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Unemployment low everywhere, but in central Florida, unemployment dipped to a record low of 2.6 percent in March. To stay competitive in the tight labor market, businesses have to care about the challenges faced by the entry-level workforce.
"This isn't about guilt. We all want to do the right thing, but this is about business," says Lee Bohlmann, president of the Melbourne-Palm Bay Chamber of Commerce, which runs the Learning Academy in Brevard County. "We want to make businesses aware of the life issues that face entry-level workers and to give them some ideas on how to help employees handle these things so they don't interfere with work."
The real-life family exercise where businesspeople are asked to step into the shoes of entry-level workers！defined by the chamber as those earning $10 per hour or less！is a key element of the full-day program. And for good reason. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are more than 35 million workers earning less than $10 per hour.
"The rising economic tide in the U.S. has clearly not lifted all boats," reports Linda Barrington, an expert in poverty measurement at The Conference Board, a global business research firm based in New York. "The number of full-time workers classified as poor increased between 1997 and 1998 [the latest figures available]. Close to 3 percent of all full-time workers fell under the poverty line！$13,003 for a family of three！with a total related population [including dependents] of up to 5 million [1998 figures]. That's up from 2.5 percent in 1997."
Inspiration
The idea for the Learning Academy grew out of a program called Workforce 2020 in Orlando. It was the brainchild of Orlando Chamber of Commerce president Jacob Stuart and Workforce 2020 project director Shelley Lauten.
"We saw that businesses needed employees, and there were groups of people who needed jobs, but somehow there was a disconnect," Lauten explains. "We decided to do something about it and bring these groups together."
In particular, Workforce 2020 identified the welfare-to-work population as a ready source of labor. The group's research turned up interesting data about the skill level of welfare recipients. Many (43 percent) have a high school education and even more (76 percent) have work experience. "We were able to dispel a lot of myths with the reality," says Lauten.
In Orlando, academy graduates have listed more than 3,300 jobs with the area's welfare-to-work office. "Many businesses have found that this is a great source of labor," Lauten notes.
But it didn't end there. Lauten and Stuart recognized that businesses needed to understand the needs of all low-wage earners, not just those coming off welfare. So, they expanded the focus of the academy to include businesses with entry-level workers on the payroll.
Workforce 2020 initially received a $1.7 million Florida state grant. It scoured the country for the best and the brightest and put together a group of advisors affectionately known as the "Great Thinkers," who conducted studies and brainstormed objectives. The outcome was a free one-day seminar known as the Learning Academy that introduces participants to workforce trends and statistics, community programs, and resources and contacts among nonprofit and government agencies, as well as area employers who have implemented useful workforce strategies.
"There's all this talent in the community so we decided to put it to use for business," notes Stuart.
The Learning Academy puts employers in touch with alternative employment sources, such as people transitioning from welfare-to-work and nonprofit agencies that strive to place people in the workforce. It also introduces employers to other community resources that help business with everything from health care (a state government-sponsored program) to transportation (local transit planning, discounts and assistance for business) to training tax credits (sponsored by the federal and state government).
Once it was ready to go live, the chamber advertised the seminars on TV and radio as well as in print ads, and sold them to the business community. "We capitalized on our relationships," explains Shelley Davis, business development manager and recruiter for Workforce 2020 in Orlando, who went door-to-door, encouraging businesses to attend the academy. "The biggest problem, especially for smaller businesses, was giving up the time to come. We guaranteed that if they gave us a day, it would be well spent."
The hard sell worked. Once Workforce 2020 got businesspeople into the academy, it kept getting them. More than 1,800 businesspeople have graduated from the Learning Academy in Orlando since June 1999. The profile of academy participants varies from small businesses with one employee to international corporations with thousands of employees. They come from a variety of industries, from shipping services to hotels to banks to high-tech firms and factories.
"We encouraged HR people from larger companies to bring CFOs, managers and others so that they could see first-hand how valuable this information is," notes Ruth Mustian, vice president of administration at the Orlando Chamber of Commerce.
That's a strategy Dorathy Nevitt, HR director at Orlando Worldwide Marriott, deployed at her organization. "As HR director, I could be as sensitive as I wanted to be, but that's not as important as getting frontline mangers to understand the issues," she adds. Nevitt attended the academy and then persuaded about 100 managers to attend. "What it did was reinforce what I'd been telling my folks."
"Businesses should utilize these services because they've already paid for them through their taxes," notes Carol Griffin, director of Workforce 2020 in Brevard County.
Piloting a New Course
The Orlando Learning Academy was so successful that the Florida Chamber of Commerce in Tallahassee, Fla., encouraged other chambers！Broward County, Brevard County and Palm Beach County！to conduct pilot programs. (The program is currently on hiatus in Orlando and has a 100-person waiting list.)
The Melbourne-Palm Bay Chamber of Commerce in Brevard County, about an hour southeast of Orlando and home to more than 12,000 businesses, received $629,000 from the state of Florida in February 2000 to jump-start its one-day program.
"We targeted employers with 15 to 100 employees because that was the group who most needed the help," explains Bohlmann. Since its start in September, there have been more than a dozen programs, each attended by anywhere from 35 to 50 people.
As in Orlando, record low unemployment！around 3.5 percent！has created a challenging recruiting environment in Melbourne. "There are businesses here that literally can't expand or have gone out of business because they can't get the labor they needed," Bohlmann notes.
Brevard County tailored its program to fit the resources in the community and the needs of its businesses. The area is heavy in the high-tech and the construction industries and has a younger population than much of Florida. Median age is 34.
Our academy started early with an 8 a.m. breakfast and ended around 3 p.m. The schedule is about an hour or so shorter than Orlando's, but Bohlmann says the shortened academy works best for its population, much of which commutes a distance to attend.
Shortened or not, a day at the academy is intense. It involves listening carefully and taking notes！lots of notes. Because it's a one-day hit, the academy is fluff-free. The statistics, suggestions and research that the more than 20 presenters deliver is pertinent, potent information that participants can put to work right away. The academy leaders demand that participants answer questions, challenge their assumptions and work on exercises with fellow HR professionals, such as tabulating the cost of the terrible T！turnover.
The Mebourne-Palm Bay area chamber's academy adheres to the three key components that made Orlando's academy successful:
Recruitment. There are myriad labor sources in addition to those workers who are transitioning from welfare. Nonprofit groups such as Goodwill Industries, the Association for Retarded Citizens and the Senior Resource Alliance all can supply companies with a steady stream of entry-level labor.
All of which is helpful to Melbourne businesses struggling to fill positions. "Five years ago you'd put an ad in the paper and you'd get 50 resumes. Today, you're lucky to get two or three," says Burt Fairchilds, SPHR, founder of Fairchilds HR Inc., an HR consulting firm in Apopka, Fla. "It was extremely useful to get all the resources. I knew there were programs out there [that helped with recruitment], but I didn't know the details, and I didn't have the contacts until I attended the academy."
Jessica Benson, a recruiter at Protocol, a call center on Merritt Island, Fla., with nearly 200 employees, knows this first-hand. "I have an ongoing ad in the paper, and it's not all that successful," she says. At the academy, "I learned there were a lot of organizations out there that can help you find employees, like AARP," which has a placement program for members.
Business Needs is currently a three-person operation. Frodge is looking to expand and came to the academy to learn how to attract quality entry-level workers. "I can't pay a lot, but I need people I can trust," she says, echoing a common sentiment.
In addition to the labor source contacts, the academy introduces recruiters to new ways of recruiting. For instance, Gerry Hoeffner, president of the Brevard County consulting firm Personnel Dynamics Inc., and a presenter at the academy, shared his creative talent search. When recruiting for banks, he doesn't look in the usual spots, such as accounting departments at colleges and other financial institutions. "Most people think of banks as dry, boring places with dry, boring people," he told the participants. "When I'm looking for tellers, I hit the bars and recruit bartenders. They're good with people. They can handle money, and I can offer them better hours."
Retention. One of the most effective parts of the day at the academy was an exercise on taming turnover led by Hoeffner in which he provided participants with real-life numbers. Hoeffner reports that the average cost of turnover is between 33 percent and 250 percent of an employee's annual pay.
This was an eye-opener for Benson. "I knew turnover was expensive, but I had no idea just how expensive," she says. With a cost-analysis sheet provided by Hoeffner, Benson tabulated the cost of losing just one employee earning $8.50 an hour, factoring things such as lost time, training and productivity. She estimates that it costs Protocol $4,400 in hard costs every time someone walks out the door. "And we have a 150 percent turnover rate. We lost 63 people last month," she says. "Add it up and it gets pretty scary."
Kendall Moore, president of Kendall Moore Associates, a five-person law and consulting firm in Merritt Island, attended an earlier academy and was most struck by the turnover exercise. "After learning just how much turnover was really costing me, I was scared out of my wits that someone was going to leave," he recalls. "I'd been worrying so much about my cost on the front end when I was losing 10 times that amount on the back end if someone left." ，
That day last January, after attending the Brevard County, Fla., academy, Moore went back to his office and gave every employee a raise. He also began taking employees out to dinner to get their input on company matters and what work/life issues they are facing. "The lines of communication are more open and people are more comfortable in the workplace," he notes. Since making the changes, no one has left the company, Moore reports.
Moore also instituted a flextime policy, though he acknowledges he wasn't enthusiastic about offering it at first. "I was afraid that employees would take advantage of it and not get their work done," he admits. "But that didn't happen. Instead, it enabled working parents to be home with kids for dinner. I even have a single dad who goes home, has dinner and then comes back to work."
As for Benson, a week after graduating from the academy, she drew up a proposal for her bosses detailing things the company should consider to improve retention, among them a suggestion made at the academy: establishing an employee assistance program (EAP).
An important part of the training in the academy is to make businesses aware that it's not all about cash. "We play up the package aspect," says Debbie Williford, project manager at Workforce 2020 in Orlando. "People don't think about package when they think in terms of entry-level workers, but they should."
Frodge, who pays $7 an hour to her employees, admits she hadn't considered offering extras. "It just didn't occur to me," she says. After the academy, Frodge decided to give monthly massages to employees. "It costs $40 a month per employee, which is nothing compared to the cost of losing employees. That's something that even a small business like mine can afford," she notes.
Mike McHenry, manager of special accounts at Gatto's Tires and Auto Service in Melbourne, has trouble keeping tire changers on staff. "We came to the academy looking for ideas about how to retain our entry-level [$6 an hour] workforce."
McHenry says he left the seminar with some ideas on how to help low-wage workers feel appreciated. One that he hopes to implement later this year is to provide free weekly laundry service to employees. "It won't cost us much and it'll help the employees and their families save time," he says.
"At the academy, I learned just how much cheaper it is to find things to do to keep them than it is to lose them," McHenry adds.
Training. Training is important to ensure a quality workforce and to keep retention high. "It's about workforce development and getting a return on your investment," says Beth Buehlman, director of the Center for Workforce Preparation at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D.C.
The academy introduces businesspeople to resources they can access for assistance. For instance, Orlando Worldwide Marriott found that many applicants for entry-level jobs were new immigrants without much English language skill. The company decided to partner with a local tech college to offer English as a second language (ESL) classes. Participants at the academy learned that there is a state program that pays for ESL classes, which Marriott used to pay for its training. It cost the company nothing.
Protocol has clients who don't always pay for training. At the Melbourne-Palm Bay academy, Benson found help through an unlikely source！Fred Ix, project director for AARP's Senior Community Service Employment Agency, who gave a presentation at the Brevard County Academy. The organization has a program that places seniors in jobs. It also pays the first three weeks of their wages and benefits, giving employers a chance to try the placement out before paying them a dime.
The program caught Benson's attention. "For some of our contracts, three weeks would be just enough to get people trained and ready to work," she says. "That way training won't cost us anything."
After the academy, Benson contacted Ix to set up an appointment to further explore recruiting through AARP.
Follow Up
One of the unique aspects of the academy is that help doesn't end after the one-day seminar. Workforce 2020 offers roundtables！meetings of 10 to 40 academy graduates who take a more in-depth look at an issue raised during the academy. Topics range from designing internal growth programs to how to structure a mentoring program to setting up a screening process for applicants. So people like Benson, McHenry, Frodge and Moore have an opportunity to stay in touch and discuss other challenges that affect their employees and brainstorm possible solutions.
"Once people have a baseline of knowledge, many like to discuss things further," says Lauten. "The roundtables give graduates a forum to network, share ideas and stay connected."
A Town Near You?
Demographic forecasts indicate that despite the current hiccup in economic growth, the labor market will remain tight for the next two decades, at least. "There's been a paradigm shift. There are more jobs and fewer workers, and the situation is only going to get worse as baby boomers retire, leaving fewer people in the workforce," says Fairchilds. "HR is going to have to rethink the way it recruits, trains and retains people."
That's why the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in partnership with the Center for Workforce Preparation has asked Workforce 2020 to help launch similar programs in six other cities around the country: Salina, Kan.; Kalispell, Mont.; Enterprise, Ala.; Tucson, Ariz.; Cleveland; and Brockton, Mass.
Each Academy of Learning will be based on the Workforce 2020 model but tailored to the needs and resources of each community and will include all levels of employment, not just entry-level. If the pilot programs are successful, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce will consider expanding the program to more cities around the country.
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