Good afternoon, welcome to PCI's production workshop series. Today's workshop is personnel wellness and life balance prioritization. This workshop is sponsored by the Architectural Precast Committee. My name is Nicole Clow, Marketing Coordinator at PCI, and I will be a moderator for this session. Before I turn the controls over to your presenters for today, I have a few introductory items to note. All attendee lines are available via the webinar toolbox has an area for you to raise your hand. If you raise your hand, you will receive a private chat message from me. If you have a question, please type it into the questions pane. Also, a pop-up survey will appear after the webinar ends. The handout for this webinar can be found in the handout section of your webinar pane. If you cannot download the handout, please email PCIMarketing at marketing at pci.org. Today's presentation will be recorded and uploaded to the PCI eLearning Center. PCI is a registered provider of AIA-CS, but today's presentation does not contain content that has been endorsed by AIA. Today's presentation is non-CEU. To start off the presentation, I would like to introduce Randy Wilson, Director of Architectural Precast Systems at PCI. Well, thank you, Nicole, and thanks everybody for joining us in this in this series and we'll just jump right right into it. So this is a workshop number 13, which is basically the fourth part of this series on building a plant culture, and Mr. Kevin Martlidge of OrgSource has been gracious enough to assist us over the last four months pulling the content of this this series together. So we definitely, I'll probably thank him 10 times today. So kind of going backwards a little bit, there's the, on the screen you'll see the topics that we covered in the last four workshops. Hopefully you've caught some of those. If you have not, you can go to pci.org, education tab, and you can search search production, which is production workshop, and then you'll be able to pull up the workshops, because these are all recorded and put on PCI's eLearning Center, which you can find at that education tab. So hopefully, if you haven't seen those, you'll be so excited after this one, you'll have to just stop everything and go back and binge watch the other three, because that's what most people do. So today we will follow our typical agenda, which we had a few opening remarks. We want to thank Nicole. We will follow PCI's antitrust policy and code of conduct policies like we do with every one of our events. We'll have a topic overview for a few slides, and then we'll jump right into Kevin and go through our topics for today. And then we do have some time at the end. I say 15 minutes, but it's typically been closer to five minutes, because we're pretty chatty Kathy's. But go ahead and send us your questions in the chat box. I'll be monitoring that throughout the presentation, and I'll be able to pull those out and answer as many as we can at the end. So again, we'll follow PCI's antitrust compliance guidelines along with PCI's antitrust policy and code of conduct policy through this presentation, which says that we will just be help grow the industry and help educate our precast producers in a very general fashion. So where does this whole topic of building a plant culture come from? Well, it originated through the Architectural Precast Concrete Committee survey. When we surveyed the Architectural Precast Concrete members back in 2019, early 2020, we asked for what kind of topics was important to them. And this plant culture was kind of close to the top of the list. So this is workshop 13, because we've covered most of the topics within that survey from workshop 1 through 13. So this kind of completes that list on the survey. We'll be doing another survey probably coming in committee days to see what topics we will be discussing in the future. Then this plant culture specifically, these four topics were addressed or proposed at a roundtable discussion at our production workshop in the fall of 2020 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. A couple of producers brought these four specific topics up, and we spent about 30 minutes discussing them. So that was the impetus for this series. So the premise of this is continuing to build a successful company. And most successful companies have things like a defined mission and vision statement. They clearly communicate to all within their organization, and then they share the vision and execute collectively as a group of employees or a group of people with a common goal. And that's the premise of everything we talk about. And so the goals for you would be, first of all, is our goals or action statements really is define your plant's culture, identify the gaps between what your perception of your culture is and what reality is, and then execute some effective changes to get you from where you're at today to where you really want to be. So it starts kind of with self-reflection. So hopefully through this series, you've done a lot of self-reflection through some of these topics and some of the details that Kevin has shared with us. It gives you really an opportunity to say, are we doing this? Are we not doing this? And start asking the questions within your own organization of where you're at and where you need to be. And that creates that common vision based on a consistent principles and actions. And then we also can help you establish expectations through verbal and nonverbal communication. This really isn't rocket science. This is really kind of comes back to how you treat your how you live life and how you treat the people around you. And a lot of these principles are coming from the books from Stephen Covey, Principle-Centered Leadership. This book has been around for 30 plus years. It was one of the first books that I read when I started selling precast concrete back in the 90s. And it's something that served me very well through my career. Kevin is also a great resource and you can get a hold of Kevin at OrgSource. His email address is on the slides as we come through here. But you can reach out to me if you want to get a hold of Kevin. And then also just internet searches. We all do that every day. But taking some time away from maybe looking at sports scores to try to look at a topic that might be pertinent to these to these webinars might might be helpful also. So Workshop 10. What are these topics that the architectural committee wanted? Well, Workshop 10 was defining what a good culture looks like. A little bit of a high high level, but we did dive into some some really deep topics as we went through those those bullet points there. Workshop 11 was setting expectations and establishing accountability. We tread kind of lightly on a couple of those subjects because when you start talking about working relationships between you know superiors and and people in the plant or people within the plant between bed foreman and and you know your workers on your on your crew. But but you really have to hold everybody accountable. And that's a top down in a bottom up kind of a conversation we had. And Workshop number 12 takeaways were basically developing and and mentoring personnel. We train people every day. We emulate others around us. So you know look yourself in the mirror. Are you are you doing everything every day in alignment with your culture? And are you actually helping employees in your company move through their career? Are you a catalyst for that? Which is which is really the subject that we talked about primarily in that Workshop number 12. So for Workshop 13, we're going to talk about personal wellness and life balance prioritization. But I want to start with with safety. Employee safety is our number one job. I know it's just it's a it's a buzzword. It's a catchphrase, but it truly is exactly what we need to be doing on a day-to-day basis. And some of the couple of questions that I want to bring in kind of as a as a safety share. What are the major causes of construction related deaths? And and one of those three that I came up with through through research was falls, electrocution, and the caught-betweens. Hopefully you guys are talking to your your folks every day about these kind of things and you're watching out for each other and making sure that nobody puts themselves in these these situations. And I know PCI has some some toolbox talks on each one of these these subjects. But overall construction workers fatalities are coming from chronic diseases, muscular skeletal disorders, noise-induced hearing loss, respiratory disease, and skin disorders. And those what's the difference between the first three and those bottom five is length of time. Those first three can happen instantaneously where those last ones happen over time and they they hit us when you're as old as I am. You're hey, what honey? I can't hear you. Those come over time. So even though that the air protection, eye protection, those kind of things you don't and working safely with your your joints and your muscles doesn't seem like it bothers you today when you're 25 or 35, but they start to wear down over over repetitiveness. So hopefully you guys are doing your best to make sure that you're looking out for your workers safety today, tomorrow, and forever. So but outside of safety, we are going to talk about these next four items, which is personal wellness, work-life balance, setting employees up for success, and then we'll wrap it all up at the end with a nice big bow. Couldn't find a bow graphic, but you get the idea. So with that, I'll get Kevin on the line here. Kevin has done a yeoman's job. He spent a lot of time and a lot of effort on this. Kevin and I have had a lot of a lot of really good conversations. So I really appreciate Kevin sharing a lot more than we have time to share on these webinars, but I've learned a lot from him. He's a true true professional and his experience has shown it. So we'll go ahead and just jump right in today. Usually I have a real clever question for Kevin, but I think we'll just we'll just go right into this whole thing. I'm going to let Kevin kind of run with this. So this is this is going to be a little bit different approach today because I think, you know, personal wellness, work-life balance, they can mean a lot of different things to different people. And these these terms are buzzwords or catchphrases can have a negative connotation as just just being noise, you know, managers just being noisy and really not following through and not taking action on on these these buzzwords. So with all this preface, what I asked Kevin to do is define these terms, you know, personal wellness, work-life balance, etc. and give us some examples of how to turn these concepts into mutually beneficial actions, which could be driven from bottom up or top down. So with that, I'll let Kevin just take off. All right. Well, thank you so much, Randy. And it's been a pleasure doing all these workshops with you. So our webinars with you. So for those of you that have been able to attend all of them, thanks for me as well. I think it's really great as an industry and specifically, you know, as a producer that you guys are thinking about these things because it's definitely important and it definitely will help kind of take your organization to that next level. If you look at all the topics that we've talked about over the last four webinars. So so with that, we'll kind of like you said, jump into it, you know, and in personal wellness and life balance. I mean that with all of this stuff, it's it could be defined differently by everybody. Right. But, you know, the way I'm kind of prefacing this or describing it as personal wellness is like your individual kind of overall health wellness, right? That you think of what kind of shape are you in the mental health that you have, you know, all the interactions you have with maybe your doctors or your medical people or staff that you may go to over time for different reasons and so forth where that life balance prioritization. It kind of includes some of that stuff, but it really has more to do with like, you know, your work and we all spend a majority of our lives, you know, at work with the people that we work with and how do we balance that in our goals and values of, you know, hey, wanting to provide for our family and advance in our career and all those things. How do we balance those with life, right? And with our family, our kids, our significant others, our fun things that we like to do to kind of recharge our battery, so to speak, when we leave the office or leave the plant. And so that's where the two kind of differentiate, you know, life balance is more, you know, both of them are kind of juggling acts like I talk about. So the life balance, we're constantly, you know, juggling work with our personal lives and other things that may come in and impact our ability to work or work impacting our ability to be with our families and so forth. And in that personal wellness, it's a juggling act too, you know, especially as you get older or you get involved in more things or you start to have kids or you get married or you get, you know, into a serious relationship or whatever it might be, all that kind of family health and parenting and the financial aspects of that, you know, being connected to your community and at a local or national level and just your all mental health of that employee kind of falls into that bucket. So I know that's kind of a long definition of both, but, you know, the personal wellness is more I think on the, you know, your personal you know, things that we have listed here like your family health, parenting, financial mental health, that kind of stuff where your life balance is how do you balance all that with your job and what you're required to do when you hit the floor. We can go to the next slide if you want. Oh, go ahead. Yeah, we talked a lot about, you know, the mental health aspect of personal wellness and life balance and there are some good resources out there and so, I mean, have you run into I know this is kind of off script, but I was just kind of thinking, have you run into cases to where maybe somebody at work that you're close to has had some personal issues and it affects their work and making sure that you have something in place as part of HR policy or another way of making sure that that individual is getting the help they need without being detrimental to the overall goal of your precast plan in this case. Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, depending on what kind of health insurance and so forth, I'm not a health insurance kind of expert by any means, but a lot of the health plans that are out there now have like employee assistance programs that are usually free of charge to the employees. So if they have some mental health issues or whatever, they can anonymously call a number and talk to somebody about that and then they will hook them up with some support, you know, whatever that may look like. Other organizations, you know, they may have somebody that's you know, kind of a third party that people can just talk to if there's issues or things going on and you have to be very careful because you have all the HIPAA laws and things like that that you have to follow. But, you know, ideally if you have that extra kind of employee support for mental health type issues, ideally best practice would be that it's some program through kind of your health insurance that you're offering or somebody that's trained in those kind of conversations that will, you know, be able to walk that person through whatever it is that they're going through. And I think from a culture standpoint, you know, it's important to build that culture up where it's okay if something's bothering you, that person has the resources available to them to go do something about it. So as a leader or as an owner or whatever, you're making all of this stuff we're going to talk about today it's awareness of your employees that they may or may not use all of it or they may use some of it or may never even look at it again. The goal is that you have the opportunity there for them if they are, if they do become aware or there is an issue with mental health or something, they know where to go for the resources and they feel supported in being able to do that. So I think that's at the bottom line, that's the key thing we're trying to get here is that your employees are feeling supported to have the resources available to them to, you know, look into mental health or whatever the issue may be. I was reading stuff about our children these days because of COVID and how they're in their challenges and I know that can be, and I saw that word parenting that we had on the screen and it resonated with me that I'm sure there's parents out there regardless of the age of your children that they are going through a lot also. So go ahead. Yeah, so you know, as you mentioned before, there's a lot of research out there on the internet for these things and as I was kind of preparing for this and doing some slides with you the other day, you know, I came across this chart and it's from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and their vision is building a culture of health, right? So everything that goes into that and I couldn't find the exact date from this data of when it was published but I thought it was very telling in that, you know, not only do we want to create a culture that's very supportive for our employees but, you know, based on the research they did, you know, supporting employee health and well-being can reduce lost time, can reduce lost revenue even, and can reduce strain from like chronic illness. And so from a business perspective and a human perspective too, you know, if you're really focused on that employee health and well-being, it can have significant impacts to not only your lost time and revenue but also, you know, the overall health of those employees, whether they take advantage of it or not. If you're creating that culture of well-being and, hey, here's all the resources we have and here's all the things that we do to help support that, it really makes an impact with your organization. And then doing that, as the survey says, results in employers saving money, right? Because you're not gonna have those extra costs that may come with lost time, workman's comp, all that kind of stuff that may be going on. Your employees are gonna save money, right? Because when you're healthy, there's not extra charges for health, you know, doctor's visits and things like that. And your employees at the bottom line, they're being healthier. And with all this, like I said earlier, it's a juggling act and you can't say, you have to be healthy if you work here. But if you're providing them with all these resources and opportunities to be healthier, to get engaged with things for their wellbeing, it will have dividends not only for them, but also for you as an employer. And the bottom line is, you're taking care of your employees on a different level, right? Not just providing them a great place to work, but you're concerned specifically about their health and their wellbeing, which that says a lot. There's a lot of companies that don't focus on that. Yeah, and I know that we have, at PCI, we've had a couple of individuals we've had to replace, you know, through attrition. And I know a lot of the hot button is, you know, developing employees and hiring employees and retaining employees and this whole workforce development. When employees have an opportunity to either stay at a company or go to a different company, I think a lot of this is in their decision-making process anymore, even during the interview process. I think because of the internet that research that a lot of them coming in, employees that are coming in, candidates can say, hey, I researched all this stuff on the internet. I'm empowered now to ask these very tough questions and demand some of this stuff. So being proactive, I'm making a statement versus a question, but being proactive and providing these and presenting this to an employee coming in, I think would be very powerful to show the precast producer's professionalism and plays right into the onboarding and the cultural focus on personal wellness and life balance. Absolutely. And we've said a couple of times throughout this webinar series that, you know, culture is kind of that X factor. And if somebody is, you know, comparing you versus another producer, say, or another company, and you're able to talk about the employee wellbeing and the employee programs and their specific development and all of these things, it's gonna help set you apart from not only to attract that great talent, right? Cause it's extra benefits and stuff that's coming for it, but it's also gonna help retain those employees as well. And every, you know, everybody has opportunity to move on and move up and move change companies and all that kind of stuff. But at the end of the day, we want to provide them the best culture and the best environment and the best support we possibly can, both personally and professionally while they're with your organization. And this is just one other piece of it. So let's talk about, yeah, let's talk about some action statements, you know, let's develop a program. What's some of your recommendations for developing a program? Yeah, I think with a lot of this stuff, we've been talking about, it's like, talk to your employees, you know, maybe get a small group of them together when it's time to maybe renew your health benefits or, you know, once a year, you have a small group that you can get together and ask them, what are they interested in? What are some things around even personal health or wellness or life balance? What are some things that are, are they struggling with? What are some things that they're interested in? What are some things that we could do as an organization to support some of those things? And then, you know, take that information and kind of develop how you can support that uniqueness of the individuals by creating support in the main areas of impact. You know, and there's a lot of, I've worked with some of the greatest companies in FedEx and Xerox and some of these large corporations and they have these great like, you know, employee benefit kind of packages. But I was always kind of sifting through, okay, what does it mean to me? And it was very generic and very vanilla to everybody, right? And I never felt like there was a personal connection between me and maybe some of the benefits that were out there. And there's some you just have to offer just as an employer. But if you can really get to that uniqueness and kind of understand, you know, some of the trends or the things that your staff is interested in, and you can kind of come up with and develop some areas that can make an impact in there, that's just gonna be above and beyond maybe what some other organizations might do. I think it's also important to offer several options. And, you know, just because you offer 10 things, there may be, you know, eight of them may not turn out to be much, but it's there if somebody needs it. But you wanna offer a lot of different variety of things in terms of personal wellness. And we'll get to that on the next slide. But, you know, try not to just, you know, be pigeonholed into like one or two things that you think are important. Think outside the box, you know, you gotta have those one or two very impactful things, but what else is there, right? What else can we be offering in terms of promoting wellness to our employees and a great life balance? And then with all this, we said it once before, but you gotta remember to maintain the confidentiality and kind of the HIPAA requirements when discussing personal health and wellbeing. So when you're having those small, say group discussions about what your interests are and what your things are, I always recommend to kind of provide the context and the guardrails of that discussion. Like, hey, we're not getting into any personal health discussions here, but just in general, what are some things that you guys like to do to stay healthy or to be active or to be involved with your community and kind of, you know, direct the conversation that way as opposed to personal, you know, health issues that can get you into a little bit of legal trouble if you go the wrong way. So, yeah. So here's some of those options you were talking about. Yeah, yeah. And there's hundreds of these, right? These are just some of the key ones that I've seen in other organizations or have been offered in companies that I've worked with, but, you know, like nutrition counseling, that's a big thing, you know, now, especially because everybody's kind of remote workforce sometimes, and how do you, you know, promote a healthy lifestyle in terms of the nutrition and things that you eat? So just having, you know, opportunities to talk with a nutritionist maybe, or having a, you know, once a year lunch and learn kind of webinar thing for people that are interested to have a nutritionist come in and just talk about the importance of that. My daughter's a sophomore at Purdue University studying to be a pharmacist, and she took a nutrition class this year, this semester is just a elective. And she's like, oh my gosh, this opened my eyes to so many things. And it was just, you know, she never would have done that, but it was an option, something she was interested in, and it's changed her outlook on how she eats and stuff. And so even though maybe not everybody would go to that nutrition counselor or something that comes in, it's a great opportunity just to provide awareness to people that may be interested. You know, cancer screenings, blood drives, cholesterol tests. One thing we didn't put on here was, you know, flu shots. When I worked for FedEx and a company out in New York City, a printing company, they had somebody come in once a year that gave flu shots, you know, if you're interested, you just sign up, you go into an office, they had set up for it, you get your flu shot and you're done. So being able to set things like that up, you know, having the American Red Cross come in and do a blood drive in your office. It just, all those things provide awareness around wellbeing. Having team outings to hike, play pickleball, put that in there because I love pickleball, 5Ks for charity, et cetera. You know, things like that, that, you know, a lot of companies have softball leagues, whatever. Having those things that allow people the choice to go out and still stay involved with their team after work but to, you know, to be active and do things and to recharge those batteries. Same thing with the company teams, bowling, softball, running, cycling. And then we mentioned it before, but the collaboration with local community impact associations, American Red Cross, United Way. When I was with FedEx, a cool thing they did once, they came in and taught a, you know, really brief one hour CPR class for people that wanted to learn CPR. And it's like, had nothing to do with working at FedEx, but it was just something that was, it was just different to give you some awareness around that. And so anything around those areas, think outside the box, there's no right or wrong answers here, but the key is to tie it to some of the things that you know your team might be enjoying or might be interested in. Well, it just, you know, addressing this to everybody outwardly is that we wanted to spend some time on this slide. So hopefully, and I had some fun finding some cool pictures, but hopefully you guys are out there thinking about that and saying, you know what, this does, this can make a big difference. You know, it can get tricky when you have 200 employees and all of them have 10 year old kids that play soccer or baseball or hockey or whatever. And you're always asking for, hey, if you 400 bucks for sponsorship here and 300 bucks sponsorship there, it can add up very, very fast, but at the same time, it can mean a lot to an employee. It can mean a lot to a community. So aligning these things with your overall plant culture. So when you start to revise this culture program, you know, throwing all your eggs in one basket. So I know an architectural firm used to give away a lot of money to a lot of different charities and that they felt like that their money, they didn't know where their money went, if it even went anywhere, they didn't good. So what they did is they cut off all charities and they started their own one major charity. And that works for them, but it may not work for you. It may work Habitat for Humanity. We're gonna go build one house every year. That might be a great thing that aligns with your culture. And that's good too, because you can get a lot, maybe get a high percentage of your employees. But, you know, the idea is to, based on what you and I have talked and what I've learned a little bit so you can correct me where I'm wrong, but the idea is, you know, don't go and, you know, try to become, you know, donate to a fishery somewhere in Florida, if you've got a precast plant in Montana, you know, make sure it aligns with what you're doing, whether it's one big thing or a bunch of little things, because at the end of the day, it's for your employees as much as is for any other reason why you're doing it. Absolutely, that's well said. You know, another one too, that's not on there that I just got to thinking about is, you know, do you have a local gym that you could provide a discounted or a free membership to your employees, you know, that they could go to? It'd be some cost to the Eurydice Association, but, you know, I know a lot of organizations do that and they offer that just to give them even something else they could do as an extra benefit. So definitely. And that's great. Yeah, and when we give these webinars, we always look at what's the downside, what's the landlines, what are the things that we have to avoid? So I wanted you to expand on some things that we want to be conscious of as we put this, as you would put this together for a company. Yeah, so I think, you know, in this one, especially if you start looking at like work-life balance and, you know, you're again talking to your employees, understanding what good work-life balance looks like for you or for them specifically, then how do you align that with your strategy? And, you know, this first point, you may not like the answer, right? They may tell you some things that, gosh, you know, I understand that, but that's just not, we're not able to maybe do that, right? And here's why, right? Not just say no, but here's why that may not work. But I love your idea and let's kind of continue to look at, maybe there's some piece of that we could do or whatever. So, you know, you need to ask the questions, but you may not like what they answer, but it's still giving you some insight into what their interests are and what work-life balance and wellness and stuff means to them. And, you know, be aware of that lack of participation, being ridiculed, it being too big of an ask, et cetera. You know, it's a lot of this stuff, I've been in organizations before where you have like the softball team, for instance, and there was pressure that if you weren't on the softball team, or, you know, just like in high school, we're picking teams at the playground or something and you don't get chosen, you gotta be very aware of that stuff, right? And so you may either have a lack of participation or is it something that everybody can participate in that wants to, and you're not excluding people just because of, you know, what maybe you're offering, right? And being very aware that there could be some of that ridicule going on, depending on your culture, that, oh, you're part of the softball team, why don't you come over here and play this? And so we're not saying that that could happen, but it's just something to be aware of as you're coming up with these things. And then ask yourself too, how might an established worker answer the questions compared to a new hire, right? And so it's easy to kind of get the insight from your team that is already there and working with you and been there for maybe a long time, but what is it that the new hire wants that's coming in? What would they say if you're asking them about specifically work-life balance or what they're interested in outside of work or their personal wellbeing? And, you know, you can't, we don't all have crystal balls, right? And can't, you know, guess what they're going to say, but based on the feedback we get from our employees, our culture, and kind of maybe some research of, you know, what people are looking for in the workplace, you could get a pretty good guess about, you know, what's that new hire, what are they going to say? And are we offering those things that can attract great talent and retain that talent? And then, you know, signs of trouble that maybe there's some things you need to look into in terms of work-life balance specifically is, you know, there's higher levels of irritation and anxiety amongst your team. There's maybe lower productivity or effectiveness. There's a lack of that personal growth. And, you know, the best way as a leader or an owner or a supervisor to see these things is to just be engaged with your team, have those conversations, check in with them, making sure that, you know, how are things going. Looking at metrics even that, you know, if you're talking about productivity and effectiveness, if you have to, but be very aware, you know, because as irritation and anxiety and productivity and things start to be impacted, there could be something going on as a root cause. It's maybe a work-life balance issue or even into the wellness side, maybe they have some personal things going on and they need to be put in contact with the employee assistance program or an outside resource because they're maybe going through some things financially or family oriented at their, you know, at home. So it's just really good to always keep that temperature of your team and understanding what's irritating them, what they're anxious about and how you can then support them in terms of, you know, your culture from a work-life balance and a personal wellness perspective. Yeah, I always go back to the term, adulting is hard. Well, managing is hard. So when I looked at this and we started to talk about it and we always preface everything by that. But anyway, let me say, how may an established worker answer the questions compared to a new hire? I look at what happened a couple of years ago and it may still be going on is when all the signs would go up on every street corner, come work here for 30, work at Amazon for 15 bucks an hour. I mean, how does somebody feel when they're, they've been working for 10 or 12 years at a facility, wherever it may be, and they're making 12 bucks an hour and then they see a sign pop up and said, they've got new hires at 15 bucks an hour. And then going immediate perception for somebody who's, you know, human, somebody that they look at that and go, that's gotta be an easier, the grass is greener over there, it has to be because I get two bucks more an hour. So I think there's, it's a, there's landmines within this whole system like everything else. And going in with eyes wide open, unlike Wiley Coyote, going in with eyes wide open, I think is kind of the key critical component of making this successful for any company. And this is a little bit of a repeat, but I think it's important that we go through these one more time a little bit with some expansion of, you know, because what are some of the considerations to make sure that when you are taking these actions, that you make sure that the program is as sound as possible? Yeah, well, I think, you know, we've talked about already that remember not everybody will participate and that's okay, but the goal is, is that you're offering enough variety that you're, you know, overall you're making that impact. And I think this bullet point number two on here is, I mean, it's so true in like not only this topic, but everything you do that providing opportunities and specifically awareness allows choice. And you'd be surprised that just even those people that are maybe totally against like, say nutrition, or, you know, they're like, oh, that's, yeah, we got to eat healthy, but I don't care specifically about that. Or, you know, they're not specifically interested in something that you're providing, you're still providing that awareness. And I guarantee you at least spark their interest enough to say, okay, I'm not interested in that, but if they hear other people talking about it, they may become interested in it, right? And so you're providing that opportunity for people to just be aware of all that. And if you're an organization that you're always talking about personal wellness and great work-life balance and this and that, it's gonna create that perception of everybody that, hey, it's just so important for the leadership of this organization because we're always talking about it, right? And so that's gonna allow people to have that choice and they may not be interested in it now, but in a year from now, it may change and now they are interested in it and you have something that's there for them. And so I think that second bullet point is, if you think about nothing else, how can we provide these opportunities to create awareness around personal wellness and life balance that allows people to have a choice based on their own personal things, right? And then, you know, obviously selecting activities to support your employee's lifestyle and interest, you know, that's just getting to know your people, whether it's for this topic or whatever, it's important to understand your employees at a level that's not just the supervisor and, you know, worker kind of relationship. You have to always remain professional, right? And we don't always have to be friends outside of work, but it helps to build that trust and that relationship with them on a professional level, just asking them, hey, what are your, you know, what are your desires for your career? Where do you wanna go next? What do you value in work? What do you value in working here? Those kinds of things. And it continues to help you build that story and that context around how to develop that culture within your organization regarding personal wellness and life balance. And I think there was, we've talked about this study a couple of times. There's a Gallup poll a few years ago that, you know, turnover within an organization, it's like something like $7 trillion it costs companies annually. And they found that 50 to 60% of the people leave companies that were in this study because they didn't feel like their employer cared about them or they were not engaged enough in their everyday activity. Like they weren't engaged in the mission. So those are all things, if you think about that, 60% of the people that leave, it's because their employer doesn't feel like they have, they're interested in their success and who they are. And so that goes to show you how important it is to be connected to your employees, not just on a professional level, but that personal level. What is it you want out of working here? What do you value? What do you, you know, how can I support you? Having those conversations is so key. And then you always have to assess your offerings and programs, just because you roll them out and you have them, it's always healthy to look at them once a year and say, hey, did that work? How do we need to tweak it? Do we need to adjust it? And also, you know, have conversations with your healthcare provider when it's time to renew. They could have some new offerings that they can offer as part of your premiums and so forth that you're paying. They could have some different programs like that. So always be assessing what you're doing and just don't be satisfied with, hey, we got a great personal wellness program and it's going to be the same for the next five years. We don't have to look at it. That's just the opposite. You need to be actively managing it and assessing it, in my opinion. Yeah, definitely. And kind of this other question and kind of continuation of that is that, is, you know, setting employees up for success in work and in life. I mean, whether they're going to stay with your plant or stay in precast or whatever, you know, I picture this employee who worked with you for four or five years or more, gets an opportunity that's maybe more in line with their skillset or their lifestyle and they're driving by the plant and they go, that was a great run. I loved working there. I wonder if this guy's still there or they still go out and they're still in the same bowling league with those guys or whatever the situation is. So what can we do to help encourage a work-life balance in a mutually beneficial manner, you know, short-term, long-term? And I liked some of the things that you brought up on this topic. Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think communication is key. I've talked about it a few times, right? You got to talk to your employees. You got to have that communication. You have to have that understanding about what their reality is, what you're able to provide them. How do you align that reality and perception with everything in terms of what you offer and what good looks like? And, you know, I think that third bold point, align responsibilities with their life goals, skillset, departmental functions, et cetera. And, you know, if you think about all the people that work in your plant, could you honestly say, okay, everybody's skillset and life goals is aligned with what they're currently doing, right? If they are, great. And there's some people that are just like, hey, I know this is a stepping stone to bigger and better things, but what are those bigger and better things? And I think the more you can have those conversations with them and they feel like, hey, somebody personally cares about my goals and my career and me personally, it's going to keep them engaged in your organization. And then to your point, you know, I think that's the biggest compliment you could ever get as a leader and owner is that somebody leaves your organization, you see them 10 years down the road and they're still talking about all the things they learned from you or the culture they worked in or the things, the positives that went on in your organization while you were there. Of course, you don't ever want to lose employees, but you made an impact on that person in some way, shape or form. And that's the kind of culture we want to develop that we're able to do that, right? And we're able to provide that opportunity for impact on all these areas. Yeah, and I think that's, you know, I got a couple of personal things that we could share in a minute, but I would definitely wanted to kind of start to wrap all this up of these four webinars. And so some of this stuff comes from all the way back to the first webinar and all the way through to today. So I wanted to like to kind of recap this series for us. Sure, well, I think that the topics that we covered are key things to be looking at when you're assessing or building that great plant culture. So kudos to the community that came up with some of the topics and, you know, it's been great work with you on kind of developing these, but we said at the very first one, these things are not just in the precast industry. This is any company, any association, any organization in the world, in my opinion, these are key things to be focusing on as you're building that culture. And it all starts with your clear vision and mission, right? If your team isn't aware of what the mission and vision of the plant is, or you as a leader, you're never gonna be aligned to the point where you're gonna achieve your full greatness, in my opinion, right? And it's easy to say, well, our mission is to produce concrete, right? Precast concrete. Well, no, it goes more than that. How are we gonna do that? So what's the vision and mission and why is that important? And what's the impact we're trying to make on the industry? Understanding that one as a leadership team is important because I've worked with organizations where even the members of the executive leadership team don't communicate it the same way, even though it's written on the wall, right? We all talk about this as our mission. So you gotta make sure it's all aligned, thereby understands it. You gotta always be working on communication and trust, being intentional with your actions, providing the why behind decisions, getting input when you're making decisions, being very aware of the impact that you're making as a leader and those around you, and how can you intentionally adjust those things to always be building trust, which will then allow your people to feel empowered and the ability to contribute to the organization and not be afraid to raise their hand and say, hey, I see a mistake or hey, I made a mistake. I'm sorry about that, but help me understand how I can make sure that doesn't happen again. And so you're building this whole culture of trust that's centered around communication and you're empowering people to deliver your mission and vision. And then we talked about a little bit today, aligning personal goals with professional goals, really understanding what it is your people want to achieve both personally and professionally and helping them and supporting them the best that you possibly can. We talked a lot about implementing mentorship for personal and professional development. I think that's a great way to do that, especially that onboarding and new hire time, that whole process from interview to offer to onboarding is so critical because those are the first impressions of your plant. Those are the first impressions of your team. And if you can tie them to a mentor or somebody that can shadow those first 90 days or you're always processing and bringing people on board the same way and going over your values and your vision and your mission and how trust is important. And here's our personal wellness and our life balance concepts and how we handle that. That's all just so important because those first 90 days are critical for them to really just have that buy-in and integration into your team. And then we talked about today's webinar, customize that personal wellness and work-life balance program for each department and employee and make it a goal for the whole organization that we really care about personal wellness and work-life balance, but then come up with ways to do that. And I know PCI headquarters, I've worked with you on your culture statement and what that means. And there's a lot of work-life balance and having fun and accountability and all that kind of stuff is what you guys really care about when it comes to your culture. And it's in an effort not to micromanage, but so people are always aware of this is what good looks like. And this is what we do to help support you. And it's okay if you don't agree with that, but let's have a discussion because maybe there's some things we can change. So with all this, it's all about personal awareness and understanding. Yeah, and we put these bullets in the kind of the top-down format, but I would encourage people to look at this from the bottom up. You got to start somewhere and most companies have to start with the top down. But when you get to a large, like most precast plants, bottom up is also a good way to look at this list. So the other way to look at this list is kind of something visual. Yeah. And so I like this visual and it's in the handout where communication and trust is the center of everything that you do. And you've taught us that Kevin and everything else just kind of resonates off of that. As long as you're open and honest with your communication, obviously there are certain things in a business you can't share with everybody, but if you're open and honest about communication, you trust your employees, they can tell you anything without any repercussions and you build that camaraderie, then I think that everything else starts to flow a little bit easier when you do that. And then what you shared with me was this personal wellness wheel, which when you look at the personal wellness wheel, it's more individualistic and then how to bring those together is kind of what I wanted you to kind of expound on a little bit. Yeah, no, absolutely. And so, the things on the left are kind of your culture, like you talked about, right? All the things that we need to do to help build our people up and to be successful as an organization and all those things. And along the right, there's hundreds of versions of this personal wellness wheel out on the internet if you go type in personal wellness wheel. But I think the key thing that you look at here is the, what is it? Seven different areas of social, physical, intellectual, emotional, occupational, financial, and spiritual. And spiritual, not in the fact that, hey, we have to have like, we're very religious, so to speak, or we support one religion over the other or whatever, but it's just the person's connectivity to something that they feel is important. All of these things, it's kind of goes back to the, it's a juggling act. Everybody is juggling these things at all points in time, regardless of what you believe or don't believe in, all of the things that we juggle in our life kind of fall into these categories in some way, shape, or form, and it's different for everybody. And so, if we can, as leaders or organizations, focus on just understanding that everybody may be going through or have different explanations or impact in these areas, how can we then support those in a way that we can continue to be a great organization, but we're also taking care of our people on the wellness side, because we maybe have programs or support or things that we understand about them in these areas that we can then help them overcome or enhance or support as they continue to work with us. Yeah, and a couple things I wanted to kind of add to this. One thing that we talked about from day one, and we didn't even put it in the slides, which I kind of want to slap myself for, is in any kind of exercise program, any kind of, and I talked to your children about this, is rest. Nothing cures ills like rest, right? When someone passes away, it's like time heals all wounds. And maybe sometimes an employee just needs rest. And I think that's one of the things that you could work into your culture as a producer, is sharing some of the most physical activities in the plant, making sure that one person isn't on the, quote unquote, beating the rock pile for 10 hours a day, five days a week. Maybe you share some of the more physical activity and cross-train people to say, yeah, it's something we have to do every single day and somebody has to do it. Well, you get to do it for the first two hours every Wednesday. And that ties back to the long-term health of an individual. So that's part of it. Maybe rest for somebody, turning to the administration side, rest might be, or I guess out in the plant, three-day weekends. Maybe one week a month, they work four 10s. So they get that extra day off and they can, especially when they say, well, I'm gonna use it for rest and not use it for something else. Maybe it is a late start kind of a situation to where one week they can show up at 10 o'clock versus showing up at eight o'clock and work from 10 to six or something. So there's all kinds of ways you can help people encourage rest, rejuvenation. I think that's one of the things that I would like to, I would offer to people, because especially it's hard work out there in precast plants. And we didn't get any questions today, which I was kind of surprised the first time we had any questions, but I want to thank Kevin so much for all your work. It's been a pleasure working with you over the next few, the last few months and actually the last three years and looking forward to continuing your relationship going forward. Same here. Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure being able to do this with you. And I hope it's very impactful to all the plants out there and everybody that's been listening. Well, I think it has been the response I've got is very positive. And again, if you want to go back and look at some of these older ones, you can find them at this education link and you can search production workshops. But I'm gonna stop here and give a little personal story. Hopefully everybody just hangs on for another minute or two. And this is very pertinent to this whole thing. So early in my precast concrete career, there's been three to four people, four people actually that I can name that was very instrumental. And they were all part of my first four years in precast. And one of them reached their 45th year milestone. His name is Scott Kemp with High Concrete in Springboro, Ohio. And Scott has been an estimator for High Concrete for 45 years. So if anybody wants to email Scott Kemp at High Concrete, I'm sure you could, I don't know what his email is off the top of my head, but skimp at high.nat or something, and congratulate him. He would be shocked. He's pretty much an introvert, but I learned so much from him in regards to how to definitely estimate, how to approach a project, how to engage in dialogue with my precast plant, engage in dialogue with our plant managers, and just how to work with our erectors, the front end specifications, how to read them, how to interpret them. Just learned a tremendous amount of him. Worked side by side about two years with him. And then I worked with him for about 10 years in sales. So he's kind of the antithesis of what we're looking at. A consummate professional, someone who looked at precast as a career, he was a great mentor. He's a great coworker. He's just somebody that we all should emulate to be like. So, and to have a 45 year precast career is pretty much hats off. So we are out there as precast nerds. We are out there. So, and I think that one of the reasons why Scott stuck around for so long is because of the management there at Concrete Technology that's now High Concrete, that's now High Concrete out of Springboro has done a great job over the last 50 plus years of putting their employees first. So just wanted to put that shout out out there. Maybe it was appropriate, maybe it wasn't, but it was appropriate to me. So hopefully that encourages people at all stages of your career that you'll focus on all your employees, because I know his family is great family and they appreciated his hard work over all those years. So I appreciate you guys listening to that. And with that, again, one more thank you to Kevin and I'll pitch it back over to Nicole. Wonderful. Thank you, Randy. On behalf of PCI, I'd like to thank Kevin and Randy for a great and informative presentation. If you have any further questions about today's webinar, please email marketingatpci.org. Thank you again. Have a great day and please stay safe.

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