DE Talk | Uncovering the Non-Traditional Workforce: Recruiting & Retaining Talent in Addiction Recovery

Season 5 • Episode 1

It’s estimated that between 22-28 million Americans live in recovery from substance abuse but these individuals often struggle to maintain employment despite its proven role in successful recovery, placing them within the “anonymous and available” workforce. In this episode we sit down with Mike Thibideau of Invest Hamilton County to discuss how the addiction epidemic is quickly becoming a workforce issue, best practices for developing second chance policies for those who relapse, advice for employers looking to hire, accommodate, and retain employees suffering from substance abuse, as well as how this issue falls under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

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About DE Talk

For DirectEmployers, it’s all about valuable connections and meaningful conversations. This monthly podcast features honest and open dialogue between powerhouse industry experts on a variety of HR topics ranging from OFCCP compliance advice to emerging recruitment marketing trends, diversity and inclusion initiatives, and insightful solutions that help infuse new life into your HR strategies.

Hosted by Candee Chambers, Executive Director of DirectEmployers Association.

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Episode Guest

Episode Transcript

Candee Chambers:

Get ready. The DE Talk Podcast starts now insightful conversations and dialogue, helping you put the human factor back in HR.

Shannon Offord:

Whether you walk into a mom and pop shop in Smalltown, USA or office in the city, they all have one thing in common, we’re hiring signs plaster from the front door or several openings on the career site. The wave of talent shortages following the pandemic has affected most employers, so much so that industries are struggling to maintain their levels of service they once held. How are they coping? Many are limiting hours, while others are getting creative with hiring, turning to often overlooked talent pools, or as our guest, Mike Thibideau, of Indiana based Invest Hamilton County refers to it the anonymous workforce. Workers who are early in the post substance abuse recovery journey. Mike, thanks for joining us today.

Mike Thibideau:

Yeah, I’m happy to be here.

Shannon Offord:

As a reformer recruiter, this conversation really struck a chord with me because so many recruiters get stuck recruiting in the same places over and over again, and I think this conversation may really open some eyes. Before we jump in, can you share a little bit with our listeners about yourself and some of your background education?

Mike Thibideau:

Yeah, sure. So I grew up in metro Detroit, come from a fairly-

Shannon Offord:

Wait, wait, wait. You grew up in Detroit?

Mike Thibideau:

Yeah.

Shannon Offord:

I’m from Ohio. That’s tough.

Mike Thibideau:

I guess, sure.

Shannon Offord:

Can we have this conversation? I’m just kidding.

Mike Thibideau:

Probably.

Shannon Offord:

Okay.

Mike Thibideau:

I went to Michigan State, so I don’t really care-

Shannon Offord:

Oh, you’re okay. You’re okay.

Mike Thibideau:

… too much. We probably dislike the same people, so-

Shannon Offord:

We good. We’re good.

Mike Thibideau:

… we’re probably okay.

Shannon Offord:

We’re good. We’re good. All right, we’re good.

Mike Thibideau:

But growing up, I grew up traditional middle class household in metro Detroit, pretty standard middle of the road upbringing, and I ended up going to Michigan State. I got my BA in public policy and public administration. Following that, I went to work on political campaigns for a number of years, and then I’m actually relocated here to Indiana.

Shannon Offord:

What brought you here?

Mike Thibideau:

I came here to work for my fraternity. They’re international headquarters. It’s actually a really big industry in the nonprofit space here in central Indiana. I would say the vast majority of fraternities and sororities are actually headquartered here in Indianapolis.

Shannon Offord:

Yeah, I think by my old office actually.

Mike Thibideau:

Yeah, if you’re over by The Pyramids-

Shannon Offord:

By The Pyramids.

Mike Thibideau:

… there’s a whole bunch of them right there, yeah. So came here to do that work. And then after that we started running a construction association, before working at the Chamber, which is kind of the overall project that we’re talking about today with that Indiana Workforce Recovery Initiative. And then today I’m the president and CEO of Invest Hamilton County, which is Hamilton County’s Economic Development Corporation.

But throughout all of that, I came from a household with two loving parents and all the privilege and blessings you could look for in this world. But I did still have a lot of trauma that occurred within my childhood and within my life. That did lead to a lot of chronic anxiety and security, a number of mental health issues, which eventually led me down a path where within that story of gainful employment and that career trajectory that I just laid out, there was almost a year of homelessness. There was involvement with the justice system. There was a multi-year, over a decade, struggle myself with addiction that came in through that.

And it’s really interesting because if you read my bio and people see… they interacted with me, I like to joke that, “It looks like all I used to do is go to kindergarten and then I just became an adult.” Being a white man living in Carmel, there’s a lot of assumptions made, I think, about what my life has been and what my life is. But the reality is that it’s had a lot of struggle attached to it as well. And so I think that’s really where in all my jobs I’ve been able to find a nice little niche and opportunity of being able to put myself in other people’s shoes that maybe otherwise are being overlooked within the labor market.

And especially being a person who traditionally… Ever since I started at the construction industry, I remember I was there and they go, “Hey, guess what? You’re working for a construction association, workforce is now your thing. This is what you care about.” And I said, “Okay, I guess I got to learn about workforce.” And the more I dove into it, the more that connection with those non-traditional hires kind of came to the forefront. And I would say that’s something I’ve been able to do throughout my career is connect that non-traditional worker to traditional opportunity and success.

Shannon Offord:

So really your position in the construction industry that really led you into the workforce recovery space then, essentially.

Mike Thibideau:

So I was at that job and I was leading and developing some training programs in construction. I was doing a lot of hiring fairs with neighborhood centers throughout Indianapolis. I was working with churches, and we were doing work with corrections. And I started to be a little bit more vocal about telling my personal story. At first, I was pretty hesitant and closed off about it. But depending on how you view it, either the right people or the wrong people found out, and they said, “Oh, you’re a person who’s done workforce development work. You’ve worked with employers and businesses, and then you also have a personal connection to this issue.”

And I got approached by some people that were working with the Chamber of Commerce and the governor’s office saying, “Hey, you should apply for this job. You should be the one leading this new thing that the governor and the Chamber are trying to launch.” And I looked at it, I said, “No,” to those people a couple times, and then eventually I said, “Yes.” And that was what really led me into that space.

Shannon Offord:

Yeah, you can only tell the governor’s office, “No,” so many times.

Mike Thibideau:

I think that’s how it goes. And I think also, you can only… I knew that I didn’t want my whole professional life to be addiction and recovery along with my personal life being a lot of that and what I do as a volunteer and how I manage my chronic disease that I have. But the opportunity for even just a couple years to be of even more direct service to my own community and the population at large in the state of Indiana was something that I kind of said, “Okay, I’ll do this for two to three years.” And I did it for two years and eight months, and then I went back to the more normal economic development, workforce development world. But as we will talk about as we go through the conversation, that kind of never went away. Once you’re in, you never get out. So…

Shannon Offord:

So tell us a little bit more about your role with Invest Hamilton County. I live in Noblesville, also in Hamilton County, and I mean, this is kind of a selfish question, I’d like to know a little bit more about what you do there and kind of what your day-to-day may look like.

Mike Thibideau:

Whoa, my day-to-day is a wonderfully organized chaos is one way I’d put it. But what we do it at Invest Hamilton County, so technically we’re Hamilton County’s Economic Development Corporation. We’re the local economic development organization for Hamilton County. However, we’re a really unique community in that Carmel, Fishers, Westfield, Noblesville, the cities themselves have these amazing economic development departments that do such a good job of driving business to their communities, while also doing the traditional economic development activities like urban planning, tax abatements, the stuff you think of that would be my job. I do none of that.

We exclusively focus on workforce development, education, and then what I broadly would call quality of life priorities that drive what we call economic vitality within our region. And the way I love to put it, and that I heard it put even better the other day by Fred Payne at United Way, is we want every person in our community to have a path to live the best life they possibly can. That means career pathways for everybody, regardless of your ability and where you come from. That means broadband access for everybody. That means a mental health support ecosystem that really has the ability to support employees and retain talent at our businesses. And it also means we continue to support the overall growth of our community in a equitable and in a really forward-thinking manner.

And so that’s where we sink our teeth into a whole bunch of different stuff. We’re managing the Pursuit Institute Project, which is a new career and technical education district that’s been opened up between our six school corporations. We support mental health initiatives and training programs in the jail. We’re diving deep into our disability environment and running training programs there. We’re assisting the county with managing things like opioid settlement dollars and forward-thinking gap analysis and strategies for building up our mental health support ecosystem.

And then we do a lot of research data projects, labor market forecasting, and general workforce development and business services for our local community. So we’re in a lot of different places doing a lot of different things. But kind of the centralizing idea of it is that right now Hamilton County has about 350,000 residents, 183,000 jobs. Before you know it, there’s going to be 500,000 people, 250,000 jobs. What happens between where we are now and where we are then to make that growth occur in the right manner and keep our community at the top and keep us great for everybody, not just the college graduates and the people coming in who can afford that great life that community.

Shannon Offord:

So how did you land in your current role? What was the transition or the process from your old position into this one?

Mike Thibideau:

Well, so when I was with the Chamber, as I said, I told them, “Hey, two to three years is what you got.” And so I started to come towards the end of that time period and I was like, “Hey, you know what? I want to get back into local work. I want to get back into economic development, workforce development as my primary.” And I knew the person who was in my role before and she was retiring, and I gave her a call and said, “Hey, I live in Hamilton County. I’d love to get local.” Because I saw in my work at the Chamber, I worked with a bunch of local leaders, and I saw how deep they were able to get on such a variety of topics and also the impact they were able to have.

They build these programs, but then they also were the ones on the ground implementing them and changing lives. And I said, “I think that’s where I want to be next. I want to go local somewhere,” and the ability to do it in my own backyard, in a place that I feel so passionate about, I mean, I grew up in Detroit, but I’ve lived in Carmel for, I don’t know, 11 years now. It’s the only place I’ve ever paid a property tax. So it’s kind of like own property, had children, the whole thing, that’s where my kids are going to go to school. I got Carmel roots now, and I think I got Hamilton County roots, and I want to give back to the community and make it a great place to live for everybody.

And so after reaching out, I kind of figured out that it was a great opportunity. It seemed like an organization that through the pandemic, had realized a lot of gaps that existed and was primed to do a lot of things even bigger. And coming on, I was the only team member, now we’re up to five, and we’re going to just continue to grow and do great things, but also in a way that builds up other organizations around us and establishes anchors in these different realms that we operate in.

Shannon Offord:

Well, I mean, obviously being a Hamilton County resident, I appreciate the work that you’re doing. 24 years now for me in Noblesville. So-

Mike Thibideau:

Awesome. You’ve seen a big difference there.

Shannon Offord:

I have. I think I’ve actually, let’s see, I’ve lived here as long as I lived in Ohio now, so I think next year I’ll actually officially be, hope no one hears this, maybe a Hoosier, maybe, I think.

Mike Thibideau:

Are you a Colts fan? Is that-

Shannon Offord:

Huge, huge Cults fan.

Mike Thibideau:

Okay, so you converted there.

Shannon Offord:

Yeah, I converted there. Pacer fan, always have been though. I’m still a Buckeye fan. And I’ll always be a Buckeye at heart, but I guess I do have some Hoosier roots, I guess. So I guess we’ll admit that now. So walk me a little bit through what a non-traditional candidate might look like. At the beginning we talked about how recruiters continually look in the same places over and over again, and they wonder why they get the same results and why they’re struggling filling their positions. But let’s just talk about maybe, like I said, the non-traditional candidate, what that may look like, and maybe some areas where they may be found.

Mike Thibideau:

Yeah, so there’s a lot of different pools of non-traditional workers. I think the main buckets people often think of are kind of justice involved, disability, and then really, unemployed is probably the wrong word, but people who’ve just been out of the labor market for a long time, chronically unemployed or underemployed-

Shannon Offord:

Unemployed, yeah, I think that’s the term, yeah.

Mike Thibideau:

… would be how we think about it. And then also I would say depending on what type of position you’re recruiting for, in some cases, even just expanding a position to not just be for a college grad can be considered opening up to a non-traditional pathway. If everybody before, if every job posting you’ve ever had for that job says you have to have a four-year degree, and all of a sudden you have a eureka moment, and you’re like, “Why? Maybe we can change that to the or 10 years equivalent industry experience or five years experience,” that can be a big thing.

And helping to recognize those lateral skill sets is a big deal for employers, because you may not think about how someone’s retail work could make them a great front desk agent at a hotel. You may not think about how somebody who has worked on a home building site could then transfer those skills over to another type of occupation.

And I think more than that, stigma allows us to put up walls for certain groups of people that make us preemptively think about what they can’t do instead of what they can. And I see that a lot with our disability work. The individuals on one end with intellectual and developmental disabilities, the medical system from the moment they’re born, their parents are just told what this person will never do. And all of a sudden that’s the narrative that’s in their brain is they’ve got that same thing. But we can flip that. We can make it about what they can do. And really by focusing on those strengths, we’re able to find great opportunity.

And it’s the same way for our reentry and recovery populations as well. These are individuals who chronically have just been grinding for the most part through life. In most cases, they started using substances when they were young, and as a result, it hasn’t been rainbows and puppy kisses. If you start using when you’re 12 years old, like I did, or when you’re 14, 15 years old at a very high rate, your chances of achieving a college degree are probably lower, but your chances of also retaining employment are lower, and your relationships in your life are probably more strained.

And as a result, the insecurity that you walk around with every single day is that much greater. And when we build hiring programs for these individuals, and when we engage with employers on how to develop these pathways, the number one thing we tell them is that, “Fear is your opponent.” Any moment in this person’s life where they can have, even if it’s an irrational one, a sense of this isn’t real, this won’t work, this isn’t for me, I’m not good enough, they’re gone. And that’s the main difference between successful, not just attraction of this kind of talent, but also retention.

I remember we worked on a training program once and we had an individual whose aunt died, unfortunately, and he just didn’t show up to work, because he had to go take care of her kids and help out his family. Every job he’d ever had before would’ve told him, “Hey, you know what? Yeah, you have to come in or you’re fired.” But instead, we got a call from the HR rep going like, “Hey, Johnny didn’t show up to work today. We’re worried about him. We’re just want to know if he’s okay.” I called up the local pastor, which is how they got connected to him through a career fair with us. And he told us the whole story. He said, “Hey, no, they had a death in the family, did this.” And we said, “Hey, tell Johnny to call work and tell them when he’s coming back.” He would’ve never called if that connection hadn’t been made and if that employer hadn’t reached out.

And so it’s taking that example and applying it to 50 other things, but also proactively telling employers, ‘When you’re engaging with this type of worker, tell them about those kinds of things in advance. ‘We’ll support you if you have a death in the family and need to take some, even if it’s unpaid time off, you can come back.’ ‘Hey, if your kid gets sick, what happens?'” Because for so long, people who get, for lack of better words, trapped within these, let’s say, $9 to $12 an hour service sector jobs, where they’re grinding through multiple jobs at a time, they’re treated like warm bodies.

And when we provide them with training and pathways to get up into really living wage position, where all of a sudden maybe they’re not just treated like a warm body, you can’t just assume that they’ll all of a sudden recognize what that difference is and know how to react and proactively receive those employee supports from their employer. So the employer has to really be more proactive in telling them about it, and saying day one, like, “Hey, here’s our culture. We care about you. Your health and wellbeing is first.” And allow culture to be something that isn’t earned but rather is unearned. I don’t know if there’s a different word for that. But give people accommodations and privileges just like you would if they’ve been there for a month and killing it on day one, and make that a privilege they lose rather than something they have to gain.

Shannon Offord:

Yeah, totally agree with that. I mean, right now, obviously the country is dealing with an addiction epidemic, really, and it’s not just a public health issue, it’s really becoming a workforce issue. Can you share some facts that may be surprising to listeners with regard to how many people may be struggling with addiction? And it doesn’t have to be exact numbers, just kind of a general… I mean, I know that there’s different types of addictions too. So…

Mike Thibideau:

So you hear a lot of numbers like one in five. You also hear there was a study in 2017 that showed 38% of Americans are dealing with illicit drug use. There’s a lot of different statistics out there that’ll show that this is a very frequent part of everyday American struggles. I know for us, we recognize that within the two-year period that I was at the Chamber, we had a lot of employers stop terminating people just on first failed drug tests. The second one, you’re out, but the first one, let’s get you connected to some type of education or best practice programming and keep you employed. And that amounted to about 60,000 workers a year in the state of Indiana that fell into that category of a first time drug failure. And so I mean, we think about our labor market and our employer situation, 60,000 people per year, that’s a lot of workers.

Shannon Offord:

That’s just here.

Mike Thibideau:

That’s just in Indiana. And so when we think about employer’s ability to retain that talent instead of letting it go, it has an effect on multiple lanes. One is, if somebody’s more able to stay connected to a meaningful life and to society, their chances of going further downhill in their health are less. But then, also, their chances of getting better are higher. When people have gainful employment and a connection to employment, their recovery outcomes are better across the board. And so we really do believe that helping employers with that is a top public health priority.

Some people would tell you, “Addiction doesn’t discriminate.” They’re like, “Oh, doctors struggle with addiction. Lawyers struggle with addiction.” It’s all true. But by the numbers, the one thing it does discriminate against is that people start using young. People who develop addiction, for the most part, start using when they’re at a really young age. And that alone does hamper the opportunities that they have available to them. Therefore, if you do look at the admissions that people have to treatment centers, it does skew towards a higher proportion than the general population, don’t have high school diplomas, don’t have college degrees, don’t have advanced degrees.

Because if I start using drugs when I’m 12 years old, how likely am I to even get through high school? Less likely. It’s fair to say less likely. And so that’s one of those areas too, is we need to recognize that when we think of social services and supports and even employment opportunities, when we’re looking for untapped talent to fill some of our hardest to fill positions in our economy, that’s a place where they are. We have to give them education and training as well.

Shannon Offord:

Do you think that most of the individuals who are struggling with addiction, do you think they’re seeking recovery programs or no? Or is that maybe to be hard to-

Mike Thibideau:

So it’s a complicated response, I guess. So about half of the people who ever meet the medical AMA criteria for substance use disorder, they stop or they mitigate on their own due to one adverse circumstance. So I could get back to college years, and I had a bunch of buddies who probably drank way too much, that definitely met the criteria for potential alcoholism.

If you’re looking at how many days a week they drank and how much they drank each of those days, they’re definitely checking some boxes. At the time, they would’ve met that criteria. And some of them continued drinking like that after college for a little bit. But for the most part, they got a job, they had a family. Maybe one night they went out and drank too much, but they didn’t like how they felt the next day, and they just said, “I’m going to pull back a little bit.”

Shannon Offord:

That’s it.

Mike Thibideau:

“I’m pulling back.” That’s about half of the people who ever meet the criteria are able to just put the brakes on themselves. The other half can’t. And they have to and they need to, if they ever stop, go through some type of medical intervention. But a lot of them don’t. So right now in America, it’s estimated that about 22 to 28 million Americans live in recovery, as in they were dealing with a substance use issue, and now are in remission, for lack of better words, with their disease. So I mean, that’s almost 10% of the population. It’s a lot of people.

Shannon Offord:

What type of advice would you give employers? I know that you talked about maybe talking to them about how they can give privileges right out of the gate, instead of making people earn them, but what other types of things would you suggest that employers do to maybe ready themselves or maybe improve what they’re doing for people who may be suffering from substance abuse who are in their companies already?

Mike Thibideau:

So Indiana Workforce Recovery at the Chamber did produce a really great evidence-based second chance policy that aligns with some state statute, provides liability protections for employers, talks about how to engage with medical community, how to use the Employee Assistance Programs more effectively. That’s a really good resource I would just send anybody to think about what a really good second chance policy works, how that works. And to be clear, it’s a second chance policy, not a third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, 10th chance policy. But the other thing, I’d echo again, culture isn’t earned. If you’re the type of workplace that says, “Once we keep people for 90 days, they stay here for years,” my question is why isn’t that 60 days?

I can get why it’s not two weeks. There are individuals in our society who go in and out of jobs. That’s fair. That’s the thing that happens. But why is your 90-day mark not 60 days? And then why can’t it become 45? And I think setting those kind of benchmarks for yourself as a method of achievement is a really valuable thing for employers when they look at their long-term retention rates. And I think also that’s very different depending on the type of work you do. So I mean, just as an example, a small business like mine, if I was losing any employees at 90 days, that would be a really high proportion. That’d be a really big problem. But I’ve supervised operations with hundreds of employees before, and in those processes, it had to be expected that a certain number of them were going to turn over, and kind of realize the job wasn’t the right fit and move on.

The other part that I would say is look at your job descriptions and make sure they really map up against what you need. So a job description shouldn’t be built to attract the ideal candidate. It should be considered the floor on which an ideal candidate can stand. And so if you think about it that way, if a person’s looking at your job, they shouldn’t be saying, “I can’t do that.” Because if they are, and then they come to you and they go, “Hey, I can’t do this,” and you go, “Oh, no problem. We’ll give you training,” then why is it on the job description or why doesn’t it disclose that they’ll get training on how to do that specific skill?

Because on the whole, especially when you look at workers who are making less than $20 an hour for many of these positions that exist in our society, again, fear and insecurity are such a huge part of this. They’ve been treated like a number so many places they’ve ever worked that if they can’t see themselves being successful on day one, the chances that they make it to that magical 60 or 90 day mark is really limited.

We also have to look at cultural expectations and thinking about what do you assume people have to know or should know on day one that you’re not telling them? So when I was in construction, a really easy example of that that made a huge difference was in one of our training programs we learned we had to teach people how to pack their lunch for a day at the job site. There’s no fridge on a construction job site. You had to learn what is it like to pack that lunch on that first day, because otherwise maybe you don’t eat, or maybe you’re invited out to lunch with people and you don’t have money to eat.

All of a sudden you’re feeling like an other, from day one. How do we make you feel more like you belong and go into a workplace with as much confidence as possible? And that’s a little bit less on the employer, but it still could be on the employer. But it’s definitely more on what we see when we develop trainings is that sense of what are those things that people are going to assume you need to know about that are going to make you feel like an other, if you’re not getting it day one? Because we all want to belong. We all want to go into a place feeling like we’re part of the team and we’re part of the group that we’re going into. We’re tribal beings, so how can we give people more of that sense immediately?

And I think that’s the same aspect of the culture not being something that’s earned thing. This isn’t some… People shouldn’t be hazed for. I mean, it’s not hazing, but people shouldn’t feel like they’re getting hazed when they go into a new job. It shouldn’t be like, “Okay, new guys, shut your mouth.” It should be, “Okay, new guy, what value do you bring? And how can you feel like you’re part of the team day one?” Every job has a learning curve, but that shouldn’t apply to how you’re treated.

Shannon Offord:

It’s always that first week when that anxiety is-

Mike Thibideau:

Oh, my gosh.

Shannon Offord:

… so present. Yeah.

Mike Thibideau:

Yeah, bump it every time. I think regardless of where you’re at in your career, you always have a little bit of that.

Shannon Offord:

I mean, I’ve been here for 17 years and I still remember my first week of anxiety here, so that was a long time ago. With so many employers hiring, can you share how employers can engage and hire job seekers that are early recovery? I mean, I know we kind of touched on that a little bit, but…

Mike Thibideau:

Well, so I think specific to early recovery, what I would say is you already probably are hiring them now. You just don’t know. Because if somebody is in early recovery, they can pass a drug test. They don’t need any accommodations. They’re an able-bodied, relatively sane member of society. If they come to you and apply for a position, they’re good to go. They shouldn’t be coming to you and saying like, “Hey, by the way, three weeks ago I was doing a lot of drugs.” That’s not like a sane thing I would recommend anybody ever say in an interview process or anything like that.

So I think more is just thinking about the fact that you do have employees who are applying for these positions that probably are in these things. So what 101 level foundational supports are you putting into place to support the health and wellbeing of all of your employees that prepare you for what happens if and when somebody does disclose a need for accommodation? Because let’s say they do come to you and they say, “Hey, listen, I’m in early recovery, and I need to let you know that I’m working too many hours. I can’t go to meetings.” What do you say? Do you say, “Tough”? Because that’s illegal, so you can’t just say that?

Shannon Offord:

Can’t do that. Yeah, can’t do that.

Mike Thibideau:

Yeah, you can’t do that. You got to know. And that’s I think when we used to do a lot of our trainings around the state, and even today when I do a lot of work with employers on non-traditional talent, one of the first things we cover is ADA, FMLA, OSHA. We go through the regulations that really do say, for the most part, you have to help these people. But also we use that to build the foundation, because if HR representatives and supervisors understand that like, “Oh, this isn’t an option we have, this is something we have to do,” then they’re more likely to just go, “Okay, this is what’s happening.”

And I think that’s the hardest part. We do have a circumstance, and I think with people in early recovery as well, where on the more social services side, we need to just get better about helping them connect to better jobs. That’s not on employers. Because, as I said, if they can pass a drug test and they’re an able-bodied individual who’s qualified for the job, on the social services side, we need to do a better job and our nonprofits need to do a better job just saying, “Hey, you know what? You’re better than the grocery store. You’re better than the gas station. You’re better than you name it. You can have a career.”

Because they really don’t believe that they can. And if we tell them, “Hey, while you get yourself into recovery and while you start this journey, this is all you’re able to do, this is all you’re good enough for.” I mean, how would that feel to hear that?

Shannon Offord:

And that’s pretty much where they’re stuck, and people keep telling them that, unfortunately.

Mike Thibideau:

Yes. And there’s a saying in recovery, like, “Nothing changes, if nothing changes.” Then I feel like at the same time, sometimes there’s a narrative of, “You’re not good enough yet for the change when it comes to this,” and I think that’s wrong.

Shannon Offord:

I think one thing that’s important to remember that this is also covered under the ADA. I think some employers may not think it is, but substance abuse is covered. So…

Mike Thibideau:

To be clear, you can’t be hired drunk on a job site or at work, ever. But if you’re not engaging in illicit behavior or behavior that’s directly against corporate policy and you come and you request assistance, if I’m an individual who goes to my employer and says, “Hey, listen, I realized I’m drinking too much. I’m using drugs. I need to go get help today.” There is an obligation, to an extent, depending on your size and safety regulations to accommodate that.

And on the other end, if you’re a person who is in recovery, like myself, and I go to my employer and I say, “Hey, listen, I’m struggling and I need to go to more meetings. I need to go meet with a counselor. I need to do X, Y, or Z to manage my chronic disease that I have.” It gets treated the same way as if I had diabetes, as if I had any other chronic heart or health condition. And that’s how it has to get treated, is, “Okay. Let’s figure out what a reasonable accommodation can be to help you take care of yourself.”

Shannon Offord:

If you were an employer and one of your employees has a relapse, I know we talked about a second chance, but how would you recommend employers deal with those relapses?

Mike Thibideau:

So I think it’s twofold. One is encourage voluntary disclosure and accommodation. So if an employee over the weekend has a relapse and they come in on Monday sober and go, “I need more help,” you help them, every time. If they don’t have a performance issue at work, they’re doing their job well and they have a little slip, make it a little slip. Treat them like that’s what it is and give them all the support they can possibly need, so that way they can get back to work and be a good, productive employee, but then also get well.

However, if it comes up instead through a disciplinary process where they’re not doing their job, they’re showing up late, they fail a drug test, failing a drug test has to have its own type of consequence according to corporate policy. Generally, it looks like, we were tracking, when I was at the Chamber, a couple of different best practice, second chance policies, and really they were second chance policies. Places that would just funnel people in and out of treatment eight, 10 times, it didn’t seem to have any positive association with outcomes.

But a, “Hey, okay, you failed your first drug test. Go get help, and then come back.” With a written process being, “Hey, we’re going to drug test you more now after this. You’re going to have a probationary period, basically. Where now that you failed this one drug test, you will get drug tested more. It’s no longer random. It’s, you will get drug tested more on this type of schedule. Still somewhat random, but on a more frequent schedule. If you fail another one was drug tests, that’s it.”

But then I think the bigger thing though, really is figuring out the process for what happens when that slip occurs, because there’ll be a slip way before there’s a fall. And so if we can just… Let’s say we are noticing, all right, all of a sudden Bob starts behaving not like Bob, meaning not like Bob in recovery. Bob goes through treatment one time, gets better, comes back in, starts killing it, doing great work. But all of a sudden starts showing up a little bit late, missing deadlines, having some interpersonal issues, maybe starts talking about money problems again, whatever it may be, behaviors that were like old Bob, before even the failed drug test or discipline can happen or should happen, I think there’s another obligation to just have a conversation of, “Are you okay? And is there anything we can help you with? We’ve noticed these behaviors that we’ve listed out. Can we help you with anything?”

Let the person disclose what’s going on and then help them. Help them get back on that right path. We worked with Krieg Devault throughout a lot of our education, and there are some amazing speakers there, and they would always just say, “It’s always okay to ask if you’re okay.” You can go, “Hey, are you okay? Hey, do you need help?” And if somebody says, “Yes,” start the process, help them. That’s a fairly common attitude or thing to hopefully do, but sometimes they can feel intimidating.

You don’t want to probe into their life, but if they’re not doing their job, you can ask them if they’re okay. And then if they just say like, “Yeah, everything’s fine,” or they might tell you something completely different, they might go, “Oh, you know what? My dad died yesterday.” Or, “Hey, I got something completely else going on.” “Okay, let’s help you with that too.”

Shannon Offord:

I think employers obviously should be offering these types of programs too, right? I mean, as part of their benefits package, that should be something that they should probably have as part of it.

Mike Thibideau:

I think so. I think a good second chance policy makes a lot of sense. And also just in general, and the pandemic has had a huge impact on this, the presence of standalone EAPs now versus embedded policies. I guess, I should spell it out a little bit. Embedded meaning it’s a tag, it’s a ride along on your health insurance or another policy that you really don’t pay anything for, but you just get as a passive benefit. Those traditionally are not as in depth as a independent service that you’re paying for on its own to be an EAP.

Those standalone EAPs are way more common now than they’ve ever been. I rarely interact with employers who don’t have one now. And I think that’s the kind of thing that you just have to know, how are we actively, not just passively saying it exists during your orientation booklet, but how are we actively communicating it so people can feel like even confidentially that they can reach out to the EAP and go like, “Hey, I need to get therapy. Hey, I need to get help. How many free counseling sessions are included?” And just look at that stuff.

Shannon Offord:

But I know you guys are doing, at Invest Hamilton County, some really cool things around mental health and substance abuse. Can you talk to us a little bit about… And I know you’ve kind of touched on some of those things, but…

Mike Thibideau:

So most of the things we’re doing right now are very… Well, so we launched a multi-year education programming period in partnership with the local chambers. And we did a bunch of mental health first aid education that we only charge businesses $5 to attend, mostly so that way they’d show up. Normally it costs around $500. So with very gracious funding from the commissioners and council, we were able to make that happen for a lot of local businesses. We also produced some evidence-based resource guides. We did some marijuana education. Sorry, to be clear, marijuana in the workplace education for businesses. We didn’t teach people how to use marijuana.

The other thing we did was produce kind of a one-on-one level resource guide and helped kickstart some gap analysis questions within the community, which eventually led us… So Invest Hamilton County, the Hamilton County Community Foundation, and then also the Hamilton County Commissioners and Council did end up standing up a new countywide behavioral health collaborative, which we’re on the guiding team for that really is now helping to drive bigger picture, ecosystem wide conversations on these topics. And that will make a huge difference in the long run in our community.

Just having everybody together, rowing in the same direction. Because there’s a lot of money in that space right now from a healthcare and mental health and support side, we need to make sure how that aligns with the rest of our, for example, justice system involvement and also our just businesses and capacity.

Shannon Offord:

I guess before we get into a less serious part of our conversation, is there anything else you’d like to share around this topic? And just to be clear, I mean, you’ve covered some really good and shared some really good information. I think our employers will really get a lot out of, but-

Mike Thibideau:

I think I’m good so far. I think I hit most of the things that I’d probably look to dig into.

Shannon Offord:

One thing we’d like to do before we wrap up these conversations, just have a rapid fire question section. All fun, nothing serious. The first thing that pops in your head. What do you wish you would’ve learned sooner? It doesn’t have to be about this topic, it could be about anything.

Mike Thibideau:

I wish it would learn sooner how to say, “No,” to things in a kind way.

Shannon Offord:

I’m still learning that. Best career advice you’ve ever received?

Mike Thibideau:

The best career advice I ever received was probably just to put self-care at the center of everything, meaning for both me and my employees. So when I think of any new program that I’m going to take on, I think of any new priority that we’re going to do, regardless of the amount of good it could do in the community, the amount of money it could bring into an organization, the amount of whatever, if in saying yes to that, the self-care of my own employees will suffer, as in their lives are going to become a lot harder and a lot worse, and therefore I probably wouldn’t be able to maybe keep them or keep them as happy, is something I at least have to think about saying no to.

Shannon Offord:

Normally I would ask, what’s your favorite fast food restaurant? But since we just talked about self-care, I won’t go there and we’ll go to a hobby.

Mike Thibideau:

I love golf. Yeah. I just finished a four-day trip in northern Michigan with some buddies, even just this last weekend. That’s my main main.

Shannon Offord:

I actually just got back from 90 hole golf tournament that started last Friday and ended on Sunday.

Mike Thibideau:

I literally did the same thing. We were probably playing golf simultaneously all three of those days.

Shannon Offord:

90 holes was rough.

Mike Thibideau:

It was. It was a lot. My spiritual and physical self, even today, are still very misaligned. How my back feels versus how my soul feels. I’m very filled up in one and very sore in the other. So-

Shannon Offord:

Yeah, I get that. It’s been hard to get up the last few days. What quote resonates with you the most?

Mike Thibideau:

So honestly, one that I end up doing a lot, especially in this job is, “Fear is the mind-killer,” from Dune, by Frank Herbert. It’s an amazing book that actually, recently, I guess became a movie too. Well, it’s became another movie. It’s been a bunch of movies. But I talk about that a lot because I say, “Fear is the job killer.” I say, “It’s the recovery killer.” I mean, fear, I talk about fear a lot in my job. So that’s probably one for now that comes to mind.

Shannon Offord:

What’s your favorite movie?

Mike Thibideau:

Probably, Star Wars Empire Strikes Beck.

Shannon Offord:

That’s a good one. All right, I’ll let you off the hook with some of these others, but I’d like to thank you for joining us today. It’s been very good information that you’ve shared. This has been one of the better podcasts that I’ve been able to participate in. So thanks again, and thank you all for listening.

Mike Thibideau:

Yeah, it was a lot of fun. Thank you.

Shannon Offord:

Thanks.

Candee Chambers:

Thank you for tuning in for another episode of the DE Talk Podcast. Stay connected with DirectEmployers on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn and subscribe to our emails by visiting DirectEmployers.org/subscribe to receive notifications of new episodes each month.