The one with the Alaska employee experience - Jaylene Owen Dir HR & Payroll Hames Corporation E193

🎤🎞️Attendance policies that include bear interactions? “The one with the Alaska employee experience” with Jaylene Owen Director HR & Payroll at Hames Corporation in CX Passport Episode 193🎧 What’s in the episode?...

CHAPTERS

0:00 Introducing Jaylene and Sitka

1:53 Jaylene's Background at Hames

3:59 Challenges of Small-Town Work

7:43 Jaylene's HR Journey to Sitka

12:55 Building Trust and Change

15:49 Transitioning to Digital Systems

21:55 Improving Employee Experience

27:25 Navigating Crises in Sitka

34:01 Balancing Employee Histories

35:37 Connections and closing

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I'm Rick Denton and I believe the best meals are served outside and require a passport

Thank you to isolved for your sponsorship of this episode. 

Episode resources:

Jaylene LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jlineberry/

Transcript

Jaylene Owen: 0:00

The important thing is, is to focus on the things that are positive, recognizing that person's contributions, not their past, their current contributions, and celebrate those successes, especially in a small town where close knit teams and everyone's contributions can be magnified.

Rick Denton: 0:16

Customer Experience wisdom, a dash of travel talk. We've been cleared for takeoff. The best meals are served outside and require passport. Hey there CX, passport travelers. Today we are going to a place I've never been. We have the chance to talk with jaylene Owen, director of human resources and payroll at Hames Corporation, located in Sitka, Alaska. And thank you again to I solved for sponsoring this episode series. I'm already excited because jaylene is my first guest from Alaska. Then as I learned more about Sitka, I knew we were in for a treat. Home to approximately 9000 people, an average of one grizzly bear per square mile, home to 85 official mountains, an active volcano and a natural beauty that would cause my draw to drop daily when an attendance policy includes a discussion about bear encounters and Sundays, things are going to be quite different than, say, Plano taxes, where I'm talking to you from today. Jaylene wasn't originally from Sitka, having moved there from Tennessee in 2016 which that clearly must have been quite an adjustment, both for jaylene and for jaylene's co workers, joining the Hames Corporation, a company celebrating its 75th anniversary. This year, jaylene entered a beloved brand, albeit one due for an upgrade and processes, systems and policies. That's a lot of change for someone coming from the outside. It'll be interesting to hear how jaylene navigated that experience. And as we sit on a riverside recording session, I think we're safe from bear encounters, but jaylene and I will keep an eye out just in case. Jaylene, welcome to CX passport live.

Jaylene Owen: 1:53

Thank you for having me. Yeah,

Rick Denton: 1:55

you and I, before we hit record, we're talking about, you know, keeping an eye out for bear encounters. You mentioned that there's actually an active bear cub that's walking around and going to schools today. So yeah, I'm gonna be looking out the over your shoulder there, just seeing if anything sneaks up behind, but we'll keep an eye out for that. Clearly, this is our first time meeting, first time getting to talk. Before this. I hadn't heard of Hames and even Sitka before, so would you tell me just a little bit about the company and your role there in Sitka in general?

Jaylene Owen: 2:25

Wonderful. Yes, that's a great question. So the family is a family working on the fourth generation, actually the fifth generation. We're looking at the third owner, the third generation of owners, Roger and Mary Haines, they had three children who are the fourth generation, and then their grandchildren have just entered the workforce last year, and so we have the fifth generation that's currently working with us. The family started their business in actually 1940 in the 1930s 1940s it was actually Barbara Haynes at the time. Her last name was rands, and it was their family business. And then when she married Lloyd Haynes in 1969 they expanded, and since then, have been in business for 75 years.

Rick Denton: 3:10

Wow. And to think, I mean, this is a brand that is so known and loved there, I just had never heard this story. And I love this idea that it is this multi generational, and certainly something that is a key element to that region, to that community, and so vital to that and that gets into it like this is clearly a place of unique employee experiences and needs and expectations. I mentioned. It's an area of 9000 people, so just about everybody knows everybody. I would imagine you and I were talking about this 18, six split of sun and dark, where so in summer, it's 18 hours and six hours of dark, and then, well, it flips on its head, as we were talking about now, 250 days of rain, seasonal opportunities for higher pay when you showed up. What were some of the expectations you encountered that really surprised you?

Jaylene Owen: 4:00

I would have to say the first thing that surprised me was the nepotism. You don't really quite realize, especially if you're from a small town, many people go, oh yeah, I'm from a small town, 300 people I grew up. But you have a road in and out, car and travel four hours and then come back for the weekend and, you know, pick up where you left off on an island with 14 miles of road. You can't drive faster than 45 miles an hour. You'll run people over. Oh gosh. And really honestly, you have generations upon generations that have intermingled, married, had children, and so the degree of separation is it's literally one for one. You you would find, I would go into an environment and be talking to someone and go, Oh, wait, you're related to that person, and I didn't realize that. And then even when we've had some very tragic things happen, like deaths, I have situations where sometimes majority, 567, employees, because they're all related, are involved or impacted, and it can. Actually shut down my operations. Wow, that's it. That's

Rick Denton: 5:03

interesting to hear it called out, you know, quite like that. That that just, and I guess, like you said, I would have had that same sort of thought of, you know, my great grandmother lived in Quitman, Texas, which was probably a town of about 300 people, but exactly that, there was a road that, well, at least now would be two hours to get to Dallas, Texas, right? A big metropolitan but if you're in that area, what particularly challenged you about that, like when you showed up so it might shut down your operations, what about in the sense of, like, hiring or talent management, and that aspect of it?

Jaylene Owen: 5:38

So the environment here, especially if you've lived here for generations, you have a sense of this is our community. Even though there's rules and regulations that say how things should be done in what we call the lower 48 those rules don't apply here. I don't do drug screens, I don't do background checks. I actually had to weed out bad habits where my employees, who were in management, when an applicant would apply, they would be calling people that they knew and be like, tell me about so and so, or they'd go on Facebook. Or in Alaska, we have a public court view for the Alaska court systems, and I'm like, No, you have to be consistent and fair and go through a process that's structured. So a lot of things that I struggled with was just trying to create structure that provided a pathway that allowed for solutions to be honed in on things that people weren't used to. You mentioned sunny days. So one of the things here is with all that dark days of rain, and it is a rain forest here, and we get about we don't go below 20 degrees. I mean, if we're in the teens, it's rare, and it's record temperatures, because it's a temperate rainforest, we average in about the 40s. But when it's a sunny day, oh my goodness, everybody comes out. They want to go out on the boat. They're doing the typical call it. When I first started here, we didn't have an attendance policy, and I thought, My goodness. And so the application of rules and standard procedures needed to be really tightened up and provide direction for those management and to be able to lead us into the the company wants to be a leader in the employment world, and to do that, I had to look at the structure and find solutions that were going to be applicable to this environment, and it was hard.

Rick Denton: 7:29

Jaylene, what is it about you that brought you to HR like I this is a there's a lot of places you could have chosen to do you've got a lot of experiences in your background. How did you decide HR is where I want to spend my

Jaylene Owen: 7:43

time? So originally, I had gone into business with the idea of doing like a master's in business administration. I was living in California at the time, and I actually was working for a casino, and the casino ended up having a very large casino robbery. It was the nation's largest in its history. That changed my mind about really, I didn't want to die for someone else's money. And I decided, well, you know what, I think I go back to school. And I had an opportunity. My family was living in Tennessee, and so I actually relocated there and went back to school. I got my degree in psychology, and then I married the two and got a degree in what is called industrial organizational psychology. So I'm a practitioner of applying the science of psychology to the workplace. So a lot of us kind of fall into the if we're not consulting, we're looking at HR roles, because we're really looking at the behaviors and the motivations of those individuals and how those translate into the working world, um, and so I was actually in a long term marriage that dissolved in 2016 15. I ended up with cancer, a very rare cancer in my 30s. I actually wanted to cut my head off my shoulders, do a radical neck dissection. They were scaring me, and I fought him back, and I advocated for myself. I ended up with, um, some, some cancer. I had surgery, but I now was free of cancer. Um, I was devoid of my relationship, my marriage evolved, and I my son was about to graduate high school, so I took the Dart, threw it at the map, found myself in Alaska.

Rick Denton: 9:17

Unbelievable. I just need to take a moment here. Unbelievable. Oh my gosh. Hey there, CX Passport travelers. I want to let you know about CX Passport Live. CX Passport Live helps brands amplify their event's impact with the power of live in-person, podcasting. Brands partner with CX Passport Live at their on-site event to help excite attendees, reward high value customers and convert potential customers. Bring a new level of energy and excitement to your event and amplify your brand's impact with CX Passport Live. Learn more at cxpassportlive.com Now back to the show. it. Be one thing if you grew up there, right? And that was you not only had this desire to bring some of that structure and the you know, kind of bring it into a new era, it's another thing to be a transplant. Mentioning that you had come to Sitka from Tennessee in 2016 How did that's going to take a lot of trust that's going to take if you're bringing this amount of change. To Haines, how did you go about building that trust, especially knowing the amount of change that you knew needed to take place?

Jaylene Owen: 10:31

Yeah, that's a great question, and it's still one I'm working on. You can live here for generations and leave and come back and you could be welcomed right in like you had never left. But as a transplant, you have to earn that, that loyalty. You have to prove yourself. And even though we consider this like a family, there's still that element of, well, wait a second, you are an outsider. Are you going to conform to the social expectations of what we see this family being and so coming in, a lot of the professional development and growth that I wanted to provide that direction for these employees, the management it was, it was a challenge. I showed up on a December day that was crisp, and had never seen this place, sight unseen, stepped off the airplane, and moments later, was at a Christmas party, and I've never looked back. I'm looking at nine years now. I brought my family here. I just recently had a grandchild. My son lives here, and he's locally connected with another girl, so I don't see myself going anywhere. And that's important, because people see this as Are you here for the seasonal Are you coming in to try to shake things up and and then leave. Or are you actually really trying to make this better? And as I worked with the employees over the years, by engaging with them and getting involved and and focusing on things like wellness initiatives, I've been able to really impact the employees and prove to them that my words just weren't words, but they came out in actionable forces that they've been able to see. I have focused on things like benefits and how we can make those even better for the employees. There's a lot of challenges here when it comes to competition, and so we're all competing for the same bodies. I'm not competing against an industry or even a skill level. I'm trying to look at a person who grew up here, and as an example, I have very large differences of populations. I have a very large indigenous population of Alaska Natives, and many of them don't leave the island to go get a social security card. So you might hire them and realize they don't have a social security card, and they've never had one, because they've not left the island. Yeah,

Rick Denton: 12:42

interesting. Okay, so, so that actually broke my brain there a little bit, because I've, you know, I grew up in Austin, Texas. I live here in North Texas, so I've been kind of in the normal city experience. And I don't even want to use the word normal, just my city experience, because to those that didn't have it, it's normal to them. How disruptive was that? Like, did you get? I know you talked about that's how you earned the trust, but were you experiencing some pushback around things like, hey, no, you actually have to have a social security card or pick whatever topic it is. What was that pushback? Like,

Jaylene Owen: 13:20

the pushback really wasn't, is so much so about that. The pushback was more about whether or not I think they were trying to get rid of me, almost like it reminded me, honestly, of like a child who might look at a step parent and go, Oh, we're going to do something and they're going to be gone. I had a lot of situations where I was challenged. I was put in a position where I had to actually push back, and that's not easy, because you can become an enemy. But when you realize that this is like a family, and when you look at your family members, you don't get to choose them, although we get to choose our employees. But when you're on an island, that's not always the case, and so you really have to look at how you can develop this person. You can't just toss them away. And so that that adds another level of uniqueness to the challenges that I experience on a day to day basis, because I'm rehiring the same people. I got to the bottom of the barrel, and we're scraping it right, and we're just like, Okay, can we get a warm body? But that's not good business, but you got to keep the business going at the same time, because we're essential. We're providing groceries to the 8000 people that live here. And so those kind of challenges have been difficult, but through the process of I solved a lot of the products that they have provided. I have this kind of motto of a rinse, wash, repeats, and it's the I go in, I might take on a new product or a new concept, and maybe it doesn't necessarily pan out, the employees might struggle with it, and they go, Oh no, that's not working. But I'll take a step back, and then I'll take a step forward again. And if it's not working at that moment, I can then take it and add it on later on, when I have the time or the ability to master that. And that's something I love about ice. All, yeah,

Rick Denton: 15:00

okay. I want to go. I want to get back to that. And so I'm going to hang on to that thought, because that idea of getting when I have the time for it, when I when I've got the ability, because at your heart with this, this HR, it's not just about the processes, it's about the employee experience. And I want to get to there. I want to, though, kind of almost go back to the beginning, when you showed up and you arrived, and we talked about this deep history. You talked about the multi generational Well, there's also a deep paper record, as I've come to understand, there that I think I read that every employee and company detail since the 1940s was kept on paper records. And I've got this visualization of file cabinets that are bursting out, and it might be like that. Walk me through what it was like. What did you feel when you discovered that and how you realized that a solution had to be identified?

Jaylene Owen: 15:49

That's a great question. It was overwhelming the company. Original heart of Sitka was Market Center. It's located downtown, and there's multiple layers to it. So if you are in the behind the scenes, underneath of where the parking lot is, there's like an actual underground where they kept a lot of things. So that's where a lot of the paper records would go high and we had a lot of our paper records required, you know, the 10 year retention and so forth. But when it came to employee records, because of that nepotism, the family, Roger and them, they kept those records because you would rehire. I mean, I'm cycling through the same bodies, and then it's like, okay, your mom and dad worked for us now I'm hiring their kids those records because they kept them for so long they would just then bring in that history of, oh, you worked for us when you were 14 and 15, and now you're, coming to work for us as a manager, and it's been a struggle for me, because I was used to I had started off in paper. Years and years ago, I had gotten to a place where I moved into an HRIS system that was all digital, while it didn't have a lot of the more technology that's now. I was used to it. But then I got here and it was like I had to go back 20 years. 20 years. So immediately I had things like, for example, this is going to blow you away too. I had to actually create my paychecks on a PDF, and when I printed them, I had to trick the system on my photocopier to copy them, because checks cannot be copied. But that Whoa, check stub I had. So if an employee got it, and every employee got a print out, and if it was at the bottom would say non negotiable, that was their paycheck stub, and they better hold on to it, otherwise I would have to try to duplicate it. And that was some of the struggles. It was just like you really want me to stuff envelopes and pay me my salary at, you know, for two hours. Or should we try to look at efficiencies of how we can pass these processes off, or incorporate them in a way that technology could help make me not just an HR team of one, but act as if I'm an HR team of 20.

Rick Denton: 18:01

Jaylin, little change of pace here. I want you to join me here in the first class lounge. I know that if I were to fly to Sitka, I don't actually know the numbers involved, but this is not a short flight, and I know that I would, if I'm changing planes in Seattle, or whatever that might look like, I might want to take a little break. And so I'm going to invite you to take a break here in the first class lounge. We'll move quickly here. Have a little bit of fun. What is a dream travel location from your past? Ooh,

Jaylene Owen: 18:25

I would have to say, anything that's comparable to Sitka in Hawaii. It's warmer to go to Hawaii in my life, until I moved here. You mentioned the flight. So we have what is called the milk run. Alaska Airlines kind of jumps all the islands as Seattle up to Anchorage. And so no matter what, you always will end up at Seattle or in Anchorage. And it can sometimes take up to a whole day, like 28 hours to get to for example, when I was going to go to Florida, I was going to leave a day earlier on Saturday to be able to make it there by Monday. Goodness,

Rick Denton: 19:01

oh, man, oh, goodness. Well, it clearly is worth it, hearing what you're telling me about being in Sitka, and maybe that difficulty of getting there is what's helped it be such a still, a beautiful place to be. What about the other direction? What's a dream travel location you've not been to

Jaylene Owen: 19:18

yet? Ooh, I would have to say, I have always wanted to go to Greece, the Mediterranean. And the idea of like, being able to see all of the Middle East would would be thrilling to

Rick Denton: 19:31

me. Oh, that would be nice, absolutely. Well, Greece is certainly known for its food. What is a favorite thing of yours to eat?

Jaylene Owen: 19:38

Ooh, um, I would have to say cheesecake that I'm a work kind of girl

Rick Denton: 19:46

like that. Just cheesecake that came out relatively quickly. I can see that I like that a lot. Well, let's go the opposite side, something you were forced to eat when you were growing up, but hated as a kid. Oh. Ooh, spinach, all right, so no Popeye for you. No,

Jaylene Owen: 20:04

no collard greens all that I,

Rick Denton: 20:07

you know, when I was a kid, I actually liked greens. I really did spinach. I never did and I it was in a conversation with somebody the other. It was back then it seemed like all spinach came out of cans, a la Popeye, right? Well, now you got the nice, fresh bags of spinach, and I enjoy but I think maybe that's it. And when I saw that come out of the can, like, I don't want to eat that thing, it looks awful. Yeah.

Jaylene Owen: 20:30

And one other thing would be okra. My dad used to eat that, and it reminded me of snot. See

Rick Denton: 20:36

you. And I may not be able to finish this interview, because you're talking about one of my favorite foods. I love okra gumbo. Give me some good fried okra. Now I'm hearing your Tennessee side come out. Though, when you're mentioning foods like greens and okra, we may have to tap into that part of you. Jaylene, sadly, it is time for us to leave the first class lounge. What is one travel item not including your phone, not including a passport that you will not leave home without

Jaylene Owen: 21:02

ooh, I would have to say my neck pillow. Being on those plane rides, there's been times I've actually had to sleep in Seattle just because you get this time you need to get your connecting flight. You have to wait until the morning. So definitely, the pillow. I

Rick Denton: 21:22

don't know if I'm dating myself, or if that most of the listeners and viewers will immediately think, Well, wait, no, you're Sleepless in Seattle. Haha, bad joke there and so, but at least you were able to get rest there with your neck pillow. Can we go back to you talked about when you showed up and you're like, I came out of a digital background and suddenly I'm back in paper. How, like, what was it that helped? You know, okay, this is the technology solution that I want. As you walk through that choice of with a wide range of solutions, how did you choose the factors that were most important to you when you were choosing a solution?

Jaylene Owen: 21:55

Oh, that's another really great question. I really wanted something that wasn't going to break the bank. First of all, being a small a lot of nepotism and turnover means that I'm going to have a lot of potential costs associated with that. So I needed something that would give me all the bells and whistles that I needed to keep just the normal HR functions, but something that, again, was targeted for the pricing that I could use. And when I looked out there, there is a lot of products, but then you're not getting the caliber of quality that you would if you were at a higher level HRIS system. Right when I first went into isolved it wasn't I solved the company. They were with ADP for about 20 years, and it was prior to my time, and they were kind of forced into a migration of a cloud system. And due to the larger aggregated employer that they have, they have multiple companies here. So the family owns several businesses, so I have several payrolls, and that just was not capable of being supported with that new cloud system. And so in the middle of this forced migration, they had to pull out. And so when I came on board, that's why I had to create things from scratch, because we had nothing. And it was, well, we have the paper, and you know, you're the HR professional, figure it out. Well, they had a time keeping system that was at least for the clocks, because we needed that with our 24 hour operation. And that was with I solved. It was actually Time Force, and it was a third party product, and I saw some of the things in it, and I thought, You know what? I bet you, they have more. And eventually, as I looked into it, they did. And I, in 2018 became one of the happiest customers with I saw, well,

Rick Denton: 23:37

and that's, I know why you and I are talking today. Certainly, as I saw to sponsor this episode, I even see the little people heroes over there off your left shoulder there in the back, when I had a conversation with Celia a few months ago, she too had hers peeking out over the couch behind her as well. And I now have one of those, so I'm actually kind of a proud owner of one of those. Okay, so you've got your technology solution in place, and yes, we've got the one that we're talking about, but this could be true of any of the benefits of technology. Often are very HR operationally focused. You even just described that solutions that make that HR function faster, better, simpler, that doesn't necessarily show to the employee directly. Yet, you're going to need employee involvement and buy in in this. How did you go about creating this, this change and successful change when you're in a paper culture now you've got a technology culture. How did you get the usage and the buy in? It

Jaylene Owen: 24:34

would, I would have to say it was really focused on the communication. The pandemic really sped that up in 2018 I remember, and recall people saying, You really think that people are going to download an app on their phone and be able to use the services are? They just didn't think it was possible. A lot of people here at that time, technology being in an island, yeah, they have it. But. Still connected to the two miles off the road. They can go to the waterfalls and all the beautiful nature that's here. So I started to really introduce it by allowing people to see the product, by installing it and going look. You can now look at your application, or not, excuse me, application, your paycheck, and you can look at these things, like your benefits, and it's right in your hands, at your fingertips, versus them having to call me, try to come down here, ask me to get them the thing that they lost or they couldn't find. I also wanted to create a sense of place. I leveraged the idea of this unique location to help my employees feel deeper connected to those things that made them a part of this company as their employment relationship, and through that, that's what isoft has allowed me to do. We have really, really focused on the ability to create flexibility. Prior to this as an example, my maintenance crew, they don't have a specific location they need to go to, but they need to be able to record, because they are an hourly employee, their time punches. That means they would have to go to a grocery store, pick one on this side or that side, go in, clock in, and then take off to work. Well, if their job was on the other side of the island, that could waste 1015, a half an hour of them having to go to locations. The app, the mobile punching, it solved the entire problem. So a lot of the technology things that was more or less looking at all right? Is this something that is going to increase my ability to service my employees, and will they be able to see the benefit of this? And by tailoring and looking at those features, I was able to get the support behind them? Yeah,

Rick Denton: 26:36

okay. And I can say, because I would, that would be so incredibly annoying, is to if I'm having to go to a physical location that had no relevance to the duty that I was doing that day, just so that I could clock into the system, I would be incredibly frustrated, as opposed to just pulling it out on my phone. Well, okay, so you're talking about employee experience there, and so much of what we've talked about, this is what I mentioned earlier that I wanted to circle back to, and that is, you've now, you've come from paper, you've got a digital solution that really helped free up a lot of time that you didn't have earlier to focus on the heart of it, the employee experience aspect of this. How did you unlock more of your time using this? And then how have you been able to leverage that to really improve the overall employee experience?

Jaylene Owen: 27:25

Wow, that's a really great question. So it's it's not something that just happened overnight, um, even now, like I currently, last year, we implemented the share and perform module from isolved, because I knew, as we were going into the current times that we were going to be focusing on behaviors that were struggling. Mental health wise, I needed something that was going to really inject some positivity into the employee realm, so we launched it. But there needs to be some buy in. And as you indicated, those things aren't just automatic, and I've had to work with my employees, educate them, show them, and then at the same time, kind of refocus their attention back to those those technology and those tools that have been put into place that they are working for us. Some of the technology doesn't get updated. And so then we have to question whether or not it's something we're using. And that's something that I've really liked about I solved is, while their products allow me to automate my processes, if I find myself in a situation where those routine tasks that I'm trying to create a better solution for, I'm not ready, I can take that and turn it off, back away, maybe focus my efforts on something else. And that's really helps me because of the fact that we haven't had the staff, I lost some assistance over the time. We have a lot of individuals that work here, but they're they're not the quality level of HR, so I've had to kind of home grow, and as I've been able to implement some of these technology services, it allowed me to do 10 times the work that I was doing, but then when I struggled, actually passing the baton on, I could go right back and pick it up and move forward. So it's been this unique kind of again, rinse, wash, repeat, where I get to step forward, maybe one or two steps, and then I have to go backwards. But it's a progress that has allowed me to implement these things that have made things better.

Rick Denton: 29:19

Yeah. Well, okay, so in the in that rinse, wash, repeat aspect of it, there's an element where you got to listen. You can assume what your employees are experiencing, yeah, how, how are you going about doing that? Is there is you've seen this in different, well, I'll say ecosystems, but other places that you've been. How is it that where you are now? How are you going about listening to what the employees are trying to tell you,

Jaylene Owen: 29:43

prioritizing clear, transparent communication that is very important. It's not always possible, and especially when you're in an environment where change is rampant. These last few years, that change has been very rampant, but being able to offer free. It open updates in a remote island or an isolated environment, uncertainty can breed mistrust. And then let me give you an example. Just in the end of August, we had some really bad storms. Ketchikan is another island that's not too far from us, and I have a store down there. They actually experienced some really bad slides, and so there was some interruption to their technology out there. And the very next day, I was actually in my office when our phones went dead, and all of us were like, what's going on? And so we just kind of, we didn't have internet nothing. No. Cell phones were working. Well, ironically, that actually was the beginning stages of what we called our internet apocalypse of 2024 we were actually out of internet connectivity for 17 days through cell phones. There was no actual phones. There was only landlines, and most people don't have landlines. I couldn't process credit cards. I couldn't process debit cards, EBT cards. We went into like crisis mode. You went to complete cash it was going right in before the Labor Day holiday. So some of these things you you can take a step forward on that technology. But the grand thing about having all of these things in paper still, or having the original processes, I've been able to fall back on that when I needed to. So it's kind of like that, step forward, maybe step back, and then reapply what we need.

Rick Denton: 31:20

Wow, I'm frozen a little bit thinking about, you know, there's some folks that couldn't go with that internet for 17 seconds, and so the idea of 17 days without internet, okay, that's a that's a crisis, not only for your company. That's a crisis for your employees in their their non corporate life. Oh, yeah, how, how did you kind of and how did you surround and support them as they went through that, both in their corporate and their personal lives?

Jaylene Owen: 31:48

Gosh, that that was a struggle. I honestly don't I look back and I'm like, wow, I survived that. We survived. It was a challenge because not people didn't know what was going on. I mean, it was like the everyone got in line, and we had lines that were going all the way through our store, wrapping around because many people the internet just stopped. Were we being attacked by Russia? What was going on? And our island, it's got the 14 miles. It kind of goes seven miles this way and seven miles this way with the coastline and where our store sits, the main one, sea Mart, quality foods. It's actually on the water. So when you pull into the parking lot, you're parking literally on the crest of the water. It opens up that area. So a lot of the repeaters, the communication repeaters that are out on other islands, were able to be reached. So all of a sudden, someone figured out that if you stood on the corner of this breakwater, you could get cell phone service. And all of a sudden we had, like, every person in town within our parking lot, you couldn't park to go grocery shopping. We were able to get Starlink, and it was installed, and people immediately jumped on that. It was just crazy. It was like, come to the grocery store to get your social hour. Oh

Rick Denton: 33:02

my gosh. Oh my gosh. So I think it was Starbucks that famously coined the phrase third spaces. This is like the the the ultimate third space for the entire island, that the only place that you can get your cellular and your internet signal is there. Jaylene, I know that we've talked for quite a while here, but there was something that you said earlier that I wanted to come back to, and I may end there, because I think it's a statement about Sitka and your experience there. And it was when you mentioned that we might be interviewing a 30 year old for a managerial role that we last knew them when they were a 14 year old working, say, bagging groceries, or whatever the role might be, you know, something very front line. How do you handle those kind of boomerangs in a talent population that is so small, is there any risk of thinking that 30 year old? Is still that 14 year old? Or how do you how do you balance that consideration?

Jaylene Owen: 34:01

Boy, that's a really great question. That's a hard one for some people, because you have generations of drama that sometimes get brought into the workplace. It's hard. A lot of people come to the grocery store to chit chat. It's their social hour. I actually don't go to the grocery store in the daytime because I'll never get out of there. And when you're working like the front end in the cash register, every person who's coming through, you're the cheerleader. You're the one going, Hey, how to How's last week. And if you have had B for other people have had, you know, issues, it can really bleed out, and that's a hard thing to escape. But the important thing is, to really focus on the things that are positive, recognizing that person's contributions, not their past, their current contributions, and celebrate those successes, especially in a small town where close knit teams and everyone's contributions can be magnified, recognizing employees for their hard work, especially in difficult times. Times can help them feel appreciated. It reinforces the idea that the team's efforts are valued, and that's what ultimately builds our family. And it's important to be that transparent, clear, concise communication, and that's not always possible, but it is something that we constantly strive and work towards. I like

Rick Denton: 35:18

it. You know what? I want to end there that's really positive there, because you're right. You can carry that baggage, but no, it's about but no, it's about identifying what the positives are and moving forward from there. How can folks, if they want to get to know a little bit more about you, your approach to the employee, the employee experience, your approach to HR, or just Sitka in general. What's the best way for them to get to know a little bit more about you?

Jaylene Owen: 35:37

I would definitely suggest to contact me on LinkedIn. I'm available through there. I am a very open book. I love to help people. I see that we're all in this together. So the connectivity to be able to work with other professionals, especially if you have questions, I might find that you have something that I don't necessarily know, and we can then swap those tools. Yeah, so definitely LinkedIn.

Rick Denton: 35:58

Oh, okay, I will definitely get your LinkedIn URL there in the show notes, I do want to thank I solved again for sponsoring this episode. It has been great to be afforded the opportunity to get to meet and talk with folks like you, and get to talk to someone from Alaska for the first time on CX passport. Jay lane, it has been an absolute delight getting to hear your thoughts around employee, experience what it was like being a transplant, how you build that trust, how you navigate a technology change, and all of that has been incredibly valuable. Jaylene, thank you for being on CX passport.

Jaylene Owen: 36:29

Thank you very much. Rick, for having me.

Rick Denton: 36:36

Thanks for joining us this week on CX Passport. If you liked today’s episode I have 3 quick next steps for you Click subscribe on the CX Passport youtube channel or your favorite podcast app Next leave a comment below the video or a review in your favorite podcast app so others can find and and enjoy CX Passport too Then, head over to cxpassport.com website for show notes and resources that can help you create tangible business results by delivering great customer experience. Until next time, I’m Rick Denton and I believe the best meals are served outside and require a passport.