Opportunity Zone Editorial
By Crain's Cleveland Business Editorial Board.
"Every success we have in bringing marginalized workers back in is a win for the GDP growth."
That statement came from Jeff Korzenik, chief investment strategist at Fifth Third Bank, who was a panelist during a May 7 event in Cleveland, "Poverty and Workforce Development: Challenges Facing the Country and Northeast Ohio." (The event was sponsored by Fifth Third and Crain's Content Studio.) Korzenik's comment, and the entire event, underscored some important truths about the red-hot economy: It needs more workers to continue its expansion, and some of those workers are going to come from the ranks of people contending with poverty, addiction and other challenges, or who have been incarcerated.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics in May reported that the number of job openings nationwide surged by 346,000 positions to 7.5 million at the end of March. The pace of hiring was little changed, pointing to a worker shortage that could hinder future employment growth, and the job openings rate rose to 4.7% from 4.5% in February. There now are 1.2 million more open jobs than there are unemployed Americans.
As problems go, we'll take these. But it does require that employers think seriously about their responsibilities in an era in which workers are hard to find and some need more assistance to reach their full potential.
For instance, "It helps to have supervisors who understand the challenges of poverty," Korzenik said, noting that, for some workers, a $300 car repair might be a serious impediment to being able to get to their job. It's far better, he said, to find solutions to help the worker — a temporary carpool, maybe even a micro-loan — than to lose a potentially productive employee.
Issues of poverty are even more complicated for workers seeking to rebuild their lives following addiction or incarceration. To their credit, many companies in the private sector — from giants such as McDonald's and Delta Air Lines to small companies including Cleveland's much-lauded Edwins Leadership & Restaurant Institute — have launched hiring initiatives specifically targeted to recovering addicts or former inmates. Old stereotypes are breaking down. CNBC last fall reported that only 14% of human resources managers won't consider hiring ex-offenders, according to a report commissioned by the Society of Human Resources Management and funded by the Charles Koch Institute. More than 80% of executives said in that report that ex-offender hires have been at least as successful as their average hire.
Frank Sinito, CEO of real estate concern The Millennia Cos., also is chairman of the board at the nonprofit True Freedom Ministries, which provides services (transitional housing, transportation and life coaching among them) aimed at helping to break the cycle of incarceration, addiction and homelessness. He said during the May 7 event that as many as 10,000 people per week are released from prisons. Nonprofits like True Freedom, plus government and workforce agencies, are prepared and eager to help employers be part of making possible a productive path forward for many of those individuals.
"The challenges are vast, and so should the opportunities be," Sinito said.
That's the key word: opportunity. Not a handout. Just a chance.
Kiersten Watkins, assistant vice president of program administration for OhioGuidestone and another member of the May 7 panel, encouraged attendees to "look at these individuals as an opportunity, rather than a disadvantaged population. They want to be given a chance. ... They want to move away from the stigma of having a criminal background and all the challenges that come with that."
Crystal Bryant, director of the Cuyahoga County Office of Reentry, said the people her office works with "may be missing pieces of soft skills," but those can be addressed, and the clients are "intelligent, diligent and resilient" and "ready and willing to work." Northeast Ohio needs to take advantage of valuable human capital. Is your company ready and willing to help?