Employee Mental Health is VITAL to Success in ANY Business

Heather Wilson: 0:00

In the writing that I do, I'm a huge proponent of group therapy. It's a way of connecting with people who have that lived experience and really understand what you're going through. These are positions that we are at at the bottom because we're we don't have a medical background or can diagnose or treat or but it's kind of a way of getting groups therapy.

Harsh Thakkar: 0:26

What's up everybody, this is harsh from qualtivate.com. And you're listening to the life sciences 360 podcast. On this show, I chat with industry experts and thought leaders to learn about their stories, ideas and insights, and how their role helps bring new therapies to patients. Thanks for joining us. Let's dive in. All right, welcome to another episode of Life Sciences 360. My guest today is Heather Wilson. She is the Associate Director QMS and document control administration at Xencor. Welcome to the show, Heather.

Heather Wilson: 0:55

Yes, thank you so much for having me. This is a great thrill.

Harsh Thakkar: 0:58

Yeah. And do you want to throw out the disclaimer before we dive right into it?

Heather Wilson: 1:03

Yes, absolutely. I just need to make a statement that the comments and opinions that I share today are mine and mine alone, and do not necessarily reflect those of my current and previous employers or any of the organizations that I'm associated with. All right, there you go. So now now we can ask anything we want? Yes, now now sky's the limit. So we're all?

Harsh Thakkar: 1:29

Yeah, so first question off the wall. If you weren't following your career now in life sciences and QMS, if you didn't end up here, what would be an alternative career that you would have ended up in when you look back at your journey.

Heather Wilson: 1:44

So there are two really, so if I had any talent possible through if I was gifted with everything, I would probably be a blues singer. Because my family is from the Wisconsin and the Chicago area. And both my husband and I really enjoy Chicago blues, and that would be great. But since I am not gifted with a wonderful voice, and that is not really on the table, probably an art teacher, because I've I've always loved the arts. And the more work that I've done more recently, with public speaking and teaching and all of that, it's it's really kind of developed that in me, and because of my love of the arts, I think that would have been a good alternative. Yeah. And there is there is some component of art in also quality and in documentation, although people don't like to hear that. But I think there is what is it? What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, there really are, there are subtleties and techniques that we have to develop over time, especially when it comes to communication and with art your communicating with images and pictures and all of that, but especially in QA were very verbal. And writing is also very important to us. And there's a finesse to that, isn't there, being able to communicate your ideas effectively. And sometimes the issues that we deal with in QA are challenging, and we have to approach them calmly and methodically and when we're working with other people, take them through that process. So yes, I do believe that there's quite a bit of art involved even there. And you are working in one of the most I should say busiest areas of any biotech or life science company, which is the whole document control and QMS part of things because it touches so many other areas, right? You're constantly having new projects and new workload. What are what are some of the challenges? You from your experience, you've seen that companies face with their document controls methods? Really in in the last 15-20 years, especially, there's been this migration from paper based systems to electronic QMS. And having these large overarching systems that are going to be able to manage all of that. And when you're working in the life sciences, especially where you have to have an eye towards GXP processes, the software systems that you're looking at, you're looking for regulated systems that are 21 CFR Part 11 compliant and are going to be appropriate for working in a regulated environment. So one of the challenges that we've had to face in the past is we have these systems in place and these great validated systems. And when you're at the early stages of bringing them into the company, you're usually working with the software company itself. They're guiding you through the process, but Once that deployment is finished, now it's on you to do configuration management and change management and maintain the validated state of that system. And that's where the real challenge is having all those processes in place, so that your audit ready, you're still compliant with all the regulations that are out there. And you're guaranteeing a consistent format for your end users to be using it. Because at the end of the day, if the system doesn't operate as planned, then your end users aren't going to be able to make any progress. So there's, there's a lot of moving parts involved. That can be Yeah, and documentation QMS. And training. These are like the first few systems that most companies implement when they're going from like, startup phase to like clinical phase. So there is a lot of opportunities to design or setup the system in the right way, because it's easier to re strategize or revamp the system design when you only have 10 SOPs. Versus if you work for a big company that has 5000 documents, it can be challenging to make changes, even if you want to make them right, because there's so much of legacy data in the system. So I know that you mentioned Do you want to talk about? I know you wrote an article in the quality magazine, do you want to what what? How did that go about? How did you end up? Did they reach out to you or you want to talk about that. So I had originally written a white paper about effective ways to manage the software systems, because as I mentioned before, at the very beginning stages before the system has actually been installed at the company, you have so much support from the software developer, and you're going through requirements gathering and all the testing the validation process. And then at the end, they they leave, and you're left with this huge system that has so much importance. And unfortunately, what I had found was there wasn't a whole lot of support with how you actually maintain that system in a validated state. So I wrote the white paper to be a bit of a guide for a way that a company can approach configuration management and change management and having all of those systems in place so that you can maintain the validated state of the system. And as time goes on, you're able to make additional configuration or process changes so that you can stay up to date with current regulations or your business needs. Okay, and when you were when you were writing that article, or when you're going through that process, did you have any, like, good examples or bad examples that you shared in there or that that come to your mind of this is how it should be done. And this is how it should not be done at all? Like, do you have some examples like so in, in testing, we kind of call it the happy path where we say this is our approach. And this is what we're suggesting, as best practice, at least from what I experienced, not just with my current employer, but with consulting work that I had done previously, and work for some additional employers as well. And we found that more than anything, it was very important to have a process in place where there were two primary groups of people working on the software, we would have a business process owner, and then we would have a technical team behind them. This business process owner was going to be responsible for that big picture view. And the business requirements, they would go to the different consumers of the software, the customers that we have, identify any issues that need improvement, continuous improvement, what have you, but but they would be the vision behind what the system was going to be. And then we would have the technical team. And they would take those business requirements, translate them into technical requirements, because they're aware of the working of the system itself. So they're able to say yes, this is viable, we can do that. Or we can accomplish that in this way. But it's not going to be a 100% technical solution. We're going to have to look at a process SOP solution as well in order to do some structuring of that information that's going to be coming in. So that was the primary approach of the article was that it really helps to have that team in place and they're really Working in tandem off of each other one more focused on the business, the other more focused on the technical. Yeah. And if you have the link to that we can add it in the show notes. I know, I don't know if it requires like a membership to a website, or is it an online article that we can add to the podcast notes for any what he wants to get on? It's an online articles through quality magazine? I'm not sure if back issues are free. So that's something that we're going to have to look at. But I do also have a PDF version of it as well. It's, it's a very stripped down version from the white paper that I originally wrote, but the white paper was never published.

Harsh Thakkar: 10:40

Okay ,okay, great. Yeah, we can figure out how to share that. And just a word before we go into the next question. I don't mention this often. But in 2023, this podcast recorded like 30 Plus episodes with a lot of people in the life sciences industry. And I really enjoyed the process I started last year, I remember still remember my first guest, and how nervous I was, and answering all asking all these questions. So if you're listening, please support us on YouTube, LinkedIn, or Spotify, Apple wherever you listen to the podcast. And if you have any comments, email them to me or message to me on LinkedIn, so we can make the future episodes more engaging, or whatever you want from the future episodes. Alright. So next, I want to talk to you I see on your LinkedIn profile that you are an advocate for mental health. So I want to ask you, as a leader, whether you're in QA, or doesn't really matter, whichever field you're in, why is it important for leaders to sort of understand the the mental health side of things into the professional work?

Heather Wilson: 11:47

I think of my father's generation. And it was one where everybody worked in the office, all the men wore a tie and a suit, and the women wore skirts or pants suits what have you. And it was very much a dynamic of leave your personal life at home, when you're at work, you're working, this is what you need to do. And in looking at some of the challenges my father went through, as an employee, and also as a manager, it wasn't really viable, because Try as we might, our, our personal issues, the challenges that we're facing, or anything that we're going through, it's going to come to work with us. And so when I became with someone who manages people and a team leader, what have you, I felt that it was far more important to not treat people just as employees, here's your employee number, we need to focus on the entire person as an individual. And I tell my people, don't be afraid to bring your personality into the office, you don't have to fit into this cookie cutter mold. To work here, bring what makes you unique, and what makes you special to the job. So that we see the real you. And I think that has an effect of really making the person feel validated. That they're they're not being asked to hide themselves or any issues that they have, my team knows that they can come to me when they have issues that they're going through. I do not need to know the details. And they know that I don't need to know the details. But what I see my role as is making sure that I can connect them with whatever resources they need in order to make the struggle easier. And if that's time off, or if that's connecting them to benefits or an EAP program or what have you, making sure that they have the tools that they need and making sure that they have the space that they need to be able to deal with that. And I think it's done quite a bit for maintaining the people on my team reducing turnover and employee satisfaction as well, just knowing that they don't have to be afraid to hide all of that, that we can deal with that.

Harsh Thakkar: 14:32

Yeah it's definitely a big value add for any leader who, who has that in their leadership bag of skills, if you will. So what I wanted to ask you is Can you can you think of any example in your career maybe in your in your personal life, or maybe somebody you worked with without sharing any names or details where you helped out and with any mental health issues and it led to a positive outcome?

Heather Wilson: 14:59

Sure. So one that really comes to mind for me a number of jobs ago, I was working a position and was experiencing a lot of anxiety, it was coming from not being entirely happy with my job feeling bored, a lot of time under utilize, I really didn't feel like I had anybody that I could go to. And in some of the writings that I do, I call it circling the drain with these negative thoughts, and you just enter this spiral. And it really feels like you can't break out of it. And it feeds on itself, I eventually had to take a medical leave, and was hospitalized for a time. But what was so wonderful and so curing and why it's stuck with me for all of these years, when I finally disclosed to my supervisor, what I was going through, and that I needed this medical leave, not only was she incredibly kind and accommodating, she came in she visited me when I was in the hospital. And that was so above and beyond of anything that I had ever experienced. And eventually, it all worked out well. But that taught me so much about being a leader, especially around mental health was that we don't have to be ashamed of what we're going through. Because we all are human beings, things are going to go wrong and mental health challenges face so many of us, but that simple act of just coming by and acknowledging that she saw me and she understood was so so powerful, and probably one of the greatest acts of kindness I've ever experienced.

Harsh Thakkar: 16:56

Yeah, that's, that's amazing. I'm aware that there's a lot of companies who have programs within for mental health or even like talking to a therapist, or are different kinds of programs, but from from your like what you're seeing, can you think of any other ways where companies can maybe offer other programs or services or help just to routinely keep check on not check is not the right word, but just to make sure that the mental health and the well being of employees is good. So that or if they can do anything, instead of waiting for the employee to come and say, I'm not, I'm stressing out about this. So any any ideas on that?

Heather Wilson: 17:46

I think it would really be wonderful, if more employees of what are called peer support specialists. This is a certification in California, and most of the states have this right now, it was based on a bill that went through the Senate a number of years ago, and I actually received my certification as a peer support specialist last year. What this is, is a person that has actual experience with mental health challenges, either yourself as the patient, or as a family member or friend of somebody who went through this. But it really provides that base of I understand what you're going through, I know the challenges of going on psychiatric medication or finding a good therapist or what have you, in the writing that I do. I'm a huge proponent of group therapy, because it's a way of connecting with people who have that lived experience and really understand what you're going through these are positions that they are considered a mental health service. But if you go psychiatrists psychoanalysts, we're we're at at the bottom because we're we don't have a medical background or can diagnose or treat or, or anything like that. But it's kind of a way of getting group therapy and a one on one basis. And I think that if more employers had resources such as that, where someone could go and speak to them confidentially that it would be a huge benefit. Yeah, that's a great example. And I have not like I have doing mostly consulting so I don't work inside a company or don't have knowledge about what are like the different benefits or programs that employees have. But I've heard some other good ones like you meant the one you mentioned, similar to that where you have like a peer person that's assigned, like when you join and basically you, and that person can tell each other like it's like a work friend, but it's meant to be like a support like a sounding board. And you can tell them what's going on. But having this kind of certification or other resources, because you really like you mentioned, it's, it's not feasible to come to work or, or whether you're working remotely or you're physically coming to work, and leaving the mental, like the other things that are going on in your life, you can't just shut it out. And nowadays, it's not only about things going on in your life, but it's things going on in the world that you can't control. Right. So mental health is not just, Oh, something is happening to me, or with me and I, I'm feeling uncomfortable about it. It's also something that's happening in the world, like it could be inflation, it could be rates going high, or whatever it is, people sometimes it can be out of control of what's happening. And yeah, so I think it's really great that more employers are doing that kind of stuff. So if for somebody who wants to, I know you're doing a lot of you also doing public speaking, you're a guest lecturer. Right? So do you get this question asked from your students or other people? who are new to this, like, what should I do to enter life sciences industry? Or like, how? How can I get into this industry? I want to work in life sciences, what what do you share? What advice do you share with them? I've done lectures with both high school students and college students who are considering jobs in the life sciences, and there's a number of recommendations that I get the first and I think most importantly, is high school or college, find yourself a mentor in the life sciences. It's a relationship that doesn't have a price tag attached to it. But it's somebody who is ideally in the position that you want to move into. And you can really foster that relationship and find out pretty quickly, is this really what you want to be doing? Instead of being in college for four years, going into an internship at the end of your four years and realizing what this is not for me, this is not, what I want to do, if you really utilize those mentor relationships, you can tour a company or a lab space, get a much clearer picture of what it's like working in an office environment, because the cubicle environment is not for everybody. Working in a lab for eight hours a day might not be what somebody wants to do. But finding yourself a good mentor at the beginning, I think is absolutely invaluable. So someone can really tell you the behind the scenes, this is what it's really like. So that like I said, you're not you don't graduate with your degree, you think you're all set to go into one career and and then you realize, like, so many people really do that what this is not what I want to do, I think it would be so beneficial for high schools to start developing those relationships, find among the parents, do you work in life sciences? What do you do? Can you mentor a high school student to give them that kind of exposure and colleges as well, early on, for any? Because I think of it when I went to college, I had an academic advisor, who told me what classes I should be taking and all of that, but I really think I would have benefited as well, from an advisor, a career advisor, somebody that could have that kind of mentoring relationship with me, because I was one of those I did three years of biochemistry, and then said after my third year yet what No, this is what I want to do. And I really had to scramble to graduate with something that was going to serve me later in life.

Harsh Thakkar: 24:16

Do you? Do you have any examples of any mentors? Or maybe if you didn't think of them as a mentor, but just somebody when you were coming into the industry or when you had your jobs, somebody that sort of helped you push to that next level?

Heather Wilson: 24:33

I really didn't. I never had a mentor. And that's why I think I'm so passionate about being a mentor now is because I want to provide those resources to somebody. I think it would have saved me so much headache. Yeah. If I had had somebody filling that role for me, because I don't know what it is we we seem compelled to have to figure out all of this on our own. And maybe we find ourselves unhappy in a career or in a job and, and we just don't know what to do. And so we go out on social media, we go to Reddit, and we say what I'm really unhappy and, and we get a bunch of opinions from people. But I don't think it really serves us well towards actual career planning, and what can I do next? So that's why I think those relationships are so beneficial, I wish more people did them. I think it takes a bit of bravery, though, where we have to step out of our comfort zone and say, Can you please help me, right, because I want to make sure this is a good decision. Yeah. And

Harsh Thakkar: 25:46

like you said, if you if you do that, or if you reach out to the right person, like you said, finding somebody who was in that career, or in that position where you think you want to be, and finding that right person, and if they're willing to share all their ups and downs, you really can save a couple of years, by not doing trial and error and trying to figure out if it's working for you, I mean, I had a few people,

Heather Wilson: 26:14

Very much so. family or people that I worked with, that kind of helped me

Harsh Thakkar: 26:21

So where can people connect with you or learn early on in my career when I was working. And one of the advices I got was like when I was starting my career, I was finding a really hard time getting full time positions, because I was an international student and companies were not willing to sponsor an employment visa for like a international student. And at that point, one of the advice I got was like, hey, just get into consulting, do consulting for two or three years and learn like all the different roles that, you can like do six month projects, and just learn all the bits and pieces. And then you can at least have more value to offer. Because right now at that point, I just had like a graduate degree and maybe like one year of internship experience. And I wasn't really separating myself from everybody else, because there were 100 other people who had one year of internship experience. And so so that was a good advice. I stopped applying. And then I went into consulting and then went into full time. So yeah, it's always it's always good to hear that from the right more about what's going on with all your speaking engagements or work? listeners? Where can they get in touch with you after the person at the right time. To make that difference. show?

Heather Wilson: 27:41

LinkedIn is probably the best place to find me. That's also where I do buy mental health publishing, I've got a newsletter called mental healthy, and I'm actually moving to a website, it's going to be mental healthy.net. It's, it's about 80%, complete. We went ahead and we launched the website. But I also want to move the years worth of articles that I wrote for mental healthy that are currently on LinkedIn, I want to move those to the website as well. So So we're currently in the process of that.

Harsh Thakkar: 28:15

Yeah. And if it's done by the time we're done editing this, we'll we'll put that in the show notes so people can check it out. All right, before we wrap this up any final thoughts you want to share?

Heather Wilson: 28:25

Probably the last thing that I would share that I think would be beneficial is wherever you work, the projects that you work on, ask for recommendations from people as frequently as you can. If you look at my LinkedIn profile, I've I've asked so many people for recommendations on different areas, but so that I have those available, or if you're leaving a position, or maybe your management is being moved to a different area, they're not going to be your direct supervisor anymore. Ask for a recommendation letter for them, so that you have them, especially for your own career development, when you're looking at that next position, that you have this assortment of wonderful recommendations that you can provide to people for different projects that you worked on different qualities, maybe a presentation that you gave, and it doesn't have to be necessarily a job recommendation. It can be what she's a project manager, and she did a really great job on this project or she supported this person or, or what have you. It doesn't have to be something huge and lengthy. The The other reason for that I also have to admit it's quite selfish. There are definitely days where I struggle and work is very hard. And it's really beneficial to go back and look at those and remind yourself that what yeah I can be pretty awesome. And just give yourself a little bit of a boost. It's it's really served me well over the years.

Harsh Thakkar: 30:07

That's a great way to look at it. I never thought about it. But yeah, it's it's and and I didn't ask for enough recommendations early in my career or if I did it was It wasn't at the right time because like you said, it has to be at the right time at once you work or from the right person, because I've had to had some working relationship. But now as I'm in consulting, working with clients, I try to make sure that at the end, even at the end of the project, sometimes it's tricky, because some clients, they want to give me a verbal recommendation. But they don't want to put it like have their name put publicly on LinkedIn or whatnot. You know what I mean? So or they're like, Yeah, I'll give you my recommendation. But can you just not put my name and just say, like, VP of IT or whatever, and then put it on your website. So I've had some clients who are like, Hey, I don't want my name. No offense to you, but they just don't. They're not that publicly outgoing on social media and stuff. So, but yeah, nevertheless, more the more recommendations, the better a social proof. That's all it's all about. So, absolutely. Yeah. Thank you so much Heather. Wish you all the best and 2024 and feel free to reach out if there's any way we can work together or collaborate on any other projects.

Heather Wilson: 31:28

Absolutely. That would be great. This has been a really wonderful experience. Thank you.

Harsh Thakkar: 31:32

Thank you. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Check out the show notes in the description for a full episode summary with all the important links. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcast.