplace, there is a free white paper available for download. At that website. It's called in our world a 360 degree view of financial literacy. This is really good if you're either human resources manager, a program director, it's a professional association or even executive pastor at a church. If you're thinking about having some kind of program in place for when it comes to financial wellness, you can you can get this white paper at no cost. And with that that's a good really kind of a good transition with today's topic, which is the 2013 Gulf Coast HR symposium when it comes to human resources. So for the way that we go out and we do our seminars, most of these take places at companies and the person most responsible for allowing us to come out to the companies is usually the human resources department. And if you think about it, usually at your employment, your retirement benefits or health benefits health and wellness wellness programs. They all come out of the HR department of local companies and so for sofa we can attach to that piece of the of the benefits, the retirement benefits or even just putting in an additional educational program in place to help those companies meet their 404 C requirements. Well the HR golf symposium is really the largest local meeting for human resource person nationals in this area. Money Matters was invited out this year to cover the event. And I'm going to share with you some of what it was that we talked about and learned at the event. We're going to start out by playing an interview with Tracy Fraser, who is president of HR Houston. So let's go ahead and and listen to that.

Speaker 2  5:18  
Tracy Fraser, president of HR Houston. Tracy,

Christopher Hensley  5:22  
thank you so much for having us here. I wanted to thank you for allowing money matters and sofa to come out to the symposium. That was a couple of weeks ago now. And inviting us out to to cover some of it. We had some interviews with people that attended that are very, very positive. Wanted to ask you start out by asking you some questions. Just in general, what would you say was your favorite part of the symposium. And

Speaker 2  5:45  
so it's still honestly so hard to pick one favorite part, there's a couple of pieces that jumped out to me, one is, it's local, you just you're meeting people in the area, including vendors, including suppliers, other HR peers, I don't love that it's local, you're building your network. The second piece I love is the enthusiasm and commitment that folks have when they come to the symposium, you see its energy, the life seeing, it's a lot of fun. So you're kind of gaining a lot from that experience from that perspective. And then you're, you have the ability to really get a lot of recertification credit at one time in one place. So from a convenience perspective, it's not only incredibly valuable to get the trends that are here, but also to have it in such a concentrated time period. available right here, right now in the Houston area.

Christopher Hensley  6:35  
I couldn't agree with you more the energy level that was there, which is awesome. I only attended the second half a second day, and saw Ryan ssmb and was just blown away. I wish I had my schedule allow me to go the first day as well. Now, let's, let's talk on a broader scale, when it comes to human resources issues. I know every year that kind of change, what's the hot topic and that sort of thing? What would you say are some of the hottest HR issues today in 2013?

Speaker 2  7:06  
That is such a good question. And we could have a long, long conversation about this. There's a couple that jumped out to me. And I would say there's one, there's one continuous issue that we've heard about for well over a decade, and that finding the right talent at the right time at the right place. So making sure that you are workforce planning in a way that makes sense for your business. They're able to forecast appropriately, and then plan in such a way to bring people on to manage workforce transitions to manage brain drain. So I think that's a big challenge, particularly in 2013, I've found more so than any other year, were asked to do much, much more with much, much, much, much less in terms of resources. And And for example, and I've heard this feedback from several employers that generally as an organization, you get some cost constraint or containment emails around q3. We're already getting them earlier in the year. Okay,

Christopher Hensley  8:10  
we're not even there yet.

Speaker 2  8:13  
Yeah, which is great. I think it's good to be conscious of those things. But I think it's a challenge to manage all of that. And keep people engaged and keep them really enthusiastic and engaged in order to perform so you know, in the output of that is author retention, how do you keep people interested in staying and building a long term relationship with your company. Now, as I put on my functional discipline hat,

Unknown Speaker  8:40  
so I'm,

Speaker 2  8:40  
I'm focused on employee labor relations, social media, is an incredible trend right now. So just like the show, and it's a great outcome of social media, but then also, it's fascinating, I love it I've met I've got a lot to learn better on, you know, for a little while in the field, but, you know, kind of navigating through all of that, you know, you want you want the branding of your company to really become apparent through social media, you want to draw people to your company, but there's a dark side. What happens when employees are talking about other employees? What happens if they're saying things that are not as positive about your company, so it's complex, I love it. Problem Solving. And we're sort of building this claim as we're flying as professionals. But I think that is a big challenge. And you know, it's going to be focused practitioners.

Christopher Hensley  9:36  
Absolutely. I know, these you said, talent, just getting the talent and then a big issue is that retention and keeping the people you get happy and keeping them there. I've heard statistics where the cost of losing an employee is huge. It's not just that employee, there's the training, there's a gigantic issue and then also social media. I can see it have, you know, from an HR perspective where it can also there could definitely be some roadblocks there? Is that what people are doing on Facebook, all that sort of thing. I'm gonna just switch gears just a little bit here. Now, our show money manager focuses on financial literacy and health and wellness, when it comes to financial education and wellness programs in the workplace. Where do you see the role of the human resources department?

Speaker 2  10:26  
I think that, for me, that is a really, really good question. So I think we can be, we have a really great role in terms of promoting education and promoting awareness, and kind of being a broker between connecting our employees with resources about how they can obtain education. So what I mean by that, in one way, I've seen employers and move forward in terms of financial literacy is in regards to retirement programs. So I've seen a lot of programs. In fact, we've, we've implemented such a program at my current employer, where we are engaging not just as employees who are nearing retirement age, but much, much earlier. Yeah, and employee lifecycle is great, right? Getting them to understand, okay, what are your options and take accountability and responsibility for making some choices that are that are tied to what their needs are and what their, what their planning needs to be, and for their particular stage, within their employment life cycles do as a part of that auto weaving. I've seen where employers have even extended that beyond the employer to their feelings. And yeah, I think it's great. It's a complex subject, if you don't work, and and finance, it's not always that easy to understand

Christopher Hensley  11:48  
jargon.

Speaker 2  11:51  
And so we try to make it accessible. That's

Christopher Hensley  11:55  
great. It's good to hear real life examples where we've seen some of those programs work sofa we talked about there, the earlier the better, because often when you're when you're really close to retirement, sometimes it's a little too late. The earlier the better. We've done programs out in high schools. And so that's really, we tried to get out there. But now tell me some of the results from some of these programs that you've had, what type of things have you seen happening from those? Well,

Speaker 2  12:24  
from a results perspective, we've really seen a couple of things. One, we've seen people who, first of all, from a results perspective, we've gotten all the positive feedback. Okay, we looked at that as our indicator, are we? Are we meeting the needs ever employees? Do they find it useful? You know, sometimes we, we get feedback where I think the trick with programs like this is really engaging employees to come and attend.

Christopher Hensley  12:51  
I'm involved. And

Speaker 2  12:55  
there's so much to do. And it's hard to make time sometimes for yourself. So the first indicator we're looking at, okay, what are the what's the feedback session? And did people use information to actually change the way they behaved, or change the way to make decisions or demonstrated that they applied some new skills? So we looked at that as well. We, in terms of retirement planning, we look to kind of what is the comfort level now and making decisions, as opposed to before? Which session? So that's another area that we look at sort of look to as well, you know, and I didn't, I didn't really talk about wellness, you know, in response to your question before, but we've also promoted a lot of things with regard to wellness, wellness is huge. And as a profession, it's not just my employer now, but you know, just over the last 10 years, I've been excited to see lots of great, perfect, and there's a direct tie to, you know, the financial health of an organization. So some things I've seen with employees, it's promoting, and promoting sort of education and awareness of both, you know, kind of financial literacy, and then also health and wellness. Right. Many employers are offering subsidies or sort of payments for taking online health assessment.

Christopher Hensley  14:11  
I think that's great. I've heard that as well. And I think it's absolutely fantastic.

Speaker 2  14:15  
Absolutely participating in physical. I mean, at least you have a benchmark for yourself, and stress is on the rise. Right. I think we've seen studies around that. And what I think is great about health and wellness programs to is you're allowing employees, again, to take accountability and responsibility for their own health, right, their own wellness, but then, as a follow up to that you're giving them tools to be able to meet whatever their wellness and health, you know, goals are. And ultimately, I think there's lots of studies that we've sort of touched on a reference kind of during this conversation and others were a healthier workforce, more productive workforce.

Christopher Hensley  14:55  
Absolutely. People are calling in sick they're not at work, but But what would you say along those lines with the wellness programs, the financial literacy programs? What would you say are some of the biggest roadblocks preventing those types of programs from rolling out? Maybe other companies that aren't adopting those kind of programs? Well,

Speaker 2  15:17  
what I find to be the biggest challenge, we talk about this a lot in the HR profession, which is measuring ROI. So sometimes these sometimes the benefits are hard to quantify, and talk about to the business folks within our respective organization. So I would say sometimes I've seen a difficulty in terms of just quantifying what do we think the impact would be long term, and another roadblock could be? Also, and I've seen this in a couple of different organizations, but just basic fear of change, right? You know, sometimes you do get a little bit of pushback from your employee population, they may perceive, if you don't spend a lot of time on messaging this correctly, that all of a sudden, you're asking them private health information, wanting to know, wanting to know a little bit more detail about them, then they traditionally shared. But I think the magic there is in the messaging, right. And I think we have onus and responsibility as, as a profession to work with communications, work with other teams and work with our peers to figure out if you what's the most effective way to message? How do we come across in a way that's genuine that really conveys what we want it to convey. And you mentioned financial jargon earlier, I think a car may be guilty of that as well. We have a lot of jargon, and so on and so forth. So we want to kind of check that and make sure that we're communicating in the right way and sharing a little bit about the benefits, and supervising our employees and their fellow teammates, incentivizing them to participate with us, and those types of programs. And that's kind of how you can help get through those roadblocks a little bit.

Christopher Hensley  17:06  
Absolutely. That's we talked a lot about playing since where it's really essentially adult education. What were you doing, and we talked a lot about plain language, just getting it where people can understand it and knowing who you're getting the message out to. So that's, that's right up our alley there. Now, for our listeners, who would be interested in attending next year's symposium, how would they find out more information?

Speaker 2  17:29  
Well, definitely, I encourage you to visit our website, that's www.hr houston.org. You're gonna get all the information. We've already got date set for next year. Yeah, we got our theme, infinite possibilities, it is going to be something you do not want to miss a lot of fun and great learning opportunity. So visit the website, visit Arlington. Eat as well. And you can continue to get information on how to attend the next symposium. Tracy,

Christopher Hensley  18:00  
do you have any parting thoughts for our listeners today?

Speaker 2  18:03  
Yeah. And you know, here's what I'd like to share. And kind of tying back to one of the questions that we talked earlier about what is one of my favorite parts of attending the symposium. We talked about a lot of different topics today, I would say that if you are in a role within the profession, or within your organization, where you haven't had exposure to talking about return on investment for wellness programs, or you haven't had exposure to social media issues, and how to work through that, or even financial literacy that we've talked about in the scoping retirement program, if you haven't had exposure in your careers, and then come to HR Houston for that we have career, career development sessions. We have big meetings, we have general meeting, we have professional development courses that help you to build that skill set outside of what you might naturally be exposed to in your current role. So we're here to help you we're here to serve, and then help you know work together partner to build up the profession in the greater Houston area. Love it. Love it. Thank

Christopher Hensley  19:07  
you, Tracy, we appreciate you. And you're listening to money matters. You were just listening to Tracy Fraser, president of HR Houston. This was an interview that we conducted right after the HR Gulf Coast symposium this year, was able to attend on Money Matters was invited out to really observe and get an idea of what types of things go on there. We were able to catch up with a one of the attendees and COO Thorn quest with the YMCA of the USA and we were able to grab her a year for a moment and ask her what it was like to be an attendee at this event. Let's listen into that now.

Unknown Speaker  19:49  
Tracy Fraser, president of HR here

Unknown Speaker  19:57  
My name is Annie hornqvist I'm

Christopher Hensley  20:01  
gonna ask you, were you here for both of the days of the symposium? Yes, I

Speaker 3  20:06  
was. Is there a particular HR issue that

Speaker 4  20:14  
particular issue, but it's always good to understand the trends, understand about the leadership and partnerships that HR is continuing to be involved with,

Unknown Speaker  20:26  
especially on

Speaker 4  20:29  
a particular issue, per se, but just the overall knowledge and understanding and continued.

Christopher Hensley  20:36  
Was there something specific that you were hoping to get out of your time that you spent here? Specifically,

Speaker 4  20:42  
I was, I came here to make sure that my strategic credits are up to date, this opportunity, offered 10 strategic credit. So obviously, that was a draw. Absolutely.

Christopher Hensley  20:55  
By now our show is, it's called Money matters. And so we focus on financial literacy. So one of the questions I wanted to ask is, how do you feel about financial education and wellness in the workplace? Well, I

Speaker 4  21:08  
think that both of them are very, very important. First of all, you guys are financially challenged. And I think everybody has we all live paycheck to paycheck. But having a really strong solid financial foundation and understanding, I think makes them more able to focus on and not so much on the data or bills that are due. And wellness, again, is another component, I think it's very important. Obviously, when you're feeling well and healthy, your productivity down, I actually recently took a Financial Peace University, the Dave Ramsey. Show, you think you know, everything you've read enough to know, but just what an eye opener and it truly is financial peace. When you finish through all this? Understanding, you just get to focus more on other things like family.

Christopher Hensley  22:11  
Now, do you does your employer have a financial education or wellness program? They

Speaker 4  22:16  
have a wellness program. They recently did a walk across the United States, where everybody has pedometers and they logged in how far they walked. I think they walked back and forth from one to the other a few times. And that was kind of a fun little activity for the organization to do. They also do have financial education, but it's primarily on retirement and saving for yourself. And they're really focused on that. I think it'd be nice in general to to have education for all staff of finances, because even staff are working, dealing with budget and understanding revenue and expense and all that important stuff. Of course, we're

Christopher Hensley  23:01  
absolutely. Now what have been the results for many of those programs? Have you seen any roadblocks or really positive results? What's happened?

Speaker 4  23:11  
Wellness Program, probably the the biggest roadblock is at the YMCA, where I work. We have so many remotes that don't live in the Chicago area they live. And so I think trying to get them engaged and keep them engaged at times is probably one of those challenges as anybody else would they find they try to find creative and innovative ways to get them involved. As far as the retirement program. I can't really speak on on that. Obviously,

Christopher Hensley  23:50  
thank you for sharing with us. We appreciate it. All right. That was in Cu Thorn quest, who was one of the attendees during the HR Gulf Coast symposium. And next we have Barbara Lane, who is the executive director of HR Houston. We were able to catch up with her during this and get some do actually sit down and do an interview with her as well. So let's listen to that now.

Speaker 5  24:18  
Barbara lane, Executive Director for HR Houston. Hi,

Christopher Hensley  24:23  
Barbara. We have Barbara Elaine here this morning for listeners today. She is the executive director of HR Houston. And Barbara first I just want to start out by thanking you for allowing money matters to attend the HR Gulf Coast symposium this year and wanted to ask you as we close out that symposium, what kind of attendance did you get this year?

Speaker 5  24:49  
We were really encouraged by attendance this year. We had 100 I'm sorry. 14 150 attendees. Wow. Wow. It's the largest to date. And we were very pleased. We had, in addition to those attendees, we had 174, exhibitors and sponsors. Wow, that's

Christopher Hensley  25:09  
huge. That's huge. Of all the people that you see come each year, because this is the 23rd, the 23rd Symposium of all those people that you see show up and attend this. Who are those people that attend? What are they kind of made up from?

Speaker 5  25:28  
They come from all parts of the HR disciplines. For instance, not people who are responsible for employee relations, international HR, leadership, organizational development, training, comp and benefits. Retirement, there's just a large, many facet of HR. Absolutely. And we have all the way from senior VPs, an HR to HR representatives. So it's a broad spectrum of titles as well.

Christopher Hensley  26:07  
Wow. Now, when you talk about is I know it's called the I know, it's called the Gulf Coast symposium, but as far as geographically, where does that golf Coast extend to where? Where do you see people come from? This

Speaker 5  26:21  
year, we had we had 84, Texas cities that were represented 23 states and two foreign countries.

Christopher Hensley  26:35  
Wow. Wow. So it's not just when I heard Gulf Coast, I'm thinking even though we're here in Houston, we're touching several states outside of Texas, as well as even some international folks coming in for this for this event. Really? Absolutely. Why do you think that is? Why do you think people are attending the symposium? What do you think they're getting out of it?

Speaker 5  26:57  
Well, I think they get a career development, we had over 130 different sessions, educational sessions over the two days, and many HR professionals now have are certified as professional human resources or senior professional in human resources. There's also a global HR search, circuit advocate. So they come for that continuing ed. But they also come because we've made it a very affordable conference. Right. And so we've been able to, to hold costs down, partially because we've had great exhibitors and sponsors.

Christopher Hensley  27:41  
So you've gotten groups that have come in that are sponsoring it to help offset some of the costs there. Well, I wish we had a doula as a as a as a financial advisor, I have to keep my continuing education up as well. But we have to sit through some of this online stuff. So there's not really a way for us to knock it out all at once. I can definitely appreciate that. What would you say was your favorite part of the symposium?

Speaker 5  28:07  
This year, we had two really outstanding keynote speakers. On the first day, we had Christine cash and who really looked at things a little more humorous thing. It was a great kickoff, there was lots of energy. The second day, we had Ryan asked us who is one of the top 100 speakers in the US right now. And he talked about retooling and reinventing HR and he was excellent. But it's just fun to watch people come together and and feel like they're getting value and be there pumped from here. That's that's probably my best part.

Christopher Hensley  28:52  
I you know, I was there on the second day, so I got to hear Ryan speak. And he told me when you when you when when I came in that he was a great speaker. And I can just attest to that just after hearing him. That's kind of the topics that he touched on really just a great, great experience. And I could see it in the audience. Just kind of that wave of what he was talking about. It was really, really good. What is now you are kind of that when these keynote speakers talk and everything comes together, I know they were videotaping it and everything was going is on schedule and everything that a lot of times their stuff taking place behind the scenes to make it look easy. When it's really not. I know your focus a lot on doing that. What would you say are some of the some of the work that really goes into it to get ready for the symposium? Well, we have

Speaker 5  29:42  
a very active committee that works with us to have volunteers who spend the whole year working with us and getting familiar with what's going to be going on so that they can help facilitate introduced speakers. They help us pick speakers is they, they also help us even choose the books that are going to be in the bookstore. So we have HR professionals that are involved, involved in all of that, and come back every year. And we've even had to have a drawing for the committee. Wow. It's a great group of people to work with.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai