Workplace MVP: Dr. George Vergolias, R3 Continuum

Intro: [00:00:06] Broadcasting from the Business RadioX Studios, it’s time for Workplace MVP. Workplace MVP is brought to you by R3 Continuum, a global leader in workplace behavioral health, crisis, and security solutions. Now, here’s your host, Jamie Gassmann.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:00:27] Hello, everyone. Your host, Jamie Gassmann here. And welcome to this edition of Workplace MVP. Work environments are still experiencing residual shifts and turns as they continue to work towards the next normal. Some workplaces are in the process of bringing employees back to the office after a prolonged time working remote. Others are experiencing an increase in workplace violence. And, collectively, there is a heightened awareness and responsibility of employee mental health.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:00:59] There’s so much that organizational leadership needs to consider and be aware of in today’s current work environment. It begs the question, where do you begin with navigating this environment of constant change? And how do you make sure your people remain protected and supported through it all?

Jamie Gassmann: [00:01:16] With us today to help provide the answers to those questions and more is Workplace MVP, Dr. George Vergolias, Medical Director for our show sponsor, R3 Continuum, and Chief Clinical Officer for TelePsych Supports. Welcome to the show, Dr. Vergolias.

George Vergolias: [00:01:33] Thank you, Jamie. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:01:35] So, let’s just start off with you telling me a little bit about yourself and your career journey.

George Vergolias: [00:01:41] Certainly. My career journey was really a bit haphazard. I admire people that have a North Star in their career, and they pursue that, and they just hit those goals. Mine, I certainly had goals, but other opportunities came up that diverted. I actually went to undergrad at Marquette University for engineering. And about a year into it, I took a class called Differential Equations as well as Organic Chemistry, and it completely kicked my butt, and I decided that is not the route I wanted to go.

George Vergolias: [00:02:11] I then pivoted to philosophy for about a year, Eastern Philosophy, and then realized that I wouldn’t have a job when I get out of school. And that was a natural extension into psychology, understanding the human brain, what makes people think the way they do and act the way they do. And I continued on that trajectory, got into a doctoral program at the Chicago School, and actually had a neuropsych track, neuropsychology, and actually finished. And I did a neuropsychology and an inpatient rotation at Duke. And I graduated and I couldn’t find a job.

George Vergolias: [00:02:50] And I was a bit frustrated. And an old mentor of mine called and said, “Hey, would you be interested in doing a postdoc at Notre Dame in forensic psychology?” And I’ve taken one class before, but I was interested generally. And I jumped on it and I fell in love. I fell in love with it.

George Vergolias: [00:03:06] And so, what happened from there is I began working in the forensic field, both in a private practice setting, consulting with courts, jails, prisons, and working with county mental health systems. And I did that for about ten years. And in that process, I began consulting with law enforcement and emergency departments around imminent risk, suicide risk, homicide risk, people that were psychotic and paranoid. And that also, at one point, brought me into the workplace violence sector. Because when you’re a threat on violence in the community, you also have some expertise and a whole range of violence risks.

George Vergolias: [00:03:43] And so, at that point, my career took two trajectories. I started consulting with EAPs and, eventually, joined R3 Continuum about ten years ago. And at the same time, my work with the emergency departments as an individual ballooned into developing a practice and then a company that staffs emergency departments with doctoral psychologists and forensic psychologists to do imminent risk, involuntary commitment, and other types of crisis assessments. And some 20 years later, here I am. So, that’s a general view of that trajectory.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:04:17] Great. And so, through TelePsych Supports you work within regional emergency departments in hospitals. So, tell me what are some of the common challenges that you have seen surface over this last year?

George Vergolias: [00:04:31] That’s a great question, because there have been many. So, what happened is when COVID hit or the pandemic hit, and it really started gaining traction in terms of awareness of the seriousness of it, one of the biggest things that hospitals needed to do – and I live in Raleigh, North Carolina, so we were a little bit fortunate. And that New York State was well ahead, they were the early curve. So, we were able to learn for some of the difficulties that Europe and New York State encountered.

George Vergolias: [00:05:00] The biggest priority was we need to free up beds. And the way we needed to do that is that we needed to maximize getting every behavioral health patient out the door that was able to get out the door. So, unless they were absolutely needing to be in the hospital, we needed to get them out because we needed to free up hospital resources. And that put a lot of pressure on staff in the emergency department, on doctors, on nurses, on the psychologists to really tell a very fine line of deciding who stays and who do we think is safe enough to go out into the community.

George Vergolias: [00:05:34] And there were moments in many hospitals – for a short period of time in ours – where we had to go to what we almost called battle triage, where there would be – you know, in 2019 or in six months from now, even now, if you came into the hospital and said you were suicidal and you had some pretty severe intent and we believed you, there’s no way we would let you leave. There was some windows of time where we simply had nowhere to put you. So, unless you came in and you were literally having acted on it, or cut yourself, or made an attempt to hang yourself, or took pills, we couldn’t keep you.

George Vergolias: [00:06:12] And in a way, it’s analogous to what some of the Vegas hospitals dealt with after the Las Vegas mass shooting involving the Mandalay Bay. There were times where, normally, someone would easily be admitted and acted on quickly with a gunshot wound to the leg. That person became a third priority relative to all the other injuries. So, in behavioral healthy, we had to do that. We had to get into some of that very tough decision making.

George Vergolias: [00:06:41] The other thing that happened is, the community safety net for behavioral health – and what I mean by that is, public sector clinics that take Medicare and Medicaid, nonprofit organizations, both practices and clinics and even partial hospitalization programs, and even individual private practices that were seeing patients that were on the verge of breakdown, all of that markedly slowed down with COVID. People weren’t going into the office. We were all pivoting to telemental health, which for many was helpful. But that’s not helpful for the person that’s having rapid manic episodes every other day.

George Vergolias: [00:07:18] Going to their apartment, engaging them in person, talking them down is a critical component. And when that was all taken away in the early stages of the pandemic, that means that safety net eroded and more and more of those people were starting to come into the emergency departments because they were decompensating and they didn’t have anywhere else to go. So, those were the big things that kind of created a pressure vacuum in those settings.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:07:42] So, what kind of impact did that have on the staff? And has it lingered, you know, as we’ve come in 2021?

George Vergolias: [00:07:51] Yeah. I mean, it had a massive impact in that it was like a two-fold punch. On the one hand, you had medical staff in particular just dealing with COVID. And when you’re talking particularly about emergency department nurses and techs and physicians, that’s difficult because they live in the space where they save lives. That’s what they do for a living. They don’t necessarily bring somebody fully to recovery, but their goal is to stabilize the life, save it, and then move it upstairs to one of the other units.

George Vergolias: [00:08:27] And when COVID hit and they were overrun, and there were people literally sleeping in cots in the hallways – and in some hospital, sleeping on the floor and in the hallways – and putting people on ventilators, they reached the limit of what their medical expertise could do. And all you had to do is wait and see is their body able to fight through with the help of the ventilator, in many cases, and make it through.

George Vergolias: [00:08:51] So, what I found is a bit anecdotal, but what I found is there was a great deal of learned helplessness in emergency department staff, both nursing and physicians. Because they’re used to working in a high stress environment, but with a great deal of control and a great deal of ability within the limits of medical science and practice to save people. But COVID changed that. I mean, there were a lot of times where we’ve done what we can do. Now, we just got to wait for this person’s body to make it through the fight or not – make it through the fight. So, that was one thing that hit.

George Vergolias: [00:09:27] On top of that, what we saw is that influx of severe and persistent mentally ill people coming to the emergency department, which added another layer of difficulty. And it increased hostile interactions. Because you had patients – and I want to be clear, in general, people with mental illness are not more violent than the rest of the community. But people with severe and persistent mental illness, who have command hallucinations, who have paranoia, who have been living on the street, who have comorbid substance abuse disorders, they do have a tendency to be more violent, particularly amidst modes of crisis. And so, what we saw is a spike in those individuals coming in and being agitated, being hostile.

George Vergolias: [00:10:11] In fact, there’s a recent study of nurses and they reported a 20 percent increase of physical violence against them during the pandemic. And this is the group that was already at high risk for exposure to physical and verbal violence. So, those were some of the big things that we saw that was really tough to deal with when you’re working in those environments.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:10:34] Yeah. And looking at the different organizational levels within a hospital, doctors, nurses, maybe nurse managers, and there’s obviously the administration level, there’s this variance in how they handle and respond to certain things like compassion fatigue, burnout, or is there a variance in how they respond to those different areas? Because I can imagine after, you know, this full year of all the kind of emotional rollercoaster that health care staff has been on, you know, is there a variance in how they’re navigating compassion fatigue, burnout, stress, and overall PTSD?

George Vergolias: [00:11:08] I would say there is – I think some of the research supports this as well – certainly in my 20 years of experience in those settings. And what I’ve noticed – and, again, I’m speaking in generalities here because we’re talking in the aggregate. But what we have seen is, for those staff that work on the floors, internal medicine, post-surgery, cardiac, there’s a lot of stressors there, right? They see death. They see suffering. They see grief. For me, one of the toughest floors would be the NICU, the Neonatal Intensive Care Units.

George Vergolias: [00:11:45] But there is a certain amount of stability in those environments. People are admitted, they’re treated, the course of treatment is worked on, and then they’re discharged. The rapid turnaround you see in the ED, the function of an ED, is to get somebody in, stabilize them, and move them out because they need the next bed. Move them up to the floor or move them back into the community. And so, when COVID hit, people cannot easily be moved because there was nowhere to move them to.

George Vergolias: [00:12:14] On top of the fact that hospitals had to do their own self-quarantine. The ED was never a fully quarantined location. Many hospitals put up tents in the parking lot where they would screen people. But moving someone from the ED up to a floor that was COVID-safe or deemed, you know, not at risk, that was a big decision. So, there were often times when people just couldn’t be moved. And that was really tough for ED staff.

George Vergolias: [00:12:41] And so, that rapid turnaround, I think, really impacted ED staff in a way because that’s what they’re used to. That was a little less impactful. I’m not saying impactful. But less impactful for people that were working on floors. That doesn’t mean there weren’t stressors. Because one of the things that people working on floors is they tended to see a lot of death related to COVID, especially at high volume hospitals during the pandemic.

George Vergolias: [00:13:08] The other thing I find is, these roles are self-selective. You know, if I was a counselor that works with – I’m a therapist doing marital therapy – which, by the way, to me is very difficult. I used to do consulting with divorce attorneys. And I quit after, like, two years because that was worse than all the forensic work I’ve done. It’s just tough some of those situations and how ugly people can be. What’s interesting, though, is these roles are self-selective. People pick emergency medicine, forensic psychology, emergency nursing because they have a drive. To me, it’s almost a certain adrenaline. It’s a certain interest. I actually think there’s a predisposition to ADHD because that attention span of moving from one patient to the next, to the next is very well suited.

George Vergolias: [00:14:02] And these are the same people that, to me, are very much like sharks. And I kind of fit this category. We just don’t slow down. We’re always looking for the next challenge. And the problem with not slowing down is, it’s hard to take emotional inventory to how am I doing? How am I coping? Let me do an emotional check in. And I think that’s difficult. Again, I’m not saying that other physicians and nurses don’t experience that, but they select other areas of expertise that doesn’t demand that kind of mindset.

George Vergolias: [00:14:33] And so, when you enter kind of that heightened battle zone, if you will, it’s very hard for emergency physicians, EMS, other types of doctors and nurses in that setting to slow down and do a self-check in. Because there really is a sense of, “I don’t have time for this. Somebody is coding in the next bay, I got to get over there. And when I go home after a 12, or 16, or 20 hour shift, I just want to eat a quick meal and go to sleep, or watch Netflix for an hour and hug my kids. I don’t have time to emotionally process.” So, that is something I’ve noticed that was always there in medicine and psychology, but exacerbated by those stressors I already talked about that impact, particularly that point – what I call the point of the spear – that emergency department setting.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:15:20] Interesting. And you shared when we talked before the show about a scenario that kind of demonstrates that in a way, you know, with an active shooter training drill that you did at a hospital in terms of how the different, you know, maybe roles within the organization responded to that scenario. Can you share a little bit about that? Because it was just so interesting to really kind of have a demonstration of how their thinking is very much reactive. It’s just kind of staying in kind of that mode versus protecting themselves or taking care of themselves. Can you share a little bit about that scenario?

George Vergolias: [00:15:59] Yeah. I’m happy too. And this was fascinating for me as well because I didn’t expect it. I was at least 15 years into my career as a forensic psychologist, and this really surprised me, which it was a pleasant surprise, but very interesting. So, what we did is, we did a full simulation active shooter exercise for a hospital setting. This was about five, six years ago. And we were fortunate that the hospital had just built a new wing that was finished, but they had not moved in yet. So, we were able to run this simulation in a full hospital environment.

George Vergolias: [00:16:33] And we had law enforcement involved. They were using blanks. We did a pre-briefing and a debriefing with all the staff. We had a number of actors acting like assailants and we had a few other actors acting as victims. And then, we had the hospital staff in their normal roles. So, we had a small section of internal medicine, a small section of OBGYN delivering births. And then, certainly, we had an emergency department section and a few other makeshift units.

George Vergolias: [00:17:02] And what was fascinating is, once the exercise took off – by the way, and everyone was educated on the general protocol of the hospital, which was pull people into a room, barricade the room, and then treat them as best you can, or just barricade. Run, hide, fight, run if you can, hide if you can. We really didn’t talk much about fight for this particular organization. And what happened is, where the people came through, the assailants, is we found on all the medical units, that’s exactly what they did. They pulled people in, they barricaded rooms, they hid. And even if there were victims out in the hallway, they would try to triage them until the assailants came nearby, and then they would go hide as they were directed to do.

George Vergolias: [00:17:48] What’s interesting is what we found in the emergency department is those staff never hid. They stayed triaging people out in the open in harm’s way. Now, I’m not judging one physician or nurse against another. No one did. It wasn’t a judgment call. Because the truth is, if you are able to hide, you’re actually probably saving more lives because there’s some evidence to show that the more an assailant can find victims, the more they’re going to keep looking as opposed to turning the gun finally on himself or exiting. So, there is some real logic to run, then hide, then fight.

George Vergolias: [00:18:24] But what’s interesting is what we simply found was the emergency personnel, it just wasn’t in their DNA. It just wasn’t in their DNA to let somebody lie there and not try to treat them. And so, what that did is it allowed the hospital to have insights that, you know, it’s like you can’t teach a dog to meow and you can’t teach a cat to bark. So, what they actually did is, they had slightly different protocols and they actually rearranged some of the design of the emergency department unit that allowed them to shut down corridors in a way that you can still triage people out in the hallway, but you could actually shut down the corridor so an assailant can’t get through with barricaded kind of moving walls and shut down doors.

George Vergolias: [00:19:09] But it was a really interesting insight that allowed us to to get a better understanding of the behavioral side of how people respond. And that’s exactly why we go through these exercises, especially live simulations. So, it really was interesting.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:19:24] Yeah. What an interesting learning just to see how the variance in your staff is thinking and reacting. I’m sure military probably has similar – you know, when you talk about Medals of Valor and all of those where somebody has stepped in to help their fellow soldier even though there is active, you know, bullets or anything coming at them. So, very interesting. So, in talking workplace violence in the hospital setting, do you think that it has changed, or increased, or has it shown up in different ways over this last year? Or is it about the same but maybe just increased? What are your thoughts on that?

George Vergolias: [00:20:01] I think it has increased. In fact, again, I mentioned that one study, 20 percent of nurses reported an increase in physical violence during the pandemic. And, again, this is an already at risk workplace group, significantly at risk. In fact, what’s interesting, I saw another study from Forbes, I think, about two or three years ago, nursing is one of the most admired professions and it’s also one of the single biggest risk of workplace violence professions.

George Vergolias: [00:20:32] What I think based on some of the factors we’ve already discussed is that, yes, workplace violence risk has increased. I think it’s increased across the board in health care settings. But in particular, at that tip of the spear, at that emergency department, EMS, first contact kind of role, I think we’ve clearly seen an uptick. And most of that violence – and it might be helpful for me to go into just a couple of minutes describing this – is what we call effective or reactive violence.

George Vergolias: [00:21:03] So, a little quick primer on that. What we know from studies that go back now almost 80 years is that, there’s basically two biological modes or physiobiological modes of violence in the human brain. And, sadly, we know this because we used to study cats 90 years ago. They put electrodes inside cats and they expose them to different scenarios. And what they found is a cornered cat versus a cat who’s stalking maybe a bird in the backyard, they have very different neurochemical and neuroanatomical processes in the brain.

George Vergolias: [00:21:34] The corner cat, of course, is in a fight or flight environment. They’re hissing. Their claws are out. They’re showing their teeth. Their back is arched. And if you went to pick up a cornered cat, you’re probably going to get scratched or bit. And I would not recommend that.

George Vergolias: [00:21:50] A cat that stalking is the opposite. It’s very subdued. It’s very focused. It’s claws and its teeth are not out because it’s not ready to pounce yet. It’s in a very covert mode. And what’s interesting is, you could pick up a stalking cat and you could walk five feet before the cat even realizes it’s been picked up because it’s locked on that prey.

George Vergolias: [00:22:11] Well, they have since study that in humans. And what they have found is very similar correlates. So, effective reactive violence is emotional, it’s reactive, it’s often spurred on by substance abuse or intoxication. Most violence is effective. It’s emotional. It’s relationship-based. It’s crimes of passion or violence of passion.

George Vergolias: [00:22:32] And then, of course, you have predatory violence, which is your mass shooter, cold, calculated. When you hear about cases just like San Jose recently, Columbine, the Vegas shooter, these people aren’t agitated. They’re not worked up emotionally. They’re cold and calculated.

George Vergolias: [00:22:49] What’s interesting is we’ve seen a market uptick in emotional reactive or effective violence in workplace. People are coming in more agitated, more hostile. From a mental health perspective, they’re more decompensated. And just average normative people that don’t have mental illness are frustrated because they’re waiting much longer than they ever used to. And they’re waiting because of conditions that, a year prior, they would have been seen within 30 minutes or less. And, now, they’re waiting six hours. And on top of it, they’re stressed about the pandemic.

George Vergolias: [00:23:25] Just now we’re starting to reclaim our lives. Things are opening up. People are going out to dinner. There’s a little uptick in people returning back to work. So, hopefully, that emotionality will be alleviated a bit. But, certainly, up until a month or two ago, that was all heightened by all of those factors. That’s a great question.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:23:44] Interesting. So, looking at those factors, looking at the increase in workplace violence, obviously you’ve heard from other conversations, burnout and mental health concerns within that hospital industry. What are some of the suggestions that you have for a hospital administration and helping their people to continue with remaining resilient and start to thrive again?

George Vergolias: [00:24:10] One of the key things is, I think, it’s important to be aware of the problem. It starts with awareness, right? I think another key issue is communicate clearly with teams around what is the administration’s perspective of the problem, understanding of the problem, and what are they doing. I say this a lot in trainings and webinars, it’s important for leaders to know that employees and other stakeholders don’t expect us to all have the answers or to have all the answers. People are really gracious to knowing no one alive has been through this before. Or if they were alive, they’re 100 and some years old and they don’t remember it. Certainly, they weren’t leaders in any organization.

George Vergolias: [00:24:59] But what is important is that we are asking the right questions. And we’re conveying to our stakeholders and our employees that we’re asking the right questions. And we’re trying to get the right answers. So, I think that’s important as well. Back to my active shooter exercise example, understand that different groups within your organization may respond differently to different stress points.

George Vergolias: [00:25:25] If you go to the neonatal wellness group, or in some cases the post-operative group or the post-cardiac group or the recovery group, and you talk about meditation, and wellbeing, and the importance of eating well, and massage, that’s probably going to hit home. You talk about that to a group of hardened emergency department physicians, good luck. Now, I’m not saying that physicians aren’t going to meditate in the ED or who work in the ED. But this is more of a hardened group, so you need your metaphors, your images of growth to be different.

George Vergolias: [00:26:04] Almost, to me, what has worked well is I use the analogy of them being athletes. As an emergency physician, most of them would understand that Tiger Woods or Serena Williams or Lionel Messi, they don’t get a massage for wellbeing. They get a massage so they can perform at their peak. Physicians get those metaphors in those settings. And so, it’s important to understand what is going to work for these different groups in terms of getting buy-in to the programs and the resources that they’re trying to promote. So, I would say off the top of my head, those are the big things that are important to keep in mind.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:26:39] Right. Great. So, right now, we’re going to get a word from our sponsor. So, Workplace MVP is sponsored by R3 Continuum. R3 Continuum is a global leader in providing expert, reliable, responsive, and tailored behavioral health, crisis, and security solutions to promote workplace wellbeing and performance in the face of an ever changing and often unpredictable world. Learn more about how R3 Continuum can tailor a solution for your organization’s unique challenges by visiting www.r3c.com today.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:27:15] So, now, we’ve been discussing the health care industry and the work environment within that quite a bit in the first half of the show. So, I’m just curious, are there other industry work environments seeing some of the same challenges that the hospital industry has been seeing?

George Vergolias: [00:27:33] Yeah. Certainly. Now, they have different pain points from what we’ve been talking about, but certainly they’re seeing increased pressures to perform, reduced resources, and other kind of exacerbating stressors going on. A few is the trucking industry has been significantly impacted in terms of – I mean, as if Amazon and other shipping wasn’t big enough – we all went to that in a massive way. And for many of us, we’re not going back.

George Vergolias: [00:28:08] I was a big fan of going into grocery stores before the pandemic. I like to walk around. I like to pick my produce. Once we started using Instacart – which is not exactly trucking – but once we started moving to using Instacart, now we’re stuck – it’s not we’re stuck. We have a habit now and it’s convenient and now we use Instacart to deliver our groceries. I still will go in and pick certain things out if we’re having a big event.

George Vergolias: [00:28:33] So, there’s been a behavioral shift where trucking and shipping delivery services – again, like Amazon, FedEx, UPS – they’ve been significantly impacted. Railyards, again, we saw shooting at the San Jose railyard. And there’s a lot of indication that this individual, the assailant, had long standing anger and resentment and felt untreated fairly and whatnot. But, to me, there’s no doubt that the pandemic and the additional stressors that were probably on those staff further exacerbated him to a tipping point.

George Vergolias: [00:29:11] Now, I’m not blaming the workplace, I want to be clear here. But in that Psychgeist of stressors, those are the kind of things that move people from a pre-contemplative stage, to a stage of maybe I can do this, to a stage of I’m going to do this, I’m going to take a severe action like this.

George Vergolias: [00:29:29] Manufacturing is another one. A lot of pressure in that environment. First responders, police, EMS, even firefighters, all of these are situations that have increased stress. So, I think all of those are kind of heightened industries off the top of my head. But what I think we’re going to see as well is return to work is going to also heighten that for many people who are just going back to the workplace, and have various questions around safety related to COVID or second variance and so on.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:30:06] Definitely. And then, looking at those various environments and the organizational leadership trying to support the people within it, are there similar recommendations you would make for them that you did for the hospital industry or does it change based on that industry?

George Vergolias: [00:30:25] Yeah. Great question. I would say they are similar recommendations. I remember an old – I can’t remember the movie. It was a movie where Nick Nolte was a basketball coach and he was kind of a Bobby Knight type style, yelling at his players. And he basically said at halftime that he’s going to take their plan for the second half and he’s going to give it to the other team because it’s not what you do, it’s how you do it. You know, the movie was interesting, but I always love that statement.

George Vergolias: [00:30:55] Because in this case, what I’ve already said are the things that I would recommend. So, what you do are going to be pretty similar. Start with those high points that we’ve talked about. But the way in which you do it, you’ve got to cater the messaging to your culture and to your people. And that’s going to be very different for a trucking company as opposed to a yoga studio, as opposed to an Amazon warehouse, or some other location. So, it’s important as leaders to know what is kind of the culture that we’re working with, and what is the messaging, and the resources that are going to hit home to that culture.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:31:35] Great. So, with workplaces that have employees who have been in a remote environment that are now returning to the workplace, do you feel there will be an increase in these challenges that they need to consider?

George Vergolias: [00:31:48] I do. I do. Now, I’m not sure there will be an uptick in violence from the perspective of an average workplace. But I think there will be an uptick in emotionality. And with that comes an uptick in hostility. Hopefully, a lot of that will be on the verbal side and it will be able to be mitigated fairly quickly with good leadership. Some may, though, trip over into violence.

George Vergolias: [00:32:10] But I think what we’re going to see is a lot of people still have anxiety around return to work. Is it safe? The variance that we’re seeing in other countries such as India or other areas, certainly, eventually those will get here. They’re starting to get here. How is that going to impact us? How good are the current vaccines going to be? What’s the workplace policy in allowing non-vaccinated people to come back into the workplace?

George Vergolias: [00:32:38] Interestingly enough, my 13 year old just got her first shot for vaccination. My 11 year old isn’t eligible. So, it’s interesting, my wife is working at a hotel, she has some concern. She’s vaccinated. She’s probably very limited risk for getting sick. What if she brings it back to my son who can’t be vaccinated yet, because that hasn’t rolled out for the under 12 or 13 year olds.

George Vergolias: [00:32:59] These are all going to be concerns that different people will have to different degrees. And they’ll be exacerbated by the way different workplaces are laid out. Are you all going back to individual offices or are you all going back to cubicles or open floor planning type of workplaces? So, these are things that I think leaders have to be very proactive about and on top of ahead of time.

George Vergolias: [00:33:21] And, again, the goal isn’t to have all the answers. But to convey we’re asking the right questions and we’re open to your questions as employees. And we’re going to work with you to find the right solutions that help you feel safe and secure. So, I think that would be kind of the single biggest concern for us as we return to work.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:33:41] Right. So, thinking over some of the things you’ve discussed today and then just things from your expertise and trainings if you were going to be consulting with an employer, if there were three things that you wanted our listeners to be aware of and take away from this episode for how they should be supporting their work environment with these challenges, what would they be?

George Vergolias: [00:34:04] I’m going to answer this at a high level, because we talked about some details. And I think sometimes the high level can be useful. The first is, awareness and understanding are key. I mean, many of us probably have heard the saying, “Everyone is fighting a battle you know nothing about.” I think it’s important to understand that even the people that look strongest in our work forces may be struggling with things that they’re adjusting to, whether it’s home schooling, nervous about acclimating, maybe they feel safe coming back to work but they have a spouse that has an entirely different workplace scenario and they’re freaking out about it understandably. So, that’s the first.

George Vergolias: [00:34:46] The other is a saying I heard that I love and that is, “You don’t drown by falling in the river. You drown by staying submerged under the water.” And I love that saying because I use it to say, leadership needs to model strength through vulnerability. As leaders, if all we ever do is act strong and put a strong face up, we have two messages to our constituents, to our stakeholders, and to our employees. One is, it’s not okay to not be okay. And that’s not a good message. And two is, we don’t model for them the ability to say, you might fall down, but you have the ability to get back up. And when you get back up, you’re going to be stronger. So, yeah, things are tough, but you’re getting tougher. So, that’s another key message that I think is important.

George Vergolias: [00:35:36] Now, that doesn’t mean leaders need to be crying on a town hall meeting for an hour. But the ability to be a little vulnerable and demonstrate that as a leader, I can show vulnerability and I can still tap into my resilience, that is a very powerful message for employees to have.

George Vergolias: [00:35:54] And then, I would say the third is communication. I mentioned this before, communicating to them often, proactively, frequently, and bidirectionally. Don’t just communicate to them, but have a channel by which employees can communicate back and share what is working, what isn’t working, what concerns and anxieties do they have. And then, respond quickly back to them on those. And, again, with the idea that we may not have all the answers, but we’re asking the right questions. And we’re open to them bringing the questions to the table. So, those are the three things that I would say at a pretty high level, really, are going to drive effective leadership as we return to work.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:36:35] Great. So, now, back to you. Looking over your career, if you were going to pick one thing that you’re most proud of, what would that be?

George Vergolias: [00:36:48] That’s tough. It’s tough for two reasons, because I’m proud of a lot of things. But, again, back to that shark analogy, I don’t dwell on what I’ve accomplished. I finish it. And I go, “What’s my next challenge?” And this is going to sound self-serving. But my tenure with R3, you know, when we started, we were doing 800 or 900 crisis responses a month. We are now responding to 2,000 plus crises a month in the workplace across a range of industries and a range of problems. And each of those isn’t just an individual contact. That’s a life you’re helping. You’re contacting. You’re helping make better. You’re helping make more resilient.

George Vergolias: [00:37:35] Who then makes their coworkers, and their children, and their spouses, and their neighbors more resilient. And when you do the math, we have helped millions and millions of lives deepen their sense of resilience in the world. And that is a force multiplier that is absolutely amazing. So, I would say it’s that work that we do at R3 every day, every month, week in, week out, that probably is what I’m most proud of. Being at the clinical helm, if you will, of that is amazing.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:38:07] Great. And if our listeners wanted to get a hold of you, how can they do that?

George Vergolias: [00:38:12] So, the best way to contact me is through, probably, email at my R3. And that is george – G-E-O-R-G-E- -.vergolias – V as in Victor-E-R-G-O-L-I-A-S as in Sam – @R – capital R – the number 3C – as in cat or Charlie – .com would be the best way to reach me.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:38:37] Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for being on our show today, Dr. Vergolias, and for letting us celebrate you, for sharing your stories, and the wonderful advice that you have provided to our listeners. There’s no doubt that they were able to get something from your information and expertise today. We appreciate you. And I’m sure your organizations and staff that you work with do as well.

Jamie Gassmann: [00:39:00] And we also want to thank our show sponsor, R3 Continuum, for supporting the Workplace MVP podcast. And to our listeners, thank you for tuning in. If you have not already done so, make sure to subscribe so you get our most recent episodes and other resources. You can also follow our show on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter @workplacemvp. If you are a workplace MVP or know someone who is, we want to know. Email us at info@workplace-mvp.com. And thank you all for joining us and have a great rest of your day.