Ramp up growth with workforce development initiatives.

For Tom Hurley, the 80/20 rule worries him. While 20% of available jobs require a college degree, he sometimes seeks to hire the other 80%. Hurley, president of the Hurley Companies in Lubbock, Texas, needs diesel and forklift mechanics. They usually lack a college education.

“The problem is that the 80% who don’t have a college degree aren’t getting the skills we need to hire them,” says Hurley, whose firm makes corrugated boxes and operates a bottled water company.

In recent testimony before the state education committee, Hurley shared his concerns about helping workers acquire the necessary job skills to succeed if they didn’t go to college. He urged state officials to invest in workforce development programs to train unskilled laborers so that they could meet the growing demand for jobs.

Meanwhile, Hurley has taken matters into his own hands. About two years ago, he and some colleagues convened a local group of business owners in non-competing industries to share qualified employees with each other. Participants include executives from a plastics factory, a steel maker and a birdseed producer.

“If I need a forklift driver, I’ll contact the other members of the group and one of them may send one over for a few hours a week,” Hurley says. “If they need a maintenance person to do preventive maintenance at their facility twice a week, I may send my guy to them.”

This informal exchange of key workers proved beneficial to everyone. For example, a company that manufactures street-sweeper brushes called Hurley to inform him that it had two strong applicants for a job opening in maintenance. But it only needed one. Did Hurley want to hire the other?

“I said no, but I knew that the birdseed factory needed a maintenance guy,” he recalls. “So I called the birdseed company and hooked them up.”

To help Lubbock companies with staffing, city officials formalized the program by launching what it calls the “Employers’ Network.” The network facilitates job-sharing opportunities among employers and circulates lists of positions that companies need to fill along with qualified workers whom they’re willing to “lend” to other firms. The network also hosts monthly meetings in which local companies discuss their personnel needs and identify ways to pool resources to help each other.

With a metro-area population of more than 250,000 and a location far removed from other urban centers, Lubbock needs to take creative measures to address shortages in workers. It cannot rely on a steady stream of qualified people to flock to town on their own.

As a result, companies such as Hurley’s must take proactive steps to attract the people they need to grow their business. The same challenge confronts employers in many parts of the country, where initiatives such as public-private partnerships with local universities and vocational schools are gaining traction.

“Employers are realizing that they can’t assume the workforce they need now and in the future will be there,” says Phillip Roark, president and CEO of Insala, a Dallas firm that makes talent management software. “So that means everyone has to become more creative.”

Cities and States Step Up
Employers desperate to find qualified employees do not operate in a vacuum. Many municipalities and states are taking aggressive steps to help.

In Lubbock, where the jobless rate ranks among the lowest in Texas, the city’s economic development group recently launched a national marketing campaign to woo workers. Armed with the slogan, “L_bbock, the only thing missing is U,” officials hope to convince a wide range of people from accountants and engineers to support personnel to relocate.

Hurley says he works closely with Lubbock’s economic development executives to inform them of job openings at his companies. He also lauds the city’s efforts to participate in job fairs around the state, collect resumes from potential applicants and distribute information packets that list available jobs in Lubbock.

Like many towns across the country with low unemployment, Lubbock is trying to recruit workers on a citywide basis for the first time. As more cities and states invest in publicity and visibility building campaigns to lure faraway workers, employers take on a more collaborative role as partners in the process.

At the same time, some states dangle economic inducements to encourage the hiring of unemployed residents. In Alabama, for instance, the state’s Department of Industrial Relations offers to pay employers half of a worker’s salary for up to two years with a maximum reimbursement of $25,000 per year if that worker meets certain conditions.

A state official recently contacted Walter Vice, a CPA who runs an accounting firm in Athens, Alabama, about the program. He says he welcomes the opportunity to interview unemployed jobcandidates, especially to fill his current opening for a staff accountant.

“I hope they bring me some candidates,” says Vice. “There has been some downsizing in nearby towns, so there might be some good talent out there. It would be great if the state paid me $50,000 to cover part of someone’s salary over two years.”

In Huntsville, Alabama, the Chamber of Commerce has responded to the area’s torrid job creation by taking many steps to meet employers’ surging personnel needs. It’s a challenge of both quality and quantity, says Brian Hilson, president and CEO of the Chamber.

“For us, workforce availability means having a sufficient pool of workers for our employers to draw from,” he says. “We need all kinds of workers, but especially well educated, highly skilled people for our growing, tech-based economy that’s driven by defense, aerospace and information technology.”

Because these sectors are bucking the national downturn in Huntsville—and the region’s housing values are relatively stable compared to other parts of the nation—Hilson seeks to spread this good news to attract newcomers to relocate. The Chamber’s multiprong outreach efforts include persuading graduating college students who hail from different areas to stay in Huntsville rather than return to their hometowns or head elsewhere.

Jobs on the Move
At the same time, Hilson’s team reaches out to college students who grew up locally but who gravitate to distant cities. “We want them to know all the opportunities they have if they come back here,” he says.

In late 2005, the last Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) report shifted 4,700 U.S. Army jobs from Northern Virginia to Huntsville. The big question is how many Army employees will choose to relocate in the next year or two.

BRAC served as a “trigger” for the Chamber to establish a workforce division and create programs to sell Huntsville to prospective employees, Hilson says. With companies adding jobs by the thousands in his area, Hilson and his team realized as early as 2005 that they could not sit back and assume that incumbent workers in other cities would agree to follow their employer to Huntsville.

Determined to sell the region, they launched a website (www.asmartplace.com) and sent ambassadors around the country to introduce workers to the area. When an aerospace company in California wanted to transfer 40 engineers to Huntsville, Hilson sent a representative to meet with them and sell the benefits of the move.

Like many business associations and economic development coalitions around the country, Huntsville’s Chamber is taking an increasingly activist role in launching workforce development initiatives to attract skilled workers. It has created a new position— director of workforce recruitment—to attract candidates to the area and educate targeted groups about job opportunities.

Supplying the right mix of workers where the jobs are most plentiful requires that decision-makers and economic planners address two critical questions: How do we develop workers with the necessary skills? and How do we attract those workers to live where employers need them most?

The Changing Role of Education and Training
Implementing strategies to develop skilled employees and drawing them to the areas where jobs await them demands an unprecedented level of coordination among states, municipalities and employers. All parties must invest time and effort weighing their options and working together on solutions.

The decisions that these groups make can help shape the demographic and employment trends in the United States for the next generation and beyond. Executives are more apt to move their business units or manufacturing plants to areas with a pipeline of qualified workers and well-established centers of education.

The lure of superior education—from successful vocational training programs to high-performing public elementary and high schools to esteemed colleges—provides a double benefit to companies on the move. They know that they can tap a steady stream of qualified job candidates while attracting and retaining employees who seek a quality school system for their children.

Even with a comprehensive educational infrastructure, holes can emerge that employers need to fill. The increasingly specialized nature of many jobs means that even qualified, well-educated technicians may lack the narrow skill sets required by a particular employer.

“If you’re an employer and there’s a shortage of skilled employees in your area, think about what skill sets are close enough so that you can train people who already have related skills,” says Blaze Konkol, a senior manager for the coaching, internal mobility and career development initiative at Deloitte, a Chicago-based consulting firm.

If you run a financial services firm, for example, you may need to hire certified financial planners and accountants. If they’re in short supply, identify jobs such as internal auditors and life insurance agents that require similar skills. You can then recruit these professionals and retrain them as necessary.

For Konkol, the driving question for employers seeking qualified people is, “What types of jobs are abundant?” Based on the answer, they can either reconfigure their job openings or train candidates to build on their existing skills.

Because workforce development is a relatively new phenomenon, employers, city officials and other interested parties lack a road map of how to proceed. They advance largely through trial-and-error, experimenting with new outreach campaigns, recruitment strategies and job sharing programs.

“There is no template for this,” says Hilson, the Chamber president in Huntsville. “We’re learning as we go.”

ONLINE RESOURCES
Most states offer workforce development initiatives to help you find skilled employees, including programs that dangle financial incentives if you hire the unemployed or other disadvantaged groups:
Alabama Office of Workforce Development: www.owd.alabama.gov/index.htm
Arizona Department of Commerce: www.azcommerce.com/Workforce/Development
Colorado Workforce Development Council: www.dola.state.co.us/dlg/wdc/index.html
New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions: www.dws.state.nm.us
Texas Workforce Commission: www.twc.state.tx.us
Workforce Florida: www.workforceflorida.com/employers/index.htm