Strategic Workforce Planning with Tresha Moreland

george grombacher 0:02
one weapon. This is George G. And the time is right welcome today’s guest strong and powerful treasure Moreland treasure. Are you ready to do this?

Tresha Moreland 0:08
I am. Let’s go.

george grombacher 0:09
Let’s go. Indeed, Trish is an MBA. She’s an sp HR. She’s a Six Sigma Black Belt. She is the principal, organizational, and leadership consultant with HR C suite. She partners with business leaders to develop workplace strategies that actually deliver results. Trish, I’m excited to have you on tell us a little about your personal lives more about your work, why you do what you do?

Tresha Moreland 0:33
Yes, George, thank you so much for having me today. Well, you know, just a high level, I’m a 30 year experienced HR leader, I’ve worked in multiple organizations over those years, I’ve started I’ve worked in manufacturing, retail hospitality, but of the last 18 years of those 30. It’s been in the healthcare industry. And so,

george grombacher 0:59
manufacturing, retail, healthcare, hospitality, all the different people types.

Tresha Moreland 1:06
That’s right. And it sure has given me a good perspective on business and what works, what doesn’t work, or at least even before the pandemic, and now, things have changed so much. But it’s been a great 30 years of experience, and I’m very anxious to share that information with employers today.

george grombacher 1:28
Yeah, I appreciate that. So not that there’s ever a time that’s not interesting or uninteresting, but we are living through our hopefully knock on wood have lived through a really extra interesting time. And maybe things will slow down a little bit, obviously, coming out of the pandemic. And then we had the great resignation. And now we’re quietly quitting and quietly firing people and everything else. And it does feel pretty chaotic.

Tresha Moreland 1:52
Oh, absolutely, I would say just about everything in the workplace has changed. I tell you what I was in the middle of writing a book. And just as the pandemic had started, and I had this perfect, but I thought was an outline and so on navigating the healthcare workforce shortage, oh, no, Ben COVID hit, and boy did everything changed and thankfully had a gracious publisher that was patient and gave me time to put a pause on the writing just so we can observe what was happening in Absolutely. Everything in the workplace changed. We went from very busy with change being constant, but in now we’re into chaotic change, which is happening rapidly. In everything that we see in every corner, we turn.

george grombacher 2:46
So there is obviously there are massive external influences that are happening that have caused a lot of this chaos. And I imagine it’s difficult for leadership within an organization to be trying to suss out, what are this what which of this is real, which is not that it’s not real, but it’s not applicable for us? How do we make heads and tails of what we need to be doing and what we need to be focused on?

Tresha Moreland 3:17
That’s an excellent question. Well, the first thing I would suggest is, forget the buzzwords for a minute. And their click worthy buzzwords, no question about it, the great resignation, the quiet quitting, you know, quiet firing. And all of these buzzwords are meant to cause you and your workforce to click. And also you leader is to stay awake at night, which you probably do. So the first thing is, I would just forget the buzzwords for a minute, and even out of social media for a minute and tap into your own workforce. And find out from them how they are feeling what are they thinking? Some some of the strategies around that would be stay interviews. But ask them in sincerity, you know, just kind of how are they feeling today? And what’s going on? You know, what are their goals in the next 12 months, 18 months, I would say five years, but you know, things are changing so quickly, I would keep it there maybe short term, just to give you a sense of the temperature going on. And I know a lot of employers look to invest in employee engagement surveys and things like that. But, you know, if you’re a small employer, you don’t have to do that. Just go just talk to your own staff and find out what’s going on and or how are they feeling? What are they thinking? What are their? What are their plans to help navigate these days?

george grombacher 4:41
So it’s always kind of a funny thing, where somebody will say, Well, how do I know what, what, what my people are thinking? Like? Well, you just need to ask them.

Tresha Moreland 4:50
Good question. That’s right. It’s not a crystal ball. And especially if you’re in you want to do this in a way that you’re developing a relationship with them. Anyway, if you haven’t already, I know there’s a lot of great leaders out there, whether they’re in large companies mid, or even small and may have already been doing that and feel comfortable. But you know, I’m just giving sometimes we need the permission, we feel like we need to hear the permission that it’s okay to ask. Ask them. Ask them how they’re feeling and that type of thing. And plus, it’ll help you, like I say, develop relationships, because that’s where it’s at now. You know, I’m, you know, I’ve seen, you know, I’ve seen PR statements backfire, you know, for employers, because they want to stick with the PR statements, but it’s really having that personal conversation with employees, that is what they want. And in what goes very far.

george grombacher 5:44
I’m 100%, one of those people that loves to just overthink everything, and make mountains out of molehills and just get myself all twisted up into Oh, my gosh, how do I, how do I bring that up? Or what do I say? And it can be just as simple as hey, Trisha would love to, you know, can we spend 10 minutes and have a coffee or whatever it might be, it doesn’t need to be this formal, 360 degree, whatever.

Tresha Moreland 6:10
No, the right. In this day, I mean, the the meeting, the meeting, or the your meetings, get lost in the pages, the pages of questions, and that and all of that. And plus, we also have to remember, we’re in a day and age where the people are highly distracted to. So you know, short meetings, where you say what you mean, and with sincerity, what it will have the bigger bang for the buck, versus all these big processes and things like that. And trust me as an HR professional, I’ve administered many of those in my past, but today, I would say it’s different.

george grombacher 6:54
Yeah. And there’s certainly value, man, when you’re in a massive organization with 1000s of people, you need specific processes to make this happen. And you need structure to allow for serendipity and for casual meetings and all that. And for companies that are a little bit smaller, like the vast majority of companies, there’s an opportunity to actually just be focused on the human beings that that you’re working with. So I appreciate that. So helping to move from chaos, and to find a little bit of stability or order within your organization. Let’s, you know, obviously let’s hope that everybody can find a do that can aid ours is able to do that. How do you think about then putting what I don’t know what the right term is putting some kind of a plan together for people strategy, workplace strategy?

Tresha Moreland 7:46
Hmm, you’re you’re hitting the nail on the head. The term is, formally is this strategic workforce planning. And, you know, I on occasion, I’ll have people call me employers where they’ve lost sight of their workforce. And it’s, it’s not a Don’t be ashamed if that’s you, you know, or don’t, there’s no judgment there in the world, you got to imagine just shoved under us in our whole workforce, and then the populations around us has shaken. So if you’ve lost sight, and you’ve got high vacancies, and you know, turnover, morale is high turnover, morale is low. And you just know that you’re short. And so now it’s time for really just to take a step back and reassess the workforce plan. And that means, you know, taking a look at the supply and demand of talent, you know, Where’s where’s the supply? So, you know, often I’ll hear a question from employer saying, I don’t know what changed. I used to be able to post a job on indeed are and be able to get these applications in, but now I’m not getting anybody. Where did they go? And so I, you know, through a workforce plan, you can answer the question, not where did they go necessarily, but how did they change? And then from there, develop a smart workforce plan. And that may require really changing up where you recruit how you recruit, and also may require you to think differently about how you retain staff, how do you how do you relate to them in the workplace? Because now with a workforce plan of today, you can understand what it is that’s changed in their minds as far as what’s important. So right, I mean, with a pandemic, we’ve all experienced losses in some way or another are we known people that did. So we’ve learned that life is short and a lot of people are reassessing their priority. So through a workforce plan, you can help capture what are those new priorities in the mind of talent that I want to attract and retain? And then from there, you can develop a very smart Our plan for today and also lead you into the future and help you be prepared for the future of work.

george grombacher 10:09
That makes so much sense. And a lot of time, we just need to be reminded more so than we need to learn new new stuff. But that to me is so powerful, what you just talked about? And that’s, do I have a really good understanding of who my ideal candidates for the roles that I have? Are? Who is who is that person? What are the qualities that I’m looking for? And then once I understand that, how can I make my organization more attractive? To make sure that we’re making a good selection decision on both of our parts? And, and then how once I get them in the building, how do I retain them by making sure that I’m actually delivering on the things that I’m talking about? So it’s not a bait and switch where people are going to be mad at me and ended up leaving quickly?

Tresha Moreland 10:59
Yes, very good point. And I would also say that the other thing I encourage employers to do is, so you know, part of a workforce plan is understanding the demographics and what’s changing? And where are people going to, I mean, so we met, we talked about that a little bit, but I’m also talking about talent or demographic migration. So people are picking up and moving out of big cities. And they had been all along even before the pandemic, but that accelerated pretty quickly during the pandemic, right. So now, we can understand today that populations really looking for low cost of living wide open spaces, and maybe even want to move closer to family. Because, wow, I mean, what did we experience, so we want to be where we want to spend more time with what matters to us the most. So once you understand those dynamics, then you can establish a recruitment strategy to either the depending on where you’re at, to talk to that potential candidate. And when I’m calling a lifestyle, lifestyle recruiting, I don’t mean to coin another buzzword here. But the truth is, people are wanting to spend more time with what matters them the most to me, that that talks to lifestyles. And so when when you go to recruit, what kind of optimal lifestyle does your area offer? Then talk about the employment situation. So you know, we can I can look up a dozen job posts right now. And they all look look the same, right? They, they may give a little description of the company what the job is, and then what the requirements are. And here’s where you apply. Well, well, what about the area is what’s you know, what, what kind of lifestyle could I expect for myself and my family, if I were to move there, those are important things to include, I think today in a job posts. And that’s information that’s informed by solid workforce plan.

george grombacher 13:05
I like That’s awesome. And that makes so much sense that if I’m trying to attract people to a certain area that I would want to highlight the areas or the different attributes of that area. That’s right. And obviously, there’s going to be some folks are hooked some companies who are just going to be hiring and remote. How are you seeing that? With up with a lot of your folks? Is it would people rather have? I guess, it’s kind of a dumb question. I think I’d always rather have the ability to bring my people into the office these frequently asked every once in a while.

Tresha Moreland 13:44
Yeah, and I don’t think it when it comes to the workforce, there is any such thing as a dumb question. Because, you know, it seems so fluid today, and remote work has offered that reality to us. So I often tell employers, you know, we, I mean, we used to worry about competing for talent with the company down the street or across the town. But now we’re competing for talent within visible competitor for talent. And that’s remote work. And it’s still an you know, you’ll see a lot of conflicting information. I even saw a graph on Twitter yesterday, showing that remote work, jobs are going down. But the truth is, they haven’t disappeared completely. And there are companies that have committed not to not to do away with it. So we can’t assume that they’re gonna go away and I can just require all my workforce tomorrow to come in or even two weeks from now or even a month from now or six months from now, because they may lead then go work for an a remote employer. I think that’s still going to be an element of our reality today, or even tomorrow. It may reduce in numbers, but that doesn’t mean We’re gonna get to a place where we were prior to the pandemic, necessarily, and technology enables that reality. God, so, yep. So I encourage employers to think of ways to compete with the remote employer to if you’re, you know, so it’s not just competing, again, with companies just across the town right from us.

george grombacher 15:24
And again, I’m probably falling victim to making assumptions. And there’s no reason to make assumptions, we’re just need to figure out what our every organization needs, figure out what it is they want. Because you have the ability to do and recruit whoever it is that you want to recruit. So these are decisions you need to be making and not leave it up to what you read about on Twitter.

Tresha Moreland 15:45
Exactly. Right. Exactly. Right. And you know, and then like I said, that was its contradiction, because then I saw that graph, but then I saw somewhere else on LinkedIn, the saying is, this is here to stay remote work is still here to say, and it may even increase, depending on the industry. So it’s, it’s very fluid out there. And your point is valid, really just get down to what your reality is, as a leader for your organization, and really understand what your dynamics are, versus just even relying again on all of this information. Because like I said, it’s chaotic, it is chaotic. We want to get to a place of order. And we can we can get there. It just I think we need to think differently.

george grombacher 16:29
Yeah, we can do it like

Tresha Moreland 16:34
we can, there’s hope there is hope.

george grombacher 16:37
So this lifestyle recruiting, I want to circle back on that because I like it so much. The things that popped into my head are affordability of being able to buy a home safety. So I don’t if I’m leaving a big city that has a high amount of crime, I’m probably interested in I have a family, I’m looking for safety. I’m looking for good schools, I’m looking for, obviously work opportunities, but that’s that’s where the employer comes in. What are some of the other key things?

Tresha Moreland 17:10
And just what’s it like to live there? What’s the culture? Like? I mean, every community has its own culture. What are things to do? For not just me as an adult, but for my children? It’s, it’s those are the things also that weigh in, I think,

george grombacher 17:32
yeah, it’s a great point. What am I? What am I going to do on the weekends there in XYZ city? Town,

Tresha Moreland 17:39
for that matter? Yep. I’ve coached employers before that, you know, even before the pandemic, while pay is important. Absolutely. But time off is two. Equally, if not, you know, is more so than even the pay, because people like that time off so that they can spend time on the weekends or, you know, and do other things like with their family, outside of work. I mean, like it or not, we’d love it if they could just love to work inside and be happy all the time. But that’s not the case. Right? So reality is that time off is is just as important as the pay.

george grombacher 18:18
Yeah. Well said. Well, Trisha, thank you so much for coming on. Where can people learn more about you? How can they engage with you?

Tresha Moreland 18:26
Absolutely. Well, my email address is Trisha at HRC suite. I have a website page at hrs C suite.com. Forward slash workforce, that strategies that consulting I also have a free guide out there on three steps to improve your organization’s effectiveness in these unpredictable times. And you can find that out there on HR C suite.com. Forward slash improve that your that organizations that effectiveness.

george grombacher 19:03
Excellent. Well, if you enjoyed as much as I did, show your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas go to HR C suite.com. And I will put the links in the notes of the show on how to find that three step document on how to figure out how to increase your organization’s overall effectiveness and well being and all that all those good things. And then she trashed an email at Trisha T R, E, sh a, at HR C suite.com. Get in touch and put everything we’ve been talking about in place, figure out your Strategic Workforce Plan, put in place your lifestyle recruitment plan for finding the kind of people that are going that you actually want and that are going to be happy in your organization and your community and all those things. Thanks again, Trisha.

Tresha Moreland 20:00
Okay thank you thank you so much

george grombacher 20:02
and until next time remember do your part by doing your best

Transcribed by https://otter.ai