SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello, everyone. How are you guys doing? Welcome to this episode of 925 Wellness Podcast. Today we are talking about a topic that I’ve been trying to bring a guest on for. And once I found our guest who I’m going to talk to today in front of you, I was like, this is great. Because it’s about belonging in an organization. That’s what we are going to talk about. And the reason I have been wanting to talk about this with an expert is because DEI or whatever you want to call it, I like to call it just belonging, but those conversations about belonging in an organization often stall at good intentions. We all have good intentions. We want our team members to feel like, oh, yeah, we do belong here. You know, that makes them more productive. That makes them show up as themselves. But the thing is, there are a lot of obstacles. And we are not talking about those obstacles. So this episode is going to reframe belonging as a business strategy, not like it’s just a checkbox on your floor’s, you know, when you onboarding forms, I should say. And it explores how organizations can move from just performative initiatives to actually measurable outcomes. We dig into what organizational health actually looks like when it’s tracked with real metrics. We all like numbers. Why? Because data talks, data shows us results, and belonging is no different. We’re going to talk about why belonging is a leading indicator for retention and performance and how leaders can build cultures that show results, not just report on effort. And today, I have a super special guest who’s going to actually help us understand this topic. Our guest today is a high-stakes strategist operating at the absolute center of one of the most complex healthcare challenges in American history. At the University of Southern California Mann School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Dr. Melissa Durham serves as an as the Associate Dean of Organizational Success and Well-Being. Her work is defined by a rare dual lens perspective. As both a prescriber and a speci and a dispenser, with almost 20 years of experience, she possesses the clinical and operational insight required to drive enterprise-wide transformation. Welcome to the podcast, Melissa.

SPEAKER_01 2:45

Thanks. Thanks for having me. I’m excited to dig into this with you today.

SPEAKER_00 2:49

I’m so glad you’re here. And thank you so much for joining us and taking the time out of your busy schedule to actually talk to us about this topic. I want to start with a question very much like related to the topic, because I want our listeners to know right away like how this conversation is going to help them. We have spent a decade like measuring diversity, and we tend to do that through headcounts, hiring targets, representation numbers. Of course, you know, we can argue that those are also data, that’s numbers too. But almost, I think none of us are measuring whether people actually feel like they belong once they’re in the room. So I want to start here. If belonging is the real outcome we are after, why isn’t anyone treating it like a metric? Something that you actually brought my attention to that, you know what? Actually tracking and moving and holding leaders accountable for a metric, which is belonging, would be more beneficial. How so?

SPEAKER_01 3:57

Well, I think when we look at the data metrics that you were mentioning before, as far as just like demographics, retention, turnover, there’s that old saying, like garbage out, garbage in. One of the biggest challenges that like I’ve had in my organization is actually getting good data around that, right? We have our certain things that we collect in HR, but it is all self-reported. Like, like, is any of this actually even a real thing? You know, if I want to see how many people belong, you know, uh or identify with the LGBTQ community in my organization, am I actually even going to really know that? So, like, how good is the data that we have anyway when we’re talking about demographics? And then also, we can increase our diversity within an organization. But when we do that, if we don’t have the systems and structures in place to support folks that belong to different communities that we bring in, then we are gonna have more turnover. We’re not gonna retain them. And then all of our work in recruiting people from diverse perspectives and backgrounds is all for naughts to begin with, right? So it has to be really like a two-pronged approach. You have to care about building a diverse organization, right? Because we know from existing data that’s how organizations thrive. And then you have to have the support systems in place in order to create a healthy organization that is also diverse. And so it’s not just about measuring belonging, it’s really about building the structures in place that create that kind of ecosystem that help people thrive at work.

SPEAKER_00 5:36

I just love how you mentioned that you have to actually create the structure that makes it feel like, okay, this is the place where I want to belong. And then we can, of course, build up on that. That yes, we that’s how you can account for those metrics. That’s how you measure those metrics. So, Melissa, tell us about your extensive career and how did you get involved with DEI from pharmacy to DEI? And what does your current role entail?

SPEAKER_01 6:08

Yeah, it’s kind of an interesting career path. And I get a little bit of side-eye here and there because if you’re not seeing me visually, I identify as a cisgender heterosexual white woman. So sometimes there’s a lot of wonder as to like how someone who looks like me and shows up like me gets into DEI. I’ve learned so much over the years from my partners who come from other backgrounds, people of color, the LGBTQ community that I work closely with. But first and foremost, I’m actually a pharmacist. I’m a health care provider, I’m a healthcare professional. And my clinical expertise is in chronic pain and chronic pain medication management. And while I was working on my master’s degree in academic medicine, because I’m also an academician and a teacher and a professor, I went through training in cultural competence. How do we teach what I mean? We call it different things, right? But back then it was how do we teach healthcare providers to be culturally competent? So I did that education and training, and then I ended up teaching all the cultural competence curriculum at our program. The University of Man is a predominantly white institution, and I was the only one who had any expertise to treat to teach it at the time. So there we go. And then when our university started really focusing on diversity as a key initiative from the provost, I was one of the only ones who could actually do this job and become assistant dean of DEI at the time. And so it was sort of a right place, right time thing. And also obviously, it was something I deeply cared about too, because in my time working in chronic pain management, I have experienced what it’s what it was to work with people who are oppressed, those who suffer from it’s it is a form of oppression. And I work with diverse backgrounds in my patient population where the color of their skin has impacted their patient care, with, you know, not feeling very othered because of a misuse of pronouns or using a dead name. I’ve had to navigate all of that as a health care provider. And I know how it impacts actual patient care. I know that when I come into a patient care encounter, there’s a level of trust that has to be built in order for me to be successful in my care, in order for them to have good patient outcomes. And these are all principles that are very transferable to an organization and to the workplace. You know, if you don’t create a sense of trust within your employees and with your peers and coworkers, you’re not going to be an effective leader, you’re not going to be an effective worker, an effective person. And if those are feeling like they don’t belong, or if you’re feeling like your workplace is an oppressive place, you’re going to have poor organizational outcomes, just like you would in clinical outcomes. So for me, all of these different like roles that I play inform each other and have really shaped how I’ve approached leadership and how I’ve approached building the systems and structures that we’ve needed where I work to create a really positive culture. I have not done this alone, but we can talk about that, that’s sort of a team approach too. But that’s in a sense of like how I went from pharmacist to DEI to trying to look at this in a bigger picture systems-based view of organizational success and well-being, which is my current title.

SPEAKER_00 9:34

That’s wonderful. I want to highlight something you just said that your experience as a pain management healthcare provider, uh, and you were dispensing, of course, pain managing medications, probably in that role too, that kind of shaped your experience of diversity, right? Because you’re right, pain is a kind of oppression in a way that you don’t feel like yourself. Like, you know, when you are in pain, you’re not 100%. And that’s where you need other people’s like empathy and support. And I mean, and if we look at the bigger picture of DEI and belonging, like that’s exactly what we are trying to accomplish, really, in an organization-wide manner with the team included, of course. So I just wanted to highlight that. So thanks for actually mentioning it and tying it in there with chronic pain management. And my experience as a healthcare provider is the same. I mean, when I see patients who are in chronic pain or have been experiencing chronic pain or just pain in general, they’re just not feeling good. Like, you know, nothing feels like pleasant in their life at that point because they want to get better. So my question for you is how do you balance the need for standardized company-wide belonging metrics with the reality that different teams, different departments, different generations, now we have like Gen Zers in the workforce. So different kinds of like teams and employees, and because they all, especially as far as generation goes, we define belonging in very different like terms and ways, our definitions are different. So, how do we balance all of that?

SPEAKER_01 11:35

Well, I’ll tell you how we’ve approached it, both at the broader like university level, when we’ve looked at this and also at my unit level, is when we’re looking at measuring belonging, we standardize the tool. We standardize the assessment tool, knowing that if there’s gonna have a different sort of response rate across groups, so different feelings, different vibes, right? Yeah, and then when you standardize the questions, you end up disaggregating the data among the groups to see, like, well, you know, is for us, for example, when we did our climate survey a few years ago, we looked at the difference between faculty and staff, and we saw that staff were really having a hard time. Faculty were kind of okay. But then you follow that up with listening sessions. You know, the metrics are standardized, the data just is disaggregated, but then the listening is really the meaning making as to why different groups are experiencing the same place in different ways. And there’s so much that came out of those listening sessions that we were able to implement to improve our organization, to improve our culture. And um, it really did kind of enhance the sense of accountability, right? Because if you start measuring things and maybe people send out surveys and they’re answering all these questions, then nothing comes of it. No one knows, like, well, whatever happened to that, nothing ever changes, you know, then you’re not a very transparent organization, you’re not a very accountable organization. And yeah, you know, it’s a bunch of fluff. So those I think are the real important, like kind of key takeaways is like the assessments standard, data’s aggregated, and then there has to be followed up with the meaning-making listening sessions as well, and then the action that that comes after that.

SPEAKER_00 13:26

Expand on the listening or meaning-making sessions. Uh, how is that implemented in your space?

SPEAKER_01 13:34

So um we did, so at the university though, we did this huge, and I did not run this, but I was one of the one of the sort of leaders of this. We did a huge You were part of it. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 13:45

I was I was important. I’m just curious because I think it sounds, it sounds great. It sounds like a great way to get everyone involved and then also get like a pulse of like what’s going on. So tell me about it. Yeah, I’ll tell you two different things that we did.

SPEAKER_01 14:02

So we did a culture survey of everyone in the university, like 20,000 something people responded. It was a big effort. Each unit got their disaggregated data, but then we also had university-right listening sessions where people from different different stakeholders actually came together in the listening sessions and we had facilitators present the results and ask, like, what do you all make of this? And we took that feedback back to the um higher-up administrators who were leading this like cultural journey. And then from there, we actually developed our university unifying values. Um, we developed the taglines around those, and then the values have been imprinted and, you know, ingrained all throughout the different systems and structures of the university. So that was one way we did it. And then on my level, we we do a climate survey every two years and we had listening groups that were, you know, in silos. We had faculty over here, staff over here, students over here. And we said, you know, this one marker for belonging came up really low, or this one marker related to your well-being at work. I had some comments that came out of this. What do you think about this? Why do you think this came up? And then, you know, you really get a sense from that piece of like why this is like, is there maybe one toxic person in your organization that is making it difficult for everyone? I’m not saying that happened, but maybe it did. Is there something around like work-life balance, work scheduling? Like we implemented um a hybrid remote thing, and that really helped everybody a lot in the workplace. Um we found that um our staff were not feeling heard and represented like whatsoever. So we instituted a a um structure, then gives us the structural piece where they had a staff council developed, where they had their own space to meet to create their own programming if they wanted, their own leadership to advocate for themselves. And that’s the thing, is like you can listen all you want, but it’s got to be followed up with such structures. And so um, those were some things that we did were that were really successful, that were informed by our data collection and informed on those listing processes. And that’s just us, but it’s it’s a transferable thing that can be used.

SPEAKER_00 16:25

Absolutely. Yeah, no, what I’m hearing is totally like again, implementable in many different scenarios, different organization structures. I know when we had our pre-interview call, you had mentioned something about uh you led an institutional shift from traditional EEI to a metric-driven organizational success model. And I’m not sure if that’s related to what we just talked about, but why is this pivot essential for the future of institutional health and what data drives that decision?

SPEAKER_01 17:01

So there’s a couple different things. So, like I said earlier, it kind of started out with us as like diversity. Like we’re gonna make diversity the focus. Everybody has to have a diversity plan, right? Which no one ever liked, everybody wrote it and it sat on the shelf. And then I and then things evolved over time to it being, well, it’s not just diversity, you have to have equity, you have to have inclusion, right? There’s some of these old sayings of like diversity, you know, is being invited to the party, inclusion is being asked to dance, right? I believe like planning. I love those memes. Yeah, I love those memes dance. And so we’re like, okay, well, it’s really all about DEI, you know, it’s a lot of titles shifted from diversity to DEI. And then when I came into that role, I was also seeing a real big um sort of gap in well-being, right? And for us, it was treated as like a whole separate bucket. Like we have DEI over here, and then we have our well-being initiatives over here. But I didn’t see those two things as separate. So being in this leadership role through the COVID-19 pandemic, through the global uprising for Black lives, helping us navigate those really difficult times where organizations were being held accountable like never before for these types of things, where people’s well-being was impacting, you know, every part of their life because of this huge, insane global pandemic. It really became very clear that you cannot separate well-being and diversity, equity, and inclusion from one another. They’re inextricably linked, right? You can’t have well-being unless you’re addressing DEI and vice versa. You can’t have a well-being of an organization without, you know, DEI and well-being of the people who are a part of it. I was kind of overseeing two different initiatives of two different buckets. And I was also seeing a lot of barriers come up just by using the DEI acronym. There’s it’s a very charged thing politically, and it didn’t start that way. So that like many terms, it got co-opted and morphed into meaning something else. Like for me, having done this for a long time, you know, DEI means creating a healthy organization. Right?

SPEAKER_00 19:21

It’s all happening to talk about. I just want to underscore what you just said. I and sorry to, you know, interrupt. But yes, DEI just means creating a healthy organization. Creating a healthy organization. That’s it, period. And I always like to say that healthy organization is like a healthy person, right? Needs measurable vital signs. Wouldn’t you do that on your patient? Of course, we all expect that when we go to see a doctor, right? But we and we don’t just say, okay, you know what? Just because our physician had good intentions, we are good. Or our pharmacist had good intentions, we are good. We need to measure it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:03

Once yeah. So so then, you know, as that acronym gets politically charged and co-opted and turned into other things, it was becoming a barrier. So prior to it being banned, um, I I went to the leadership, I went to the dean, my boss, and I was like, hey, listen, I really think we need to pivot here, you know, from my title of being around DEI and SBDEI focus. I really think we need to focus on organizational success and well-being. I think we need to bring this back to the why behind it. I think we need to make it clear so like what the mission is behind this work so that we’re not coming up against unnecessary barriers, just like within a one with other stakeholders around our organization. And I wanted the DEI and well-being things to be melt merged together, one umbrella, and make it very clear of like what we’re trying to do here. And so he was like, great, do it. So we shifted, we pivoted, we renamed everything. And so we were pretty far ahead of the game because when in 2025, all the executive orders came down that no one is allowed to do DEI anymore, we were already shifted. You know, there was some putting out fires of language and things that we needed to do in a reactive state. But the fact that we were so proactive with this really helped with like the resilience of our initiatives, of our organizational culture. It helped with um maintaining who we are. And so we had kind of already done that shift and taken it up a level, you know, to organizational success and well-being. And I think that because we did so much work leading up to all of this shifting in the political climate, we were really able to maintain who we are. And I think that’s what really what it really means to be a values based and values driven organization, right? Is are you true to who? You are, do you know who you are? And what do we core despite all the noise, despite you know, things going on in the world, right? Like you can put out fires all you want with your fire hose or whatever, but if you have put in a fire-resistant materials and cleared the brush ahead of time and installed fire retardant trees, right, you’re gonna be able to weather it much better than if you’re just out there with your garden hose. This is my it’s probably not a very sensitive analogy to lost. No, it’s a great analogy, I have to say. So for us, that proactivity and keeping the bigger picture in mind and not trying to split hairs all the time around like language has served us really well.

SPEAKER_00 22:47

That’s wonderful. It’s great. This is such a great example of organization-wide proactiveness, right? Like, you know, being proactive about your mission, about your values, actually communicating what it means. And you had already changed the name. And I’m so glad you’re open about talking about it, what happened in 2025 and how a lot of organizations were asked to like close up those departments and or, you know, just the operations. But that’s the thing that the goal underneath is to have a healthy organization. It doesn’t really matter what the department is called, like as long as the mission is there. I mean, yeah, great. Kudos to you guys. Really good.

SPEAKER_01 23:32

It’s not done alone, too. I think one of the big challenges that a lot of my counterparts in this work have faced is that, you know, you’re given a title and you’re just like, okay, like you’re in charge of this. You’re in charge of like DEI, or you’re in charge of organizational culture. And you and it doesn’t work that way.

SPEAKER_00 23:51

I bet.

SPEAKER_01 23:52

Yeah, no. No, it’s a team effort. Yeah. There has to be other folks like embedded throughout who were, and unlucky, there’s been other champions who have really, you know, kind of championed um the this work because it’s not a it’s not a singular thing. And I think that a lot of folks doing this work have not been set up for success because either they have been given a title without authority, a title without resources, you know, and so that’s always a recipe for disaster for people too, when you’re just given an empty placeholder to check a box without given actual support and the ability to do your job.

SPEAKER_00 24:31

So that’s kind of top two for a lot of folks. I want to underscore what Gija said, that a lot of times you’re given the title, but not the ability to implement the good intentions and the mission are values that you think you hold for the organization. So if you were to give the someone who has the title but is having a hard time implementing the mission, the real mission behind DEI, what would be one tip you would give them? Of course, having your team members or getting team members together is a great one to start. But what else can they do?

SPEAKER_01 25:05

Well, I’ve actually had discussions like this where other people in this role have reached out, like say they’re new to the role and they’re like, well, what do I do? How do I, how do I work going? And then I would ask them, well, what what type of autonomy, authority, and resources have you been given to begin with? Because if someone comes to me and says, Well, none, I’d be like, get out.

SPEAKER_00 25:30

Don’t do it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:33

Given that advice before. Do you have protected administrative time to do this? Are you expected to just do this as like service on top of your regular job? That doesn’t, I’ve I’ve this happens and it’s like, oh no, I’m just, oh, it happens. Yes, it happens all the time. I hear about it because of the goodness of my heart. Because I identify as, you know, part of a minority community. And I want, and I’m like, well, you have to protect your own time that’s valuable. You have to protect, you have to get your work done. You know what I mean? Like service is great, but if this isn’t, if you’re not valued for this effort that you’re putting in, don’t do it.

unknown 26:10

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 26:10

And then if you are, I would talk about how do I ask them, you know, how do you plan to leverage the resources and support that you have? How can you be strategic about creating buy-in within your organization? Who are the other key stakeholders who you need to work with strategically to get on board? Yes. As a woman in a leadership role, many of us become masters in maneuvering strategically. Because even in my position, there’s lots of people who I need to do things, but I don’t have authority over them. So how do I interact with that person in a way that can get them to do what I need them to do? So there’s a there’s a lot of strategy and a lot of interpersonal jockeying that needs to be done. And in order to do that, you have to have yourself shorter, right? So people who work in DEI roles really, we are probably one of the top users of therapy. Uh hit the word by bed. Help them therapy. Um because we have to have ourselves in order. Yeah. Health, our well-being, and all those things in order. Because if you’re overworked, if you’re burnt out, there’s no way that you’re going to be able to be calmly, mindfully, and strategically doing the work that you need to do. And so that that’s some of the advice that I would give. There’s probably more specific things I would get into, but um, those are some of the big things that I would tell someone doing this work.

SPEAKER_00 27:54

Yes, and those are great things. And Melissa, I can’t just stop saying this to you because honestly, thank you. Thank you for being so candid about these things. I’ve talked to leaders and especially like in HR or DEI departments, and there is a little bit of hesitation to say these things out loud. Everybody thinks like just, you know, brushing them under the rug is the right thing to do. But I believe no. The more we talk about it openly and just the way you gave the tools, like, hey, you also have to protect your own time. If this is something that you’re doing just on a voluntary basis, how long are you going to be able to sustain it? I mean, be real, right? And are you doing a service to the DEI initiative of the organization at that point? Probably not. So I love all the things you said. And I also want to highlight what you just said being a female leader. And I don’t like to like categorize like leadership in female or male leadership. But yes, there are truths to the things that are going on in organizations. As a woman leader, yes, you try to navigate things more strategically. You learn to do that because that’s what’s required of you. So, yes, can you then translate those skills that you have learned and gained as a woman leader or female leader into building a strategic team for yourself and then advocating for the cause or the mission that you have? So thank you. I mean, really great info over here. I have a question for you though, because in my experience, I believe that senior stakeholders are a lot of times, you know, they just think belonging and well-being are just soft skills. We don’t want to invest in those. We don’t feel like that’s worth it. So how can we get them on board? What’s your experience been? And I believe that metrics can really help with that cause. So, how can we ensure that the organization’s most critical initiatives succeed in in terms of DEI initiatives?

SPEAKER_01 30:14

So, like making the case for it. Yes. Yes. How do you convince senior leadership? That’s the question. We talked a little bit or a lot about metrics on this, but I think that it’s pretty widely accepted that employee disengagement, turnover, and burnout are bad things. I don’t understand, or I would, I would be, I think it would be tough to find. Well, I don’t know, maybe it wouldn’t be tough to find, but I think it would be a hard, uh, a hard sell that those things don’t matter. So I think absolutely everybody agrees that retention is their goal. So I think that focusing on those types of metrics can be very helpful. I think that if you can highlight pain points that you’re aware of in your organization and describe how those pain points actually play out in real terms and real effects, like specific examples, like, you know, um, like the example I gave with the staff council that we started, like staff are feeling really underrepresented and whatever. And um, I think those are types of things that perk the ears up of leadership. But I face the same pushback in the beginning where I’m like, we really got to do a well-being initiative. We got to focus on well-being. And people are like, well, what are you gonna do? Like have people doing yoga in the hallway. And I’m like, yeah. Or um, one of the things too is you have to capitalize on situations that arise. I’ll give you another example. I was advocating for us having an in-house wellness counselor for many years. We started talking about this in 2018. And I’m like, we really got to have it in-house. And then there was pushback. Well, how’s that gonna work? You know, are they gonna have an office they go to? People are gonna see people going in and out of their office. And I’m like, yeah, we’re gonna normalize help-seeking behaviors. We’re gonna normalize accessing mental health resources. And then what happened was the pandemic. And so all of a sudden, everyone’s struggling with their mental health. And finally, I’m like, hey, by the way, remember that conversation we had? It’s time. It’s time. And everyone’s like, okay, you’re right. So sometimes it’s timing, right? Sometimes it’s capitalizing on situations that arise. And sometimes it’s finding a like a specific, like I said, pain point that really highlights what you’re trying to say. But again, I can’t say enough that it’s important to be strategic.

SPEAKER_00 32:43

It is. It is. Well, you have to have the right timings. And it’s sometimes it takes like repetitive attempts to like the fact that you were, you had already presented the idea. It was all just sitting simmering there in the background. And then when the need was there, you could just push it. So, you know, that all makes great sense. I want to talk about another reason why I think these initiatives don’t work and or fail if they were implemented. And it’s simple. And since you’re pretty candid, I think you’re the right person to talk to about it. I’m gonna talk about money, capital. When budget conversations get tight, I know that the first department to go is exactly this one, right? DEI or well-being or employee well-being and whatnot. I actually recently worked with an organization that totally cut the department out because they were like, what did term it? That it’s more like a voluntary thing that we provide for our employees. It’s like an extra perk, I think that’s what the set called it. Because I was the consultant then telling me, and I’m like, hang on, not a good vibe, the kind of organization that I want to work for, honestly. If that’s how you’re feeling about it, and the first budget cut you see, the program is going right away, like into trash. I’m like, I don’t know. So, how do you make the business case that investing in organizational health metrics delivers ROI?

SPEAKER_01 34:24

Okay, so I think it probably goes back to a little bit what we talked about on before is the cost that incurs if you don’t do this. Right? Let’s talk a little bit more in detail about it. I’m gonna touch on what you’re saying really quick. There is an old sort of like thought around DEI is that you can’t treat it like the frosting. It has to be baked into the cake. And it is baked into the cake. It’s not something that you can just eliminate. Because these principles are all throughout your work, through your policies, or maybe their the lack of presence in them in your policies has impact, right? Whether it’s something simple like, I’ll give you like a basic example. Our student dress code. It was like men wear this, women wear this. And it was making certain, you know, non-binary folks feel very othered, right? It’s within DM Princessors are within every little policy, procedure, office, experience, space. So it’s not something that you can just see as like fun events and fluff and cutouts. And I think that in doing this work, if you build it in a way that it is baked into the cake, that it’s structural, then it’s not something that can just be cut or eliminated. And when you tie it to who you are, then you’re gonna have people go, wait a second, what does that say about us? What does that say about you as a leader when you think that like we don’t need this anymore? Right? What does that say about this as a place to be, live, work, learn when that’s something that we don’t think matters?

SPEAKER_00 36:00

That’s the thing. You’re making such a good point, just like the example I gave you. And I was like, what if actually the employees ever heard this conversation that I’m having with the the leadership team? There were HR and uh benefits manager over there. And I’m like, this is like this is wrong on so many levels.

SPEAKER_01 36:22

Yeah. What like what what how did how does that feel to know that like your leadership doesn’t option. Like they’re telling me it’s an optional thing, just so you know, it’s like an extra perk. Yeah. And you know what’s interesting to I found we’ve I had so many discussions about what it means to work somewhere, right?

SPEAKER_00 36:42

And if you’re a leader Let’s talk more about it, yes, because I think that that has everything to do with belonging, everything to do with organization’s values, and then of course the leadership. Let’s talk about it. What does it say about that work culture?

SPEAKER_01 37:00

Yeah, I think we know that there’s parts of work that is transact that’s transactional, right? We all work to make money. Yes, yes, we have to pay our bills. Yes. Our bills, right? We’re not doing it for free. But we all know that it’s more than that. It we all know that like we get a lot of great life satisfaction, a lot of fulfillment when we care about our work, it’s meaningful to us. Otherwise, people would get so upset when something goes wrong or if they feel slighted or because people really do care about what they do. We spend more time at our jobs than we do with our families. So, you know, there’s a lot more to it than just being transactional. And I think leaders really need to understand that our work really matters to us. And really, whether it you think it’s important or not, you know, whether it’s the smallest job to the most important high-stakes position or whatever, it really matters to people. And I think honoring that is really important and taking care of people, like I talked about before, almost like I would in my clinical space. We have to have compassionate care. We have compassionate care with boundaries, is a really important way to approach this as a leader. That’s sort of like the values that I hold, leading with compassion, like boundaried compassionate leadership. Um, and I think that’s something that helps to instill these ideas of belonging and like organizational success and can really help leaders in the long run.

SPEAKER_00 38:26

Absolutely. I couldn’t agree more. I want to touch a little bit upon team retention, let the a little bit zoomed in there. What have you found in your own organization with your experience? And or if you have any like data or research to support it, like how does it pan out? How do well-being initiatives and DEI pan out for better team retention and engagement?

SPEAKER_01 38:56

So within our organization, the engagement that we have, I think really does contribute to retention and a sense of like belonging, a culture. And it’s that proactivity piece that we’ve talked about. There’s a variety of studies that that demonstrate the importance of retention, importance of the sense of belonging, you know, whole scale. For us, I think what happens is that when we start to see engagement kind of drop off, when we start to see participation drop off, I think those are can be like some early indicators of that quiet quitting that we all hear about. And so those are things that we kind of like look for and try to find ways to like, you know, address it early on. Because I think one of the worst things that we can have is disengagement. I’ve experienced this myself on a personal level where I was in a position that was really high stress, I wasn’t supported. And then I had like a really big burnout experience. I had to take a month off of work and I came back just disengaged. I benched myself where my talents, my input, my skills were not being offered up. I was like, I’m gonna do the bare minimum, I’m gonna float through and just like, and then finally I started to notice that we had a new leader at our unit, at our school, who was gonna listen, who was gonna care about the things I cared about. And I and I took myself off the bench. But I think that’s a huge risk for people is that sense of like disengaging, doing bare minimum. Um, you know, and we called it quiet quitting, right?

SPEAKER_00 40:35

Around COVID. These are all like kind of old terms now, but it’s a real, it’s a real thing.

SPEAKER_01 40:39

Yeah, it is real. Yeah. Like my paycheck, go home. But that’s kind of the kiss of death in a lot of places, is this idea of disengagement? Yeah. And that really impacts retention. Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_00 40:52

I want to uh close up our conversation with, I believe, a question that’s probably on top of everyone’s mind. We’re gonna talk about AI and automation. So, in an era of increasing automation and AI, how do you ensure that the human element, because of course the the whole belonging part is more of a human thing, um, how does it, how do you, how are you planning for it? How do you ensure that it remains at the center of healthcare technology and your school and pharmaceutical innovation?

SPEAKER_01 41:28

I mean, there’s gonna be different opinions on this, but this is my opinion that I think that there are human things that AI will never be able to replace. I agree, yes. But there’s no sense in ignoring it. And I think that if we’re smart about it, the smartest people know how to leverage AI to increase their capacity for the human interactions. So if we can use AI to build more efficient systems and processes, and this also comes from like my healthcare kind of brain that I’m the AI. If I can use AI to save my time in documentation, for example. Yeah. And on patient education and listening, then that is an appropriate use of it. And I think that’s the smartest way is we leverage these technologies so that it enables us to increase our capacity for the things that are meaningful. So, I mean, that’s a big broad, probably sort of general take, but that that’s that’s how I see myself using it. You know it.

SPEAKER_00 42:33

That’s great. Anything else? Any parting words, anything you would like people to know about if they’re looking to start a well-being and organizational health department in their own organizations. I know on Instagram we have quite a few people joining us live right now. Uh even if they’re not doing it themselves and they’re advocating for it, what should they do?

SPEAKER_01 42:59

So I think one of the things that came up as as we were talking, you’re like, oh, you’re so candid about this, right? So what one of the reasons why, and I’m probably not really answering your question, but this is what I want to say. One of the reasons why I’m so candid about it is because of the leadership that we that I have over me, right? That there’s been there’s been a sense of like giving me some empowerment to speak on these things, giving me, you know, resources, giving me autonomy, and also the fact that I know that where I’m at, my work is valued and part of our organizational values. So I think that’s an important message to other leaders, right? If what I do sounds pretty good to you and you think someone should be doing it where you are, you have to create the conditions for me to do my work, right? Or someone like me to do my work. And then that way I can help broaden that and create the conditions for other people to perpetuate a healthy organization and a healthy culture. So that’s it’s top down, bottom-up, everything in between. Um, and I’m able to do what I’m doing because I’ve had leadership and support. I think that’s a a big takeaway for leaders listening. Um we’ve we touched on a lot of big points for those of us who are doing this type of work and the the strategy really that has to be in place behind it.

SPEAKER_00 44:19

Yes. The best parting words ever, and these are your words, so yeah, you can take them in any direction. But yes, you being so candid on this podcast interview and talking openly about everything that goes on in organizational health says a lot about your leadership and says a lot about your institution and your organization. USC is such a great school, I have to tell you. Yeah, Southern California has my heart in many ways. But I’m so glad that there are institutions and organizations who believe in the work and they have great team members like you heading the cause. So thank you. Thank you for joining us today and actually enlightening us with all the information. I think there’s so many great tools and nuggets of wisdom for anyone who is trying to start a new initiative and or just improving their existing one. So there’s a lot of info here. So thank you for taking the time and sharing this with us. Thanks for having me. Thank you again, and thanks everyone for listening to us. Thank you for joining us on Instagram. I hope you enjoyed this conversation. It will be going out in a podcast format, video andor audio soon as well, if that’s how you consume it. And if you were uh hanging out with us live, thanks for the hang. Bye.