by Steve Corwin

Fall Festivals are upon us! Who would think that this moment, this season, has broken upon us in the blink of an eye, yet after what has seemed to be a never-ending season of “life deferred?” It feels like it has taken forever for life to transport us to this moment. Our sense of the passing of time has been uprooted and set down in a disheveled heap. We are left sorting our life events into baskets of “near to” and “far from” this moment. Yet we are often left feeling unsatisfied in the results of that sorting task.

A key to feeling we can take charge in this moment, that we still have mastery over the events in our lives, is to connect with others. One superb way of doing that is to develop friendships with new people and experience new learning with those new friends. Coming in January you will have another unique opportunity to do that, thanks to IAWP.

Join us on January 12 and 13, 2022 for a virtual conference on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Our own Oni Marchbanks will be one of the featured presenters, along with experts from across the country. This is a chance to network with peers from every state and even with International delegates. Stay tuned for more information in the months ahead about this important event.

In the meantime, we are sending members a small gift, a token of our thanks for your membership in your professional organization. Your membership helps support events like the DIE virtual conference coming in January. We hope you will use the “key” we will be sending you to open doors safely, while you remain open to new ideas and new experiences.

Your adaptability to perform new tasks and to serve countless customers—through myriads of changes to our workforce landscape and to the new tools we have mastered to meet those challenges—has been nothing short of amazing. Let us hope that most of our work becomes more predictable, while we continue to meet it with fresh skills and perspectives. You have worked hard to get to this moment. Take some time for a deep breath and to appreciate how far you have come.

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From Shellie in Montana:

I was trained in Unemployment Insurance and worked from home for 15 months during the pandemic. I’ve been back in the office for 5 weeks now.

The majority of clients walking thru the door are seeking assistance with ID.Me. Outreach to clients/job seekers is a huge focus post-pandemic, finding workers for desperate employers.

Staff is going where the people are - to educate and assist the public on the many job openings in our area, WIOA programs, and the Return to Work Incentive, etc.

“Pop-up” Job Service can be found (weekly) in outlying smaller towns, Farmers Market and the office building of Department of Public Health and Human Services.

Shellie DeLeo, WPDP, Certified Workforce Professional

Workforce Consultant

Montana Department of Labor & Industry

-- Workforce Services Division -- Job Service Libby --

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From Ryan in Minnesota:

I work for the Minnesota Unemployment Insurance program, working in benefits.

Our office has been open the entire COVID period, but coming in for staff is optional. About 87% of office staff has been working at home since April of 2020. (I have remained in the office, by choice). We are never open to the public, so it’s a moot point.

Our return plans have been in abeyance the whole time, so we do not have a definite plan. The Delta variant has not changed our return plans yet, since we haven’t had any definitive plans.

Ryan Chegwin,

Unemployment Insurance

Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development

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From Rebekah Wilkes in Washington:

It seems like things are consistently changing here. As you might know the Governor of Washington has made it a mandate that all State of Washington employees will get vaccinated before October 18th or lose their job. That has created a ton of work especially since I am now working in HR. Also, Washington State has implemented the mask mandate again statewide as well that went into effect 8/23/21.

Rebekah Wilkes

Talent Acquisition Specialist

Washington Employment Security Department

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From Alan Crawley in Maryland:

I do not refer to us getting back into the office as a reopening. We served as many customers virtually as previously in person. We never closed our services just took them to a new level virtually which allowed our customers to do the same.

My county has returned to in-person and our American Job Center is open 5 days a week (M-F).

There is no big plan to follow because we are writing this script as we go. Adjustments are being made, like offering our customers the choice of attending workshops virtually or in-person, and transitioning back to wearing masks indoors because of the Delta variant. We also had to ensure our facilitators adjusted to providing the workshop experience virtually with customer engagement.

What I have learned is having the right technology is important to serving the demands of operating virtually. You can easily outpace your bandwidth, which causes connectivity to be interrupted when working in a virtual model. Even when you return to brick & mortar, the challenge is serving both virtual and in-person at the same time.

Alan Crawley, MS, GCDF, OWDS

Labor Exchange Administrator

Division of Workforce Development and Adult Learning

Maryland Department of Labor

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From Brenda in North Dakota:

Prior to the COVID crisis, ND had a labor shortage. Our employers are still struggling to find workers that start and stay in their employment. We are again seeing hiring bonuses and some wage thresholds rising.

[Brenda sent a screenshot of the July North Dakota unemployment report, which can be found here: https://www.ndlmi.com/gsipub/index.asp?docid=672. The UI rate was at 3.6% with nearly 15,000 people out of work and looking for a job. That was down from the 4.4% rate in June.]

Brenda Cornell

Business Advisor

North Dakota Job Service

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From Talia Jaide Ni Dufaigh and Ann Hartman in Washington:

Washington has embraced innovation and the delivery of services through a hybrid model. Staff in the unemployment claims centers and headquarters buildings continue to mostly telework. Only building-dependent employees work in the building. However, many of our WorkSource Offices have reopened.

Our Workforce Development Professionals are bridging the technology divide through limited in-person services. Representing Job Seeker and Business Services, Team Members are partnering with community groups, teams are engaged in virtual and in-person resource fairs and pop-up events. Employers are coming on-site for hiring events (offering significant hiring incentives). We also see a high demand for state-wide virtual workshops with the reinstatement of Job Search Requirements.

On September 4, 2021, the federally-funded Pandemic Benefits programs will end. Throughout our state, we anticipate an influx of job seekers in need of job search assistance and/or training.

Talia Jaide Ni Dufaigh, MBA, WorkSource Thurston County Supervisor, and

Ann Hartman, Communications,

Washington Employment Security Department

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From Lanae Vetsch in Montana:

I work in the MT Department of Labor & Industry, Research & Analysis Bureau, Occupational Employment & Wage Statistics program. I work in the main Department of Labor & Industry building in the Workforce Services central office. I don’t work at the local Job Service office.

The bureau I work with does not see clients in person, we talk with them via phone or email. I work with the OEWS program. A survey is sent to employers asking for job titles/duties and wages for each employee. Two survey panels a year are sent out (May and November) to about 1350 employers each panel. Usually, these employers are surveyed once in about 3 years.

When the survey is sent back to us, my co-worker and I classify the job titles with the Standard Occupation Classification code and enter that data along with the wage into our computer database.

We have multiple federal deadlines to meet throughout the year. Our national conference was cancelled last year and this year, they decided to have a virtual conference for about 1 hour a couple of times a week over 4 weeks via TEAMS.

It’s strange not to travel to a conference and see folks in person. One of the trainers mentioned that more people were able to attend the virtual conference than they can in person. I miss the networking that is done after training classes.

I was sent home to work on March 17, 2020. At first, I did not like working at home, then after several months, I started to get used to it. Our work unit was told to be back in the office on July 12, 2021, and some of our coworkers are still teleworking. I personally did not miss the drive time and traffic to get to the office.

After we moved back to the office, moving to another office space was one of the first things we did. My coworker and I were moved to another office and our supervisor moved into our old office. We have federal deadlines to meet and it was challenging to pack/unpack the office and get our work done.

When working in the office, I believe it is important to present a professional appearance. I am still trying to get back into a pre-work routine, for example: how long does it take to pick out an outfit, jewelry, hairstyle, make lunch and get my morning walk in, etc.

The program I work with didn’t change during the time we were working from home, we still had deadlines to meet. We heard that several of our co-workers across the states are still working from home and will not go back to the office. Will we ever get back to “normal” pre-pandemic?

Lanae Vetsch

Research Analyst - OEWS Program

Montana Department of Labor & Industry
Research and Analysis Bureau

Articles Compiled by Steve Corwin

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Goodness, time does fly! Remember when we could go in-person to IAWP meetings and were so involved? We laughed, we learned, we shook hands and gave hugs. Gosh, that was fun. Building a relationship is always a great thing to do. Then COVID-19 knocked on our doors.

I remember being glued to the TV as soon as I got off work and in the mornings before work. I had to hear every minute what was happening with COVID. Silly me, I would wake up at 3:00 am or 4:00 am and watch the news. I kept thinking the awful numbers could not be true. The loss was so high. These were people who were just living their lives. There were people every day that did not survive. People close to us. The whole nation watched, from all over the world, people grieved. We were all in the same place with this grief.

“It has been 1 ½ years since I started working from home. I was happy but it became clear to me that not everyone had this incredible opportunity.”

I ended up working from home. That was a great opportunity and the space I had for an office was perfect. A large window looking at the well-kept landscape made me smile every morning. The coffee cup heater that had that first cup of coffee on it every morning comforted me. The most valued part of my day was the virtual events so I could see my coworkers, hear their laughter and most of all, be part of the team. It was wonderful to connect with my manager almost daily. It has been 1 ½ years since I started working from home. I was happy but it became clear to me that not everyone had this incredible opportunity. The groceries had to go on the shelves. The gas for our cars had to be pumped and thousands of medical care doctors, nurses and all of the staff it takes to keep the hospitals running had no choice. They had to be on-site.

For someone like me who enjoys delivering in-person presentations to my audiences and receiving the positive energy that is generated from those encounters, the pandemic and the work-from-home directive posed a bit of a challenge to my outreach system. While I was no stranger to various online presentation tools and had long ago incorporated these tools - GoToMeeting, ATTConnect, Webex and yes Zoom before Zoom became ZOOM - into my outreach efforts and had them in my toolkit, it was still a challenge. Over the years and through trials, errors, and tribulations, I developed specific processes for my online presentation delivery system. These tips, tricks, and best practices aided me tremendously when I stepped into an all virtual presentation world.

There were still challenges posed by going entirely virtual with my presentations and top of the list was maintaining high energy levels for both me as the presenter and for my audience. When it’s just you on a monitor screen with your audience in “listen-only” mode - you don’t have the audience’s energy to fuel you and it is difficult to engage them. The listen-only mode has its place in the outreach world - sometimes that’s the type of presentation that is needed, however, most times a presenter wants their audience to be engaged. So, I did some research on how to maintain that connectivity with your audience when your world has gone virtual. Depending on the audience of course, I have incorporated polls, word clouds, music, background changes and more into my presentations.

Most of the virtual platform systems have their own bells and whistles so I try to incorporate some of those as well. Just recently I was told of an idea on how to use the dreaded camera in a fun and interactive way that encourages those who don’t really like the camera to become more engaged - I’m happy to report that this novel idea is working well. As you face your own challenges in working remotely, I wish you much success and good luck.

Troy McMillan, Illinois Dept. of Employment Security

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The famous Italian operatic tenor Enrico Caruso reportedly could break a wine glass using only the power of his voice. The method and mechanism of Caruso’s feat were that he would plink the glass with his finger, listen to the vibratory tone that was generated, and match that precise tone with his voice. With an increase in the amplitude (loudness) of his voice, the glass would vibrate violently enough to shake itself into pieces.

Not always recognized is that our bodies have structures of different densities and different locations that respond to sound, although not destructively as did a wine glass as it fell victim to Caruso’s voice. You can discover this phenomenon by placing your hand on the back of your neck and feeling the different locations of vibration as you recite the vowels out loud. Notice how the “eeee” vibrates higher in the neck than the other vowels. I utilize this tool when examining my patients. With my hands placed on different regions of their necks and backs and talking with them, the locations of muscle spasms become evident by feeling the more intense vibration generated by their voices during normal conversation.

With practice and patience, you can determine the areas of your body that you hold tension and use the power of your voice to massage away that tension. If your shoulders are the place you hold tightness resulting from stress, simply place your hands on your shoulders and start speaking or reading aloud from a book. Raise and lower the pitch of your voice and feel which resonate sounds cause more vibration of your shoulders. The next time you feel tight shoulders, repeat those sounds by speaking or better yet by singing them and notice the relaxation you feel afterward.

As human beings, we respond to what others say to us, but we respond more to what we say to ourselves both in meaning and in vibration.

Comments or questions can be directed to Dr. Mark Butterfield at: mjbdc@hotmail.com

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