“That’s my big goal,” she says at the outset of our conversation. “To remind people that their kindness is an asset on the road to success. You can express love and truth at the same time—that’s what Radical Candor is. It’s caring personally and challenging directly.”

It’s a timely message in an era where social media often warns that kindness can be mistaken for weakness. Scott is unmoved by this trend.

“You can be as kind as you want,” she says. “As long as you also challenge people. Tell them what’s awesome—but also when they’re messing up. That’s real kindness.”

For Scott, kindness isn’t softness. It’s clarity. And clarity, delivered humanely, is what workplaces desperately need.

When Silence Harms More Than Honesty

Leaders often avoid difficult conversations in the name of protecting feelings. Scott argues this creates far more damage than speaking up.

“There’s nothing worse than feeling like you’re a dead man walking with your boss,” she explains. “People know when they’re making mistakes. If you don’t point it out, you’re not doing your job.”

Scott outlines the three behaviors that can define workplace culture:

• Radical Candor – caring personally and challenging directly
• Obnoxious Aggression – challenge without care
• Ruinous Empathy – caring so much about feelings that the truth never gets said

Ruinous empathy is often the most misunderstood.

“It’s not nice,” she says. “It hurts the person who needs the truth, it hurts the team who has to redo work, and it hurts results. It’s bad for everyone.”

Five Generations, One Workplace

Today’s workplaces often include Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, Gen Z, and even Gen Alpha interns. The multigenerational mix can be energizing—or challenging.

“Yes, everyone has different expectations,” Scott acknowledges. “But we have to be careful about generalizing by generation. We know not to stereotype gender or race, yet we seem eager to stereotype by generation.”

She draws from her experience managing 700 recent college graduates at Google.

“For all of human history, the younger generation has told the older generation how they screwed up the world,” she says with a smile. “The way I earn my right to give critical feedback is by being open to the feedback they give me. When young employees feel seen and appreciated, they’re hungry to learn—but I have to earn it.”

Drop the Email—Take a Walk

As communication leans more heavily on email, Slack, and text, Scott believes leaders must return to the fundamentals of real conversation.

“Don’t send an email. Don’t send a text,” she cautions. “Slack is a feedback train wreck waiting to happen.”

Her advice is refreshingly simple.

“If you’re in person, take a walk. If you’re remote, pick up the phone. Not a video call—there’s too much noise in interpreting facial expressions on Zoom. Just call. Listen to the words.”

She notes that body language can confuse rather than clarify. “If I tear up, it doesn’t mean I’m sad—it probably means I’m furious. Facial expressions can be misleading.”

‘AI will never be able to do: Have a Real Human Relationship’

Though this will be her first time in Waikiki, Scott has long felt at home in Hawaiʻi.

“I’ve been coming to the Big Island every Christmas for two weeks,” she says. “Beach 69 is my happy place. I snorkel the whole time.”

As she prepares for her event, her message crystallizes around one core belief—one that may resonate deeply with Hawaiʻi’s leaders navigating generational shifts, hybrid work, and evolving expectations.

“Kindness is an asset,” Scott says. “And it’s the one thing we can do for each other that AI will never be able to do: have a real human relationship.”

It’s a message rooted in humanity—and one Scott hopes will stay with Hawaiʻi long after her visit.

To register for next week’s event, please click on the link:
2025 Annual Membership Meeting – Hawaiʻi Employers Council

Of course, a lot of young office workers grapple with the same things. They’re uncertain about how to navigate office life, they’re full of awkward questions, and they’re eager to make meaningful connections. On top of all that, they want to make good impressions on their colleagues and supervisors. Here are some answers to questions from young people about career etiquette and strategies:

Q: I took a leap and attended a pau hana. I got some business cards and now want to connect further with some of these people. What’s the best way to reach out to them?

Networking events can be difficult to navigate – you might be shy and have trouble approaching strangers, the music might be loud and it is hard to hear what people are saying or you don’t want to appear pushy – but once you take the plunge, LinkedIn or email makes it easier to follow up.

I spoke with a series of Hawai‘i HR professionals: Marie Kumabe, owner of Kumabe HR; Kim Miyashiro, director of human resources consulting services at Kumabe HR; and Jennifer Ellis, director of HR and operations at Talent HR Solutions. Here are tips they shared about building those connections. 

1. Don’t get too loose: Emails and LinkedIn are not Instagram or TikTok. They are media for professionals, so avoid sounding too casual in your messages.

2. Set your priorities in advance: When you send your first message to a new contact, consider beforehand why you want to connect. If you want to learn from them, don’t jump in with a big ask like, “Will you be my mentor?”

Start with something small like: “Thank you for connecting with me. I’m so impressed with your success in xxx (fill in the industry: banking, journalism, sales, etc.). I would love to meet for coffee or chat on the phone to learn some tips for getting ahead.” If you make a strong connection in the chat over coffee, you may have met a mentor. But avoid ambiguity in your online outreach – the more vague your message, the likelier you will get no reply.

While not everyone will say yes, many people in Hawai‘i are willing to help the next generation and share their knowledge – if you make it easy for them and you express gratitude.

3. Send that email or outreach as soon as possible: Within two days of meeting someone in person, follow up before that person forgets you and the conversation you had. In your initial outreach, you should mention something you discussed or something memorable that can help the other person identify you.

Q: After hunting for five months, I landed my first office gig. However, I’ve had a sideline doing photography since college and I don’t want to give it up. Should I talk about my side gig at work?

Hawai‘i has the highest cost of living in the nation, so side hustles are common and can help you avoid more debt. But many people avoid discussing their part-time jobs at their full-time workplaces because they fear their colleagues and managers might ask questions like: Are you more loyal to your side gig than you are to your main job? Do you put a higher priority on the side gig than your main job? Will your side gig get in the way of your main job?

But Jennifer Nahrgang, chair of the University of Iowa’s Tippie College of Business, says on average, side hustles help people to be better at their full-time jobs. Her research on their effects on performance, published in 2021, found that side hustles can expand time management and sales skills and provide some relief to otherwise monotonous schedules.

Being open about a side gig shows transparency with your employer, can build trust and may even showcase valuable skills you’ve developed outside of your main job. However, it’s important to consider your company’s policies and the nature of your side gig before disclosing it. You may be governed by noncompete clauses or exclusivity rules that forbid the kind of outside work that you do. Don’t break those policies, but otherwise, it’s up to you if you want to mention your side gig before deciding whether or not to keep it.

The workplace issue of side jobs is likely to become a bigger deal in the future. In a 2024 survey by Bankrate, a personal finance company, 36% of Americans said they had a side hustle, but that proportion grew to 48% among Generation Z, those aged 18 to 27.

Q: I’ve been overworking and need time to center myself. How do I take a mental health day without being seen as lazy? And do mental health days actually enhance your mental well-being?

You shouldn’t be labeled as lazy for keeping yourself healthy, because if you burn out or become physically sick, you won’t be able to do your job, period. A mental health day can prevent illness and burnout.

If you suffer from constant stress, anxiety, physical headaches, lack of energy and inability to sleep, a mental health day could be the best thing for you. Some companies explicitly allow mental health days in their sick leave policies, and other companies allow employees to use sick leave for mental health reasons. But there is no specific Hawai‘i law that requires companies to provide that benefit.

Your primary care physician or therapist might provide a note that supports taking a mental health day if they believe you need time off because of a diagnosed mental health condition.

Move past the negative stigma and take mental health days when needed to maintain your health. Taking care of your mental state can help mitigate future illnesses and can increase your overall mood at the office. But if you do take time off for your mental health, don’t violate your boss’s trust by overdoing it.

Kathleen Rhoads Merriam, mental health advocate and co-chair of the Hawai‘i chapter of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, says to set some goals and standards to effectively reset, like getting yourself to the gym, exploring nature, sleeping the proper amount, taking a walk or seeking professional help.

Want to make the case that your mental health days actually help the company? Mental Health America, a national nonprofit advocating mental health and well-being, found that mental health breaks can increase workplace productivity, creativity and morale when coming back to the office.

But also be honest with yourself – and be fair to your employer: Do not take days off from work because you need to recover from a weekend or other time off when you burned yourself out partying. Time off is meant for recuperation, so you are ready for work on Monday.

That’s the assessment of a report from the Hawai‘i Workforce Funders Collaborative, a partnership of nine nonprofits, including Kamehameha Schools, HMSA, the Castle and Weinberg foundations, and the Hawai‘i Community Foundation.

The collaborative’s report – called From Crisis to Opportunity: Building Hawai‘i’s Workforce Resilience – advocates a comprehensive approach to the layers of workforce challenges, using data and human stories to spur creative collaboration among the state’s many stakeholders. Its ambitious goal: ensuring that 100% of working age residents have access to careers that can sustain families and thrive in a rapidly changing job market.

“This report is a call to action for stakeholders across sectors to collaborate in ensuring that every resident has access to education, training and meaningful work opportunities,” says HWFC Executive Director Matt Stevens. (Read the report at tinyurl.com/HWFCreport.)

Another framework for collective action is the state government’s Workforce Development Unified Plan 2024-27 (tinyurl.com/HIWorkplan). States create unified plans as the means to access funds within a body of laws known collectively as Investing in America that provide a total of $1 trillion in funding. DOGE, the department led by Elon Musk that is cutting federal programs and firing government employees, had not cut any of the workforce development funds from these laws as of the end of February, Stevens says.

Aligning state goals with federal priorities, fostering collaboration and focusing on specific population needs can enhance the state’s chances of securing the resources necessary for such large-scale changes, according to the state plan. The contents of the plan guide the conditions for new partnerships to form among educators, employers, employees and key stakeholders to drive workforce development for high-demand jobs, create paths to living wage occupations and enhance skill building for high-growth industries.

Stevens notes that, while the availability of federal funds has helped bring more stakeholders to the table to support and implement Hawai‘i’s State Unified Plan, the catalyst for collective action is the recognition that the current workforce system is not sustainable. “If federal funding is cut, the need for this work will only grow,” he says.

Building Careers in Hawai‘i

While these efforts are in their early years, the state is starting to see some wins, particularly in technology jobs. In the financial sector, Ben Schuster, First Hawaiian Bank’s senior VP of engineering technologies, was tasked in 2020 with creating an internal team to support the bank’s digital transformation. He found many of his core team members from UH’s Information and Computer Sciences Department, some of whom were hired while they were students.

Schuster says the team “led some important strategic initiatives that year” tied to the bank’s Paycheck Protection Program’s Small Business Administration loans. “That was when we started to get organizational buy-in to grow the team.”

Professors began referring their top students, and people continue to be hired at the bank through that initial pipeline.

One of them, Irene Ma, had completed a three-month internship at Amazon and turned down an annual salary of almost six figures to join FHB, even though the bank couldn’t match that salary.

“When I got that Amazon job offer, I was pleased, but part of me really didn’t want to leave Hawai‘i,” Ma says. Starting as an associate software engineer, she was promoted to back-end software engineer two years later.

“I feel like I’m doing a lot better than mainland big tech, where you’re stuck in that one position. You don’t really have that career growth opportunity,” says Ma.

Cybersecurity consultant and UH West O‘ahu associate professor Michael Miranda says the job market has gradually gotten better for Hawai‘i’s young professionals: “It started years ago, but literally two days ago, I was at a tabletop exercise with critical infrastructure security personnel. I looked around and I see four or five of my former students,” Miranda says. “That’s a testament to our ability to produce students that employers can hire now, and they are only getting more experienced.”

Similarly, Jennifer Sabas, military affairs senior consultant at Chamber of Commerce Hawaii, has seen a steady rise in personnel with Hawai‘i ties at local offices of the National Security Agency.

“They have several thousand employees,” she says. “Years ago, you could probably count on two hands how many of them had Hawai‘i ties. Now when they do an all-hands call, you can see the great increase of locals working there.”

Defense Workforce Diversity

Within Hawai‘i’s defense economy, the Chamber of Commerce Hawaii’s Military Affairs Council is partnering with stakeholders to rebuild the general public’s image of what jobs in that sector are like.

“The military in Hawai‘i is not just about national defense, but it also represents opportunities in terms of jobs and careers,” says chamber VP Jason Chung.

Sabas says the chamber is reaching out to students, parents and educators to expand their understanding about the opportunities available: “It’s about opening the aperture for the local community that these are really good jobs.”

Until 2018, most Department of Defense contracts dealt with construction and engineering. That’s been eclipsed by professional services in emerging industries: information and operational technology, cybersecurity, data science, electronic warfare and intelligence.

“That was the justification for us to approach Hawai‘i’s congressional delegation and talk about having a separate effort for talent,” Chung says. The Pacific Intelligence Innovation Initiative – a public-private partnership known as P3I – creates and supports multiple paths for local talent.

In a follow-up joint email statement following news of DOGE-mandated layoffs at the Pentagon, Chung and Sabas agreed that DOGE’s federal government job reductions will undoubtedly have economic implications for Hawai‘i, and the long-term effects remain uncertain. However, their response mirrored Stevens’ response, writing that this news amplifies the message behind the mission: “This underscores the need to remain proactive in strengthening our defense workforce pipeline. Programs like P3I play a crucial role in this effort, equipping local talent with advanced technical skills to meet the evolving demands of defense and intelligence sectors in Hawai‘i and the broader Indo-Pacific region. Investing in workforce development is key to ensuring resilience and adaptability within Hawai‘i’s defense job market,” they wrote in the email.

A model for building the workforce in emerging industries is the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard Apprenticeship Program, established in 1920 to train local employees in skilled trades when mainland recruits were difficult to find. The program continues to be “the gold standard on how you earn while you learn, then go into a good career working for the federal government,” Chung says.

Some paths to good jobs require college degrees. But for entry-level jobs in areas like data science, students can be hired after earning certificates or microcredentials that take less study time. These short-term options address concerns that these students cannot afford to spend a lot of time learning new skills without a paycheck coming in. “It all goes back to the cost of living,” Sabas says.

In its first year, P3I sponsored more than 100 internships. One of the most competitive is Viceroy Maven, an immersive experiential program in which interns are embedded with operational organizations, working with senior leaders on real world problems.

“They have dedicated mentors, and we’re ensuring that the actual senior leadership of that organization is directly involved,” says Chung. For this year’s team, for example, “We’re very likely going to embed a team to specifically work directly for the Hawai‘i National Guard Commander Major General Steve Logan and his staff in terms of shaping data and figuring out all the different collaboration that has to occur with the state and federal agencies, and the military to put a very holistic and comprehensive plan together.”

“Our vision is to be that critical enabler, just like the apprenticeship program for Pearl Harbor in those areas,” says Chung, “keeping our talent here so they can live, work and stay in Hawai‘i.”

One Problem Underlying All

Reversing out-migration through multiple job pathways not only strengthens the local economy, it also grows a population that has the deep knowledge, intelligence and commitment to help tackle Hawai‘i’s biggest challenges, says Stevens.

“Headlines focus on challenges like affordable housing, quality health care and sustainable agriculture. But what often gets overlooked is the common denominator: a strong workforce is essential to solving all of these issues,” he says. “We don’t have 10 separate problems – we have one underlying challenge: ensuring that people are present, trained and equipped to do the work that helps Hawai‘i thrive.”

In Hawai‘i, the HWFC and the Islander Institute found that a “good job” is one that supports holistic well-being, is aligned with cultural values and contributes to the broader social fabric of the state.

Echoing that sentiment, FHB’s Ma says big tech didn’t offer her the sense of purpose she was looking for. She wanted to contribute to her home state: “In big tech, there’s a lot of focus on job hopping for the next big job opportunity. I don’t like that mindset. I really like staying in one company, having that career growth and developing that personal connection,” she says.

“I was grateful enough to have an opportunity in the mainland to intern and kind of gain the skills there, but then I really wanted to bring back those skills and that knowledge that I gained, to bring it back to Hawai‘i, and showcase that in local businesses.”

HWFC’s Stevens says that developing Hawai‘i’s workforce means connecting with those deeper values.

“Nobody thinks of themselves as ‘the workforce.’ We identify with the things that are important to us: our passions, our communities. We collectively make up the workforce, and there is a role for everyone to play in ensuring workforce resilience,”  says Stevens.

“To truly support the workforce, we need to go beyond just job creation. That means addressing systemic challenges and providing the wraparound services – like transportation, child care and mental health support – that traditional workforce funding often doesn’t cover.”

Table of Contents

Large Companies | Medium Companies | Small Companies | Other Categories | Benefits

Just when it seemed like employee engagement numbers had hit rock bottom, they slipped even lower. Only 31% of employees nationally said they felt involved and enthusiastic about their jobs last year, according to a Gallup survey – a 10-year low.

In Hawai‘i, engagement figures are probably no higher, says Tracie Foglia, the talent solutions manager at the Hawaii Employers Council. Foglia is spearheading a new HEC initiative to help the council’s approximately 750 member organizations attract the best people, and effectively engage and develop them so they’ll stay.

Finding and keeping talent is the single biggest problem that local leaders worry about, she says. Yet many of those leaders haven’t adapted to employee needs for meaning and connection in their jobs, which is crucial today, she says.

“For me, it all comes down to engagement,” says Foglia.

The New Rules of Engagement

While there are no easy fixes for poor or lackluster engagement, “it isn’t rocket science,” says Foglia. “It’s really about employees having an emotional connection to the work they do for the organization, its mission, vision and values.”

In her previous position as a recruiter for a local staffing company, Foglia says, she would “essentially shuffle people across Hawai‘i organizations because employers weren’t telling them how the work they did mattered, and that wasn’t engaging them.”

And you can’t get people to commit to an organization using tools of the past, she adds.

“We used to throw a pizza party or have board games in the breakroom, and we would call it engagement. But engagement is not entertainment,” says Foglia. “We want to do work where we know that we matter, where we can commit to an organization and we know that the organization is committed to us. We want to do work that we’re fulfilled by,” she says.

Engaged employees stay at their jobs longer and deliver better results, says Foglia. “You not only keep the great talent that you have, but their hearts and minds are engaged in the work the company does, and they become advocates for your company.”

She says a narrow focus on key performance indicators and other metrics will “impact not only the experience of the employees, but your bottom line.” In a McKinsey survey, for example, 99% of respondents who said their company’s talent management was very effective also said their companies outperformed competitors, compared with 56% of all other respondents.

3 Ways to Improve Employee Engagement

Skills development: The most important way to help people feel engaged at work is by giving them the opportunity to develop their skills, says Foglia. That can take the form of tuition assistance, training and workshops, or cross-departmental training and “exposure.”

“Exposure is my favorite one,” she says, as it lets employees shadow a leader, bringing them into rooms and conversations and preparing them for new roles.

Among 2025’s Best Places to Work companies, 91% say they help employees take work-related courses, and 87% assist with attending business workshops and conferences or getting professional certifications. Forty-two percent offer reimbursement for advanced degrees.

Job shadowing and cross-training are offered at 89% of the Best Places to Work, and 83% provide formal mentoring.

Work-life balance: The second-most important engagement tool, Foglia says, is building flexibility into employee schedules when possible and prioritizing work-life balance, which improves physical and mental well-being.

She says employers need to honestly assess people’s workloads and capacity. Do they need assistance? Can projects be delayed or sent elsewhere? Is there an off-hours policy that protects the employee’s private life?

“If I’m on PTO, am I expected to check my email?” Foglia asks. “A little part of me dies inside when I read someone’s out-of-office message and it says, ‘I’m on vacation and will reply when I’m able.’”

Among this year’s selected companies, 88% say they offer flexible work hours, and 71% say employees are discouraged from checking emails and voicemails after work.

But only 40% of those companies say employees are not permitted to work during vacation, and only 44% require employees to take vacation time.

Caring managers: The third-most important factor that determines whether employees feel fulfilled and valued is their direct manager, says Foglia – and many managers need training and skills to effectively lead a team.

She says managers can be taught to ask questions – What are your biggest challenges? How can I help? – and to actively listen. “People’s well-being and their ability to share with others when they’re having a hard time is completely dependent on the direct manager,” she says.

Managers at Best Places to Work companies excel at building positive relationships with employees. In survey results gathered from employees, 93% say their bosses treat them respectfully, 92% say their bosses are mindful of their personal needs, and 90% say their bosses willingly listen to suggestions and want employees to reach their full potential.

At an organizational level, while 95% of employees say they understand how their work impacts their companies’ success, only 84% believe their companies value them.

Pay and Benefits Matter

Beyond these foundational elements, fundamentals such as pay and benefits are crucial for engagement, says Foglia.

“The vast majority of people work because we have a financial need. If your company does not have market pay, you’re going to lose employees and not attract employees.”

And while many companies offer a suite of benefits, Foglia says, employees are often unsure of what benefits they have and how to use them. She suggests that companies explain the value of benefits, especially more complex ones such as 401(k) plans and employee stock ownership plans, and organize financial literacy workshops. An employee stock ownership plan gives employees partial or full ownership of a company.

On the Best Places to Work list, 97% of organizations offer 401(k) plans or something similar, 34% offer profit-sharing plans and 21% offer ESOPs. All of the companies say they offer medical benefits, and 87% of employees say their share of the costs is reasonable.

As for pay, only 68% of employees at Best Places to Work companies say their compensation is fair.

Hawai‘i’s Unique Advantage

Foglia says that Hawai‘i has inherited the relentless work culture of the mainland, which is “the only one I know where, when people are on vacation, they still feel a need to check in with the office.”

Rather than looking somewhere else for healthier models, she says workplaces can find the guidance they need at home.

“One of our amazing super-strengths in Hawai‘i is our culture of aloha. We naturally try to build connections to people. So why don’t we double down on that and really leverage that in the workplace?”

She says companies should consistently make time to talk with employees about why their work matters and how important they are to the team and the company. “What better place to engage people than here?”

Large Companies
250 or more Hawaiʻi employees

The remaining large companies are listed in alphabetical order.

Adventist Health Castle
Headquarters: Kailua
Employees: 969
adventisthealthcastle.org

American Savings Bank
Headquarters: Honolulu
Employees: 968
asbhawaii.com

Central Pacific Bank
Headquarters: Honolulu
Employees: 697
cpb.bank

Child & Family Service
Headquarters: Ewa Beach
Employees: 326
childandfamilyservice.org

Diagnostic Laboratory Services Inc.
Headquarters: Aiea
Employees: 735
dlslab.com

First Hawaiian Bank
Headquarters: Honolulu
Employees: 1,908
fhb.com

Hawaii State Federal Credit Union
Headquarters: Honolulu
Employees: 376
hawaiistatefcu.com

Island Palm Communities
Headquarters: Schofield Barracks
Employees: 402
islandpalmcommunities.com

Prince Resorts Hawaii
Headquarters: Honolulu
Employees: 1,559
princeresortshawaii.com

ProService Hawaii
Headquarters: Honolulu
Employees: 444
proservice.com

Servco Pacific Inc.
Headquarters: Honolulu
Employees: 1,045
servco.com

Medium Companies
50-249 Hawaiʻi employees

The remaining medium companies are listed in alphabetical order.

AES Hawaii
Headquarters: Arlington, VA
Employees: 64
aes-hawaii.com

AHL
Headquarters: Honolulu
Employees: 100
ahl.design

Alexander & Baldwin
Headquarters: Honolulu
Employees: 99
alexanderbaldwin.com

American Floor & Home
Headquarters: Honolulu
Employees: 123
americanfloorandhome.com

Aqua Engineers Inc.
Headquarters: Kalaheo
Employees: 90
aquaengineers.com

Atlas Insurance Agency
Headquarters: Honolulu
Employees: 108
atlasinsurance.com

Bristol Hospice Hawaii
Headquarters: Salt Lake City, UT
Employees: 176
bristolhospice.com/hawaii/

Castaway Construction & Restoration LLC
Headquarters: Kahului
Employees: 90
castawayhawaii.com

CW Associates CPAs
Headquarters: Honolulu
Employees: 65
cwa.cpa

Diamond Bakery
Headquarters: Honolulu
Employees: 62
diamondbakery.com

Elcco Electric Inc.
Headquarters: Kahului
Employees: 72
elccoelectric.com

EnviroServices & Training Center LLC
Headquarters: Honolulu
Employees: 55
gotoetc.com

Finance Factors Ltd.
Headquarters: Honolulu
Employees: 108
financefactors.com

First Insurance Company of Hawaii
Headquarters: Honolulu
Employees: 216
ficoh.com

G70
Headquarters: Honolulu
Employees: 102
g70.design

Hale Kipa
Headquarters: Ewa Beach
Employees: 100
halekipa.org

Hawaii Community Foundation
Headquarters: Honolulu
Employees: 84
hawaiicommunityfoundation.org

Hawaii Dental Service
Headquarters: Honolulu
Employees: 134
hawaiidentalservice.com

Hawaii Diagnostic Radiology Services
Headquarters: Honolulu
Employees: 64
hawaiidrs.com

HEMIC
Headquarters: Honolulu
Employees: 123
hemic.com

Hickam Federal Credit Union
Headquarters: Pearl City
Employees: 105
hickamfcu.org

Island Insurance
Headquarters: Honolulu
Employees: 140
islandinsurance.com

Kapili Solar Roofing
Headquarters: Waipahu
Employees: 156
kapiliroof.com

Kilauea Pest Control
Headquarters: Kailua
Employees: 78
kilaueapest.com

Kupu
Headquarters: Honolulu
Employees: 69
kupuhawaii.org

Layton Construction
Headquarters: Sandy UT
Employees: 56
laytonconstruction.com/meet-hawaii/

Life Cycle Engineering
Headquarters: Charleston, SC
Employees: 104
LCE.com

M. Dyer Global
Headquarters: Pearl City
Employees: 78
mdyerglobal.com

N&K CPAs Inc.
Headquarters: Honolulu
Employees: 59
nkcpa.com

Noguchi & Associates
Headquarters: Honolulu
Employees: 56
nogins.com

Nordic PCL Construction Inc.
Headquarters: Edmonton, Alberta
Employees: 173
nordicpcl.com

Pacific Administrators Inc.
Headquarters: Honolulu
Employees: 51
pacadmin.com

Pacific Biodiesel
Headquarters: Wailuku
Employees: 91
biodiesel.com

Pacific Guardian Life Insurance Co.
Headquarters: Honolulu
Employees: 117
pacificguardian.com

Pacxa
Headquarters: Honolulu
Employees: 92
pacxa.com

Pyramid Insurance
Headquarters: Honolulu
Employees: 66
pyramidins.com

Ronald N.S. Ho & Associates Inc.
Headquarters: Honolulu
Employees: 66
rnsha.com

Seagull Schools
Headquarters: Kailua
Employees: 147
seagullschools.org

Service Rentals & Supplies LLC
Headquarters: Kahului
Employees: 63
service-rentals.com

St. Andrews Schools
Headquarters: Honolulu
Employees: 77
standrewsschools.org

Swinerton
Headquarters: San Francisco, CA
Employees: 150
swinerton.com

UHA Health Insurance
Headquarters: Honolulu
Employees: 169
uhahealth.com

Waimanalo Health Center
Headquarters: Waimanalo
Employees: 127
waimanalohealth.org

Windward Auto Group LLC (now called Jerry V’s Auto Group)
Headquarters: Kaneohe
Employees: 126
jerryforthepeople.com

Small Companies
15-49 Hawaiʻi employees

The remaining small companies are listed in alphabetical order.

Big Brothers Big Sisters Hawai‘i
Headquarters: Honolulu
Employees: 24
bbbshawaii.org

Ceramic Tile Plus and Exclusively Yours
Headquarters: Kahului
Employees: 30
ceramictileplus.com

Chun Kerr LLP
Headquarters: Honolulu
Employees: 39
chunkerr.com

Diamond Head Dental Care
Headquarters: Honolulu
Employees: 36
diamondheaddentalcare.com

Dynamic Planning & Response LLC
Headquarters: Honolulu
Employees: 43
dynapnr.com

Express Employment Professionals of Hawaii
Headquarters: Honolulu
Employees: 23
expresspros.com/HonoluluHi

The Hawaii Group Inc.
Headquarters: Honolulu
Employees: 36
thehawaiigroup.com

Hawaii Information Service
Headquarters: Honolulu
Employees: 16
hawaiinformation.com

Hawai‘i Public Health Institute
Headquarters: Honolulu
Employees: 48
hiphi.org

Hawaii Zipline Tours
Headquarters: Honomu
Employees: 19
ziplinetourshawaii.com

HiEmployment
Headquarters: Honolulu
Employees: 22
hi-employment.com

Imua Family Services
Headquarters: Kahului
Employees: 42
discoverimua.com

Independent Energy
Headquarters: Honolulu
Employees: 23
independentenergyhawaii.com

iQ 360
Headquarters: Honolulu
Employees: 16
iq360inc.com

Lawson & Associates Inc.
Headquarters: Honolulu
Employees: 15
lawsonsafety.com

Make-A-Wish Hawaii
Headquarters: Honolulu
Employees: 28
hawaii.wish.org

Mitsunaga & Associates Inc.
Headquarters: Honolulu
Employees: 38
mitsunagaassociates.com

Okahara and Associates Inc.
Headquarters: Hilo
Employees: 38
okahara.com

Premier Solutions Hi LLC
Headquarters: Honolulu
Employees: 19
premiersolutionshi.com

Servpac Inc.
Headquarters: Honolulu
Employees: 18
servpac.com

Sustainable Island Products
Headquarters: Kailua-Kona
Employees: 21
sustainableislandproducts.com

T&T Tinting Specialists Inc.
Headquarters: Honolulu
Employees: 26
tnttinting.com

Verity CPAs
Headquarters: Honolulu
Employees: 18
veritycpas.com

WestPac Wealth Partners
Headquarters: San Diego, CA
Employees: 40
westpacwealth.com

Windward Synergy Center
Headquarters: Kailua
Employees: 20
windwardsynergycenter.com

Zephyr Insurance Co. Inc.
Headquarters: Honolulu
Employees: 20
zephyrinsurance.com

Other Categories
Most Family-Friendly Companies

Small Employer:

1. Hawai‘i Energy / Leidos
2. Express Employment Professionals of Hawaii
3. USAble Life

Medium Employer:

1. New York Life Insurance
2. Layton Construction
3. Nordic PCL Construction Inc.

Large Employer:

1. First Hawaiian Bank
2. Prince Resorts Hawaii
3. Parents And Children Together

Healthiest Companies

Small Employer:

1. Hawai‘i Energy / Leidos
2. Express Employment Professionals of Hawaii
3. WestPac Wealth Partners

Medium Employer:

1. First Insurance Company of Hawaii
2. AHL
3. Alexander & Baldwin

Large Employer:

1. Child & Family Service
2. First Hawaiian Bank
3. Central Pacific Bank

Best Places to Work for Women

Small Employer:

1. Hawai‘i Public Health Institute
2. Windward Synergy Center
3. Chun Kerr LLP

Medium Employer:

1. G70
2. Edward Jones
3. Atlas Insurance Agency

Large Employer:

1. Island Palm Communities
2. Bowers + Kubota Consulting Inc.
3. Bayer Hawaii

Best Places to Work for LGBTQ+ Employees

Small Employer:

1. Hawai‘i Energy / Leidos
2. Ceramic Tile Plus and Exclusively Yours
3. Express Employment Professionals of Hawaii

Medium Employer:

1. Northwestern Mutual Hawai‘i
2. New York Life Insurance
3. CW Associates CPAs

Large Employer:

1. Parents And Children Together
2. American Savings Bank
3. First Hawaiian Bank

Best Places to Work in Hospitality in Hawai’i

Prince Resorts Hawaii

Best Places to Work on the Neighbor Islands

Service Rentals & Supplies LLC

Best Young Business to Work For

Windward Auto Group LLC (now called Jerry V’s Auto Group)

Best Places to Work Rookie of the Year

Service Rentals & Supplies LLC

Best Family-Owned Place to Work

Service Rentals & Supplies LLC

2025 Benefits at a Glance

About six months into her pregnancy, Leilani Kailiawa learned from her doctor that something was seriously wrong.

The baby was tiny, and the blood in her placenta wasn’t flowing properly, an untreatable condition that put the pregnancy at risk. As the final trimester progressed, she was advised to leave Hawai‘i Island for Honolulu and its specialized medical facilities and doctors.

Kailiawa was 40, married and had two older children. She had already dropped to half-time hours at her job managing a Taco Bell in Kona, a company she had worked for since high school. Fewer hours helped reduce the stress of work and her three-hour round-trip commute. Now, all of her work hours would have to be cut, with a return date unknown.

“It was important for us as a family that I stayed close to him, even if it meant struggling.”

— Leilani Kailiawa, mother of a child with disabilities

She applied for benefits through her employer’s temporary disability insurance, known as TDI, which the state requires businesses to purchase. The disability insurance covers pregnancy complications and the postpartum period, providing 58% of a mother’s average income, with a current cap of $798 a week. Benefits generally cover five to six weeks, or eight weeks for cesarean-section deliveries.

She also applied for Med-Quest, the state’s Medicaid program for low-income residents. The public plan covered her care at the Kapi‘olani Medical Center for Women & Children, as well as a place to stay. She flew to Honolulu, where her days became a stressful blur of doctor’s appointments and concerns about the baby.

Finally, on March 7, 2016, Jeremiah was born, at just 2 ½ pounds. He was whisked into the neonatal intensive care unit, where the staff soon discovered that he had a dangerous condition, volvulus, a twisting and knotting of the gastrointestinal tract. He needed immediate surgery, the first of several.

Jeremiah remained in intensive care units for seven months, with his mother by his bedside. “It was important for us as a family that I stayed close to him, even if it meant struggling,” says Kailiawa.

Paid Family Leave Would Have Helped

Financially, the family was strained. She had no income. Her TDI benefits ran out in April, about a month after Jeremiah’s birth. And expenses were mounting, including flights every two weeks that her husband made to Honolulu, sometimes bringing the older children. The tickets were charged to their credit card.

“That’s where we could have used paid family leave,” says Kailiawa. “Because it’s only so much with TDI.”

The family visits were reprieves from the long days spent at the hospital and the nights alone in her hotel room, with no one to talk to, worried about Jeremiah and how the family would manage in the years to come. Potentially, a lifetime of intensive parenting lay ahead.

By October, once Kailiawa and her husband had learned to change his nasogastric feeding tube, Jeremiah was released from the hospital. Back on Hawai‘i Island, Kailiawa’s life narrowed to caring for a medically fragile baby, and eventually a young boy with a pediatric feeding disorder, hearing loss and other conditions.

“For a period of three years, I just secluded myself from everyone,” she says. “I was trying to find my place as a mom of a child who I know will have challenges.”

Jeremiah is 8 now, with a “lot of spunk and a great spirit,” says Kailiawa. He attends elementary school in Kailiawa’s hometown of Hilo, where the family moved two years ago. But his parents are still rebuilding their lives after the chaos of pregnancy, infancy and early childhood.

While her husband works full time, they’re chipping away at accumulated debt, the result of Kailiawa’s lost income and inability to return to a regular job because of heavy caretaking responsibilities at home. Kailiawa has tried several work-from-home arrangements, including her latest venture, as an insurance agent.

Over the years, Kailiawa, who says she’s normally “very reserved,” has found her voice as an advocate for children with disabilities and their parents. Today, she’s a member of the ‘Ohana Leadership Council, organized by the Hawai‘i Children’s Action Network, which champions more robust paid family leave for caretakers of all kinds.

“As Good as It Gets”

Kailiawa’s story lies on the raw edges of the parenting experience, but it’s not unique. Many parents find themselves in extremis, with health challenges, lost income, crumbling relationships and relentless child-care demands that prevent them from working regular full-time jobs.

Even uncomplicated births can throw a family into new levels of turmoil. For Amy, who asked that a pseudonym be used for confidentiality since she’s back at her job, starting a family was comparably smooth. But, with not enough time off from work and not enough money to cover leave, it opened her eyes to the precarity of the career-family balancing act.

Amy is the main earner in her family as her husband builds his landscaping business. After a decade in the nonprofit sector, she had returned to UH Mānoa to earn a master’s degree, with sights on getting a better-paid job in the private sector. She landed one right out of graduate school, and already pregnant.

Her short tenure with the company meant she wasn’t protected by the Family and Medical Leave Act. The federal law guarantees 12 weeks of unpaid leave and job protection for people working in organizations with at least 50 employees, but only if they had worked 1,250 hours during the 12 months before their leave starts.

She also wasn’t protected by the weaker Hawai‘i Family Leave Law, which applies to larger companies with 100 or more employees but requires less time on the job. Employees need six consecutive months at the company, including part-time work, to qualify for four weeks of unpaid leave – the bare minimum time it takes to heal from childbirth.

Because of her circumstances, Amy had entered a less predictable world, where much is dependent on the policies, traditions or even whims of her company, which doesn’t offer paid leave for employees. She got lucky with a sympathetic boss and was given 12 weeks of unpaid leave.

She had another stroke of luck by qualifying for temporary disability insurance, but just barely. To be eligible for TDI benefits, employees must have worked at least 14 weeks in Hawai‘i, be currently employed and have earned at least $400 in the year before they take their first day of “disability.”

However, some jobs don’t count as employment, including Amy’s UH graduate-assistant job, leaving her to merely hope that she would meet the 14-week eligibility cutoff. “If my son had been born before my due date, I wouldn’t have made it,” she says.

Since her income is fairly high, she expected to get the weekly maximum amount of $798 for six weeks. But the check that arrived was missing an entire week of benefits. The insurance company, Pacific Guardian, wrote in an email exchange that this “elimination period,” or when the policy will start paying benefits, was “determined by the employer and the type of policy they have.”

That left her family with about $3,600 for her three-month maternity leave, supplemented with savings and her husband’s income from contract jobs. The TDI funds covered one month’s mortgage on their Central O‘ahu home and utilities, but not much more.

As the end of her three-month leave approached in July, Amy was still up much of the night nursing the baby and sleeping in the mornings when he napped. She was deeply exhausted, fantasizing about long stretches of sleep. She asked for and was granted another month of unpaid leave to prepare for the transition.

“I was thinking by three months things would be easier,” she says. “Maybe four months will be easier but, honestly, I don’t know if he’ll be sleeping more.”

Her husband helps with cooking and care, and will take on more caretaking duties once Amy starts back at work, much of it done remotely. She’s not sure how the arrangement will work out and says the family is in “survival mode.”

“I don’t want to choose between working and having a baby, but with so little leave, it does feel like a choice,” she says. “If I wanted to stay home longer, I would basically need to quit my job, which is not an option since I have (health) insurance for the family.”

Amy has lived in Hawai‘i for many years and would like to stay. But she also wants a second child, and is already toying with the idea of moving back to California, where she and her husband have family and the state paid-leave program is more generous.

“Having access to those benefits is a big impetus to want to move back,” she says.

“My situation here is as good as it gets. On the one hand, I’m very grateful for that. But on the other hand, I feel like it’s not enough,” she says. “Any paid leave beyond the five weeks of partial pay would be such a big relief.”

“If I wanted to stay home longer, I would basically need to quit my job, which is not an option.”

— Amy, first-time mother who is heading back to work

TDI: “A Horrible, Confusing Patchwork”

Here’s a fact that is often repeated but can still deliver a jolt: The United States is the only developed country in the world without a national paid family-leave program. The U.S. joins Papua New Guinea and five small Pacific Island nations – the Federated States of Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Tonga and the Marshall Islands – as the only outliers among the 193 members of the United Nations, according to the World Policy Analysis Center.

Globally, the average length of paid maternity leave is 29 weeks, usually at partial pay and with payment caps. U.S. law, in contrast, offers unpaid leave, lasting just 12 weeks, and only covers about 56% of workers since small employers, part-time workers and new hires are excluded.

To fill the holes in the system, nine states and Washington, D.C., have implemented paid-leave programs, and four others have passed paid-leave legislation. Hawai‘i occupies an in-between space, with temporary disability insurance serving as an awkward substitute for more generous and inclusive plans.

The state’s TDI law, enacted 55 years ago, requires all employers to provide partial “wage replacement” insurance coverage for “nonwork-related injury or sickness, including pregnancy.” Some policies cover employees for up to 26 weeks.

The Hawai‘i Department of Labor and Industrial Relations, which governs the TDI program set up by the state Legislature, explained in an email that pregnancy-related medical conditions such as preeclampsia could be covered by TDI, with a physician’s verification. Childbirth and the postpartum recovery phase also require medical approval.

The email continues: “If the individual is not capable of working due to a medical issue after the birth, the period would be a disability. If the health-care provider determines there is a period or periods before and/or after birth when the individual is not able to work due to a medical reason, the individual may be able to receive TDI benefits.”

In stark contrast, California’s paid family-leave website uses welcoming language to encourage people to apply for eight weeks off at up to 70% of their pay, and with a weekly maximum amount that’s more than double Hawai‘i’s cap. California was the first to introduce a paid-leave program, but other states now offer more – 12 weeks of paid leave – including Connecticut, Colorado, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon and Washington.

Hawai‘i’s temporary disability insurance law, to its credit, covers most working people, says Arynn Nagahiro, a labor and employment attorney with the law firm of Torkildson Katz. For example, those working part-time – even spread across multiple employers, with breaks between jobs – would probably qualify for TDI benefits. But someone who had just returned from an extended break from the workforce, or someone just entering for the first time, would not, she says.

Yet quirks in the system abound. A mishmash of jobs, such as Amy’s graduate-student job at UH Mānoa, are excluded from TDI benefits. Others deemed ineligible for TDI include domestic workers in private homes, student nurses, real estate and insurance agents, sole proprietors, people who work in the fishing industry and those who work for family members.

Deborah Zysman, executive director of the Hawai‘i Children’s Action Network, says TDI is “a horrible, confusing patchwork,” with gaps in coverage and different rules for different employers. The Hawai‘i State Teachers Association, for example, offers its own temporary disability insurance to union members, independent of state-approved TDI plans.

“Some people in Hawai‘i get something, but many do not,” says Zysman. She says her organization often hears from people whose employers haven’t purchased TDI, as required by law, “and the employees find out when they need it.” The state Department of Labor counters that, saying most employers are compliant.

But the sheer complexity of the system can lead to unexpected claim denials. Taylor C., who asked that her last name be withheld, got a denial letter in 2022, several months after her second child was born.

Before the birth, she worked for a mainland loan company, but the volume of business had dropped as interest rates surged.

In the weeks before her delivery, her hours were cut to zero and she applied for unemployment benefits. She says she was still on the company’s health-care plan, and expected to get more work hours in the future.

The company handling her TDI claim, Tristar Risk Management, denied her request. Taylor C. says she immediately appealed the decision with the Hawai‘i Department of Labor and Industrial Relations, which upheld Tristar’s decision.

She had not met the “current employment” requirement, and had not “performed regular service for the employer within the two weeks before the start of (the) disability period,” according to the department’s denial letter. She was also cited for collecting unemployment benefits.

“It felt very sneaky. … Who knew you would need to technically have (worked) hours in the two weeks before the birth?”

— Taylor C, mother of three who was denied TDI

Taylor C. was shocked. She says she would have used vacation time in her final weeks of pregnancy if she or her employer had realized that the temporary work slowdown would make her ineligible for TDI benefits.

“It felt very sneaky because I was an employee, my medical (insurance) was still there,” she says. “Who knew you would need to technically have hours in the two weeks before the birth? No one having a baby wants to deal with this stuff. It was so demoralizing.”

Taylor C. says she was lucky to get four weeks of paid maternity leave from her employer, but the loss of TDI benefits hurt financially, and the entire experience felt cold and perfunctory.

The TDI process even surprised Liana Hilweh, a CPA and “paperwork person” who, until recently, was managing director of HiAccounting, the accounting arm of The Hawaii Group.

Once the company’s HR officer notified the insurance carrier about her pregnancy, Hilweh says there’s a “transfer of responsibility. … The employer is almost no longer involved and has no control, and you have to be the one to get your benefit.” That includes getting a doctor to fill out parts of the claim.

After her daughter was born in 2020, she used all of her paid time off, took unpaid leave and got her capped TDI benefits, which she had initially thought would be higher. When her son was born two years later, she received $3,494 for five weeks plus two days of TDI.

Despite getting 12 weeks of maternity leave, which neither federal nor state family-leave law require since the company has less than 50 employees, she says it felt like a good time to step away and try something else. She left her job to help her husband grow his remodeling and building business and to care for the family.

The Hawaii Group recently hired Hilweh to coach her successor through the maternity-leave process, which includes dispelling assumptions that TDI covers the entire 12 weeks of leave or comes close to matching the mother’s salary.

“If you’re the mom and you’re the breadwinner, you need to plan,” says Hilweh. “You need to understand how your family unit will work, but you can’t foresee all the things that might go differently. You might have a traumatic birth or postpartum depression, and need more time off.”

She says something goes amiss for every mother. For her, it was a health scare during her first maternity leave that ended in a botched biopsy, a milk fistula that got infected, and a painful open wound – while still breastfeeding – that took three full months to heal.

How Paid Family Leave Works

In the past legislative session, Zysman from the Hawai‘i Children’s Action Network says she felt encouraged by real interest percolating around a paid family-leave program. While the five bills introduced this past year all died, she says momentum is building as more people understand how a paid plan would work and what it would do.

Zysman and a coalition of supporters that includes AARP Hawai‘i, Catholic Charities Hawai‘i, Parents And Children Together and 23 other organizations envision a state insurance fund that employees would pay into via small payroll deductions, much like unemployment insurance. Because everyone contributes, individual costs would be low – less than 1% of employees’ pay would be deducted to cover the insurance. Claims, with medical approvals, would be submitted to the state Department of Labor and Industrial Relations.

In return, employees would get a finite but substantial chunk of paid time off for a broad range of parental, medical and caretaking scenarios, such as mothers and fathers caring for infants, adoptive parents bonding with a new child, parents caring for very sick children, adult children helping aging parents recover from surgery, a spouse traveling with a partner for cancer treatments or the employee himself who is recovering from an accident.

The plan would absorb Hawai‘i’s temporary disability insurance, for which 22 private insurance carriers are currently authorized to write policies. It would open eligibility to sole proprietors, gig workers and other people who hold jobs that aren’t currently considered employment under TDI rules.

Conceptually, paid family leave shifts the focus from a disability framework – a person is injured or incapacitated and incapable of working – to one of care and recovery: providing people with support through periods of critical caregiving for their family members or themselves.

While the paid family-leave plan would follow models created by other states, details such as the amount of time off, the percentage of wages people will get, and whether costs would be shared by employers and employees are still in discussion.

The state Department of Labor and Industrial Relations is part of that discussion. It’s being asked to run any program created, which would require more funding and a larger staff. The department’s primary role now is to mediate TDI cases in which insurance benefits have been denied. A department spokesperson says that works out to about 6% of the approximately 800 claims filed yearly, including those unrelated to pregnancy and childbirth.

In a written statement, Jade Butay, who assumed leadership of the department last year, says he can’t act until the Legislature decides how the program would be designed. He says he wants to ensure the design doesn’t “conflict with some of our preexisting programs, including TDI and Prepaid Health Care.” The latter requires employers to offer health-care coverage when workers get sick or injured, unrelated to their jobs.

But Zysman says the challenges are surmountable and that other states have developed the software and procedures to run effective programs. And a mountain of Hawai‘i-based data was collected for a 2017 report (called the Hawaii Family Leave Insurance Grant Analysis Report), followed by a legislative analysis, that made persuasive arguments for the viability of a more robust paid-leave plan, and the desire for it among residents. For example: 

• 62% of Hawai‘i survey respondents said they wanted to take time off in the past to care for a baby or ailing family member; of those who wanted time off, only 80% of new parents and 65% of family caregivers did so.
• 89% of respondents said they would use a paid leave benefit, if offered.
• 60% had a “very favorable” view of paid leave and 34% a “somewhat favorable” view

“Everybody Eventually Has a Caregiving Story”

Lisa Kimura, a community health consultant at Kaiser Permanente, helped spearhead Hawai‘i’s first paid family-leave initiative in 2013 when she was executive director of the nonprofit Healthy Mothers Healthy Babies. The 2017 family-leave report, funded by the U.S. Department of Labor, came out of that work.

“This policy alone is something that is so fundamentally transformational to the health of our society,” Kimura says. “Everybody eventually has a caregiving story. And once people start to realize that this is something for everyone – this is for you, whether you’re zero or 100 years old – then it becomes meaningful and impactful.”

Zysman, who now leads the initiative, oversees about 20 employees at the Hawai‘i Children’s Action Network. She says a state insurance fund would be cheaper for businesses, and points to her own nonprofit as an example. When an employee took time off last year, the nonprofit paid the entirety of her salary, as well as the contracted help hired to fill the gap. A state-run paid-leave program would have been much less costly, she says.

While small businesses are often leery of paid-leave programs, one study found perceptions change once a program is started. Two years after paid leave was introduced in New York state, a survey of small business owners, who were previously skeptical, reported higher levels of employee commitment and fewer challenges dealing with extended absences than respondents in neighboring Pennsylvania, which doesn’t have a paid-leave program.

Kimura says that employers “should adapt to employees’ needs, rather than having some steel box that they must reside within. That’s not how you create happy, loyal employees and not how you build your business,” she says. “When people feel cared for as employees, they turn around and care for your organization. I found that to be true in spades.”

She speaks from experience as a former nonprofit leader and also as an employee who once left a job in the hotel industry when administrators tried to block her work-from-home plans during her third trimester. Her doctor had prescribed bed rest.

But her employer wanted her offthe payroll and using TDI benefits before she gave birth, which she says would have been financially disastrous. In the end, her supervisor prevailed and she was able to work from home at full pay, but she left the company not long after her baby was born for a more family-friendly environment.

A Father at Sea

A huge body of research shows several months of paid time off can significantly improve a mother’s overall well-being, which leads to healthier babies. In addition, a 2024 study found that paid time off resulted in fewer infants being hospitalized for respiratory infections.

Research also shows that when men stay home too, they not only bond with their children, but their partners are less anxious and depressed. Yet men are sometimes subjected to workplace cultures that downplay the role of fathers and the value of paternity leave.

Christen Zulli lives near Hilo on the Hāmākua Coast with her two children, ages 7 and 5. Her husband is usually somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, where he works 90-day contracts as a marine engineer with Hawai‘i’s shipping companies. He’s often far from satellite communications, cut off from his family, missing holidays and birthdays.

Zulli says she never expected to be parenting solo, and that she and her husband made a pact to jointly co-parent their kids. But the desperate year after her younger child was born upturned their lives and sent her husband to sea for their financial survival.

“The paid family-leave philosophy targets the heart of what it means to be family and community-centered.”

— Christen Zulli, mother of two whose husband is at sea

Her second pregnancy was harder than the first, says Zulli. At the time, she was caring for her firstborn and coping with frequent migraines. Then medical complications arose, including a subchorionic hemorrhage and placental abruption that put her pregnancy at risk.

She needed help with her toddler, who was past the 10-pound lifting limit that her doctor advised. But child-care facilities in her area weren’t taking children that young, so she hired three college students to work part-time in rotation. The financial stress and the fear of losing her unborn daughter triggered severe anxiety, which later ballooned into severe postpartum depression.

Her husband, meanwhile, was working at a robotics company in Waimea. After their second child was born, he took the company’s two weeks of paid leave and then returned to work. Zulli says she was calling him frequently, as her thoughts were spiraling into disturbing places. Her husband was given a performance-improvement plan for “not living up to expectations and taking too many phone calls from me,” she says.

Her husband then talked with the human resources department about taking a longer period of unpaid leave through the federal Family and Medical Leave Act, though he didn’t think it was financially possible for the family. His boss followed up on his inquiry, wanting to know if he would be taking unpaid leave. He said he didn’t know yet, and a week later he was let go from the company.

Zulli says the company’s culture “looked down upon health issues and mental health issues.” Employees were given the message that they “shouldn’t have emotions, and that they should dismiss their wife’s emotions, and that they should dismiss anything that isn’t work-related.”

For an entire year, her husband searched for a professional job on Hawai‘i Island, as they tapped funds from their retirement plan and borrowed money. He finally gave up and began bidding on shipping jobs, which often depart from Honolulu on short notice. Zulli is now trying to resuscitate her life-coaching business while often parenting alone and dealing with stress-related autoimmune conditions.

“The future that I had seen prior to my husband being fired is not the same future that I see now,” she says, adding that longer, more generous paternity leave would have helped her family, as well as others.

“The paid family-leave philosophy targets the heart of what it means to be family- and community-centered because it’s not just about having children,” says Zulli. “It’s about everyone in the ‘ohana getting the support they deserve at the time they need it most, and that it will not result in their family losing their jobs, having to move, going bankrupt or financially injuring them for years, which essentially is what happened to my family.”

Centering the Family

Ashley Lukens wants the entire family-leave system to be rebuilt, with parents and the developmental needs of children at the center. The director of the Hawai‘i Center for Food Safety and founder of a local consultancy says the postpartum period after her now 9-month-old son was born – 15 years after her daughter – was emotionally, psychologically and physically intense. And it was a reminder of the inadequacy of family leave, even in the best situations.

Her employer, based in Washington, D.C., gave her eight weeks of paid leave, along with accrued paid time off and additional unpaid leave. Her husband’s employer, global consulting firm Ernst & Young, gave him 12 weeks of paid leave. She and her husband both work from home, and they’ve hired a full-time nanny at $3,800 a month.

“Every day that I’m with my son, I feel this profound gratitude that I have the flexibility that I do, and also profound dismay that we expect the vast majority of families to return to work after four weeks,” Lukens says. “It is literal insanity.”

She said she recently wanted to get an 8-week-old puppy but was told that many veterinarians and breeders don’t recommend separating puppies from their mothers until they’re 12 weeks old. “And yet in the United States, we expect women to go back to work after four weeks,” Lukens says.

She describes herself as a “work-identified woman,” but she’s also acutely aware of the mother-baby connection and the “deep interconnectivity that helps us understand a baby’s needs before they’re verbal. And we can’t have that if we’re separated from our babies all the time. We can’t have that attunement if we’re forced to go back to work after four weeks.”

“(I feel) profound dismay that we expect the vast majority of families to return to work after four weeks. It is literal insanity.”

— Ashley Lukens,  mother of two and a lifelong activist

She says laws and government policies have failed to provide the paid time off that parents and children need, and many private employers in the Islands, including some of the largest, offer nothing beyond vacation and sick time.

“It’s incumbent upon Hawai‘i and employers that if they don’t want the best and the brightest to leave and go to the continent, they need to start providing competitive leave.” She says her own company, with less than $1 million in revenue, gave an employee eight weeks of paid leave because “it’s the right thing to do.”

She’s encouraged by Gen Zers and Millennials, her own generation, who are “fighting for the reclamation of our dignity in the workplace. You do see a recentering on different values,” says Lukens. “I think we do value rest and we value vacation. We value the ability to work from home and to center ourselves around a different story. And paid family leave is absolutely part of that.”

Paid Leave Is Rare in Hawai‘i

Before she moved to Hawai‘i eight years ago, Katelyn Shelly worked on Wall Street, where long hours are valorized. But the culture has a contradictory element: Financial companies generally provide lots of paid family leave, for both parents. Shelly, for example, got 16 weeks of paid maternity leave from J.P. Morgan after her second child was born nearly a decade ago.

She says she was surprised to discover that Hawai‘i is so far behind. In fact, 73% of workers in Hawai‘i don’t get any paid leave through their jobs, according to the National Partnership for Women and Children, which calculated the percentage from recent U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

After Shelly was hired as COO of Chun Kerr, a small law firm in Honolulu, she helped advocate for paid leave. The partners readily agreed, she says, and in October 2022, the firm rolled out eight weeks of fully paid family leave; for longer leaves, mothers can turn to temporary disability insurance to fill any gaps in pay.

So far, three mothers and two fathers at the firm have taken fully paid parental leave, and they’ve all returned to their jobs. For the men, in particular, Shelly says she tries to assure them that it’s not just a written policy but a benefit they’re expected to use.

“The fathers find themselves in a position where they want to take advantage of the leave, but they’re worried about the career implications and the perception that it presents,” she says.

Chun Kerr is an outlier with its paid leave policy. Only 17 of the 78 companies on Hawaii Business Magazine’s Best Places to Work 2024 list said they offered fully paid leave. Of those, only a few responded to a request for more detailed information. Some said they didn’t want to highlight their policy’s disparities, which are based on a person’s position or seniority, and one submission didn’t exceed the minimum requirements of federal law.

Those companies that did respond, including Chun Kerr, are profiled in a separate sidebar, along with Bank of Hawai‘i, which was named to Newsweek’s most recent list of “America’s Greatest Workplaces for Parents and Families.” (See the sidebar below for a survey that lets others submit paid-leave information.)

In a tight labor market like the current one, “employees can be more picky and selective about the companies they go with,” says Serena Puaokalani, a senior HR consultant at ProService Hawaii. “Sometimes benefits are more important than the base pay, especially if you’ve got ailing family members or you’re responsible for young kids. They’re going to be looking at what your paid-leave benefits are.”

And prospective employees can get detailed information on sites such as LinkedIn, Indeed and Glassdoor, so they’re savvier than they were a decade ago, she says.

Statistics show that the cost of replacing an employee can range from 20% to 150% of that person’s annual salary, depending on the employee’s role, industry and location, says Puaokalani. “It is not uncommon for women to leave their work because they don’t feel like they have ample time to recover or bonding time with their newborns,” she says.

“Companies that offer paid leave, such as parental leave, enable employees to balance family responsibilities without jeopardizing their jobs. This benefits both employees and employers by enhancing recruitment and retention efforts.”

Shelly from Chun Kerr says the firm’s paid family-leave benefit also serves a broader mission of keeping young professionals in Hawai‘i.

“If you want to start a family and you’re already having a hard time making ends meet, and then your company is saying, ‘If you want to be home with your infant, you’re going to have to sacrifice your income,’ that’s asking people to leave,” says Shelly. “We want to do our part to help the local economy and keep local talent here.”

Know Your Rights

Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA)

The federal FMLA guarantees up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave for parents, including adoptive and foster parents, and people caring for themselves or family members with serious health conditions. For parents, leave must be taken within a year of birth; for people with serious health conditions, leave may be renewed each year.

The law applies to employers with 50 or more employees. Employees must have worked 1,250 hours with the employer during the 12 months before they start leave. Because of these restrictions, FMLA only covers about half of U.S. workers.

Hawai‘i Family Leave Law (HFLL)

The state HFLL says employees “may be eligible” for 4 weeks of unpaid family leave each calendar year for the birth or adoption of a child, or to care for an immediate family member with a serious health condition.

The law applies to employers with 100 or more employees. Employees must have worked at least 6 consecutive months, either full time, part time or as temporary workers; unlike the federal FMLA, no minimum number of hours is required.

Temporary Disability Insurance (TDI)

Hawai‘i employers are required to provide TDI benefits for their employees. Benefits for mothers generally cover about 6 weeks for vaginal births and 8 weeks for C-sections, but the first week after birth may be excluded. Payments are 58% of the claimant’s average wages; many employers don’t allow vacation/sick time to be taken at the same time as TDI benefits.

To receive benefits, employees must have worked at least 20 hours per week for at least 14 weeks in Hawai‘i; and earned at least $400 (total) in the 52 weeks preceding the first day of disability; and be in “current employment.” Be warned: Not every job is eligible. See section 392-5 of the Hawai‘i Revised Statutes for exclusions.

Hawai‘i Administrative Rules

Hawai‘i administrative rules prohibit employers from terminating a female employee because she needs to take leave for a disability due to and resulting from pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions. The administrative rules further require employers to allow female employees to take leave for a “reasonable period of time” as determined by the employee’s physician, taking into consideration the employee’s physical condition and the job requirements.

Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA)

Federal PWFA regulations went into effect on June 18, 2024. They apply to private- and public-sector employers with 15 or more employees.

Employers must provide “reasonable accommodations” to employees with “known limitations” related to pregnancy and childbirth if those accommodations don’t cause “undue hardship.” Examples of accommodations are providing a stool to sit on, more rest breaks or a later starting time.

According to the companies that Deloitte surveyed, the top areas of outsourcing are cybersecurity (81% outsourced those functions), IT (77%), legal (64%), taxes (61%) and HR (57%).

To know if outsourcing is the best fit for your company, the first step is to understand what it would look like.

Ben Godsey, CEO of ProService Hawaii, says some people have a misconception of what HR outsourcing really is.

“Once they know and understand it, they oftentimes adopt it because they say, ‘Gosh, I’m trying to do these things. It’s taking up my time, it’s taking up my key managers’ time. We don’t understand all the rules, the rules keep changing. It’s getting more complex every year. We make mistakes, our employees are unhappy,’” Godsey says.

He says ProService has experts in all areas of HR and can also help with specific needs while remaining cost effective.

Another major local outsourcing business is Altres – parent company of Altres Staffing and SimplicityHR. Debbie Padello, Altres’ director of operations, says SimplicityHR helps business owners focus on their core businesses – whatever those businesses are.

“Say you’re a doctor. You go to school all these years and you become a doctor. You didn’t go to school to become an employer,” Padello says. “There’s so many requirements, from legal compliance, HR laws, taxes, payroll.”

“It’s more simple to have an expert like us do the employment administration, and then they can run their business.”

Some companies replace their entire departments with outsourcing; others use it to supplement their in-house teams.

Connecting to Tech Leaders

Another benefit of outsourcing is having a connection to experts in rapidly changing fields like IT and cybersecurity – so it’s not surprising that those were the two most outsourced functions in the Deloitte survey. Pacxa helps its clients in business, nonprofits and government maintain and modernize their technology infrastructures and reduce cybersecurity risks.

President Kelly J. Ueoka says Pacxa has formed partnerships with major tech companies like Oracle, Microsoft, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and SonicWall to provide hardware and software solutions for its clients.

“It’s really about providing the expertise to pull a myriad of these leading-edge technology vendors together to help (clients) modernize IT infrastructure, reduce overall cyber risk, increase productivity and efficiency,” Ueoka says.

The latest service that clients want from their IT experts is help learning and dealing with the challenges and benefits of using AI. That need will almost certainly increase.

“I think that within the next 12-24 months, we might see an influx of companies having to adopt AI because they will be getting attacked by AI,” Ueoka says.

There are so many cybersecurity aspects to oversee that once AI is used for cyber-attacks, it may be more than what humans can handle, he says. That’s a challenge that Pacxa and its partners are gearing up to face.

It’s Hard to Find Talent

Chamber of Commerce Hawaii CEO Sherry Menor-McNamara says outsourcing is one solution to a huge challenge faced by local businesses: finding the right workers to fill positions.

The chamber has outsourced most of its accounting and HR needs since 2000, which Menor-McNamara says frees up resources to help local businesses, continue advocacy efforts and engage in activities that support the chamber’s mission.

And for companies that retain their own HR departments, Altres can serve as a “toolbox” for their specific needs, Padello says. “We customize our service to our clients.”

After decades of low inflation, Godsey says, Hawai‘i has seen price increases in the past three or four years that many people haven’t faced in their professional lifetimes.

“Employers have to work to be more efficient to stretch their resources to be able to deliver at a price point that their customers can afford,” Godsey says. Outsourcing can help reduce those costs.

“Before Covid, the prevailing view for local employers was, ‘Why would I outsource HR?’ Now, it has turned into, ‘Why wouldn’t I outsource?’ Before Covid, everyone wanted their HR team in the office,” he says. Now, “we are our clients’ HR department. We just don’t happen to be in their office. … And now it’s much more like, ‘Of course that makes sense.’ ”

Contact Center, Not Call Center

Outsourcing is not limited to HR and tech.

“When you talk about call centers, normally you’re talking about telephone,” says Max Tsai, owner and president of TC Kokua, a Maui-based customer support company. But instead of a call center, his company operates a “contact center” because it covers all forms of communication, including telephone, online chatting, email and SMS texts.

His clients include businesses from all sorts of industries in Hawai‘i and on the mainland.

“In this day and age, if you are calling Hawaiian Airlines, they’re in the Philippines,” he says. “I think our big differentiator here is being local. That’s our biggest value proposition.”

Godsey cautions against hiring a mainland or international outsourcing company because it may not know Hawai‘i’s unique state and county requirements. “If you trust a mainland company, they’re probably going to have you out of compliance with local rules and regs.”

On top of local knowledge and expertise, he says, there’s ProService’s “care and commitment and desire to do right. I don’t think you get that, even if you have all the expertise, if you’re just handling things from the Philippines.”

Both Godsey and Padello stress that building trust with their clients is essential.

“People need to be able to trust us,” Padello says. “And that all falls back on our people and the culture in our company, and being able to make sure that we take care of our people so that they can take care of our clients and that they’ll stay.”

Godsey says: “At the end of the day, trust is simple to talk about but it takes a lot of hard work to earn. I’ve run the business for 20 years. In the early days, we didn’t have a great reputation for consistently doing what we said we were going to do but we built that over time.”

They’re young, ultra-casual, and opinionated. They like flexible work arrangements and would rather not do email. Many, in fact, would rather not come to your drab, boring workspace at all. Welcome to Generation Z. They’re the youngest members on the team, and they’re making earlier intergenerational differences seem downright quaint. Consider these local examples:

• A Gen Zer asks her boss for a raise just two weeks after getting hired.
• A young team member keeps missing work, with no warning or explanation.
• A boss gives his new hire feedback, and is surprised to get some in return.
• A 22-year-old lands a dream job, but already feels disillusioned: “This is not what I imagined.”

In interviews with Gen Zers and their employers in Hawai‘i, people are reporting misunderstandings, misaligned expectations and outright culture clashes. And the problems aren’t going away, no matter how many demands and threats employers make.

Consider this too: In a national survey of managers conducted by resumebuilder.com in 2023, 1 in 8 said they had fired a Gen Z employee a week after hiring them.

But refilling positions isn’t easy, especially in Hawai‘i. The state’s population has been falling for several years, with the “brain drain” of young, educated people driving out-migration as they move for college or jobs in the continental U.S. They often don’t come back.

And the percentage of older residents here is growing. About 1 in 5 was 65 or older in 2020, a proportion that’s projected to rise. With fewer young people entering the workplace than those aging out, the stakes are high for companies to cultivate the next generation.

Despite all the complaints, Gen Z can be the best thing to happen to a business. Young employees can be creative, entrepreneurial, technically adept, not afraid to question why a business is doing things so inefficiently, and eager to work hard when they feel valued and challenged.

So what makes this age group so different from previous ones? What motivates them and helps them do their best work? And how can employers modify the old rules and norms to appeal to this new generation, tap into their strengths and entice them to stay on the job?

Here’s what a selection of Hawai‘i’s Gen Zers – and the people who work with them – say about understanding Gen Z, bridging generational divides and creating a pipeline of talented young leaders who can keep enterprises thriving long after Boomers have made their exits.

A New Breed

In Hawai‘i, Gen Z is made up of about 260,000 people born between 1997 and 2012. Now around 12 to 27 years old, the cohort has been steadily joining workplaces, often baffling, frustrating or even infuriating their older colleagues.

“Every generation has differences, and there’s always tension. But this one feels like it’s more of a gap,” says Katie Chang, executive director of the Center for Tomorrow’s Leaders and an upbeat Millennial.

The Center for Tomorrow’s Leaders has emerged as an informal think tank on the issue of generational differences in Hawai‘i, in part because it’s immersed in both the world of young people and the organizations that support its mission.

More than 800 high schoolers across the Islands attend the nonprofit’s weekly in-person classes, where they learn skills such as conflict resolution, opinion writing, critical thinking and advocacy, culminating in major community projects. The goal is to help young people see themselves as leaders and start practicing the habits of leadership.

In December 2023, about a dozen Gen Zers from CTL’s vast alumni network were brought to Honolulu for what Chang calls an “explosive conversation,” where stereotypes were debated, confirmed and rebutted. The session is helping shape CTL’s presentations to its funding partners, many of whom are concerned about finding and keeping young workers.

“We still have to insist on character formation and accountability for our young people, such as insisting on the discipline of showing up consistently, and showing respect. On the flip side, this is a radically different generation, and they really do want to be seen, heard and loved. Both sides are going to have to move and meet in the middle.”

— Katie Chang, Millennial and Executive Director, Center for Tomorrow’s Leaders

In the popular narrative, Gen Zers are often described as lazy, prone to anxiety, socially awkward, tech-addled and distracted, obsessed with work-life balance, and ready to bolt from jobs that don’t give them what they need.

Many of Hawai‘i’s Gen Zers say the stereotypes are partly true, but they fail to capture the whole story. For every negative trait, there’s a positive one, or a contradictory trait that complicates the picture. And many stereotypes point to the biases and unchallenged norms of older generations.

Sean Maskrey, a 2021 graduate of ‘Iolani School and rising senior in economics and political science at the University of British Columbia, says some generalizations are just wrong, such as the laziness jab.

“It strikes a chord with me to hear we’re not trying,” he says. “We weren’t born and told to be lazy. That wasn’t something that was ever shown in a positive light for us. I don’t think anyone prioritizes laziness or relaxing or wanting to have a work-free life.”

He chafes at the condescension he sometimes hears, and the lack of understanding about the pressures his generation has experienced. Gen Z, for example, gets blamed for being addicted to the technology that adults developed and handed to children. “I don’t think kids had a choice,” he says.

Others, such as Alexa, a Hawai‘i based Gen Zer who was recently promoted to operations manager in her organization’s technical division, says it’s the older generations that often create problems by being stuck in their ways. As an example, she points to the software used at her company: It was installed in the year she was born.

“It takes a younger person to ask, ‘Why are we doing this? This doesn’t make sense,’ ” says Alexa, who asked that her real name not be used. “The younger folks are trying to improve things, but they face resistance from people who want to keep it the same as it’s always been.”

“In my experiences, the most important thing is just having the openness to ask questions and not being put down by asking those questions. … An ideal workplace is to have clear expectations about the scope of the job and what’s expected.”

— Sean Maskrey, Gen Zer and a student at the University of British Columbia

So Smart, So Clueless

As digital natives tethered to their devices, Gen Zers have a lot of information at their fingertips, and they absorb viewpoints from many voices. They’re knowledgeable, articulate and very good at presenting themselves, explains Chang.

“It’s a real paradox, then, how they seem to be clueless in the sense of the knowledge gap, and the whole skills gap seems to be widening exponentially,” says Chang. When high school students begin working on their final projects with CTL, she says they can identify pressing problems to address, but their solutions are often “a complete non sequitur.”

“Even the basic critical thinking of how do you get from A to B, and therefore to C, used to come more naturally, and now we’re having to train for it,” Chang says. She says employers report the same. Chang says she thinks social media, where it’s never quiet and information is rarely linear, plays a part. Long stretches of deep reading and thinking have grown increasingly rare, and can seem impossible to achieve.

A bestselling new book by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, “The Anxious Generation,” argues that Gen Zers have literally had their brains rewired by technology, and their progress toward independence stunted by overprotective parenting.

The situation developed quickly. In 2007, the iPhone appeared. In 2009, “like” and “share” buttons were added to social media. In 2010, the front-facing camera was introduced, allowing teens to embark on self-curated lives, offered up for approval from a fickle virtual world. The result, argues Haidt, has been a youth mental health crisis, along with sleep deprivation, the loss of real social ties and fragmented attention spans.

Maskrey could feel the impact of social media when he was working on college assignments. He deleted TikTok from his phone last year, which he says has helped. “The ability for critical thinking is definitely diminishing, and I felt it happening to me,” he says.

Others were also struggling. Maskrey says one of his professors became exasperated and wanted answers from the class: Why can’t anyone get their work in on time? Why can’t they extrapolate their own opinions from the readings?

Image: AI & Jeff Sanner

Alone in a Noisy World

For April Nakamura, a longtime teacher at McKinley High School, associate director of CTL and a Gen Xer, the generational shift became noticeable before the pandemic, and was mostly centered on socialization.

“Throughout my teaching career, it’s always been very easy to build relationships with students. But starting around 2018, I began to notice that it’s almost like a veil has come down. They just don’t really talk to you or engage with you,” says Nakamura.

Students are self-aware, if confused about their own behaviors, she says. They tell her, “We don’t know what’s wrong with us. I don’t know why we are this way.” She worries about their social lives, and says they rarely have anything to report from the weekend, except sleeping, homework, playing video games and hanging out at home.

The pandemic accelerated those feelings of isolation and alienation.

“Covid was a defining moment for my class,” says Kimi Vidinha, who graduated from Waimea High School on Kaua‘i in 2023 and recently finished her freshman year at Pacific University in Oregon. “A lot of us have trouble communicating and have not fully matured, which is really apparent in college.” She says most students don’t contribute to classroom discussions and many stick with the people they know on campus.

Since exiting the pandemic, when school and social life were fully mediated by devices, she says that many of her peers have become addicted to their phones and distracted by the glossy mirror world of social media.

“You see what people look like on Instagram, and what other people are doing, and it gets hard to differentiate between reality and what you see on social media. … It’s completely blurred.”

Vidinha can find herself “sucked into the loop” of Instagram but prefers staying busy with classes, clubs and track practice. And she’s something of a pandemic outlier: The long school shutdown turned her into a more extroverted person. “I was able to self-reflect and become a more confident version of myself,” she says. “My personality kind of did a flip-flop.”

Ezekiel Bernardo-Flores, a private banking associate in First Hawaiian Bank’s Wealth Management Group and an older Gen Zer, says his generation connects to the world through social media, which is a “gateway for you to feel that you’re less than.”

He says he’s bombarded with postings from people who seem to be wildly successful, even if their stories are unverifiable or even fabricated. It leads to making comparisons and feeling bad about your own achievements.

“I’m very hard on myself, and I’m not the only person that’s hard on themselves,” says Bernardo-Flores, who imagines an easier, less fraught past, before social media, when the only success stories you heard about were from people you knew in real life.

For Maskrey, quiet self-reflection is difficult for his generation. He thinks the nonstop, all-consuming nature of social media has interfered with developing a secure identity, away from the judgment or approval of the comments area.

“I think there is a loss of identity in general and the idea of self for young people,” he explains. “There’s no opportunity to really think about it and develop it because it’s kind of like your identity is what’s trending now.” He says that shaky foundation leads to perceptions of Gen Z being “super emotional and reactionary” in the workplace.

Already Burnt Out

The ceaseless distractions of social media contribute to premature burnout, says Trisha Mei Ramelb, a student leadership facilitator and marketing coordinator at Center for Tomorrow’s Leaders and a Gen Z alum of the organization.

“It’s hard to turn off. And I think that’s why we feel so restless and so tired all the time, because we aren’t able to turn off and separate; we’re always on the go,” she says. “Usually you would expect burnout in midcareer but now it’s happening in high schools.

“Young people describe losing momentum and feeling like it’s a perpetual Monday, with fatigue and brain fog, unable to see clearly. Guarding mental health has become a priority among Gen Z.”

Gen Zers want workplaces to prioritize mental health as well. A 2022 national survey of 19-to-25- year-olds found:

• 82% of Gen Z employees say mental health days are important.
• 31% find it difficult to cope with pressure and stress at work.
• 42% say burnout and lack of work-life balance would make them quit their jobs.

Justin Fragiao, technical director at UH Mānoa’s Kennedy Theatre, a current graduate student and a Millennial, says he appreciates Gen Zers’ openness about discussing mental health, having struggled himself, especially as a high schooler. But he also worries that, after they graduate from college, they won’t find the same level of inclusivity and honesty in the working world.

He gets exasperated when his staff of 10 reasonably well-paid student workers continually ask for mental-health days, or just fail to show up. Sometimes they don’t even email or text to let him know.

When they do show up for work, they bring all their emotions with them. “They just wear everything that’s going on with them, whether they’re elated about something or having a terrible, terrible day, and then everyone should know about it,” Fragiao says.

As a new boss, he found himself shouldering much of the workload of building giant sets for productions, and under tight deadlines. It wasn’t sustainable. Now, he’s working to impose more rules on students and expectations about their roles. He says he wants to build students’ skills so they can handle multiple tasks, and instill a sense of professionalism in them.

Lord Ryan Lizardo, the associate VP of education at the Chamber of Commerce Hawai‘i and a young Millennial, was a teacher at Campbell High School for six years. He also saw intense emotions from students that affected their ability to cope.

“If something was happening in their personal lives, they would immediately shut off,” he says. “Being sensitive to situations is a critical piece to navigating mental health with this upcoming generation. They want a workplace that supports their growth and values their mental health.”

“Yes!” to Work-Life Balance

In a poll that CTL conducted of Hawai‘i students and alums, 74% said they would choose work-life balance over a high salary.

It’s a natural byproduct of the stress and anxiety that they struggle with more than other generations. It can also be a reaction to the workaholism of their parents, or the lack of loyalty that workplaces have shown employees, including their parents. That lack of loyalty is usually reciprocated.

Gen Zers had more than a full year disrupted by pandemic shutdowns. The older ones learned firsthand that they could work from anywhere, often on their own time. And they’re certainly not nostalgic for the old workplace of fixed hours and open offices.

Many, in fact, recoil at the trade-off they’re expected to make: decades of work, nearly all their daylight hours, the bulk of their adult existence on Earth, in exchange for enough money to one day buy a little house. Is that really appealing?

Maskrey, for example, has spent much of his life on a familiar path for Hawai‘i’s high-achieving youth: 13 years at a homework-heavy private school, an Eagle Scout, multiple summer internships and now deep into a five-year program that leads to a bachelor’s degree and a master’s in business management.

Lately, he’s been rethinking the many hours he’s spent in a volunteer leadership role at his university in Canada, and questioning what these years of effort will actually bring. For all the talk about employers not being able to fill jobs, he says many of his peers struggle to land anything.

He says he’s gotten internships in Hawai‘i through personal connections; when he didn’t know anyone, his applications went nowhere. Many of his college friends can’t find jobs, even those graduating in popular fields such as environmental studies. One friend applied for dozens of service jobs to help pay living expenses, with no callbacks.

“The biggest experience for my generation is that we’re just not hearing back,” says Maskrey. “We’re applying to so many jobs and not hearing from anybody.” And they’re not being picky, he says. They’re just trying to keep moving forward with their lives.

In an ideal world, he says Gen Zers want jobs that align with their values and offer a sense of purpose, without sapping away all their time and individuality. “Gen Z prioritizes being real and just being human. People are people, not capital,” he says.

The worst work situation, Maskrey says, would be “feeling like you just have to show up and clock in, sit and put your head down forever, and then clock out at 5 and go home. That’s a nightmare situation for me.”

Alexa is living in that world now, having made the “difficult transition” from a part-time job while attending UH Mānoa to a full-time role with her organization. Her recent promotion to a managerial position has elevated her stress and sense of unease. She says she “feels the burnout.”

“I had certain expectations and higher hopes of what working was going to be like,” she says. “And then you come into the workplace and realize this is not what I imagined. You’re faced with the reality of working 9 to 5 for the rest of your life, and it’s very depressing.”

Gen Z is adept at stepping into “big shoes” and thriving in roles that demand responsibility. But they’ll probably need lots of coaching. | Image: AI & Jeff Sanner

“True Pragmatists”

For all their idealism and commitments to social justice and climate activism, money is still important to young people. And given what they’ve experienced in their lives, how could it not be?

As Courtney Kajikawa, a Gen Xer and senior VP and manager at First Hawaiian Bank, wrote in her 2023 thesis report for Pacific Coast Banking School, major political, economic and social events, known as “period effects,” have had a profound impact on Generation Z.

“Period effects like the Great Recession, the pandemic and the current inflationary environment have made Hawai‘i Gen Zers feel more financially insecure,” she writes in “Brain Drain to Brain Gain.”

Some had parents who lost their jobs during the Great Recession and the pandemic, and some Gen Zers did too. Others struggled to find employment as they graduated from high school and college into a challenging economy.

In writing her thesis, Kajikawa ran focus groups to gather Gen Z perspectives in Hawai‘i. She says that young people understand how financially precarious their lives are, and the insecurity weighs heavily on them.

“They’re really concerned about, ‘How am I going to pay off my debt? How am I going to afford a place to live? How am I going to save for retirement?’ ” Kajikawa explains in an interview.

“I see Gen Z as ambitious and driven. … It just requires more coaching and more time with managers and supervisors, and more empathy on our part. We need to ditch the ‘Oh, kids these days’ attitude and meet them where they are.”

— Courtney Kajikawa, Gen Xer and Senior VP and Manager, First Hawaiian Bank

Hawai‘i residents ages 20 to 24 earn an average of just $40,200 a year, which is far too little to survive independently. For those with student loan debt, the burdens are even heavier.

These economic concerns are felt worldwide, with 51% of Gen Zers saying they live paycheck to paycheck, according to the Deloitte Global 2023 Gen Z and Millennial Survey. They may want work-life balance, but 46% of Gen Z respondents said they’ve taken second jobs to make ends meet, compared to 37% of Millennials.

In a Morning Consult survey, half of Gen Zers said they wanted to become entrepreneurs or start their own businesses. Many dream of being influencers, while others make money live-streaming themselves playing video games on Twitch, or selling T-shirts or “kitschy little things” on Instagram or TikTok, says Fragiao from UH Mānoa. He says one of his friends left a job he hated and devoted himself to painting; he now sells his artwork online.

Data from McKinsey & Company shows that Gen Zers are more likely to be self-employed or working gig jobs than older workers, but 56% of them would prefer to have permanent positions. Like most people, they’re looking for stable paychecks.

Gen Zer Josie Dang, a rising junior studying health care management at UH West O‘ahu, agonizes over whether to take on her family’s full-service salon in ‘Aiea when she graduates, or keep studying for an MBA, or look for a professional job with regular pay.

Her father arrived in Hawai‘i as a refugee from Vietnam, and he started his business from the ground up. Dang says he and her stepmother work constantly, leaving her home to cook, clean and take care of her younger sister. She’s seen how owning your own business doesn’t always bring the freedom and flexibility her generation seeks.

She says she doesn’t want to seem ungrateful or be a disappointment, and that she knows she should take him up on the offer of taking over the family business. Instead, she says she “just goes back and forth. … Honestly, a 9 to 5 with a high salary is looking kind of good.”

Chang, from the Center for Tomorrow’s Leaders, believes that financial stability will guide many Gen Zer decisions.

“They’re true pragmatists,” she says. “A lot of employers think they need to put out the right messaging when it comes to political and social issues, and I think that’s true to a degree. But in the end, I think that the priority will be financial.”

Why Move Out?

In Hawai‘i, many young adults deal with the high cost of living by living at home. This multigenerational arrangement, long popular here, is growing across the country, with nearly 16% of Millennials (ages 28 to 43) living with their parents in 2022, according to U.S. census figures.

But the CTL leadership team wonders if the arrangement can be too cozy and interfere with Gen Zers’ growth and independence. They say the stigma of living at home is gone, and the motivation to leave is weak.

“Gen Z has a much higher desire to live at home, but there are things you learn by not being at home, so they have knowledge gaps,” says Chang.

High school teacher Nakamura, a Gen Xer, says she grudgingly stayed home after college, but she paid rent and saved to move out as soon as she could. Ramelb, a Gen Zer, still lives with her family and says both she and her family members love it. Still, she’s saving to live on her own one day.

At 26, Bernardo-Flores recently left his family home and moved into a rental in Honolulu. His mother didn’t want him to go, but after high school at Kamehameha Schools Kapālama, college at Chaminade University and a job downtown, the commute from Waipahu had become unbearable.

His father questioned why he was renting and not buying, like he had done as a young man. The house, Bernardo-Flores says, cost less than a tenth of the price today.

For Alexa, being away from home is worth it, for now. She recently moved into a small studio apartment in Kaka‘ako and is paying more than she’d like to, but she says she was tired of being treated like a child. “It’s hard to have your own life and live at home,” she says.

The decision to rent wasn’t easy, and she says she’s still “testing the waters” before deciding whether it’s really worth the money to live on her own.

Let’s Fix Things Around Here

Lizardo from the Chamber of Commerce Hawai‘i loves many things about Gen Zers, such as their social media skills and their sensitivity to what he calls “the isms”: racism, sexism, homophobia – they’re able to navigate those in ways that other generations aren’t able to, and to really be delicate but also very fierce.”

While the subtleties of talking about identity are clear for Gen Z, the nuances of communicating across generations are much less so. “They’re not afraid to push boundaries and share what they’re thinking about the workplace very quickly and easily,” before they’ve built trust and rapport with older colleagues, Lizardo says.

He coaches them in understanding the workplace culture before trying to change it, and improving their communication skills, such as writing business emails without using texting shorthand.

At First Hawaiian Bank, where 16% of the workforce – over 300 employees – are Gen Zers, Sherri Okinaga, a senior VP and head of the Organizational Effectiveness Division, embraces their energy, adaptability and what she calls “resilient risk-taking.”

“Seasoned employees want to focus on why policies and procedures exist and how existing programs came to be, whereas the younger generation is questioning, ‘Why do we have to do it that way?’” says Okinaga, a Gen Xer. “They’re reinventing work in a different way, using more AI and digital tools.”

Okinaga is working to make the bank “an employer of choice” among young people – and reexamining some of the traditional practices in the process. As nearly half the employees are Gen Zers and Millennials, and the executive team is made up of soon-to-retire Gen Xers and Boomers, she sees it as an imperative.

“Employers who are really galvanizing the Gen Z energy and creativity, by hearing their voices in the design of future work, are going to be the winners in the war for talent,” she says. “If we keep doing what we’re doing today, we will be out of business.”

The bank provides opportunities for young adults to learn, grow and lead, she says, and creates benefits and programs that appeal to them. For example, there are flexible hybrid work options; cross-mentoring that lets younger people coach older colleagues on technical skills; cohort-based learning programs to help them feel connected; and a quarterly awards program designed by younger staff and rolled out on social media.

Award winners are treated to dinner with the entire C-suite – an exercise in flattened hierarchies. “Employees can be in maintenance, in facilities, security guards, anyone,” says Okinaga. “It brings everybody closer and says every contribution matters.”

Image: AI & Jeff Sanner

What’s Next for Me?

Employee engagement lies at the core of any business’s success: Do people care about their jobs and do they try to do their best work?

Gallup polls say mostly not. In 2023, Gen Z engagement in the workplace dropped from 40% to 35%, and 14% of Gen Z employees were considered seriously disengaged.

The status quo isn’t going to work anymore, says Bernardo-Flores, the private banker and Gen Zer. Companies can’t expect young employees to do the same job for the same company, decade after decade, as his father did. Gen Zers want more than that, he says.

“We have an unusual labor market right now,” says Chang. “It’s important for employers to know Gen Z wants work-life balance, meaningful work and high salary. I think that expectations of really wanting all three are going to create demands on a lot of employers.”

And many Gen Zers are doing quite well for themselves. The Economist noted that the U.S. has more than 6,000 Gen Z chief executives and 1,000 Gen Z politicians. And many Gen Zers in Hawai‘i are defying generational stereotypes and quickly climbing the company ladder. But even as they do, they feel pressure to dispel others’ perceptions.

Bernardo-Flores says his father encouraged his kids to go to college so they’d have more opportunities than he did. His mother wanted them to find stable jobs with well-established organizations. The values of his parents shaped his own choices, he says.

After graduating from Chaminade in 2020, at the start of the pandemic, he moved from his part-time teller job with First Hawaiian into a full-time role. From there, he soon moved into the position of private banker, complete with a Bishop Street office with a view.

He says many of his peers started intensive training at the bank, then abandoned it after a few months. The fallout trickles down to people like him, who love their jobs. He says he appreciates the mixture of autonomy and guidance he’s given, as well as long-term pathways.

“I feel like as a Generation Zer it’s harder for me to gain that trust, to let my employer understand that I’m committed, I’m different from these other guys and gals that maybe weren’t,” he says.

Alexa, the operations manager, agrees that being one of the only Gen Zers among older colleagues means constantly having to prove herself. She says she works hard, at a high level, to combat low expectations, while given little support.

Despite her efforts, she finds it frustrating when she’s not taken seriously or left out of conversations. “There’s an attitude of, ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about, so I’m not really going to pay attention to what you’re saying,’ ” she says.

The sense of disillusionment with the adult world of working full time, paying bills and trying to stay afloat is leading her to question her prospects in Hawai‘i, the place where she was born and raised and had never wanted to leave.

“The world has changed. Older generations will say, ‘You just need to get your foot in the door and take any job you can.’ It doesn’t really happen like that anymore. You have to have so much experience and education to even get a job. … We need more opportunities for younger people to gain that experience.”

— Alexa, Gen Zer and an operations manager at a well-known Hawai‘i organization

“But the reality is there just aren’t many opportunities. It’s much too expensive, and the amount of work you need to do to live is not sustainable.” She’s looking at options, such as graduate school, working on the mainland – anything to escape a narrow, constrictive future.

While Bernardo-Flores says he’s committed, he’s also practical and ambitious – two traits that Gen Zers aren’t always known for, at least not yet.

“Money isn’t always the driving factor for us,” he says. “It’s the idea that we’re going to be recognized for our work, that the work we’re doing is high value, and that there’s long-term success waiting for us. If we don’t see that in the job, then we definitely won’t commit ourselves fully to it.”

Beginnings: Born and raised on O‘ahu, Natalie Perez lived on the North Shore before moving to ‘Ewa Beach when she was in second grade.

“Growing up I had never heard of qualitative research,” says Perez, who spent much of her childhood racing at the Kahuku Motocross Track in hopes of a career on the national circuit. But injuries over the years led her to give up that dream; she opted for college instead.

Lifelong Learning: Perez was entirely homeschooled before attending Windward and Leeward community colleges. She went on to UH West O‘ahu, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in humanities with concentrations in English and literature.

Then, while working toward a master’s degree in composition and rhetoric, she switched gears and earned a master’s and then a doctorate in learning design and technology.

“I just love learning. I’ll probably go back to school. I’m still really interested in law, botany, interior decorating,” Perez says. “I’ve decided I’m not going to have just one career but multiple careers over my lifetime and I’m excited about that.”

Path at Amazon: Perez held various roles at UH and was director of online teaching and learning at Honolulu Community College when a recruiter from Amazon reached out.

She started at Amazon as a senior instructional designer and researcher and now works as a qualitative research scientist.

“I work on a science team that is housed within human resources. The team is really focused on looking at our employee population and things related to human resources such as people’s working environments and employee experience.”

Specific Role: “My job is to design research studies aimed at being able to understand employees’ experiences about their work.”

She and her team collect information using interviews, focus groups, surveys, journals and diary studies – all with informed consent – “then take that data, analyze it and generate it into reports,” she says.

Those reports are shared with company leaders and used to improve employee experiences on the job and increase employee retention.

She finds the work meaningful and fulfilling. “People want their voices to be heard and I think that’s really important for organizations to be able to listen to their people.”

Global Connections: “One of the biggest challenges is time zones. It can be difficult trying to connect with people in the exact opposite time zone of mine. So it makes for some very early meetings and some late evening meetings.”

Motivation: Perez says the most exciting part of her job is constant exposure to new people, new places and new ways of thinking, working and living – all while mostly working from home on O‘ahu.

“I get to work with some incredibly brilliant and diverse people who live around the world … people in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, the Pacific and just about every single country in between,” says Perez. And she says she gets to talk with them about Hawai‘i and its people and culture, and has the opportunity to travel too.

Keeping it Local: Perez says she sometimes misses the special atmosphere of our local work community, “but I’m so thankful to get to continue to be in the community and support local. I try to do things like different presentations with high schools and podcasts.”

Perez, a first-generation college student, says: “I really encourage students to go to school. As a little kid from ‘Ewa, I didn’t think I’d ever be in this role doing this work, but it’s totally feasible and possible.”

Workers’ compensation claims can be filed for a variety of injuries and illnesses that occur at work – from cuts and strains to repetitive-use injuries like carpal tunnel syndrome to skin disorders due to chemical exposures.

Workers’ compensation benefits can include compensation for lost wages and medical expenses. In the worst cases, workers’ compensation can pay permanent disability or death benefits.

The National Safety Council says the top three occupational injuries involving days away from work are 1) exposure to harmful substances or environments (36% of such cases), 2) overexertion and bodily reaction (22%), and 3) falls, slips and trips (18%).

Keeping workers safe helps companies avoid expensive workers’ compensation claims and higher insurance rates. It can also boost morale, improve worker retention and increase productivity.

Here are eight tips to cultivate a safe environment:

• Build and maintain management support. This can take many forms: Managers need to be alert to potentially unsafe actions at work and should take active roles in safety training. And they should ensure adequate staffing to meet production and service goals, and invest in measures and resources to prevent injuries, such as providing personal protective equipment and training programs and repairing faulty equipment.
• Model and encourage safe behavior. Unsafe habits can develop if workers are pressured to cut corners to meet deadlines or if they see their supervisors acting unsafely.
• Train your workers to do their jobs safely. Training and education are especially important for new workers, but everyone benefits from refreshers and reminders. Provide updated training when new processes are implemented or changes in safety requirements take place.
• Conduct safety inspections. Regular inspections give you the chance to mitigate workplace hazards before they lead to injuries.
• Train with personal protective equipment. It’s not enough to have PPE on-hand – workers have to be familiar with the equipment and know how and when to use it.
• Promote safe driving. Make sure your requirements don’t pressure employees to drive unsafely. Keep your vehicles in good condition (that will usually save you money too). If you operate a fleet, telematics programs that use GPS to track drivers can encourage them to act safely behind the wheel. Most importantly, ensure your drivers are qualified to operate your company vehicles.
• Know your industry’s regulatory requirements. Depending on your jurisdiction, you may fall under Hawai‘i or federal occupational safety and health standards. Following these standards can help you avoid both injuries and fines.
• Proactively manage workers’ compensation claims. If a claim is reported, encourage prompt treatment using telehealth if possible. Offer injured workers modified duties if needed until they recover and stay in touch with proactive communication. Staying on top of these cases can ensure workers aren’t away from their jobs longer than necessary.

It’s also important to partner with an insurer that can help you navigate safety concerns in your industry. Consult with your independent agent for guidance.

In 2020, Accuity implemented a “responsible time off ” approach toward its employees that may seem radical to many in Hawai‘i. Under the policy, our 100 team members don’t have a set number of paid time-off days. Rather, they are free to take as much “RTO” as they need as long as they do so in a responsible manner.

The RTO policy has become a valuable tool for our organization, underscoring the respect we have for our team members’ personal interests and character but most importantly, enhancing our personal and professional relationships.

As unlimited PTO grows in popularity nationwide, here are my recommendations for companies considering this model.

First Consider the “Why?”

The primary objective behind our reboot of paid leave is to disrupt the employer and employee dynamic, and kickstart a new mindset within our firm. We want to foster a stronger culture of trust, openness, honesty and excellence.

We went from a parent-child dynamic, where PTO days were bestowed upon employees over time, to an approach founded on a balance of power, mutual respect and trust. RTO is a tool to empower our professionals to manage their lives without anxiety, while also embracing accountability, communication and collaboration.

Establish Guidelines

Accuity chose “responsible” time off versus “unlimited” time off because of the guidelines in place to ensure continuity and fairness. For example, each team member must take a minimum of two weeks RTO per year, with a maximum of three consecutive weeks at any one time.

Consider Blackout Dates

It is each individual’s responsibility to prioritize time off , but they must be responsible about how much and when they take it. This means respecting project deadlines and being considerate of other team members’ workloads. If your business consistently experiences particularly busy times of the year, set blackout dates in anticipation of staffing needs.

Communicate Clearly

It is not enough to require that employees act responsibly; we must define that responsibility clearly. Work closely with HR to craft a policy that is easily understandable. Communicate the policy proactively and be prepared to respond to questions.

Reinforce Through Culture

You can have the best RTO policy in place, but it is meaningless if your employees feel guilty or unsafe about using it. Demonstrate trust and empower your employees to act responsibly.

Consistently Evaluate

This model may not work for your employees and your business. Make sure to create systems to track performance and productivity in relation to employee RTO. Expect a transition period: Give people time to absorb the change and adjust accordingly

This month’s expert:

Photo: courtesy of Cory Kubota

Cory Kubota
Managing Partner
Accuity LLP