A Workforce Solutions Summit was held on Wednesday at the Corn Palace. Mike Henke, who is a recruiting and training consultant from Nebraska, touched on several workforce issues during the event.
He said the number one local challenge to workforce development is lack of candidates. Much of that is blamed on the pandemic, but Henke says it was a problem before that. “Before the pandemic hit, we had the lowest workforce participation rate in the United States since the Great Depression,” Henke noted. “We had more retirees. We had 10,000 Baby Boomers retiring everyday in our country. So that hurt our workforce participation. We had families where one of the parents was staying home for raising children and different things, so there were a lot of dynamics going on. Then you throw in a pandemic, and it’s kind of a perfect storm.”
Henke stressed the importance of employee retention and creating a positive work culture. He also talked about how employee recruitment strategy has changed. “Today’s newspaper is Facebook,” he says. “That’s where everybody goes. You should all have ten places where you post your openings. It’s fragmented. Back in the day, you called the newspaper, placed an ad, and let the applications roll in because it produced such a flow. You can call the newspaper today, but will it produce a flow? No. It’ll produce a trickle.”
Henke also talked about retaining employees and creating a positive work culture.
Karen Whitney, regional workforce coordinator for the Mitchell Area Development Corporation, says there are at least 890 jobs in Mitchell.
Around 50 people attended Wednesday’s Workforce Solutions Summit.