Heroes in Business - Eric Mulvin, Talent Acquisitions with Pac Biz’s Cathy Belen, Contact Center Cactus Chat

Episode Date: February 28, 2023

Eric sits down with resident Pac Biz Talent Acquisition Manager Cathy Belen to talk about maintaining an employee-centered culture and putting mental health first in this episode of Contact Center Cactus Chat.

All right, welcome back to the Contact Center Cactus Chat Podcast. I'm your host, Eric Malvin. We're back with another episode, and I'm actually back out in Dumaguete, Philippines, and I've got a chance to interview one of our employees today. So we have Kathy Bellin, who's our Talent Acquisition Manager. So welcome to the podcast. Thank you, Eric. Thank you very much for having having me I'm really excited to be on your podcast and I believe I'm the first one for the year correct you are your first employer and first employee we've interviewed you know we got Jake as a co-host and so you're the first one I want to I'm excited to be introducing to our listeners some of the really amazing

people that help run PACBiz behind the scenes. So, yeah. So, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you very much for having me. I'm really excited to be here with you. I'm honestly quite nervous, but I'm really happy to be doing this with you, Eric.

Awesome. It's such an honor. Thanks for accepting. So, why don't you introduce yourself a little bit, tell the listeners what is it you do here at PACBiz, and yeah, a little bit about your background. Okay so just like what Eric said my name is Kathy Belan but I'm Mary Catherine Belan so I am the talent acquisition specialist here at Pacbiz Virtual Services I've joined the company since November of 2020 so I'm a pandemic hire so to speak so I've been in this role ever since I joined the company

and it's really quite exciting how I joined the company Eric because I didn't know really that Pacbiz existed but I knew the general manager Miss Pippin and you know one time I met her in the local mall and I was kidding her Miss Pippin can can you just get me, hire me? And she said, oh no, we can't hire you. So I said, okay. And then, you know, probably two days before I joined the company, I saw the HR manager who was my friend. And this is a story I keep sharing the new hires that the HR manager here at BackBiz is really an angel to me because I was in a dark space so to speak with my mental health I had some mental health challenges and when I saw her I didn't really know back this was looking for someone in talent acquisition so I said

can just hire me can you just hire me to be your PA or whatever and then she said really you really want to join us because you know, we can have a place for you. And so two days after that, I was here in the office and I was just ready to go. And I never really thought that that day would turn into two years and a couple of months already. So it's been a wonderful, wonderful ride here at Pac-Biz. i never heard that story so i didn't know how they uh found you so that's cool yeah yeah interesting yeah for sure and uh yeah you did come on at a really interesting time because we uh when the when coven hit we work with a lot of people in the hospitality industry and they got hit hard with covet so we were not hiring people in fact we weren't laying people off but we were freezing work status

for a lot of people so it was uh pretty unique for us to be hiring someone on at a time when you know things were still a little not normal in the world i mean what was it like starting a job with a new company that because we weren't we weren't doing uh anything in the office and then you had to like find people interview them and I guess you probably didn't actually get to see them in person was it all through zoom at the beginning I don't remember oh yeah interestingly when I started that day we had an account called if you can remember local fi we were looking for a VA at that time so it was to be a for local

five and web developer for monsoon marketing so that was the first thing I did it was the first task that that was handed to me yeah it is definitely so well since no one was here we did all the interviews first by phone which is what we call today as our initial interview. And then after that, we did Zoom. So it's phone and Zoom. So it was quite, it was unusual, but we had to adjust because we were so used to doing face-to-face. But in my case, since I was doing seven years of freelance working from home

prior to this job so it was new for me and that I was talking to people again which I never did for seven years I think when I was doing freelance so it was strange but it was extremely refreshing and it was great to see new people meet new people but in my case because I learned I mean I knew most of the people in admin it was so great to be seeing them working with them and you know just working with empowering women inspiring aspirational women so it was really it was it was great it was eye-opening refreshing and I think I was just really ready to go at that time and start a new career

here at Packbiz. All right, so you got hired on and I know we were dealing with the effects of COVID, you know, like people, especially here in the Philippines, like the lockdowns were way more restrictive than they were. And I think it really took a toll on people. And I know we try to do a lot of things to help our staff out and provide them support wherever we could. And I know we were talking a little bit about the show before the show about motivated by nature, which I haven't

thought about in a while. And so I guess we started that initiative not long after you came on, right? Correct. Yeah. So what was that like? that like because you know you probably weren't expecting like this call center to be like focused on or at least thinking about mental health and trying to help out the staff so I guess first like explaining what motivated motivated by nature was what was that program and again let's start with that mm-hmm okay yeah motivated by Nature was actually a program. Initially, it was really a contest, which we had back in January 2021, if I remember correctly. We were really encouraged to unplug, so to speak, to get out from our work desk, commune with nature, be with nature.

And we were tasked every day we would we were given tasks to do so let's say for today it's the letter A so we need to find something in nature that started with letter A so I don't know maybe a for just about anything in nature maybe air well although you can't really see air but you know something like that so maybe smelling of you know fresh air, unplugging from your desk, go out in nature so that's what we did. Yeah like bee, take a picture of a banana tree. Bee, correct yeah. Bees. And so on so that's what we did and in essence although it initially started out as a contest I think essentially it made everyone stop and recharge, so to speak.

Because, you know, when you're working from home, you tend to have this, you know, cabin fever. So with Motivated by Nature, everyone was really encouraged to go out, spend some time in nature and, you know, commune with nature. Spend some time in nature and, you know, commune with nature. And in a way, I think it was physically, mentally, and spiritually healing for all of us, particularly in my case. Because, you know, I've been quite open with my struggles with mental health before I started with PACBIS. And, you know, motivated by nature was really a great help for me to take care of myself, take care of my mental health. And also because of Motivated by Nature, I was also quite motivated to do my first half marathon. So I did that and that was very exciting.

And I think without Motivated by Nature, I wouldn't be able to do my first half marathon. That's impressive. And I remember hearing stories about staff where, like, they were getting out. They started, like, getting into jogging. Because to explore these places, you've got to leave your house. You've got to walk around, you know, go to parks, go out to nature, go to the beach. So, yeah, it was really cool to see, especially because, again, we were all dealing with the effects of that being locked in and you can tell it was like people were getting burned out it's a good way to get people back out again

and that wasn't our first initiative I mean just thinking about it through with you right now like there's been a few of things that we've launched around mental health since you've come on board just in those two short years that you've been at pacvis um i'm trying to think of like what are some of the other things do you remember what are some of the other things that we've tried to put in place over the last couple years um apart from motivated by nature um i think we had some uh talks by invited guests in talks by invited guests in the guidance counseling community in the local, in our schools, I mean. And I think, of course, Susan Heaton from Motivate My Nature also spoke to us about it. Just to, you know, talk to us about things on how to really take care of ourselves, self-care,

and just, you know, just cope with the COVID situation better yeah yeah and now that COVID is kind of fading away life is a tough part everyone's having challenges you know the world's just it always seems like it's getting crazier and crazier and you know we're dealing with that trying to do our job take care of our families and so lately I think even like we're looking recently made a choice about our health insurance based around like the support they offer for mental health right yeah well I don't really have a lot when it comes to the to the services that's being offered together with our health insurance. But what I can share is we are trying to actually form like a mental health support group for everyone.

And what it is, is that we're trying to, because, you know, with health insurance, what it usually covers is of course your usual checkups dental hospitalization but now with covid situation i think what's great about the covid situation is that people with mental health struggles are being validated i mean their feelings how they feel their struggles are being validated and so i think people are recognizing that mental health is really part of health and it's also something that you really really need to take care of so nothing is really final when it comes to the mental health package that we have but we are trying to look at services that would offer mental health first aid, so to speak.

And what does it include? It includes sessions, therapy sessions with psychologists. And if they need psychiatrists, like when we're talking about medication, there is also something like that. Because although we have psychiatrists and psychologists in the city, what happens is that we cannot book them right away. And more often than not, when someone needs mental health first aid or mental health first support, they need it right away. Like me in my case, just very recently, Eric, I had a traumatic experience on New Year's Day when I lost my, you know, my dear dog.

So I really needed help right away. And you cannot just book an appointment right away. So that's the sad part. That's the challenging part. I mean, I'm not trying to throw shade at our psychiatrists here in the locality. But what I'm trying to say is that we want to be able to have a program that's available, accessible to everyone when they need it right away, the help that they need. That's why situations like that and others we've dealt with over the past year,

that's why we're looking at that kind of stuff. And I think it seems like in the U.S. anyways, they're just kind of coming around to this. And I really hope that we could be the leaders here in the U.S. anyways, they're just kind of coming around to this. And I really hope that we could be the leaders here in the Philippines because, you know, they're just now coming up to it. The Philippines usually, I mean, in the U.S., Philippines is usually a couple of years behind or even further. So, you know, we're trying to model that, like, you know, here's how you can take care of your staff better. And I think we're the perfect business for that too, because like we're all about retention. You know know you see behind us here this past weekend

we just got to celebrate our eight-year anniversary of PACBiz and I found out I didn't even realize this but by the end of this year if we don't lose a bunch of people for whatever reason I don't know what would happen then we'll have over 50 people celebrating their five-year anniversary impact this yeah so like for us we want to keep people around we don't want someone burned out because if they're getting burned out they're gonna quit or they're gonna have poor performance on the job which will lead to them being let go possibly and at a tough time in their life when they need the most support typically that's when businesses are letting these people go because a

lot of times companies don't have the resources or patience or whatever they just like there's so many people out there let's put someone else in mm-hmm so I think it's pretty interesting you know that we're able to at least start looking at how can we do better as a company for our staff. Correct, yeah. And I think, Eric, it's very much aligned with our focus, company focus, which is to promote not just client growth but employee growth as well. And I think with employee growth, there's also growth in the company. And when the company grows, that means we are keeping the right people retaining the right people and making the right people happy as well so and you know as and I'm sure you're very

much agree with me that the most precious resource of the company is the people okay so we really really have to take care of them yeah people all the time say we're a people organization there There's not a lot of, there's no secret technology behind the scenes. We don't have a room full of AI computers actually doing the calls. They're all people. Correct. We've got to take care of them. So that's so true.

All right, Kathy. Well, that's all the time we have for part one of this. We've got a lot more conversation. We're going to get into culture index a lot deeper and the next episode here in part two. And so thank you for being on the show here and thank you guys for listening and we will catch you part two. Look for us in two weeks. We will hear the rest of the conversation with me and Kathy.

We're talking about hiring and talent acquisition and getting into people's personalities so that we can find the most amazing people to join our Packers family.