Welcome, everybody, to the 2023 Supervisor Excellence Webinar Series. This is a series that Deer Oaks has provided for our client organizations now for the last 10 years. I'm really glad that you joined us again for this journey this year.

We have four new topics we're offering this year, once a quarter as has been our process in this series over the years. So starting today, of course, with How to Maintain a Mentally Healthy Workplace Environment. We're going to come back in April, on April 10 with Advanced Communication Skills That Improve Employee Motivation. And then in July, we'll be presenting Emotional Intelligence for Supervisors. And last but not least, in October, we'll be providing Presentation Skills For Supervisors.

Now, folks, if you want any-- if any of you would like to have the registration information sent to you for the subsequent sessions the rest of the series this year, all you have to do is hit Reply to your GoToWebinar invitation for today and just request the registration links for the remaining topics in the 2023 Supervisor Excellence Webinar series. We'll be happy to send them to you. Also, if anyone would like the PowerPoint from today's presentation, that kind of information, you can also hit Reply to your GoToWebinar invitation for today and request that as well.

All right, folks, before we get started on today's topic, if you could please locate the Raise Hand icon in the GoToWebinar software in the upper right-hand corner of your screen. I want to make sure our technology is working for us. And if you can see my slides clearly and hear my voice clearly, could you please click on the Raise Hand icon now.

Thank you, folks. Looks like we're good to go technology-wise. I also want to make you aware that during these educational presentations in the series provided by Deer Oaks, participants will be in listen-only mode, which means, of course, you won't be able to audibly ask questions during the formal parts of the presentations. So for today, of course, you won't be able to ask-- audibly ask questions, but we will have a Q&A session here at the end because your questions are important to us.

And so after the formal part of the presentation, which really should probably last somewhere around 30 to 35 minutes today, give or take, we'll open it up for questions. At that point, if you have any questions, please type them into the question box in the GoToWebinar software in the upper right-hand corner of your screen. And we'll get to as many questions as time allows today. So I'm looking forward to that question and answer session here coming up shortly. Let's go ahead and get started, folks.

As a starting place for today, I want to remind us-- and I know I'm probably preaching to the choir about this, but mental health issues in our world are on the rise. Certainly, even before the global pandemic, incidences of mental health issues that people are dealing with in today's world have been increasing. But since the pandemic, that's continued to increase even more quickly. As a matter of fact, some statistics I want to share is since 2020, the beginning of the pandemic, there's been a 17% increase in workers experiencing mental health concerns.

And so very concretely, the stress of the pandemic and all of the changes that we've had to adjust to because of it and all of the rest of the things that are happening in the world, the stress level being so high, has really taken its toll on people's mental being. And there's a significant increase in workers experiencing mental health concerns. Along those same lines, the percentage of workers that say they're leaving jobs for mental health reasons has increased from 34% to 50% over the last two years of the pandemic. Again, that's a very significant increase.

And so I also want to mention that the percentage of workers leaving jobs for mental health reasons within the younger generations has increased even at a higher rate. As a matter of fact, for the millennial generation, it's over 60% of workers have cited when they leave their jobs that they're leaving jobs for mental health reasons. And over 80% of Generation Z workers are saying the same thing. They're leaving jobs for mental health reasons at a higher rate as well.

And then last but not least, there was another study that said 84% of workers report at least one workplace factor that has negatively impacted their mental health. And what we're talking about in terms of workplace factors would be stress level on the job, maybe a culture that's not very supportive, maybe it's relationship issues with coworkers, maybe it's too much-- too heavy of a workload, lack of perceived support for mental health concerns or stress concerns. So again, because of all the things that have been happening in the world over the last few years, mental health issues are definitely on the rise.

All right, I want to start today in terms of talking about maintaining a mentally healthy workplace environment with creating a more supportive workplace culture. Now, I certainly know that all of us here on the line today, based on just our general relationships with the client organizations that Deer Oaks serves and provides EAP services for, many of you probably come from different roles within your organization. Some of you might be holding human resources positions. Other others of you might be a senior manager. So others of you might work in occupational health or risk management.

And so regardless of what's your role, I know that all of us are trying to do our best to create a supportive workplace culture for our respective organizations, trying to make the employees as comfortable as possible. So let's talk about some best practices that are important in this area in terms of creating a more mentally healthy workplace environment. So one is obviously look at the concrete things that we can do as employers to establish a healthy workplace environment that people can actually see and touch.

And so for example, creating an environment physically on the job or in the environment that's conducive to a balanced lifestyle, whether it be maintaining break rooms and rest spaces that are tangible and encouraging employees to take their breaks when they need them. Another way to, of course, create a healthy workplace environment is to be flexible in scheduling and where and how people are doing their work. There's been a lot of that happening in a very positive way across the world since the pandemic began.

Many employer organizations, as we all know, nowadays are more open to people either working remotely for their organization or in a hybrid sort of a schedule where part of the time, they come on site to work, and other parts of the time, they're able to work remotely for their organization. Flexibility in scheduling as to when people work. There seems to be a trend to have people-- because, for example, working parents sometimes during the day have some day care responsibilities, especially with small children. But in the evenings can catch up on emails and do some of their work after the children are asleep.

And so some organizations have been cutting edge in terms of having flexible schedules for working parents. And then also benefits, right? I mean, there's a lot of benefits that organizations can provide like an employee assistance program that can really be important in helping provide support for employees that are going through stressful events.

And finally, let's encourage our staff to unplug from technology. I think it's very healthy to send a message, and whether it's a-- in a form of a formal policy or just informally, having supervisors be supportive to their teams to send a message that it's healthy to unplug from technology after hours. I know most of us know that in many environments, it becomes kind of a common practice for people to be sending out emails, group emails after hours, after 5 o'clock in the afternoon, in the evenings, and then over the weekends.

And as we all know, some people are very diligent about-- and many people now are getting their emails-- probably more than not nowadays are getting their emails over their own personal smartphones, right? Some people have work phones that they use and are required to check, of course, depending on a person's job responsibilities. But a lot of people, they just have their work phone for-- their work emails forwarded to their personal smartphone.

And when they see an email from a colleague over the weekend or in the evening, they feel compelled-- even though it's not mandatory, they feel compelled to open that email. When that person opens that email, it re-engages their mind into the world of work when they should be experiencing downtime and recharging their batteries and taking a break from work. And so I think it's important to encourage staff to unplug from technology.

Unless there's something happening, a deadline or a job responsibility that requires someone to stay connected to their technology, I think it's healthy practice to encourage employees to unplug from technology. I for one, because I'm not on call for Deer Oaks-- so if I don't have any deadline or if I'm not waiting for a return email for an important circumstance, I typically by 7 o'clock at night turn my smartphone all the way off. I just-- just like I boot down my computer at the end of the day, like many of us do, I turn my smartphone off.

That really cuts off or it disconnects me and distances me practically from technology and from the workplace. And that helps me unwind. That helps me relax. And I try to do that every evening, again, unless I'm waiting for something or I'm on a deadline, and then every week.

And I just try to keep-- try to stay away from looking at my emails, my work emails so that-- so I don't allow my work life to kind of spill over into my home life and get in the way of me keeping a good work-life balance and maintaining good mental and emotional health. So folks, those are some things to consider. And I know a lot of you are doing a lot of those already, but these are things to consider doing more consistently.

Next, I think it's important-- and I know many of you are aware of this as well. I think it's important that we proactively and intentionally create a sense of belonging for our work teams. Maintaining the most welcoming and inclusive workplace environment would be the first step in that.

And I know most of us recognize that when we maintain a welcoming and inclusive workplace environment where people feel like they are part of the team, they have a sense of belonging, a sense of community. They feel like this is my work family, right? Or this is my work. This is my home away from home. I mean, these are my work colleagues. These are my friends.

That when we do that, when we create an environment just like that, where people feel just included, they feel a sense of belonging, it really enhances employees likelihood of getting engaged and doing their best work. And it really helps to improve retention. Employees are less likely to leave an organization when they're working for an environment that feels like a work family, where they're really bonded to the organization. They feel like they're a part of it. They know that they're valued by their supervisor and by the organization.

And part of that-- we communicate part of that, the fact that we value employees by giving them a voice. We need to regularly as supervisors-- I'm a supervisor for Deer Oaks. We need to regularly, as supervisor, be looking for opportunities to give people input into decisions, into changes that need to take place, into how the work gets done.

When people-- and I know we all this. When people have input into the work plan that they're partnering on or into decisions that are being made or policies that are being created, they take more of a sense of ownership. And again, it enhances that connectedness that they feel to the organization where they really-- like this is my organization. I'm a part of something that I feel really, really good about and I belong to.

And then last but not least, in terms of creating a really comfortable workplace environment for employees, I do believe that leadership should regularly and proactively monitor employee needs. We need to make sure we have an understanding of what the stress level is among the employee population. Or at least within your department or within your span of control, we need to have a good idea about what the level of engagement is, what the morale is of the organization.

If we as leaders make employee satisfaction an ongoing focus intentionally, when we're regularly watching for that, assessing how happy people are and how high their stress level is, how motivated they are, how comfortable they are working in our environment, the more-- obviously, if we're in touch with that, we're going to do the kinds of things that we need to do to make sure the environment is supportive and comfortable as possible for employees. And part of that happens just between supervisors and employees on a regular basis during regular communication if we prioritize that.

I'm a big believer that we ought to have team meetings and one-on-one meetings on a regular basis. And so what I mean by that is every team or department should have a regular team meeting. Kevin Kruse who wrote a book called Employee Engagement 2.0 said that every team should be meeting regularly at least once a month.

I meet weekly with my team. I have a small team. I've got three-- four direct reports. So there's five of us on our team, and we meet regularly once a week. And then I also look to schedule one-on-one meetings with employees on a regular basis as well.

And during those conversations, we need to be making sure we're asking people how they're doing and asking the employees for their suggestions. What else could we do to support you, or what's going on right now that-- how else could we enhance this environment to make it as comfortable as possible for everybody?

And especially, folks, remember if you've got remote or hybrid workers who are not on site physically every day, one of the things that we learned as organizations across the country during the pandemic is when people are working remotely, they can feel more disconnected from their supervisor, disconnected from their team, and disconnected from their organization. So it's especially important to make sure that you're staying in close communication with anyone that works either full time or part time on a remote basis. It's really, really important to keep those people connected and feeling cared about and feeling an important part of the organization.

All right, the next part I want to talk about today is encouraging healthy coworker relationships. This is another really important part of creating a mentally healthy workplace environment. I know most of you recognize that the quality of employee relationships-- and I'm talking about coworker relationships. This would be between supervisors and their employees, but also from employee to employee.

Like within a department-- think about this. If it's eight-- if there's eight people in a department, a supervisor and seven employees, the relationships between the supervisor and all seven of those staff members and all seven of the staff members with each other, the quality of that relationship is a primary key to both job satisfaction and effectiveness. There's been a lot of research done on that.

I mean, people feeling bonded to their coworkers where they care about them as people, again, where they feel like they have a sense of belonging, that they're part of a work family, that the team really cares about each other, and really facilitating opportunities for people getting to know each other, not just professionally but also personally. There's incredible research, folks, that talks about teams where individuals feel really connected to their colleagues and care about and like each other have remarkably higher productivity.

There's a book out there called The Leadership Challenge that cites some research that says the teams where individuals feel really bonded and really care about each other have productivity up to 70% higher than teams that don't care about each other so much and see their coworkers as just coworkers, and not necessarily as part of a work family. So it really behooves us as supervisors, folks, and HR professionals and senior leaders, it really behooves us to intentionally create environments where people feel more connected to each other and to do more formal team building. Talk a little bit more about this here in a second.

And part of that is to facilitate regular interactive team meetings, team lunches, offsite team building events, even virtual team building events that bring employees together for additional team bonding. During the pandemic, I was really blown away in a positive way. And I was hearing lots of stories from organizations that got really creative via Zoom or Teams or other virtual platforms to keep their employees bonded together where they felt connected to one another.

There was one organization that when their-- before the pandemic, every Friday at 3 o'clock, they would have an employee break room, something they called Popcorn Friday. And it had become a tradition of this organization. And people really looked forward to.

And the organization would-- they would have-- they bought a big popcorn machine. And of course, you can do it just with a microwave, but they-- the organization would provide the popping kernels. And they would pop a whole bunch of popcorn on Fridays. And at 3 o'clock, you would have dozens of employees from that organization congregating in the break room just kind of visiting with each other and kind of debriefing from the week, start to downshift, getting ready for the weekend.

And it was such a positive part of the morale of the organization. And it really kept people bonded together as colleagues. Well, about two months after the pandemic that began as we all remember in March of 2020, someone had the idea that, boy, we really miss Popcorn Fridays. And that's the number one thing because this company pretty much sent 90 plus percent of their employees home to work remotely for social distancing reasons, like so many of us did.

But someone got the idea in that organization. Hey, wait a second. Why can't we do virtual popcorn Fridays? And they did. So then they decided. The company sent out bags of popcorn, the kernels, to all the employees, a couple hundred employees.

And they would do-- via Zoom, they would do Popcorn Fridays virtually. And I thought that was an incredibly creative way to keep employees connected together. But however you do it, just be thinking about on a regular basis.

And I use my weekly team meetings with my team as one of the best ways for creating connection is-- and we do a lot of icebreakers at the beginning of the meetings. We visit together and catch up with each other about what's going on in our lives before we get down to business. It really helps us as a team really have connectedness with each other and to get to know each other better and to be comfortable with one another. It's made a huge difference in how much we enjoy working together and how productive we are.

Last but not least, if you do any interpersonal skills training, I think there's an assumption sometimes in the workplace that all adults have good interpersonal skills. And when we think about that, most of you would agree that not everyone does, right? Fortunately, there are a lot of people that do, but not everyone does.

There are people on every work team that are not great communicators, that are maybe somewhat self-centered or just aren't good listeners or aren't very respectful of other people's feelings. And so I truly believe that providing some training-- if you're going to have what they call soft skills training, again, for employees to come in and work on interpersonal skills and emotional intelligence and some of those kinds of things, that encouraging, collaborative communication, teaching people how to be respectful communicators that aren't just interested in sharing their opinion, but become very skillful and interested in asking others what they think.

And people really brains-- learning how to brainstorm together, so-- where they can really reap the benefits of the approach that two heads are better than one. And I just-- that's one of the things that I've been able to do over the last, I don't know, 15 years that has really helped me become more effective in the workplace as I've become a much more collaborative communicator through getting some extra training and practicing being less directive and more collaborative. It's really made a difference.

And so I really encourage us for-- if you feel like your team's not on the same page a lot or there's a lot of conflict on the team, providing some collaborative communication or best practices in communication training can really help teams to get along together and communicate together much more effectively. All right, the next thing I want to share, folks, is making sure that the supervisors in your organizations are caring and communicative.

Now, I know-- now, these are the kinds of things-- many organizations do leadership training, right? We all do. We do at Deer Oaks. We do leadership training or management training, right? Most organizations do some form of that.

But I truly believe that if there's an investment to make in training, this area would be one of the most important investments that you can make and will give you one of the greatest amounts of return. Gallup, the polling company that does a lot of employee engagement research, they are very definitive in sharing that the number 1 reason that employees are productive on the job and that they stay with organizations for the long term is they have a great connection, great relationship with their direct supervisor.

And Bob Nelson, another leadership trainer, goes on to say that the level of every employee's motivation is typically tied specifically to the sum of the interactions they have with their supervisor. So if they have a supervisor that's a caring communicator, that shows interest in their ideas, that listens to them, that is supportive regularly as they communicate, those employees tend to be more motivated, as we all know, and be more engaged in doing their best work. And so I think it's important that we-- again, whether you're in senior management or you're an HR executive or you're just looking to help improve the quality of the work within your department, the way that supervisors communicate with employees is real key.

And so along those lines, it has to be a focus. It has to be a priority. The supervisors need to recognize that Gallup research I just shared is real. It's a reality that the quality of their relationship with their employees is the primary factor in employee motivation and engagement. It's not just a factor. It's the number 1 factor.

And so unfortunately, a lot of supervisors don't spend a lot of one-on-one communication time with their employees. And they'll typically tend to communicate with their employees on an as-needed basis. And not that they're not being good people, but it's everyone's busy. And to be efficient, supervisors, they're not taking time to do small talk and bond with employees. And they're really conversing with employees really only when they need to complete a task or deal with an issue, right?

And this was something I fell into early on my management career. I've been managing people now for going on 30 years. And I think that was my biggest mistake in the first 10 years of my role of a supervisor, is I was overly task focused. And I was not investing time in relationship development with employees.

Sure, I would be friendly. When I'd see someone in the hallway, I'd smile and say how you doing? How was your weekend? But I wasn't really intentionally regularly getting-- staying connected with people and getting to know them and showing that I cared about them as people.

And so I think it's really important that we take the time. And as I got more advanced training in this area, and I've gotten to know the people that report to me a lot better and taking more of an interest in their lives, it's really improved, not only the quality of my relationship with them, but it's-- I've noticeably seen that we've had a lot less turnover.

We haven't had any turnover in my area in over six years. And our team is really, really well bonded together, really care about each other, enjoy spending time together. And we're really, really productive as a team. I know some of that is because we've just all worked together to really get to know each other.

And we really feel like we're a work family. We feel real bonded to each other. And part of that comes from regular one-on-one meetings. As I mentioned earlier, having regular one-on-one meetings with staff. I meet one-on-one with my direct reports every week.

And because I've got a small team, I can do it weekly. If you have a large team, maybe you do it every other week or at least once a month. But Gallup, the polling company, again, says that employees who have regularly scheduled one-on-one meetings with their supervisor are three times more engaged in doing their best work than employees that don't.

And think about this. If you don't have regular one-on-one scheduled meetings with your supervisor, you're typically going to either see your boss in the hallway when you pass them in the morning and have a quick hello and/or talk with them on an as-needed basis when there's an issue or something that needs to be discussed or a question that needs to be asked, right? That's reactive.

What I love about my one-on-one meetings with the team is I spend the first 5 or 10 minutes just catching up with them, asking people about their families, asking people about areas of their life that I know that they're interested in, catching up on what's going on in the world. And it really helps stay connected to people. And I think it really helps facilitate a caring relationship between me and my team, me and my teammates.

And I think it makes a difference. And I think that because I've made more of a intentional focus in doing this, I really feel like the quality of my relationship with the team is so much better than it was 10 years ago, just because I'm much more proactive about this nowadays. It makes a difference.

My boss does the same thing with me. Our executive director, she meets one on one with me on a regular basis. Always at the beginning, ask me how I'm doing, how my weekend was, how my grandchildren are. It's really motivating to me, and I know that she cares about me as a person.

And it's one of the reasons I've been with Deer Oaks for 11 years, is she's a great person to work for. I feel really-- I feel very cared about by her, not just as an employee, but as a person. It really makes a difference. And so seeing it as an investment, folks. I know we're all busy, but see spending time with people, catching up with them and showing an interest in their lives as an investment.

And then last but not least, and I know I'm preaching to the choir about this, I think we all recognize the value of showing appreciation and recognition for staff or giving recognition to staff. Another research study cited in that book, The Leadership Challenge by Kouzes and Posner I mentioned earlier-- Kouzes, by the way, if you're interested is spelled K-O-U-Z-E-S, and Posner is P-O-S-N-E-R, Kouzes and Posner, is that 70% of American employees wish they were more appreciated at work.

And I think that's interesting, which really kind of leads you to think that a lot of us in supervisory roles aren't doing a really good job thanking people for their efforts. I know we're all busy. And folks they do get a paycheck and all those kinds of things, but people need more than just a paycheck to feel appreciated. They need to know that the people that they work for, the people that they work alongside of notice their hard work and appreciate their efforts. And so I think it's important we go out of our way to recognize that regularly.

There's a book out there called The Carrot Principle, where they did a survey of employees. And they were asking employees, what's the number 1 thing you want from your boss? And the number 1 thing was to receive appreciation and recognition. I thought that was really interesting. And so I think it's really important that we in leadership positions on a regular basis, intentionally go out of our way to show more appreciation and give recognition to the team.

All right, last but not least, let's talk about encouraging employee well-being. Obviously, it's an important part of maintaining a mentally healthy workplace environment. So it starts with modeling, right? When you're in a supervisory role, people are looking to you.

Sometimes we don't realize that people are watching us, but they do. So the attitude that we have, how positive we are when we come to work every day, if we keep our lives in balance, that actually speaks volumes to employees. They pay attention to that.

So for example, if you're not keeping your life in balance, if people see you working till 7 o'clock every night, and they see you eating a sandwich at your desk every day, that sort of is the-- and you may not be telling people that you expect them to do that, but that's sort of models for the team that that's the expectation, that what you value is people working through lunch and working late. And we've got to be careful of that, folks, right?

There's so much research that says when people have a balanced life at work or when they take their breaks, when they leave work at a reasonable time, it actually helps them not only with their mental and physical well-being, but it really helps their-- aids in the quality of the work that they do. When people are burning the candle at both ends and are exhausted, quantity doesn't necessarily mean quality, right? I mean, it doesn't mean that they're going to be more productive.

I think people who-- there's lots of research about this. People who live a balanced work life, when they go to work every day, they pace themselves, they take a good lunch break, they walk around a little bit during the day and take a break, they visit with their colleagues a little bit, and they leave work at a reasonable time, and they make sure that they have some downtime in the evenings and on the weekends, those folks are happier, healthier, more productive people in general.

So it's important, I think, that you model that, that you pace yourself, that you show employees that it's OK to slow down, it's OK to take time to visit with a-- visit with one of your teammates in the hallway for 5 or 10 minutes. There's some workplace environments that I've worked in the past that were so uncomfortable, so stiff and businesslike that people always want to try to look busy. And that's unhealthy.

People need to-- for people to do their best work, they need to feel relaxed and comfortable. I think you would all agree. And so I'll-- I was so proud of this one chief financial officer that I met with at one point. And she was doing something with her team. And she said to the team, I want to give you guys permission, she said to them, because she was saying she wanted people to lighten up a little bit and be more comfortable with each other.

She said, guys, when you walk in the door in the morning, I don't expect you to go right to your cubicle, boot up your computer, and just nose to the grindstone for hours, and then take your lunch break. She says, you have my perm-- I love that she said this. She says you have my permission to stop at one of your buddies' cubicles or desks or offices and visit for a few minutes and ask them about their weekend. You've got my permission.

And she did qualify by saying, I don't want us to take a half an hour to just sit around and chitchat. No, of course not. We got work to do. But 5 or 10 minutes, I mean, I want you to enjoy your time here. And I want you to feel comfortable and enjoy your time with each other.

I thought that was a wonderful way to give people permission to take care of themselves. And I thought that was great that she verbalized that. And so also, demonstrating an interest in wellness activities. If people see you taking care of yourself, they're going to be more apt to take care of themselves.

Now, remind people also to manage their stress well. I. Think this is important some people have a hard time with that. I know we all know that. I've got one particular employee that I've been working with for many years that I get lots of emails from over the weekend. And so I know that this person burns the candle at both ends and tends to overwork a bit.

And so I've said to this person on Fridays before, multiple times, you're important to us. You do a great job. I don't want you to burn out. So I mean, please, if you can, maybe try not to do any work over the weekend. Enjoy your family. I want you to-- again, I don't want you to burn out. I want you to take care of yourself.

And I think that makes a difference. I've noticed that over the years, I've seen that person sending out fewer over-the-weekend emails, which hopefully is indicative that they took that advice and are trying to enjoy their downtime over the weekends. And so remind people to take care of themselves. If you see someone not taking their lunch break, you might suggest, hey, don't have to work at your desk-- or I mean eat at your desk. I want you to get out of here if it's a pretty day.

Now, along those lines, if you sense that an employee stress level is too high, offer support. I think it's important to let people know that, hey, I know that our work gets stressful sometimes. I know that we have some deadlines, and there's a lot going on, but again, I'm here to support you if you need it. And I want you to take care of yourself.

I think those are really good messages you can send to the staff to help them be more aware of taking care of themselves. I also encourage people to disconnect from work on the weekends to unplug from technology, like we talked about earlier. And I make sure to model that. I don't send out any emails over the weekend, none, zero.

Even the once in a while when I'll come out to my office on a Sunday morning to catch up on some things, I will draft emails that I'm going to send, but I put them in the draft folder. And I don't send them out until Monday morning because I do not want people feeling-- checking their phone and seeing an email from me over the weekend. I do not want them to feel tempted to open that email and get them out of relaxation into thinking about work again.

All right, last but not least, I also think it's important to encourage good time management with your team. I think it's important to talk to people about time management from time to time. This is another area that sometimes supervisors don't talk about.

It's almost assumed that if someone's an adult, they've got good time management skills. I think most of us that some people don't. Just like some people don't have good interpersonal skills, some people don't have good time management skills. So I like coaching people and talking to them about don't overcommit. Don't try to get too much done.

Let's talk about priorities, and let's talk about maybe focusing on a fewer number of important things rather than trying to get too much done. I think it's important for people to have the goal of creating an achievable daily plan, so they can pace themselves throughout the day. I don't want people feeling rushed throughout every day. That keeps their stress level up high.

And I also try to monitor employee workloads. I don't want people to feel overwhelmed. I know there's times when in every workplace and every workplace environment workloads are higher. It's cyclical for most of us, but I really try to monitor people's workloads. And if I sense they're feeling overworked or overwhelmed, I like to try to talk to them about providing additional support.

All right, folks, I know we talked about a lot of things during a very short period of time today, but I want to go ahead and open it up for questions. I mean, this is a really important topic, especially during this point in time, when stress levels are probably higher than they've ever been. And so if you have any questions, any additional questions about how to maintain a mentally healthy workplace environment, please feel free to type them into the question box in the GoToWebinar software on the upper right-hand corner of your screen. We have plenty of time this afternoon.

We do have well over 100 people on the call today. So we may not get to everyone's questions, but I'll get to as many as we can. So again, if you have any questions, please type them into the question box in the GoToWebinar software in the upper right-hand corner of your screen.

Here's a good one. How do you approach employees who are all about business and don't like or want to chit chat or to share about their personal lives? That's a great point. And so small talk and bonding is ideally most effective-- I know we all this. It's ideally most effective when you customize it or tailor it to the comfort level of each individual person.

So I try to find out on what level will each person want to connect with me. Some people will want to talk about their families all day long, right? And so I will-- that's where I'll go. I've got one employee that has a daughter and loves to talk about their daughter, just like I love to talk about my grandchildren.

So I'll ask questions about the daughter. And that always-- we always have some nice conversation around that. And I can tell that this person feels cared about and feels that I'm interested in their family. And that's important. Other people wouldn't be comfortable talking about that. And they may be more comfortable talking about football during football season.

But I try to figure out what non-work-related things is each person interested in. There's always something. And even for people that are the most stiff and businesslike, I may just do some small talk around business related kinds of things. But the bottom line is we want to have-- we want to connect with people and bond with them. And when you ask them and converse with them about areas that you find out that are interesting to them, that always is a good bonding experience between you and the employees.

Thank you. We've lots of questions coming in. Here's a good question too. During your team meetings, what types of things do you discuss? When I have them, I feel there's nothing to discuss. That's a really good point. And so this is how I handle it, is I work with one of my supervisors, and we talk about two or three topics per week.

So we do weekly team meetings. We typically keep them to 30 to 45 minutes. If there's not a lot to talk about, we'll cut them short. But we go into the meetings typically with two to three things that are going on in our world right now or areas that we want to focus on moving forward. And then we just facilitate a brainstorming conversation with the team about those topics.

And it goes really, really well. It really does. I mean, people are-- because we've created an environment where everyone knows that we really-- the supervisor and I, we really value people's input. We've created a real collaborative environment where we do a lot of brainstorming and sharing.

And rather than-- and that's a big change in the way I used to facilitate my team meetings, where years ago, I used to come with my agenda. And I would go through the team meeting doing 80% of the talking and covering the things I wanted to cover. And I noticed that people weren't very engaged.

And then I realized, as I got better training and more experience, that I wasn't facilitating it in a very, very good way. I was too directive. It was too much one-way communication, and it wasn't comfortable for people. They were feeling like they were being talked at.

So when I learned how to be more of a facilitator and more of a collaborator, it's made a real big difference. And again, if you go in with two or three things to talk about and the meetings over in 15 minutes, no problem at all. Go ahead and let it naturally come to a close. And there's no sense just holding people together just to hold them together.

But those conversations tend to go really, really well. And again, it's not what we're talking about. It's the fact that everyone's encouraged to share. We take-- we bring issues or topics or problems, and we throw them out to the group, and we brainstorm together. And it's really become a nice collaborative process for us as a team.

And people look forward to that nowadays. I think it's really great. Now, we also start a lot of our team meetings with ice building activities-- or excuse me, icebreaker activities, team building activities. And so what I'm talking about is we'll go around the virtual room, and everyone-- because we all work virtually. So our weekly meetings are virtual.

And so we'll go around the room and around the virtual room, and everyone will have a chance to weigh in. We've had some really cool icebreakers. And you can go online, and if you like the idea of doing some icebreakers at the beginning of the meeting, it's only 5 or 10 minutes for people to get to each other better.

You can just google icebreaker suggestions. You'll get a ton of them online. There's lots of information out there. And so one time, we did one on talk about the best concert, musical concert you ever went to and why it was such a good experience.

And we had a lot of fun with that one. Everyone got to each other's musical preferences. We got to know each other. And so we've done literally dozens of those over the years, and on different topics. And it's really helped us let our hair down and get to know each other better and get more comfortable with each other.

That's a great way to start meetings oftentimes. And you don't have to do it every meeting. But from time to time, it's a nice way to get people more connected together. All right, let's see what other questions we've got.

All right, here's another good one. So you guys are bringing up some really good questions. And again, I'll get to as many as I can today. How would you suggest opening a conversation with an employee who stresses a lot about deadlines and will not take a breather? This then rubs off other staff around this individual.

That's a really, really good question. And of course, there are people on every work team that are like that, that are just all business, all work, pretty intense, right? And you're right, that that kind of intensity sometimes makes things uncomfortable for people around them that are trying to stay in balance.

And so for people like that, I really do try to slow down a little bit and engage them in a little bit of bonding at the beginning of our one-on-one meetings. I know they're going to want to get down to business. And I'll just say yeah, we've got time for that too. You've got plenty of time.

I just want to-- I want to get to know you a little bit better. I want to be able to better support you. And getting-- by getting to know you better, I'll learn what's important to you. And that'll help me do a better job of supporting you as your supervisor, is the kind of approach I take.

And again, I don't force it. I won't spend a whole lot-- if someone's so all business they don't want to talk about their personal life at all, If I can't find an area that I can talk to them about that would be comfortable for them, I'll move on. But 9 times out of 10, I've been able to as I get to people over time just by slowing down.

And even for people that are really businesslike, I'll learn a little bit more about them and ask them a couple of questions at the beginning, or I'll bring up a topic like if I know they like football say, hey, did you see the playoff game yesterday? And at least gives us a minute or so we can kind of visit about the game.

I can ask questions like, does your family-- is your family going to do anything-- I know your kids are in school or does your family are going to do anything for spring break? I mean, those kinds of things. Any plans for summer vacation? I mean, those are the kinds of things over time. And the get to someone, of course, the have areas to ask them about since you're getting to know them better and what's important to them.