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LSU’s Legacy at RoyOMartin Transforms Forestry Through Bold Approaches to Employee Health and Education

LSU’s Legacy at RoyOMartin Transforms Forestry Through Bold Approaches to Employee Health and Education

Through innovation related to people, not only technology, LSU and LSU Health Shreveport
alumni are transforming the leading business in the leading agricultural industry
in Louisiana.

LSU’s Legacy at RoyOMartin Transforms Forestry Through Bold Approaches to Employee Health and Education

RoyOMartin’s tagline, “We grow trees and people,” relies on the efforts of LSU and
LSU Health Shreveport alumni Dr. Brian Elkins and Donna Bailey, who drive people-centric
innovation at the company. Not in terms of technology, but in employee health and
professional development. So far this year, turnover at the company’s Oakdale plant
has been less than five percent.

– Photo by Elsa Hahne/LSU.

Innovation isn’t always about the latest technology. Sometimes it’s about transforming
an organization by making its people happier, healthier and more successful. At RoyOMartin,
Louisiana’s largest landowner and maker of wood products, LSU alumna Donna Bailey
and LSU/LSU Health Shreveport alumnus Dr. Brian Elkins have helped build an educational
system as well as a healthcare system—within the company—to support RoyOMartin employees
and their families.

“My goal was always to make our company as profitable as it can be,” Bailey said.
“Our leaders, when I joined RoyOMartin, were experts at manufacturing and forestry.
Meanwhile, I was an educator. I was an expert on people. As such, I knew people were
the biggest secret of all in making our company more successful, and LSU showed me
how to get it done.”

Bailey first joined RoyOMartin in 2005 after working as a teacher in Allen Parish
for 12 years. After continuing her education at LSU and getting her master’s degree
in leadership and human resource development in 2017, she was promoted to vice president
of human resources at RoyOMartin. There, she created WoodWorks, a high school outreach,
training and internship program from which the company continuously recruits, and
Women in Manufacturing, an initiative to broaden access to opportunities in a still
male-dominated industry. Her latest addition is Girls Can Too, a mentor program for
middle and high school students to learn about manufacturing.

Donna Bailey on Leadership

Bailey

My responsibility as a leader is to help those around me, and when every leader at
every level is a teacher, we are world-class.

Donna Bailey on Innovation

Bailey

Question everything, every day. Challenge the status quo.

Donna Bailey on the RoyOMartin Educational System

Bailey

“I knew people were the biggest secret of all in making our company more successful,
and LSU showed me how to get it done.” 

–
Donna Bailey earned her master’s degree in leadership and human resource development
at LSU in 2017 and was immediately promoted to vice president of human resources at
RoyOMartin.

“You never hear ‘I want to grow up to be a manufacturer,’” Bailey said. “But manufacturing
can be exciting and challenging, and is just not sold that way. With all the automation
we have now, women can be manufacturers same as men, and manufacturing offers great
careers and opportunities. I believe we have a responsibility as a company to help
educate students about the careers available to them in our industry.”

“Early in my life, I thought there were only two choices—teacher or nurse—so I chose
to become an educator,” Bailey continued. “Even though I loved being a teacher, had
I known about manufacturing and what people actually do here, I may have chosen a
different path.”

Bailey and her team have continued to build professional development programs for
RoyOMartin employees, such as Pay for Knowledge and Skills, where workers can learn
and grow at their own pace as they continue their education, allowing employees to
decide the size of their paycheck. RoyOMartin University and other programs, meanwhile,
offer leadership training. Further, the children of employees can receive scholarships
to attend any public university, including LSU, or technical or community college
in Louisiana. RoyOMartin has about 120 students on scholarship right now.

“Education is embedded in everything we do; almost everything comes back to education,”
Bailey said. “The founder or our company, Roy O. Martin Sr., was a teacher before
he purchased his first sawmill in 1923. The family’s love of education is what attracted
me to the company in 2004, and I have tried to continue that legacy by helping our
company become a learning organization.”

“Sometimes we do so well growing people that they leave us for bigger and better jobs,”
Bailey added. “We still consider that a success. It’s a win for our community and
for those individuals and their families.”

About a decade ago, RoyOMartin’s healthcare costs kept climbing while employees had
difficulty accessing healthcare—sometimes missing a day of work just to sit in a waiting
room. Roy O. Martin III, the third-generation chairman, chief executive officer and
chief financial officer for RoyOMartin, decided to do something unusual about it.
Martin, a prominent LSU alumnus and donor, received both his bachelor’s degree in
mechanical engineering and his Master of Business Administration from LSU. At the
time of the healthcare crunch, he happened to be part of the same running club as
another successful LSU alumnus, Dr. Brian Elkins, who received his bachelor’s degree
in biochemistry at LSU Baton Rouge and then went on to complete medical school at
LSU Health Shreveport. They talked, ran and talked some more, and in 2013, Dr. Elkins
signed on as the medical director of Legacy Health & Wellness, a comprehensive primary
care clinic for RoyOMartin employees and their families. It’s located in Alexandria,
between the original RoyOMartin plywood facility in Chopin and the more recent oriented
strand board, or OSB, plant in Oakdale.

Dr. Brian Elkins on Leadership

Dr. Elkin

When you respect each person as a teammate, as opposed to seeing them as people under
your authority, everyone wins.

Dr. Brian Elkins on Innovation

Dr. Elkin

Everyone knows their own job best. Likely, they have the best solutions to any problems
that are going on. That’s why people need to be heard and empowered to make changes
and improve operations where they work.

Dr. Brian Elkins on the RoyOMartin Healthcare System

Dr. Elkin

I’m honestly surprised not more large companies are doing it.

–
LSU and LSU Health Shreveport alumnus Dr. Brian Elkins is the medical director of
Legacy Health & Wellness, which is wholly owned by RoyOMartin, Louisiana’s leading
manufacturer of wood products, and provides comprehensive primary care for its employees.

“I don’t know how many times I told Roy ‘no’ before deciding to take this on—I somehow
just didn’t understand what he was trying to do—but I’ve come to fully embrace this
model,” Dr. Elkins said. “I’m honestly surprised not more large companies are doing
it. Of course, it couldn’t be done in all states. In some places, corporate practice
of medicine isn’t allowed. But here in Louisiana, it saves RoyOMartin a lot of money
while we, as part of a five-person care team, are able to treat our patients like
they’re family. Our goal is not to make money, but we save the company a good amount.”

Martin

Roy O. Martin III says “reckless confidence” led him and RoyOMartin, Louisiana’s leading
wood products manufacturer, to partner with LSU and LSU Health Shreveport alumnus
Dr. Brian Elkins to build a primary care clinic for employees as well as LSU alumna
Donna Bailey to put education at the core of company culture. 

– Photo courtesy of RoyOMartin.

How much? According to Martin, he spends about half to a third, compared to his competitors,
on healthcare for employees. And when the cost of drugs went up, RoyOMartin added
a pharmacy.

“Roy is an innovative leader and, together, we’ve been able to make better use of
every dollar the company spends on healthcare,” Dr. Elkins said. “And as a doctor,
I really appreciate the opportunity to do everything I can for my patients.”

Dr. Elkins keeps a gratis appointment as associate professor of clinical family medicine
at LSU Health Shreveport, for which he used to direct the residency program at Rapides
Regional Medical Center in Alexandria, knowing from experience that people who train
in Louisiana tend to stay in Louisiana, thus helping to improve local healthcare access.

“Sometimes it seems the gap between healthcare providers and businesses and between
educational partners and businesses is a mile wide,” Bailey said. “At RoyOMartin,
we’re trying to solve close the gap. Through WoodWorks, we’ve educated thousands of
students and have hired many into our company—at one point, 30 percent of our production
workers at our Oakdale facility came straight from our WoodWorks program. With our
newly implemented Girls Can Too, our desire is to attract more young women to the
industry. We can only do that by building relationships with our educational partners
and, together, changing the perspective on manufacturing as a career.”

“Now, our workers are thriving and their families are thriving,” Bailey continued.
“Having the clinic means our people can be seen right away when there’s a problem—it’s
easy and affordable—so it doesn’t end up in a surgery or disability.”

Elkin and Bailey

“Yeah—I went there!” 

– Photo by Elsa Hahne/LSU.

Bailey says she wouldn’t be where she is today if it wasn’t for her master’s degree
from LSU.

“My education gave me what I needed to put these programs in place,” Bailey said.
“It gave me the confidence and the knowledge to explain why and convince others to
do what I knew was right. Our company has exploded with leadership development because
of my education at LSU, and leadership isn’t only about production numbers—it’s about
being a coach and a teacher. We’re passionate about safety and sustainability, and
professional development is just as important. That’s what LSU did for me; LSU showed
me how to develop world-class leaders. I’m sitting in a vice president’s seat, but
I’m really a teacher at heart.”

Most years, turnover at the Oakdale plant has been 5-10 percent, and participation
in RoyOMartin’s Pay for Knowledge and Skills career development program at the Chopin
plant has tripled, increasing from 32 percent to 94 percent.

“It’s human nature to want to learn, grow and succeed,” Bailey said. “The change at
our plywood plant alone resulted in millions of dollars in profit in one year—$11
million. There’s a science to growing people, and LSU gave me that. Growing people
is partly about removing obstacles to make them less scared to fail, and the entire
time I was in the master’s program, everything I was given, I was taking back and
using immediately at the company.”

 

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Aetna picked to operate North Carolina employee health plan

Aetna picked to operate North Carolina employee health plan

RALEIGH, N.C. — Insurance policy giant Aetna will administer North Carolina’s health protection approach for point out governing administration workforce, academics, retirees and their family customers setting up in 2025, the State Treasurer’s Business office declared Wednesday.

The firm received the agreement and will switch Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, which the Condition Wellbeing System reported has held the third-celebration administrator’s task for around 40 years. Aetna would start out with a three-12 months deal, with the solution afterward for two agreements that would final a single calendar year each.

Blue Cross, the state’s most significant health and fitness insurer, explained in a prepared statement that it really is pursuing an attraction of the Condition Wellbeing Plan’s deal award on Dec. 14, and advised North Carolina citizens could eliminate their employment in the transition. In the competitive bid system, UMR Inc. also submitted a deal proposal along with Blue Cross and Aetna.

Specified the plan’s dimensions, the administrator decided on to deal with paperwork for wellness care expenses, guarantee claims are compensated and construct out a provider community is important.

The system, which sits in just Treasurer Dale Folwell’s office, covers much more than 740,000 men and women, with bills compensated for by condition money and member premiums. The deal oversees wellbeing treatment shelling out of extra than $17.5 billion around 5 decades, the news release said. Blue Cross will not execute administrative expert services for the approximately 185,000 retirees who are enrolled in Medicare Edge programs, having said that.

About $79 million in administrative expenses are anticipated be paid out to Blue Cross for the duration of the 2022 calendar calendar year as portion of its third-social gathering agreement, according to the health prepare. Folwell and the strategy claimed in a news launch that the Aetna agreement could result in $140 million in value personal savings need to it prolong to 5 yrs.

“A adjust of this magnitude is a great prospect for a fresh new perspective, and we glance forward to operating carefully with Aetna to create new strategies to give price transparency, boost access and excellent while reducing the value of overall health treatment for individuals who educate, secure and provide, and taxpayers like them,” mentioned Folwell, a Republican elected to a 2nd time period as treasurer in 2020.

Blue Cross said it was “deeply dissatisfied” by the Condition Wellness Plan’s selection, expressing it “threatens North Carolina work.” The business also claimed it would look for additional information and facts by way of a general public data request.

The Point out Wellbeing Plan attempted to counter any narrative about lost work opportunities. The information release explained Aetna presently staff about 10,000 staff in the point out, and that 600 personnel were being assigned Wednesday to operate on the transition with interim system director Sam Watts. System users will not have to be take into account modifications until finally 2024, right before the 2025 enrollment period of time starts.

Folwell mentioned he’s spoken with top Blue Cross leaders, who “guarantee me that they will end strong for the up coming two a long time.”

Though the plan wields good bodyweight in wellness care in North Carolina, Folwell and other individuals have been pissed off at times with Blue Cross’ administration, accusing it of opaque selection-building.

Blue Cross has reported some information on approach member promises that Folwell has wanted would put the company at a competitive downside. Compromise point out legislation permitted in 2022 could aid the Point out Wellness System operate out improved financial agreements with wellness treatment suppliers.

Ardis Watkins, govt director of the Point out Workers Affiliation of North Carolina, a union symbolizing point out workers, expressed caution about the changes but mentioned the association is open up to listening to Aetna’s plans.

“Point out employees are often wary of transform,” Watkins reported, but “it has been our expertise that the plan’s management has the interests of point out workforce and retirees at coronary heart.”

Watkins said even additional expense price savings are required in the coming several years to reduce fees from falling increasingly on plan customers. Folwell has been battling with the state’s hospitals on that front.

ABC11 took Folwell some of your worries and issues. He shared what it could indicate for you and your spouse and children.

“Blue Cross has never ever set our rewards. Our rates, or what the prepare covers, at any time. That is accurate yesterday. That is true today. And it’ll be accurate tomorrow. All those advantages and those rates are established by the Condition Health System Board. And that is real yesterday. We have not tinkered with co-pays. And we have frozen family premiums for 5 many years. And we are heading to remain on that path,” Folwell ongoing.

Folwell claims nothing will transform, but is it too early to say?

It’s not completely obvious if you will be capable to continue to keep your identical health professionals, but Folwell stated the alter has the probable administrative financial savings of about $140 million to North Carolina taxpayers above the length of the agreement.

“What we are hoping to do is we’re trying to just take advantage of our largeness like we have done for our retirees. So that we can offer you a much better product at a reduce expense.”

But North Carolina Association of Educators President Tamika Walker Kelly outlines some issues with this transfer by the state treasures place of work.

In a assertion to ABC11 she said, “It is alarming that a conclusion of this magnitude could be declared with no general public oversight and no warning, and we will study how this transfer will impression our members. It is vital that North Carolina prioritizes the wellbeing and very well-becoming of our public faculty personnel and college students.”

Copyright © 2023 by The Involved Press. All Rights Reserved.

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Support employee mental health with a mandated time off program

Support employee mental health with a mandated time off program

Joe Alim is the VP of item and operations at Compt, an staff stipend platform. Alim also was co-founder and COO of expertise-tech startup, ScholarJet.

I’d only been functioning at the enterprise for 8 months when our CEO instructed me to select a week to acquire off, or she would choose for me. When I had discovered that was her usual, easy way of executing matters, I knew the tactic of mandating time off was emerging as a way for businesses to endorse effectively-getting and engage staff. Regardless, just after committing to and using that time off, I was equipped to stave off burnout and proceed to prosper in my job.

Burnout culture is accelerating as sweeping layoffs carry on throughout industries. Presently worn-out staff are expected to operate lengthier hrs or go away it is an ultimatum Elon Musk gave the remaining Twitter employees.

It’s also a warning sign about your corporation. Alternatively of addressing the symptoms, ahead-thinking businesses glance to clear up the root of the difficulty by committing to staff properly-becoming. Just one meaningful way to conclude harmful get the job done society is by mandating time off.

The benefits of mandating time off

Emphasizing the great importance of wellness and wellness as a component of mandatory time off guidelines is a fantastic way to help your workforce in using care of by themselves. Investigate has demonstrated quite a few added benefits of time off:

  1. Bigger engagement and productivity. The Society for Human Useful resource Management claimed that personnel who had been given mandatory holiday vacation time claimed greater job satisfaction than individuals who ended up not. And as Shashank Nigam and Neil Pasricha mentioned in a 2017 Harvard Business enterprise Evaluate article, using time off can guide to a lot more creativeness.
  2. Better tradition. If personnel are lacking genuine get the job done-lifetime integration, they will burn off out. Required time off makes a lifestyle exactly where persons sense cozy taking time off when needed as an alternative of sensation guilty about using time absent from perform or not executing at their ideal because of to a lack of relaxation. It also provides companies the incentive to make sure every single personnel has all the instruments required to succeed at their work opportunities while taking care of tension proficiently without having sacrificing their individual psychological or bodily wellbeing.
  3. Much less unwell days. Aon Hewitt identified a link in between staff effectively-getting and absence management, concluding that companies that commit in wellness must minimize shed productivity in excess of time. A 2012 report by the Global Basis of Worker Positive aspects Options discovered the expense price savings to be just one to three dollars in healthcare expenses for each individual greenback spent on an employee wellness application, results the US Chamber of Commerce (pdf) has supported.

How you can assist staff members with mandated time off

Be accommodating. The 1st stage is to generate a plan that can meet up with the requires of all types of workers. It is vital to think about how they will take gain of their time off and whether you want to set any restrictions on what they do with it or restrict the total of time they’re authorized to use. Just take note that placing too quite a few limitations negates the purpose of this concept.

Make a plan that is clear and adaptable. A mandated time off plan involves distinct guidelines that are effortless to understand and stick to. Getting the adhering to features in put enables for business and structure:

Critique your federal and point out laws, recent enterprise procedures, and methods. Glimpse at these in relation to regarding holiday accrual so you realize what staff are entitled to acquire beneath existing policies just before acquiring new ones. Upcoming, determine what advantages will be offered by way of your mandated time off plan (specifically if this is an prolonged leave like a thirty day period-lengthy sabbatical). Last but not least, doc these gains by creating an employee handbook that clearly states when workforce should really hope their initially paycheck next the start date for their leave period of time(s).

As with any gains method, adapt accordingly. As your organization grows and the desires of your workers evolve, so ought to your family vacation coverage (among other folks).

Guide by instance and boost. Staff members ought to sense like they can use their time off in any way they select without having feeling like they are sacrificing their position safety or productivity. Forcing folks to just take time off seems like an quick sell: who doesn’t want a lot more time to appreciate their own life? But the fact is that harmful place of work lifestyle has extended been instilled in staff, creating people today feel fearful to get time off, like they don’t ought to have to relax or set their effectively-becoming forward of work initiatives and OKRs.

If you genuinely want men and women to get out of the workplace, go on getaway yourself. As a chief, people today will observe your instance, including using time to rest and recharge.

Location and supporting boundaries aids, too. When workers are absent, make certain they are entirely offline. A team solution assists be certain this happens:

  • Make sure workforce know when a co-worker is on getaway and not to disturb them.
  • Kindly remind them that e mail and communication tools let scheduled messages (a gorgeous invention) to honor time boundaries.
  • Be picky about what you message about to guarantee they are not inundated with email messages that could have waited for their return or troubles that others could have solved.

How significantly time off ought to a enterprise mandate?

Regardless of whether a required PTO plan accompanies a financial institution or unlimited family vacation times, it is critical to decide how numerous days you be expecting employees to just take off. There are a pair of approaches to technique this: need personnel to choose off a specified total of time intermittently or in a person consecutive chunk. For illustration, a coverage may well enable staff members to acquire at least a person consecutive 5-day holiday just about every year or a single working day off every single month to make a a few-day weekend.

Some employers established a least amount of days to take off quarterly or annually and go away the final decision of when up to employees. Goldman Sachs, for case in point, calls for employees to take 15 days off each year. It was a shift to improve retention and morale by offering everybody a considerably-needed crack. In the same way, marketing business We Are Rosie mandates at the very least 5 times off quarterly to combat personnel not making use of times because they truly feel responsible about taking time off.

In a study of 1,000 workforce, Cornerstone found 87{08cd930984ace14b54ef017cfb82c397b10f0f7d5e03e6413ad93bb8e636217f} considered 3-working day weekends were being far more effective in alleviating tension than extended vacations. It also assists avoid anyone using off at at the time in the course of the holidays (for dread of the use-it-or-shed-it insurance policies some states even now enable), hoarding days to roll in excess of to following calendar year, or hard cash out—all of which are counterproductive to operate-lifetime integration.

The workforce has experienced to take care of and overcome a great deal in the very last two years—a pandemic, a economic downturn, and now sweeping layoffs as the holidays strategy. So it’s no question pressure amounts are higher. However, 50 {08cd930984ace14b54ef017cfb82c397b10f0f7d5e03e6413ad93bb8e636217f} of personnel will not get time off except forced to, and concern of layoffs will probable compound this. As an employer, you can aid your workforce and base line by recommitting to work-existence integration by mandated time off policies.