Northwest Arkansas businesses, colleges respond to workforce shortages

As a culture, Americans got used to the idea that manufacturing was a dying industry as more and more jobs went overseas and automation made a workforce seemingly unnecessary.

With the “onshoring” efforts of companies like Wal-Mart attempting to return manufacturing back to the United States, hundreds if not thousands of skilled laborer jobs are open across the country. Northwest Arkansas is no exception. Manufacturing decreased in the last decade in the region but has never died out. The Northwest Arkansas manufacturing sector employed an estimated 26,200 in August, down more than 21% compared to August 2004.

Culinary and hospitality (travel and tourism) is another growing industry that faces as shortage of well-trained workers.

Local companies are working to bridge those gaps through their own training programs and with the help of community colleges like NorthWest Arkansas Community College. 

Mike Harvey, chief operating officer for the Northwest Arkansas Council, told The City Wire recently that the gap between skilled workers available and the number of job openings continues to widen. In the local market he said there are two openings for every one welder certified last year. Machinists, tool & die makers, industrial maintenance and installation repair as a local employment sector reported 382 openings last year, according to Harvey. At the same time local schools graduated 57 workers with those certifications.

“It’s surprising to some that there are shortages in the production occupations because for the last 13-15 years they’ve been losing jobs in the terms of net,” Harvey said in September. “People look at that and they see no future there. It’s a vicious circle there where we’re losing jobs in manufacturing but then we can’t find people (for the jobs that do exist).”

Harvey and several local manufacturing industry leaders agree that another factor they are facing is the aging workforce. Those who are long-time skilled workers are aging out of the industry or they are not up-to-speed on the newer, higher level technology used in manufacturing. Many of the jobs now available are for machinery/robotics maintenance and machine workers with skills on the high-tech machines. 

“The more you automate, the more people you need to work on those machines,” Harvey said. 

CORPORATE INTERVENTION
Keith Scheffler, owner and CEO of Creative Things, characterized the shortage for skilled machine operators and machine maintenance workers as “severe.” 

“When you do find good machine operators, you do what you can to hold on to them,” he said. 

One way that Creative Things is helping its workforce get the training it needs is to send them to classes that provide the necessary training. There are not a lot of local resources for certain skills, Scheffler said, so Creative Things sends staff members to Kansas to learn skills such as plastics technician. For other skills training such as CNC operator, the company utilizes NWACC. They also offer an increasing amount of on-the-job training if an employee demonstrates the aptitude for a given type of skill. 

The company also works to make the work environment easily adaptable to people’s lives. For example, they now run 24 hours a day for five days a week, giving employees more choices for shifts. 

At Pace Industries, the story is similar in that a good chunk of the openings are for skilled technical workers, said Director of Talent Acquisition and Development Ken Stuckey. 

“We are needing people who can automate robots, do technical maintenance on machinery and also engineering,” he said. “There’s not been enough people who have the skill set to step in and do these jobs without going back to school or having additional training.” 

Pace Industries is bringing more training for employees into their plants as well as helping pay for employees to earn an associate’s degree in a related field. Stuckey said Pace has already seen a return on its investment. 

“If you don’t have a local group of people who can do these kind of skilled jobs, then you have to go outside of the region to recruit, which is very expensive. You then run the real risk that they won’t stay in the area more than a year or two years (once they move to the region). The cost of losing a technical skilled worker really shows that training locally is a win for everyone. People can stay in their community and make more money. It allows us to have a more stable workforce.” 

WORKFORCE INNOVATION
Gene Eggman, executive vice president of Human Resources and Government Affairs at Pace, said the July passing of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunities Act (WIOA) was a major win for manufacturers. 

According to the U.S. Department of Labor website, “WIOA is designed to help job seekers access employment, education, training, and support services to succeed in the labor market and to match employers with the skilled workers they need to compete in the global economy. Congress passed the Act by a wide bipartisan majority; it is the first legislative reform in 15 years of the public workforce system.”

“The WIOA Bill passage in the Senate and President Obama signing into law was truly a win for manufactures like Pace Industries in our state,” Eggman said in an email interview. “May 27th Governor Beebe and members of his Workforce Cabinet hosted 50 manufacturers of which I attended to discuss our needs for a competent and interested workforce.”

Eggman said it was learned at the meeting that there were at least 1,000 skilled positions in Arkansas that were open but could not be filled.

“Some manufacturers said that their need was so critical that they may have to shut their doors in the next year,” Eggman added. “So the passage of WIOA may be too late to help this manufacturer but it should help others like Pace in the future.” 

Keith Peterson, dean of Workforce Development at NWACC, said skills gap training is a need statewide and colleges like NWACC are working to address those needs. Part of that is creating programs that meet specific and changing needs. 

“It’s a creative time right now in workforce (training) in that with manufacturing coming back to the U.S., it’s something that culturally, we’re trying to wrap our heads around it,” Patterson said.

NWACC’s workforce training programs are versatile with several standardized certification and degree programs, as well as the ability to customize training for a given industry client. Peterson said the college works directly with a lot of different entities from many industries to assess the various workforce needs. 

“What we’re hearing right now is that the mostly the industrial trades is what we’re looking at,” he said. “We’ve had a 20% growth in those programs in the last year.” 

HOSPITALITY, CULINARY JOBS
Another skills gap area is in hospitality and culinary arts industry and various entities including NWACC are working to bridge that gap. 

“The labor market data is very encouraging in Northwest Arkansas in hospitality,” Peterson said. 

Encouraging would be correct. The region’s “leisure and hospitality” sector employed an estimated 22,800 in August, according to federal Bureau of Labor Statistics updated Wednesday (Oct. 1). The August job number, if not revised, sets a new record for the sector in Northwest Arkansas.

The growth in area tourism and business travel has increased the need for all kinds of hospitality jobs from front management to chef. 

“We have found that we are pretty much full in enrollment in those programs,” he said, adding that they have an approximate 80% placement rate for when students graduate. 

The workforce gap in culinary and hospitality has been known for several years, which is why NWACC and other state colleges created certification and degree programs.  Christie Ison lives in North Little Rock and is the founder of the new website ARFoodJobs.com. It started as a site where those looking for work in the hospitality industry and those seeking employees in that industry could connect. It’s developed to become a networking organization in the short time since the site went live.

Ison said those graduating with the hospitality and culinary skills’ certificates weren’t sure where the jobs were.

“I saw the need for connection,” she said. “We have a huge amount of secondary programs all over the state and some are pretty well established while others are new. It’s become the next cool big thing in education. But it takes a few years for that to translate into putting people into the workforce.” 

Ison said there is a lot of turnover in the culinary industry but it’s not because of poor work environment. 

“Job satisfaction is super high so it’s something people stick with. It used to be perceived as something you did when you were young but now it’s becoming more of a career choice,” she said. “There’s a lot of turnover in culinary because it’s growing so much and people are advancing quickly.”