Timothy Zercher 0:00

Well, Zoe, thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate you uh taking time out of your day.

Zoe Huppman 0:04

Yes, thank you for having me.

Timothy Zercher 0:06

Absolutely, absolutely. I always like to start this podcast by asking how you got into this field, how you got into your current role.

Zoe Huppman 0:13

So it was kind of a fluke, actually. I had a family friend who's a BCBA. I worked with her kiddo who was dealing with some struggles during arguably one of the most difficult points in her life. And they needed staff for the area that I was in. And she suggested she was like, you know what, you should try being an RBT. And I started and I loved it. And I quite frankly never wanted to stop.

Timothy Zercher 0:35

That's awesome. That's awesome. And I know you also had experience on the HR side too.

Zoe Huppman 0:39

Yes. So that's what I currently do. I'm currently an HR business partner. So I transitioned with my clinical company into an HR role. And then from there, I now support people who have differing disabilities on the employment side.

Timothy Zercher 0:52

That's awesome. So a lot of behavioral health leaders talk about hiring, but retention is where things tend to get a lot harder, as we all know. From your perspective, both as someone who has been an RBT and now is in more like a leadership role, what do organizations often miss when they're trying to build teams that actually stay?

Zoe Huppman 1:10

They tend to oversimplify the wrong things and overcomplicate the wrong things. At the end of the day, it is not an easy job, but they tend to not look at what's actually difficult about it versus what's easy. There's a lot of, oh, the data and things like that. And that's where people tend to get tripped up and they're like, oh, it's the hard part. It's not. It's tiring. It's tiring and it's exhausting. And not having that quality of hire, trying to just fill bodies instead of actually getting into the nitty-gritty, doing the realistic job previews of this is what you're getting into. But then also supporting those staff once they're in place, giving mental health these that are stigmatized and are honored, essentially, providing those types of resources where, you know, here is our brain break corner and giving adequate staff who can sub in and out when you're dealing with a longer tantrum. I think my longest tantrum I dealt with was almost three hours straight. Three hours straight of a kid actively tantruming. You need a break from that, you know? You need to be able to take a breather. And for me, my breather was going to the bathroom for a few minutes and then going right back out. It's that kind of internal support that's going to make the biggest difference.

Timothy Zercher 2:22

Absolutely. And can you tell us more about how you create those work environments? What is a brain corner? And how does that support spectral long term?

Zoe Huppman 2:32

So a brain corner, like just like a quiet corner. Give somewhere where there's some space and some separation from the kiddos, but also make it darker. Play some calming music, give a nice comfy chair or a big bean bag, maybe incorporate, like they talk about total rewards packages. That's like the big HR thing, your total rewards package. But people don't understand what that is and what they actually have available to them. For example, where I'm at now, we have like a 24-hour service that you can call and they offer moving and things like that. It'll be the most random things that employees don't know they have for them. And providing that type of setup is going to be a lot more helpful. Like having, like I said before, having the coverage, be able to sub in and out, or to be able to take that time away is important. And also having, you know, supervisors and things like that that are aware of what's going on and can support the client, which adequately supporting the client then also adequately supports the staff.

Timothy Zercher 3:31

Absolutely. And vice versa, right? If you're adequately supporting your staff, then you are taking care of better care of your client because your staff isn't exhausted and overwhelmed and all the things. That makes complete sense. That makes simply sense. What have you found is the hardest part of growing your organization, growing your teens?

Zoe Huppman 3:46

People not having an adequate understanding of what disabilities entail. So I always said I did ABA for a very long time and I still apply a lot of the principles. I personally have never actually subscribed to ABA itself. The foundations of behaviorism are always very valid, but ABA is very contrived and it's great in a clinical setting. Anything else, you're not taking a holistic enough approach to the individual. And I've seen it on the clinical side and now also on the employment side. It's a lot of explaining to managers what is a symptom of a disability versus what is actually bad behavior. A lot of times we'll see bad behaviors, and quote unquote bad behaviors, but something that's, you know, not conducive to typical employment. And having to kind of break down, and in my role at being HR, I can't tell them what the disability is. But being able to break down, like, no, they're not being insubordinate. We need to look at the function of the behavior. Here's why they did that. Here's how we can mitigate that in the future, and we can move on. It doesn't have to be a big thing, you know?

Timothy Zercher 4:48

Yeah. Absolutely. Well, and that goes to just again, supporting your staff and clients, right?

Zoe Huppman 4:54

And that knowledge base, like the additional training and things like that. I would not be anywhere near as good as at my job currently if I hadn't been a clinician previously. I don't think I would be able to do it, if I'm being honest. Not having that base level of information and knowing. And I just worked with ASD. RBTs are specifically just for the spectrum. But even just having that core level of knowledge to be able to apply across the board to the other disabilities is super, super helpful and makes my job way less frustrating because I understand, oh, they're having a bad day. They're not actually, you know, the worst employee in the world, as the manager might think at that moment.

Timothy Zercher 5:33

Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, yeah, I mean, if you've ever managed a team, then you have the worst employee in the world at least a couple of times a week. At least that's how it feels, right? And then you can take a step back. So because we're a marketing agency, I always have to ask some more marketing questions. First one is outside of word of mouth, what works best for new team member acquisition? What's the best way to recruit to pull them into the team?

Zoe Huppman 5:56

Partnering with the actual community groups. I suggested a lot. I don't know that they've actually taken my advice, but at least in my industry, I've suggested partnering with the school systems. I worked with the LFI program, then my school, which is learning for independence. Those are kiddos who are not diploma-bound, they're certificate bound. But then we also have autism programs and things like that where they are diploma bound. And a lot of these kids get left behind. They hit 21, there's no more services, and then they don't have that sort of integrated employment to help boost them up so that way eventually it's a launch pad, they'll get to typical employment, is the goal. Like that's the general idea. So partnering with vocational agencies, job coaching agencies, doors, art, like all that stuff to try and help create this network and this foundation of support to help move these people through and actually be able to live functional lives.

Timothy Zercher 6:54

Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. And then what's one tactic that either your team is using right now or just considering or even just watching in the marketplace right now, especially when it comes to recruitment marketing?

Zoe Huppman 7:06

So a lot of job fairs and things like that as well is where they're looking. They're real big on trying to fill those positions versus just trying to keep the people employed. And I'm sure you've heard it. We refer to it as a revolving door. You know, like it just it in certain areas, that kind of is what it is. You have to look at the demographic, you have to look at the whole picture. But just trying to really strengthen those connections has been the easiest way to actually get people in and working.

Timothy Zercher 7:40

Yeah, that makes sense. Well, and it always comes down to relationships, right?

Zoe Huppman 7:44

It really does.

Timothy Zercher 7:44

Or relationships, that's what works.

Zoe Huppman 7:46

That is always the biggest.

Timothy Zercher 7:49

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Zoe. Thank you for sharing some of your insights. And I think you're doing a good job in taking care of your team from everything that I've seen online too, which is good. It's a good job.

Zoe Huppman 8:00

Thank you, and thank you for having me.

Timothy Zercher 8:02

Absolutely.