Sheree Anne Kelly: We’re in the middle of this chamber of commerce renaissance. We’re being called upon to be thought leaders on issues that we’ve never weighed in on before, but we can’t keep expanding without letting go of the things that don’t serve our mission and don’t serve our needs.

Amanda Ellis: That’s the voice of Sheree Anne Kelly, president and CEO of the Association of Chamber of Commerce Executives. Today she walks us through ACCE’s burnout research, why burnout has been on the rise in our profession, and how organizations can help teams build healthy relationships with work. She’ll also share tips on recruiting and retaining the right people in the unique world of chambers. I’m Amanda Ellis and you’re listening to Inside America’s Best Cities, a podcast for chamber, economic development and talent attraction professionals. Learn more about this podcast at livabilitymedia.com. And with that, let’s jump in. Welcome, Sheree Ann. Thanks so much for joining us today. I know our listeners are going to love hearing some perspective from you. We’re going to be talking a lot today about getting the right people on your team, making sure they have the right resources. Of course, those things are important to really any organization. But just to set the stage here for our conversation, why is it uniquely important from your perspective for chambers to be people-centric?

Sheree Anne Kelly: Sure. Well, let me just first start by saying thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate the time and the chance to connect and share some interesting insights. So chambers of commerce and economic development organizations, they’re often lean enterprises. They have limited resources and really bold agendas. So you definitely need the right people in the right seats. And one misplacement, one person who’s just not the right person for that role can completely throw off the balance of work and maybe most importantly, the culture for your organization. It can ruin it for high performers. Some of the feedback that I hear from folks is that they wish they’d gotten rid of employees who weren’t a fit sooner than they did because the fallout can be absolutely devastating. And what we’re seeing, I mean especially post pandemic in light of the great resignation, is that most organizations are becoming much more employee-centric. People of all generations are making employment decisions that balance their personal and professional interests, and they’re seeking these environments and benefits that really best suit their own needs. So this means people are a lot quicker to leave a job if something isn’t a fit. And even beyond just employees, a lot of groups are becoming more people-centric in their total decision-making. They’re thinking about current and future customers, their partners, community members, especially underserved populations. And all of those people are at the center of their messaging and where organizations are focusing their efforts. So it’s the same with chambers. It’s not about what organizational leadership wants, but really how can we serve all of those stakeholders.

Amanda Ellis: At the annual conference in Indie this past summer, which I know we’re also excited to be in Salt Lake this upcoming summer, you talked about the research you all have done on staff burnout in the chamber space. Can you talk through what some of those findings were?

Sheree Anne Kelly: Absolutely. Like most professions, burnout was really high. So we surveyed chamber executives at all levels. This also included some economic developers as well. Some of the questions were just really startling, we got really unusual responses. The first thing we asked was, “On a scale of one to five, how stressed are you?” And organizational CEOs, so the top leadership of a chamber or an economic development organization, almost nine out of 10, 89% said they were somewhere between a three, four or a five. So they were between moderately to extremely stressed. And almost a quarter of all respondents said they were a five, the highest level of stress that you can get. So then we said, “Okay, let’s dig a little deeper. What causes this stress?” Top answer, 63% said it’s the always on work culture, round the clock, no time off, always having to deliver.

But another big answer was polarization and partisanship. 44% of our survey respondents said that was a reason they felt so stressed out. So we’re working around the clock. We’ve got early mornings, late evenings, weekends, plus it’s getting harder to get things done. And the environment, particularly the political, the legislative, the regulatory environment can be really ugly. So some other stuff that came out of the survey, the further down the ranks you go in an organization, your passion level for the job decreases. So CEOs have much higher passion levels than say directors or managers. So if CEOs are feeling stressed and overwhelmed, well then the staff below them start off with those lower levels of passion, so they’re much more likely to want to move on if things get rough. So we also asked, “What is feeling burnt out due to you? What are some of the repercussions that you face?” Nearly six in 10 said it impacts their wellbeing. So their mental or physical health, their sleep, all those factors. But 37% said they feel less confident in the role that they did than they did a year ago. So you’re losing confidence, you’re losing sleep, you’re not feeling great. And then 34% said it impacts their personal relationships, friends and family. And more than one in five said they feel less likely to deliver on their goals. So you’ve got all these personal impacts, but that last statistic, it means it’s obviously also impacting productivity. So we asked folks, “How are you dealing with burnout?” And we got lots of common answers focusing on wellness and setting boundaries. But the shocking data point for me was at 34%, so a little more than a third are either considering or actively looking for another role. So you’ve got a third of your staff looking to leave at any given point because of stress and burnout. And so this last question that I’ll share really pointed to some opportunities that I see and ways that we can improve our work environments. We asked, “What does your Chamber offer to combat this high stress burnout situation?” 37% said nothing or they even feel discouraged from taking PTO. And that was a huge aha moment for me, that even at a baseline, people don’t feel like they can take the time off that they’re given.

Amanda Ellis: So it’s even the benefits you’re being given to help with that, if you don’t feel like you can actually use them, then that’s not going to help you.

Sheree Anne Kelly: Exactly.

Amanda Ellis: Oof. Like many industries, of course in the last couple of years, things have changed a lot really quickly and are continuing to. And for chambers, many of them have been engaging in a lot of new areas like childcare and housing, just to name a couple that have gotten more high profile post Covid. And just adding responsibilities, adding service areas, adding and never really necessarily taking anything away to make room for those things. Is that what you see as behind the burnout issue growing? What’s your perspective on how we got to where we are?

Sheree Anne Kelly: I think you hit the nail on the head. There are several factors, but like you mentioned, chambers are expanding their role and for good reason, we’re in the middle of this Chamber of Commerce renaissance. So we’re being called upon to be thought leaders and partners to weigh in on issues that we’ve never weighed in on before. So like you mentioned, chambers are now engaging in areas like crime or mental health because we recognize that a strong business community needs a strong community to be prosperous. So we’ve got our hands in more activities, but we can’t keep expanding without letting go of the things that don’t serve our mission and don’t serve our needs. So if you think about historic chamber cultures and we’ve often tried to make everybody happy so we have a hard time saying no or stopping doing something that we’ve done for a long time. We really have to think about our chambers and our economic development, organizations like startups, have an entrepreneurial mindset, if you will. We need to test new ideas. We have to get rid of things that don’t work and pivot and adjust to the changing environment around us and use data that we can gather to figure out, “Okay, what do we need to keep? What do we need to get rid of?” By nature, like I said, I think chambers are really lean, but we also have to abandon these old business models that don’t work for us anymore. If you’re still running your chamber the same way that it was run in the 1980s, you’re missing the boat. There are all these new revamped revenue options that can make a huge difference and generate the funding to support staff and resources that we need. And we’ve seen really innovative chamber models that flip the old formula on its head. We’ve seen subscription models, a freemium offerings where a select subset of membership can join for free. We’re also watching Chambers that are leveraging their 501 foundations to help support community impact work, creative sponsorships, fee for service. We need to find the funding that aligns with our mission, but also can generate the support that we need, staff technology and other resources to do the critical work that we’re doing.

Amanda Ellis: Yes. So what can chambers be doing to address this and retain the right people?

Sheree Anne Kelly: Sure. What we know is that hosting a webinar on stress reduction isn’t going to help solve the problem. That’s not it. It’s a nice offering, I recommend sharing tools like that. But what it really comes down to is figuring out the root cause. Are you trying to do too much? Do your staff not feel connected to the mission or the strategic plan? Do you have the wrong people in the wrong seats? Or are the conditions in your workplace not matching the expectations of your team? And one of the first is just figuring out what you can do less of or stop doing. This is really hard for us to say no to change the portfolio of work that we’re doing. So you can conduct an assessment of your existing programs, your events, benefits and services. Even the committees that you have, communications that you send out, internal meetings, is there a place where you could streamline?

Amanda Ellis: I think we could all do a little of that.

Sheree Anne Kelly: Right? And are these things still aligned with your mission? You could do a cost benefit analysis. If you don’t currently do cost accounting, try to factor in staff time to events and programs and see if it really does pay off. As we mentioned from the burnout survey, we heard that people don’t feel encouraged to take time off. That’s an easy one. Encourage it, lead by example. If you’re the boss, take time off, disconnect. Try to send fewer emails in those off hours. But you could also have your staff co-create boundaries around their work time. Do you want to say, “Hey guys, we’re going to have no internal meetings after 4:30 PM.” Or maybe, “We don’t respond to emails on the weekend unless it’s noted as high priority.” These are easy things, but now everybody is aligned with, “Hey, this is how we’re going to approach our work.” And I mentioned having the right people in the right seats, that’s maybe the most critical. So if your teams are overworked, you got to figure out why. Is it a capacity or a portfolio issue? Is it a skills issue? Problem with your structure? If you can figure out those answers and address them, it can make a huge difference.

Amanda Ellis: One of my favorite minor tips you were talking about just communication outside of office hours. The scheduling function in email is the best thing. I use that because we do a lot of people work the schedule that works for them, and you don’t necessarily know if that’s going to be the same as your coworker. So that allows you to get whatever the thing is out of your head, but you can schedule it at a time when that person is going to be the middle of the day, the next day or whatever that might look like.

Sheree Anne Kelly: It’s a fabulous pro tip, because we are all working on these different types of schedules and you want to make sure, hey, if I happen to be up at 11:00 PM because this is a good time for me to get this accomplished, you’re not stressing somebody else out with it.

Amanda Ellis: So it’s no secret that chambers often can’t necessarily pay what corporate entities might. In light of that, how can they really make sure and everything that we’ve already discussed, that they are competing for the best folks?

Sheree Anne Kelly: Yeah. No, I’m a huge fan of making sure that whatever you offer really aligns with what your team wants. So just an easy place to start is surveying your staff, asking what’s working, what’s not? “What can we do to improve the culture? How does everyone feel about the benefits? Does the team feel heard?” Lots of questions like that can give you some insight as to maybe some adjustments that you could make. And while we can’t match corporate salaries, we also can’t expect great talent to show up or to stay if the pay isn’t out of market rate. So we really have to benchmark salaries against similar roles. We at ACCE, we have a benchmarking tool called Dynamic Chamber Benchmarking that it’s available and does salary benchmarking. But you could also check with Fellow Chamber Leads, other associations, nonprofits. You could even talk to headhunters in your industry. Just finding a way to make sure your pay scale is aligned with the market. But one place that chambers can compete on is benefits, retirement benefits, making sure you’re paying attention to your team’s future is a huge one. ACCE offers 401K and insurance benefits. But I’ve also seen creative benefits that are out there closing the office between Christmas and New Years, increasing the paid time off that you offer. I’ve seen a resurgence of sabbaticals, which I think is fabulous. We actually offer those at my organization too. Tuition reimbursement, casual attire, pet friendly offices. Taking a look at things like your employee handbook, do your policies reflect what a modern staff is looking for? I actually spoke at our annual convention last year about the Plano Chamber. They revamped their staff policies and the language of their handbook. So it was less legalese about what you can’t do and more about what you can do. And we’re big data geeks in our industry. There’s some wonderful survey data out there about why people leave their jobs. So McKenzie put out a survey, the top three reasons why people quit their jobs. So number three was uncaring or uninspiring leaders. So that’s all about the leadership. Number two, inadequate compensation, so like we said, got to benchmark those salaries. But the number one reason people leave jobs was lack of career advancement or development. So as a chamber, professional development is a huge opportunity to attract and retain staff and making sure that your staff has a chance to not only improve their skills, but there’s vertical mobility in the organization. What’s their career path, and making sure you’re regularly talking with them about how do you get from point A to point B. And there was actually another survey that asked how have our priorities changed since the pandemic when it comes to future employment? So what are you thinking differently about your next job? The number one answer was people want more flexible hours and or remote work. So as a chamber or an economic development organization, you might not feel like you can have a completely remote office or all the flexibility in the world, but where can you loosen the reigns? I’ve seen Chambers that do everything from saying, “Hey, as long as you hit your goals and you do what we agreed upon, you can do it anytime, anywhere.” All the way through to other organizations saying, “I want everyone in the office together on one or two days a week,” but they allow staff to pick another day or two that they can be remote. So there’s a lot of data out there that just points to the fact that people, they’re moving towards freedom and flexibility in how they do their work, what they do, when and where they do it. So how can you add flexibility to make sure that you’re aligning with those expectations?

Amanda Ellis: Yeah. A couple of follow-up questions to that. So you mentioned sabbatical and that, that’s something you all do. Talk a little bit more about how that would work.

Sheree Anne Kelly: You have really good timing on this because we’re reimagining our sabbatical program right now. But as it currently states, basically if you hit the 10 10-year mark in our organization, you get two free weeks off in addition to your existing PTO that you can pair up with two weeks of your PTO. So you have an entire month off from your job. It’s a chance for you to go off and do whatever you want, whether it’s binge watch something on Netflix or travel or learn a new language or pursue some other passion of yours. And we’re actually reimagining it because at this stage of the game, I think it’s unrealistic to expect people to stay for 10 years.

Amanda Ellis: That is very, very cool. So what are you thinking of changing the timing to?

Sheree Anne Kelly: I’m definitely shrinking the time commitment, so somewhere between five and seven years. And I’m also thinking about having the organization give three weeks and then the person only has to give one week of their PTO. So you basically get three bonus weeks, and we already have a very generous PTO policy to begin with.

Amanda Ellis: I love that it’s something you can really look forward to for hitting that tenure.

Sheree Anne Kelly: And it’s incentivizing people to stick around. If you can stick it up to this point, then you get this wonderful time off, which I think I’ve heard so many people, especially post pandemic saying, “I just want a month off.” I don’t know if you’ve gotten the same vibe, but I feel like everybody is saying it. So why don’t we build that into our benefits?

Amanda Ellis: So you also mentioned professional development. Do you have any specific professional development recommendations that you feel like are generally a good fit for chamber teams?

Sheree Anne Kelly: Sure. This feels like a great softball question by the way. So obviously-

Amanda Ellis: At ACCE.

Sheree Anne Kelly: … that’s what we do. We offer professional development. We have webinars, we have a certificate in chamber management. We have the Certified Chamber Executive, the CCE, which is the highest certification that you can receive as a chamber professional. So we have lots and lots of professional development opportunities. But there are a ton out there now. So if you’re looking to build up specific skills, LinkedIn has some great easy online options. You can do them whenever you’d like. In fact, this idea of on-demand learning is gaining so much traction because folks say, “I need to break this up into a timeframe that works for me.” I know a lot of states have their own state chamber executive networks and they offer programming. IOM is a great place to start. We usually say once people have gone through the IOM program, then looking at our CCEs is good next step. And I’m sure chambers also have members who are specialized in certain skills or professional development training, and maybe you can arrange for some swap where you can have free training for your staff and they get some benefit for the chamber.

Amanda Ellis: Yes, that’s awesome. A lot of people in this chamber line of work, I feel just fell into doing it and they’re like, “I love this, but I didn’t really know it was a thing before I ended up here.” So thinking about recruiting students, early career folks to our industry, should we be trying to create more intentionality about encouraging people to make chambers their career path?

Sheree Anne Kelly: It’s something we’re actually talking about quite a bit at ACCE, and we’re trying to address it at the national level. In fact, it’s a goal in our new strategic plan. But what we hear a lot about with when it comes to the interests of younger generations. And when they’re looking to join an organization, they’re looking to join a place that can make an impact. And what better career option to do that than a chamber? Chambers are completely community centric. The problem is younger generations just don’t know what we do. So in your own community, thinking about how can you get in front of young students as they’re investigating their career options? Can you be a guest lecturer at middle school, high school, college or technical school when they’re thinking about what their next steps might look like? Are there places where you could participate in a career fair or supply literature? Can you offer internships? Or even if you want to take a step back from programmatic work, are you on social media platforms that younger audiences are on? Are you on TikTok? Thinking about, am I going to find a way to reach that next generation? And do you have emerging workforce programs in your chamber? So you’re exposing students to the chamber brand while you’re also exposing them to career options within the community. So there’s no one solution, but if you keep thinking of ways to engage with younger folks, that’s going to make the difference in having them encouraged to participate in the work that you do.

Amanda Ellis: Yes, agreed. And I think that the mission of chamber speaks to a lot of people, but it’s just when you’re a student, you haven’t always been exposed to a lot yet. But if you were, you would be like, “Wow, that sounds like something I would really be interested in.”

Sheree Anne Kelly: Right. Absolutely. And even with our names, sometimes it’s hard to really comprehend the breadth and depth of what a chamber does. And I’ve had young professionals saying, “Chamber of Commerce, it sounds like Chamber of Horrors.” And so we have to do a really good job of telling our story.

Amanda Ellis: Hopefully, that’s not what anyone thinks about once they learn a little bit more.

Sheree Anne Kelly: I don’t think so.

Amanda Ellis: That’s hilarious. Are you saying that you’re going to choreograph a chamber TikTok dance the next conference?

Sheree Anne Kelly: That’s a great recommendation. I’m going to put that in the file, the file for consideration. We’ll see how that goes.

Amanda Ellis: I’ll sign that to someone else, sign that to someone on the team. Shifting gears a little bit, I know that ACCE has a pretty new strategic plan in place to guide your work for the next few years. Can you talk us through some of the high points of that strategy?

Sheree Anne Kelly: Sure, sure. So we’ve got basically four pillars of focus, and. The first one is we really just want to be the thought leader for the industry, so we’re creating a thought leadership and research center. We’re going to modernize some of our research around the future of chambers. So just making sure that we’ve got the resources, the information, the data that everybody needs to get their job done. The second pillar is all about the chamber of commerce brand. We want to amplify and elevate that brand, make sure it’s reflective of what chambers do, courageous leadership and economic impact and storytelling. We want to help amplify stories, but we also want to help our members tell their own. We’re really good at telling our member stories, but not always so good at telling the chamber story. The third pillar of focus is being future focused and customized with our service. So we’re revamping our membership model. We’re thinking about that next generation of chamber leadership and chamber staffing. We want to improve and augment some of our custom consulting and custom research, and provide resources that can help chamber boards as well. Then our last pillar of focus is a nod to my staff. We’re building out a world-class association. We want to regionalize what we’re doing, make data-driven decisions, automate where we can and make sure that our culture is reflective of who we are, and it’s a culture that attracts and retains the right kind of talent. And then we’ve got two lenses that cut across everything we do, and these two lenses are probably the most, I think, critical parts of the strategic plan. One is DEI. We want to make sure that both internally and externally, we’ve got a lens of diversity, equity, and inclusion across the work that we do. And the second lens is strategic partnerships. We know we’re stronger when we do things in tandem with other organizations, so making sure that we find those good partners.

Amanda Ellis: Yes. Well, that’ll be exciting to get to see all of that play out over the next few years. So as we head towards wrapping up here, I always ask a wrap-up question about where our guests are based and some fun bucket list type items that visitors should do. And I believe you are in the D.C. area. Sometimes people are in a little bit lesser known spots. But what are some things you would say outside of the touristy stuff that everyone who comes there would do?

Sheree Anne Kelly: I actually live in Bethesda, Maryland, which is right over the border of D.C. The thing that I want to highlight the most is a place called Java Nation, and it’s this locally owned coffee house, it’s female owned. They have three locations in my county. And this location, it’s not just a coffee shop, it’s also a restaurant, it has a bar. They have the best coffee I’ve had in the entire D.C. area. They’ve got great food, and they have this little outdoor small stage where local musicians come and they play year round. And this was my oasis during the pandemic, because you were outdoors, you had heat lamps, and I really consider it one of my favorite places on earth. So Java Nation in North Bethesda is my hidden gem.

Amanda Ellis: Very cool. I’ll have to check that out. Thanks so much for joining and sharing so much great info today.

Sheree Anne Kelly: Absolutely my pleasure. So glad that we had a chance to connect and talk about some of the wild and crazy things going on in chamber world.

Amanda Ellis: Thanks for listening to the Livability podcast, where we take you Inside America’s Best Cities. At Livability, we highlight the unsung awesomeness of small and mid-sized cities across the country. We also partner with communities to reach their target companies and potential residents through digital content and print magazine programs. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow, rate and review this show wherever you listen to podcasts. You can learn more about us at livabilitymedia.com. Have an idea for an upcoming episode? Email me at [email protected]. Until next time, from Livability, I’m Amanda Ellis, sharing the stories of America’s most promising places.