One Size Doesn’t Fit All
Martha Gerardo, Chief HR & DS Officer
According to Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM), the greatest trend HR is facing is the demand to recruit, hire, and retain great talent. In 2022, we lost 6 employees to retirement, totaling 166 years of service to the Co-op. Our remaining Baby Boomers will mostly be turning 65 by the year 2030, which tells us we will be having more upcoming retirees in the next few years. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the average years of tenure in 2022 was 4.1 years. This is quite a significant drop from the 27 years of service averaged by our retirees in 2022.
The HR department, along with Executive staff, have been closely monitoring the changing trends and realized that we must invest further in the development and well-being of our employees. We needed to focus on forming a positive and productive environment in the workplace that would benefit both the employees’ mental health and happiness and the organization’s structure and goals with minimal effect to the membership. So, we felt this was the perfect time to survey employees and see if they wanted us to embrace more flexible work models. Come to find out, most of the employees wanted an alternative to the conventional workweek, hence, the beginning of a Compressed Work Schedule (4/10s) option. As this alternative didn’t fit all, some remained on the regular business hours schedule. These schedules allowed each employee to opt for the schedule that gave them a better work life balance. This too, served as a great recruiting and hiring tool.
Our membership, too, were surveyed on options on how we should conduct our annual meetings.
The consensus was that our traditional in-person annual meetings didn’t fit all. The membership wanted the ability to be in the comfort of their homes or wherever they chose to be at the time and still be able to participate in the meeting. After hearing our membership and further review of the expenses, we successfully held our 3rd virtual annual meeting on Saturday, October 8, with 220 memberships in attendance! This definitely indicated that we were able to entice a new platform of members, while still reaching out to some of our traditionalists.
Speaking of traditional…newspaper ads, workforce postings and company sites are no longer the hub for searching for employment opportunities. Over the years, RGEC’s Communications department has had to heighten its participation in the social media platforms to increase our pool of potential applicants. Our social media likes and shares have definitely increased over the years. But, is that enough in today’s world as we fight through the latest trend in the demand to hire? Not to sound repetitive, but this too, didn’t meet the “fit all” category. We knew it was time to purchase an applicant tracking software that would take us to another level. This software allowed us to transition to electronic job applications, improve our applicant tracking methods, and enrich our social media platform by having the ability to include our postings to free job boards on Indeed, ZipRecruiter, Glassdoor and Google, to name a few. The applicant interest pool was remarkable. A total of 38 applicants were hired in 2022!
In an effort to continue investing in further developing existing employees and working towards succession planning, we also look for opportunities to promote from within. Safety, from the board of directors down to each employee, is one of the top priorities. Being that our service territory is so vast, one safety person can definitely run out of fuel pretty quickly. Therefore, we were fortunate enough to have someone on staff that checked some of the qualifications, not to mention had the interest, and promoted him to Risk Management Coordinator (in training). Congratulations Ruben Luevanos! Both he and existing safety guru/mentor, Gerald Nielsen, hit the ground running and started tackling many demands that the department requires. Additionally, this position allowed for the opportunity to improve on the safety culture for the Co-op, membership and public.
What’s even more exciting news, is the purchase of our new Fort Stockton Campus. This was certainly a huge undertaking. Lots of hours of planning and actual labor were invested in order to make the move seamless from one building to the new one. Everyone was extremely excited and grateful not only for the facilities, but for the potential growth it will allow the Coop in the near future.
It is apparent that we will continue to see different trends, and the needs of our employees, community and membership will also change, but rest assured that Rio Grande will continue working towards cultivating an environment that fits all.