People Plan

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Paul Martin and Colin Rooke discuss the people planning side of disaster recovery with special guest, Grant Douziech.

Listen to the full episode here, or read the full transcript below.

Paul Martin:

Welcome to Risky Business, commercial insurance with Butler Byers. This is Paul Martin, the business commentator on CKLM, and joining me, Colin Rooke, Commercial Risk Reduction Specialist at Butler Byers. And we have another special guest joining us today, and I want to welcome Grant Douziech with Apex Performance Consultants.

And Colin, you invited Grant to come along today, and maybe just a little background about why you did that, and then, Grant, we’ll haul you in here and you can talk about why you’re participating in our show today. So, Colin, over to you.

Colin Rooke:

Yeah, so in the previous episode we were talking about disaster recovery planning, and we’ve touched on it several times throughout the years. And it’s one of those topics where it’s an old one, but it’s always relevant. So we talked about, okay, how can we help plan for disaster, whether it’s a small loss, major loss, total loss. We talked about why the plan’s important. It’s absolutely crucial when trying to get back up and running as soon as possible. It outlines what everyone’s role is within the plan, who’s going to call who and why.

And then most importantly, we take that plan and we talk with the insurance market and say, “This client is prepared.” During that show I did allude to that I wanted to bring Grant on and talk about, okay, the plan addresses getting up and running from a physical standpoint, but it doesn’t really talk about the people, what they’re supposed to do, who’s staying on, is everyone staying on, what planning can you do around people planning.

And, you know, I’m not the expert, and I talk about, we identify the risk, we quantify the risk, and then we reach out to third parties to say, “Can you help us with this?” And Grant from Apex Performance Consulting is one of those people. And so I thought, “Bring him on the show, he can explain what he does and why it’s important to have a people plan as part of a disaster recovery plan, or just really proper planning altogether.”

Paul Martin:

All right. Well, Grant, welcome to the show. It’s always great to have these trusted advisors that Butler Buyers works with, and that provide some deeper insight into some of the more detailed parts of the program that Colin likes to talk about.

In terms of preparation, this concept or notion of step-by-step planning, and on the people side… And clearly people are the big issue right now, I mean, you hear about job vacancies, employers scrambling to find people… You’ve got to work as an employer and a business owner very, very diligently to make sure that you keep your team in the loop, if I can put it that way. And also figure out how to actually turn into reality this notion that my biggest assets go up and down in the elevator every day.

So Grant, jump in on this. And when I toss that out to you about, and as the way Colin framed it up, is the people side or the people planning side of disaster recovery, I mean, what bells go off for you? What are the key messages you want to deliver on that one?

Grant Douziech:

The key messages, and thanks, Paul and Colin, for the invite, it’s really about preparedness. As Colin mentioned to you, disaster recovery plans, it’s sometimes easy to think about your physical location, easy to think about IT and technology, putting into place, but people sometimes forget what do I with the people that I have. So for example, if you have a manufacturing facility that undergoes a catastrophic fire and is no longer operating, what do you do with the people that work there? What about the office staff? How do you continue to maintain some level of business when you have issues with people that now have to work from home or don’t have a location to work from?

So it requires a lot of communication and pre-planning to ensure that people understand what happens to them. Because at that point too, you don’t want people to suddenly think, “Well, I’m out of work. I need to go look elsewhere,” especially in this environment where they could probably easily find work somewhere else. And how do you keep them intact, and how do you keep your payroll intact? So those are big questions that companies should be answering before an event happens, because you don’t want to be planning it while you’re in the middle of a crisis.

Paul Martin:

Yeah, Grant, you raise an interesting point about virtually every business will [inaudible] of some form of business interruption insurance, but I’m assuming we think about that in what comes to mind for us is the customer. How do we get the customer and get paid, keep the transaction stuff going. Often we don’t think about the personnel side, the HR and payroll side of the people that we’ve got, their life interrupted too. And so I mean, do business owners in your experience kind of miss that one a little bit?

Grant Douziech:

Yeah, I think it’s something that you think of the last moment after an event happens. And like you said, Paul, a lot of these people have families. They’re not necessarily going to wait around for an owner to come up with a solution. They may have to be proactive because they have bills to pay, they have a lot of anxiety… I think it’s important that you’re on top of that communication to how long they’re going to be off, how are they going to get paid, and when do you plan to spool back up.

And it’s also different for people that are in an office environment, because you might be able to transition some of the work that they would do in a physical office to now working remotely, similar to what happened for us, majority of people, during COVID.

Paul Martin:

And it’s an interesting point, because we’re still having that controversy and that conversation about working from home. I mean, that’s one of the legacy pieces that came from that. For those businesses who thought, “Hey, that’s behind me, I’ve got that baby resolved, now they’re all coming to work in the office every day,” or, “we’re not going to build a policy around that,” probably, you know, this is another reason to have that policy, isn’t it? It’s not just pandemic.

But if you have some kind of a disaster that you have to deal with, all of a sudden this is back on your table again. And as Colin likes to say, you got to plan in advance. You can’t plan after the crash, right? You’ve got to plan before. So what do you counsel business owners to do on this front?

Grant Douziech:

Well, really it comes to sitting down and not necessarily getting into the weeds or the details of what event you’re trying to mitigate, because there’s several external things that could cause your business to be disrupted, but rather a detailed plan for each employee as to where would they work, how long would they be off, and how would we retain them in the event that they for some reason couldn’t come into work. And identify those roles that can be worked remotely, and what material, and supplies, and resources, they would need to do so.

You need to be able to pivot quite quickly in these cases, otherwise you lose people’s confidence and that’s where anxiety starts to kick in, and people start thinking about working elsewhere.

Paul Martin:

You just raised a couple of important words that I want to make sure that we get covered through this. And one of them is trust, that the worker has to trust that the boss has a plan, has this thing in hand. And you’ve used the word anxiety a couple of times in this, and clearly this is a part of the conversation or the vocabulary these days, and that people are talking a lot about this. We’re talking more about mental health issues and all of that.

So I mean, this is way more than just we got to close the door for a day or two here while we clean up the water spill or whatever, I mean, that’s the stuff that I want to dig into.

So if you don’t mind, just stand by, we’re going to take a little break. When we come back, those are the areas that I want to dig into, so maybe lend some thought to how you want to address that.

You’re listening to Risky Business Commercial Insurance with Butler buyers, Paul Martin here. We’ll be back after this break.

Welcome back to Risky Business, commercial insurance with Butler Buyers. Paul Martin, your host, and joining us today, Colin Rooke, Commercial Risk Reduction Specialist with Butler Buyers, and a special guest, we have Grant Douziech with us, who is with Apex Performance Consulting. And they specialize in the HR side of this, and we’re talking about disaster recovery.

And before the break, Grant, you were using terminology that is probably relatively recent in the vernacular of the business world these days. Words like mental health, anxiety, that 5, 10 years ago, that wouldn’t even have been a part of the conversation, now it’s pretty mainstream. I mean, what are you advising your business clients on this one? Like, how should they be looking at this? And you try put it in the context of what we’re talking about here is like, how does insurance factor into all of this, so…

Grant Douziech:

Yeah, that’s a good point, Paul, years ago, it wasn’t something that they would look at. However, having worked with some clients that have been through some catastrophic business interruptions, nowadays people are, they need to have confidence and trust with the owner, because people do feel challenged by everything that’s going on around them.

And they’re just trying to provide some stability and security to their own lives. And they do have loyalty to the company they work for, but at some point they have a spouse or a family that they’re accountable to, and they will need to make changes if they don’t feel there’s a plan, if they don’t hear anything from an owner till, you know, 48 hours after an event has occurred. You don’t want to create that thought that they might be out of work for a long period of time.

Paul Martin:

Colin, you’ve been listening in on this thing, I mean, what are you hearing here and what is resonating with you?

Colin Rooke:

Yeah, a couple of things. One, you mentioned how is this relevant to insurance, and I was thinking too, as part of the story we tell to the insurance market, I mean, which I’m primarily focused on, I was thinking how you could use this as a retention tool, or even a recruitment tool, to say, “We have a plan in place and obviously we hope there isn’t a disaster, however, we can share that in the event of a total loss or a major loss, we could be up and running in X amount of time. And also, with the insurance coverage, based on that, we carry ordinary payroll coverage up to 90 days or 180 days.”

So you could share that to the workforce and say, Look, this doesn’t often come up…” And it’s rare that the employees or even management are involved in a commercial insurance renewal, but something that you could share would be, “We have a plan in place for disaster.”

You could share your people plan, call it, and then you could add to that to say, “And we want people to know in advance, just in case there is chaos and we can’t get to everyone, or people forget, that we have coverage in place. So your pay would be secure even if we were closed and then unable to pay.” I think that could go a long way with, yeah, retention, just to share that, which admittedly I haven’t ever suggested to any of my clients they do until I had the thought now.

But also, furthermore, we can share that with the insurance markets to say, “Outside of insurance, they’re working on a people plan too,” which again, if everyone’s aware of their role and you think about getting back up and running to profitability, or at least the same level you were at prior to the loss, the more people that are on board, the less people you lose, the more anxiety you alleviate, the better the organization and the quicker you recover.

Paul Martin:

Grant, I want you to jump in on this one because I think Colin’s really touched on something interesting about using it as a recruitment retention tool as well.

Grant Douziech:

Yeah, absolutely. What a difference that would make in my mind when you’re recruiting a position and you’re letting someone know not only what you’re offering for benefits, and pay, and the value of working with your company, but also that you care for your staff and your people to a point where you have a plan in case something happens. You don’t hear that during an interview process very often. But for somebody who’s making a decision of, do I go with company A or company B, that could be a significant difference for them.

I also agree with Colin that I think it’s good to every six months or a year, just remind staff that you have a plan in place in case something becomes disruptive, and that you’re prepared, and that you’ll make sure that they’re looked after through the mechanisms of insurance and other programs that might be available after.

Paul Martin:

Well, I’m thinking just to, sorry, Colin, to doubly reinforce this is that this is a very, very competitive marketplace right now for talent, and every ledge will, well, could use every tool in the kit. And this is one I don’t hear very many people putting in the kit. So maybe it’s an interesting new idea that’s out there, that you may want to just share whether it’s as part of the interview process or onboarding if nothing else. But, Colin, you wanted to jump in?

Colin Rooke:

Yeah, just a similar thought, Grant being someone that would be involved very, very regularly in the interview process, I just wanted to know… And I think I know the answer to my own question. So you would say that it’s fairly rare that an employer would say, “And just so you know, we ensure a half-year’s worth of payroll in the event of a disaster. So if you joined us and something did occur, rest assured, one, we can be up and running in six months, and two, your wages would be safe,” and use that as a difference maker?

Grant Douziech:

And just to add on top of that, I think that also puts you in a position as a small and medium business owner to be competitive with a much larger company or corporation, because you’re now providing security through that offering. And that to me would probably be very reassuring to some people that are making that choice of joining a much larger company versus a small and medium business, which has its own rewards.

Paul Martin:

I would assume you’d have to kind of define what a disaster looks like and that sort of stuff, because losing a big client isn’t necessarily a disaster, it may feel like one, but it wouldn’t be an insurable one. So you’d have to kind of refine and define that a little bit.

But I think we’re into some really interesting territory here. And the purpose of this program is to inform business owners, and employers, and managers of some of the things that they should entertain when they’re thinking about business planning. And we’re covering some ground today that I’ll guarantee you nobody else has had a conversation about, this is a very fresh type of conversation.

So, Grant, I want to thank you for bringing that perspective here and getting us moved off into this territory, because I think it’s really unique. And we’ve got maybe a half a minute left, so I just want to kind of close on this notion you’d put forward about the idea of trust.

And I think many of us forget that as young people, we’ve got to pick a partner out of the herd and we got to hope that that partner will do what we need done. Then we got to go to the next step, which is pick an employer out of a herd, and hope that one actually knows what they’re doing and can guarantee a paycheck for us. And that then we can go about planning our own family lives, and planning the larger things in life.

And you’ve really put a finger on that today, and Colin is offering up this notion of, “[inaudible] and actually to protect that, we can provide you with some coverage, so…” I want to thank you for taking the time to join us today, Grant, that’s been very insightful.

Grant Douziech:

Thank you, it’s my pleasure.

Paul Martin:

And, Colin, as always, great to have you aboard and have this conversation. So we’ll pick this up on the next program.

You’ve been listening to Risky Business, commercial insurance with Butler Buyers, Paul Martin here. Thanks for joining us, talk to you next time.