Covid’s Impact on HR with The Y in Central Maryland’s Keisha Sitney

Better People Podcast

In this episode, The Y in Central Maryland’s Chief People Officer Keisha Sitney talks about the unique challenges HR faced during Covid, the ways Covid changed the HR world, and how HR leaders can properly identify and share the accomplishments they achieved during this difficult time.

Keisha Sitney is the Chief People Officer at The Y in Central Maryland, where she has been working for over 15 years.

Keisha is an experienced leader with a demonstrated history of working in the non-profit organization management industry. Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Better People:

• How to become a Chief People Officer.
• The ways Covid has changed the HR world.
• How HR can help managers understand employee trauma.
• How to reduce employee churn rate.
• The difficulties of working in HR for a charitable organization.
• How to properly identify and share your accomplishments.
• Operational strategies that you can bring into HR.

Resources:

• The Y in Central Maryland
• MidAtlantic Employers’ Association (MEA)

Connect with Keisha Sitney:

• LinkedIn

Connecting with the host:

• Margaret Uhrich on LinkedIn

Quotables:

• 5:11 - “On my 100th day I actually had to furlough 2100 people that was not why I took this role, I don’t think any of us went into HR to do that so my thoughts and dreams of well we’re going to develop people and we’re going to have a great culture and we’re going to do this shifted quickly to furloughs and terminations and let’s try and stay open and temperature checking and Covid testing and regulations keeping people safe so I’m so happy to be beyond that part of the role but as you know Covid has had some lingering impacts.”
• 7:45 - “We really try to work with our managers and our supervisors but you find thought that they are the ones that are dealing with the brunt of it so they’re also holding onto the trauma that their team members are holding onto and then also with the staffing shortages and crisis that we’re in the workforce crisis we’re in many managers are doing the front line roles that they were hired to manage others to do so if you were overseeing a couple of the pools as the swim director now you’re lifeguarding for 8 hours a day you don’t really have the time to do the things that managers typically do.”
• 14:03 - “Write down, track your accomplishments and not just track them go ahead and monetize them what’s the value of that accomplishment, that new system that you put in or that new provider that you brought in that has saved the company this much money or has made your onboarding process more efficient so keeping track of those monetizing them and then communicating them.”