Speaker 1:
As a bank that focuses on business, we work with business leaders all day, every day. We have a front row seat to what's working and what has potential. The First Business Bank Podcast is dedicated to sharing insights to help you work better, smarter, and faster to achieve your goals. Let's get into the show.
Mark Meloy:
Hello, I'm Mark Meloy, CEO of First Business Bank, and I'm one of the hosts of the First Business Bank Podcast. Welcome to today's episode where we're going to talk about the role of communication in managing change. With me today are Corey Chambas, CEO of First Business financial services and Jodi Chandler, our chief human resource officer. Corey has been with the company for 26 years. He's previously been the president and CEO of First Business Bank. And prior to that was a commercial lender with the company. He serves on several not-for-profit and for-profit boards in and around the Madison area.
Mark Meloy:
Jodi Chandler has been with the company for 28 years and in her role, she leads the human resource group for over 300 employees of First Business Bank. So as we get started today, Corey, I'm going to ask you, in these times of change, what are the most important aspects of communication with the employee group?
Corey Chambas:
I'd say the most important aspect is over communicate. You just can't communicate enough, when things are dynamic and changing, people just have a lot of uncertainty and the more you can interact with them, the better. They'll conjure up their own thoughts and fears in their head, if you're not there to, to guide them as to what's really going on with your company and communicating as much as possible is critical. I know when this all started, I was putting out a daily email to the whole staff on what was going on. And that got a little boring after the second week. And I did a little video. People really liked that, which then led to video Q&As that we did twice a week and then kind of down to once a week or so.
Corey Chambas:
And that also leads into the thought of communicating in different media, in different ways with people. So some people are better with written. Some people are better hearing something verbally. So communicating in different ways and communicating a lot is just really important in uncertain times.
Mark Meloy:
Jodi in your role as the chief human resource officer for the company. I think you'd probably get ... Your team gets communicated with by the employees that maybe don't want to go to a supervisor. Don't want to ask their coworkers, especially when change is going on. Because the questions and the uncertainty of what the future might hold. Any thoughts about that and the messaging and the responsiveness to employees that don't want to communicate that way?
Jodi Chandler:
Yeah. Mark, a lot of that communication happens one-on-one and at the beginning of this particular change and the change being the COVID situation. We knew that wellbeing was at the top of everybody's minds, just staying safe. So we did put out a lot of information in that regard, just staying safe, staying healthy, different tips around wellness and wellness takes on all different kinds of forms in times like this. So feeding out some information to kind of spark some thoughts in employee's minds. I think that they feel comfortable reaching out to us and we've always had the approach on our HR team, there are six members on our HR team. That we want any employee to feel free to call any one of us.
Jodi Chandler:
Each one of us has different groups of people that we might be closer with in the company, where employees may feel more comfortable reaching out to any one of the members of our team. So keeping those doors open, those phone lines open, and then also listening. It's amazing what you can pick up on when you have different meetings, different conversations. You notice kind of a different personality than what you might normally see in somebody and then doing the outreach that really needs to happen. Just checking in. "How are you doing? Is there anything that you need? Is there anything that we could be helping you with?"
Jodi Chandler:
There's just been a lot of life that's happened during this time as well. Lots of really good things too. So finding those moments in different employees personal lives that really are meaningful in that matter and look way different today than they did in February. And acknowledging what's going on, I think has been really helpful. So we might not always have the answers, but we're always really willing to listen and to help them find the answers.
Mark Meloy:
So I know one of the things that I found most informative, most enlightening was the work that was done in surveying our employees in the current crisis, I'll call it of the COVID pandemic. And so many people, as you said, dealing with a variety of things, whether it was concern for their health, concern for their families, concern for other loved ones, daycare, what have you and coming back to work. Talk about the survey that was done, how it was done and really the information that came out of it. Corey, I know you played an important role in that, both in driving it, but also in communicating that information back to the employees.
Jodi Chandler:
Yeah, we've done a couple of different surveys over the past several weeks now. And prior to this time, we had never done what I would call a pulse survey. Just kind of in the moment, five or six questions, make it very, very easy for your employees to participate in the survey. The first one was just, how are you feeling? How are you doing? Do you have the resources, kind of the technology resources is really the first survey that we did that you have to be able to do your jobs. We got a lot of really good information out of that. We used an online tool that we're able to feed that information into our different leaders and are different managers in our company.
Jodi Chandler:
We were able to kind of do some different sorting and whatnot too, to just say, are people in this part of our company feeling any different than the people in another part of our company? Making sure that everybody was kind of getting equal attention. So I think, being able to have a system or a tool in place to be able to do that quickly and then just get the results so quickly and get that feedback back to the employees. Corey, mentioned those Q&A calls that we've been doing on a weekly and now, and every other week basis. Being able to bring just kind of real time information back to the employees and sharing that, whatever it is, kind of good news and or bad news. I think was just really helpful reassuring to our employees and to be able to use their feedback, to help direct us on how to do this and where to focus our attention.
Jodi Chandler:
The second survey to your point, was really around return to work. And what is that going to look like for everybody? Do you want to return to work? Do you have the ability? Do you have children at home that you need to care for? Is there a compromised situation, health situation in your household that maybe you just don't want to? Again, we got really good feedback. One of the first times, we let employees know that we weren't going to be doing that in a confidential manner because really needed to address these different situations one-on-one. The most current topic that so many parents out there are dealing with now, is just what is back to school going to be looking like for their children, for their school districts?
Jodi Chandler:
And we're getting ready to do some additional surveys and whatnot. As we navigate as a company around what might now be a longer time period of change. And having parents needing to participate in virtual learning with their children. So really good for us, really good for the employee. And we're able to get kind of in the moment feedback, if you will, on what I think is changing, situation that's changing every day.
Mark Meloy:
Corey as it pertains to the pandemic and sort of how we've reacted to it, what have you learned as a leader of the company and communication that you now would be able to apply to managing change of some other type in the future?
Corey Chambas:
I think the thing that I learned is that frequency needs to be higher, but also that people have more questions than I would have realized, and it was almost a little serendipitous that the first Q&A call that we did was a Q&A call. It wasn't set up to be, "Hey, let's do a video call and communicate this information out to people." So it had no agenda on my part at all. And it went for more than an hour of people, instant messaging me questions to answer. I was overwhelmed by the amount of questions and concerns people and particularly, some of them are about the company. And then at that time a lot of them were also very personal to the person's situation that they're in and their work situation and what was going to happen.
Corey Chambas:
So I guess the thing that I learned was that I wasn't communicating enough. I don't think we were communicating enough. I don't think we were taking advantage of the technology that we had to communicate because we didn't do video calls before. So the calls that we had done before previously that were all company calls. Well, our all company staff meetings were videoed, but we did some other calls, Q&A calls when we released our earnings quarterly, but those were just audio calls. And I'm now, kind of the video police, people know I get after them, if they don't have their video on, on any call. Even Mark, if you and I are just talking about whatever, we don't talk on the phone anymore. We video with each other every single time and it's just a different experience.
Corey Chambas:
And so I think what I learned there is, that's a different experience for our employees too, on those sort of the corporate communication that's coming out from the CEO or from management, is if you can use video and people can see your face and your facial expression, it's just a different kind of experience. And so learning to use the technology every time, and then also providing a mechanism for people to give more input and to feel like they have free rein to ask the questions. There's a little bit as a leader, you're a little vulnerable because you can get questions that are really hard and difficult to answer, but you just have to continue to be honest. And sometimes my answer to the questions are, I don't know, I just don't know that yet. And I think people appreciate that honesty. And if you're honest in your answer, they're going to ask more questions. That's certainly something I've learned.
Mark Meloy:
Yeah. I think that I've heard it described as that willingness to be vulnerable, which I think is really ... Makes it real as we talked about, makes it honest, makes it comfortable for everybody that A, we're in this together, not everybody has all the answers. Everybody has a certain level of anxiousness about whatever the situation or change may be. In this particular case, we're talking about COVID, but it could really be anything else. I mean, it could be ownership change for certain companies. It could be dramatically difficult news with the death of an employee, or it could be financial results. I mean, there's a whole variety of things that can cause change. And then the importance of communication as it plays out in that regard.
Mark Meloy:
If you were talking to a new business leader, what would be thoughts that you would describe to them about change? Using maybe the example of new owners coming in or difficult financials. Thoughts that either of you have in that regard, in terms of communicating to their work or teams.
Corey Chambas:
One thing I guess, a piece of advice I would have is, I think it's more important to be real than to look smart. There might be, say new owners of a business. They might want to come in and be impressive. Think that, that's the most important thing. But I think the most important thing is that employees feel trust, that they trust the folks because that's going to flow to the whole ongoing stream of communication that happens. And if, the owners are going to get good communication back from the employees as if there's trust. So just being real and being honest about things is more important, I think, than being impressive. Hopefully you have some smarts and you can give some good answers to questions, but honesty is the most important piece to me.
Mark Meloy:
Yep.
Jodi Chandler:
Mark, if I could just add too. I think one of the things that I've learned during our most recent change, it's just so much good can come out of a change and even a sudden change. Like what we needed to do basically over a weekend, can you get 95% of your workforce working remotely in a day? And I would have come up with a 100 reasons why we would not have been able to do that, given a choice and kind of some time to think about that. But when you're forced to do it and you just really don't have time to think about it, you make it happen. So don't underestimate your workforce, your employees in what they can do, what they can handle, their resiliency. And then there's always positive things that come out of a change.
Jodi Chandler:
When you first hear the news, I think your instinct is to go to kind of the bad and I'm not going to like this and it's not going to work and whatnot. But as I reflect back over now, the last three or four months, just a lot of really positive things that have happened as a result of the change that we've been going through.
Mark Meloy:
Yeah. I think there's something numbing almost about news of change, but there's also something really energizing about finding solutions and being able to work through the successful remediation or solution.
Jodi Chandler:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Mark Meloy:
Any parting thoughts that you either have as we talk about communication as managing through change?
Corey Chambas:
Well, I'll be redundant and say the same thing about over communicating, but I'm over communicating, over communicating. It's the key issue.
Mark Meloy:
Good.
Jodi Chandler:
And the only thing that I would add to that is, I just think again, with the changes that we've made with how we've communicated, the frequency by which we've done it, doing the video conferencing calls, whether it's a two-person call or a 300 person call. As I look back over the last four months, I think our company has strengthened as a result of that. A lot of positive things can come as a result of change. And sometimes when you're just forced into doing it and have to make it happen, it just works. Never underestimate what your employees can do. They're resiliency, their ability to adapt and to change. And you're able to do the things that had you been given a choice and some time to think about, you would have come up with lots of reasons and lots of excuses, why not to do it. So embrace it and just go with it.
Mark Meloy:
Yeah, that's great. Well, thank you, Corey and Jodi, for your thoughts on communication and managing change and thank you to our listeners for taking the time to hear what these two had to say and hope it sparks ideas for you in applying to the management of your own company. Thanks for listening. And we will see you next time.
Speaker 1:
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