Teams to visit 100 N.C. firms
By Phyllis Moore
Published in News on October 22, 2014 1:46 PM
pmoore@newsargus.com
A team of workforce development partners has been visiting local businesses to discuss the challenges related to finding and retaining top quality employees.
The effort is part of an initiative announced in the spring by Gov. Pat McCrory -- "1,000 in 100," a charge for local teams to visit 1,000 businesses of all types in all 100 counties in the last 100 days of the year.
The Wayne County effort is being led by Diane Ivey, executive director of the Wayne Business & Industry Center at Wayne Community College, and Tammy Childers, executive director of the Eastern Carolina Workforce Development Board. Others on the team include representatives from Wayne County Public Schools, Wayne County Development Alliance, Wayne County Career Center/Division of Workforce Solutions and WCC.
The goal was to visit at least 10 area businesses of varying sizes and scopes, paying attention to the challenges they may have as employers, Ms. Ivey said.
"We have different sectors and we try to hit businesses in as many sectors as we have represented in our community," she said. "Everybody has been very happy to talk to (us). They have been very forthcoming.
"For the most part it's voluntary for the businesses to participate and those who have been happy to do it have shared a variety of different types of information with us."
There is a template of questions to ask, she said. In addition to eliciting background on the company, its size and types of jobs there, the team wants to discover the needs -- challenges in filling jobs and finding good candidates and what future hiring may look like.
While the team can't necessarily provide answers, it has pledged to scope out the correct person or resources in the community and help make connection with the local businesses.
"Any conversation that we have with a company to really listen to them and hear what they're saying is just another avenue to work toward fulfilling their needs," she said. "It's not always one agency that has a solution. It's a collaboration to come together to make things happen.
"The solutions are not quick and they're not easy and it does take a long commitment to make things happen."
So far the team has exceeded its goal, making stops at more than 10 area businesses.
"We have been to N.C. Manufacturing Inc., a machine business. They have like 18 employees," Ms. Ivey said. "We visited Cooper Standard Automotive, which has in the hundreds of employees.
"AAR has more than 100 but fewer than 500. They recently had layoffs. That was one of the companies that we wanted to go to because we knew they had had challenges, not only in finding workers but in having to lay off people."
Other sessions have been held at Mt. Olive Pickle, 3HC, the community federal credit union and Southern Bank, Hampton Inn, Southco Distributing, Tri-County Electric and Park Designs.
The "1,000 in 100" will wrap up at the end of the year, but the process does not stop there. Information gathered will be compiled and added to a database, which will be made public.
The individual responses from each entity, however, will remain private.
"They can be assured that the information that they share with us is confidential," Ms. Ivey said. "It's like a Survey Monkey, so it's anonymous in that way.
"The whole point in all of this is that this information can be gathered to inform the policy makers to help them in creating new guidelines and helping legislators better understand and see what is important."