Addiction & Recovery Conversations with Brett Lovins

HR's Role in Supporting Recovery Friendly Workplaces: A Conversation with Michael Erisman

• Brett Lovins

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This eye-opening conversation with HR executive Michael Erisman discusses some barriers that can prevent meaningful support for employees in or seeking recovery.

Michael shares his powerful personal journey, beginning with a sobering realization on his 25th birthday that changed everything: "If you don't make radical changes, you won't see 30." Since that moment in 1989, his path through recovery has intertwined with a distinguished HR career spanning companies like Microsoft and GE across 160 countries.

Together we explore why companies default to the "box-checking exercise" of Employee Assistance Programs rather than creating truly recovery-friendly cultures. Michael challenges the common objections—fears of litigation, concerns about maintaining workplace social events, and uncertainties about appropriate boundaries—while offering practical wisdom for organizations ready to evolve.

What makes this conversation particularly valuable is how it bridges personal experience with professional expertise. Michael articulates what he calls "the air, food and water" of effective management: clear goals, feedback loops, and creating environments where people feel valued. These fundamentals create the psychological safety necessary for employees to seek help when struggling with substance use issues.

The potential impact extends far beyond those currently in recovery. As Michael puts it, "On the other side of recovery are some of the most amazing employees you can ever possibly get." People who have walked through addiction and recovery often bring extraordinary gratitude, honesty, and perspective to their work—qualities any employer should value.

Ready to explore how recovery-friendly practices could transform your workplace? This conversation provides both inspiration and practical next steps for creating environments where recovery is visible, normalized, and celebrated.

Other useful links from Brett:

  • Sober Curious Consulting - Brett's Recovery Friendly Workplace consulting business.
  • Brett's YouTube channel
  • Washington Recovery Alliance - building the capacity of the recovery community to advance substance use recovery and mental health wellness by catalyzing public understanding and shaping public policy in Washington State.
  • Recovery-Ready Workplace Toolkit - providing information, tools, and resources to help employers from all sectors—government, for-profit, non-profit, and not-for-profit—effectively prevent and respond to substance misuse in the workforce from the Department of Labor.
  • Data on SUD in the US (2022) - from SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration). Link to my favorite PDF for statistics.
  • Addiction 101 - it’s not a moral failing—it’s a treatable illness. Get the facts about this misunderstood medical condition from my friends at Shatterproof.
Speaker 1:

Welcome to Recovery Conversations. My name is Brett Lovins. Today I have Michael Erisman. How lucky for me and for you. If you're a regular listener to my work, you'll know that Recovery Friendly Workplaces is one of my main jams. So to have somebody of his caliber from HR to talk about Recovery Friendly Workplaces and his experience as an HR boss Just couldn't be more right on time for what I need. And we've become friends via LinkedIn and have had several chats, and he was willing to come on and have a chat with me for this podcast. So listen in and if you're an HR professional, visit SoberCuriousConsultingcom if you want to learn more about recovery friendly workplaces. All right, let's roll it. All right, michael, in the flesh, or at least across the screen. Here, though, we've talked a bunch of times and I'm really appreciative for our kind of newfound relationship and friendship, and probably in the pre-roll I'll talk about how we met, which I think is kind of cool. But how lucky for me.

Speaker 1:

I'm very interested in trying to bring recovery-friendly workplaces, which you know, about we've talked about, and I don't have a lot of HR pros that I can refer to, and you and I have had some great conversations. Welcome to the program. Please introduce yourself to my audience as you see fit. That sound good, yeah absolutely.

Speaker 2:

Hey, first of all, it's great to be here. When I first saw your information on LinkedIn, I was like, of course, this means a lot to me personally, for the reasons you just described, you know, not just because of my interest in creating workplaces that allow people to be successful and to thrive, but also that I personally, you know, am in recovery and you know so I have. It's not that I've looked at this from a distance. I've seen it up close and personal and I've been a part of it, and I'll just share with your audience, just for a couple of minutes, kind of a little bit about that story. I got really lucky. I mean the level of gratitude I have every day for the fact that I hit a bottom relatively early. I was pretty young. I woke up and I consider it divine intervention. Other people might have a different opinion.

Speaker 2:

I woke up on my 25th birthday and I looked in the mirror. What I saw staring back at me was a truth that I could no longer rationalize. It was very simple and it was this if you don't make some serious changes in your life and I mean radical changes you are not going to see the age of 30. You are dead before you're 30. And that was a powerful, powerful moment and so and actually a very frightening one, because the nature of what I was doing and sort of where I was, you know, is there's an irony around addiction Addiction actually tells you you're not addicted. That's the amazing thing about it is I would, I had the ability to rationalize virtually anything. And what was happening in my life is I was hitting a point where all of the facade that I had tried to set up was starting to crumble away and I was seeing myself doing things I swore I'd never done, I would never do. So that was in August of 1989. And in late September of 1989, I had six weeks of money and dignity left. So you know, I had to leave all that on the table. I checked into a rehab center and I have been sober ever since, from September 25th 1989 to present, and what an incredible gift this has been, you know.

Speaker 2:

And when you think, when I think about my career and I will sort of dovetail that into the HR aspect of my career up until that point I was working for the Westin Hotel in downtown Seattle and, look, I'm very thankful to the Westin who helped cover the benefit costs of that treatment and was very supportive of me as I went through it. I had ran a catering company doing concerts and films here in the Seattle area. Residential construction I built houses, I did commercial construction, which I was terrible at. And so when I finally did get into sobriety, I went back to school and I started working on my degree. I ended up getting a bachelor's degree and right like a week before my 10 year high school reunion which which was great, you know I mean, most people who go to college for 10 years become doctors, you know. But I squeaked in and and and got my degree and had it was deciding what to do.

Speaker 2:

And so my father, who was a longtime executive at Boeing, he only had one piece of advice for me. He said whatever you do, don't go into HR. That was his only advice for me. Whatever you do, don't go into HR. And so I ended up. I got this. I was studying psychology. I have an undergrad in psychology and communications and then in graduate school I studied industrial organizational psychology and development, and then also communications and employment law, and so I got this. My father called me back and he said hey, look, I just, I just met with General Electric. He was working for Boeing. Boeing and GE were working on a plane airplane together and he said I was at this meeting up in Schenectady, you know where their R&D center is, and they had this HR person there and it's everything I've always thought HR should be. I've just never actually seen it. So here's the person's name, right Give her a call. If you want to go into HR, give her a call.

Speaker 2:

So I did, and what that ended up in is a career in in HR. I started with with GE. Uh, ge capital um was down in Jacksonville, florida, working in call centers and, you know, collection centers, et cetera. I worked at GE. I moved all over the place they can move like three times in four years. Then I got an offer. They made a big mistake of moving me to Denver, colorado, which I loved, and so they wanted to move me again.

Speaker 2:

And Pepsi came along and is the greatest job ever, and so I thought to myself I wonder what a career in HR would look like. And I went on GE's website and they had a job called the VP of HR for NBC Sports. That would be great, right, I would be hanging out with Bob Costas and all these people and paid like 300 grand a year in Manhattan. I was like that's it, that's the gig I want. So I printed that job description. It was three pages, single space to stuff I needed to learn.

Speaker 2:

And I said, well, I'm going to get that job Now. Keep in mind I'm at the time I think I'm four years sober and I have two months of experience. I may not have a snowball's chance in hell. I'm getting that job, but I spent the next seven years doing only one thing is that I'm going to learn everything I can on these three pages. So that led me to this amazing HR career where I look I don't care what you pay me, I don't care how many hours I'm working, I just want to learn, and I'm going to learn everything I possibly can. And so it took me all. It's the. The career has taken me all over the world. I've worked in, I think, 160 countries. Uh, around the world, uh, I've worked in all kinds of industries. I've gone through ups and downs and M and a activity and every employee relations issue that you could, you could possibly think of, and probably many that you haven't even thought of, and so I've absolutely loved my HR career. So for me, the combination of these two things has been fantastic because I've been in a position where I can help businesses be successful.

Speaker 2:

And if you think about what it takes to make a business successful, right, you have to think about what are the people implications of your business strategy. It doesn't matter what your business is. It could be, you know, making soft drinks or software. It could be, you know, healthcare. It could be nonprofit, it could be anything. In order to make that work, you have to get a bunch of disparate people with different views to come together to produce an outcome. And you know there's endless variability in that, there's endless challenges in that and there's all kinds of complications in that. And that's what I love to do and I've just absolutely enjoyed my career. Like I said, it's taken me all over the world and I've spent the last almost now I can't believe it 30 years doing this.

Speaker 1:

Yeah Well, that's a true HR professional, and I've looked at your LinkedIn profile and it'll be in the show notes for those of you that want to look Michael up, and I hope you will From my perspective as somebody who's trying to use one of our chats. The other day you used the word disruption and I like that word. I've liked that word for a while. It does sometimes have some baggage for some people. They're like oh so, I'm aware of that as well, but you know what I'm trying to do, right, because of what you just said too.

Speaker 1:

I've been in this spot for a while and I've seen all kinds of things. Add on top of that that you're somebody in recovery. You no doubt have seen issues with substance use, lots of it and you know just to kind of brag on you a bit, since my audience probably won't know you like you've worked for some big companies at high level, right. So you're walking around with an eyeball on a few different things that there's no way I could know. And so in our previous conversations, as we discussed recovery-friendly workplaces, which we're going to delve into here I've postulated some questions to you and you're willing to take them on and if you're up for it. I've kind of got a few on the side here. I think we'll hit HR professionals that listen in to this, probably be right on time if they're considering it.

Speaker 1:

Does that sound good to you? Yep, yep, let's talk about it. Okay, let's talk about it. Okay, let's talk about it. Let me just start with the one that I hear the most right Stop it dead in the tracks is we have EAP, full stop. We're covered. Okay, that's an argument, or not even an argument. That's a solution that's been built to address a particular thing, although I would argue, an umbrella of things, and I'm talking about something a little more specific. But I'm going to pause now and let you speak to the EAP answer and how you think about that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean, look, let's start out with the positive right. It's great when organizations have benefits, have things, structures that they put in place to enable their employees to get help on things that they might need. Right, and EAP generally is kind of renowned for mental health issues, although it's used a lot for people who are going through situations like, maybe, adoption or a divorce or things like that and, in particular, what it does is it actually separates the company from the service, right, it provides a buffer in between where, basically, look, don't come to like and again, I don't mean this in a bad way, I just mean this in reality Look, I'm not equipped to know how to handle your situation. So, let's say, I'm a leader, I'm a manager of a team, and someone is struggling with something, and and and usually the reason that that that struggle becomes important is because the struggle then ends up having an impact on their ability to do their role successfully, right? So usually the symptomatic, the symptoms of whatever they're struggling with directly impacts their workload and their results, and then the company starts to address that, and in addressing that, these things may come up, and so it's essentially a company's way of saying, look, we're not the experts on these, on whatever this issue is or whatever these things are. But we've set this benefit plan up. By all means, reach out and take advantage of it, and that's a good thing. I mean again, I believe most of these things are set up with the best of intentions.

Speaker 2:

There's another element as well, and that's that the company is then not necessarily aware of the service that's being provided or who it's being provided to, and there's a level of anonymity in that process provided to, and there's a level of anonymity in that process. And with modern employment law being what it is and I'm going to speak to America, I'm not going to speak to all the other countries in the world they're very different, employment laws are very different. But I'm going to just keep the comments here to the US, although I certainly have a lot of experience in a lot of other countries. But in the US in particular, the employment laws are complex enough and create some liability when it comes to things like HIPAA laws, for example, and privacy related to things that you might be dealing with outside the workplace. And yet you know you're employed by us in a company, and so it does give the organization the ability to kind of disconnect those two things. So, and there's again.

Speaker 2:

I think, generally speaking, those things are fine. There's nothing wrong with them, like, if your company doesn't have an EAP, you should have it, okay. However and I think I speak for most HR professionals there's probably some benefits people listening to me that have much higher aspirations for these things, but for most people it's a box checking thing. Look, we have an EAP you might have back when we all used to go into the office all the time. You might have a poster up in the break room or something and here's the EAP number and you certainly hand it out with your data and you probably go to your benefits website or your app and there's information. But it's a relatively hands-off box checking exercise and so from that standpoint, it's good, but it doesn't really address the issue. It's so disconnected from that issue. It doesn't really address the issue. It's so disconnected from that issue. It's basically saying this is available, good luck with that, and so I think where it falls short and I think that's kind of what your question is getting at when it falls short is what should companies be doing more proactively to address issues that happen in the workplace?

Speaker 2:

And there are a lot of ways in which companies are starting to do a much better job of that. If you think about wellness programs, for example, right, a lot of press about wellness programs. I'm usually not the right person to talk to about wellness programs, because what I usually start with is well, why don't we stop doing a bunch of the toxic things that we're doing here in the workplace that cause people to need wellness programs? Why don't we start there and then we can add the wellness programs in. But there are things that companies are out there trying to do to bring those services more directly to employees in a more accessible way. But that's it.

Speaker 2:

You know, when you brought up the issue of recovery and, for example, you brought up the issue of an employee resource group around recovery, I'm just instantly intrigued and the reason is because I've never seen it. I've run employee resource groups, you know, for years, decades, and some really amazing ones. Right, there's LGBTQ. There's, you know, there's various ethnic and nationality background groups. There's veterans you know the last company I was in, we had this working parents ERG, fantastic, right? You know, when you're a working parent, you're trying to juggle all these things in your workplace and the kids and your kid's sick and all of this stuff. It was fantastic. And those employee resource groups are a great way to kind of facilitate in an indirect manner. We care about these things and we want you to work with each other.

Speaker 2:

And then generally, as the head of HR, my job with the ERGs was to do kind of two things Number one, help sponsor them and maybe give them a little budget to use, and then number two, to be able to ask questions and occasionally say no right, because every ERG group comes back and there's a fine line between an ERG that's really helpful and an activist group, and so you have to kind of straddle that line sometimes. But generally speaking they're fantastic. But what you brought up, brett, I was shocked to realize doesn't exist. It just doesn't exist. And I thought to myself why? Why doesn't it exist? So maybe that's something we can explore a little bit?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I'd love that. So for those of you that don't know our lingo, I'm just going to add a couple in there ERG employee resource group. So in larger corporations you'll have kind of interest groups that come together, and I don't know that I ever told you, michael, how that happened for me, but basically it was me taking on telling my story to the entire company and then writing a blog follow-up, and so I go from this many people in recovery that I know well, actually there was one and as soon as those landed here comes the pings. And we know the stats. You know roughly two-thirds of american families are affected by substance use in some way or another. Right, so it it's shouldn't be any surprise. And at Cisco we've got all the the, the groups you just outlined and many more. But when I get all of that, I you know, and it's a, it's a place that I've been for years, as have you like, there's power in us knowing each other, and there's there's having friends and people that that get this thing. So, yeah, so it was really an accident. So suddenly I've got 100 people coming at me and then I started getting to know other companies there were a couple and it's like well, let's keep going.

Speaker 1:

Now I want to postulate the question. That's the second time I've used the word postulate, which is fascinating. Anyway, I'm going to run another question by you. So I got a fair bit of resistance at Cisco Systems and you know, in our previous conversation and you even delved into a second ago, this idea of the gray area right, you were playing there. So one of the things I heard the most about why that wasn't a good idea for like a year and a half after many, many meetings, was three words fear of litigation, which we've talked about not in this podcast, obviously, if that's a line you want to pull on or any of the things I just said. I guess my point is that I've seen an appetite for it. It's still going on, that you haven't seen it. It just seems like there's just a ton of winning to be done here that you haven't seen it.

Speaker 2:

It just seems like there's just a ton of winning to be done here. So over you there is for sure, and if you think about fear of litigation, that's kind of an easy label that gets slapped over. This is a gray area and I don't really know what to do. Okay, what it really means is there's an ambiguous line and this is something that every organization deals with is that there's an ambiguous line between what's my role as an employer and what's my role as some sort of having a major influence in this person's life. Right, and so what generally happens in the workplace and this is the case whether you're dealing with an issue with alcohol or substance abuse, mental health issues or you name it any other issue the difficult place to go to and I'll tell you what there's two very, very important reasons for that.

Speaker 2:

The difficult place to go to is the root issue what you want, what most companies go to, is they go to the symptoms Absenteeism, you're not showing up for work on time, you're not getting your work done on time. You know you maybe behaved in a way that was inappropriate. You know we've been part of tech companies, and tech companies have lots and lots of events with a lot of alcohol, events with a lot of alcohol, and you know, I mean, if I had 10 bucks for every time somebody had too much to drink at a company, at events, and did something stupid, I'd have retired a long time ago, right? So we all understand that. We know that that's a reality. So what companies generally tend to focus on is they tend to focus on the symptom itself and as it relates to the workplace, and try to avoid going into the root cause. Now, there's two reasons for that, and I think, I think there's some validity behind those reasons, but I'm hoping that what you're trying to do and what I think is important to do here can remove some of the stigma. Okay, so the first reason is um, it's not my it's like I don't have jurisdiction on that what you do when you're not in the workplaces, unless it violates the law or puts the company or other, you know, employees in danger in some way. Um, it's none of my business, right? So there's, there's that type of approach. The second type of approach is look, I'm not really an expert at understanding why, and I don't have a good enough, deep enough, relationship with my employees to be able to even broach that subject.

Speaker 2:

Now, if we talk about this in the two areas, it comes up the most right Mental illness or some sort of struggle with a mental health issue. Right, I don't know if it's a mental illness or not, but some sort of struggle with a mental health issue, or substance abuse in particular. And let's go talk about substance abuse Generally speaking and I speak from personal experience on this and I'm sure you would agree when you are actively using, having somebody approach you with, hey, I believe you may have a substance abuse problem, is generally not met with open arms. Okay, and that's me being polite, right, generally speaking, hey, I think you may have a problem with alcoholism. You know is not going to be received well, and so organizations tend to avoid it, they tend to not want to go there because, first of all, it falls into that gray area, sort of outside my jurisdiction. Second of all, it's generally not met well. It's generally not met well, it's generally not received well. And even if the person says, yes, oh, I'm so glad you brought it up, I actually am really struggling with that. They're like well, okay, what do I do now? Call the EAP? So I think, generally speaking, organizations shy away from these types of issues for what I would consider generally good reasons. What it does, though, is it means that we're missing out on opportunities, right, and if you think about substance abuse specifically, let's talk about that, and that's something that I think I can easily put in my area of expertise.

Speaker 2:

If you think about substance abuse and the way many of these programs of recovery work I struggled with this the first time I heard it, by the way, so you know, if you're listening, you might struggle with it as well. These programs are not meant for those who need them. They're meant for those who want them. In other words, the challenge with substance abuse is that, until a person hits a point in their life where you mentioned disruption earlier, where the fear or the penalty of staying the same outweighs the fear of change, they will not change, and so part of the challenge here I believe that companies are facing is targeting this at the wrong audience. So, instead of targeting this as, let's put in a program so people who might be actively dealing with substance abuse can confront that and get the help they need. Instead, let's bring together people who are in recovery, who are going through this process, who, in our support for that, can create an organization or a place that they can thrive and be successful in. And let's let all of those people be able to be better equipped to reach out and create a place where, if someone is struggling to reach out, and create a place where, if someone is struggling, they can look and see hey, there's somebody like me who's also struggling and that's now a safe place for me to go. And I think, if nothing else, the acknowledgement what you're trying to do here is something that says it's okay to talk about this, it's okay to have these kinds of questions and there are other people also struggling with this. And if we can bring us all together, you know we can have some influence.

Speaker 2:

Now, one of the things that we talked about and I think I use this example specifically is okay, a lot of times, people will look at something like this in a way like they might look at sort of like a peanut allergy. Okay, so if someone on the team has a peanut allergy, then what do we do? Nobody gets any peanuts, right, peanuts are gone. We don't serve any peanuts. There's no peanuts in the building. We don't put peanuts on anything. We don't serve food with peanuts on it because someone has a peanut allergy, right?

Speaker 2:

That's not how to address an issue like alcoholism, and so a lot of times when you go into an organization, if you even bring this up, the immediate reaction is well, if I raise the issue that there are people who are struggling with alcoholism in my workplace, do I now need to have a completely dry workplace and not serve any drinks at all? And I think the answer to that is no. I think you need to be responsible, you need to provide options. You need to be aware of when you might be putting people in situations that where it's sort of preferred or there might be pressure on them to drink. You need to be aware of that, but you don't need to sanitize your workplace from that. Now, if you're talking about, you know fentanyl. Yes, you should sanitize your workplace from fentanyl, but you know what I'm getting at and I think that's one of the other things that causes resistance. So, if I bring this in, what does it mean? What do I do with it? How do I respond to this? Does that mean that none of us can ever drink again at a company event? And that's that's yet another reason why I think there's some resistance around this.

Speaker 2:

Now, the final reason that there's resistance is that you know a lot of people who are struggling, don't want anyone to know about it, and I certainly understand that you know there there's. For me, my life got so bad that I realized that nothing could be worse than going back to the way it used to be, and so any sort of shame or insecurity I might have of even being on a podcast like this and telling a little bit of my story, I don't care at all. Whatever you think about it, good for you, it doesn't make any difference to me. But I realized that that is not where everybody is, in particular early on.

Speaker 2:

If you're struggling with something, I mean there's a lot of shame involved and there's a lot of, so people may not want to out themselves, if you will, to join an ERG and to do that, and so when you add all of those things up, I think the resistance that you see in companies, it makes sense. It's not coming from a bad place. It's not that there's a bunch of people that you know they just don't care. Not that there's a bunch of people that you know they just don't care. I just think that there's a lack of education and there's a lack of willingness to step out of the box a little bit and say, hey, we should think differently about this.

Speaker 1:

Oh, so good. So much in there. So much in there. So I'd love to expand the scope. I'd love to add two things, which will probably turn into six, but anyway, I love these chats. So the first love to I'd love to expand the scope. I'd love to add two things, which will probably turn into six, but anyway, I love these chats. So the first one is I would like to take us back to the first scenario you're talking about, like the peanut thing, right?

Speaker 1:

Note that the three words for branding purposes are recovery, friendly workplace, right. And so I'm going to pose that we haven't even talked yet about some of the things that can be done easily. And I've said this to you many times there's so much winning to be done, so many easy wins, right. But for our purposes, I totally get the guy or gal that's sitting there saying what are you talking about? We get together and this is what we do once a year for our event, and you're going to get in the way of that and I'm not going to let it happen, right? So there's that.

Speaker 1:

So I would love to propose this idea, that and I've used this metaphor with you before signposts. So it's more about the environment that people are in, because I'm going to tell on myself. If I saw a sober happy hour at Cisco Live when I was still drinking, I would have bad mouth, mouth that thing from a distance, like you wouldn't believe, right. I would have bad mouthed to people around me about how those holier than thou people, right, but there was leading towards this, wanting it for myself. There was a small voice that was active in me that would have made a note of that and I would have known that it was possible for 450 people to get together and party without alcohol. So that signpost would have been there as a cultural example for us to get to each other.

Speaker 1:

Same with the ERGs. So I want to turn it back over to you, but this one's rocking me. So my idea here is a recovery-friendly workplace isn't so much about getting to the individual who needs it right now. It's urgent, or should be urgent To me. It's more about the environment that allows everybody to do their thing within reason, right? What do you think about that picture I just painted?

Speaker 2:

Within reason, right? What do you think about that picture I just painted? Well, I largely agree with it, a hundred percent. I think, though, you know, one of the one of the challenges, one of the reasons I love I've loved the work I've done for the last few decades, is because of these, very these complexities. You know, there are paradoxes that aren't meant to be solved, they're meant to be accepted, and here's an example of a paradox. A paradox is it's okay to use alcohol to celebrate, and some people have a big problem with alcohol, and it's very detrimental and it causes a lot of damage. Those things exist at the same time.

Speaker 2:

Now, generally speaking, we try to want to solve these paradoxes. In other words, I need to go one way or the other right. One direction is hey, we just don't hire people unless they want to come in and party with us. Okay, that's one way to do it. Another way to do it is we're going to eliminate all alcohol. We're not going to do any alcohol at all in our function. Both of those are attempts that I'll kind of put at the opposite ends of a spectrum, but they both miss the point, because they're trying to solve that paradox as opposed to being comfortable living with it, and I think what you're describing this friendly, and the reason I love the ERG approach in particular is because ERGs are not something that I have to condone and endorse everything the ERG does. Rather, it's there intentionally for that reason for those people who have those shared interests to come together and then we can look at, okay, there could be some things there that we can use to bring awareness elsewhere in the company to do some other things. But it's not something that I have to write a policy for and it's not something that I have to mandate. It's rather it creates, it's meant to create a workplace where people feel valued, respected, want to work and can thrive Okay. So that's the fundamental challenge is, if you present somebody a solution, that is hey, for this problem, you do this. We can debate that all day long, whether it makes sense or I agree with it, et cetera, but we understand it conceptually. If you go to somebody and say, no, this is still going to exist and this is still going to exist, and guess what? This tension is still going to exist. But you can also create a scenario where you are helpful without restricting the environment.

Speaker 2:

We also want organizations with a whole bunch of different people coming from different backgrounds. We have right now, today, here in America, we have more generations working side by side than we have ever had in the history of civilization. We have multicultural people from different countries coming together. You know, I worked for Microsoft and one of my favorite times at Microsoft was when the World Cup was going on, because you'd walk around the campus in Redmond and it was like the United Nations, right. I mean, you had all these people from all these different countries and you know, rooting for their team and it was just fantastic. It was wonderful to be a part of team and it was just fantastic, it was wonderful to be a part of.

Speaker 2:

But when you have all that coming together, you're going to inevitably run into areas of tension and overlap. We have been able to manage that and we can manage this too. We can be more open about the value of recovery. We can be more open about having a safe place to go and deal with these kinds of situations, whether it's yourself or as a family member. We can do better than we're doing today, and because today we're not really doing anything. So I think, yes, there are challenges. Yes, if you're listening to this and you're a head of HR somewhere and you're thinking I don't know exactly how this is going to work. I get it, but it's important, it matters, it's a huge deal in our society and if we are going to be an organization that is going to create the right place for people to be successful and thrive, it's one of the many things that we need to address and we have to do better.

Speaker 1:

When you just touch one thing that I want to just expand on a little bit. Up until this point in the conversation, we've both mostly been focused on the individual who potentially has a problem, et cetera. But you just mentioned the family, right? So most HR teams are not only providing benefits for the employee but also for their families, and so I'm going to paint a picture for you of the star employee who has a child, who's gotten hooked on opioids because they're a huge problem in our society. And what do they do?

Speaker 1:

They go on Google and do their best. Do you think that's going to affect their productivity? Et cetera, and not even somebody who's necessarily struggling with substances themselves. So that picture that was painted for me one time, and anyway it really resonates with me, because that individual has so many opportunities to learn about addiction, learn about the stuff that's around and then, if they're not uncomfortable talking about it, learn about the stuff that's around and then, if they're not, if they're not uncomfortable talking about it, they're able to share with their peers. And now, all of a sudden, that normalization becomes well more normalized.

Speaker 2:

Well, and it becomes more accessible and it becomes something that's that's worth saying. Look, this is, this is, this is life, this is what it means to to live in the societies that we live in. This is a big problem, and we know some of our employees are going to face it, and so I think, somewhere between you know we're not drug and alcohol treatment centers or experts, but we shouldn't ignore it entirely either, right? So the question is is how do we find and move a little bit on that in that regard? And what I was so intrigued about when you, you and I first started talking was you're so spot on about let's start, let's do something, let's make this more accessible, let's talk about it more. You know the ERG thing is fantastic. Talk about it more. You know the ERG thing is fantastic.

Speaker 2:

And I have been in companies where, informally, they set up whether it was like IM, messaging things or whatever where you could go and set your own group up, and you know there was one that was like friends of Bill W and a bunch of people that go to AA, and we shared a bunch of things. I'm still in some contact with some of those people today and I've worked that company in like 15 years, right? So there can be some things companies can do that can be very, very valuable. I think the starting point, though, is and I encourage everyone who's listened to this and runs an organization and is thinking about this is to reach out to you and start having the conversation about let's think about how you could set up an ERG on this. Let's see about the resources that you could have available. Now, that's from a company perspective, that's typically the HR person or the CEO, and the HR person or somebody in administration that's thinking about it that way. Let's also talk about something that's closer to home, right, and that's people join organizations and leave managers.

Speaker 2:

Now, you've heard that before, we've heard that over and over again, and one of the things that I've kind of spent my whole career working on is look, I can do a bunch of stuff in HR, but I'm not. I might be the figurehead of the culture, but I'm not the culture. I mean, the culture is what gets created by all of the managers and employees, right? You know, if you think about what a culture is, it's sort of that thing somewhere between what you aspire to be and put on the walls and think you are and what you actually are and what people experience, and it's some amalgamation in between that. And so, when I think about what's one of the first steps required for organizations in order to be able to create a workplace where we can better identify when some of these challenges exist and be better equipped to deal with it, there's generally three things. I'll just walk through them really quick. I call it the air, food and water of being a manager. Right, like, if you want to be a good and forget manager leader, if you want to be a good leader, these three things you have to do.

Speaker 2:

Okay, the first one is clear goals. Organizations have to have clear levels of accountability, because when you're talking about specific and now I'm back to the employee themselves who may be struggling right, when you're talking about that, when does this conversation arise? It typically arises when there are some symptoms of that behavior that are running smack into the accountabilities that you have about performance, how you show up in the workplace, et cetera. Right, but you have to have clear goals, et cetera. Right, but you have to have clear goals. And the reason I bring that up and it's going to sound very different from the second two is, you know, I've been in massively large companies, hundreds of thousands of employees, and so when we ran a bunch of data studies, what we were able to look at is we could set up as a criterion, like a predictor, if you will using, you know, employee engagement surveys. If I want to predict intent to stay, what is the thing that most predicts that? And it wasn't what we might've thought it was. It wasn't pay or compensation, it wasn't benefits, it wasn't recognition, it wasn't the things that we most normally would associate that. It was do I have clear goals? And it wasn't close. By the way, statistically, it was the predictor of intent to stay is do I have clear goals. So that's number one.

Speaker 2:

And now let's get into the second two. Number two is feedback loop. You know, in order for you to be in a position, as a leader, to help someone on your team who may be struggling with this, whether it's themselves or a family member who's struggling with it, you have to have a relationship, and that means you need to provide feedback and you need to listen and create that openness. Now, one of the things I've tried to do in my whole career and I won't speak to how well I've done that you know the hundreds and hundreds of HR people have reported to me over the years could probably attest to that is to create an environment where my people can say anything they want to. In fact, I expect them to and I need them to.

Speaker 2:

If you think this process isn't going to work, then say it. If you think this is a stupid idea, by all means, please tell me If you think the way I'm leading this particular issue could be improved. I need to know that, because one of two things happens Either you're wrong or you're right. Now, if you're right, I need to know it. I desperately need to know it. Right, not want to know it, I need to know it. If you're wrong, then you need to know that and we need to have that dialogue.

Speaker 2:

But creating that feedback loop and I don't mean performance appraisals or any of that that crap, I mean literally real-time feedback. Do I know where I stand? Can I have a conversation real time? And I used to do this with my teams all the time. We do this model called debate, align, execute. So it's required that if we're going to go do something, we debate it up front. Is this the right idea? What are we not thinking about Unintended consequences, etc.

Speaker 2:

The goal here, though, is to create an environment where people trust you enough to be able to talk to you about what's going on. You cannot help somebody if you have no idea what's happening. And the last thing is how do you create an environment where people can feel valued and respected as a person and as an individual and do their best work? Now, obviously, that's an environment free from harassment, free from discrimination. You know where they're treated, with respect, etc.

Speaker 2:

No question, this stuff that you're doing would be great if, centralized an HR function or somebody would come in and say, hey, we're going to set this ERG up, or people can join it. That's good, that's a good start, but, at the end of the day, it comes back to each and every leader in your organization and the relationship they have with their people. Do they care about their people as people, not just as employees who are producing an outcome, and do they create that environment where people are free to talk about them? Because that means you have to be authentic, you have to be vulnerable, and you have to create those relationships. Those things can position organizations much better to be able to address the kinds of things that we're talking about, and even if you do all the right things of putting these ERGs in place and, to your point, making sure you have the right signpost, even if you do those things well, if your managers have not created an environment of trust and respect, it's still not going to matter, it's still not going to work. So I would encourage you to think about it both in both of those ways. You know, are we as corporately looking at this is a major issue into society and we're going to address it and be honest about it and make it a recovery friendly organization, honest about it and make it a recovery friendly organization.

Speaker 2:

And, number two, have I created an environment where people have enough trust in me to where they can get the help they need? Because if I go back you know now, 35, 30, 30, almost 36 years ago, 35 and a half years ago, and I go back after that sort of awakening, on my 25th birthday A couple of weeks later, when I went into my boss at the Westin Hotel, I had a relationship, I trusted him and I said, look, I'm in a bad spot, I can't do this anymore. I can't do this anymore, I have to change. He was not surprised at all, by the way, but he was able to say, yeah, let's go have you talk to somebody in HR and we'll look at our benefit plan, and I think we can cover something like that. I was able to work it out and I'm very grateful not only to the organization that did that you know, check the box but it was possible because I had a relationship with somebody who I knew cared about me as a person, you know.

Speaker 2:

And so I think, when you think about the kinds of disruption and change that we need in companies today, it's both in the awareness of what's happening and how to do that better.

Speaker 2:

But it's also in how our managers and leaders create that environment of trust and respect. And you know, that gives, that will give you the freedom to address issues that you would otherwise not get to address. That'll give you, that'll get you insights. You know, when you, when you sit down and say, hey, you know how's it going, I, I, it seems like you're struggling a little bit, you know how can I help. And if you, if you have that genuine relationship, that's when people will open up to you, you know. And so, yes, this might feel like a daunting change for organizations that you know are thinking about. How do we go in visibly and and and make and raise this issue as something that's important to us? Um, but you can start every day on the things that are the precursors required to have your people trust you enough to seek you out to help in the first place.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, oh, that's just lovely, all right. So that's been a really nice exploration of sort of what I would call the micro look. You're basically giving advice to the manager, and that manager may have issues of their own too, so that's. I mean, there's just a lot of variability about what that looks like on the ground. Usually do, by the way. Yeah, and so now I'd like to I'd like to, as we kind of close up here, I'd like to go back to the macro view and say a couple of things to somebody who doesn't know this.

Speaker 1:

Recovery-friendly workplaces I didn't invent. There's a ton of stuff about it, so I'm mission-driven here. So, even if you never talk to me again or whatever, fine, because the macro approach to this that I'd like to let you tee off on, if you're willing, is, I truly believe that what I call the recovery ecosystem. There's a lot of ecosystem stuff around recovery and helping people with substances, etc. They're usually nonprofits, very small, etc. And I'm grateful for them. They do hero's work, etc. But I'm convinced, refute away, because we're going to have psychological safety here, but I don't think you will. I'm convinced that if more companies like Domino's fall, like they should, and become more recovery-friendly workplaces, we change our society like a huge bat Damn, and isn't that worth trying? Uh, and again, I guess I'm kind of doing a little bit of a cheerleading thing to anybody who's an HR rep. Isn't that worth trying, is it? Aren't there a lot of people that would benefit from that, even that are inside the company? If multiple companies are like that, okay, soapbox complete.

Speaker 2:

Please take us home Multiple companies are like that Okay, soapbox complete, please take us home. Yeah, no, look, 100%. It's just a reality that this is a problem. But I want you to think about it on the other side too. You know, when I travel around the world, if I have a choice for where I stay, I will stay in Westin Hotels. I haven't worked at Westin in what's it been 33 years and I'll still stay in them.

Speaker 2:

I have a sense of loyalty because that company at the time when I was in a tough spot, yeah, the company could say, yeah, we just checked the box and that was part of our benefit plan and whatever. That's not what I'm referring to. I'm referring to the fact that I had that relationship and somebody cared enough about me to want to help me through that Long story. Short, by the way. I ended up going back there and when I graduated from undergrad, I'd stayed working there part-time while I was going to college and then I went back and I ran in one of the banquet departments for about a year and a half before I went to grad school. So look, there's a. On the other side of recovery are some of the most amazing employees you can ever possibly get, amazing employees you can ever possibly get. You know, look, I mean I can't begin to explain how grateful I am to have the contrast effect, to understand you know where I've been and to be grateful for opportunities that I have in front of me. The healthiest people that I know and have known in my entire life, I would say most of them are in recovery and are honest and, because it's required, when you go through something like this and you get on the other side of it, it's a completely different perspective that you have about life and you have about others and you have about opportunities, and so I would encourage organizations to not be, you know, to not be afraid of this, to not be afraid of the stigma of, you know, facilitating this.

Speaker 2:

Now, look, if people don't want to participate, you don't force them to do it, obviously, but to make it more friendly, as you're saying, to get some resources in place, to at least talk to your managers about maybe some signs and some things to look for, to set up an ERG or make one available if anybody's interested in participating in it, and then letting it go where it goes. You know, these are things that are not hard things to do and they're not costly things to do, right. We're not talking about, you know, major overhauls to your IT system. I mean, we're talking about small shifts in behavior and that can make a huge difference and create an organization that you know is more in step with reality and more in step with where you know, and people want to work for places like that. You know people want to be seen for who they are and they want to be to, to be valued, and so I agree with you. Long story short, I agree with you 100 percent. Of course we should try to do that.

Speaker 2:

And look, I'm sitting here right now in all honesty, going look, I brought this to the table in every role I've ever been in. I've never been shy about who I am. Now I cannot tell you how many times I've been personally in a situation where I've been pressured to drink. You know, hey, we just had a great quarter, we're all going to toast something. Everybody gets a glass of champagne. You know, I hold mine up, I don't drink it, or I do a Diet Coke or club soda or whatever. And then inevitably somebody says, well, you don't drink, and I go, no, no, I don't drink, or whatever. And then they ask me a bunch of questions and I've always been really open with that, but we can remove a lot of that stigma and we need to remove that stigma.

Speaker 2:

You know this is a this is a big, big problem in our society and it is. It crosses all classes, levels of education. You know backgrounds, you know this is. There are people right now that you know and you work with who are either struggling with this or have a close family member who is, and so we can pretend that's not the case, or we can start raising some awareness and raising some attention to this issue and hopefully, you know, if nothing else, you create a more friendly environment that allows more people to seek out your EAP. Great, that's a start right. So look, I think what you're doing here, brett, is fantastic. It's needed. I feel a little chagrined. I haven't done more in my own career. I've brought a lot to the table personally, but I haven't driven this and I should have. So consider me on board.

Speaker 1:

Well, I can't tell you how grateful I am we met and that you've given me so much of your counsel and time over these last. I don't know, we've only known each other a couple of weeks, I think, it is, maybe three or four, I don't know. But yeah, man, you're so helpful. That was a lot of really good information for me and for, hopefully, some other folks. Lot of really good information for me and for, hopefully, some other folks. And yeah, man, I hope we can stay friends and continue to support each other as this weird experiment I'm working on goes along.

Speaker 2:

Well, look, that goes without saying, and I think this is a noble thing to be working on and I encourage if you're listening to this and you have any interest in making a dent in this at all or even doing something I encourage you to reach out. Just reach out to Brett, I mean, if you want to reach out to me, if you want to connect with me on LinkedIn, please by all means do so. You know, once a year I've done this now for 20 some odd years Once a year, I post my little sobriety birthdate thing on LinkedIn and, man, I have lost count of the thousands of messages that I get and people who come back to me decades later and say, hey, you didn't know this, but I was really struggling and now I'm sober and I really appreciate it. I'm like, wow, that's fantastic, you know, and I think just being more open about this issue in general is always going to be helpful. And let's not get sidetracked. You know you're not trying to go in and diagnose people and you're not sending them to. You know. Let's not, let's not freak out about the whole legality issues here. Let's just create some openness and start having conversations and um and see where that goes. And, if nothing else, you know, if you allow people to connect with other people who are struggling with similar things, it's going to help.

Speaker 2:

So look I am, look I am. I am beyond grateful for the career I've had and for the work I'm doing and for the lessons that being in sobriety has taught me. This has been such a tremendous gift for me that I want nothing more than, if anybody out there is struggling, for them to experience the same thing, for them to experience a level of freedom and hope that they didn't think was possible. Because it is. And that's why this work, brett, is so important. Sure, it will help companies address a major problem in society. Sure, it might deliver some positive value to an organization, no question. But that's not the main reason. The main reason is we need to figure out a way to get hope to people who right now don't have it.

Speaker 1:

Thank you, michael. Thank you for your friendship and your guidance these past weeks. Really good conversation. I'm sure a lot of HR professionals will gain a better understanding of it through multiple lenses and especially the HR lens, with your experience For HR professionals. You want to learn more? Please visit my website, sobercuriousconsultingcom. You want to learn more? Please visit my website, sobercuriousconsultingcom. You can grab 30 minutes for free right there on the website and I'd love to talk to you further about helping your company move towards it and help your employees, their families and their communities. Thanks a bunch.