HR Overview For Non-HR Professionals

Tony Martignetti
Hello and welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I'm your aptly named host, and I'm the podfather of your favorite hebdomadal podcast. Oh, I'm glad you're with us. I'd be stricken with graposis if you threw me for a curve with the idea that you missed this week's show. Here's our associate producer Kate with What's Up.

Kate Martignetti
Hey Tony, here's what's up. HR overview for non-HR professionals. Trust is key, and so is strong middle management for CEOs and EDs responsible for human resources in their nonprofit. Janelle Miller Moravek helps with what to focus on and how to manage job descriptions and hiring, retention, promising employees, problem employees, talent development, performance management, and more. She is executive director at Youth& Family Counseling. On Tony's Take 2.

Tony Martignetti
Tales from the Gym. More sourdough for Rob.

Kate Martignetti
Here is HR Overview for Non-HR Professionals.

Tony Martignetti
It's a genuine pleasure to welcome Janelle Miller Moravek to Nonprofit Radio. She's a nonprofit leader and mental health advocate She has led Youth& Family Counseling as executive director since 2009, driving its growth and impact across Lake County, Illinois. She's managed teams as a non-HR professional for nearly 20 years. You'll find the agency at counselingforall.org, and you'll find Janelle on LinkedIn. Welcome to Nonprofit Radio, Janelle.

Janelle Miller Moravek
Thanks, Tony. Thanks for having me.

Tony Martignetti
It's a pleasure. We're talking about HR. I love HR. A non-HR professional. You are not adamant you are not an HR professional.

Janelle Miller Moravek
I am not an HR professional, but that doesn't mean that I don't do HR, a lot of it.

Tony Martignetti
Exactly. Tell us what you do at the agency, what the agency is about since 1962, I believe, mental

Janelle Miller Moravek
health

Tony Martignetti
counseling. Please tell us.

Janelle Miller Moravek
So Youth& Family Counseling is a community-based mental health counseling center. We see whatever walks in the door. We see across the lifespan, people from all walks of life. And we've evolved over the years to think about access to mental healthcare in all kinds of different ways, from affordability to cultural, linguistic availability, geographic availability. So we've grown with each iteration. It's been, it's been a wild ride. I just celebrated my 25th workaversary, so I've been actually here at YFC for 25 years.

Tony Martignetti
Yes, you were director of development, right?

Janelle Miller Moravek
I was director of development before I came up through the fundraising. Yep.

Tony Martignetti
Well, congratulations on your workaversary. Never heard of a workaversary, but congratulations.

Janelle Miller Moravek
Thank you. Yeah, it's a big milestone. Yeah, it is.

Tony Martignetti
25 years, uh, it's a good long time. You're well established in Lake County.

Janelle Miller Moravek
Yes.

Tony Martignetti
Uh, do you get to see any clients yourself?

Janelle Miller Moravek
Well, since I am a fundraising professional and not a clinician, um, one would hope no, right? I don't see clients.

Tony Martignetti
Oh, okay. You're a mental health advocate.

Janelle Miller Moravek
I'm an advocate.

Tony Martignetti
I was thinking of a mental health professional. No. Okay. All right.

Janelle Miller Moravek
But no, I don't have any of the clinical certifications. Um, I, I have been working in the environment, so I know enough to be dangerous.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah, no, no, no, no, it wouldn't be appropriate. No,

Janelle Miller Moravek
but yeah, no, no, but yeah.

Tony Martignetti
All right, let's go to a question that might be a little more appropriate. Um, not non-HR, non-HR for HR pros. Uh, you're doing— you say you do, you do HR every day, you think?

Janelle Miller Moravek
Yeah, for sure, I do HR every day. Yeah.

Tony Martignetti
Okay, okay.

Janelle Miller Moravek
Yeah,

Tony Martignetti
so what do you think Where's your focus as the executive director, CEO? What are you focusing on around HR?

Janelle Miller Moravek
Oh, so many things, right? So many things.

Tony Martignetti
Get us started.

Janelle Miller Moravek
Yeah. So, I think it falls into 2 buckets, right? So, HR is my— it keeps me safe. It keeps YFC safe. So, in this bucket, you've got compliance, risk management, I mean, honestly, I don't worry as the executive director. I don't worry about the big stuff. I don't worry about the breaches in confidentiality. We're pretty secure. I worry about HR laws and someone not being paid appropriately or classified appropriately. One of those could take us down. So it's a huge— It's my best friend on compliance. And if I have a really good— if I manage that risk, that's my— that's HR right there, right? And then the other big bucket is performance management, talent development. We're a fee-for-service organization, so philanthropy covers 40% of our budget and fees for service 60%. I need this to happen. That means I have to have productive employees. And so taking care of them, developing them, providing an environment where they can show up and do their work and be successful, giving them the tools, those are all the things that I do every day. And a lot of that is HR, right?

Tony Martignetti
Absolutely. I think it all is that you just enumerated. Yeah. On the compliance side, How do you get help with the laws of HR, making sure that, like you said, employees are categorized appropriately, right? As an employee or they're a 1099 independent contractor. But that's just one example.

Janelle Miller Moravek
Right.

Tony Martignetti
How do you get help with the compliance side?

Janelle Miller Moravek
So I'm not an expert, right? I'm not an HR professional. And so at the beginning when we were a smaller organization, our budget was under $1 million, I relied on my board. I was careful to always have an HR professional on my board, and the one that I had when I stepped into this role, and she stayed with me for a hot minute until I got my feet under me, she was one of the best teachers I've ever had. She taught me so much, and she was so generous in sharing the resources of her team. So it morphed from, you know, the board person helping me to then we We had enough extra resources, so we actually joined a lawyer. There's a lawyer here in Illinois, and she has a consultant program for nonprofits, behavioral health nonprofits specifically.

Tony Martignetti
Hmm.

Janelle Miller Moravek
And she was my go-to resource. She would let me know about law changes and then say, and here's what you need to do with that. Your handbook should now say this. She would say, and you should now do this. That. And so thinking back to, you know, when they first talked about having the Fair Labor Standards Act changes and all of the, you know, raising the wages and the levels so that you're exempt or non-exempt, she walked me through all of that. I was thrilled when in 2021, we were big enough to need more HR, but we're still not big enough to need Like a whole team of HR professionals.

Tony Martignetti
A vice president of human resources. Right.

Janelle Miller Moravek
We're not big enough. There are only 32 of us. But we do have a fractional HR. So we did outsource. And that's been a really great solution for YFC in this sort of in-between space. I have, through our outsourced partner, I have strategy support and then everyday Make sure the benefits are entered properly support. So, it's looked different depending on how big or where YFC was. Today, our budget's just under $3 million. So, we've grown quite a bit.

Tony Martignetti
That's a cool evolution though from—

Janelle Miller Moravek
It is.

Tony Martignetti
Board member to consultant to fractional HR pro.

Janelle Miller Moravek
Yeah, yeah.

Tony Martignetti
And as the agency has grown, so has the needs of the HR, but you're still managing it.

Janelle Miller Moravek
Yeah, exactly. And I guess I've come to this point in my leadership where I look around and I say, there are certain things that I can delegate in HR that everybody should know. And then, there are certain things that I, no matter even if I have a vice president of HR, I still should hold, right? That strategy, some of that vision. Yeah. I should for sure hold it.

Tony Martignetti
What's delegatable?

Janelle Miller Moravek
Benefits, right? Onboarding, hiring, you know, some of the talent development, performance management. I think of it, you know, our org chart looks like a typical org chart, right? It's got the triangle with me at the top. I take care and manage 4 to 5 people and everybody under them. They've got 4 or 5 under each of them. And if we all take care of our next person down, we've got a pretty solid group.

Tony Martignetti
Okay. And we're gonna talk about the importance of middle management. I know you rely on them. They're critical.

Janelle Miller Moravek
They're my secret sauce.

Tony Martignetti
Let's talk a little more first though about the talent development, performance management. You see, those are your 2 buckets, your compliance and your talent development. What are you— how are you spending your time around the talent part, growing people?

Janelle Miller Moravek
Oh, we spend a lot of time on growing people. So, in my world, behavioral healthcare, we're actually in a workforce shortage. We've been in a workforce shortage for many years pre-COVID. And so, it's not just to attract that worker, the skilled experienced, talented worker that we need to work with our clients, it's not enough to just pay a salary. They can work anywhere. We have to offer value. And what we've learned that is valuable to these mental health professionals is growth. And so we have leaned into growth pretty consistently. So today, even though we're just 32 people, There's a career ladder for clinicians at YFC, and it's— it has 3 levels. Um, when they work, when they shut their doors and go into with a client, right, they're all doing the same job, but they're doing it at different proficiency levels. So at this point, we have 10 core competencies, and we've defined out the behaviors, um, for each of those core competencies at each level. And we are actively training and tracking progress and assessing our definitions so that we are making sure that we're promoting and moving everybody up that ladder as much that we can. So that's just one piece of how we're leaning into that professional development piece. But there's also— Okay.

Tony Martignetti
No, no, it just sounds pretty complex.

Janelle Miller Moravek
It is, but it's kind of fun. It's like making a crossword puzzle.

Tony Martignetti
Right? I struggle with crossword puzzles, but yes. No, no, I— no, no, no. Yeah, no, it's essential. I mean, it's an investment. I'm not by any means minimizing or denigrating. Like, it just— it sounds like a large investment, but it's an investment in your professionals, in your team. So it's an investment worth making. I mean, there's core competencies and 10 behaviors under each competency, each for different— 3 different levels. You know, that's, that's a lot of talent development infrastructure to put together, but, but it's worth it.

Janelle Miller Moravek
Yeah, it's totally worth it because my, my teams are growing, right? And, and now they're staying. What I need them to do is I need them to stay.

Tony Martignetti
There you go. I was gonna get to retention.

Janelle Miller Moravek
Yeah. So I need them to stay.

Tony Martignetti
Retention rate. I mean, you've got a shortage. You can't afford to lose anymore. You really don't want to lose anymore. We're gonna get to, we're gonna get to trouble employees. We'll get there later. But yeah, hoping, hoping to avoid firing, but sometimes maybe not. But so yeah, so you've got You're trying to retain people. This is a, this is a staff team retention plan, right?

Janelle Miller Moravek
Right. And everybody knows, right? Turnover is expensive. And it's not only is it expensive, it's not good for client care. Like, it's, it's awful when you have to tell a client, oh yeah, you're gonna work on your 3rd therapist here at YFC. Like, that's like, that doesn't do anybody any favors. So we really want our therapists to come and to grow with us. And, and we do everything we can on a whole bunch of different levels to make that happen.

Tony Martignetti
How often do you do formal performance reviews with, with the manager, with your manager? Or just, you know, I don't mean you. Yeah.

Janelle Miller Moravek
So, yeah, but we have a quarterly cadence. And so, so most of my clinicians are getting weekly supervision, um, with, uh, with the supervisor for, for clinical reasons, right? They're reviewing their cases. They're, they're getting another set of eyes on those cases. making sure it's appropriate. We have to do that as a standard of care. OK. But what we've done is we've rolled into that some performance management and some talent development. We've asked our supervisors to be mentors, coaches, teachers, cheerleaders. They know their— they are the person for their team, right? So Susie, who's on Katie's team, Katie is her person. And we know that if she has anything, be it, I'm not feeling well, I need to take 2 weeks off, is that okay? I have a tough case. Any of that stuff, she's going to ask her person because she sees that person every week. And so we've really had to upskill our supervisors.

Tony Martignetti
There again, leaning on your middleman.

Janelle Miller Moravek
Yeah.

Tony Martignetti
Right. All right. So now we've teased this a couple of times. Why don't you explain how essential middle management is for a 30-person organization? 32.

Janelle Miller Moravek
32. They're my, they're my secret sauce. They're my whole reason we get anything done here. So they're super important to me, those middle managers. And it's— they're in this uncomfortable position of being between leadership, right? These are the folks in the trenches.

Tony Martignetti
These are the folks that report to you, right? We're talking about these—

Janelle Miller Moravek
They actually report not to me, they report to my clinical director for the most part. But—

Tony Martignetti
No, no, I'm sorry. No, wait, the middle managers. Middle managers report to the clinical director, not to you?

Janelle Miller Moravek
Correct.

Tony Martignetti
Oh, okay. Okay. Senior management reports to you.

Janelle Miller Moravek
Senior management reports to me.

Tony Martignetti
Middle management reports to the clinical director. Okay.

Janelle Miller Moravek
Yeah.

Tony Martignetti
Okay. So there's your secret sauce. I'm sorry, I just wanted to get—

Janelle Miller Moravek
That's okay. That's a really good clarifying question.

Tony Martignetti
Okay.

Janelle Miller Moravek
So, yeah. So it's— they report in and I lost my train of thought.

Tony Martignetti
Okay.

Janelle Miller Moravek
You had asked me.

Tony Martignetti
I had asked you why middle management is so essential, how much you lean on them, what their responsibilities are.

Janelle Miller Moravek
So I covered a little bit about how my staff, they work with their supervisor. That's their go-to person. So I need that person to be trained in HR, know how to understand our business model so that they can understand and guide that productivity. They're doing discipline, right? I need them to be great at giving feedback, positive, And negative feedback. And those are all HR things. They're signing their time cards, you know, and I— this year we've actually empowered them to make some hiring decisions. So they get to make that first round of interviews and present a final, you know, couple of candidates to their supervisor, whoever that may be. And we're empowering people to, to make those choices and to try that out. And Sometimes it works. Sometimes they make, you know, choices that maybe weren't so great. And that's a really good learning experience. Right?

Tony Martignetti
On the— oh, absolutely. Of course, the mistakes. Hopefully we do learn from mistakes. Well, you know, there was a red flag in the interview, but I ignored it type thing.

Janelle Miller Moravek
Exactly.

Tony Martignetti
Like that. Does every new employee Get an interview with the executive director?

Janelle Miller Moravek
Nope.

Tony Martignetti
No, not necessarily. It doesn't make you nervous? Doesn't make you nervous?

Janelle Miller Moravek
No.

Tony Martignetti
No.

Janelle Miller Moravek
Okay.

Tony Martignetti
Now she's— if you can see the video, she's like, no, no way, no way. All right.

Janelle Miller Moravek
Not nervous. Listen, I, um, I, I trust— I feel like I feel good about our process.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah.

Janelle Miller Moravek
You know, I, I've trained them in, in how to How to hire, how to ask questions, right? And, and we, when we go to hire a position together, we put together a guide. Well, they put together a guide, whoever the hiring manager is, but they, they have to sit down and they have to think about before I let them post the job, um, what is this person going to do, right? That's the job description. But then what makes it a great job? Like, why would someone want this job? And then what are the challenges that come along with this job? Yeah. And then what are the absolute essential things, characteristics that I need to have in a candidate, in a new hire? And then we base our interview questions off of how they answer those questions. And so we're actually interviewing and asking for examples of, tell me a little bit about how you break into a new team and how you establish a relationship with someone you've never met before. That's a— An example. So I think they have a good process, and I trust them.

Tony Martignetti
Trust. You trust. Yeah, you trust those folks who are the secret sauce.

Janelle Miller Moravek
Yeah.

Tony Martignetti
When we were emailing about topics and I asked you, you know, how does HR support hiring, retention, and firing? You said something that you just, you just mentioned very briefly, but we're going to do it. Job descriptions.

Janelle Miller Moravek
Job descriptions.

Tony Martignetti
Essential. Another, another essential element to HR for non-HR professionals. Why, why is a job— now, you don't mean the description that goes out to the public, do you? Or do you— when you're hiring? Or do you mean an internal job description? That you were just referring to internal job descriptions a minute ago, but—

Janelle Miller Moravek
Right. Yeah.

Tony Martignetti
Why are these so important?

Janelle Miller Moravek
Well, I think your job description is so important because that is the position, right? You hire for the position. You don't hire a person. You hire someone to do a job. And so what is that job? What are you asking them to do? And I had always had sort of 2 different documents, an internal version and an external version. And then my HR team was like, hmm, We think they should be one. Like, why would you, why would you not be completely transparent about what you're expecting this person to do? And I said, oh my gosh, but that's so much. And they said, right, don't you think you'd want people to know?

Tony Martignetti
Yeah.

Janelle Miller Moravek
And so now we, we put the whole thing up there, um, and it's a lot. But, uh, to their point, We're getting more qualified candidates. So it's a better— so our job descriptions are key because you're defining the purpose of the role. You're saying who it reports to. So you're just reading a job description, you'll know, OK, this is kind of how I fit into the organization. Here's who I report into. And I can kind of get a sense of where that person is in a hierarchy. And here are my essential Job functions, right? These are things that I'm going to do every day. And then the other ones, OK, those are things I'm going to be involved in, but they're not going to be my— right, my direct responsibilities all the time, or I might do them like once a year. You got those. So you have a pretty good idea of what's expected of you. And then you get to see the how you need to act. And hopefully the company has laid out a little bit of the how they want people to work. Yeah. And so that's, that's really important for when you're hiring and bringing that person on. But it's also important for when you have them on because that's— you can say, but this is what we hired you to do. And if you're not doing that, then you're not doing the job we hired you to do.

Tony Martignetti
Now we're getting into the performance management.

Janelle Miller Moravek
Right, exactly. And so we have gotten to be really pretty specific when we talk about the caseload you're expected to carry. We say what that is. And then if that person isn't delivering that caseload, it's like, but this, this is the job. And so let's talk about how— what's getting, what's getting in the way. And it's, there's always, it's always curiosity first. Like, what's going on? Why, why are— like, why, why aren't you meeting the productivity goals? And it could be anything from poor time management to— Yeah. They need to work on their rapport so that they are warmer and connecting quicker with people. It can be, I'm getting all kinds of clients that make me really uncomfortable because it's triggering something inside of me. But we have to have a trusting relationship with the supervisor so that you can work through those and then say, OK, well, what can we do? Let's— time management. Let's block out your schedule. Where can— how can we help you? Yeah. You know, plan your time so that you can get everything done. You know, if it's, you know, I need to work on those rapport-building skills. Okay, let's— why don't you do this training and then we'll role-play in our next supervision and we're going to work on that, that skill, and they'll work on it every week.

Tony Martignetti
So you have a very high-touch model of HR.

Janelle Miller Moravek
Yes, we do. We do.

Tony Martignetti
I don't know if that's because of the nature of the work is all high touch, obviously personal. These are therapists or counselors or psychologists, right?

Janelle Miller Moravek
Yeah, they're therapists. So, they're certainly high touch.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah, there's a very high EQ to the work. So, maybe that suits you, but, or maybe, you know, it's, I mean, it sounds appropriate for any organization, even—

Janelle Miller Moravek
I think so.

Tony Martignetti
Even if it's not a you know, mental health advocacy.

Janelle Miller Moravek
It doesn't— you should— I guess I feel like you need feedback. You need, you need to get data, right? You need to understand how are you doing and how does that compare to what's expected of you. And your manager should be having— maybe you don't need it every week, but at least monthly or quarterly conversations. It's

Tony Martignetti
very personal. Um, and trust, trust is essential, as you've said.

Kate Martignetti
It's time for Tony's Take 2.

Tony Martignetti
Thank you, Kate. Another new Tales from the Gym episode. Remember Rob, the former Marine, Semper Fi? Uh, he suffers lower back pain, he's got the skinny legs, and 3, 4 weeks ago he got a loaf of sourdough bread. He sort of connived it out of a woman who was unnamed at the time. By telling her how good her baking probably is, you know, like just BSing his way into it. And she went out to her car and got him a loaf of her homemade sourdough bread. Well, he got another loaf. So, and, and her name is Kim. Her name has now come to us. It's Kim. And I don't know, she, she seems to be committed. Like every time she bakes, it sounded like She's gonna do a loaf for him. Like he's getting his daily bread. Give us like give us this day our daily bread. Or give us this day our daily sourdough. What is that? Who's that from? Give us this day our daily bread. Oh, and forgive us our trespasses. Oh right, that's right. Okay, so that's the church Catholic Church. He he's he seems to be hooked up connected with. Kim's sourdough supplying. Let's see what happens. And these are just the ones I witness. Of course, there may have been loaves exchanged— or not exchanged, given. No exchange. He's not giving anything. Granted, that I don't witness, but I'll be keeping my ears and eyes open for more bread exchanges. We'll see what happens between— now Kim, that's a new character. Kim, we know her name. Yeah. And Rob Semper Fi. That's Tony's Take 2. Kate?

Kate Martignetti
I heard that baking sourdough takes a lot of talent because there's something with like the sourdough starter, whatever that is. You have to like feed it things like—

Tony Martignetti
Yeah, well, yeah, there's, there's fermentation and it has to, but it's a long process. It's a much longer process than like Pizza crust. If you ever have made your own pizza crust, that, you know, that you can do in like half a day or so. It just rises over time, or several, several hours. But sourdough, yeah, you have— there's a starter, and you have to— it's many, many day process to get the start, to get the dough to do what you want it to do. It's all, it's all related to chemistry and oxygen and release of— Hmm. Carbon dioxide, and you get the, the bacteria. Okay, that's the, uh, that's the extent of it. I know it involves chemistry. It's very technical.

Kate Martignetti
Good for Kim then, if she's able to like do that.

Tony Martignetti
I know. And look, Rob, and Rob gets these free breads. I mean, it's, you know, Rob, I don't know what it's, you know, she's just, she's being friendly. I don't know. His daily bread.

Kate Martignetti
We've got beaucoup but loads more time. Here's the rest of HR Overview for Non-HR Professionals with Janelle Miller Moravek.

Tony Martignetti
Is there something in your background that led you to develop this type of a high-touch HR infrastructure?

Janelle Miller Moravek
I— well, Other than my lived experiences here, no. I mean, I was a French major. I do like to talk.

Tony Martignetti
French people are French people are very high touch. I mean,

Janelle Miller Moravek
oui,

Tony Martignetti
in a different way, right?

Janelle Miller Moravek
Oui, right? Yeah.

Tony Martignetti
All right. I don't know. Maybe it's French. Maybe it's your influence from Wesleyan College French culture.

Janelle Miller Moravek
Maybe. I don't know. But it's you know it's. We're certainly a very relational organization, but also I think it is because we're a nonprofit. And the other piece of it is that no one works and comes to the nonprofit sector to make money. Like, we all know we're not making bank here. And so why are they here? They are here to make a difference. They're here to grow, and they have to feel connected. And so all of this high-touch work, whether it's Performance management, a caring manager, engaged in big picture conversations. It's all about connecting the employees to the mission because that's what attracted them to come and work here in the first place. So maybe that's the reason. But this is what has worked for me. I had a good coach. several years ago and said, when you falter, go back to what worked well for you. And I have done that. And while it has, over the years, it might look a little bit different, the core values are the same, right? Which is understand what is motivating your people and what's getting in the way for them and take care of that so that they can do their jobs. Right, and be very transparent and upfront.

Tony Martignetti
Mm-hmm.

Janelle Miller Moravek
And so we have conversations about once a year about what's good about working at YFC. And then the next question I ask is, what would make it great? And that's where you tease out all of the stuff that's getting in the way. And I've had everything from You know what? It's good. I love the people. But what would really make it great is if we had a full-size fridge where we could all put our lunches in.

Tony Martignetti
That's a pretty low lift, right?

Janelle Miller Moravek
Exactly.

Tony Martignetti
It's a low lift. Done. The refrigerator is coming next week. Yeah,

Janelle Miller Moravek
exactly. And I had a board member raise her hand and say, I'll buy it. There you go. But it could also— and I'll laugh because sometimes they'll say like, well, we really would like an en suite bathroom. I'm like, I can't do that for you, but I can put in a door so that you don't have to go out and go to the bathroom in front of your clients. Will that work? You know, so we have, we have some conversation and, and we all get to a place. And, and what's really important is that after I ask, I show them what I'm doing with that information that they gave.

Tony Martignetti
Sounds like YFC is a very friendly place to work.

Janelle Miller Moravek
I try.

Tony Martignetti
You have accountability, you got goals. You have productivity measures, as you said, but how'd you find your way from French at Wesleyan to mental health work?

Janelle Miller Moravek
Oh, that's a love story.

Tony Martignetti
That's fabulous.

Janelle Miller Moravek
Isn't that fabulous? So when I was graduating from Wesleyan, I was going to go off and do a master's program in France and I was going to meet a Frenchman and live overseas. Yeah, that didn't happen for me because I was actually in love with a guy who wanted to be a high school teacher and football coach. And those don't translate.

Tony Martignetti
And he wasn't French. He wasn't

Janelle Miller Moravek
French. He didn't even speak French.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah, yeah,

Janelle Miller Moravek
yeah. No, right. Yeah. But he's the love of my life. So, yeah. So I stayed here and did what I knew best, which was development and fundraising. And then I got another job in development fundraising. And then we decided we wanted to start a family and I was looking for a part-time job. And this was the only place that was offering a part-time job in fundraising. So I took it. They're not easy to find. I took it. And I think we've grown up together. I've had my 3 kids here. At one point they were— when they were babies, they came with me to work. Mm-hmm. It's been— it's a kind of a special place because it, it requires a high level of trust. You have to trust your supervisor. You have to trust your colleagues. We have each other's backs at all times.

Tony Martignetti
Well, your clients have to trust their therapists.

Janelle Miller Moravek
Yeah. Yeah. And there's no judgment here. There's— it's, it's pretty special. And so when When the executive director before me stepped down, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I'd been his development director. I knew, you know, I knew exactly what we needed to do to take it to the next level. And the board, that same HR person said, go for it, we'll help you. So the rest is history. It's been—

Tony Martignetti
It starts out, yeah, it starts out as a love story. Well, the love story of course continues, but starts out,

Janelle Miller Moravek
yeah.

Tony Martignetti
As a no surprise, your, your grand plan, you never even made it to France to live. You never lived in France?

Janelle Miller Moravek
No, I am. No, I'm holding out. Maybe in retirement.

Tony Martignetti
Oh, okay.

Janelle Miller Moravek
Maybe.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah, we'll see. Would it be more countryside or rural or city?

Janelle Miller Moravek
Oh, you know what? I actually think Normandy would be a really great fit for us because there are a lot of English speakers there because He's still your husband.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah, you have to bring him up, bring him along. Well, right, 6 months living and you become fluent. I think you don't have a choice.

Janelle Miller Moravek
I don't know, although after your brain melds together, it's harder to learn languages.

Tony Martignetti
No, it is, it's harder, but it's not impossible.

Janelle Miller Moravek
No, it's not impossible.

Tony Martignetti
We'll give him— all right, give him 9 months. Plus he's got you to help. He's got—

Janelle Miller Moravek
he's absolutely—

Tony Martignetti
yeah, he's got fluency right in, right in the house. All

Janelle Miller Moravek
right, there we go. Yeah.

Tony Martignetti
Let's talk a little about helping to avoid people from getting fired. We touched about it a little bit, the job description, accountability, but someone's a little astray. Is there something called a performance management plan or performance improvement plan? I think we had someplace I used to work. I would be a terrible employee now. I would sabotage my own employment because that's how miserable I would be. But we used to have some PIP, I think, performance improvement plans. Yeah. I hope I wasn't on one. I might have been. Maybe that's how I know about it. Maybe that's why I'm a terrible employee now. I don't know. But we had PIP. Do you have something like that? Or how do we coach people along so we don't have to fire them?

Janelle Miller Moravek
Yeah, I mean, here it comes back to feedback, right? And so, giving that immediate feedback and then coaching for what can you do. Also feeding that growth. Hey, I've noticed you're struggling with this. Let's work on that. And of course, things happen. Things happen, and you have to discipline somebody. They make a bad choice. They lose their cool. And so, yeah, we have a toolbox, right? You've got a verbal warning, a written warning. You can issue a very serious final warning on their file. And we have performance improvement plans, but they're truly meant to be improvement plans, right? So when you get to that point, There's some pretty specific things that you need to work on. And so that's just an opportunity to lay them out. And it's just like any other growth plan. You're monitoring against it. And if they meet the goals, then okay, great.

Tony Martignetti
They've improved.

Janelle Miller Moravek
They've improved. You've done what we've asked you to do. We've seen the growth. And thank you, right? And if they don't or they choose not to, they don't. There's can't and won't, right? If they can't or won't, then, OK, this isn't probably the best fit for you. And that's a different conversation. I've seen it go both ways. But it's that conversation that's really important. It's hard. It's a really hard conversation to have.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah.

Janelle Miller Moravek
Right? But it's important because, listen, our jobs also evolve all the time. As our organizations are responding to the environment, they need us to respond with maybe how we work, maybe what we do. And so reviewing job descriptions regularly can help mitigate some of that. But sometimes you have to change and you don't want to change.

Tony Martignetti
And it shouldn't come as a surprise either,

Janelle Miller Moravek
right?

Tony Martignetti
I mean, if, if we're, if we're meeting regularly to evaluate our performance against Excuse me, against the performance improvement plan. And these meetings are routinely disappointing and negative for both the supervisor and the team member. You know, it shouldn't ultimately come as a surprise.

Janelle Miller Moravek
Correct.

Tony Martignetti
It should never be a surprise. That's just humane. Right. It shouldn't come as a surprise.

Janelle Miller Moravek
Yes.

Tony Martignetti
For any reason.

Janelle Miller Moravek
Yeah. Okay.

Tony Martignetti
Okay.

Janelle Miller Moravek
Yeah.

Tony Martignetti
How about on the other end, hiring? When you folks are hiring, you've got the job description. By the way, I fear there are lots of job descriptions that are, well, used to be templated, I think, from, you know, from the web. Just find somebody else's job description that was posted and use it for your own company, your own organization. Yeah. Now I think they may be AI-generated. Maybe, I don't know, maybe that's not so bad for a first cut. Right. It

Janelle Miller Moravek
could be a great first step.

Tony Martignetti
But it's certainly not going to pass muster at YFC. I mean, at the humane, you know, this is a humane, trusting place to work. We're not going to rely on the AI-generated— I'm not a huge fan of artificial intelligence. I'm begrudgingly being dragged along. But certainly, you know, that's not the final job description, the way you've described it. Not at all.

Janelle Miller Moravek
I mean, I think like, like AI can do some of the work, but it can never replace the thinking and the creativity and the critical thinking that we bring, right? Yeah. So you're thinking about job descriptions, it should be personalized for your organization and for that role. And thinking about, you know, what would success look like? And then what What does it— it starts with a brainstorming session, right? You don't just sit down and write a job description. You have to have a brainstorming session. Where does this person fit in? What do they do? Who do they work with? You know, what do I need out of them? Like, if I need case management, what do I need them to do? Those are the essential functions.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah, you're getting paid.

Janelle Miller Moravek
Yeah.

Tony Martignetti
What are we paying you to do?

Janelle Miller Moravek
Right. So like, for me, I think like the clinicians, it's pretty basic, right? I mean, it's, you, you, I need you to work with clients. I need you to do your documentation. I need you to manage emergencies. Right. I need, that's, that's pretty much it.

Tony Martignetti
Oh, you have, you have, sometimes you have mental health emergencies?

Janelle Miller Moravek
Oh yeah.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah.

Janelle Miller Moravek
Oh yeah.

Tony Martignetti
Oh, you're like, oh, not every week, but.

Janelle Miller Moravek
Yeah. I mean, people are getting, the level of acuity is rising as people wait longer and longer and longer for health. I see. So it's, it's, that's a whole nother Oprah show.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah, because the pressure on you is going to increase and funding and assistance are decreasing or being taken away either by companies or by, by government subsidies. Healthcare, I mean, just healthcare, I'm thinking healthcare generally, we're talking specifically mental health, of course, but

Janelle Miller Moravek
Right.

Tony Martignetti
Which has never been a fully funded—

Janelle Miller Moravek
Correct.

Tony Martignetti
Fully funded institution support that to begin with.

Janelle Miller Moravek
Yeah.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah. Like, like an insurance insurer will give like 6 visits or something, or, you know, 12 visits where, you know, 12 visits you need, you need 12 visits a month maybe.

Janelle Miller Moravek
Right. Well, they're not supposed to do that anymore. We have parity laws now, but we don't have any way to enforce them. And that's why that big lawsuit against UnitedHealthcare is such a big deal is they're being forced to do parity. But you've got reimbursement rates which are typically below cost. And so,

Tony Martignetti
yeah,

Janelle Miller Moravek
you know, it's— I guess it's a whole nother show.

Tony Martignetti
Another show. All right. So I made you digress, like, it's okay, but I had asked you about hiring. What do you look for? What do you look for when you're bringing somebody into YFC? What do you look Job description aside,

Janelle Miller Moravek
yeah,

Tony Martignetti
you look for in the person?

Janelle Miller Moravek
Uh, mission alignment and flexibility, coachability are the top 2, because most of the other things, like if they're a clinician, they're going to have to have the qualifications, of course. But if they say, I'd like to be in 5 years, I'd like to have my own private practice, they are not going to be happy here. And this isn't the place for them. It's a community health center. And if they are pretty rigid and they don't like getting feedback and they don't like working differently, they're probably not going to do well here either. So we're really looking for that flexible, coachable person. Because listen, it's not just our supervisors who are giving feedback to our— Right. Clinicians, it's the clients themselves who are also going to require that clinician to be super flexible. We see across the age span, we see all walks of life. And a therapist is going to maybe one session have a 7-year-old. And then in the next session, they might have a, you know, an adult, a middle-aged adult, and they pivot back and forth. So they have to be flexible and able to, to adapt to whoever's sitting in front of them and meet them where they are.

Tony Martignetti
How do you, how do you measure this flexibility, coachability, gauge it? Maybe not measure, but how do you judge it?

Janelle Miller Moravek
Uh, you ask really good questions and you have a conversation.

Tony Martignetti
Like what?

Janelle Miller Moravek
Oh, um, we asked them how their previous performance reviews were. We asked them, uh, you know, if you were working on something and all of a sudden you had to switch gears, How'd you handle it? What'd you do? Tell me about the situation. Give me the context. Help me understand what action you took. And then let me know what the result was. That's always sort of the cadence of those questions. Because it's really important to figure out, is this person going to— how are they going to respond to that need to change?

Tony Martignetti
All right. Because these are very— Personal, intrinsic, you know, sort of amorphous ideas to try to capture someone's coachability.

Janelle Miller Moravek
Right. So I think the key, which I have learned is— and listen, there's a whole science behind hiring and interviewing that is fascinating. And I don't— I'm not— well, I'm not an expert, right?

Tony Martignetti
I'm not a professional. Well, yeah, we're HR for non-HRs, so we're pros.

Janelle Miller Moravek
But what you can do is once you know sort of what attributes or characteristics you want. You definitely want behavioral-based questions, right, that are going to test behaviors. So you could throw into AI, I'm looking for some behavioral-based questions around flexibility, around managing boundaries, around ethics. And those can give you a good place to start. And then, of course, every interviewer is a little bit different. You've got to find your style. So practice. Practice with somebody else. Practice just saying the words. Because they have to— at the end of the day, a great interview sounds like a conversation, right? It's just, tell me more about this. And then, ooh, that sounds really interesting. I want to go— exactly the techniques you're using here with me. I want to go back to— I want to talk about something you mentioned earlier. Those are all— you're doing this all to tease out what's valuable for your listeners. An interview for a job is doing the exact same thing. Wow. They're teasing out what they want.

Tony Martignetti
And this is non-AI-assisted.

Janelle Miller Moravek
Look at that. Look at you.

Tony Martignetti
It's possible. It's still possible to function. Here I am, the curmudgeon. But I'm trainable. I mean, I'm trainable, but I have a lot of skepticism around it.

Janelle Miller Moravek
Well—

Tony Martignetti
Artificial intelligence.

Janelle Miller Moravek
And my daughter would say, would like you because she's a chemistry student and thinks that we're going to kill the ozone with all of the use of AI. So she tells me to use it less.

Tony Martignetti
There was the environmental impact. Yes.

Janelle Miller Moravek
I'm saving the environment.

Tony Martignetti
I just had a guest recently who creates artificial intelligence models for nonprofits, you know, like specifically so that they're training just on your content and it's protected. It's not, it's not made available to the universe to train the models. And part of what he does Is carbon offsets for clients. I don't know, I didn't ask him specifically how they do it, but he did mention carbon offsetting for the— yeah, there's— It's a big deal. There is an impact. I know, environmental impact. You know, succession planning, like, how do people see a future? Okay, I'm not the guy who wants to have my own practice in 5 years. But I do want to know that I have a future at YFC beyond what I'm doing now. Like, 5 years from now, I may not want to be doing the exact same thing I'm doing now.

Janelle Miller Moravek
Right.

Tony Martignetti
Maybe I just torpedoed myself in the interview. I don't know if I say 5 years from now, I would like to be doing something with more responsibility. How do you get people to see their future With YFC?

Janelle Miller Moravek
That's a really good question.

Tony Martignetti
So finally,

Janelle Miller Moravek
yeah,

Tony Martignetti
it's finally a good one.

Janelle Miller Moravek
It's— they've all been good, but that one's really good. You know, we're relatively— we're a mid-sized organization.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah, 30, that's small to mid— that's on the small end of midsize. I mean, yeah, I even consider 100, 200 employees midsize.

Janelle Miller Moravek
OK, so we're small.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah.

Janelle Miller Moravek
Yeah. So, and we're mostly clinicians. Of that 32, most of those are clinicians. And so it's— I'll talk about them, and then I'll talk about everybody else, mostly administrative roles, right? So on the clinician side, it's fairly easy because we have that career ladder. And that career ladder that we've built follows what we know about clinical development and clinical growth. So we know that stage 1, they're working towards full licensure, and we know what we need to do to get them there. And we talk about it and we show them, and then when they pass the test, we celebrate and they get a promotion. And then they are clinicians. Then we spend time— they're competent, right? They're competent, they're independent. And so it takes them a little bit. Right. But eventually, I'd say 3 to 5 years later, they get a little bored. And they've been trying a bunch of different things. And most clinicians— most, not all, most— say, I'm curious about teaching, or I'm curious about being a supervisor. Mm-hmm. Like, I want to start to do something else and become more of an expert. So then we train them on how to be a supervisor. And then

Tony Martignetti
you do that, you have an internal course?

Janelle Miller Moravek
Oh yeah. Yeah. Which is the same thing. It's, it's a lot of, of high touch. Um,

Tony Martignetti
more HR infrastructure invested in team, team building.

Janelle Miller Moravek
Yep. And then,

Tony Martignetti
you know, talent development.

Janelle Miller Moravek
Yeah. And then they, they keep going. And if they can't find it at YFC, they usually, you know, I have one, she's been working a long time in the field. Now she's going back to get her PhD. So they can do that. So it's fairly easy to see that growth and to, you know, you do different things along the way because you're qualified for different things. You know, if you don't have that kind of ladder or robostructure, like the admin side where there might be just 1 or 2 people in each department, you know, yeah, what does that look like? I think it looks like honest, transparent conversations. Where do you want to be in 5 years?

Tony Martignetti
Mm-hmm.

Janelle Miller Moravek
And if you want to have a job that has more responsibility. Well, how can we, how can we fuel that for you so that you're ready for what comes next? I think the most beautiful transitions are when you know someone's going to leave and you're able to do the hiring before, and then it's just seamless, right? And so I think it's, it's those really frank conversations that you only can have when you have trust. To say, okay, so you're in a mid-level development role now and you'd like to do more. So let's identify the skills that you might need. Is it financial acumen? Is it business savvy? You know, is it a soft skill? And then how can we how can we give that to you? In my opinion, there's. All kinds of things in my bucket, senior leadership buckets, that we'd love to share and we can delegate down, right?

Tony Martignetti
So, Janelle, leave us with some inspiration for— this has been, I think, all very inspirational, valuable, but, you know, like, sum it all up for us, for HR, for non-HR pros, where it may be overwhelming to some people.

Janelle Miller Moravek
Oh, it shouldn't be overwhelming. HR should be your best friend. And HR is— it is— it's the people piece of the operation. And it really just comes down to— it's just taking care of your people. That's all it is. And if you take care of your people, they'll take care of your organization by doing the work that they do. And so if I— if I could— if I do my job well, Then my team is able to thrive and my clients have really good outcomes. And that's my mission, right? It's not complicated. It, it doesn't have to be hard. It can be sophisticated. It can be simple.

Tony Martignetti
It can be simple.

Janelle Miller Moravek
Mm-hmm.

Tony Martignetti
It just takes thought. It takes intention.

Janelle Miller Moravek
It takes intention. Yeah.

Tony Martignetti
Janelle Miller Moravek, Executive Director at Youth& Family Counseling, counselingforall.org. Janelle is on LinkedIn. Thank you very much, Janelle.

Janelle Miller Moravek
Thanks, Tony.

Kate Martignetti
Next week, the new tax law, what it means for end-of-year and 2026 fundraising with Russell James. If you missed any part of this week's show,

Tony Martignetti
I beseech you, find it at tonymartignetti.com.

Kate Martignetti
Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I'm your associate producer, Kate Martignetti. The show social media is by Susan Chavez. Marc Silverman is our web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein.

Tony Martignetti
Thank you for that affirmation, Scotty. Be with us next week for Nonprofit Radio, Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%. Go out and be great! Thank you.