Business Report Trends for 2021 Roundtable

S P O N S O RED C O N TEN T

Trends for 2021 ROUNDTABLE

5 Baton Rouge thought leaders share insights for business and the community in the year to come.

“Successful distribution of a vaccine in 2021 is going to be a major priority.”

“The good news is we still do have investment opportunities on the horizon.”

Stephanie Cargille

Warner Thomas

“Revenue recovery is going to be big for everyone.”

Kathy Trahan

“My biggest concern is for our very small businesses.”

Steve Webb

“Those that fared well did so through innovation and being nimble.”

Eric Bosch

S P ONSORED BY:

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Meet the roundtable participants Warner Thomas President/CEO, Ochsner Health

Kathy Trahan President/CEO, Alliance Safety Council

Eric Bosch

President- & CEO-Elect; Director, Audit and Assurance Services Group LaPorte CPAs & Business Advisors

Stephanie Cargile Public Affairs Manager, ExxonMobil

Steve Webb

President/CEO, Neighbors Federal Credit Union

About the Trends for 2021 Roundtable

5 Baton Rouge thought leaders share insights for business and the community in the year to come.

2021 HAS FINALLY ARRIVED. So many of us were eager to see 2020 in the rear view mirror, as if the flip of the calendar to January 1 would erase all that was terrible about the year we left behind: A pandemic. Economic hardship or outright devastation for small businesses.

A downturn in the oil and gas sector unlike any other. Mass layoffs. A barrage of hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico. And more.

For the past three years, Business Report has invited thought leaders representing each of our sponsors to a unique morning roundtable for conversation about some of the most critical issues facing Baton Rouge business and the community in the coming year.

Topics include quality of life, education, industry, workforce, technology and more. Though vaccines were en route in mid-November at the time of our

conversation, the continued uncertainty about the impact of COVID-19 was everpresent in the discussion. Leaders shared how the pandemic has transformed their way of doing business, and their plans for continued innovations in 2021.

Comments made during the roundtable have been edited and condensed for clarity and for space. Read and share the online version at businessreport. com/2021Roundtable.

Daily-Report.com | BUSINESS REPORT, January, 2021

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Let’s reach a healthier state together.

- Lance D. Diabetes Patient

When it comes to our health, we are committed to move our state forward. With investments into community health centers, mental health resources, educational programs, screening and prevention resources, we will make our community stronger and healthier.

Let’s do this together. Let’s lead longer, healthier lives. Let’s reach a healthier state. For more information, visit ochsner.org/healthystate

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evenue recovery is going to be big for everyone. We experienced a 70% drop in training units overnight following the stay-at-home order. Our focus shifted to how we can meet our members where they are and help them get back to work, too. With that in mind, we immediately began converting content for virtual delivery, and we expedited technology solutions to verify the integrity of training that required proctoring using AI-based remote identity verification. The million-dollar question became, “How could we take existing and/or nearly ready services and technology applications and put them together in new and different ways to create added value?”

Kathy Trahan

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s it relates to our economy, my biggest concern is for our very small businesses. Our larger companies are resilient. They have capacity. They have capital.

They can withstand the storm longer than a lot of our local independent businesses can. So I am really interested to see how our smaller companies rebound. I think even small businesses need to have an online presence. We are all competing globally with the Amazons of the world. Even in the financial world, we are competing with the Amazons of the world. No business is too small to be online. If they want to continue to succeed, they must invest in that business from a technological perspective.

Steve Webb

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ducation. It’s what leads to workforce and economic prosperity. By continuing to invest in quality school options for all students and in supporting our teachers and school leaders, we can ensure a strong education infrastructure.

Our company and others in industry will continue to provide high-paying, long-term careers for today’s students. But as our industry becomes more high-tech, we need to ensure local students can compete for these opportunities. Moreover, a strong education system helps us recruit employees to Baton Rouge from all over the world.

Stephanie Cargile

Focus: On horizon health care

We changed our name from Ochsner Health System to Ochsner Health.

Some people are like, “What’s the big deal?” It is a big deal. We are all focused on health and keeping people out of our facilities, moving from being reactive and taking care of people when they come to see us to being proactive and making sure that people get their screenings, making sure we are monitoring blood pressures from home, making sure we are keeping diabetes under control. Now that we have digitized all of our data, how do we predict what is going to happen with people? How do we predict depression? How do we predict people who may need to go to the ER or be readmitted before it happens? We are using this data to start to predict how we approach taking care of people differently, better and much more proactively. I think that is really a big horizon for health care. It’s great to have an electronic medical record, but how do you now use the data in a very, very different way to take care of people? We have made and will continue to make significant investments in this arena.

Warner Thomas

QUESTION

What is the most pressing issue for South Louisiana and Baton Rouge in 2021?

LaPorte CPAs & Business Advisors is one of the largest independent accounting and business consulting firms in the region, with over 190 personnel in New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Covington and Houma, as well as an office in Houston, Texas.

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or so many businesses economic viability is the most pressing issue, but for communities, it’s also education.

Right now, I am concerned about the impact of virtual learning—both the efficiency and the efficacy. From grammar school to college or vocational education, we have to ensure that it is fair and equitable to all students and that everyone is getting the appropriate level of resources and support needed. Even before COVID, education is the imperative as the economic disparity in the area is exacerbated by the challenges in education.

Eric Bosch

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he successful distribution of a vaccine in 2021 is going to be a major priority for Baton Rouge and every community in this state. We anticipate that there will be a vaccine in late 2020 or early 2021, which will help mitigate some of the impacts of COVID-19. It’s not going to eliminate it, just as the flu shot doesn’t eliminate the flu. But it will be another precaution and method for reducing risk factors, allowing our economy and allowing our communities to get back to the new normal in this post-pandemic environment. The governor is spending a lot of time on and working with a lot of local governmental entities on how to distribute it. It’s going to be a massive initiative to try to inoculate that many people with the vaccine in 2021.

Warner Thomas

Daily-Report.com | BUSINESS REPORT, January, 2021

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ybersecurity is huge.

We protect people’s money.

I think they are probably more concerned about that than their kids are, unfortunately. If we mismanage data security, the reputation risk and loss of business would probably be non-recoverable. We take it very seriously. This is a continuous effort. This isn’t anything that’s new, but every day is a new day and every day is a new challenge.

Steve Webb

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orkforce. Today, we have well over a thousand positions open in our organization and a lot of those are in clinical areas. Having enough clinicians to take care of folks, having them in the right discipline and having them in the right training: That is a major issue for us. We are doing a lot of partnering with the educational institutions around the state to train more people and being open to doing that so that we can connect with more students as they are going through their clinical training. But workforce is a big issue for us and I think we have to continue to think about how we get people connected to health care careers earlier on in school. Students need to understand that you can do a lot of different things in health care—you can do IT, you can do HR, as well as being a nurse or a physician.

Warner Thomas

QUESTION

What are the most pressing issues facing your industry in 2021, and how are you prepared to deal with it?

The Alliance Safety Council’s Emerging Technologies Center focuses on the future of learning technology and training process innovation for business and industry. It provides an environment conducive to design thinking and also innovative content development and delivery technologies that will transform the adult learning experience.

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or us like most industries, acquisition, retention and development of talent remains a top priority. With ongoing advances in eliminating repetitive tasks through AI, our emphasis will continue to be on expanding our advisory role, as this will not be automated. LaPorte has focused heavily on broad-based talent development through programming such as LaPorte University.

This has proven successful in creating a consultative culture and particularly in this year that has paid off. We have worked to help our clients navigate the financial challenges of the pandemic—to really look at cashflow, credit, and liquidity in order to be able to weather an uncertain future.

Eric Bosch

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n the industrial sector, many people are shifting jobs right now because of unemployment. Many are trying to migrate to the industries that happen to do well for some sense of security during this time—the ones that are thriving. So training has become a big issue. Because of the movement of labor, they are having to retrain and because they may have absolutely no understanding of our industry. It requires more intensive onboarding than maybe normal.

Kathy Trahan

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ur company faced shrinking fuel demand in 2020 due to consumer uncertainty and a big reduction in both car and air travel. In 2019 we announced a more than $500 million-dollar propylene project in Baton Rouge. That project, along with others along the Gulf Coast, were slowed down. However, the good news is that construction continued and we are still planning to support the same number of construction and employee jobs. In 2020, we’ve had to navigate operations and make adjustments to respond to the changes in the market. In Baton Rouge, our integrated Refinery and Chemical Plant provide a critical competitive advantage as the two sites can share feedstocks, ensure efficiencies and respond to demand. The good news is we still do have growth opportunities on the horizon.

More than ever, its important for our local operations to be able to compete for capital investment against other ExxonMobil facilities in the Gulf Coast or globally. We want Baton Rouge to be able to attract those projects. Economic incentives will play a key role in ensuring we stay competitive.

Stephanie Cargile

BUSINESS REPORT, January, 2021 | BusinessReport.com

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his is probably unique to the Baton Rouge marketplace and to us. We asked the question, “How do you grow your business if you are in a market that is not necessarily growing? Is there any new market out there or do you actually have to take market share from someone else?” I have always subscribed to the notion that your business is either growing or it’s dying. There is no status quo. There is no staying in place so we are constantly looking for new ways to grow our business, new ways that we can identify new markets and new opportunities within the greater Baton Rouge marketplace. It’s a challenge not unique to Baton Rouge but unique to maybe markets that don’t see an influx of population and new citizens.

Steve Webb

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e are building a home monitoring system right now internally. It’s in beta testing right now and will be ready to go live in 2021. It monitors, in particular, aging parents at home. Monitors how many bathroom trips. How long are they in bed? Are they eating? Are they going in the refrigerator? Do they leave the stove on? Are they sitting in their chair? Just looking at activity. It will be coupled with digital tools we have for hypertension and diabetes which are also done virtually. With a wireless blood pressure cuff, we can track your blood pressure remotely. I think you are going to see remote monitoring being big. The idea is like Lifeline, where someone has fallen, you can kind of push the Lifeline button and for $30 a month it’s great after the person has fallen. Frankly, then it’s too late. Our system will look to prevent those types of things from happening and look to identify, in some ways, whether they are not drinking water, or not having enough output, do they have a UTI or are they getting dehydrated? What does their balance look like? All those types of things which will help us avoid emergency room visits, help us avoid hospitalizations and keep people healthy. So that’s absolutely a big focus for 2021.

Warner Thomas

The Grove in Baton Rouge represents the single largest investment Ochsner Health has ever made, with a price tag of $116 million. The five-story, 225,000-square-foot complex comprises a multispecialty clinic and surgical center with 10 overnight beds. The Grove also has 249 exam/procedure rooms, and it’s estimated the facility can handle around 2,000 patients per day.

The facility has experienced double-digit growth since opening. It’s part of the system’s shift in focus from inpatient to outpatient.

QUESTION

What will be a major business focus for you in 2021?

Focus: On mortgage mania

The mortgage industry has been really interesting. Typically, when interest rates are extremely low, we have a tremendous refinance boom. Everyone is refinancing. We are still seeing refinancing, but people are taking this opportunity to basically upgrade. We are seeing a lot of purchases. I am thinking, “COVID’s happening, what’s the economy going to do?” I am retracting and trying to liquidate debt. But I guess confidence is higher than I really would have anticipated, because going back to April and May, consistently month after month after month, we are setting new milestones for what we are able to produce on the mortgage side. I don’t know if people are bored and they were sitting at home and they were just looking and said, “Let’s go buy a house!” Along that same line, we do a tremendous amount of automobile lending and we have set records this year on the amount of people that are out buying vehicles. It is interesting to see that people are still getting along with their lives and those normal activities of buying homes, getting cars.

Steve Webb

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e have focused for quite some time now on supporting community and client education.

Often this has been done in person through lunch and learns or organization presentations or through emails or posted blogs. However, during COVID the shift was rapid to leverage video conferencing on a much broader scale for both safety and speed of communication.

Throughout the pandemic, we took a proactive stance in researching and disseminating information on legislation such as the CARES Act and Paycheck Protection Program through webinars, blog articles, and eblasts. We will continue to emphasize our advisory role, including helping our community and current clients navigate the ongoing challenges in a current or post-COVID world and in supporting them in their decision process around the best economic programs available to them.

Eric Bosch

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e continue to invest in our local training programs at Baton Rouge Community College to ensure they match the job needs at our local ExxonMobil facilities. Our North Baton Rouge Industrial Training Initiative collaborates with several major contractors and partners like BankCorp South, who all provide insight on how we can prepare and educate students for success in the job market.

ExxonMobil already has hiring programs in place for 2021, and our focus will be on crafts positions, such as pipefitters, millwrights, electricians and welders. These roles will be important to support our potential, newly announced refinery investment.

Stephanie Cargile

Daily-Report.com | BUSINESS REPORT, January, 2021

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QUESTION

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echnology makes life easier—or it should—but it is not inexpensive. We are continuing to compete in the local marketplace, not just with local competition but we are competing with fintech and we are competing with national banks. There is a new competitor in our inner space every day, every week it seems like. So you have to stay abreast of the changes in technology and provide what people are expecting. I mentioned Amazon earlier. If Amazon has done nothing, it’s created a necessity to offer better service.

People expect things to really appear at their doorstep overnight. In the financial sector world, sometimes decisions can’t happen quite that fast, but the expectation is that everything can be done instantaneously. So we are investing in that technology to make those processes easier and quicker and more convenient to our customer base or membership.

Steve Webb

How do you see technology continuing to accelerate in 2021?

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he reality is that our world has fundamentally changed in the past eight months. All the anecdotes we hear of that the transition in technology has accelerated 3 to 5 years in eight months. We have definitely seen it in our world. If you return to 2019, we did about 3,000 direct to consumer telemedicine visits—and that was with advertising and trying to get folks to use it. This year, we will do 280,000. It’s a very big change. The technology platform, the way you engage consumers from a technology perspective: How do you build a relationship from a digital perspective as well as a physical location perspective is a big focus for us. I think it’s going to be an ongoing focus for lots of businesses. I think those that did not have a digital presence certainly were disproportionately negatively impacted through this period of time.

Warner Thomas

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do think that on the employee side, we look at the fact that we can hire people anywhere now, but the flip side of that is that our employees can take jobs anywhere, too. So I think the competition for talent has really changed a lot.

We now have employees in about 31 states today and I think that is going to continue to accelerate and grow, but I do think that especially in the IT area and others, we are seeing some people being recruited to out-of-state organizations because they don’t have to relocate now. I think the demand on talent is going to be a very interesting situation.

We are all going to have to be creative about how we retain talent and what types of things we will have to do for folks in order to retain them, and what flexibilities we will need to give them going forward.

Warner Thomas

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QUESTION

Exxon is a pioneer in virtual training for industry.

In preparation for its polypropylene project in Baton Rouge, the company in October “lifted” 400-pound reactors in advance using an integrated virtual experience, allowing operators to identify efficiencies and prepare for safety challenges ahead of the actual lift.

What talent demand trends are we likely to see in 2021?

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e have a lot of our young people move out of state and they seek jobs elsewhere. Many companies lose employees perhaps because their significant other took a job out of state.

Maybe now is the time to invest as we have done in technology so our people can work remotely and perhaps we can figure out a way to preserve those employees. Now it’s OK to have them working two, three, seven or 12 states away. We’ve been hesitant to do that before, so it kind of gets back to “Let’s not lose the positive things we have learned from this.” Let’s not just fight so hard to get back to the way things were.

I know it’s a comfortable place. It’s a safe place, but it’s not always the best place so let’s focus on finding ways to be better.

Steve Webb

BUSINESS REPORT, January, 2021 | BusinessReport.com

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ur focus was on the health of our employees, clients, and finances. Employee health was addressed through implementing extensive safety protocols and by having the courage to enforce it versus just giving it lip service. We had regular Microsoft Teams calls to check in and let employees know the business was doing well, and that we would be proceeding with promotions and raises versus foreseeing a need to eliminate any positions or cut salaries.

The technology we already had in place allowed us to handle remote working effectively and the safety protocols provided a stronger sense of comfort when the time was right for our employees to return to our offices. We addressed client care through personal outreach to focus on unique needs and to educate on relief measures. And financial health was addressed through a focus on productivity and client care, expense reduction, and ongoing budget management.

Eric Bosch

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e still anticipate a large percentage of our staff to be working remotely or in a hybrid work environment, not any different than a lot of industries. Now we feel as though we were slightly ahead of the game with some of the technology that we had implemented. Not necessarily expecting a pandemic but just looking at a new way to conduct business, we have installed a number of devices called integrated teller machines. So today, I actually have tellers working from home that can do a cash transaction all across our area while they are sitting in their office at home. I think we will see more of that. Not necessarily out of fear or concern for COVID. But if it is just the better way to do something, why not do that and stop fighting the urge to get back to the way things used to be? Yes, we are all comfortable in that old norm. However, we want to make sure if there are advantages or opportunities created, let’s take advantage of those long-term.

Steve Webb

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t surprised us to find an increase in productivity when we were forced to move everyone except key operations personnel from our training centers to working remotely. It required a shift in how we communicated, but we actually experienced greater connectivity using Microsoft Teams and Zoom. Our Customer Success team was able to use software-assisted technology and voice translation apps to help customers from anywhere in the world. Since we were in the process of converting content for virtual proctored delivery, our content development and technology teams were working around the clock.

Using an AI-powered marketing platform, our marketing team was able to immediately get these timely solutions in front our customers, who were essential workers.

Previously, although only 75,000 of the 270,000 training units were delivered face to face, social distancing and limits on how many individuals could be trained in our respective facilities required constant adjustments in staffing and hours of operation. We are planning to continue these work practices post-pandemic where they make sense. Although we don’t know how much the pandemic will alter economic forecasts of a 2025 recession, we’re confident we can continue to diversify our offering. This would not be possible without the support of our dedicated board of directors. Our focus will be performance support tools as sophisticated job aids that walk workers through the tasks and procedures required to do their jobs. These essential workers and their industries are constantly being challenged with doing more with less. We want to save our members time and increase time on tools.

Kathy Trahan

QUESTION

What has been your greatest challenge during the pandemic and how did you overcome it? How will your business be different in 2021?

Focus: On regulations and legislation

ExxonMobil, along with other industry, is participating in the Govenor’s new Climate Task Force via our trade associations, such as the Louisiana Chemical Association and Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association.

Our refinery and chemical plant facilities are ahead of the curve in some of the flaring efficiency investments we have made over the past few years, and our newly announced, potential refinery investment would further reduce our site’s volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions.

From a legislative perspective, we will continue to be engaged in the tax reform discussion. And then, the long-term issue of legal reform in the state will continue to be a priority. In this tough economic climate, it’s very important that Louisiana is positioned as business-friendly and open for new investment without complicated tax structures or frivolous lawsuit activity.

Stephanie Cargile

Focus: On business continuity planning

The pandemic reinforced to us how important it is to have a continuity plan in place.

Based on natural disasters over the past 15 years, we already had a strong continuity plan, leadership well-experienced in navigating disasters, and employees well versed on supporting clients in disaster contingency planning. That preparation was invaluable as the day after they announced the shutdown we were up and running remotely without missing a beat. For example, everyone already had laptops, we were already cloud-based and we were already adept at video-conferencing.

Eric Bosch Daily-Report.com | BUSINESS REPORT, January, 2021

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rom a more personal community aspect, I see my grandchildren and you know, parents are warning their children and the children are getting fearful about the aspects of social distancing. I think that there is going to be an impact on how they socialize, the trust issues that they have. We are huggers down here in Louisiana and they are being held back and discouraged from that social intimacy— for their own good, of course, but I am just really concerned about that aspect of it.

We have a great culture and a great community down here and I hate to see that break down because of everything that has happened to us. I am hoping that people will go and make that extra effort to help people feel connected.

Kathy Trahan

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am very interested to see how the local restaurant community is able to survive. I know they are very innovative.

It’s going to be something to keep an eye on.

Commercial real estate—especially office space—we haven’t seen it yet, but as leases begin to expire, as we have all mentioned, more people are working from home. There won’t be an immediate impact, but longterm, I think that we may see that we have an oversupply of commercial real estate— especially office space—in the marketplace. I think it is a little premature right now to say what the long-term effects are, but I think we can see there are areas that we need to keep a watchful eye upon.

Steve Webb

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or many businesses, while working in the office will likely be preferred, the value of learning how to effectively work remotely will be a plus.

Also, as we continue to talk with our clients about lessons learned what we hear over and again is that many of those that fared well did so through innovation and being nimble. They understood their mission and figured out how to deliver even in challenging times.

Eric Bosch

QUESTION

In what ways do you see the Baton Rouge and South Louisiana communities and economy forever impacted by this pandemic?

Focus: On mental health

One of the things that I worry about is just isolation. My daughter is 21 and all of her classes are virtual. She is in her apartment by herself going to school and I think there are lots of kids who are isolated. I think that there are elderly folks who are more isolated from their families because the family is afraid to impact them from a health perspective. The ongoing mental health issues around this are going to be significant. We don’t even know what that is going to look like. Working from home is great. But when I talk to employees, most of them want to have a mix. Most do not want to work solely from home. They miss the interaction with people. It’s nice to have that day or two where you can kind of sit down and focus and crank a bunch of stuff out, but I do worry about folks in these isolated situations. Is that really healthy? Is that good for a company to have folks that are a bunch of individual contributors versus a team? It’s hard to continue to build and develop a team virtually. You can do it to some extent, but we are social creatures. You want to be around people. We will bring a bunch of workers back in 2021 into our facilities. We are doing it the right way. We are going to social distance. We are probably going to rotate people in and out, but part of that is we think we are losing some connectivity and it’s really not even a business issue as much as it is organizational culture.

Warner Thomas

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Neighbors Federal Credit Union got its start with $150 in a shoe box and in 2020 grew to $1 billion in assets.

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rom a healthcare perspective, the demand will be forever changed for some services. ER services are still down 15% to 20%. Some of those are being done in a different way.

Some virtually, and some folks are not seeking the care. So I think the demand of service and the type of service that people demand is going to change significantly—I think in ways we don’t even really know yet. We also see health screenings generally down for 2020 in spite of us doing lots of outreach to people about cancer screenings and diabetic checks. One of the things that I do worry about long-term is that we have one of the highest mortality rates around cancer. It’s not that we don’t have great cancer physicians. It’s just that people don’t get their screenings, so we catch cancer later and at a more severe stage of disease. I worry that this will have an ongoing impact on these types of preventative services.

What’s the ongoing health impact of some of those issues?

Warner Thomas

ExxonMobil Baton Rouge management spent much of 2020 focused on the physical and mental health of our large workforce, which can grow up to 6,000 people per day at our five local sites. When the pandemic hit, we sent non-essential workers home in accordance with state guidance, but we still had our essential operations ensuring our site was running safely and reliably. You can’t send home the folks that are keeping your facility running 24/7, so we had to really focus on new ways to keep those individuals safe. We realized our employees were under more stress than usual, whether they had to report to the workplace each day to support operations or were working from home and maybe feeling lonely. Our country also experienced racial unrest in 2020, and our employees felt that stress too. Our local refinery and chemical plant managers worked with our Employee Resource Groups, like the Black Employee Success Team (BEST) to address those issues and set up better work practices to improve inclusion and diversity.

Stephanie Cargile

BUSINESS REPORT, January, 2021 | BusinessReport.com

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STAY FOCUSED ON WHAT YOU DO BEST. WE’LL FOCUS ON HOSTING AND FACILITATING MEETINGS THAT MATTER. The Alliance Emerging Technologies Center (ETC) provides an environment conducive to design thinking, as well as space for business and industry to come together – safely – to ensure they’re able to respond to the changing needs of their workforce.

Within the ETC, there is an area dedicated to Design Thinking, which helps companies uncover the root causes of issues. Design Thinking workshops utilize a company’s most valued resources – its employees – to discover the best possible solutions. This process empowers companies to innovate, evolve and align at speed.

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alliancesafetycouncil.org Daily-Report.com | BUSINESS REPORT, December 17, 2019

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