Summary:

Rhonda Davenport, Chief People Officer at Cain Watters & Associates, shares her insights on how to grow and maintain an elite team during difficult times. She emphasizes the importance of creating a culture where associates feel appreciated and cared for, which is achieved through transparent communication and actions that back up the words.

Rhonda discusses how  Cain Watters experienced a hiring surge during the pandemic due to their reputation as subject matter experts in the dental industry. She highlights the challenges of integrating new hires during a time of remote work and shares strategies such as video calls, proactive outreach, and in-person meetings to foster camaraderie.

Rhonda also explains how  Cain Watters implemented an office optional approach to accommodate the changing work-life balance preferences of their associates. The key to maintaining loyalty and belonging within the organization lies in effective communication, transparency, and intentional actions.

Key Takeaways:

Creating a culture where associates feel appreciated and cared for is crucial for maintaining an elite team.

Transparent communication and actions that back up the words build trust and loyalty among associates.

During the pandemic, Cain Watters & Associates experienced a hiring surge due to their reputation as subject matter experts in the dental industry.

Integrating new hires during remote work requires intentional communication, video calls, and in-person meetings when possible.

Cain Watters & Associates implemented an office optional approach to accommodate the changing work-life balance preferences of their associates.

Chapters:

[0:02:34] Average tenure of associates at Cain Watters & Associates

[0:05:36] Maintaining an elite team during a crisis

[0:08:48] Equipping managers during the pandemic

[0:12:27] Office optional approach and balance between remote and in-person work

[0:16:14] Focus on communication, transparency, and follow-through

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She's the Chief People Officer at Cain Watters & Associates, and she's going to explore with us this question today. It's a real pleasure to have you with us on the show today, Rhonda. Thanks for joining us.

Rhonda Davenport: Thank you, CT. It's a pleasure to be here.

CheeTung Leong: Tell us a little bit more about what Cain Watters does and what you do as chief people officer there.

CheeTung Leong: I love how the first thing you said was culture, because I think that's something that everybody owns, like every single team leader, every single senior executive. But at the same time, there's someone who is that person who nudges everything along. So when you think about the culture of the organization what, do you think about?

And how would you describe it?

Rhonda Davenport: Can't really use words to describe the culture of Cain Watters. You almost have to feel it for yourself. That's why, like, when we're going through our interview process, we really try to have candidates come on site All too often, I think employers really focus on utilizing the word culture, but they don't have the actions to back that up.

I think people feel safe and stable knowing that people have found a home more or less within our firm and can trust that people are going to be transparent with them.

CheeTung Leong: So you mentioned tenure. How long is the average tenure of an associate at Cain Watters?

CheeTung Leong: That is quite long. Let's dive into that hiring surge during the pandemic a little bit. What was driving that? Because as you said, it was a time of extreme uncertainty for many businesses. I can't imagine that many people were wanting to go visit their dentists and the dental industry probably wasn't doing the best during that time as well. And of course, serving that industry. Would have been challenging for most upstream businesses.

How did you guys end up in a spot where you were hiring more during that time?

CheeTung Leong: And how did the business actually turn around? Because during that time I imagine that there'd be quite a number of distressed clients needing that financial advice that doesn't necessarily create a lot of financial security for the firm because you're not sure like how long those clients would, continue.

But yet. There was that confidence enough and conviction that there was a need to expand hiring during that time. And this kind of goes back to that idea of maintaining elite teams because if the voluntary turnover during a time of crisis is low that means that the team was working really hard together and, at the same time accepting new entrants while the rest of many other companies were really struggling. So what was different at Cain Watters?

And that's. what so many of our associates were experiencing from our clients. And then even on the HR side, we were experiencing from our associates. So it was really about taking the time to understand how they were feeling their true questions and concerns and going on that journey with them.

CheeTung Leong: And as a chief people officer what, did you do to garner this feedback and your associates are probably spread out a little bit in multiple different locations.

Rhonda Davenport: With these teams those are the senior leaders on those teams are the ones that need to be communicating with their people.

CheeTung Leong: Rhonda, I'm going to probe you a little bit more on this front.

Because even in the best of times equipping managers and line managers is challenging to say the least from coming from HR. And many times especially in a professional services context, people become managers not because, they're good managers, they become managers because they're, really good individual contributors.

Rhonda Davenport: You have to keep in mind the managers, they themselves were experiencing all of this too and so it was a lot of outreach and the exact same things that I was encouraging the managers to do. I was having to exhibit. To them. Asking how are you personally, professionally so that way they could understand it's just treating people how you would wanna be treated in a situation like that.

CheeTung Leong: And that's probably where you got your nickname. Dr. Davenport probably.

Rhonda Davenport: That's right. Yes. Yes. Because I truly was the person people were calling saying. What am I supposed to do by CDC guidelines? I was getting more information than I probably needed from people on themselves and their family and everything else. So yeah, I just I went by dr. Davenport for about a year and a half.

CheeTung Leong: You know thinking about the organizational psychology through this period you have this core group of people that survived the storm, and they weathered the storm together and came out of it in one piece. So the bonds within this group would have been extremely tight.

Rhonda Davenport: I think it was a challenge for really probably every organization out there during the pandemic, simply because of the remote situation. Everyone's so used to forming relationships in person, and we really had to shift and shift into more of an intentional form of communication. And in doing that, what we would do is have, video calls like people were required to have their videos on during team meetings proactive outreach to new hires by various team members when they were onboarded.

We had to do them obviously remotely. But we started having those in person as soon as we possibly could because in order to understand Cane Waters culture, you really have to feel it.

CheeTung Leong: And as of today, are you guys back to the office like full time or do you have like a balance?

Rhonda Davenport: Yeah. So we created through COVID this office optional approach that has really been it's been received well by our associates. I think through the pandemic people found this balance that they had lost at one point and really have this appreciation for spending time with their family and their friends.

Now, of course we do have some meetings that are mandatory and we want people to come in person for those. But outside of that, it truly is office optional. And we're finding that more often than not, people are opting to come into the office. At least three days a week. Some people enjoy coming in five days a week.

And it's for that social interaction and getting, to know just the various departments where prior to COVID our office setting was such that the departments were really just divided within the office and you didn't get to interact as naturally as you would now.

Rhonda Davenport: So we, try to do a combination of things in that orientations are typically held once a month. For those that are unable to attend for extenuating circumstances, they can dial in. But again, in person is really encouraged. A lot of the in person interaction happens more on that team level because of how fast we're growing. It's been interesting. I've been with the firm nearly 6 years now, and when I started, we had roughly 130 people and we're now over 300. And with that rapid growth, people just felt [00:15:00] like they were losing touch.

Like, how are we going to keep up with all of these new people? I felt like at one point in time, I knew who everyone was and in order to help maintain that. We've really pushed the departments to spend that time together, not only within the team format, but department format. So we have the various teams and departments come in, or they have team activities that they do with each other typically on a quarterly basis.

But in addition to that, as a firm, we have an annual kickoff meeting in which everyone comes together for the first half of the day and we give firm updates along with any other like activities or whatnot that we want to have. In the past, we've had guest speakers that have presented.

So we do that as well as we also host a family night where all of our associates can bring their immediate family. It gives everyone the opportunity to just mix and mingle.

Rhonda Davenport: It's, really been a focus on communication. Really focusing on interdepartmental communication while there's a lot of work to be done on that. Trying to focus on that as well as I mentioned the transparency piece, people really feel a sense of trust when you're transparent and forthcoming with the things that are happening and the things that are actually said are actually backed up by actions. So that is one thing that I really take a lot of pride in at Cain Watters is when we, put something out there it's followed up with action.

CheeTung Leong: Awesome. So really that transparent and open communication and ensuring that. You're basically walking the talk, right? So backing, that communication up with solid action. That's wonderful. Thank you so much for sharing that journey with us today, Rhonda. If people wanted to connect with you to find out a little bit more about your experience in this area, what's the best way for them to do

Rhonda Davenport: Sure. Yeah. I can be found on LinkedIn.

And look forward to the next session of the HR Impact Show, where you hear more stories like what Rhonda shared with us and more learning points creative ways of solving problems when you have to do more with less. Thank you so much for listening. My name has been CT. Talk to you next time.