Young Professionals Young Professionals directors. There are a lot of benefits to having a network of new funeral directors who you can lean on outside of the company and state you work in. Thankfully, we learned about the Order of the Golden Rule’s young professionals (YP) network. This allowed our newest director, Allison McCormick, to meet and learn with other new directors going through similar experiences. Allison came to us right out of school and was by far our youngest director. Her needs and expectations were quite different from the seasoned veterans we had on staff. While they were able to teach her a lot of the practical and hands-on requirements, the YP network offered Allison a chance to learn and grow with other new directors. An added benefit was she was able to meet folks who were not only new directors but also had previous diverse careers. This gave her another perspective on the funeral industry from someone who did not come right out of school into the field. Another important element of the YP conferences is that participants are able to all travel to one location to focus on their training. (It doesn’t hurt that they tend to travel to nice destinations, either.) Joking aside, being able to get out of the funeral home and focus on training with like-minded peers for a number of days was invaluable for Allison and for all of us. She came back energized with a lot of terrific ideas not just to change how we do things but to improve upon what we were already doing well. As we all know, change in the funeral industry can be deathly slow (no pun intended). One area where the next generation of funeral directors has really benefitted our firm has been in social media. A YP training session Allison attended focused on utilizing social media to promote our brand and our messaging. This is an area some funeral homes have embraced while many others have not. Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter are an important messaging tool for the younger generations and if we want to be relevant to our future customers, we have to utilize these tools as well. Allison McCormick of John J. Ferry & Sons Funeral Home, third from left, poses for a picture with other young professional OGR members at the annual YP event in 2019. Being a 5th generation family funeral home, we understand the importance of nurturing our employees, especially our next generation of funeral directors. Not only are they in-tune with our future generations of customers, but they can help us improve the services we provide today by bringing a fresh perspective to the way we do things. Best of luck to the latest class of funeral directors! Pat Ferry is a 5th generation Licensed Funeral Director at the John J. Ferry & Sons Funeral Home in Meriden, Connecticut. He is a graduate of the University of Connecticut (‘03) and the McAllister Institute in New York City (‘13). Patrick and his partner Claire have two children, Parker and Ella. Connect with him at pferry52@gmail.com. Learn more about opportunities to connect with young professionals in the industry at OGR.org/Young-Professionals www.ogr.org | The Independent® 7
8 Publizr Home