All right, Sebastian Girard, welcome to the show. Are you ready to get this party started?
I'm very ready to get started and very honored to be here today. And Adam, if I can ask you if you can call me Seb. Sebastian is when I'm in trouble. And when you say Sebastian is just bring me back to the time where my mom was yelling at me. So Seb would be fine.
All right. No flashbacks. No PTSD, please. Not. Exactly. I'll go in the fetal position and shiver. So that let's not do that. Now, I want this to be a positive experience. You're going to be you're going to be in the nest today, you're going to be I want you to feel comfortable.
I'm already doing... I'm feeling comfortable. So that's a good start.
Yeah, good. Well, speaking of being in the nest, are you an early bird? Or would you consider yourself a night owl?
Early Bird by a mile, not even close, I can wake up at 3:30-4 o'clock in the morning and ready to go no snooze fresh, but by five or six o'clock at night, brain is off, and cannot wait to go to bed.
Wow. 3:30-4 is that like normal?
Normal is probably around five, but it will work or any emergency. I need to wake up before that. Waking up is not an issue.
And now did you train yourself to get up this time? Or is this just always kind of been your circadian rhythm?
No, it's since I'm young. So it's a blessing and a curse. But this is a Yep, early bird. So I keep saying to the people I'm working with if you want my brain, get it before one or two o'clock in the afternoon. After that. My energy's down. Yep.
So I mean, I'm assuming you're similar to me. But I get more work done before nine and after five than I do during the course of an entire normal, you know, workday.
That's exactly that. And especially when you're early bird, right, nobody's calling you. You can do your emails, you can get things moving. There's little disruptions.
Yeah, yeah, for me, too. I really appreciate that. Tell me about some habits that you have, or one habit that you have good, bad or indifferent.
Only one good one, which I think served me well in life. And I will say this is an ad that I had pre COVID. Because COVID can you know mix things up a little bit. But I was very good at compartmentalizing. So achieving balance, right? Which is how do you balance your mental health, family, friend, or life with very stressful work life, right, and just the capacity to get home. And when you're with a kid, you focus on the kids. And when you're when you're why if you focus on your spouse your fortress on you're able to focus on the spouse. And that has served me very well for two years.
That's a great skill set, especially now and we have so many different distractions, again, is this something that is natural to you? Or this is something that you, you know, have consciously worked on? And if so, share your secret sauce? Because I'm sure there are a lot of people that would not have given that answer.
So yeah, no, this is a good one. So this is one that I think early in my career realized that I was able to be balanced in many aspects of my life, but not necessarily with the work life balance. So it was very consciously incompetence, to consciously incompetent and being balanced. So took me about a year or two to consciously make the effort. You know what, when I'm spending my time with the kids, this is kids time, and I'm not gonna pay attention to anything else. And after a year or two, just became consciously competent. And if you ask me today, I'm unconsciously competent in debt. Right now I'm able to do it without thinking about it.
That's truly a habit. This is a great quote, I love it says that you know that a lot of people think that they control. They control their life, but you don't you control your habits. And it's your habits that control your destiny,
that can change your life. Exactly.
Yeah. So these tiny habits, that I mean, but that's fantastic. And have you noticed, as a result of that conscious or unconscious, I should say, unconsciousness of being able to do that. Has that enhanced your ability that that time with your kids? Does it make you more productive when you're working? Does it make you more productive when you're having or whatever it is that you might be doing at that time?
I will say it's all of the above. And it's reflected with mental health, right? Because if you have the capacity to forget what's happening at work, and really focusing into the moment, your mental health is enhanced, and by having your mental health enhanced you're also enhancing the mental health of the people you are with, because you're able to give them more of your full attention and be really 100% there for them. So and really linking it to mental health.
I never even would have thought about that. But that's a great perspective. Something to think about. So Seb, tell me something that most people don't know about you.
All right. So So everybody listening right now hear an accent, right? I'm talking funny. And normally, if I'm in the conference, I'm going to ask the audience's that. Where do you think I'm from and 90% of them? Don't get it right. So it's quite pretty boring. I'm from Canada. So nobody's perfect, right? I'm Canadian. And my accent is from Montreal, right? It's a French Canadian accent. Now, what people don't know is I did full DNA testing, so I'm fourth generation Irish. And in my blood, there's not a drop of blood of French in me, whatsoever. So I'm an Irish English with a little bit of Portuguese, and like 0.3%, Viking. So of course, when people ask me, I'm saying that I'm a Viking, because I really liked 0.3%, Viking. But I have no French whatsoever in me and French is my first language. So here's a fun fact. Yep.
Oh, that's good. Well, my next question, I was gonna ask what was the last thing that made you laugh, but I can tell you the last thing that made me laugh, and that was
what I just said.Well, what the last thing made me laugh. So my kids make me laugh everyday. But the last thing was a post on Twitter yesterday, because the COVID vaccine is a hot topic right now. And there was this quote saying, if you ever played in a battle pit when you were a kid, you don't have the right to worry about what's in the COVID vaccine. And it just made me crack. It's like, okay, that's so true. Those are just so nasty and gross. Right? So let's not worry about the vaccine. If you played in the ball pit, it just made me laugh.
good stuff. So you know what I forgot to as we just got right into our conversation, as the show started. But you don't mind sharing what your elevator pitch is kind of who you are and what it is that you're doing?
Yes, absolutely. I always start by saying, I'm a husband. I'm a proud dad. I'm a friend. And I'm an HR executive like that to me, and this is how I'm defining myself and probably in that order, right. And if I have to give an elevator pitch, what I'll say is, I'm a futurist, and I'm a business and social engineer. And my specialty is to transform HR to really exceed the current stakeholder needs, but also position yourself to proactively address the future needs of the organization.
Wow, how about that, we could have a whole show just on your elevator pitch. That is fantastic. That's powerful. And I gotta tell you, I'm such an I actually wrote it down is because I had someone else I had in my other show at a gal the name of Christie Walsh, she's fantastic. She's the head of a company called Elevate. And when I had asked her something similar about, hey, describe yourself or your elevator pitch, or whatever it was, she led with something very similar about I'm a friend. And I was like, You know what, damn, that is good. Because that really is that does define who we are in what's important to us. And it's not to take anything away from your job, you obviously have a big job, you just kind of pulled in the holistic approach to your elevator pitch. So kudos to you for that one. And give a little more airtime to Christie Wallace for doing the same thing.
Very powerful, like, well, I will go listen to the Christie Wallace podcast for her conversation with you. But it's very powerful, because work is not what defines us. Right? So it's very smart to wish he enjoyed an incident. Yeah.
And I think that's such a great segue into what you do, ironically enough. So if you don't mind, what is your title, your workforce engagement, but what is your title? And exactly what is workforce engagement?
Yeah, absolutely. So I'm basically a senior executive in HR and workforce engagement, the way we are thinking about workforce engagement is leading all the key HR department in the center of expertise that we have in a good HR, that engaged with all stakeholders with the power to create an experience for them. And by that when I say stakeholders, I mean all of them, right? So that can be teammates, that can be leaders that can be executive, that can also be anybody interested to join the organization, right. So for example, an acquisition is far more force engagement, because this is a department that engage in many ways with multiple stakeholders, and have the power to create an experience. And the best example would be somebody that is interested to work for us. Well, very often, they go on our website, or they have a conversation with one of our time position consultants before they even work for us. And that's when a person needed to create an experience or to create an engagement. Right? So that's how we think about it.
That's interesting. And how is that either similar or different from someone that's considered a chief experience officer?
Yeah, that's very good. So that's a very good question is difference in the sense that the CXO going to focus on the experience of the teammates, and depending of them can also focus on the either the patient experience or consumer experience and going to drive that specific strategy. We're in the case of workforce engagement, it's really leading the department that influence that experience. So then it's the strategy of those departments that have the power to influence all of those experience. And in our case, the way we're thinking about it is really kind of acquisition executive recruiting, the HR business partners, teammates relations, when you think about all those departments, they have the power to impact the full experience of teammates in the organization. So chief experience officer drives a strategy of experience, but workforce engagement lead the department that can influence that specific influence. Yes.
Thank you for explaining that to me.
Yes. I know, right. Yeah. can be confusing,
it was interesting. I had read a Gallup poll. A while back when I'm a big fan of Gallup, I think they're one of the credible. I don't know what exactly they're labeled. But anyways, where they talked about how companies that have engaged employees, I think they enjoyed like two and a half times more revenue growth, versus the competitors that have a very low engagement level. So I remember when you and I first kind of connected and when we were talking, I remembered that fact. Yeah, that was like, it just makes so much sense and kind of hearing about what it is that you're doing and how you're going about things really supports it.
Oh, without a doubt, and I firmly believe in Gallup, I agree with you. And I've read those studies and everywhere has been that creating experience or maximizing engagement was a focus that 2.3 met Brett, it seemed to be accurate, without a doubt, even just by minimizing turnover. Right. So So assuming that people that are engaged and have strong experience to where their employers are not going somewhere else, this is a huge productivity factor. There's nothing else that can break an organization more than having an awful vacancy rates and just having worked not done or worse, having other people having to pick up the work that is not done. And then they get overburdened and burned out. Right. So that's Yep.
Its has a big domino effect. That's happening. Right?
That's right. That's right.
Yeah. Interesting. So what would you say is the skill set or I don't know if it's a personality type, that typically excels in this kind of role?
Yes. And I'm a firm believer in personalities. So even when I do my own hiring for, for leaders, working closely with me, to me experiences maybe 25 30% of the great and the personality is the other 70 75%. Right, and in this case, is truly focused on customer service. With a strong capacity to understand current and upcoming needs, strong capacity to understand trends and technology and be able to direct correlation. I'm biased because I come from the world of business, right? So HR and healthcare as my second career, I was in an operation in business executive, for a for profit organization in the past, which was the number one HR service provider in the world. And that business background is serving me and state. So to me, it's experience focused customer service oriented focus, strong business acumen and strong understanding of the current and upcoming needs and what needs to be done to address them at from all point of view for the teammate, from the leaders from the patient, etc.
So what would someone that maybe has a more traditional background in HR, are there things that they could be doing to ascertain this business acumen or some of the other things that you've just discussed?
Yes, that's a good one, because it's one of the challenges we're having, right? So an HR professional, that has been a terror professional, to really compensate. So of course, as always, all the classes etc, what I've seen successful is to attach them to project with Operation leaders. So it's a little bit of a buddy system, where it would be able to shadow some part of the operation leader work right and really get into how they think through it, how they use financial, how they use data, how they use PnL, how they make their decision, so that the HR person can close the gap and end up having the same language.
So Alright, let's say that you have a traditional HR background you have, then you are getting groomed to to do this job to be at work in workforce engagement. What is the career path look like? from there? I don't know if there's if you can just do this at other organizations, because I don't know of a lot of organizations that have this type of role. Or there are other opportunities that can come to fruition, whether it's working maybe in the business, because now you've become so ingrained in the business itself? Or is it to kind of stay more in the kind of following more the traditional HR?
That's a very good question. So I think I CHRO would need to look at all the HR departments that are having in the strength of haldor, senior leaders they have and make a decision of how do you maximize the strength of those people. In our case, the way we were thinking about it is it was really putting together different HR departments that would bring enhance the engagement of people. So every organization can do that. So the care path is do you have a strong business acumen? Do you have a strong understanding of HR and the capacity to drive people strategy? Do you have a strong focus on deliveries strategy and customer service? And if you have that, then it's the desire of the organization to pack together those departments to achieve that. It's making sure that the organization want to use that strategy to get to a stronger engagement.
Interesting. And then how about the field itself? Does this type of role lend itself more so to a particular field? Like, for example, you're in the healthcare field. So why is workforce? And why is the workforce engagement officer important specifically to your field?
And I will say, I think it's important in any field. And let me explain my answer, because and of course, they'll care because there's this component of patient experience. So the more the teammates are engaged, the more patient experience go up. And we know in healthcare, the more you have patient experience, this is how you get refunded right, this is how you get paid back with age cap scores, etc. But I will say it's in any field, because first you touched on it, Gallup said it right 2.3 productivity, I will say, I'll give you two facts, and then give you an example. So Maya Angelou said it best, right, which is, people gonna forget what you told them. But they're always going to remember how they felt. And this is so true. And then I'm going to link that concept to the experience economy. So the experience economy is a concept that started in the late 90s. It started with an HBr review. So in the Harvard Business Review, it turned into a book. And that was written by B Joseph Pine the second and James H. Gilmore. And the concept of experience economy is the organization is going to be able to draw the attention of their consumer consumer in a way that they're going to create experience and make the consumer want to spend all their time with them, are going to be the companies that's going to win in the business place. Now, if you think about companies that did that extremely well, in 2020, let's think about Disney, Amazon, Apple, etc. it's crystal clear, those are the company winning out out there. Now, if we take that concept of experience economy, that we mix it with the concept of people are going to forget what you tell them, but they're going to always remember how they felt. Everything is about an experience, right? Everything. And the more you can generate that experience, the more people are going to want to stay with you. And in a world where talent acquisition go to the plate, already two strikes, right, so we're having two boomers going to retirement for only one millennial or one Gen Z coming in into the employment market. So two resource leaving for retirement, only one resource coming into the employment market, the unemployment rate. So now of course, it's higher because of COVID. But pre COVID, we were in a full employment market below 4%, right, or even the gig economy right now, knowing that the Gen Z 41% of them going to want to be an entrepreneur, and are not going to even want to work on your payroll. So talent acquisition is trying to from the get go, your only chance to win is retention. And if your only chance to win as retention, then this is why workforce engagement become your path to win. Because the best way to retain is to create experience that's gonna make your team mate feels about your organization, and never want to go somewhere else.
Interesting.
So it was a long answer. But I wanted to set the table. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Do give me one second stab sorry. Thank you. No, sir. I just have my daughter just came in and handed me a coffee, we'll edit that one little portion out. No problem. You see your dad first. Right. So that's fine.
You know what, that's an awesome point. And you know what, maybe we'll actually keep this in just to keep it as real as possible and authentic. And just in the spirit of because it's you.
And in 2020, I think we all get used to work from home and dealing with life and work being entangled that way. Right? So yeah, well,
so how does that then filter in to the workforce engagement? Are those things that you've had to kind of have there things that you've had to implement to kind of tell everybody? Hey, it's okay, we got to be a little looser, or a little more understanding empathetic?
Oh, absolutely. We had to define what leading with empathy meant. And we really had to re reshape all our training module to how do you lead at a distance, right? Because leaders that are great in person doesn't mean that they're greater the distance and there's many things that how you lead people remotely gonna change? How do you engage remotely? It's very different in how you engage in person. How do you provide feedback remotely? How do you do it performance management remotely? How do you even how do you perceive a teammate that is maybe going to struggle remotely, right in person I can make I might be able to pick up on cues that something's going wrong with you remotely, it's way harder to find out. So things like That we had to reshape all the training and retrain all our leaders to be able to be king the best at leading remotely? Well, that's
a great, that's a great skill that you don't even think about. I mean, now, there's a new job out there called like the chief remote director, and oh, wow, yep. Yeah. And I forgot, there's two other names I've heard that are essentially the same thing. But it's kind of addressing just things like what you're just talking about that fall under? Yeah, like under your umbrella. That's a great idea.
And you know what, I think it's amazing, because it's something good gonna come out of COVID. Right, like Winston Churchill said, never waste a good crisis. And I think working remote is going to be one of those, right, which is, we're going to be able to drive results and manage to results instead of managing to a schedule of eight to five, right? So don't get me wrong, eight to five, there's job that still need to happen. But as you said, many of us now it's cool, being virtual, or having kids at home, maybe you take a longer lunch, because it needs to take care of your kids, but then you work at night to compensate for that. And Indian What really matters is the results. Right? So so that results management is going to be pushed up. And I think it's a that's a good thing.
I love that. And I agree with you about that. There are a lot of positives that have come of this, but I love that managed to results. I think that is excellent. That's a great quote, you're, you're loaded with these golden nuggets of knowledge.
Well, I don't I'm just quoting, right, so so I'm good at copying. So I'm just gonna be exactly a copycat
is managed to results. Is that a, I haven't heard that before.
I think that what he was saying is managing to performance, right? So which is manage the outcome, and not necessarily the hours. And what matters is not how long the person is working during the week, what matter is, are they delivering what they have to deliver, no matter how long it take, that's a new skills that leaders that lead with teammates that are working remotely, that really need to build,
you know, like, I feel bad for a lot of these leaders, because a lot of people now are just thrust into these positions, there's this whole new generation of leaders that weren't groomed to be leaders to begin with. So that was an issue pre COVID. So take that and kind of sprinkle in some COVID. And there's just that whole other level of challenge on on from a leadership standpoint. So that's tough.
It's very tough. And especially in healthcare, we had a tendency to be a bit behind the curve ball with working remotely compared to other industry, like, for example, technology industry, there was a Harvard Business Review that was done a couple years back. And I think what they said about working remotely was so telling that I think COVID is a blessing on that specific aspect. So they were asking in the nation, to to workers, would you want to work remotely if you had the chance, even if it's partial, right? Even if it's two days a week? And over 90% of them said yes, would love to? Then what they did is they look at the job of those people to see if they can work remotely, right? Because if I'm a if I'm a truck driver, my I cannot work remotely, right? So just cannot I need to drive my truck. Well, there's the self driving cars now. But still, you see what I'm saying? Right? So so 90% wanted 50% kin, so 50% of the people could have been working remotely. And to the question, are you working remotely even partially, it was 2.7%. And that gap is scary. 90% want 50%, Ken, and 2.7% was. So what COVID did is now that 2.7% it went up dramatically. So for the leaders that had a hard time to adapt to it. What I want to say is it was coming anyway. So I understand your pain. I totally get it. But please don't revert back because even before COVID, the message was crystal clear. This is what people wanted. And you're not going to dictate that trend. The trend is going to dictate to you so embrace it.
That's interesting. That's your height. It just exponet it expedited. This was a catalyst. Exactly. Yeah. So interesting. So what are the top three things that you're presently investing your time in these days?
So this one is easy and hard to answer? Because right now it's bracing for the surge in COVID. Right. We know the cases are going up and being in healthcare, we have to do everything we can to have enough beds for a patient and everything we can to have enough staff so that we don't overburden our existing staff. So right now it's surge, or some combination, right? We just partnered with for us, that's health, the medical, the medical side of Wake Forest. So it's this is where the time is right now. Now, in normal time. It's really about moving from engagement to experience, because there's a big difference between both and do it in a way to enhance retention. I really feel that the organization that's going to win the retention game going to win period. The second one is to understand the inter correlation between customer experience and teammate experience because they're There is correlation, but to be able to analyze data and know exactly where to focus to have your best bang for the buck, and then the hence, retention, that's the second one. So we're very dominating in the southeast. But we're at a point right now where we can go tap in the pool in the nation, and to find a way to do it the best way. That's where I would be spending my time.
Yep, gotcha. Excellent. Um, we're getting tight on time. But I really would, there are a bunch of things that I wanted to cover with you, is there a way that you can? You've got these three pillars of HR that we discussed in a previous conversation? Do you mind at least high level explaining your three pillars of HR?
I'll make it simple and fast. So let's think about a stool. at the top. So the top of this tool is basically driving the people aspect of the organization. Right. So what do we need to drive the people strategy of the organization? So the first leg of the stool would be strategy and strategic workforce planning, which is what's next? So it's really the pillar of assessing what's coming our way? And what strategy? Do we need to address that? And how do we translate it into action today to address that trend? The second leg of the stool would be engagement experience of which is the How do you get there? And then the third leg of the stool would be operations. The now, right? So operation would be more typical HR departments like data management leave of absence, etc.
Great. And then how would you kind of compare your again, I don't want to put you on the spot. But your three pillars of HR, to the podcast that I did with Dennis Roberts, where he had like what he called his three buckets of HR.
It's very, it was very similar. I think we were saying the same thing with different words. So that was, that was actually quite interesting to define it with different words. Yep.
Yeah, I thought so too. So I think that's really interesting. If you could go back in time, and give yourself some professional advice. What would it be?
Oh, well, there's many. I will say that, and I will quote two of my mentors. Everybody talked about IQ and EQ. And I think we're missing the boat. I think what we need to talk about is Sq, which is social intelligence. And I'll give you two quotes. And I'd like to explain that because it's something that I grasp later in my career, that if had grasped earlier, it would have just made me even more successful. So the first quote come from Chrissy Hofbeck she's a she's an exec actuary for one of the she was one of the top execs from one of the big insurance company, but she was also a survivor, the show, you know, with Jeff Jeff Probst. She was a survivor participant, she was a runner up, and she wrote a book called winning condition. And her quote is, it is not who you know, it is who knows you. And that's a big difference. And then the second quote would be from our current chief people and culture officer, Dr. Jim Dunn, it gave me that said to me once, you don't have to be the smartest person in the room, those are often not the one that's going to be succeeding. You need to be the person that's going to understand all the network, understand how the relationship are going. And you're going to find a way to get visibility to those people and have them pay attention to you. So again, it's not what you know, it's would know you. And if think about it, social intelligence is often winning over everything else.
You're speaking my language right now. So awesome. Oh, this is Yeah, this is my language. I mean, my company is all about network wise. It's teaching people, the art and science of building world class relationships. And it's all of those things that you just talked about. I mean, I was foaming at the mouth, as you said, sq. I wholeheartedly believe in it. And I could give you a statistic above statistic and study upon studies that reinforces everything that you just talked about. And when you were just talking about I missed her name, but it reminded me of Henry Ford. Sure, you know who he was at that time. So back in the day, he was the papers destroyed him, he was this, you know, big business tycoon that made all this money and, but they would talk about how I think they called him stupid. And because he didn't grow, I think he camera, he graduated even High School. So they really like they really work hard on him. So finally, he sued one of the papers, and I'm totally bastardizing the story, but I think you'll get the genesis of it. So at one point, he's up on the stage, he's up on the stand, and he's getting interrogated by the lawyers. What's the capital of New York? Where's Grant's tomb buried? I mean, just asking him just like basic just questions and things that maybe you learned in high school or college and he didn't know the answer, didn't know the answer, didn't know the answer. And he stayed calm. And then after about, I don't know, maybe an hour of being interrogated them showing how stupid he was. He finally is just like, You know what? I don't know the answer to 90% of the questions that you just asked me, but you know what i do know. I've got a button on my desk. That's got lots or I've got a thing on my desk with lots of buttons that can get you the answer to every single one of those questions and probably school. You on the history behind the answers that I have access to, and so much more. So who's the one that's not intelligent right now? Then it's brilliant. It's totally brilliant. That's where he came. He said that if he could trade in one thing it would be you know, if he you know if he was to go broke it, but he could keep one thing, what would it be? And it was his network. It was his Rolodex, it was surrounded because of the he appreciated the social intelligence and the power of being able to connect with people. And the beauty of being able to you know, in a network, the the whole thing is to network is the surround the weakness of the individual with the strengths of the group. So all of these, talking about Yeah. Oh, yes. Yeah, that's great. So thank you for that.
My pleasure. Because it's fascinating to me, also, that people forget to network, or don't even take the time when this is one key component of success. Yeah,
yeah. It's the difference between busy and important. Well, I got to tell you, and this was an important conversation for me. I mean, I mean, you want to talk about meaningful conversation? I mean, we did that. I mean, you are a social engineer. It was funny, when you kind of described yourself as that I was like, Oh, that's interesting. I'm really happy to hear that I didn't get to dig into that. But I mean, you really are, it sounds to me that you've really found your calling in the role that you're in. I mean, you're passionate about this, you understand people, we didn't get a chance to really dive in as much into your background. But for those that are listening, sebs got a MBA from MIT, which I'm sure you've been able to leverage understanding the data, understanding the business, which I think really helps to kind of build this ecosystem that you're doing in your role by interacting with all these different people understanding the data, understanding their roles, having that empathy, and being able to make a massive contribution. So I'm also a huge fan of quotes, and you throw a lot out there, so I appreciate Yes,
I did interlink my education to networking and Enescu. Don't get me wrong. I think MIT was an amazing education. Right? It's it's what I've learned at MIT is priceless. But what I really got out of it is a network and maximizing the network is taking me as far if not further than the quality of education that I had. Right. So So going back to what you're doing and or what you're sponsoring, right, which Sq is really making a difference.
Yeah, sure. as Matt said, this has been a great conversation. What did I forget to ask you? What are we leaving out? Well, there's a lot that I wanted to ask you. But is there anything in particular that you would like to share before we say goodbye?
I will just say, first honor to be here today and just have the chance to talk with you and bond with you. And if anybody want to reach out to me, I always love networking, and love different thoughts. Right. Let any pushback you agree or disagree, please reach out. Let's have the dialogue.
Always a pleasure, for sure. Many thanks for coming on the show my friend.
No, I met my pleasure and Yep, absolutely. That was an honor.