Confronted with massive change and instability, savvy employers will focus on people skills and the core tenets of what leadership means, says Debra Dupree, Psy.D., chief executive officer of Relationships At Work. An absence management consultant and mediation specialist, Dupree recommends that employers invest more in training and education for managers to ensure their actions align with the organization's mission, vision, and values, and that they update policies and procedures to be more inclusive.

Read the Q&A in the Healthcare And Wellness issue of @Work magazine: http://dmec.org/2022/11/20/industry-qa-a-different-mindset-to-ensure-inclusive-environments/

DMEC: Welcome to Absence Management Perspectives: A DMEC Podcast. The Disability Management Employer Coalition, or DMEC, as were known by most people, provides focused education, knowledge, and networking opportunities for absence and disability management professionals. DMEC has become a leading voice in the industry and represents more than 160 professionals from organizations of all sizes across the United States and Canada. This podcast series will focus on industry perspectives and provide the opportunity to delve more deeply into issues that affect DMEC members and the community as a whole. We're thrilled to have you with us and hope you will visit us at www.dmec.org to get a full picture of what we have to offer, from webinars and publications to conferences, certifications, and much more. Let's get started and meet the people behind the processes.

Heather Grimshaw: Hello, and welcome to Absence Management Perspectives: A DMEC Podcast. I'm Heather Grimshaw, communications manager for DMEC. I recently spoke with Dr. Deborah Dupree, chief executive officer of relationships at Work about changes that employers are facing for @Work magazine. As an absence management consultant and a mediation specialist, Dr. Dupree has a unique perspective on the unprecedented changes in operations and employee management that employers are facing today. And we wanted to share some snippets of the audio interview so you can hear Dr. Dupree's guidance directly. We hope you will also read the full Q&A “What’s Hot? What’s Not? Embrace a Different Mindset to Ensure Inclusive Environments” in the Health and Wellness issue of the magazine and included a link to that in the Notes section of this episode.

Heather Grimshaw: Are there other policies or practices that you would advise DMEC members maybe to reconnect or to connect a little differently and more effectively with their teams?

Dr. Dupree: Yeah, there are several things. Again, I see encourage employers to [revisit the questions] what is our mission, purpose, and values? Because oftentimes one of the things is what I say and what I do are not aligned, right? And so there's mixed messages and creating confusion. And so that is where employees find it challenging them to really get on board and be aligned with their organizations because there is inconsistency. And as I always tell leaders when I'm coaching or training them is that as a leader, I don't care what level you are, all eyes are always on you. So how you conduct yourself and how you carry out the organization's purposes is critically important and are you behaving and doing things in alignment with those things? So go back to the evidence, go back to the policy. Because we think we might know some things, but over time we forget. Oh, gosh, I forgot all about that. For example, I was just earlier this week working with a local city, and we've done a number of interactive process meetings for employees with disabilities. And I've asked, well, what is your policy, you know, about how long do you provide temporary accommodation? And I don't think we have one. Well, she just notified me. Oh, no, we do it's 90 days. It's like, well, that was helped deal with a couple of really challenging issues last year. Again revisiting your policies and procedures. And are they current? One of the things I encounter a lot is job descriptions that are vastly outdated. That's important for a number of reasons hiring, recruitment, and onboarding. Because if your job descriptions are not relatively current, then what kind of message are you giving your new employees? It's also critically important that when you do have employees who have medical conditions, where their performance of essential functions may be impacted. Again, if you've got outdated procedures that go back ten years or even five years, then it's like, okay, well, where do we begin here? Foundations of what the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission say is updated job descriptions. And I know that's a huge endeavor, huge endeavor. It's an investment for an organization. But if you chuck it down and maybe take a division or a department here and there and have that as a goal over the next two or three years and then two with updated technology, the way we're operating today, it's very important to do that. So taking a look at job descriptions, taking a look at policies and practices to make sure that they're current in today's modern world is important. And then also taking a look at lead policies. One of my challenges I face in working with organizations is a lack of clear guidance around providing temporary accommodation when somebody is going through something medical and if they can come back to work. And it's not always intentional. So I don't want to ascribe any blame or fault, but too many times employees are left off of work unnecessarily because of medical condition. And employers don't really know how to ask the right questions, and they don't have a procedure for how to engage employees. And they don't do things like temporary accommodation, whether it's remote work or modified duties or alternative assignments, and then managing the time frames for that appropriately. And so one of the things I see a lot is because of some of these requirements now, particularly in school districts where I do a lot of work, is that job duties are also being realigned and incorporating new things because of COVID-induced practices. And so that's where going back to the job descriptions, at least in the school district environment, they have bargained with their labor unions as far as adjusting job descriptions to be inclusive of some of these new demands. Related to COVID like testing, tracing and just sanitization and things like that that may not have been in job descriptions before and then even hiring of additional people to keep up with the workload. So this is, again, another area. We're just thinking outside the box and being flexible and, okay, how do we reconfigure things so that we're doing our job of keeping a safe workplace? I like to emphasize there's not just physical safety. It's also psychological safety.

Dr. Dupree: Yeah, absolutely. That's such a good point. And I think a lot of times people struggle with that concept of psychological safety. I already mentioned the social unrest and how that opened up Pandora's Box in terms of attitudes and prejudices that still proliferate in society, in our cultures, in the workplace, and how that has created psychologically unsafe conditions. But then we also look at the toxicity of the political divide, and that's a whole other arena of lack of psychological safety. Who can I talk to? I mean, you know, there are plenty of stories out there where families are divided, and that's why I just implore with leaders and organizations that we can't afford not to look at things differently.

Heather Grimshaw: That's a great point. You mentioned the policy piece. Is there a guideline or a recommendation that you have for organizations maybe? Is it every five years? Is it every two years? Is it every year that you reassess, you look at those different departments and ensure that your policies are, as you mentioned earlier, aligning with your mission purpose, and also that you've updated things. So to your point about the schools, you're renegotiating as you need to to make sure that you're covered legally, and also that your employees and teams have what they need to be successful.

Dr. Dupree: That's a good question. I can't really say that there's any specific timeline as far as how frequent job description should be updated. But what I would suggest is that organizations make it part of their plan, the strategic plan, to reevaluate the nature of their organization, what changes or innovations have transpired intentionally or unintentionally? Because certainly a lot of what we've experienced the last couple of years was unintentional. But I would suggest every two years would be, I think, way too much. It's a lot of time and investment. It's a big project. It really is. I've done those things, and it's like, oh, man, I even get tired of doing them after a while. It depends on the size of the organization. But for example, for a really large organization, that might be something that each year they take a look at one or two key areas, for example, and have a team that will evaluate, are these up to date? And what do we need to change? And that way, they're continually it's a continual evolution, but they're making sure that they're covering all components of the organization. For smaller organizations, I would say at least every five years.

But again, it depends on what's going on and if they've incorporated new systems or new technology or they've restructured a department and things like that. Reallocated duties, those are all opportunities. I work a lot with organizations to look at their policies about how to address those things and help put into place some procedures for what they can and cannot do according to state and federal laws and guidance is put out there. This whole thing about accommodation for medical conditions or accommodation for religious beliefs has been around for you know, title VII was implemented in the Civil Rights Act. So it's nothing new. It's just, you know, we're being faced with it in different ways because of the health concern. And so we look at what are the practices and procedures we've already dealt with. But now we're expanding our mindset to look at this in light of COVID So again, that's where the flexibility in thinking I mean, just to say no is not appropriate. And again, if we go back to some of the tenants of the Americans with Disabilities Act, a good faith effort and that's the premise for mediation too, a good faith effort to try to resolve the situation and to have a conversation about, well, how can we do this? Engage the employee. And again, temporarily. And so a lot of organizations do have policies around temporary accommodations. So just use those. And so as I mentioned, 90 days is not uncommon. That's consistent with EEOC does 180 days is sort of the max in terms of best practices according to the EEOC guidelines. And so again, see if what we can do so we can get back to some normality, but again, not to the way things were, but again, so that we can get people back functioning and working appropriately. So that's part of that thinking outside the box, being flexible, being able to look at things differently. How can we keep this employee working, but maybe differently, at least in the short run. And I would say there's some disability cases too, is that 90 days isn't easy. But it's tolerable we have lots of situations where in another quarter things will be different. And then certainly if things are improving but need more time, then another 90 days may be appropriate. But if things hit the six month mark, okay, we need to go back and revaluate about being able to continue this or not. And so always with that temporary thing, what can we do for now in the short run until circumstances may change? And so one thing I strongly recommend, particularly in light of what's happened in the last couple of years, is that organizations, it's time to get back to the people skills of being a leader. And I know that training is always one of those things that gets thrown out with budgets, but I'm sorry, in the light of corporate profits these last couple of years, I have a hard time believing that you don't have the money to invest in your people. And this is about the technical skills. This is about the people skills. And I'm not going to refer to it as soft skills because they are hard skills strongly needed that many people are lacking. I'll share with you a stat that comes from the Ken Blanchard Institute, is that they said that many supervisors and managers don't get the necessary training and how to lead people oftentimes as much as ten years, into their careers. And I certainly see that as a mediator. Oftentimes the miscommunication, the foundation of the allegations are often rooted in supervisors and managers and sometimes leaders of organizations lacking in the area of people management. That's one thing I strongly advocate, that organizations take a good, hard look at into building training. The other thing I would suggest is that connecting with people more intentionally, and sometimes it's just a matter of three to five minutes, and so if you make it a routine practice and that's one thing we were doing at the financial institution. That was the biggest complaint of employees, that they were working managers. And so they were busy doing the work of their departments, but they weren't doing the work of managing the people and so weeding into their daily and weekly practices how they can connect with each of their employees in some meaningful way. So it started with the CEO, where he would meet with everybody as they were onboarding, or maybe even before they made the final selection or something like that. But it's very early in the process, so he got a chance to meet them and it made a difference.

Heather Grimshaw: That's great advice.

Dr. Dupree: Well, I think it's time to get back to management. By walking around and getting out on the floor, touching bases, people. Yeah, it just lights people up. And now they recognize me. They actually know my name.

Heather Grimshaw: Yeah, I think it kind of carries through to what you said earlier about that purposeful work. If an executive knows who you are, you think to yourself, what I do matters. So it really kind of connects those dots in such a great way. Thank you so much for your time today.

Dr. Dupree: Well, thank you, Heather. I really enjoyed this opportunity to talk with you and look forward to what comes out of it.