Page 16 - BusinessWest Sept. 29, 2021

SMeet the Women of Impact Judges
oon, BusinessWest will unveil its Women of Impact for 2021, our fourth annual celebration of area women who are accomplishing great things, standing out in their field, and doing impactful work in the community. As in past years, we’ve asked a panel of three independent judges to read and review dozens of nominations to determine the class of 2021. They are:
Michele Cabral
is interim executive
director of Profes-
sional Education
and Corporate
Learning at Holy-
oke Community
College and direc-
tor of Training &
Workforce Options.
She started her
career as a CPA for
KPMG Peat Mar-
wick, graduated from the Leadership Develop- ment Program at CIGNA Insurance Companies, and joined Farm Credit Financial Partners Inc. as CFO and COO. At HCC, Cabral has held positions as an Accounting professor, then dean of the Business and Technology Division, and she cur- rently leads the HCC Women’s Leadership Series.
Automation
Continued from page 15
such, is a timely topic of discussion, Bean said — “maybe more than we’d want it to be.” And that’s partly because of the unique set of economic stressors that have emerged over the past 18 months.
“We’re probably all feeling busier right now than we’ve ever felt,” he said. “I know there’s a lot going on that’s causing us to have a lot more on our plates, a lot more challenges to solve, a lot more obstacles to overcome than we’ve had to in the past. So why are we taking time out of our day to have this conversation?”
Well, first of all, businesses are being forced to do more with less. Roughly 3.5 million Americans are not in the workforce but used to be — largely because of the pandemic, but not totally. Popula- tion growth has slowed, and the massive exodus of Baby Boomers from the workforce has acceler- ated somewhat.
“That has a huge impact on the ecomomy, one we cannot minimize,” Bean noted — and one that will continue to ripple throughout organizations of all sizes at a time when everyone seems to be wearing more hats than before, juggling more tasks, and trying to keep up with less help. And that leads to more stress in the workforce.
“We’re seeing more employees comment that they feel overwhelmed, people are leaving their jobs, looking for new jobs, changing industries,” he said. “Or they’re managing the working- remote, working-in-the-office challenges, health- care challenges ... it’s a lot of stress and pressure on the workforce that’s still working.”
On the other hand, the workforce crunch has also created a talent shortage and one of the best-ever markets for job seekers, who have more leverage than before, Bean said, making it harder to hire and retain employees.
Dawn Fleury is
the first senior vice
president of Corpo-
rate Risk at Country
Bank in Ware. In
her current role, she
oversees the bank’s
comprehensive
risk-management
programs. Before
joining Country
Bank, she had a
21-year career
with the FDIC as a commissioned senior bank examiner in the Division of Supervision. Fleury serves on the board of Christina’s House in Springfield, which provides transitional housing for women and their children, as well as edu- cational programming as families transition from homelessness to permanent, stable living environments.
Wage growth has accelerated, and so have employee demands regarding everything from remote work to more autonomy to relaxed dress codes, he noted. “Employers are working really hard to try to manage and keep up with those demands while also managing the business.”
It’s an incredibly difficult economy, he added, and just for small employers; the situation is really trickling up to larger and higher-paying employ- ers as well. “It’s not ignoring anybody.”
Ellen Freyman is
a shareholder with
Shatz, Schwartz
and Fentin, P.C. in
Springfield. Her
practice is concen-
trated in all aspects
of commercial real
estate: acquisitions
and sales, devel-
opment, leasing,
permitting, environ-
mental, and financ-
ing. She has been recognized for her community work and was named to Difference Makers and Women of Impact by BusinessWest, Massachu- setts Lawyers Weekly Excellence in Law, and the Professional Women’s Chamber Women of the Year. She also earned a Pynchon Award from the Ad Club of Western Massachusetts.
“All in all, it makes you feel like, if you’re a small firm, you’re in a race that’s a losing battle,” Bean said. “Exhausted? I don’t blame you.”
No Standing Still
But exhaustion is no excuse for inaction,
he argued, before refuting the common myths around automation: that it’s too expensive, too complicated, and takes too long to implement. All are untrue, he explained during the virtual seminar, and again during a sit-down with Busi- nessWest Editor George O’Brien during a recent
And it comes, Bean explained, in the midst of what’s known as the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which builds on the third (which began in the mid-20th century and
was known as the digi-
tal revolution, marked
by the rise of comput-
erization). This fourth
revolution is meld-
ing technologies like
artificial intelligence,
robotics, cloud com-
puting, augmented
reality, smart sensors,
3D printing, and many
other advances, and promises to transform the way people live and work.
“There’s a lot going on right now that is digitiz- ing and changing the way we interact with pretty much every aspect of our life,” he said. “And it’s happening at a rate we are very unaccustomed to handle.”
As noted, businesses trying to adapt to this fast-changing world are doing so amid all the recent challenges stemming from the pandemic and the labor situation. Small businesses also lament the growing culture of acquisition, and find it difficult to compete with larger companies with more resources, more innovation, and the ability to pay more for talent.
“
There’s a lot going on right now that is digitizing
and changing the way we interact with pretty much every aspect of our life. And it’s happening at a rate we are very unaccustomed to handle.”
edition of the magazine’s podcast, Business Talk (businesswest.com/blog/businesstalk-with-del- cie-bean-ceo-of-paragus-strategic-it).
In other words, there’s no excuse for any busi- ness to avoid this conversation any longer.
“We don’t want to be the next Blockbuster,” Bean told the seminar attendees. “We don’t want to be the company that could see that things were changing, stuck to our guns, hung on, and ulti- mately worked their way into oblivion.” u
—Joseph Bednar
16 SEPTEMBER 29, 2021
FEATURE
BusinessWest