This video segment is from Restoring Hope, a TV series hosted on WHMB40 and serving the Indianapolis area. Crosswinds Counseling offers counseling services throughout Indiana.
Curtis: It’s a pleasure welcoming our next quest, Jenny Leshney. Jenny is the Director of Engineering for Christopher B. Burke Engineering here in Indianapolis. Jenny, thank you for joining us.
Jenny: Certainly.
Curtis: For those who don’t know Christopher B. Burke very well, tell us a little bit about your organization. What do you guys do?
Jenny: Sure. We are a civil engineering firm. We focus on water resources, a lot of dams and levies, stream restoration, environmental work. Those types of things.
Curtis: With four offices in Indiana, you guys have done a lot of work across the Hoosier state.
Jenny: We have. Our main office is in Indianapolis, but also South Bend, and Crown Point, and Columbus.
Curtis: All right. So we’re here on Restoring Hope. We’re talking about mental health issues generally, and you work at an engineering firm. Where is the connection? Why are you here? Why does this matter to Christopher B. Burke?
Jenny: So we have a lot of clients. We are in the customer service business, and we have a lot of clients that we deal with on a regular basis. Some are more challenging than others. We have a large volume of work and several engineers. In the course of our work, it can be a high-stress environment, and so we really pride ourselves on wellness for our employees. We have a good wellness program. We have a bike-to-work program. We actually have a canoe-to-work event. We do some other interesting things, but in light of Covid we were seeing a disconnect with our staff and wanting to help and support people with their mental health as well. Keeping people and their families healthy and helping them cope with whatever issues might arise during the day, and it keeps them more active and healthy and engaged in their work when they’re happy and healthy and engaged at home.
Curtis: Tell me more about how the pandemic impacted your work. It had such a diverse impact on different organizations, different segments of the population. Did people start working remotely? Was it mixed? What was that like in and around your offices as the pandemic really settled in?
Jenny: Well, we all worked remotely. It happened pretty quickly. We were able to get everything set up, and probably within a week, everyone was able to work from home remotely. Which made us very efficient at first because people weren’t having a commute and they were getting down and ready to work, that type of thing. Then as time went on, you know you need to have some collaboration and some in-person and some face time and so we saw people sort of falling off engagement with staff and it was really important to keep people engaged.
Curtis: And how did you do that? How did you go about doing that? Because the pandemic hasn’t let up yet and we’re some 18 months into it.
Jenny: Right. So a lot of team videos and zooms and go-to meetings and whatever platform we could get on, but we also went to some weekly huddles with our teams and you know some little fun questions of the day and keeping different people leading those meetings and just trying to keep engagement and doing something a little bit different each week. Kind of break up the monotony of being in their home. I was going stir crazy. I was in my home all the time. which I have a property I can walk around on, but a lot of people might be in their apartment and you know, not be able to get out or engage with other people.
Curtis: One of the other things I know Cristopher B. Burke has done is, you have become a Corporate Counseling Partner of Crosswinds Counseling. Tell me what that has meant to your team and your staff there in the office.
Jenny: I think it’s important for people to realize that there’s no shame or stigma in admitting that you need help and that you need mental health. That you need to take care of your personal well-being. And I think what has been great about it for our staff is that people can take ownership of their own well-being and they don’t have to feel intimidated by that and the company supports that. It allows people to move forward in dealing with any challenging issues. Whether it be your children or your spouse or your family or your mother-in-law lives with you, all of these types of things people have challenges with.
Curtis: I have this picture in my head of engineers.
Jenny: Yes.
Curtis: Maybe this is a bad stereotype, but of [engineers] being more introverted, quieter, more keep-to-yourselves type of people, which can make mental health issues even more of a challenge when you are prone to isolation anyway, it can be another stumbling block. How has that been received, to have this service in your organization when you probably do have more of those introverted people who probably wouldn’t be talking about these things.
Jenny: Will the interesting thing about Crosswinds is that it’s completely confidential. So that engineer that might be intimidated or not socially out there can actually take advantage of these services without anybody knowing and actually maintaining that type of privacy, and I have not seen any adverse impact from that. I think people are actually more willing to be open and honest when they have that opportunity to do so.
Curtis: Yeah that is good. As an employer, I feel like one of the things that employers have to be cognizant of in this day and age with recruiting and retention so important, is providing these kinds of benefits – it really is a benefit, do you think that Christopher B. Burke looks at it that way – through this lens of this is an important tool that we can offer to our employees yes, but it also helps us as an employer to be more compassionate.
Jenny: Sure. There are a lot of firms competing for very limited talent. One of the things that I think sets us apart is our culture. That is a culture of wellness and taking care of our employees, and I’ve really believed that offering these services does set us apart. There are not a lot of engineering firms that do that, and so we’ve been able to add to our staff. I think one of the things is the culture and the opportunity to take care of yourself, [to take care] of your wellness as well as your professional life.
Curtis: Thank you so much for taking a few minutes to be with us tonight.
Jenny: Absolutely.
Curtis: We really appreciate your time.