Engaging Employers to Benefit Low-Income Job Seekers: Lessons from the Jobs Initiative
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Find the pdf at the following link: Engaging Employers to Benefit Low-Income Job Seekers: Lessons from the Jobs Initiative
By Judith Combes Taylor and Jerry Rubin J U N E 2 0 0 5 Prepared for the Annie E. Casey Foundation
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[Excerpt below:]
Summary of Findings from the Research
This research identified six primary findings:
The JI [=Job Initiative] intermediaries benefited their participants by screening employers, and they benefited employers by screening job applicants.
Our research strongly suggests that the “value added” for low-income participants was the JI intermediaries’ screening function. In effect, the intermediaries surveyed the field of firms hiring low-skill, low-income people, and they engaged employers who offered better-than average working conditions for JI clients.
The research also suggests that employers valued JI intermediaries for a distinctive role: reducing the perceived risks of hiring JI participants. In other words, these employers perceived JI clients (and other non-traditional hires) as business risks on account of variable attendance, inadequate customer service skills, etc., and they appreciated the intermediaries for reducing that risk to an acceptable level.
Employers worry that low-income individuals represent significant business risks, and they believe soft skills training can be a solution.
According to JI employers, soft skills are the key for applicants who want to get in the door of a good job and stay there. That is, good soft skills are the opposite of the business risks represented by non-traditional hires, and a good soft skills development program reduces those risks. A number of employers said that the most important thing the JI intermediary did was to raise the soft skills of participants to an acceptable level. Research data tracking JI participants bear this out: participation in soft skills training is the main predictor for short-term labor market retention of JI participants.
Technical skills are essential for longer-term retention and advancement.
The research with employers supports the common-sense perception that technical skills training is essential for low-income people, but it also suggests that the impact of training does not become evident until about six months into the new job. That is, soft skills seem to be what count for surviving the first few months on the job, but technical skills are essential to staying on the job and advancing. Again, analysis of JI participant data bears out what employers say: technical skill training is the main predictor of longer-term retention for JI participants.
A large number of JI employers implemented practices to support their entry-level workers.
Employers’ supportive practices ranged from ad hoc offerings (e.g., transportation subsidies) to comprehensive career ladders that included in-house training. Their immediate intent was to stabilize and, to a lesser extent, upgrade the skills of internal workforces whose reliability, experience, or skills fell below employer expectations. There is a suggestion from the quantitative data that certain employer practices—those with an immediate payoff for workers—increased retention rates.
Two factors, acting in combination, shaped employers’ development of supportive practices: a desire to benefit the larger community by hiring people who needed help and recognition that “the bottom line” constrained the extent of the support the firm could provide.
When questioned, most JI employers said they hired and supported low-income workers because they believed it was their responsibility to support their communities; hiring people who needed help was a way to do that. However, their experience was that such hiring practices resulted in a less-than-optimal workforce. As a result of their civic commitment, they were willing to invest company resources in improving the workforce, either through pre-employment preparation or on-the-job supports. In all cases, the need to remain commercially competitive put a limit on the extent of corporate generosity.
Employers valued the advice of trusted intermediaries on how they could strengthen or expand their supportive practices.
Even though many employers in this research provided unusually high levels of support for non-traditional workers, some were willing to increase those levels further— but help from an intermediary was essential in the cases we examined. The JI intermediaries recommended changes that would both benefit firms and help workers stay on the job and advance; often the intermediaries provided technical assistance on how to implement those changes. The employers’ predisposition to an ethic of civic responsibility was equally important, creating a receptiveness to the intermediary’s overtures. Each of the employers emphasized that the firm’s bottom line required that the cost of these supports meet a business test.
