Moving People to Jobs: Lessons From UPS's Transportation Plan

Workforce, Feb, 2001 by Lea Soupata

The economy is booming. New jobs are being created at a record pace--approximately 70 percent of them in the suburbs. Yet despite these opportunities, many residents of urban neighborhoods don't apply.

Why? The jobs are available. The people are qualified. Where's the disconnect?

This was the situation faced by United Parcel Service in the late 1990s as the company tried to staff its large package-sorting plant outside Chicago. The problem was--and is--transportation. Without their own transportation, job candidates living in urban locations simply don't have a way to get to work in the suburbs. They don't apply for these jobs because they just can't get there.

The solution to the problem is a bit more complex. It involves issues that employers sometimes like to avoid: grass-roots politics, deep community involvement, working with public agencies. But over the past two years, UPS, the nation's fourth-largest employer, faced the challenge head-on and created a transportation solution--and a blueprint for solving this growing dilemma.

The result? Through this unique public-private access-to-jobs transportation program, UPS now moves 3,300 part-time employees per day from the inner city to the company's sorting facility in the suburbs. Turnover rates are low. Employees are thriving. UPS has a motivated, dedicated labor pool.

For 93 years, UPS has been in the business of delivering packages to people. In Chicago, the company has found itself in the business of delivering people to jobs.

Build it and they will come...if they can

The UPS Chicago Area Consolidation Hub is located in Hodgkins, Illinois, a suburb west of the city. It's the largest package-sorting facility in the world, requiring a workforce of nearly 10,000 part-time employees to staff its four daily shifts. UPS carefully chose the suburban location for its proximity to rail lines, major interstates, and-presumably--a ready workforce.

Our research showed that the majority of the population base needed to staff our facility resided outside the immediate area. When we built the location, we knew that a natural pool of applicants lived in the inner city on the south side of Chicago. They were only about 35 miles away, but they didn't have an easy, reliable way to get to Hodgkins. Very limited public transportation to the site existed. But buses didn't run directly from the city to the facility and existing schedules didn't mesh with UPS shifts.

Yet the company was dedicated to finding a solution. We needed people. Plenty of people in the city needed jobs. How could we bring the two together?

The concept of creating a transportation solution had been tossed about early in the life of the facility. So the idea was there, but UPS wanted to take it to a whole new level.

First things first

Although UPS had experience with smaller-scale transportation initiatives in New Jersey and Philadelphia, the Chicago project was a major undertaking. For others considering this solution, some initial homework:

* Define corporate goals. Before any program of this nature is launched, it is imperative to articulate the desired outcome. At UPS, the answer was simple and economic: the company believed that providing a transportation option would attract and retain quality employees.

* Put someone in charge. Dan Bujas, a 24-year UPS veteran skilled in workforce planning, labor relations, and operations, was tapped for the job. Bujas, now transportation coordinator for UPS'S North Central Region, had two key attributes: enthusiasm and determination. Ask Dan, and he'll tell you, "To my knowledge, no company had ever done this. My only qualification for the job of planning and implementing a transportation solution was that I'd been on a bus before. But I was confident that the idea could work because logistics is our specialty at UPS."

* Learn a little about transportation. First, does existing public transportation address the reverse-commute needs of riders coming from inside the city to the suburbs? And can it accommodate around-the-clock shift workers in a safe and reliable manner? Second, a fixed-route bus system is most cost-effective from a recruiting standpoint. Choose an area densely populated with potential employees, create a transportation "hub," and move people from there. For UPS, this is a familiar concept; it actually mirrors the UPS delivery principle of consolidation: bringing packages to one location and distributing them from that point.

Establishing a triangle of support

An effective access-to-jobs program requires three key players: a company with jobs, a community with interest, and a transportation entity willing to work with both. Putting together--and nurturing--this triad is the most important and perhaps most difficult step. Equal commitment from all three "legs" is required for the program to stand. And it is the company's responsibility to maintain the relationship.

As UPS assessed the community situation, it became clear that a lack of personal transportation often isolated residents from good-paying, career-oriented jobs. In the Chicago area, this effect was most dramatic in the Seventh Congressional District.