In Their Shoes - relationship between entry-level employees and human resource professionals and businesspeople - Statistical Data Included

HR Magazine, August, 2001 by Andrea C. Poe

Businesspeople spend one day facing the challenges of their entry-level employees and come up with new ways to recruit and retain them.

We're huddled together, stymied about our budget. Should we buy a used minivan and a beat-up Honda or make do with one car and the unreliable bus system? We opt for two cars but find that no matter which option we choose, there isn't enough money left in our budget to send two of our three children to day care. As parents, we each make $8.50 an hour and work full-time, but we still can't afford the basics. * Frustrated, we toss the paperwork aside. * We can give up easily because this family affair is just an exercise, and my "family members" are actually three Florida-based businesspeople I met earlier that day. We're among 20 others attending the Brevard County Learning Academy in Melbourne, Fla., a program designed to raise the awareness of business owners, managers and human resource professionals about the financial challenges of their entry-level workforce. * "It's pretty shocking how little that [budget] is and how little [it] buys," says Kim Frodge, a fellow "family member" and owner of Business Need s Inc., a commercial cleaning service in the Palm Bay area. She is attending the seminar in search of new places to find high-quality workers. * The budget exercise is designed to demonstrate to businesspeople the real-life difficulties low-wage workers face.

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).