The following transcript is provided unedited.
Paul Falcone:
Okay, full disclosure. I didn’t know I wanted to be in human resources. I didn’t quite know what human resources was. I was the first one in my family to go to college and didn’t know what I was going to do in the business world. But the funny thing is it’s three decades in and I couldn’t see myself doing anything else.
Tony Lee:
Welcome to the HR Storyteller podcast series from the Society for Human Resource Management. I’m your host, Tony Lee, head of content here at SHRM. Thank you for joining us. Our HR Storyteller podcast feature practitioners and thought leaders in human resources, sharing stories about why they love HR, what motivates them, and what’s moved them in their careers. Today. We’re joined by Paul Falcone, who’s the CHRO at the Motion Picture and Television Fund in Los Angeles. Paul, welcome.
Paul Falcone:
Thank you, Tony. Wonderful to be here.
Tony Lee:
Yeah, it’s a thrill to have you. So you’ve got an interesting HR story to share with us, I think, right?
Paul Falcone:
I do. Full disclosure, I didn’t know I wanted to be in human resources. I didn’t quite know what human resources was. I was the first one in my family to go to college and didn’t know what I was going to do in the business world. But the funny thing is it’s three decades in and I couldn’t see myself doing anything else. I am so glad I spent my career in HR because there’s no other function out there that lets you touch people’s lives the way HR does. I’ve just been really blessed having this as my career path.
Tony Lee:
Yeah. Now, full disclosure. You and I have known each other for some time.
Paul Falcone:
We have.
Tony Lee:
And you are a regular contributor to shrm.org, a columnist, and have sent us some great content. I want to ask you a little bit more about one article that you wrote because I think listeners are going to find it really compelling. So people don’t really know what the Motion Picture and Television Fund is. So you can describe that, but you’re basically in healthcare and you have gone through a pandemic that had a pretty dramatic effect on your business, right?
Paul Falcone:
Yeah. Very true. My background is interesting. I was head of HR for Nickelodeon. I was head of international HR for Paramount Pictures, but I had also worked in City of Hope, which is a cancer research hospital and Motion Picture and Television Fund is a healthcare nonprofit that takes care of the needs of entertainment industry retirees primarily. So the campus that I work on is a residential care facility. It’s long term care, skilled nursing, memory care, and those types of things. Going through the pandemic was really difficult because we were ground zero. If everyone remembers about COVID, it started … first found in Seattle in a retirement home and because the retirees were the most vulnerable because of their age, that’s really where I think COVID hit the hardest in many ways. So doing HR in a COVID environment inspired me to write an article back in 2020 for HR Magazine, for other people to get some perspective of what it’s like.
Tony Lee:
Yeah. So you have a lot of challenges. I mean, retaining people in that kind of environment, attracting new employees in that kind of environment, keeping your own HR staff motivated. What was the biggest, what was the toughest?
Paul Falcone:
Okay. So in our case, we have about 500 employees, two of them died from COVID and we lost about 10 of our residents. That’s really hard. The tenure in our organization averages about 15 years. That’s a long time. We have a lot of employees who have 40 years plus, plus the ones who started last week. When you average that all out to think it’s 15 years, it’s pretty high. It is like nothing else I’ve ever seen in terms of the amount of energy it took, the amount of Goodwill, the amount of communication. It just didn’t end. Kudos to our CEO who did a fabulous job over communicating through the whole period. But the reality is you have to lead with your heart in situations like that. We did it as much as we possibly could for the employees going through that period of time, because it was very emotional as you’d imagine.
Tony Lee:
Yeah. So let’s talk about your HR team first. I mean, how do you keep HR professionals motivated in the face of such loss?
Paul Falcone:
Well, the first question that came up is do we want to stay in HR physically on the campus? Or do we want to work remotely? Because we’re technically a corporate group. Most of the corporate groups all decided it would be better for them to work remotely, which was good because the directions we were getting from the governor in California were, “If you don’t need to be in the workplace, you shouldn’t be there.” Our HR team is about five people to cover the 500 employees and I said, “What do you guys want to do?” To the one, they all said, “We want to be here. We need to be here for the employees. When they have needs, they can’t come to HR and say, “Oh, the door’s locked.” I think, again, I respect my team tremendously.
It’s almost like band of brothers. We’ve all been through a tremendous pandemic together. You’ll never forget the people you’ve been through this with. That was the first issue. It was their decision. The second issue is how do we keep people engaged when they’re frightened? Again, the communication helped, but the way we look at it now is very different than the way we looked at it in 2020. March is when it hit, as I recall, and I wrote the article for SHRM in May, just two months later. We had the National Guard on the campus because we needed more RNs and they were sending out the troops. I mean, it literally was no one knew how dangerous this was. In our situation, we had to open up an isolation unit for the residents who had gotten ill, they couldn’t have their family members come. The truth of the matter is they said goodbye over FaceTime.
As hard as that was, it’s like, “How do you keep people motivated and in a time when they’re frightened because they didn’t know what it was? Of course, in our situation, Tony, what was interesting is it was a union environment. So the first thing we asked was for volunteers to man the isolation unit and we got a number of people who said, “Yes, I want to be there for the residents.” Again, God bless them, they did that, but we didn’t have enough. So then it was a matter of selecting people in reverse seniority order, which is what the contract says, the newest ones would be mandatorily assigned to the unit and people were there in tears saying, “I took this job. I didn’t know this was going to happen. I’ve got young kids. I can’t risk going in there.” Some did and some had to quit. There was no judgment. That was the bottom line. Everyone has to do what’s the right thing for them and their family under their circumstances and that was the message that was so important for us to push out.
Tony Lee:
Yeah, and that’s a culture. I mean, it’s a culture of caring, obviously, but when you’re recruiting, bringing new people into that environment, how do you make sure that they’re going to be the right fit to be able to give the care you need?
Paul Falcone:
Yeah. That’s a great question. I mean, obviously when you say what’s the fit, right? We’ve got good interviewers, so the HR team is that first screen. Then when you look at the nursing team or the residential team or whoever it happens to be, the hospitality team, they know what they’re looking for. But again, I think we all had to tell our story and that’s when we made it safe for the hiring managers to do. If people can tell their story about what makes us unique and give an example and say, “Listen, if you take this job, you need to know A, B and C. Even you may be assigned to our isolation unit or a quarantine unit or something along those lines.” Yes, we’ll give you all the PPE, the protective gear, to protect yourself, but the reality is, again, in 2020, we didn’t know what this was.
So there are only certain people that are going to step up in a situation like that, which meant we had to interview more people than we probably normally would to find people that would fit into that kind of culture and that kind of challenge.
Tony Lee:
So you’ve been doing this a while. So fast forward to now, great resignation, inflation, impacting compensation, problems with civility in the workplace. I mean, you name it. How are you getting through all these challenges?
Paul Falcone:
Yes. That’s a good question, Tony. It’s one fire at a time. I think realistically we’ve been building the plane while we’ve been flying it for two years, two and a half years, and now we’re facing all these same issues. In our situation, we had contract negotiations in November and we gave what we thought was a very fair increase to the union members and they covered about two thirds of our workforce. Well, flash forward to March or April of this year, all that increase went into their gas tank. The prices are going up through the roof and this is a reality. How do you get around that? Some of the things we do are just simple gestures. A $20 gift card. A $20 gas card. Things that people feel like I know you’re trying. We’re a healthcare nonprofit, we’re nonprofit. We don’t have bajillions of dollars to give, but the more the communication, truthfully the more the love, when people feel that belonging, the little things we do, free meals for the employees.
So when we were going through that whole COVID phase, anyone on campus had three free meals a day from our cafeteria. Those were very expensive and we did not budget in as most companies did and most healthcare organizations. If you opened an isolation unit or a quarantine unit, that wasn’t in your plan because no one knew the COVID was coming. Then towards the end of 2021, we thought it was kind of going away and whoops, we were wrong about that and it came back fearsome. So the reality is this challenge is all over the place. We have each other’s backs and that’s the message. The organization that I belong to was founded in 1921, we celebrated our hundredth anniversary last year. We actually got an honorary Oscar, the humanitarian award at the Oscars last year.
But basically the philosophy is we see a need and we fill it and we keep it that simple for all the people that … not just the residents on the campus but anyone we help in the community, but we have to start with our own. And we wanted to make sure that people felt like we weren’t taking advantage of them to only service the clients and the customers and the patients or anything else. We wanted to make sure that the employees felt like we were listening to their needs too. We had their backs and we did a lot of things for their families. Even something simple like pull up your car, open the trunk, and we were going to put in toilet paper, we were going to put in rolls of towel. You couldn’t find paper goods, people forget all about that stuff.
But we made sure that as much as we can use our bargaining leverage for distribution reasons and we can pass that along to the families, get them the PPE that they needed, get them tested, get their family members tested, that’s when you say yes, we’re a real community and we’ve been through this and it has that family feeling.
Tony Lee:
Well, the rule of HR really has evolved the last couple of years, hasn’t it? Because if you think about the importance of people through all of this, everyone talks about having a seat at the table, but HR is sitting right next to the CEO in a lot of organizations these days, right?
Paul Falcone:
Yeah. Very much. So the funny thing too is the seat at the table, you never have to worry about. I always tell people it’s been an incredible two years. I haven’t done much in terms of human resources, but man, do I know my masks and do I know all the rules. The reality was they look at the HR department outside of the sea level, outside of the president. You look at the HR department and say, “What is that culture of that organization? What are their beliefs? No disrespect. You don’t look at IT. You don’t look at sales. You’re not looking at market. You look at HR and as much as we could, we needed to talk about that ourselves. Because as long as the five of us were on the same page, we knew we’d be able to deliver to everyone else.
Look, sometimes people are having bad days and bad times and we’re there for each other. It’s from that core, from the five of us, that I think a lot of the culture was changed going through the last two years.
Tony Lee:
So let’s pivot a little bit and talk about the folks who are new to HR or who are just getting into HR and thinking about it. So many are surprised, HR, it’s not something they majored in, they happen to get into it. What would your guidance be to start a successful career and know that you’re really contributing in HR?
Paul Falcone:
Generally speaking, the way I look at it, Tony, is that there’s two parts of this animal, right? Part number one is there has to be some kind of people orientation, generally speaking. I’m not saying there are an HR people who love analytics and love databases and that’s fine, but I am saying it is an intense people type of career path. So you have to make sure that on the people side, you are comfortable with that. The second piece to me is if you can look at it not just from what we’ve been talking about, just the heart of the culture of the organization, it’s really about we’re the department that can build the muscle of your leadership. We can help bring the awareness level to the individual contributors. We can help the line managers and senior executives not step on landmines. But the bottom line is we can leverage that human asset to have greater productivity, greater performance. That’s really where the key is.
I mean, there’s definitely a business element to it. Part of it is there’s a calling, right? There’s the sense of, “Yes, I love people and I want to help people,” and that’s good and that’s healthy. But the other part of it is you have to be looking at the people element as your domain to increase revenue, to increase performance. To me, that’s really exciting. I love the leadership stuff and what’s motivated me and in turn, I think I’ve motivated the people on my teams over the years.
Tony Lee:
It’s funny because the assumption’s always been, well, you got to be a people person to be in HR, but there are a lot of roles for people who aren’t necessarily people persons who probably never thought of HR as a career direction.
Paul Falcone:
Yeah, I would agree. But the funny thing is, even if you’re a data analytics type of person and you love HRAS and you love all … the bottom line is what you’re studying is the people and that asset of your organization is the primary profit lever. In a knowledge based economy, it’s not about widgets anymore. It’s not manufacturing driven in the sense where what makes companies stand out is the human capital muscle, the people who give that discretionary effort. How do you create that environment where people feel self-motivated, where people feel like their boss has their back and they want to do more just because they can, not because they have to? When you can pierce their hearts to that level, you’ve got everyone engaged and really hitting at 110% where in a compliance culture, you’ll get no more than a hundred percent and it’s just because they won’t go any further than they have to.
But when you can get the ones who are saying, “Yeah, I want to do more because it’s for my boss, it’s my favorite boss,” or, “I love this organization,” that’s when magic things happen.
Tony Lee:
You’re talking to a lot of other CHROs, CEOs, other people in HR. So what’s next? I mean, given all that we’ve seen, what should we be looking at around the corner?
Paul Falcone:
The current issue that I see is the sense of incivility at work. People are afraid, their wires are exposed, they’re anxious, they’re exhausted, and it’s not just from the pandemic. It’s also, to your point, what we’re seeing in terms of the economy right now, which may be moving towards recession at this point in time, we don’t know. It’s what we’re seeing in politics. It’s what we’re seeing globally. These are tough times and I think anyone who says they’re not isn’t paying enough attention. So I think, although we don’t know which direction it’s moving in, the agility is the key. We have to be fast on our feet and we have to be flexible. One thing that COVID taught us is the laws that were coming out of California on Monday changed on Tuesday. That really was exhausting, but it was an excellent exercise in terms of figuring out how do you become part of change and how do you lead it?
We’re going to see more of that, though. We’re not done yet. If COVID took two, two and a half years for the real hit, you’ve got probably two and a half years, at least, of seeing the fallout in the economy from the supply chain to everything else. So just everyone needs to take a deep breath, everyone needs to understand we’re all on the same page and we’re doing our best, give each other the benefit of the doubt. But in terms of your leadership, don’t just come from it from a series of, “I’m the manager, and I know everything.” You got to pierce their hearts. This is beyond what’s going on in their minds. People need to fall in love with the company all over again. That’s really the key.
Tony Lee:
Wow. I have to ask, because you’ve mentioned civility a couple of times. How is it being manifest and what can HR do to improve that?
Paul Falcone:
You have to ask, because people won’t necessarily tell you. Your frontline operational leaders don’t always come to you and say, “My people are behaving like there’s a full moon. People who I would never expect to see this kind of aggressive behavior are acting that way.” But if you ask them, they’ll tell you. So don’t assume that no news is good news. I think you have to reach out there and when you’re in that space, ask the leader, what is it that you’d like to do? What are you thinking? Now, many times what they’re going to say is, “Just leave it alone for right now, but if it continues being a problem, Paul, I’ll let you know,” and that’s good and sometimes it does kind of fix itself. But the reality is that intervention may need to come and you should be the one on the spot to kind of help them through that.
Tony Lee:
Now, do companies have a choice in terms of responding to the resignation, the demands for more? Is this temporary? Do you think we’ve seen a permanent change where employees are constantly going to be looking for greener pastures, going to be looking for 10% pay hikes? What do you think?
Paul Falcone:
That is a beautiful question. No, I think it’s temporary. I think it’s temporary. Some of the things I’ve read, even with shrm.org, is if six to nine months from now, we might be looking at recession, we’ll be back where we were in 2020, where people can’t find jobs, the doors are closed, there’s layoffs happening and it’s that whiplash effect that we really have to be prepared for. It is amazing to think I’ve never in my career seen what we’ve seen in the last six months. Prices going through the roof, you can’t pay candidates enough. If you doubled their salaries, it’s still not enough. Of course, they’re walking away. What COVID taught people was, “Well, I’m not doing that anymore.” Whatever the that was. I’m a waiter. I’m a this, “I’m never doing that again.” Okay, fine. God rattled their cage. They realize that’s not what they want to do.
The only problem is employers need people who have experience and so you can’t find any right now. So we’re at a very funny juncture in this whole phase of coming out of the COVID, but I also think there’s going to be an economic phase, there’s political implications. The world is leaning in different directions right now. Flexibility is the key and we’ve got to make sure we’re taking care of each other, listening, creating the space for people to talk, but definitely having that flexible mindset because you don’t know which way this is going to twist and turn. The only guarantee you know is it is going to twist and turn. You just got to try as much as you can to be really at the source. You have to be the influencer. You want to be at the front end of that. You want to control it.
Tony Lee:
So if you’re in a situation as an HR professional and your CEO or your senior leadership says, “I don’t buy any of this, let’s stick to our guns. They don’t want to work here, they shouldn’t work here. We’re here to make money,” what is the HR professional do? What do they say?
Paul Falcone:
It’s tough. Some CEOs appear to be tone deaf to this whole thing. It’s like, “Okay, it’s over. Everyone come back to work. I don’t want to hear about it anymore. It’s Monday to Friday, nine to five, period.” That tone deafness is getting companies in trouble. People who are saying, “You know what? I don’t like the way the company handled themselves in COVID. I don’t like that they’re making believe it didn’t happen.” I’ve heard stories where people say it turned out that our CFO had COVID, but they didn’t tell anybody. So it’s like, “Okay, it’s good enough that I can come in and work, but you don’t mind the fact that I might have been affected or gone home and infected my whole family.” Those are ethical decisions, Tony, that come up and granted, we didn’t know what we were facing. It’s been a hundred years since we’ve had one of these, but there’s an element of kindness, there’s an element of selflessness, there’s an element of just humanity that companies handled it the wrong way.
It’s not too late that we can’t fix things, but you really have to think, especially if you’re a C level person, if you really are being tone deaf to what these needs are right now, that’s going to be difficult for you because you’re going to continue the turnover. People need to know, especially the younger generations, the Gen Y, 35 and under, the Gen Z, 25 and under, they need to know that their company gets it. I think that’s good wisdom for everyone who’s in a C level position these days.
Tony Lee:
Yeah. One other question on that. So we all know that having a social conscience as a company has gotten far greater in importance, especially to those younger generations of employees. Do you think companies are getting it? Are they starting to demonstrate that? Are they giving employees the opportunity to give back to their communities on the company dime? What do you think?
Paul Falcone:
I think it’s a great question. Corporate social responsibility is when you pose the questions to the Gen Y millennials and the Gen Z Zennials, right? These are the most studied cohorts in world history. We know what they want and corporate social responsibility and environmentalism are two of the top five. So the reality becomes if you’re a wise employer, listen to what they’re saying. First of all, this younger generation is very wise beyond its years because they’ve had some pretty tough years. The reality is what they’re asking for is good stuff. If you come across as tone deaf and “I don’t care, just get back to work and if you have any questions, I don’t want to hear them,” you’re going to block people out. So if you’re the HR person and you’re dealing with a CEO who kind of comes from that mindset, give them the data.
Listen, you can’t fix everything. “This is my company and I started it and if it fails, it fails under my leadership.” I get that. But if you can give them the data, this is 45% of the population that’s working in this company is like the rest of the country, they’re Millennials and Zennials, that’s what’s going on. Let’s listen to them because that 45% is going to add 50% very soon, and especially the Baby Boomers are finishing off right now. So the smart money is going to say listen to what they want, especially if it’s noble, especially if it’s sincere. If they do, let’s build a program around this. I just think that’s smart, but then it could be the CEO’s idea. So as much as you can get that person to that point, there’s enough literature out there to help make your point very easily.
Tony Lee:
Beautifully said, Paul. Thank you so much. It’s been a real pleasure having you here. Paul Falcone you’ve been listening to, sharing his wisdom and some great stories. You can hear all of our HR Storyteller podcasts by visiting our website at shrm.org/podcast. Thank you so much for listening.