Loaded: The Hahn Ready Mix Podcast
A podcast for the employees of Hahn Ready Mix
Loaded: The Hahn Ready Mix Podcast
83. What’s Andrea’s Deal?
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Griffin and Lex interview Andrea!
We cover her background, what she does everyday and how she thinks about topics like process improvement and feedback.
Plus our concrete term of the week!
Welcome to Load It, the Han Ready Mix Podcast with Andrea Meyer, Griffin Hahn, and producer Lex.
SPEAKER_02Are we starting already? This is like a break. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Yeah, let's do it.
SPEAKER_00We're already five minutes into this podcast. Oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_02You have a strange perception of time. All right.
SPEAKER_00How's it going?
SPEAKER_02It's raining again.
SPEAKER_00The rainiest fall.
SPEAKER_02Had it. I've had it. I've had it. It's the worst.
SPEAKER_00It's wild how everything is so green, like and spring like, even though it should be brown and dry.
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_00It's really weird.
SPEAKER_02Yes. Well, uh, the good news is this coming week it's only supposed to rain like four days during the weekday. So brutal. Absolutely brutal.
SPEAKER_00Compressing. Compressing the work that must be.
SPEAKER_02Prepare for that, everybody.
SPEAKER_00What other good news do you have?
SPEAKER_02I don't know. What uh what should we talk about?
SPEAKER_00I had a couple announcements, all kind of maintenance related. One thing I'm excited about is that haulers now can select and identify which trailer they are using for their DVIR. So it had been tricky in the past to let the mechanics know which trailer you had an issue with because they frequently trade and it wasn't listed in there. So that's an update. That is a big improvement.
SPEAKER_02Is this where I thank you? Yeah. Is this where you look for it?
SPEAKER_00I had asked Lex to take care of this and he said he would and then did not. So I had to do it myself.
SPEAKER_02This is like again, strange perceptions. This is like my wife will say, like, hey, can you take the trash out tonight? And I'm like, sure. And then she stands next to the trash can and stares at me and until the trash gets taken out.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it was a lot like that.
SPEAKER_02And then she three seconds later goes, I'll just do it myself. And oh, okay.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00Uh Lex is generally one of the best for these types of projects because he's very detailed and he's very thorough. There's no trailer would be left behind in an effort like this. But I just threw in the ones that I thought needed to be there. So you might want to take another look, but I got a good start on it.
SPEAKER_02You told me, oh, it's all done. It's all right. What I need is now I have to double check your work.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So the trailers are in the DVIRs. Please use it if you're reporting issues. It's important. The other thing, I think we did talk about this right when it happened. I'm not sure. Maybe at the beginning of the year we switched our oil that we're using. Yes.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_00And we talked about it then. But I think now that it's time for services are coming up again. I think people may have forgotten or didn't realize maybe they're not listening to the podcast and getting this information.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But the new oil is a different kind of oil that lasts longer. So they don't have to do services as frequently as we had been. It can go for six months or 50,000 miles. So if you're anxious or eager to get your service done, they're keeping track of it in the shop and they will get to it on the schedule that they have set.
SPEAKER_02Yep. Absolutely. Yeah, that was a big deal when we switched to that.
SPEAKER_00A big improvement, uh, great for you know labor and uh just something to keep in mind.
SPEAKER_02Yep.
SPEAKER_00And the other one I had queued up for you to talk about was it's colder out now and we're using defrost.
SPEAKER_02Defrost, yes. And um those less mechanically you know inclined than myself.
SPEAKER_00Like everyone in this room, perhaps.
SPEAKER_02I don't know about that. Uh may not know that you have to have the air conditioner running when you turn the defrost on. It kicks the air conditioner on. So if it feels like uh you're blowing AC while you have the defrost on, that's how it works. So that is not a a malfunction or anything with the truck.
SPEAKER_00That's what's supposed to happen.
SPEAKER_02We don't we don't need to bring it into the shop. That is yeah, intended to work that way.
SPEAKER_00I think it's a little bit different in some trucks. Like some trucks, it's clear that the AC turned on, like the light comes on or whatever that indicates that. And on other trucks it just happens kind of automatically and you don't know what's happening. So um, that is how it's supposed to work.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. You ready to talk about our topic today?
SPEAKER_00Uh I'm ready. I did not prepare.
SPEAKER_02Well, you know what the good news is per usual. The good news is you don't have to prepare for today's topic. I already are an expert in today's topic. So we've like interviewed everyone that works here, or or not that works here, but then the management team.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um, and uh except for you. We haven't interviewed you. We haven't talked about your past and history and background. Of course, snippets of it come out, right? But we've been ignoring and neglecting you for all these episodes. So design. Time, time to dive in.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_02You ready?
SPEAKER_00I'm ready.
SPEAKER_02You ready? Okay. So my first question to you is why are you the way that you are?
SPEAKER_00Uh I'm not sure what you mean by that.
SPEAKER_02I'm just kidding. That was not a fair question. Take it how you mean it. Or want it. 100% that's a fair question. Answer it now.
SPEAKER_00I don't know what you mean. I am a very curious person. I'm a I don't know, a pusher. Not pushy, but I'm a pusher, I guess, is what I would say.
SPEAKER_02All right. Well, let's go back. Let's go back to the beginning. Where are you from? How did you get here? What did you do before you came to Illinois?
SPEAKER_00Okay. Um, I grew up in a tiny town, Ohio, Illinois, 500 people. There were eight kids in my class. You want to go all the way back to these details? I ended up moving. I graduated from Newman in Sterling, Illinois. I went to Valparaiso University and I was a broadcast major. Um, and I actually hated it.
SPEAKER_02That's that's why you have full circle here.
SPEAKER_00We can't come back here to broadcasting. I did not like my experience broadcasting there, but uh the school was actually famous for broadcasters. A lot of good news people and weather people came from that school, including Gretchen Zee from Good Morning America.
SPEAKER_02I don't know who that is. Yeah, me either.
SPEAKER_00The most famous weather person right now.
SPEAKER_02Where's is it Al Roker still doing it? No. No, you tell how much uh uh T. Same level, though. Same level. Okay.
SPEAKER_00Uh then I had a few different jobs in HR, and uh most significant amount of time was spent in the insurance industry. I worked for nationwide insurance and sentry insurance, and they kind of have a field model where they have these claims and underwriting offices across the country, and they have a HR, a corporate HR person that is set in the field offices to kind of help manage things, and that is what I did. I traveled a lot and started offices and closed offices and managed training for those super boring insurance industry things. Um, and then I moved back here and started a family and needed a job where I was traveling less and landed here.
SPEAKER_02Didn't you have a a little while to casino?
SPEAKER_00Uh briefly, when I left the insurance industry, I thought that it would be fun to work in the casinos around here, and it in fact was not fun at all.
SPEAKER_02So it doesn't seem fun to me.
SPEAKER_00No, no, no. I underestimated, you know, that it's it's running all the time. Um, so the the responsibility for the leadership there is also required to be there all the, you know, weekend nights and weekends are holidays are the busiest time.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. For sure.
SPEAKER_00That was not a match for me.
SPEAKER_02Okay. I remember when we first met at your interview. And so what what was your first like impression? Like, what are your first thoughts about like, oh, this is a ready-mixed concrete company, and what's that gonna be like? And how did that square up once you started?
SPEAKER_00Funny, my first interview was off site. Uh, so I didn't even get to come here. So I really had no concept of of what we were talking about. But of course, after that first interview, I saw trucks everywhere, like all the way back home. And every every day after that, I saw trucks everywhere. So that was really kind of all I knew up front. Um, and then I did come for a second interview here to the office, and I got to meet Brian, and then I got a very clear picture of exactly what we're doing here.
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_00And I still wanted to come.
SPEAKER_02That's good. That's good.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Uh I know you had uh some good stories involving John, like in your first week, but what was your first week like when you started in?
SPEAKER_00Oh yeah. Well, there uh we were without an HR person when I started. So there are some like transactional HR things that were stacked up. Like we do a lot of job verifications. It's required by the DOT. So there was like an actual stack of papers that had to be filled out and faxed in, which I had never like not used a fax machine really in my life. So that was back in time. Yeah, it was a step back in time, but there was definitely plenty of actual paperwork for me to do. And that's that's what I did uh right up front. But I learned a lot by doing that. I tons of filing that hadn't been done and going through every single person's employee file and learning everything that was probably the best thing to do first.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Well, so we we brought you on as an HR manager, and uh quid I'd say pretty quickly your role really expanded beyond what would a HR manager traditionally do, right? And so uh your title now is chief of staff, which can mean really anything. Take it how you want you want it to mean, right? Uh for a long time we didn't even know what to give you as a title, right? Because it just nothing fit. But then we had a vendor we were meeting with, and they're like a chief of staff, well, oh, that that actually might fit better than anything else we thought of. When you explain that to people and they say, well, what does that mean? What do you do? What do you actually do? Why don't you fill us in? So I mean, I think there's a lot of folks out in trucks that they know who you are, but I don't know if they know your whole responsibilities and what you're yeah.
SPEAKER_00If it's in a professional setting, I usually say that I am responsible for the people and the processes here mostly. And a lot of that includes systems that that we use. Um so that's kind of the most general example. When it's with other people who know us better, I say that my job is to do everything that you don't want to do.
SPEAKER_02The list is long.
SPEAKER_00The things that are of no interest to you. So I don't do much with concrete or anything technical because you find that very interesting and fun. Um, and I don't do much with customers other than helping with dispatch and drivers and their interactions with customers.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_00I don't get many phone calls from customers directly.
SPEAKER_02You're missing out. It's a lot of fun.
SPEAKER_00You get to do that part.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah. What do you think the folks driving in a truck all day? What do you think they think that they infer that you do?
SPEAKER_00I think that they think that my office is like the principal's office, and I just have like an all-day stream of people coming in to get in trouble.
SPEAKER_02Oh, well, that's pretty accurate.
SPEAKER_00That is not accurate. Hardly. Hardly what I spend. There are not many people that have to come to the principal's office.
SPEAKER_02That's true. Walk us through like a normal day. So let's call it a normal Tuesday. What are you tackling? What are you thinking about? What's going through your head?
SPEAKER_00I always have a list of the things that I want to do, um, which are usually like pretty forward-thinking, fixing something or deciding how something's going to work in the future. Um, but what I end up doing more than half the time is addressing, I call it it's kind of like a parade of problems that enter my office. By the time I get here in the morning, there are a lot of problems that have bubbled up to the surface. And those people come see me and we talk through anything from you know, people problems or systems that aren't working or something new that we haven't done before that we need to think through how to how to tackle it.
SPEAKER_02Or family problems. Right, personal problems. You're the in-house therapist. Yes. Yes, right. Dan Snyder came on the show at one point and um said that when his phone rings, it's normally you texting him. So you uh I mean you do that a lot, right? You reach out to folks uh throughout the company all the time. What are you normally trying to do or learn when you're reaching out to people? So they so they understand that you're they're not in trouble just because they hear from you.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I kind of view it like every person has their own plates that they're trying to keep spinning, right? So Dan is responsible for the Eldridge facility and the drivers there and the concrete that's going out there and customers there. So he has a set of plates that he keeps spinning, as does everyone else. And so I'm sort of looking at the bigger picture of all the plates that are spinning, and something will catch my eye, and I will dive in to figure out how we can get that one.
SPEAKER_02This plate is not spinning. This is not going how I want it to go. Yes, right.
SPEAKER_00Something there's an indication of some kind that something is not going how we want it to go somewhere. And so I look into all the different systems and resources that I have, and then I am very curious. So I say this is what I see, and I will message someone like Dan and say, Hey, what's what's happening here? And then we get to the bottom of it, right? Get that one going, and then we move on to something else.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Well, and it can be all sorts of different things, right? You're you're texting why why do we add so much water on this load? What happened there? Or customer called and rejected a load because of what you know, what what happened with this?
SPEAKER_00So how long has this strip been sitting here? Right. When's the last time you swept the floor? Like just anything.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Absolutely. So let's talk about process improvement. Right? That is uh certainly your passion.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And why do you like that? First of all, like what's what's the I think it's kind of laziness.
SPEAKER_00Like I don't like to do busy work. I almost never did my homework. Now I have kids in junior high that have to do homework, and I was a person who hated doing homework. Like I just thought it was very inefficient to do the same math problem 20 times on a worksheet and turn it in. Like, I'll show you I can do it one time and then I'm moving on. So I think my a lot of my efficiency comes from laziness of not wanting to do hard work over and over again.
SPEAKER_02That's a harsh self-assessment.
SPEAKER_00Well, I don't I mean, I work hard to make it easier.
SPEAKER_02Well, I mean, and you're not you're not just, you know, doing your own processes, right?
SPEAKER_00But I hate to see anyone working harder than they need to.
SPEAKER_02Well, we have so many places just by virtue of the nature of the beast of ready mixed concrete, where people spend a lot of time to get very little done or have extensive workarounds or um bash their head against the wall again and again and again. You know, I always think that you have a really powerful ability to say, okay, what is the end goal we want to achieve with this process? What do we need to do it? And let's cut the crap out. Yes. If it doesn't need to be there, then why are we doing it? Let's get from point A to point B in the most effective way possible.
SPEAKER_00Or if we run into the same problem every day, I don't want, I don't want to have that same problem tomorrow. So what can we do differently?
SPEAKER_02So a lot of the the benefits and and open enrollment that stuff still kind of sits with you. Obviously, Tiffany takes a lot of the the kind of the day-to-day work on that. But like what do you do? You're you're you're meeting with insurance and kind of putting together our total benefit package. So what do you think about through that process or how do you approach that?
SPEAKER_00I'm lucky that I had that insurance background where I kind of know some sides of that business that that give me a bigger picture when we're meeting with people. But I am like a a shrewd customer, right? Like I don't want to overpay for anything. So I try to think through everything we can do differently on our side to present a better picture to get a better deal on insurance, whatever side it's on. So that's why, like, that's why we do the health screenings, right? If we if everyone's seeing a doctor and getting blood work at least once a year, we look better to the insurance companies to get a better price for us and a better price for the customers. So I'm just always trying to see if there's any other, you know, lever we can push or different thing we can put forward to make it look better to get a better price.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And get the best deal, like get the most value for whatever we're paying for.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And especially on insurance. I mean, things are crazy right now. So if you gotta pull every lever and and find every nook and cranny where there can be savings or right.
SPEAKER_00And there's so many pieces to it here where we're talking about employee insurance, whether it's health or dental, but then also like all the trucks and all the properties. And it it just really adds up to, I mean, that could be a full-time job if you wanted it to be.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Well, that's why we hire brokers to help us. Yes. Yeah, yeah with with those things. Let's talk about feedback. You're a big fan of feedback. And um, we've had a lot of conversations on here about, you know, directness and feedback. And I I think you even brought up once that like we've we're almost too comfortable at times here. And and we need to make things a little uncomfortable sometimes when we're giving feedback because that's how we can grow and improve. And yeah, talk to me about what if someone is getting feedback from you, how should they be thinking about that feedback and and what are you trying to accomplish through the process?
SPEAKER_00I think mostly what I'm trying to do is bring awareness to something. Um, because I don't think anyone comes to work trying to do a bad job, right? Nobody is coming in here, like, I'm just gonna be terrible today. I'm gonna do everything wrong. No one's coming in thinking that way. So if they are doing something wrong or something isn't working out, I mostly think they need to know that. Like I just need to bring awareness to it and let them know. Um and then I'm also being curious and asking, like, why are you doing it the way that you're doing it instead of doing it the way we want you to do it? Um, because sometimes we do need to change that process. So um I hope that people hear feedback from me in that way and that think that I'm open to whatever the explanation is and trying to work collaboratively to get where we want to be.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I think sometimes people, you know, it's it's sometimes hard to hear, especially, you know, constructive or or negative feedback. And I a lot of times when I know that you're gonna talk with somebody about a change of direction you want to uh have them do, it's like this is our when you when you're involved, it's our best attempt to put them on the right track for success, right? So it's not like, oh, they're trying to get rid of me or something because Andrew came to talk to me. It's uh no, this is because we think you can do the job and we need to help you get there, right?
SPEAKER_00Exactly. That's the the goal of feedback is to help someone improve. Definitely never uh, you know, I back in the insurance days, we would have like performance improvement plans where you would write down everything someone did wrong and then follow up every week and tell them how many other things they did wrong. I'm so glad that that's not our approach here, where it's definitely like let's remind someone of the boundaries of how we try and do things and let them know that they're outside of those boundaries and get back on track.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Let's talk about pay lossity. It's like a little bit in the rearview mirror that uh we're we've over the worst of it and the transition with it. But moving to pay loss was a big change for how we do things with people's paychecks and benefits and all that. Like what were we trying to accomplish with that? And do you think that was successful? And are we finished with that process or we have more to go?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, this is a this is a loaded question this week. Uh, because we do have some issues with Pelocity right now. But um for the most part, I think that transitioning to Pelocity was well worth the effort for the improved level of transparency that an employee has on their own information. Like you now have in your hands all of your time off requests and when they're approved and not. Like that was one major pain point for people before we had pay lossity was there's a paper process. You didn't know if it was approved or not. It was a just a mess on both sides for the employee and the company. Um, so that is a major improvement. Also being able to change your own address, your own deductions, your own benefits, everything right there in your hand is just a major improvement.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, for sure.
SPEAKER_00There's still struggles. You know, we have we're running two different companies in two different states, and the transferring between those and trying to have managers view employees on both sides is yeah, is not without struggle. I still wish there was better and more opportunities for communication. Like I there's the community page in there where we post this podcast and some other things. I was hoping that that would be more robust than it is. And I think it it I still think it will get better. I wish people didn't have to change their password every 90 days and go through that whole ordeal. You know, it's not perfect, but I think it's a a major improvement.
SPEAKER_02Well, I we can see like how many people are viewing like our community announcements, right? So for the podcast every week, it's you know 40 to 50 people.
SPEAKER_00And so But that's 40 to 50 more than we had.
SPEAKER_02But the you know, we have like 150 employees here, right? So so we're only hitting about a third.
SPEAKER_00And some people use it all the time. I mean, some people are viewing their paycheck. And doing things all the time, and other people are come to me every 90 days and say I haven't been able to log in and now I my password changed. So it's a wide variety.
SPEAKER_02Right. What's the hardest part of your job, do you think?
SPEAKER_00Present company excluded?
SPEAKER_02I can take it. Or Lex can take it, I guess.
SPEAKER_00No, I think the the hardest part of my job and the best part of my job are kind of the same, where it's the same thing and totally different every single day. Like we have the same problems of getting the best people to do this work and keeping the trucks running and keeping the customers happy and responding to customer requests that are outrageous. Like those things are always the same, but they're also always different. So that is really hard. But also I would be bored if it wasn't like that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. This we've said it a million times on everybody. This industry is the one thing it is not is boring. So that's for sure. You're part of our executive team, right? So we're a lot of high-level discussions and everything, strategic discussions. Um, and we joke a lot of times that you know your approach to a lot of those is I don't want to make the decision, but once we make the decision, we should get out of your way to let you implement it. Right.
SPEAKER_00Let me know when you decide.
SPEAKER_02I mean, is that how you view it really? I mean, uh, what do you think about that?
SPEAKER_00I mostly think that there are not many wrong decisions. Like if you are a good person and you have good intentions, you're making good decisions and I can execute them no matter what. Um, so even like personally, I don't spend that much time like deliberating about what I'm going to do or whatever I'm gonna do, I'm just gonna do it and then make the best of it. So the decision isn't that important to me.
SPEAKER_02We could not be more different on that front.
SPEAKER_00That's why we're a good team. I'll let you spend hours and hours and hours deliberating, and then once you decide, we'll make the best of it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. That's good. You know, on that front of when we look at things differently, like what's something that maybe people would be interested to know that you've pushed me on, right? That that you can think of. Because that that does happen, right? Like I take you give feedback to everybody, but I take your feedback very seriously as well, right?
SPEAKER_00So I don't have a specific example, but there's many things where you see something and see all of the potential and all of the opportunity and none of the downside. So I feel like it's my job to point out to you the challenges and all the ways that this could go wrong. And then we do it anyways, and I make the best of this.
SPEAKER_02Well, we did talk about that uh this week. And I told you and Jeff, I said, guys, uh, if I'm the optimist and you two are pessimists, uh, the problem is there's two of you and one of me. And so you guys need to be half the pessimist that I am optimist to make it, you know, to make it balanced.
SPEAKER_00No, I think it's still, I think we're still right on track.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_02All right. Anything else you want to talk about while we got uh it's it's your day.
SPEAKER_00The only other thing that I thought of that we haven't talked about yet was uh one of the best things about working here is that we actually get to make decisions and impact the daily outcomes. And I think everyone has that opportunity. Every driver, every person that works here has a chance to influence how things are done. And that's the best part for me, different than all the other places that I worked where it's a huge ship and one person's opinion didn't matter that much. It really does matter here. Yeah. I want everyone to know that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we take good ideas wherever they come from.
SPEAKER_00And uh and we'll try it tomorrow.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, right.
SPEAKER_00Most of the time.
SPEAKER_02So let's just we do our word for what's your word of the week. All right. So the word uh I came up with for this week is curing, right? Okay. So concrete needs to cure to reach its potential. And what actually would define curing as in in terms of concrete as being giving concrete the time, the temperature, and the moisture to to reach that potential, right? Some other day we can go into why the moisture is important, but uh just know that it is. So uh our customers in general are not good at this, frankly. We pretty much always give concrete the time, right, to gain strength. I'd say we're pretty good most of the time in protecting the temperature. And that's really only a concern, really, in the winter, right? And customers will sometimes call and say, uh, uh it's borderline. Should I cover the concrete tonight? I'm like, well, if you're asking the question, the answer is yes. Um and so they do a decent job at that. Where we do a bad job is when it comes to moisture. So curing as it relates to moisture, um, could involve uh the way they used to do it was to flood the slab um with water. So they'd make like a dirt berm around concrete and flood it with water. It's not very feasible, or you know, from today's construction practices, and they would flood it for a month. But curing can be done with like wet burlap blankets, or sometimes you see on bridge decks like ultra cure blankets. But most of the time, curing is most easily done with just a curing compound that's sprayed on the top. And that locks the moisture that's in the concrete right as it's setting in there for about a month, and that curing compound will break down from UV rays. But um especially when it comes to the surface strength. If we don't cure, we have about 50% lower surface strength than if we do cure the concrete. And where do our durability problems happen? Right at the surface. So curing is is a critical, critical step in the concrete construction process, particularly in exterior concrete. And frankly, most of our contractors skip it entirely. That is um uh something I always harp about. So I thought it would be a good, a good uh we could do a whole episode on that one. A whole episode on curing and it, yes, everybody knows.
SPEAKER_00Then we'd have to figure out how to make it reach our customers.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_00Good. Well, thanks for listening, everyone. I hope you come back next week.
SPEAKER_02Well, this was fun. All right, have a good one.
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