22 minute read
Guest Columns
GUEST COLUMN Win Irwin
Time to stand up and remove barriers to work
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As hair of the board of directors of Irwin Seating Company and an owner of the company, I value and honor the contributions that our employees make every day to provide quality public seating to our customers. We are a 114-year-old family-owned company that survives because of the skilled people who come to work every day. We are committed to following the Golden Rule to treat people as one wants to be treated.
It is wrong to put people in jail when it is unnecessary and to keep them there prevents them from earning a living, supporting their family and community, and takes away their freedom.
For those who drive to work, losing a driver’s license not only results in a lack of transportation to get to the workplace, but results in punitive costs and fees that those who make an hourly wage are simply unable to pay. Too often, minor nonviolent offenses — sometimes even o enses stemming from unpaid tickets — leave Michigan residents stuck in jail without a trial and without the ability to pay to get out.
A tra c ticket with a heavy fi ne an individual can’t pay leads to a license suspension, which if unaddressed, leads to arrest and jail. Another large sum of money they can’t a ord to spend comes in the form of arbitrary bail charges. So, what happens? For too many people, they remain in jail until their trial date, not convicted of any crime. Not only does a person lose their freedom, but they also put their employment at risk.
Lawmakers in Lansing are on the right path with a solution: pretrial fairness bills. The eight-bill package modernizes Michigan’s pretrial practices in several ways. Chief among the solutions is improved due process. Everyone in Michigan, regardless of their background and net worth, has the constitutional right to due process.
Everyone accused of any crime should be seen by a judge within 48 hours of being arrested. If a judge assigns cash bail, it should be set at an amount that’s reasonably within their ability to pay.
Detaining someone accused of nonviolent and minor crimes because they can’t a ord to pay a large sum for cash bail is an infringement on their constitutional rights, and it also takes them out of their community. It prevents them from going to work, taking their kids to school, attending classes, paying bills and taking care of other responsibilities.
We need to treat all people with respect and dignity.
It is especially encouraging to see both Democrats and Republicans in Lansing working to address this complicated issue.
Pretrial fairness e orts have the support of our local lawmakers Tommy Brann (R), David LaGrand (D), and Steve Johnson (R), who have each sponsored one of the bills in the package. These bills will improve the Grand Rapids region.
I am asking our leaders in Lansing to hold a hearing and take public testimony on these bills, so the benefi ts of modernizing our pretrial system can be heard.
Earle S. “Win” Irwin is chair of the Irwin Seating Company Board of Directors.
MI VIEW WEST Garth Kriewall Michigan journalist, kriewall@hotmail.com
GUEST COLUMN DeAndre’ Harris and Kelsey Dame Four ways to tackle employee fatigue
Employees are tired. After 19 months of struggling with COVID-19, employers and employees are reporting a sharp increase in burnout and fatigue.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shares that throughout the pandemic, working adults have elevated levels of substance abuse, suicidal ideation and other adverse mental health conditions, such as anxiety and depression. The CDC pointed to several groups, including essential workers, who reported higher instances of mental and behavioral issues than the overall population.
These issues can lead to employee burnout and fatigue, which directly — and often adversely — impact the workplace. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration noted, “fatigue can cause weariness, sleepiness, irritability, reduced alertness, impaired decision making, and lack of motivation, concentration and memory.” Each of these e ects can lead to an increase in poor job performance, such as general carelessness on the job, decreased productivity and, most importantly, workplace injuries and accidents.
The problem
What’s behind the increase in employee burnout and fatigue? There are a variety of reasons, but the biggest issue clearly is the stresses from the pandemic. Employees in Michigan and other states were on lockdown for long periods of time. After a while, that isolation can really take a toll on individuals.
The pandemic also required working parents to balance the needs of their school-age children with the challenges of working from home. These circumstances, combined with continued social unrest that has dominated media headlines over the past year, can consume an employee’s thoughts.
Additionally, the labor force is stretched thin, which makes it challenging if not impossible to maintain normal business operations. This means some employees may have had to endure even more changes to their everyday job expectations. These unparalleled changes and continued uncertainty are fueling employees’ collective burnout and fatigue.
Employer solutions
What’s an employer to do? There are four things that can have an immediate and positive counterbalance to fatigue and burnout: • Reassurance: It’s critical for employers to set a positive tone and create a supportive workplace culture. Whether the issues are related to or beyond the pandemic, establishing a positive workplace culture requires a top-down approach. Management should let their teams know how much
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Expand E15 pump options
Editor:
Michigan is positioned to lead the way to a clean energy future and deliver climate solutions, and we need to use every tool at our disposal to meet this challenge.
That’s why we urge leaders in Lansing to support broader use of E15, a clean-burning, higher ethanol blend that cuts down on harmful pollution, reduces dependence on fossil fuels and benefi ts Michigan’s economy.
Any passenger vehicle built since 2001 can use this fuel, and it saves families money at the pump. By increasing the amount of ethanol in our gasoline from 10% to 15%, we have an opportunity to deliver a win for Michigan farmers, Michigan families and Michigan’s environment.
I encourage our leaders in Lansing to support expanded options at the pump with E15.
Chuck Lippstreu President Michigan Agri-Business Association
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GUEST COLUMN Mary DeYoung and Jennifer Kok Culture attracts quality employees to your business
Small business owners are tired, weary, and frustrated with the constant revolving door of their employees coming and going. The recent pandemic, changes to the way we do business, early retirement packages and government fi nancial assistance have created a tough environment for small business owners trying to fi nd qualifi ed talent.
How can this be addressed?
First of all, employees are asking for and seeking culture in the workplace. While some may feel this is a buzzword of today, we believe that it is here to stay. Even with businesses knowing culture is important, many don’t know exactly what culture is or how to defi ne it.
There are a number of ways to go about defi ning your culture, but what is foundational in any process is identifying and defi ning the vital behaviors that make up your culture. These behaviors should be things that you actually do; they should not be aspirational.
Businesses often choose words and values that are aspirational, and they end up being performative rather than authentic. People quickly see through that and unfortunately it erodes trust and reputation faster than if you had not had them in the fi rst place.
Look at culture as the personality of your business, the foundation, what matters to you and what your business represents. Knowing your culture and sharing it transparently is the fi rst step to fi nding qualifi ed talent.
Once businesses have their culture clearly defi ned, the next step is leveraging that to attract and retain the right people. Shift your interviewing and hiring to elevate soft skills. What does that mean? Soft skills are non-technical skills that impact your performance in the workplace such as being a team player, communication skills, and adaptability — and even though we tend to overlook them, they are the key to attracting the right employees.
By elevating soft skills in your interviewing process, you set the tone for folks to know that being su cient at the tasks isn’t enough, but being a good coworker also is vital. Setting this up clearly from the beginning also will help your employee retention improve. Retaining employees takes similar work as attracting them. Investing in the continuous development of your employees, whether soft or hard skills, not only makes your people feel more seen and valued, but it also supports your culture. It does this by continuing to reiterate and reinforce the vital behaviors while equipping your employees to live out your mission.
Your recruitment process may benefi t from shifting as well. A new study shows that 79% of new hires are fi nding their jobs via social media. Create a target market profi le for your employees and meet them where they hang out online. For restaurant owners, that could be TikTok. Showcase a day in the life of that position. It will help them get a feel for the environment, the culture and what to expect by joining your team.
Remember, culture doesn’t just start and stop with the new hire, the trick is that you don’t want folks to feel like their support drops o after orientation is done. Moving from being new to feeling at home should be seamless. This is where your culture picks up. Onboarding is the introduction; culture is what keeps the support and reiteration happening.
We are creating a two-part webinar series on how to attract and retain employees. During this deep dive you will learn all the tools needed to confi dently attract the right people for your open positions and cultivate an environment and team to retain employees to enable you to grow your business.
Mary DeYoung is owner of Gray Space Collaborative and can be reached at mdeyoung@grayspacecollaborative. com or (616) 648-2733. Jennifer Kok owns Next Wave Business Coaching and can be reached at jen@nextwavebusinesscoaching.com or (616) 821-9623.
Four ways to tackle employee fatigue
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they value and appreciate their contributions. • Resources: If employers have an employee assistance program, be sure to remind and promote its availability to team members, especially those who are in safety-sensitive positions. • Consistency: Now’s not the time to let up on workplace safety and health protocols. Employees who have historically followed these protocols may think less of them today, but it’s important to maintain a workplace free from recognized hazards. An employer’s failure to do so could result in a violation of the Occupational Safety and Health Act. The act, and its state counterparts, requires employers to provide a place of employment free from recognized hazards that can cause or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm. • Cross-training: In light of continued shortages, consider cross-training employees for di erent jobs so you can better distribute workloads. High performers tend to take on more responsibilities — and are at greater risk for burnout. To the extent employers can increase fl exibility across their teams, workloads ease and stress is reduced.
DeAndre’ Harris and Kelsey Dame are attorneys at Warner Norcross + Judd LLP who concentrate their practices on labor and employment law. They can be reached at dharris@wnj. com and kdame@wnj.com.
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tion of manufacturers, retailers and designers dedicated to raising awareness and expanding the adoption of environmentally sustainable practices in the industry. The winner of the annual Green Ribbon Award is chosen by SFC ambassadors and fellow members. Re.dwell won its fi rst-ever Green Ribbon for its Universal Reclaimed Wood Multipurpose Table, selected by designer and fellow SFC member Robin Wilson based on its design, ingenuity and sustainability.
Re.dwell also received a top score on the 2021 Wood Furniture Scorecard of the National Wildlife Federation and the SFC. The scorecard recognizes furniture companies that implement responsible wood-sourcing practices throughout their supply chains. This year’s scorecard assessed 94 North American furniture retailers, awarding honorable mentions, high scores and top scores. To earn a top score, companies must receive 18 or more points in the categories of responsible wood-sourcing policy, responsible sourcing practices and performance, and additional actions. Re.dwell earned a top score alongside much larger companies including Williams-Sonoma, Crate & Barrel, IKEA and Target. The business also received a top score in 2020.
“Although we don’t do what we do for the awards, being recognized for our commitment to an eco-conscious future in these ways continues to motivate us to keep doing what we’re doing and reassures us that we’re making an impact and, hopefully, leading by example,” Chase said.
Chase’s journey to starting Re.dwell — which was featured in an April 2018 article by the Business Journal’s sister publication, Grand Rapids Magazine — had its beginnings during his graduate education in the architecture program at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana.
He took a summer job between semesters with a local carpenter who was demolishing an old building by hand. They spent most of the summer deconstructing the house and saving the materials. The city of Muncie then asked the carpenter to bid on more demolition projects that otherwise would be done with excavators, likely destroying the materials in the process. Before they knew it, they had formed a business model around tearing down houses and saving the historic wood materials used to build them — often from oldgrowth trees that were hundreds of years old.
“We’d sell all the materials to foreign manufacturers and lumber dealers and things like that, but we built furniture from some of the nicer stu we saved,” Chase said. “He taught me everything he knew about furniture-making, and when I moved back to Grand Rapids, I stuck with it.”
For the fi rst few years after starting his Grand Rapids furniture business, Chase also worked as a freelance architect for various fi rms in West Michigan — that is, until Re.dwell became so busy through word-of-mouth referrals that he needed to go full time.
“It very quickly went from end tables and co ee tables to selling out of craft stores to, ‘I need an industrial space to build a ton of furniture,’” Chase said.
He got his fi rst commercial job in Grand Rapids after the owners of EA Brady’s saw his booth at the Eastown Streetfair. He equipped the former Eastown location of the butcher shop with displays and other custom-built furniture. From there, the owners’ pet sitter, Erica Lang, hired Chase to design and build the interior wood elements and furnishings for her in-progress store, Woosah Outfi tters, at its fi rst location on South Division Avenue. Lang became a repeat customer, hiring him again to build out her Wealthy Street location when the business moved there, then again to renovate a tiny food and beverage camper and build all the outdoor furniture when she opened Outside Co ee Co. next door to Woosah.
The word spread about Re.dwell’s work, and Chase and his team did many other local projects until Re.dwell’s Etsy page and website began garnering national attention.
Now, Re.dwell’s work can be found in 40 states and the District of Columbia in commercial, o ce, residential and outdoor settings, and most of the work it manufactures leaves Michigan.
This year, Re.dwell has done about 60 projects — many of them multi-piece jobs — with its most recent being furnishing The Reserve multifamily apartment complex in Dallas. Re.dwell built all of the furniture for its shared spaces, including communal tables integrated with data and power sources, as well as all of the desks inside the leasing o ce.
“We personally deliver and install most of these bigger projects,” Chase said. “Customers like that personal touch of meeting the designers and the craftsmen and seeing them put it together and make sure everything is done correctly. I think often that has been a big part of our success.”
The prices Re.dwell charges customers vary from job to job, Chase said, but in general, residential dining tables can start around $1,500, and co ee and end tables at a few hundred dollars and up.
“We’ve always wanted to be able to provide furniture to everybody, so if somebody comes to me with something they need or want, that’s the nice thing about being custom and having the design background — I can try to put something together that fi ts just about any budget,” he said.
Chase’s business started on the cornerstone of environmental responsibility, and he doesn’t plan to abandon that commitment now.
“Sustainability has always been my focus, and so … being recognized by a national organization for our e orts, especially being such a small company, it’s kind of cool,” he said.
More information about Re.dwell is at redwelldesign.com.
Two years in, retail cannabis growth explodes
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The modalities in which people are using cannabis also seems to be trending away from traditional consumption methods.
“We saw edible sales going up for a while,” said Jarrous. “I wanna say ... when we were deep in the trenches of COVID, I think a lot of people kind of leaned toward it because they were maybe worried about smoking or, you know, something along those lines, because that one kind of threw us o guard ... but we saw more and more people demanding those sorts of products.”
Jarrous said Exclusive saw many consumers leaning toward non-smoking items in general, including topicals and transdermal patches.
“(It) was kind of surprising. Usually that’s a really niche section of the market. And we saw a lot of people leaning toward those as well, which is really interesting to see and really great and bodes really well for companies like Exclusive that really pride ourselves on creating new products and different products for a lot of di erent people.”
According to a Michigan Marijuana Regulatory Agency (MRA) monthly report, Michigan saw more than $161 million in combined adult use and medical sales in September 2021 alone, with adult-use sales representing approximately $125 million and medical sales representing approximately $36 million.
By contrast, there still are more medical licenses in Michigan than there are those for adult use. According to LARA’s website, as of Nov. 4, Michigan has 490 active medical provisioning center licenses compared to 395 adultuse retailers.
Jamie Cooper, director of industry and community development for Sensi Magazine and founder of Sensi Connects, formerly Cannabiz Connection, said this balance may change as municipalities that once prevented adult-use retailers begin to see fi nancial benefi ts from those retailers being present in their cities.
“We’ve seen a lot of changes around accessibility,” said Cooper. “Two years ago, there weren’t a whole lot of businesses operational. A lot of municipalities were very hesitant to be one of the fi rst to opt in for adult use. We have seen a lot of municipalities witness some of their neighboring communities thrive from cannabis, and that made them willing to opt in to allow it in their community so they can start generating some of the tax revenue as opposed to losing it to their neighboring communities.”
For example, one of the state’s largest markets, Detroit, so far has allowed only medical provisioning centers and opted out of allowing adult-use establishments. City o cials are considering an ordinance to allow adult-use marijuana establishments, beginning with what they call “legacy applicants,” or longtime Detroit residents, who would receive fi rst priority for licensing.
“So, we’re ... seeing sales numbers increase and continue to increase year on year, but we’re also seeing the price come down to the end consumer and that’s because more businesses are getting operational,” Cooper said. “The MRA is also lowering some of the costs, the barrier costs. When it comes to being in business operating, you know, licensing costs are a lot lower than they were two years ago, and that might be more applied to the medical program.”
Cooper said that due to changes surrounding the medical program, signifi cantly fewer people are applying for or renewing their medical marijuana cards because adult use continues to be more accessible.
“Because of the cost of medical licensing, there are even a lot of companies just dropping medical ... because they have to pay the cost to supply to the medical market, but they also have to pay the cost to supply to the adult use, so it’s more money. Sometimes they (then) drop the medical, which is not fair to those that are using cannabis as medicine.”
In terms of overall growth, Michigan cannabis industry professionals are optimistic for what lies ahead. According to the same study from headset.io, Michigan remains one of the newer cannabis markets and is currently ranked third in terms of overall sales in the United States, trailing only behind California and Colorado.
“I believe that Michigan has been one of the smoothest rollouts for a legalized adult-use industry,” said Jarrous. “As much as we’ve had to kind of adapt and adjust (to) rule changes and packaging regulation changes and all these things, all these kinds of obstacles, I still think if you look at it compared to other states, we went fairly smoothly.”
Jarrous said that Michigan was able to learn from the problems other states experienced and make corrections, contributing to a smoother rollout of the industry here.
“I think we have been doing very well as an industry,” Jarrous said.
“I think Michigan has a really intelligent and sophisticated cannabis community in terms of both consumers and operators alike, and I think that made a big di erence in the success of the Michigan industry.”
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