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(upbeat music) (audience chattering) (bell chimes) - Hello and welcome to the City Club of Cleveland, where we are devoted to conversations of consequence that help democracy thrive.

It's Friday, September 30th and I'm Molly Walsh, principal of Standout Consulting and proud member of the City Club Board of Directors.

I'm pleased to introduce today's forum, which is the George Gund Memorial Forum on the state of the American economy and also part of the City Club's Workforce Development Series.

Over the last several months at the City Club, we have been talking in depth about the challenges and opportunities in the workforce today.

In June, we heard directly from human resource professionals on how their jobs have changed over the last several years.

In July, we took a close look at the social determinants of work, uncovering what workers need in order to thrive in their careers.

And today, we will hear from top executives who are navigating new workforce dynamics and the solutions they propose to fully support the needs of their workers.

Some call it the great resignation, but human resource professionals see an era of great opportunity to reimagine talent, strategy and purpose.

Employers are now moving beyond traditional benefits packages and are considering different key influencers in workplace benefits programs to increase retention.

This includes financial wellness and the longevity of its workforce.

Joining us with some opening remarks is Kevin Crain.

He is the head of Retirement Research and Insights at Bank of America.

Kevin's team creates and delivers research focused on workforce, aging, longevity and employee financial wellness.

After Mr. Crain's remarks, we will move to our panel conversation.

Joining us on the panel is Dr. Kelly Hancock, chief caregiver officer at the Cleveland Clinic Health System, Dr. Ethan Carp, president and CEO at Magnet and Tony Mellone, head of Human Resources at Nestle Professional, USA.

If you have a question for our panelists, you can text it to 330-541-5794.

That's 330-541-5794.

You can also tweet your question @thecityclub and City Club staff will try to work it into the second half of the program.

Members and friends of the City Club of Cleveland, please join me in welcoming our esteemed panelists and Kevin Crain today, Kevin.

(audience applauds) - Thank you Molly for that kind introduction.

It's an honor to be here in Cleveland.

I'm actually based in New York, but it was such a tradition of the City Club and being able to speak about this second.

Thanks to the Bank of America team for being here.

And third, I am a Red Sox fan, but I'm a Guardians fan now because I always loved Terry Francona.

So go Guardians, good luck in the playoffs.

(audience applauds) The Red Sox, unfortunately we are nowhere near that.

So it is an honor to speak today about talent and the balance, and we're gonna speak as a panel too about this.

We just released this week our 12th Annual Workplace Benefits report, which studies exactly what was teed up in the introduction.

Looking at financial wellness, considerations of employers and then how it reconciles with employees' attitudes and feelings.

And having done this study for 12 years, this year is probably the most monumental given the quickly shifting world that we live in.

And I'm gonna speak about some of those trends.

We entitle the report purposefully, Navigating a New Era of Financial Wellness.

We didn't wanna talk about the, well, are we going into a post pandemic period or endemic period, it's truly a new era.

Labor markets are different.

Employee benefits are expanding, they're changing, they're becoming different.

Employees are feeling in some cases more empowered in a different way.

So I'm gonna speak about what goes into all those elements of why we think of it as a new era.

And let me start with the labor markets.

This is a significant element.

One thing we found in the report is 46% of employers, when we said, "Are you seeing significantly increased resignations?"

They said yes, 46%.

But what was coupled with that is they believe strongly now financial wellness programs are a very important element to counteract that trend.

84% of employers said offering financial wellness tools and programs can help reduce employee nutrition.

81% said wellness tools can help attract quality employees.

To go along with that, in the study we found employers need to stay at attuned and be activists to mitigate this highly challenging environment.

Not surprising when we said to employees, if you're feeling a level of stress right now, why you're feeling it?

And I'm sure you're not gonna be surprised.

80% of employees said they feel it because of inflation.

The current economic situation.

71% of employees said the cost of living growth is outpacing the growth of their pay.

So they're beginning to feel that pressure even on their daily lives.

One thing we always study in this study each year is we ask employees, do you feel good or excellent about your financial wellness?

And we did two versions of research this year.

In February and in July.

In February, 57% of the employees said they actually felt good or excellent about their financial wellness.

That was a high in the last five years.

By July, that had changed to 44% of employees felt good or excellent, and that was the low we saw in five years.

But, but when we said to employees, how are you gonna feel two to three years from now about your physical, your emotional, your financial wellbeing?

Actually they were optimistic.

60% plus said they do think they would feel better in that.

So again, when you look at employers, and I know all of you as employers, all you're doing to expand benefits, give more tools, give more support to your employees, that's obviously gonna be critically important to get them through this period.

We have seen an expansion of benefits.

One thing during COVID and even coming out, probably one of the most important form of benefits that we saw and employees were asking for was emotional wellness benefits, right?

Not just EAP programs, emotional wellness benefits, as well as the expansion of physical wellness benefits and financial wellness benefits, student debt programs, emergency savings programs, things like that.

Those are all critical arrows in the quiver for employers to help their employees.

A promising thing was employers said at a very high percent, if I do a good job of this, I see more loyalty from my employees, I see more satisfaction.

And therefore with that, hopefully an employee base that that stays longer.

Now moving on to healthcare, healthcare is always something we found in the survey that's of great interest and concern.

And certainly that's even become more paramount.

The good news is a very high percent of employers say, I have to feel equally responsible about that as I do about overall financial wellness.

And I do, and they're doing things obviously in looking at what they can do to manage premium costs, health savings accounts.

If they're offering a high deductible health plan, encouraging more of that.

Interestingly in the study, if an employer offered an HSA, 89% of those employers were also seeding the HSA with employer money as a way to further incent using that.

So let me finish up and talk about the employee side.

So one thing not surprised and we'll talk about as a panel is we asked employees in the last six months, "Have you taken a tangible action because of your financial security or insecurity issues?"

50% of the employees said, "Yes, we have."

The three biggest things they've done is tap emergency savings, immediate savings, worked additional hours if they were in an hourly job and obviously could increase their wages.

And the third highest was, look for a higher paying job.

So they're clearly feeling like they have to act.

But further out retirement is still a concern.

When we surveyed in February, 69% of employees said, "I actually think I'm confident of reaching my retirement goal by the summer."

That was 56%.

74% of employees said the 401K plan is a very important element to retirement savings.

That's great.

But only 61% of employees are maximizing if there's an employer match, just even doing that, maximizing the match.

So there's obviously some room there for the program to be more effective.

And then one area we study which we've never done before is social security and Medicare.

Now you wanna talk, We were talking about politics and I am not going far into politics here.

Social security and Medicare is a very paramount political issue right now if you see what's going on in the midterms and probably in 2024.

We asked employees, "Do you understand it?"

38% of employees said, "Yes, I do."

We asked employers, are you helping the employees understand it?

Less than 40% of employers said, "I'm doing something actively in that."

That's important because those are gonna be pillars for someone's retirement preparedness.

Or when we did the study someone said to me, "Well, why do I care?"

A younger person.

Well, for the other reason if you didn't think it was gonna be there, you're gonna need to do more personally to be accountable.

And then last, when you looked at different segments, age groups, across all age groups, they felt this sense of financial insecurities starting to fit in the last six months.

But on ethnicity, there was more pressure.

We saw in ethnic groups with Asians and black African Americans felt more of the financial stress and strain of the last six months than the other ethnic groups.

And then women feel it more than men, but that gap is narrowing, they both equally feel it.

So that was our study, those were the results.

And with that, I'm might let these guys be the star and we're gonna take it to the panel discussion.

(audience applauds) - I just have to jump off here real quick.

We have a slight mic problem with your mic.

So whatever the first question is, who's going first?

I'm gonna help out here and jump to Kelly because the healthcare workforce challenges are massive right now.

And trying to ensure that your nurses for instance don't go on strike as some have elsewhere in the country.

I mean, can you talk a little bit about how the Cleveland Clinic is thinking about that?

- Sure.

So I think to put it in context for this discussion, when we look at our overall workforce for the Cleveland Clinic, we're nearing 76,000 caregivers.

And so when I say the term caregivers, I'm referring to all of our employees because they're all called caregivers.

So whether they're clinical facing or not.

And specific to the workforce shortages that we're experiencing are mostly in the US where we have locations clearly in Northeast Ohio, Florida, Nevada, where we employ about 69,000 caregivers.

So you are correct.

We certainly are feeling the impact of the shortage, particularly due to the pandemic.

So again, to put it in context, pre-pandemic, we enjoyed about 5,000 openings on an annual basis, which was pretty typical when you compare us to different benchmarks that we utilize.

But when you started going into the pandemic, particularly of March of 21, where you looked at the overall labor industry and the number of openings across all industries, and we looked at our own data, we nearly doubled those vacancies, were 10,000.

And you can imagine the strain that that put on our organization.

And so as you can imagine in what you've seen in the news and understood, particularly our clinical facing caregivers, particularly our registered nurses, got tired for a variety of reasons.

And so they left the workforce.

So some had the ability to retire early, some just chose to leave healthcare altogether.

And others took advantage of the travel agency that's alive and well.

Of course there's a national nursing shortage that existed before the pandemic but it got exacerbated of course.

So there are a variety of different factors that impacted that shortage.

So to mitigate those shortages, we've done a variety of different things.

We've made some strategic investments in terms of our talent acquisition team, particularly around sourcers and recruiters, so we could really understand where that talent is out there and how we can bring them to our organization.

So they're very well aware of what we have to offer as an organization.

We have a strong partnership with our academic colleagues, both here in Northeast Ohio and in Florida and in other areas.

And so we're leveraging that to see how we can partner in bringing in students, not just from a nursing perspective, but other allied health professionals as well into our organization.

I'd also say that the pandemic has some silver linings, you know, and one of which is that we've enjoyed a stronger partnership with our healthcare organizations here, particularly in Northeast Ohio.

So university, hospital, metro, the VA and of course, you know, St. Vincent Charity where we've come together and working on this workforce sector to see, we're all in the same boat, but to see how we can come together and leverage our resources to bring talent into our organizations.

Because after all, we have a shared purpose, right?

We all wanna support those in our communities and those in needs of our care.

So those are just a few of the initiatives that we have in place.

- Great.

Thank you Dan.

That was a really good question by the way.

- Yes it was.

- So I'm gonna let Ethan and Tony, I'm gonna let you opine on the same thing.

So Ethan, same thing.

If you look at the labor conditions, the economic conditions as was just talked about by Kelly and how it's changed.

- Sure.

So I'm talking to you wearing many hats on this panel.

So one is as the leader of a nonprofit, about 60 people, services.

We help small manufacturers grow.

Half of our economy depends on those manufacturers.

And so half of our organization actually works with them on shop floors.

So we get to hear their challenges in workforce, but also product development and marketing.

And the other half works, like Kelly mentioned, working with the sector to say, how can we work with the community to build pipelines into manufacturing?

Because there's also 10,000 people in Northeast Ohio that could go into manufacturing that manufacturers need that they're not getting.

And the impact on our economy is immense because one out of every two jobs here depends on having a thriving manufacturing sector.

So that's the first hat.

The second hat is as the board chair of the Workforce Development Board.

So for those that don't know this organization, also it runs services called OhioMeansJobs.

And this is for those maybe that are out of work, looking for a better job.

A lot in our urban environments here in Cleveland, they see 15,000 people a year who go to them and say, how can I find a job, how can I find a career?

And where they struggle is to say, all right, well, how do we get those individuals, not just the ones we see into training, into these types of jobs versus maybe something that is easier or more well known.

The other thing is there's a labor force participation problem, right?

This is a fancy way of saying, we have a recruitment issue.

We need people for all of our jobs.

Where are they coming from?

So this organization is on the front lines trying to do that along with many other community partners.

And the third hat is kind of embedded in there as a leader of our own organization, we are services firm.

So we represent sort of a small services.

And all of these come with unique challenges.

But while they're different, they are all different facets of the same challenge.

And that is that workforce is a systemic issue.

Solving these challenges can't be done piecemeal.

So if it's the labor force participation, that's great.

You get somebody into the workforce, okay, where do they get the training, how do they get the transportation?

How do they get linked through so they don't just drop off at some point.

For example, for a services organization, we're looking, okay, when they're in your organization, that's great.

You're paying them well, how do they stay?

Culture, your values, right?

These are all just different pieces and they've all gotta be in place.

So that's sort of a little bit of the perspective that I bring, but it's also the challenge I think that we're all facing as we go out there that we can't look at this piecemeal, we've gotta look at it holistically.

Tony.

- Very good.

From an Nestle perspective, I only wear one hat.

- I can't say that.

- Just a small hat, right?

- In HR, you know, from that perspective of trying to manage all of these dynamics.

You know, we all have that same opportunity.

We're in the food business.

We feed America.

That's how we see our roles throughout the US and all over as we've just discussed.

The labor shortage is there and we're challenging that.

It is that value proposition we need for all of our employees and future employees to understand what an opportunity is with Nestle, what are those long term opportunities?

But also the short term, it's really attracting the new folks that we need to get on into our organization and retain them.

And it's the entire length.

It's not hiring 20 somethings.

It's not hiring 30, it's the whole group.

So we have to meet each and every employee almost in their own personal space where they are.

Whether you're just getting outta school, high school, getting outta college, looking for a new job.

You might be someone in your '50s looking for a new transition for a role.

So we're trying to meet them.

And it is the medical benefits for some, it's the financial benefits for others.

And then it's that initial aspect.

And you have to look at holistically, it is financial, it is, you know, the mental aspect things, it's the health aspect of the things.

And it's also the social piece.

So being very creative in benefits and bringing folks on board so they understand that, pay is important, but it's that value proposition over a longer time that we have to educate.

And it's one of the big things that we try to do with our different benefits, is educate the employees on what the value they have and how they bring it.

Whether it's an HSA that is portable, we've made our benefits to where an employee could come work for us and go work somewhere else, that is a portable benefit along with our 401k.

And even we were in a transition period with our pension, the pension became a cash value that folks could make portable.

So we're transitioning as quick as we can, but this new environment is very dynamic.

It's changing quickly and we're just, we're adapting, but it is adding that value to the employee's experience.

- Tony, on your comment on the long term, so a lot of what we do is entry level, right?

And trying to pitch it.

And the salaries, you know, are like as a career manufacturing above average, and healthcare, right.

These are really good careers, but you've gotta pitch it at the lower level.

And what we find is the long-term perspective on, hey, even a couple years out is really challenging for us because folks are saying, especially at under $25 an hour say, folks are saying, yeah, but that dollar is more important than the healthcare benefit, than what I can make in three years, et cetera.

Curious when, as you're talking about that, how does that... - Oh, very much so.

You know, it's competitive market.

People are looking for flexibility.

We were sharing earlier though, in manufacturing, you start up a lasagna line and that lasagna line needs people on it.

So we don't have that flexibility of remote working in our manufacturing or flex time in our manufacturing.

So it's set, so it's kind of rigid in that respect.

So we have to have that entry level that it's attractive, but then it is encouraging them and get them to understand, again, you'll hear me say value proposition.

We started a life save spending account... - Lifestyle spend.

- Spending account.

Which is a new benefit.

We're one of the few organizations out there, about 20% that are out there.

Our employees, $500 each employee for them to spend on their mental, physical wellbeing.

- The lifestyle spending account, you fund that.

- Correct.

That is, is 100% percent funded by Nestle.

And it's something that is seen a great reaction to initially.

- Do you do that also?

- You know, that's something we're exploring.

So when we think about the value proposition for our caregivers as well, and we look at the total rewards, what we know is that we have a very rich employee health plan.

You know, so we serve about 120,000 lives with through our health plan.

And when you compare the offerings and the out-of-pocket and their premiums, their top notch, but that's not enough to your point.

So right now to look at how do we meet our caregivers where they're at personally and professionally, we too are looking at a more contemporary approach.

So we've just completed a benefits preference survey.

And so we're asking caregivers 'cause we wanna understand what is more important to you.

Do you want a lifestyle account?

And for a trade off of less vacation for example, do you want us to increase your premium?

And we know that answer for trade off of... - Leading question.

- You know, what is more important to you?

Because what we understand is to attract the talent and retain who we have, we need to meet them where they're at.

- Now, what about emotional wellness benefits?

Has that been an evolution over the last few years of beyond employee assistance programs expanding those and in what way?

- Sure.

- And what have you all done in that regard?

- I can start.

Certainly in healthcare and, you know, again, pre pandemic, you know, we had very rich offerings in terms of supporting our caregivers through your traditional employee assistance program.

But what obviously what we found, particularly what they've seen in the past three years is that they needed more.

And so we solicit their feedback.

So we have everything from the employee assistant program to peer support groups to what we call emerge stronger where colleagues come together and similar peer situations and have conversations that's facilitated.

We also have other offerings outside of our organizations for caregivers who prefer perhaps a more confidential conversation on how to help them.

In terms of physical wellbeing, we had to pivot a bit during the pandemic and so many of the offerings that our caregivers enjoyed from yoga to other, you know, classes that we had to do virtually.

And to my surprise, you know, the uptake with that was, it was very high.

So we'll continue on that path for some caregivers where that benefits them, but also exploring what else is needed to support them.

- Yeah, it's a holistic approach, you know, from the standpoint of how do you, I'm not gonna go into Kelly's word, how do you treat an individual, right?

They're looking at it from their perspective.

So we expanded a great deal on our mental capacities of making things available, whether it's online or in person.

We made those available.

That lifestyle spending account is one that an individual, if you're into yoga, yoga magic, supporting that social being, that the overall piece.

So it's a critical piece of what we're doing and making it available.

- How important do you think you can all comment on this?

Benefits are to someone's decision making to either come or stay with your organization in their hierarchy of order of how they decide.

And we talked about today, virtual work, we talked about that a little bit and we talked, but how important are benefits to that consideration?

It may be different by generation too, but I'd asked you.

- Yeah.

I'll start.

I'll start from our own internal organization.

And we've got a bunch of team members here.

So they'll hold me to account afterward if I don't answer it now.

I'm not gonna take signals.

As I think about this, there's two purposes, right?

You gotta have competitive benefits as the overall comp package, but there's a huge range of what that means, right?

In your premium, et cetera.

You know, yes, we have healthcare, yes, we have those things.

So then once you're, you know, you've hired the person, 'cause, you know, I'm not really saying in the recruitment phase, you say it's competitive, it's the salary, okay.

Once they're there, then it's not just signaling, but a lot of it is signaling.

So if values matter, feelings of belonging matter, if people wanna feel cared about and that you truly do live values, whatever they are, I mean, realistically, I think they're super important.

But all values use different words to kind of say the same things.

If that's what's important, then doing things like the lifestyle.

So yeah, you're paying for yoga, but you're paying for mindfulness.

Or I'm just listing through your home office things, things that don't add up to a lot, but say, look, we're trying our best.

We can't make such and such free for you or we can't do this other thing because we're constrained as a small company or as a nonprofit, but we can try and do these other things that make your life better.

Where do professional development, that's actually wrapped in here.

Or even personal development.

The idea that you can pay for things and encourage people to take on even relatively expensive, you know, things that just improve them, again, you're valuing them.

Those sorts of benefits are signaling and they're creating that culture to say, no, we actually do care about you and we can't do everything, but here are the things we can do.

- And that hard for them, away from them.

- And I was gonna answer, it really is where the person is in their career, in their life.

You try and figure that out through the sourcing in the interviewing process to really gauge what is important to them.

Is it financial security?

Is it, you know, maybe it's a family change that they're looking for.

They're looking for support and benefits around having children and nurturing children.

It might be a college student.

Tuition reimbursement might be important for someone.

And we partner with the high schools to really sell the pack that we have a high school, excuse me, a college reimbursement program where someone can come to work for us and they can get their tuition reimbursement, you know, covered for them.

So it's meeting them where they are.

If you're getting someone in their 50s, they're thinking about retirement.

We've got a good retirement package and we have to explain it to 'em.

So that value proposition used to be a job, now it's, you've gotta meet them where they are and figure out how to connect with them so you get them in the door and then retain 'em.

- I would agree.

So to answer your question, I would say absolutely yes.

And so what we hear from our sourcers and our recruiters is that people, as we talked about earlier, people have choices and they are shopping for those choices.

And so when you look at not just your traditional, you know, benefits that you offer, but the voluntary benefits that are appealing to them and the things that we've done in terms of flexibility of work schedules, and again we were having conversation pre-launch about remote and hybrid and what everybody was doing and people have choice in terms of that.

And so predominantly we're obviously a clinical organization, but we do have some caregivers who have the ability to work remote in hybrid.

And that's important because if you don't offer that for them, they have choices.

So again, it's meeting them where they're at and it's just, it's obviously more than the employee health plan.

- How complex have your jobs become when you have to think more in detail around differences by age groups, different by ethnicity, right?

Differences by gender.

Clearly there are, I mean, your jobs have become incredibly complex because benefits are somewhat generic.

But how do you deal with that?

- Well, I think you hit it.

It's about inclusion and feeling included and belonging.

And so it's really been a focus for us, making sure that people feel that they belong.

So when you look at the makeup of our caregivers, majority are millennials followed by some GenXers and then some baby boomers.

And so just meeting them where they're at and then couple that with the diversity of our workforce and our efforts around continuing to grow that diversity of experienced thought, of course.

And so we have about 27% of our caregivers who identify as a diverse caregiver.

And so it's meeting them where they're at to what's important to them.

You know, we're right now in the middle of this caregiver engagement survey, and it's more than a survey, it's an ongoing listening engagement strategy.

And so one of the questions that we've posed out there is, do you feel that you belong here at the Cleveland Clinic?

And so obviously we're gonna continue to take that feedback, use it wisely to develop, you know, initiatives, programs, strengthen things that we're already doing, and not to make sure that feel included, that they belong.

- When you say inclusion I also think when we talk about diversity, right?

To your question, right?

So in our plans, first of all the work we do with our manufacturers along workforce and bringing the system together, it's squarely aimed at diversity, right?

The populations we're going after are historically disadvantaged and they are the groups that have the most barriers.

And we are explicitly trying to tackle those barriers and say this is the future workforce.

Manufacturing is a highly white industry and we're trying to change that.

That being said, finding the right people and then getting them in and making them feel comfortable and included is a whole nother ballgame.

So now you're talking about inclusion and so internal to magnet and what we talk to our manufacturers about is how do you actually make an environment that is welcoming?

'Cause that's very soft.

You can do surveys, which we've done these sorts of things.

But I think what it comes down to is some level of psychological safety, which is kind of what we're talking about right here.

The fact that somebody could bring up, and I wanna loop back to your mental health, you know, question.

- Sure.

We can offer it all day long.

That doesn't mean that people feel comfortable taking advantage, not because they don't trust us, but if you create the culture where you're actually understanding what's going on in people's lives individually.

And that is independent of, you know, race or age or gen, right?

That is the epitome of individualized.

You're building that relationship and you have that trust and you can see when somebody's struggling.

Now regardless of whether you pay for it or not, you can make the suggestion.

And this is a little scary, I think for many employers, especially small ones to say, oh, does that get me into legal trouble?

And all those sorts of things.

And at the end of the day, doing the right thing by your people carefully, consciously, with care, sure, somebody might screw up at some point, but I would like to take somebody screwing that up over having the right culture and doing the right thing by the humanity of people in your company any day.

- Agreed.

- That's a great statement.

I mean, realistically it is doing the right thing and understanding where employees are and what their mindset is.

But it's a partnership.

It's what you're doing.

It's, you know, what we're doing.

And what you're doing here as a group.

We have to come together and figure out how do we work through this?

And, you know, that experience and going into manufacturing, I don't know if anyone's been in a manufacturing facility.

It can be daunting going in for the first time.

It's about making that conscious effort to make sure they're comfortable.

That security piece of it and understanding that, you know, what they're gonna get into.

So it's explaining the job, it's explaining the opportunities, it's explaining each and everything.

A lot of times we get comfortable with what we have and we forget all the things we actually have.

So it's a reminder of what the value they actually have and the job that they're in and, you know, understanding where they are.

Someone coming out may be looking for a career opportunity.

So again, it's just that overall mental where they are and how to meet them there.

- And it's getting... - Go ahead.

- Oh, it's getting over that old school thinking around, you've gotta treat everybody equally.

You've gotta treat them fairly.

- That's right.

- But it's not the same for every person.

- It's not, you know, I was gonna add, it reminded me this initiative that we're a part of at the clinic.

So we're one of the founding members of a coalition called One10.

And One10 is designated to hire and promote one million black Americans in the next 10 years.

So that's where the one 10 comes from.

And so we joined this coalition back in December of 2020.

And what I loved, and it forced our organization to do is really take a look at all the roles in our organization that had different educational requirements.

And really understand, are those requirements really a value add to the job or rather do we shift to the skills-based in competency?

And what can we do to support them as individuals and to both of your points.

And so what has allowed us to do is to bring talent into our organization, into those roles.

And not just bring 'em in, but they could really see a career trajectory for them.

And so we're designing these apprenticeships, they're kind of earned while you learn.

And I think that support and those support resources, those wraparound resources that allow us to remove those barriers and make sure folks are successful is really applicable to all of our caregivers.

And so that's something that we've enjoyed and we continue to work on.

- I would even say from a manufacturing standpoint, our skilled labor, manufacturing technicians and mechanics, we wanna meet people halfway.

If you are interested in that, we'll partner with the local community colleges and have an opportunity for a career, a long-term career in a trade aspect of things.

So it is a long-term commitment and partnership in getting early.

- I might check Ethan's comment that when you're talking about like emotional wellness, totally agree with you.

You're not for our program but there's some stigmatization that the employee is not comfortable availing themselves.

One thing we studied back in time was caregiving.

Now you call your employees caregivers.

- We do.

- Right, which I love.

But we studied caregiving and there are 40 million caregivers in the United States.

Many of them are employed.

Many of them for years have felt stigmatized that they don't feel they can speak up or work.

Has there been an evolution, well, I'm sure your business, but in your business is about recognizing that aspect of a life.

And caregiving by the way is multi-generational.

It's not just older.

So I'm interested in the evolution of benefits or considerations as an employer towards support of people during that caregiving phase of life.

- Well, naturally it goes... - I know.

- Yeah.

In our organization yes.

- When we first talked and you said you call them caregivers I was like, wow.

- Yeah, absolutely.

You know, and so obviously the organization promotes a culture of safety.

So whether it comes to our patients or our caregivers, obviously we wanna support that.

But, you know, what powerful messages that we can impart on our caregivers about having that psychological safety to come up really comes from their peers.

And so what we found very successfully, particularly over this pandemic is having the peers who are willing to do so share their story.

So we have one of our brave caregivers who came forward and she recognized the fact that she was in a dark place and she took advantage of the support that we had offered for her.

And she says, you know, I wanna tell my story because I know there's other people who are afraid to speak up, who may be in a similar situation.

So it was a lovely conversation that we had with her, myself, our CEO, about the power of what we had.

And I could tell you the uptake from that has been immense, of people reaching out and taking advantage of our resources.

So the continued support of that culture and really fostering that is important to us.

And I'm sure to the both of you as well.

- Oh, very much so.

And again, caregiving.

You know, I'll go from childbirth all the way through taking care of a parent.

It's an endless thing.

And we've put a lot of benefits around childcare and parents spending time with their, whether it's an adopted child or natural birth or any of those to make sure that there's a bond there.

And we do have, Gerber is one of our products.

So we have an end to end relationship with children, and then we're also in the medical side of things from an elderly care perspective.

So it is end to end that we look at how do we help our employees take care, the family.

It's a whole proposition, not just the employee, but a family proposition.

- Go ahead.

And Ethan you're smiling.

- Yeah, no.

I'm of two minds, right?

I can take the very cold view of this which I'll give in a second or the very warm view, right?

The very warm view is we wanna do right by everybody.

And, you know, this is living our values.

It's showing people that we care, it's doing all those things.

We want to give people the time and the space and the benefits to take care of what they need to take care of.

I can also say, hey, look, it's reflective of me.

What would I want out of my employer, right?

That's really an easy question, right?

I'd want the time and the space to do it.

I can also take the cold view for those that say, yeah, that's all wishy-washy, you know, soft stuff.

And I can take the cold view and say, you know, it's a cost of doing business, right?

Like you can ignore it and ignore the fact that somebody's having difficulties or has to do stuff and they're gonna leave.

They're gonna be unhappy.

Like there's nothing you're gonna benefit from that.

Sure, maybe they're 5% less productive because they're in that state.

Okay, that's fine.

You know, that is just like, if you let somebody go, there's a chance they sue you, right?

That is a cost of doing business, whether you like it or not.

So you can take both views and they point to the same thing, which is do the right thing.

Spend the time, give somebody the space to do it and figure out how your benefits allow that to happen.

- Well it's interesting.

To your point Kelly, I think one of the biggest networks, employee networks in the bank is the parent and caregivers' network.

Because it was started so people could speak about those issues.

In terms of employee satisfaction and loyalty, I mean, now you talked about, I found that question interesting that you say you pose to people.

We do a survey at the bank too when we ask, are you gonna be with Bank of America a year from now?

But that's interesting, the way, is that something similar?

- From a cultural standpoint, we do survey quite a bit.

Would prefer to do it face-to-face, but there are those challenges in folks feeling comfortable with that answer.

But it's an important part of what we do to retain folks, to understand, you know, from their perspective how we're doing culturally, what can we do differently to really, and we do ask the question, "Are your plans to stay with Nestle for the next one to five years?"

To base kind of where we are.

And that's a litmus test for us.

- And do they, can they provide comments?

- Oh, very much so.

- Have you seen the comments change over the last few years?

That's a very leading question but... - Interesting, I would say through the pandemic Nestle did, really the comments there were very positive of the support.

Now, does that mean everybody's happy?

We employ folks all over the US.

No, not everybody's happy.

So it's a challenge to maintain that.

- All right, so I'm getting my cue to open it up to questions.

- Let's thank our panel for their great insights.

(audience applauds) We're about to begin the audience Q&A.

I'm Molly Walsh, principal of Standout Consulting and member of the City Club board of directors.

Today we are hearing from top executives who are navigating new workforce dynamics and learning about their solutions to fully support the needs of workers.

Joining us on stage, Dr. Kelly Hancock, chief caregiver officer at the Cleveland Clinic Health System, Dr. Ethan Carp, president and CEO at Magnet and Tony Mellone, head of human resources at Nestle Professional, USA.

Moderating the conversation is Kevin Crain, head of Retirement Research and Insights at Bank of America.

We welcome questions from everyone, City Club members, guests, students and those joining via our livestream @cityclub.org or radio broadcast at 89.7 Ideastream Public Media.

If you'd like to tweet a question for our panelists, please tweet it at the City Club.

You can also text it to 330-541-5794.

That's 330-541-5794.

And City Club staff will try to work it into the program.

May we have the first question please?

- The first question is from our virtual audience and it asks, "What do each of you need from the workforce development sector that the sector isn't already doing?

And what is the workforce development sector doing that you need more of?"

- Who wants to start on that one?

- I will jump in.

- Okay Tony.

- It's a great partnership for all of our manufacturing and our production areas all over the US.

Is that partnership of really getting folks to understand what we do.

People don't grow up going, "Ooh, I wanna work in manufacturing."

So that partnership is such a critical piece to connect people that are interested in working with an open job.

So a very critical part of what they do and the value add is just continue doing what you're doing and expand that partnership where we can.

- Yeah, I would agree.

I think it's been a valued partnership.

I would also add to continue to partner with us to recognize what barriers still exist and how we collectively as a community can, you know, address those barriers, remove 'em and have the appropriate resources to wrap around the potential talent for our organizations.

- Ethan.

- Being part of that workforce system, I would maybe be harsher and say, I think there may be three things.

There's one, accountability, right?

The more business, the more those use it and say, it's not just charity.

This is actually critical through the infrastructure.

You talk about systemic racism, this is how we actually start fixing some of that.

Holding accountable to real outcomes.

That's number one.

The second thing and that, me included.

The second thing is ask more to have more connectivity directly into our communities.

That is missing.

And maybe it was there in the past, but like knowing the people down the block.

Having that connectivity.

So when you talk about jobs, it's not in this high level, oh, they're out there, it's real people learning about real jobs.

And then the third thing is to, looking at those two, don't give up.

If you're frustrated the first time, it may be the organization you're working with, there may be others or it may just be the complexity of the workforce system and getting that holistic solution right.

Don't give up, keep at it.

We need your help to do that.

- Yes.

Thanks for coming.

As I sat here and I took a few notes, I go back to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right?

I believe that we need to take a look at that.

So when we look at that first need is what?

The physical safety, those are the first two.

So as corporations are looking to retain and recruit, let's go way back when Ford used to have its own housing development right there, right?

So you eliminate certain barriers.

You don't have to worry about the transportation barrier, the housing barrier.

So think of that concept.

And I'm sitting here and I'm listening to how do we retain, how do we recruit a lot of our young people, they're basically wondering, okay, how am I gonna pay my rent?

Where am I gonna get money to pay, is my salary gonna be enough of that?

Imagine if you can incorporate something like that.

That's a benefit, okay?

You work and then it's maybe getting a full salary.

You may get a housing allowance or so forth and so forth.

And then as long as you're with us, you get that housing allowance.

And then when you get to a certain level, you can then move out to the, wherever you wanna go and get your other thing.

So I think that, you know, we're missing a point on some of the things.

Let's get back to the basic needs of how do we recruit and retain these young people.

Not even young people, but they could be older people.

Be seniors, okay?

They've been displaced.

So that's the one thing I thought about as I sat here and listened to you all talking and go back and forth.

So the other thing is about the caregiving.

Oh my gosh, we're living longer, okay?

Or my parents died in their '50s, when they were 50 some years old.

Now I got an in-law that's 92.

I have an uncle that's 96 years old.

That's a whole nother dynamic we have to deal with, okay?

And the Cleveland Clinic, thank you so much because I'm a patient of yours, so, okay.

Hey, I'm still here because of you.

Thank you so much.

My daughter, she has a nursing degree from you.

My niece has a nursing degree.

And thank you so much.

But having said that, part of how they were able to get that, my daughter, they stayed with us until she could get through the schooling and the whole bed as an adult.

And then once she's out, now she's a traveling nurse, okay?

My niece is a traveling nurse with Cleveland.

- But she needs a job.

- Huh?

- But she needs a job.

I know how to get her cooked.

- No, no, no, no.

She's with the Cleveland Clinic as a traveling nurse too.

So it's all good.

So anyway, that was just a little comment.

So we have to catch our high school students at an earlier age.

We need to get them in that pipeline.

- I agree.

- So we can talk afterwards.

I have an internship program, paid internship program.

- Yeah.

- Thank you.

- Was actually Beechwood High School yesterday with the culinary program.

Meeting with them and talking to their juniors and seniors is something that we do.

We have to connect with them, you know, for our industry and for really to help them get to that next opportunity.

Our factory here in West 25th, we're looking at how do we supply transportation?

Are we able to do that?

The jobs like I said, there's some that start at two o'clock in the morning.

That shift has to be that point in time.

But we're partnering with a lot of the different agencies to try and solve some of those problems.

So it's out there.

- Tony, doesn't longevity actually help many, isn't that actually been kind of a saving grace recently that actually people are continuing to stay on for some of those skilled jobs that we cannot find right now?

- Yes.

- And that is one of the nice things about Nestle and for the most part, we have folks that stay with us for 35, 40 years.

So it's been part of who we are as a culture to be able to work with folks to be able to do that and have that longevity.

But certainly, yes, it does.

Retaining them does help us quite a bit.

There's a lot of knowledge in those individuals also that transcending to the new new group is important for us.

- I wanna thank you for your comments about the financial wellbeing.

You know, that's top of mind for us as we look at it.

So we provide the appropriate programs to support our caregivers, right when they come in.

You know, in terms of retirement, tax support, et cetera.

And there's more we can do.

So thank you for reminding me.

I'd also like just to offer, you're exactly right.

Engaging those who are in high school is so important.

So when I think about our greatest shortage right now, again, as the registered nurses, we have a wonderful program that's called Aspire program.

So you know that program.

So it starts with juniors in high school.

And this program happens to be focused on underrepresented kids in high school.

And we give them an opportunity to come into our organization over two years to have exposure to RN and we support them from a tuition standpoint which has been very successful as we just graduated our first cohort of registered nurses from that program.

- And if I could build on that, we have a relationship with the National Restaurant Association.

I mean, it's a large employee.

If you think about the restaurant industry, it is a starting point for a lot of people and we wanna continue to drive that.

And we have a partnership there.

Their Prostar program is in high schools all over the US and it's a critical part of understanding how students can come in, differentiate themselves and what it takes to be in that industry, but also give 'em skills that could go transcend anywhere that they go to work.

- This is a wonderful conversation and I really appreciate all of what you've said.

I wanna kind of look from a little higher level.

I've always viewed workforce as a bit of a Gordian knot and untying that knot required some way to accelerate the navigation of the new workforce dynamics.

And that obviously is systemic and one or more of you have mentioned that.

But how can we in Ohio or how can we in workforce accelerate that navigation?

It's wonderful what you're doing individually if your companies and organizations, but I think, I believe there's much more that needs to be done on a systemic level.

What are your thoughts?

- Well, I'll be prevention from a benefits perspective.

One area we've left out a little bit of is also the government, right?

When you talk about systemic, and you talked about, now I wanna go to student debt for a minute there.

You know, today, a younger generation, right?

I mean, if they have student debt, they have to pay off their student debt.

Therefore if they can't save in the 401k and the employers matching, they don't get the match.

It's a double-edged situation.

There is a provision in an act that hopefully will pass congress that will allow employers to match the amount in the 401k that the person then is using to repay their student debt.

So there are things with the government that have to be done to systemize, like benefits.

Caregiving is another situation too that will make it so employers, all employers are doing equal things to help people's financial wellbeing.

But I'll let you guys take the harder part of the question.

- You know, I'll take a stab at that one.

So when we look at our overall workforce and trying to be more proactive in predicting where we're going to be in the future, you know, we have a smaller team that's looking at, it's called Strategic workforce team, to look at not only our current needs of today, but more importantly, what do we need in the future.

So it's looking at what skills, competencies, how can we leverage technology not to replace individuals, but to augment the work that's being done.

So whether you're clinical or not, and then taking that and working that at the broader level to your point of the states with folks like Ethan and his teams to see what we can do to get the appropriate talent into our organizations.

- Ethan?

- I'm again pulled in two different directions.

One collectively being bold with whatever interventions we're gonna try 'cause nobody actually has the right answer.

And being bold requires community all working together.

I didn't mention this.

We didn't talk about remote work, but in the middle of the pandemic, most of our staff is remote.

But we decided, hey, let's build a building.

So we built a building.

I will also make the invite.

On October 28th, we're having a community grand opening 61st in Chester.

This building is actually a place where thousands of students from the local region will come and they can experience firsthand what manufacturing's all about.

And that's bold.

And it only came together because community actually came together over a two-year period and funded the thing.

They funded it, foundations like the Gund Foundation, the Cleveland Foundation, private enterprises came together and said, hey, this is what we need.

And that's bold, right?

That's a bold thing the community did.

On the other hand, we can also say, I'm big into private industry here.

I talk to recruiters and I say, "Recruiters, why are you not solving this problem, right?

You're being paid a lot of money to do it, particularly in the urban core.

Why is this not happening?

Why is this not a diversity initiative?

Why isn't happening?"

And the answer is, it's way more expensive to go after somebody who has barriers to getting a job.

The transportation, the wraparound supports, all the things that you've heard about today, but also in the previous and the in the future forums here.

It's too expensive.

Okay, so what do we need to do to make it less expensive?

So there's barriers are removed to sufficient point that private industry, Nestle can go to their recruiter and say, "Great, I want a whole bunch of people who are diverse from city of Cleveland and all the other problems are solved around it.

And that is a public private partnership for sure.

But I do believe there has to be a private solution that eventually kicks in once public assistance has helped get over those barriers if it can ever be achieved.

And again that begs for the systemic answer 'cause you can't just remove a barrier and not have the private solution there or the employers who wanna hire.

- Thank you.

So earlier Kevin, you opened up and I think you had a data point that 46% of companies had experienced resignations during this time.

So Ethan, to your point, I wanna helicopter up and think about our boards and how nonprofit and corporate boards are supporting C-Suite leadership, and how are you all being supported as leaders of organizations during this time?

We've seen a lot of folks resign, right?

And so when we think about, even this conversation it's really you all speaking out about what you're doing, but you're also a part of this equation.

So can you talk about how are you modeling wellness and belonging and how are you being supported by your boards?

And lastly, what would you recommend or share with boards of other organizations around like how they may sort of inherit or sort of promote those best practices?

- I'll go ahead and start.

First of all I think we are very fortunate, our organization to have the board of directors and board of trustees that we do.

We have a very supportive and engaged board, particularly during the pandemic.

They clearly understand and continue to understand the stress that we were under from the disease itself.

And then that, yeah, you're on that, the workforce shortages.

And so they were there with us every step of the way and they continue to be.

So we're very fortunate from that aspect.

In terms of wellness behaviors, you're absolutely right.

You know, we have to model that for caregivers to see it's okay for them to do it.

So it's a nice reminder that we too have to take advantage of that, lean on one another.

You know, I am very fortunate personally that I have wonderful colleagues on the executive team, a wonderful CEO who believes in that and make sure they're intentional as well as the team that I'm surrounded with.

With some are in the room, just fabulous people to continue to remind me.

- Tony do you want... - Yeah, Nestle philosophically has always had a nurturing environment.

I mean, it was started on baby formula.

So when Andre started Nestle, it was around that nurturing piece.

You know, someone in the community could not nurse.

So formula came out of it.

So it's been that way, but it is modeling those behaviors.

The HR group that spoke a couple weeks ago, I'm sure they talked about that aspect of, what, how we had to engage and how we had to participate with the employees.

It's building that relationship.

Yes, there are, I'm not pointing in Eric, but there are still some of those folks we have to get to and teach them how to lead and develop folks.

But it's being in there and engaged and really driving that aspect and modeling the behavior.

(audience applauds) - Thank you Kevin for moderating this important conversation today and also to Kelly Hancock, Ethan Carp and Tony Mellone.

Today's forum is part of the City Club's workforce development series in partnership with the Deaconess Foundation, with additional support from Bank of America.

We would also like to thank the Greater Cleveland Partnership for their support of this forum.

Today's forum is also the George Gund Memorial Forum on the state of the American economy, made possible by a generous endowment gift from the George Gund Foundation.

A banker, businessman and philanthropist, Mr. Gund is credited with growing Cleveland Trust Bank, now KeyBank into one of the largest banks in the United States and strengthening its ties to business.

In 1952, George Gund established the George Gund Foundation with the aim of creating an institution that would carry on beyond his lifetime, finding creative solutions to social ills.

Since then, the foundation has made hundreds of millions of dollars in grants toward the advancement of human welfare.

We are grateful to the foundation for their long-standing support of the City Club.

We would also like, oops, sorry.

Wrong page.

And that brings us to the end of today's forum.

Thank you once again to Kevin Crain and to each of our panelists, and thank you members and friends of the City Club.

I'm Molly Walsh, and this forum is now adjourned.

(audience applauds) (bell chimes) - [Announcer] For information on upcoming speakers or for podcasts of the City Club, go to cityclub.org.

(soft music) - [Announcer] Production and distribution of City Club forums on Ideastream Public Media are made possible by PNC and the United Black Fund of Greater Cleveland Incorporated.