Newsletter Archives

The Southerner Email Blast - February 2024

Jodie D. Dupree, SCCFA President-Elect

A HIRING EVENT

Let’s talk about people or more specifically, employees. We all need them. We cannot run our businesses without them. In every group of employees, there is a segment that is at the beginning of their career, a segment on the end of their career and a segment in between those two groups that is really getting most of the work done. Finding, people, training people and retaining people is the primary job of the manager of any business. It is often the hardest part of any manager’s job because good people seem to be hard to find. You post a job on Indeed or craigslist or one of the other hiring sites and you hope to get a few decent resumes. The downside to hiring that way is applications trickle in. You interview and maybe hire someone only to find out a week later that somebody much better just had not applied yet. If you could only have waited a few more days before pulling the trigger on the person you hired. Time kills deals so you just cannot drag the process on day after day. You have to act but what if what if there was a better way to recruit and hire.

I was recently part of something I had never tried before. A hiring event. Just the word event makes it feel more special and it was certainly that…an event. We were looking to hire a few sales counselors but rather than put ad after ad on the hiring sites we put one ad out announcing a hiring event. We informed people that if they came on a certain day between certain hours, we would guarantee that we sat down with them and gave them an interview. What we found was that we got much more response than we might normally get just advertising a position. People felt they didn’t have to play the application lottery and hoped their application made its way to the right person. They didn’t have to wait on a call back or try and do something to make themselves stand out. They knew that if they showed up that day during those hiring hours that someone was going to sit down with them, read their resume and interview them. Guaranteed. We advertised the hiring event on indeed and on our Facebook page (you do have a Facebook page, don’t you?) and on other hiring and job sites. We announced the date and the 6-hour window for the event. We had over 100 people respond and nearly 35 showed up. That seems to be about the hold rate of those who RSVP for the event. Some let us know they were coming, and others just showed up. We ended up hiring several from that one day of interviews. It worked so well that a few weeks later we tried it with cemetery maintenance folks. We ended up getting 66 responses from people wanting jobs. We didn’t need 66 new maintenance employees, but we did need 6 and we found them at that one-day event.

To make the event work we need multiple people who could do interviews, so no one was waiting for too long. We used a preprinted interview question forms for the interviewer to ask of the applicant and fill out during the interview. There was an initial set of questions and if we didn’t think they were for us we thanked them after the first page of questions was asked and after we had a chance to talk to them for a few minutes. If we did like them another interviewer took over and asked the remaining questions on the form and provided a second set of eyes and ears in the hiring process. After the interview was complete, the interviewers each rated the person as A, B C, or D. Obviously, we were interested in hiring the A folks and maybe even a few of the B’s. While interviews were going on, we handed information about the job and our company to those waiting to be interviewed. In the case of the maintenance hiring event, we had computers set up and ready to go and folks to assist anyone that needed to fill out our online application for a job. Needless to say, both events were a huge success.

The event worked because we compressed the application and interview process down and did not drag it out as we normally do waiting on people to apply. Remember: TIME KILLS DEALS.

Speaking of time, the days are drawing closer for our annual convention and this year will be fantastic. We are at the gorgeous, Westin Hilton Head Island Resort and Spa. July 15-17 with sand, sun, golf and tons of information, learning and seeing old friends. Register now because early bird registration ends March 31, 2024, and book the hotel right away to make sure you get part of the room block set aside for the convention. Join the SCCFA along with the cemetery associations of Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee. I look forward to seeing you in July.

Follow this link for all the details on our 2024 convention.

2024 SCCFA Convention Page

Westin Hilton Head Island Resort & Spa | July 15-17, 2024

We are pleased to partner with these great state associations for our 2024 Convention:

Cemetery Association of Tennessee
Georgia Cemetery Association
Kentucky Cemetery Association
North Carolina Cemetery Association
South Carolina Cemetery Association

Booth space is running out! Just five (5) booths still available.

Early-bird registration savings ends March 31, 2024.

Hotel rooms are limited. So, make your reservations today.

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WELCOME, new SCCFA supplier member, Universal urnS!

BRADENTON, FLORIDA: American Urn Manufacturer has opened their doors for business. Universal urnS is an American made utility urn manufacturer providing the funeral and cemetery professionals with durable utility urns for cremation placements in brick, cored, and mausoleum settings. The rectangle utility urn, cylinder urn, and mauso urn are designed to fit all granite offerings in the cemeteries.

During the pandemic, it was difficult for cemeteries to find compatible urns to handle the demand. Co-Owner Lyle Kobus stated, “When he was approached with the opportunity, he wanted to bring manufacturing back to Southwest Florida.” Working with industry professionals, Kobus and his team of designers and engineers after 2 years have created a custom die made for extrusion to the exacting standards required for the placement in the cemeteries.

Universal urnS, Inc. is looking to market the urns to national and independent funeral providers in the Southeast. Tom Scholz, National Sales Manager for Universal urnS said, “After two years of test marketing we are ready the service the Southeast Funeral Providers in several states. Our service continues to grow with our 3 day to a week delivery. We hope to improve our service to 2 day delivery options available by mid-March.”

Universal Urns, Inc. is a Florida Based urn manufacturer specializing in extruded aluminum utility urns to fit all niche requirements including brick, cylinder, cored wall, mausoleum niche, and ground placement of urns.

Universal urnS | http://www.ssurns.com | 941-224-0956

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Check out our event calendar for a listing of conventions in our region:

SCCFA and State Convention Listing

er - Spring 2023

The Southerner Email Blast - January 2024

Greetings from the SCCFA! We trust 2023 has been good to you, both professionally and personally.

I want to say hello on behalf of our Board of Directors and take a few minutes to mention some important things to all of you.

We realize as we head fully into the Holiday Season, everyone is busy trying to reach your goals and needs of your job and your businesses for this year. All of us have certain criteria we are trying to attain by year end to make sure our objectives are met, and we are also adapting to the ever-changing environment around us.

As I reflect on my over 41 years in this profession, there are some definite differences between the “old days” vs today’s challenges. Many of us who began a long time ago on the cemetery side of things started out knocking on doors every week for a low-cost form of advertising and getting seated with families for in-home, Preneed presentations. Back then, even some Immediate-Need business might be conducted in a family’s home, at their kitchen table, often in the evenings. Many cemeteries didn’t even require a family to come to the office to finalize an interment, sometimes even opening graves with just a phone call from the funeral home and/or family.

At the young age of just 22, I was placed in charge of revising that policy at our location. As you can imagine, we were met with some resistance from some funeral directors, and families, too. But now it seems amazing that so many cemeteries waited so long to implement that requirement.

Which brings up the issue of proper verification of a grave opening or authorization of other business regarding a space or crypt. In attending several different association meetings and speaking with several operators, I’m concerned with locations not always following proper protocols for this oh-so-important part of our job. We are very lucky that there weren’t a whole bunch of wrongful interments from years ago. The most potential legal problems you have are the result of not having a good system in place for ensuring we do open the correct site. As well as allowing someone who is not the actual lot owner to authorize an interment or other transactions. Unbelievably, this still is a practice of some operations.

Why? It’s not complicated... if they are not listed as the Owner, then they can’t authorize an interment or other business regarding Interment Rights. We remind our staff, it’s no different than if they were attempting to change an auto title or other ownership document of any asset owned by another person, unless they are the actual owner. A regular Power of Attorney doesn’t apply either, if that person is now deceased. Only a Durable POA or a Last Will and Testament listing the Executor of the Estate, can allow someone else to authorize an interment. In the absence of those documents, then a majority of the children of the Lot Owner should be required. In the case of a divorce, you cannot act as a judge and decide “who gets what” for arrangements at the cemetery. If the Will or Divorce Decree doesn’t specifically address the new ownership of their cemetery items, then it’s the family’s responsibility to furnish documents to establish a “trail of ownership”. That’s not our job.

I’m covering this subject because we’re still seeing some cemeteries allowing an unauthorized person to sign documents and make decisions about cemetery items. This also applies to a Deed Transfer and even the purchase and placement of a memorial or monument on the grave. “Mom didn’t feel well, so after we left the funeral home, we took her home”. Sound familiar? Sorry, but again, if your name isn’t on the Deed or Certificate of Ownership then you can’t sign to authorize things. You must have a very clear understanding with your local funeral directors about this, so they can help you schedule an appointment with the right family member.

You should also be getting a call from the funeral home and/or family to be included in the discussion about setting the day and time of a service. Almost all cemeteries have it in their Rules and Regs that “the cemetery is the scheduling agent for an interment.” This prevents multiple services arriving at the same time at your facility.

One more issue along these lines is the rule that most cemeteries have about being able to correct mistakes without any liability. That language should be in your Interment Authorization Form, Contracts and Rules and Regulations. In an Endowment-Care cemetery, the family doesn’t own “real estate”. They own “Interment Rights”, which can be reassigned to a new location in the event their original selection is not available. With decades of existence now for cemeteries, it is a guarantee that at some point an employee has made a mistake in your records and you’ll have spaces which were “double sold”, or a maintenance crew has opened the wrong space in the past. Rarely was this an intentional act by an employee, with no purposeful misleading or harmful actions. It was almost always just a simple mistake by someone. Occasionally a huge rock or tree is now preventing usage of a space shown on your garden map. But these are another potential legal liability for you. This must be dealt with prior to making an interment, as having to inform a family that their loved one now needs to be disinterred and moved to a new location could result in some type of compensation from you to that family, if not a lawsuit, despite the language in the documentation they’ve signed.

Your administrative staff must proof all documentation and immediately alert you of an issue well before performing an interment. Family service counselors need to physically inspect the site well before the family arrives at your office. A maintenance crew member should also inspect the site as soon as possible to look for possible issues.

Today’s business atmosphere is different than years ago. People are far more likely to start slinging the word “lawyer” around than in the past. The public is not as reasonable as years ago. While people’s technical skills are off the chart versus just 20-30 years ago, our society’s verbal communication skills have declined greatly. Especially with what you might call “conflict resolution skills”. The ability to calmly and reasonably hash out problems and come to a solution that everyone can be happy about. This also applies to your staff. Not everyone who works for you may be good at handling a difficult conversation with a family. Your best person for tackling those tough situations should be the person meeting to discuss a problem with a family.

Again, having a good system in place for documenting and updating your records, along with verifying the correct site for an interment, is paramount to providing good service to families and preventing costly mistakes for your business. Training is key! Each employee involved must approach this almost from the viewpoint of not trusting what other employees are saying, to provide completely independent verification of that site.

On the funeral side of things, we’ll be having one of the funeral director members on our Board providing information like this soon, with reminders and examples of issues that funeral homes are dealing with in today’s business environment. With the drastic rise of the cremation rates in almost all markets, all funeral homes are having to be much more detailed and in compliance with who is authorizing a funeral and even more so who is authorizing a cremation. As well as children of someone who prearranged a traditional funeral, who are now attempting to change that to a direct cremation in order to get a refund on the parent’s previously planned funeral.

Plus, the huge problem for all funeral homes of unclaimed cremated remains by so many families. Unfairly to funeral homes, they’ve become a storage facility for those remains, with many states not allowing them to dispose of those even after a certain amount of time and unsuccessful attempts to get a family to take possession of their loved one’s cremated remains. Even though all cemeteries offer cremation interment options, and many funeral directors encourage cremation families to consider permanent placement of those in a cemetery, the majority of those families haven’t given any thought to the burden being placed on a deceased’s survivors with unplaced cremated remains becoming an awkward problem as time goes. We have families coming in every month who cremated a loved one in the past, who now have realized they want somewhere as a final resting place for those remains. Many are survivors of someone who expressed that they wanted their ashes scattered, but the family couldn’t bring themselves to go through with a scattering. As I noted at the beginning, things have changed a lot for all of us since I began my career in 1982!

Finally, I wanted to address the topic of belonging to an association like the SCCFA and your state association as well. Your state association is a critical part of your business success. Are you a member? If not, why? They represent you at your state capital whenever there are legislative issues that arise, which most certainly will occur every so often. Even well intended state legislators have a tendency to overreact and overregulate when a constituent from their voting district is upset about something. They don’t understand details about all the different professions they are charged with overseeing at the state level. Your state Association works on your behalf to educate legislators about our business and works to prevent bad legislation from being passed, usually in the name of consumer protection, which eventually often ends up actually hurting the consumer and costing them more money, as businesses are forced to pass along increased expenses resulting from a bad law to their customers. Regulation is needed, but it needs to be good regulation and oversight, protecting consumers while being fair to businesses. Your state association also provides valuable education and networking opportunities for you, with their annual convention and other gatherings. Not to mention someone nearby you that you can call or visit to assist you with questions or problem solving.

The SCCFA is a regional group, comprised of businesses, employees, and suppliers from a dozen different states, who have a vast storehouse of knowledge and experience to share with you. Many of us with the SCCFA have worked in multiple states, with knowledge of the laws of those states as well as regulations on the national level. Our board and members are available to assist your state association with legislative issues that arise, to help make sure they are fair to families and businesses alike. We are available to attend state conventions or seminars as a guest speaker, and with organizing multi-association conventions to bring together more attendees and exhibitors, providing timely topics on our program, as well as providing the best networking opportunities you’ll ever find! In addition, the SCCFA has always been known as “the Family Reunion” gathering. We select venues and arrange agendas which provide the opportunity for your family to attend with you and enjoy a good time.

Next year is a great example of this. Our 2024 Convention is a Six-Association gathering! Yes, six associations together! The SCCFA, GCA, NCCA, SCCA, CAT and KCA are all meeting at the Westin Resort on Hilton Head Island, SC, July 15-17. The venue is fantastic, ocean front, with a tropical resort atmosphere that makes you feel like you’re in a whole different world! The program features topics and speakers that cover almost all phases of cemetery and funeral home operations. About 60 exhibitors will be set up to visit while there, with time set aside for a golf tournament, cornhole tournament, two receptions, a banquet complete with live musical entertainment, as well as fun family activities during the afternoons. The theme is “Focus on the Family”, both the families we serve and our own families. The cost is very reasonable and represents an investment in the growth of your career and your business! You should register with the association on our link below NOW, and also reserve your lodging using that link below. We already have many who have registered and booked their rooms. So hurry to be a part of this awesome event!

I’m very proud and very honored to be serving as the current President of the SCCFA. We are as strong or stronger as we have ever been, with a great Board and blend of cemeterians, funeral directors, owners, managers, employees, and suppliers who all work toward serving our customers to the best of our abilities. Being an active part of your state association should be a priority for you; then being an SCCFA Member should be your next move. We look forward to having you with us next July!

Tim Smith

PS: Great advice to follow... ”Stay the course. Don’t overreact. Think long term!” May God bless you this Holiday Season and the families we all serve!

Annual Convention

Spring 2023