What Happens When 160 Employees Go Missing Overnight?

Austin Maggard - Master

Austin Maggard: [: 00:00:00

And a RH is unique in the fact that we are very rural and not unique in that, but unique. And we understand that when you take care of patients that come through your doors, it's not not that you're not gonna provide any better care in a metropolitan area, but you may never see somebody you know ever.

But when you're at. Some of our locations, it's people you go to, friend you're friends with that you, your kids, go to school with them that, you go to church with, at Walmart, in the community at a ballgame, whatever. And these people are in the best or worst moments of their life, right?

And you have to take care of those people. So there's an intimacy to that, that we are very cognizant of. So we really wanted to leverage that family dynamic. And on the other side of that is we wanted to understand and make sure that our culture and our culture statement was documented somewhere in a way that.

Again, the [: 00:01:00

We should have the same experience as an employee at every single one of our locations across our 14 hospitals and clinics and those kind of things. The moniker we used was Right. If you've, have you ever been to McDonald's? Sure. Most of us have. And what's that experience like? Just think about it for a second.

What's your experience at McDonald's like? They provide they're successful, they provide a service, but you may or may not ever get your food in there. Typically they're grumpy when you're there and it's inconsistent on whichever across town that you go to. Might be a better McDonald's than the other.

[: 00:02:00

That's why we partnered with Disney and look to all these places to be. The fixed point of what we wanted to really model ourselves after and move towards. Because again, we didn't want it to be a thing where it was a bait and switch where our staff said, yeah, your culture statement says this, but you're really, this place stinks and I hate working here.

You'll still get that, we're not perfect by any stretch, but, if we can make it 10% better by using that to drive our decision making processes, we want to make all of our decisions that we're talking about in conjunction with our employees. And in, in service of our mission, vision, and our culture statement, we should be making some pretty good decisions about how we move Air H Forward.

Beavers: The flash floods of: 2022

Everyone hoped it was a once in a lifetime disaster, but it wasn't when another flood hit. Appalachian Regional found itself back in the same storm. Only this time with something even heavier on the line Trust. As Austin Maggard, vice President of Human Resources recalls, we thought it wouldn't happen again, but it did.

And this time our employees weren't so forgiving. They trusted us to be ready and we weren't. In this episode, Austin walks us through the sobering realization that being unprepared again wasn't just a logistical failure, it was a leadership failure, and what followed was a radical shift from reaction to intention, from damage control to culture building.

an Regional took its hardest [: 00:04:00

Austin Maggard is an experienced human resources executive with a demonstrated history of progressive leadership and complex healthcare systems.

He currently serves as vice president of human resources, where he oversees system-wide HR strategy, labor relations, compensation, policy development, and organizational culture initiatives. Austin's background includes extensive experience in union negotiations, compensation strategy, workforce development, and HR operations at both regional and corporate levels.

He holds a master's degree in HR leadership and analytics at Bachelor's and Human Resources Management and professional certifications, including the SHRM, CP and Predictive Index. Committed to fostering a strong, compliant and engaged workplace. Austin brings results-driven and people-focused approaches to every aspect of human capital management.

much for joining us today on [: 00:05:00

So as you came into this conversation, I'm really curious. What is it that you'd like to shed a light on from your career?

Austin Maggard: Oh goodness. Too many too many mistakes to count that you've had a learn term. First of all, thank you for having me and thankful to and blessed to have this opportunity to speak with you this afternoon and hopefully, share some lessons that, that I've learned throughout my career.

But yeah, I. I've made more mistakes than I carried account. And you have to learn from each one of 'em. And I think that's the biggest takeaway that I have of anything is you've gotta be able to be humble and ready to. Stepping into the unknown if you make a mistake, don't take it personally, don't dwell on it.

Use it as a learning opportunity and continue to move forward. Hopefully people are really hard on themselves a lot of times, and I know that I was at that point for a lot while, but, as I've grown up in my career a little bit, I realize that mistakes happen and you won't be where you are without 'em.

So

s than the rest of the world [: 00:06:00

Austin Maggard: Yeah. I think the biggest one is I reflect on that, that's in, in. Recent years in, for those that don't know it, Appalachian Regional Healthcare. We are a 14 hospital employer healthcare system. Employ about 6,500 people rural southeastern Kentucky and Southern West Virginia.

In July of: 2022

Thousand year flood and in the Appalachian Mountains here, similarly what's. What's echoes about that is, is how much flash flooding this country has dealt with. Our particular area here in eastern Kentucky, we were hit in July, 2022, again, February 15th of this year.

Our [: 00:07:00

The runoff from the mountains will literally come down these hollers legitimately down these valleys towards the river basin. And we had multiple people. Actually at one point, right after the flood, the next week or so, we had 160 of our employees that were completely unaccounted for.

Thankfully we did not lose anybody. But we did have a good majority of our population that lost their homes. That lost their belongings, that lost, their time, obviously, because, they were unable to get in and out of these areas. We had people that were going out on a TV and horseback to be able to get out to these communities that are extremely rural, almost impossible to get to just to really even make contact with people.

We had no [: 00:08:00

While I won't say that's the mistake, there's no playbook for that, and it's not something from an emergency preparedness perspective that we thought we'd ever have. Thankfully here in, in eastern Kentucky and all that Southern West Virginia, our natural disasters are somewhat frequent.

Thankfully. We don't get tornadoes, we don't get hurricanes, we don't get these things. Earthquakes, et cetera. So we really didn't have a playbook for this. So we really piecemealed it together at the time.

as the head of HR for those [: 00:09:00

Austin Maggard: for sure.

Alexa Beavers: So when you said, Hey, we had 160 employees unaccounted for, I would love for you to just help me understand as, in the seat that you were in, Slow us down and help us understand what that was like.

Austin Maggard: Scary, obviously. We. The next morning, the next week or so, we had, we were meeting that night at, 11 o'clock midnight as a senior leadership team, including our C-suite, et cetera, on what status, what we're gonna do, how we can make an impact, but. I'll tell you, it's, it.

We have a very resilient staff. That was the, really the word a across the, that time was resilience. That we would, make this, make it through it together, make it work. We had staff in our hospitals that never hesitated, that stayed and worked several days straight without a break.

patients and their families. [: 00:10:00

And the thought process of we may lose 160 or better of our employees is a very sobering thought. And it's not something that was ever lost on our senior leadership team. And that was the front of our minds was, yes, our communities are impacted. Yes, there are lives lost, et cetera, but these are our people for now.

And we wanna make sure that our people are taken care of before we take care of the other people. Thankfully over the coming weeks through again, reaching out and going into the communities, we were able to find, locate, make contact with these people and. Determine they were okay, but we were all gonna need a lot of help.

cted us going forward, which [: 00:11:00

And we still keep this up today with our distribution center efforts where we gather supplies, we gather needed items, we open those up through actually distribution center. And, we sent pallets and truckloads of stuff in North Carolina just recently, and we still keep those efforts open to be able to put clothes, food, diapers, essentials, necessary items through many different channels and drives on the back of not our employees, but there are people in the community that need the help.

Alexa Beavers: Yeah, I think that what you mentioned about when you have a moment to pause and say, oh my goodness, we could be losing 160 of our employees. It's sobering. And I almost, I'm curious about how you navigated this real live disaster without losing your sense of. Calm and focused. What? What allowed you to do that?

There was chaos. Yeah, there [: 00:12:00

We all had a role to play in it, whether it was figuring out how we're gonna pay people, whether we're talking to the union, we're figuring out staffing everybody, not just myself, but across the organization came together with their respective silos of various expertise and subject matter experts.

And said, you know what? This is what's gotta get done. And we got it done. So I don't think there was ever a moment that any of us really lost it and said, oh gosh, how are we gonna do this? And it's an impossible mountain to climb. We took it one step at a time. We solved the problem in front of us one step at a time, because if you looked at the big picture, it was too overwhelming.

It was too much. So you solve, you know what, can you do the right thing the next five minutes and let's make the biggest impact we can for the next right thing to do, and then we move forward from there.

Alexa Beavers: I love that. The next right thing, not looking at the big giant overwhelming torrent of things coming at you, but the next right thing. One of the things I would love to have a window in on, and I know you weren't recording any of this or anything back in the day 'cause you were focused on what really mattered, which is the next right thing.

Austin Maggard: Sure.

Alexa Beavers: [: 00:13:00

Austin Maggard: It was a very coordinated effort. There I will give very good credit to we have an individual by the name of Paul. He is he works in our security operations, who is prior military prior Secret Service. It really took command and we had a complete command center set up at our corporate executive office.

We had a command center that was. Put it up in infrastructure, very militarized command center. From operations perspective, we started figuring out, here's all the things that have to happen from an essential personnel standpoint. Here's all things that have to happen from a community outreach standpoint.

Here's all things that have to happen for our employees and staff from a support perspective. Let's prioritize and execute. And that was really the methodology that it was. All right, let's go down the list. Everybody give their report where they're a subject matter expert in it. What are you doing and how do we need to do it?

y efficient, very well-oiled [: 00:14:00

And we all were ready to go when we were called upon.

Alexa Beavers: What do you attribute that to in your team's dynamic? What do you think allowed that?

Austin Maggard: We, we have a very close knit leadership team across the C-suite, across the vice president level, across, our entire expanded leadership to our local administration including CEOs, a very. Tighten it. And I think that's really, I attribute that a lot to our culture. Really the culture of not just Eastern Kentucky and but of this organization we've been around for, gosh, 70 plus years at this point.

the organization as a CEO in: 2021

I don't need to micromanage. I'm gonna get my part. And we know it's gonna all get taken care of at the end of it. And we all have mutual respect for each other and the ability to work together [00:15:00] independently.

Alexa Beavers: I think that's a great thing, and I don't think that every leadership team would've shown up in the way that y'all did if you didn't have the trust, if you didn't know that the person sitting in the chair next to you was gonna take care of their responsibilities, et cetera. I think that's a huge thing.

When you look back and you essentially, you were navigating the unseeable, you hadn't been through this. Before and you also mentioned, these are not the types of disasters that we here in Kentucky anticipate. Tell me more about, as you guys came through this, you didn't lose anyone.

People lost their houses. You had deployed, people on horseback and things like that. So tell us a little bit more about, as you started to take that next best step, how did things start to unfold for your employees and you.

ts of, these counties in our [: 00:16:00

They're okay, but, their home life is completely disrupted. Their house was completely washed away, down to a foundation. They're mo only mode of transportation. And unfortunately we do live in a rural impoverished area in eastern Kentucky and in southern West Virginia.

It just, that's what our demographic is. So it's not like a lot of these people have and not that anyone really does. Typically you have a disaster like that. It takes time for insurance to pay you for, whatever that happens. Fema, comes in it. That process is a long process.

If they pay you at all, and there's stipulations where you have to move and things like that our geography behind me is it's vertical. We, we're in the mountains, so if you move out of the flood path, where are you gonna go? You can't just hang a house on the side of a mountain. We were really trying to figure out these infrastructure challenges was really the next things because we have staff that were burning out, who are burning the can on both ends to provide the coverage for the influx of patients that we're seeing in our hospitals.

% of our staff [: 00:17:00

We're trying to solve the challenges. All right, we're in a union en environment, right? So we've gotta follow our CBAs in so far as practical to be able to say equitable distribution of overtime. How are we gonna pay if we do any sort of hazard pay or stipend pay or cover administrative time for people who, couldn't work for means for reasons beyond their own circumstances that they're not losing their PTO time or having to burn through their sick.

And again, we're trying to make these real time decisions in, okay, if we do for this group, then. These ones up here in West Virginia, they weren't affected. Is it fair to those, like trying to figure out what makes sense for a, a third of our population who is affected in making sure we remain fair and equitable and in compliance with the rest of our CBAs and our system and our policies, that really didn't exist at that point.

eceding a little bit and as. [: 00:18:00

And that's, maybe where people might think, oh, we're through the storm, but you might not have been through the storm yet.

Austin Maggard: No, the immediate piece was over, but the long work to get to a point where we had a playbook for how to deal with this, was done. And I will say again we navigated it well. We were able to pay admin time for some days for some people, on what made sense from a fiscal perspective.

We were able to, our foundation raised. Tons of money through the community that we're able to then redistribute as emergency perspective back to the staff. And we were able to do things to meet immediate needs going forward. But, the next logical step was, all right, how do we prevent this from happening in the future?

t this would not be an issue [: 00:19:00

This one actually was not a flash flood, but even worse, it was a entire day worth of rain where, a foreseeable thing, but it was worse because the flood levels were higher. We had a flash flood that washed people away. This was a actual flood that raised the river levels up that affected a different group of population of people.

And we find ourselves in a position where. We still don't really have the infrastructure. Now we have the infrastructure to understand how to deal with the immediate short-term effects and distribution piece. We didn't have staff unaccounted for, but from a, all right we gotta go back and think how did we pay people last time?

What decisions did we make last time? How did we do this last time? And to make sure we're trying to stay fair and consistent with our staff, because we never put a policy in place. We never documented, we never said, okay. In the event of flood, this is the glassy break to fix it. And we never did that.

, that gets some frustration [: 00:20:00

We really gotta get forward thinking on making sure we're ahead of these things going forward, and to make sure that we're communicating we, we have these expectations, we put these things in place. We these, we over-communicate our policy changes, we ensure the downstream effects are taken care of, and really wanna make sure we have not only just an emergency preparedness plan on a small scale, but for just for all of our policies, all of our decision making, that we're really understanding the downstream effects and making sure as we're as forward thinking, proactive and not reactive as possible.

Alexa Beavers: So what I'm hearing you say is that, we've lived through something that took us off guard because it was unseeable, and then we didn't take the gift of learning from that reaction. You were great at reacting, and then you found yourself on your heels all over again. What was when you realized that was what was going on?

What was going through your head

Austin Maggard: Crap. I didn't think we'd be here again. And

a word I would've picked. I [: 00:21:00

Austin Maggard: It was probably much worse at the time, but I'm trying to keep it keep it nice. It was a lot of those kind of thoughts of, man, how are we here again? And, it's so unfortunate for our people who, we don't catch a lot of breaks here in eastern Kentucky.

And man, these people just got back on their feet for, we had. Staff who had just rebuilt their homes, literally had finished and put paint on the doors and were flooded back out of their house again. It's, we don't catch a lot of breaks. So not only was there a sense of frustration and defeat out of that, of man, we're doing this again.

But man, we never really figured out. The playbook for the next time. We didn't think it would happen again. So from a change perspective, we put all, everything on the table to document. We had a debrief call after we got through the immediate aftermath to say, okay, going forward, I don't care.

ure that. R. Yeah, we are as [: 00:22:00

Let's make sure as we're talking about policy rollout or as we're talking about just any sort of changes to the organization that are like terms and conditions, things that we're really over-communicating, over explain, over-explaining, putting acknowledgements in place, putting. Quizzes in place where the staff understand it.

Having forums in town halls and feedback of this is what we're doing. 360 degree communication and transparency. And that is a big thing that we got from our engagement survey recently was, enhancing in our communication. And that's not easy, we again, we're 14 hospitals that are spread out with the ancillary satellite clinics, locations, home health locations, et cetera.

ct with those people so they [: 00:23:00

So trying to solve some of those challenges on the back of this was a wake up call to, we can't just let stuff sit on the back burner and assume it's not gonna happen again and fix it later. To stop that methodology. That's an old way of doing things to make sure we get direct feedback, we put it in place, and then we over-communicate it back to make sure that the trust factor stays in place.

ll year. It was resilience in: 2022

Alexa Beavers: It sounds like you might have had some real deep work to do on trust because first, resilience is one thing and people probably built a lot of appreciation for how you navigated the unknowable. And then there was this thing that was potentially. A space where we could have been better prepared and then all of a sudden you're finding yourself having to scramble.

What are some of the things that allowed you to not make this mistake for a third time?

aff in a couple of different [: 00:24:00

You should pay these people and not these people, and we're not gonna, you should have been prepared for this kind of thing. As we started working through increment weather, and this even goes back to, we were dealing with little bits during some snowstorms back in January, even prior to the flood, and we were trying to start working on the policy and trying to figure it out, and we never really got to a place where, you know, what made, what makes sense in a bubble.

We're in an office or in our corporate office making sure the downstream effects of that are really gonna translate to the staff that we get in front of all the things. And that's what I mean about the proactive piece. That we get in front of all the intangibles, that we really take feedback or if there's a terms and conditions things, we make sure we are proactive with communicating with our unions and say, Hey, this is things we're changing.

mething random. So we really [: 00:25:00

We're going through this again. I didn't get paid and such got paid and this person did, and this person got it and I was deemed essential, but I don't think I'm essential and this person's essential. And your policy doesn't say like that noise was too much and we don't want to do that anymore.

Whether it be Franklin, the weather, otherwise we do not wanna put our staff in a position where they don't trust us because we're inconsistent, because we don't communicate or we put out a half baked. Idea that's on the under side, under raw side of undercooked here, right? We wanna make sure that our, again, all of our intangibles, downstreams in so far as practical and hypothetically are thought through and communicated, and they have a chance to ask questions.

anagers to say, Hey, this is [: 00:26:00

What's your, you're the expert on this stuff. How does it affect you on a day-to-day basis? We want that feedback because then we can say, okay we can't do it for this reason, or We need to make this language that change for this reason. That's where you get them empowered and engaged and really think that they're, they have a voice and a seat at the table, which really drives that retention because they have ownership of their job and their work and their life.

And it's not just because admin or system or whoever is telling me I have to do a thing, or this is a black and white policy that's been through the whisper game by the time it gets to me on, here's what it is. So continuing to be proactive and this is, I know it's a long answer to your question, but continuing to be proactive about that communication to make sure that you are on purpose with talking with and getting feedback directly from staff managers, et cetera, that are affected by these changes.

Is absolutely the key, not only for them to feel comfortable with it, but to get the buy-in and support for what you're trying to change. From a change management perspective. They have to own it too. And they have to believe in what you're doing as well.

oom, is what I'm hearing you [: 00:27:00

Austin Maggard: That's a hundred percent correct.

Alexa Beavers: Yeah, being proactive in a boardroom only goes so far, and it might make perfect sense to everybody that says this great idea. And then when you go out to talk to the maintenance guy who doesn't have email, or you go and find the person that is, you know, trying to commute to work over. Roads that aren't there anymore, you have to recalibrate. So what you did was you said, okay, we can have an intention and then let's get our team members involved to help us face this problem together. Is that right?

Austin Maggard: No, that's absolutely right. And we've done a lot of work over the last 18 months with, and a lot of organizations have, but we were thankfully on the cutting edge of this. We developed a new culture statement. And that's really something we wanted to put pen to paper as the cornerstone of our organization.

We've had a mission and vision, but we really wanted to put pen to paper to what our, we want our culture to be. And that's another kind of lesson where we learned, we wanted to make sure, I've been in organizations before in my career that they said their culture was something that it wasn't.

people are smart. They have [: 00:28:00

I've been on the other side of that point where I know what it's like to work here. I know what we say externally and those two things don't line up. Whereas we really wanted to develop this culture statement based on what we know, based on what we actually are, based on what we think our staff thinks we are.

And then we've soft rolled that out over almost a two year period now to where we started with. Just floating the idea During hospital week we expose people to it. We made a video, we made it the theme for hospital week, and then we focus throughout the summer on one tenant at a time of our different value words.

And then we've, made it intentional to where we trained. We had Disney the Disney Institute come and train all of our 700 managers on best practice. And around the culture statement on how to deal with people and what that looks like. Then we made it a mandatory education at the first of this year as a KPI that they all have to quiz on the culture statement.

ve to understand what it is, [: 00:29:00

Alexa Beavers: Thank you. Have a nice day.

Austin Maggard: is it really 'cause it's not. And so you want people to believe in what you believe in and really, again, have the ownership of Yeah.

I think that we want it to be bite-sized pieces to where it doesn't matter what my position is, I can think of a tangible way I can affect those things. So that goes for all of our policies, all of our changes, all of our thought process as to. Yeah, it makes sense. And maybe there's things that are hard and we can't just, make it a cushy thing.

Maybe there's something that people are just not gonna but if you have the trust that you've earned in that trust capital built up and all these different areas where you've really done your diligence and having these conversations with the staff, with the managers, with the leaders, getting their feedback, applying that feedback, making policy changes if you need to, making, different decisions or giving those things back through these surveys, if.

vegetables here, you've got [: 00:30:00

And you can still explain the why behind it. So over communication, explaining the whys, that it's a huge thing for me as to how you get success on change management.

Alexa Beavers: tell me a little bit about how you got the backing for the culture work.

Austin Maggard: Yeah. So the culture stuff seems very fluffy and very intangible. It's very hrs of, Hey, we're gonna roll out this culture statement. It's gonna be this nice thing. And so it was really, especially when I was starting to ask for six figure cost to say, Hey, we wanna bring the Disney Institute on site and have them come train all of our managers.

No. And so what we really had to do was put on the CFO speak hat and say, okay, we implement this culture statement. We make the investment into our managers. We have some major downstream dollars that we really need to be cognizant of here. I'll tell you from a case study perspective, Ohio State, Kaiser Permanente, places like that have decreased their turnover and they picked up absolutely millions.

e can do the same here for a [: 00:31:00

And so we've picked up eight figures on our revenues in conjunction with some other efforts around productivity and that kind of thing, but are. Our turnover data has decreased significantly. Our retention efforts have increased, and we're talking about additional, and that's not even the intangible dollars of turnover costs, which is unseen, right?

That's just gained productivity, lost contract labor, these kind of numbers. So we're talking about, we can pick up. It's sky's the limit for what we can do with those kind of numbers to continue and, keeping the efficiency of gain of our staffing happy, productive, healthy, really bought into this culture statement further enhances the fact that yeah, we've been churning through our staff at, 30%, less.

It's really gonna make a huge impact going forward.

ing the buy-in, but you put, [: 00:32:00

Austin Maggard: Oh it absolutely has. Yeah. And it's shown in our engagement surveys, it's shown our outcomes, our interactions, our patient feedback and all those things factor into our cumulative, scores around how we're scored as a healthcare system from regulatory oversight and those kind of things.

So as we translate those into really, behaviors that are inculcated into the organization. Those things become, really metrics and KPIs that we could look to drive and say, before this date, we were here after this date, we were here for May. Patient feedback and survey perspective.

From an employee engagement perspective. From a turnover, KPI perspective, retention rates, turn rate, all of your HR dashboard as it were, and then your CFO and clinical dashboards, they can all reflect the trends in the right direction. And, we can't directly say it's only the culture statement, but you can say from this date forward that we really made this on purpose, really trained people and put effort into it.

gagement survey feedback has [: 00:33:00

Alexa Beavers: Had you not been proactive and you were still in reactive mode of 2022, which served you at that time? 'cause you had to be reacting to something unseeable, do you think you could have gotten the same results?

Austin Maggard: I don't, I think we would've achieved some level of. Of increase because we have made very significant compensation adjustments, but at the same time we're now on par with other people. The retention and the turnover, things that we're seeing are now people aren't just leaving for money through the feedback from exit interviews are, those are different reasons for leaving the people are moving outta the organization.

So people are staying now and not just chasing dollars because we're equitable. Yeah, I don't want to go anywhere else. I wanna stay here. Even if we're not equitable, we're not quite on pace with somebody else. They wanna stay because they love where they work. They love what they do, they love the people they work with.

we would achieve the net. I [: 00:34:00

Alexa Beavers: Incredible. When it comes to shaping the culture from an emergency that was born out of an emergency, and really taking it not just to be reactionary, but to be proactive. And be on purpose as you said. I think that really has shown through in your results, and I'm excited to see what you all can continue to do as you continue to practice what you preach. I think that's really amazing and what I'm picking up on is you said something earlier when you realized that you were facing the noise of the employees and saying, oh. You and the leadership team got together, you said, we gotta be better. And it's not just about being proactive now for this particular instance, because we, that would be mo maybe like just spackling on a crack, but you went the extra mile to look at how you do things overall and being proactive and engage other, the team members and things like that.

So let me ask you a [: 00:35:00

Austin Maggard: We didn't really have anything. We knew what we were, ultimately a lot of the stuff came back to family, and I know that's gotten to be a dirty word in HR anymore, of oh, we're all family here. It's not really that. It's, we have a workforce at a RH that we're blessed that we have a kind of a dichotomy of issues.

One is our average age of seniority is like in the 30 years of service category. We have some employees that are turning 54 and 55 years of service. At a RH, which is insane. We want them to retire at some point. God love them, but at the same time, they just love working. That's what they do. And so we've got this generational thing where you have, grandparents working with their grandkids.

provide any better care in a [: 00:36:00

But when you're at. Some of our locations, it's people you go to, friend you're friends with that you, your kids, go to school with them that, you go to church with, at Walmart, in the community at a ballgame, whatever. And these people are in the best or worst moments of their life, right?

And you have to take care of those people. So there's an intimacy to that, that we are very cognizant of. So we really wanted to leverage that family dynamic. And on the other side of that is we wanted to understand and make sure that our culture and our culture statement was documented somewhere in a way that.

heir family's external brand [: 00:37:00

We should have the same experience as an employee at every single one of our locations across our 14 hospitals and clinics and those kind of things. The moniker we used was Right. If you've, have you ever been to McDonald's? Sure. Most of us have. And what's that experience like? Just think about it for a second.

What's your experience at McDonald's like? They provide they're successful, they provide a service, but you may or may not ever get your food in there. Typically they're grumpy when you're there and it's inconsistent on whichever across town that you go to. Might be a better McDonald's than the other.

The flip side of that is, have you ever been to a Chick-fil-A? Okay. If you're in California, Washington, New York, Florida, anywhere in between, you have a consistent level of service from a Chick-fil-A, right? And it is pretty uniquely Chick-fil-A. We wanted to have that level of Chick-fil-A level of customer service as it pertains to healthcare, and we wanted to leverage our culture statement.

ays this, but you're really, [: 00:38:00

You'll still get that, we're not perfect by any stretch, but, if we can make it 10% better by using that to drive our decision making processes, we want to make all of our decisions that we're talking about in conjunction with our employees. And in, in service of our mission, vision, and our culture statement, we should be making some pretty good decisions about how we move Air H Forward.

Alexa Beavers: Yeah, so it's 'cause it's not just words I'm hearing. Your culture statement is a statement of what makes us who we are at Appalachian Healthcare. This is our

Austin Maggard: absolutely correct,

Alexa Beavers: And if that's our identity, it helps us to make choices about what we wanna do in each next step. And so tell me now, where did you land?

Tell me if I was to say Hi. Nice to meet you. Appalachian Healthcare. What's your culture statement now?

to sell down to really three [: 00:39:00

We want 'em, feel welcome, cared for, and appreciated. At the core of what our culture statement says, that's really the decision making that we want to go through. Patients, families, they feel welcome when they come in. It's a guest type environment, we want welcome, cared for, appreciated while they're here.

10, five rule basic things, very obed behaviors for smiling and greeting and may not making eye contact, going the extra mile to help people navigate again. That's why we brought Disney in. They're great at those kind of things cared for. So again, caring for our staff when they're here and then appreciated.

So not only for our employees, but patients and families of, we close interactions with. Thank you for trusting a RH and again, trying to reiterate that trust piece. In, in making sure that we are really on purpose and on intentional with our rewards and recognition, with positive feedback, with really going the extra mile to, to recognize our staff who do a good job.

y at our internal university [: 00:40:00

And so hopefully what you would see is a very. Happy staff who really wanna do the best thing that they can to take care of our patients the best way that they can. Because again, we're unique in the fact that you're taking care of people, for the most part. And we all really try to take a, take pride in that piece.

Alexa Beavers: Lovely. So when you went from this, oh crap moment, it catalyzed something that allowed you to say, we want everyone to feel welcome. Cared for and appreciated. So you put policy changes in place, you're training people about what that means, and you're making decisions about how you take each next step based on is it gonna make them feel welcome?

u in your growth and career, [: 00:41:00

Austin Maggard: It has been a great journey in resilience and persistence for sure. It has been a great journey in really understanding that it's okay to make mistakes, and you have to, because we said from the beginning it's okay to make mistakes. You have to learn from 'em, and you had to be proactive.

And the worst thing that you can do is make a mistake and then continue to make it right. The definition of insanity, that whole thing is continuing to do the same thing and hoping to get a different result. And, so for me I've really learned that not only with our staff across the house with the, as an enterprise, but really with my teams with the HR staff, that you really need to take those things as well to, to heart, right Over communicate.

Ask and explain the why. Making sure that your staff understand, there's a concept in military called decentralized command, right? They have to be able to take ownership locally and of those decisions and be able to apply them. You can't always run back from the front lines to the back to.

o? They're moving over here. [: 00:42:00

So ensuring that, at least with my team as a microcosm of the entirety of the enterprise. That we're doing those things in the same way. We're over communicating. We're making decisions based on the culture statement. I'm asking for buy-in, I'm asking for questions, poking holes in things I don't want.

Yes, people, I want people to tell me that I'm wrong and let's try to figure out a way to work collaboratively to fix it. And I think really taking those to heart and taking some humility in that and not thinking that, I have to be this person that I'm not and say, this is what we're doing because I said so.

I don't wanna lead that way. I don't think that you is the right way to lead. It works for some people. That's not my style. And so I'm really, cognizant of that as, I continue to navigate and grow in my career.

. Give me your, and then you [: 00:43:00

Or maybe make you feel like, oh, I should have thought about that. But you're like, oh, thank goodness. And then acting on those things I imagine helps him to make, feel cared for. They, he took me seriously.

Austin Maggard: that, that's the hope. And I definitely, obviously always welcome that feedback. We're not gonna be perfect and sometimes things get missed or miscommunicated, but again I'll. Immediately take ownership of that and, apologize and say, Hey, we should have done this differently.

But for the most part, we wanna work collaboratively as much as we can. 'cause I do want all of my folks to feel welcome, cared for, appreciated. Because our job in administration in the healthcare world is to take care of the people who take care of the people. If we have.

Our staff that they're living in fear or we're making their life difficult. They can't provide the best patient care possible. So that kind of goes for me to the HR staff. The HR staff supports our staff. The our staff supports the frontline staff and so on. So if I'm not, if getting a great product from the HR side, nobody is, and it affects, everybody, we all have a hand in this mission.

We all gotta be rolling the boat the same direction. And that starts at the top with me.

Alexa Beavers: All [: 00:44:00

Austin Maggard: Be, don't be afraid to overreach. And I know that sounds odd, but, and I'll elaborate. I've been thankful and I'm very cognizant of, I've outkicked my coverage from my career perspective. I've been in HR a little over a decade between 10 and 15 years in various positions, and I'm at a vice president level and a.

Billion dollar enterprise healthcare system. And I, that's not lost on me. And, early on I would look at the corporate ladder, as it were, as I was entering the HR career and looking man, that would be crazy to get there someday, 20 years from now. But don't be afraid to send an application.

ou can command some level of [: 00:45:00

That's a very little gap to, to navigate. But if you can do it well that will really serve you because from an executive level, those things get noticed, right? Somebody that does things right, that shows up early, that puts in the work, but also has a sense of humbleness trying to be a sponge and wanting to learn and absorb as much as possible.

Those things get noticed. Somebody that has the subtle confidence to not, overreach and have to feel like they have to be involved in every conversation and kind of know their place and know when to add value. Those things are imperative. You don't want somebody who's just trying to and it's, I hate the term, but like peacocking a little bit, like trying to look like you're supposed to be there.

But also walking that line of confidence in being able to have an executive presence. I think those things really, at no matter what level, I don't care if you are a temporary, HR intern. Those things get noticed. If you show up and you do the job the right way, it will serve you that those things absolutely get noticed.

So my recommendation is [: 00:46:00

Even pretend that you're supposed to be there, that's half the battle. You can learn everything else on the way

Alexa Beavers: I think that it really even ties back to a little bit of the theme of our interview, which is it's okay to fail, so put the application. Out there. Go out there, put yourself out there. Be ready to be okay to fail. Have the confidence to know you're still okay, even if it's not perfect, but don't be so confident that you're not gonna.

Austin Maggard: that's absolutely correct. BSBA sponge, and you may put. 800 job applications out there, but it just takes the one right opportunity. And I can say that was my journey. I started climbing the ladder I, on a whim put an application for this role. Never thought that it would be something I would be qualified or able to do.

ars and never saw, thought I [: 00:47:00

So don't be happy where you are, continue to climb but also learn as much as you can on your way.

Alexa Beavers: And be a sponge. I love that advice and I think that when you really turned your attention to being a sponge proactively, you made a huge difference alongside your leadership team in creating a culture that allows people to be sponges and grow and, really contribute to the culture that you're trying to create there at Appalachian Healthcare.

So way to turn a lesson into something. Cool. Nice job.

Austin Maggard: Thank you.

Alexa Beavers: Thanks for sharing this story with me. It's not something that everyone would wanna share that we actually learned the second time around. I appreciate that. So tell me, Austin, where can people find you as they are like, Hey, I need to pick that guy's brain.

s usually the easiest place. [: 00:48:00

Questions about anything they want to ask me or career advice or any of those things. Happy to work through all those different things. 'cause I've probably been through it at some point. I've went through several jobs in 10 years across various increasing levels of responsibility.

And I don't know everything by any stretch. And I want to continue to learn as much and maybe I'm sure there's something I can learn from somebody else that there's a conversation to be had.

h as fast and urgently as we [: 00:49:00

I'm gonna start that over. So what I really liked is that you were brave enough to share, Hey, we did a pretty good job in navigating this unseeable circumstance. In fact, I thought that was maybe the mistake, but then as we deepened the conversation, you opened up even more and said, you know what? We could have done more with that. As you were humble enough to recognize that we could have done more with that, you really put the, intention to use and recreated your whole culture and it's something you're continuing to cultivate, which I really appreciate doing. Culture work is never easy, and so leveraging lessons from other places where they're doing it well, like your organization has, is a great way to do that.

n't make decisions in a silo [: 00:50:00

Austin Maggard: Absolutely. That's a great way to, to sum it up. It just continue to learn be okay with failure. But as long as you learn something from it along the way, you know that's part of life. And you can't grow if you're not failing. And to me, if you're not failing, that means you're too comfortable with where you are and you're not getting better.

And at the end of the day, I wanna get 1% better every day. So that's gonna come with some bumps in the roads.

Alexa Beavers: Thank you for sharing today.