Todays News

Workforce challenges, local partnerships highlight Hinson roundtable

Struggles to attract workers and fill vacant positions have only become more pronounced in a post-COVID world, but the discussion wasn't all doom and gloom during a roundtable meeting with U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-Iowa) and a consortium of local business and government leaders at Alliant Energy's operations center in Marshalltown on Friday afternoon.

Officials like Iowa Valley Community College Chancellor Kristie Fisher and UnityPoint Health Administrator Shari King also shared some of the successes they have had preparing and placing students into well-paying jobs right out of school and how partnerships between local entities have made it all possible.

"We have some workforce. We've just got to harness it and provide some programs that really make it work well," King said. "It's a grow your own mentality, because we do have great people."

Marshalltown Community School District (MCSD) Superintendent Theron Schutte said career conversations are now beginning as early as kindergarten, and some high school students already have the necessary training to become paraprofessionals. Directing students toward the specific skills they need for their desired occupations, he noted, has become more important than ever.

"We have to figure out a way to get them more meaningful experiences in the workplaces versus just working for McDonald's or working at Wal-Mart or something like that," Schutte said. "We really need to engage them and try to do it in a way where it's not just an educational thing, but there's some pay attached to it as well."

RACOM President/CEO Mike Miller said IT jobs have been particularly difficult to fill, and the salary expectations for positions he looks to fill have risen by at least $20,000 per year. As a result, he said, he's gravitated toward young graduates who are willing to train and "upskill" quickly and worked with community colleges like Marshalltown and Indian Hills to find the right candidates.

"In California, technology companies are hiring Des Moines IT folks to work from home and paying them $150,000, $200,000, $225,000, $250,000 (a year)," Miller said. "It makes it very difficult for us to compete."

Hinson outlined her own goals for getting America back to work, including reducing government regulations and addressing childcare issues that have led some parents to stay at home instead of returning to their jobs.

While most types of businesses are still struggling to hire, the healthcare and education fields have been hit particularly hard during the pandemic. Several other issues specific to those professions were discussed on Friday, including Commercial Driver's License (CDL) requirements for bus drivers and addressing the general sense of burnout among healthcare workers. The MCSD, for example, is still short staffed by about 80 employees.

"But obviously, we have rockstars. Everyone's making it work, and our kids are being served very well," MCSD Human Resources Director Nora Ryan said.

Marshall County Supervisor Steve Salasek said the county was struggling to hire sheriff's deputies at current pay rates without raising property taxes, and Hinson responded that she believed the rhetoric around law enforcement needs to change nationwide in order to make it an appealing line of work for young people.

"If we don't have safety and security in our communities, we don't have anything. That's the way I kind of see it. That's the base," Hinson said.

Marshalltown Mayor Joel Greer touted the city's MPACT program, which has embedded two social workers into the police department, as a step in the right direction on improving policing on a local level, and he also implored Hinson to address immigration in a way that will allow major Marshalltown employers like JBS to stay fully staffed.

Hinson said the proposals she has heard on immigration are extreme in one direction or the other, and she didn't endorse either approach.

"It's really a complex issue. You have, on both sides, you've got the 'Build the wall, deport them all' (supporters), and you've got the open borders. Neither of those is a good solution in my mind," Hinson said.

Before the meeting ended, Schutte expressed dismay with some of the recent rhetoric aimed at educators through "the media and the political process" and said it makes hiring harder amidst historic shortages.

"In some way, shape or form, we've got to figure out how to change that, and I think a good start is to figure out a way to support, recognize and applaud people that are doing everything they can to keep kids in school," he said. "Because we found out through COVID how important it is for school to be in session."

During a subsequent interview, Hinson shared her hopes for an economic revitalization as COVID restrictions are eased across the country.

"I think what we saw over the last two plus years is people have become more reliant on the government in that process, and so instead of investing in more checks to people from the government and increasing that reliance on government programs," she said. "That's what I'm focused on with workforce policy, and that's why I think this conversation today was so important."

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Contact Robert Maharry at 641-753-6611 ext. 255 or rmaharry@timesrepublican.com.