| |
Big Sign Syndrome:The Job
Developer’s Small Business
Advantage
By Cary Griffin and Dave Hammis, Griffin-Hammis
Associates
The Big Bang
As job developers, we always reveled in the accomplishment of finding
jobs in large corporations. Both of us have worked with the huge companies
that mean multiple placements once an “in” is nurtured
with the Vice President for Human Resources. It is true that these
companies, including Wal-Mart, McDonalds, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Citicorp,
Home Depot, and others mean good jobs for people. It also means significant
time and effort cracking the hiring code, it often means facing 200
applicants for each job, and it also means that changes in shift managers
or department heads, something all too common in big business, can
signal a change in corporate culture on the local store or factory
level that leads to folks with significant disabilities losing their
jobs or suffering reduced hours and opportunities. Still, the seductiveness
of landing a dozen jobs scattered throughout a company with just one
good shot, the Big Bang, is too hard for most of us to resist. And
who doesn’t want a few Fortune 500 companies on their resume?
Experience teaches us that working with big companies can yield significant
payoffs for people with disabilities. In the early 1990s in Colorado,
Dave and our team at the Center for Technical Assistance and Training
(CTAT), along with the state VR agency, and the late Rick Douglas from
the U.S. Department of Labor, established the prototype for what would
become the Business Leadership Network (BLN). This group of employers
was less an educational group than the BLNs of today. Instead, they
were actively involved in meeting job seekers, using their personal
and professional networks, and creating employment up and down their
supplier and customer chains. With Dave taking the lead, these members
of the BLN, many from very large corporations, helped find work for
about 50 people with significant disabilities in one year. Interestingly,
the small business members were just as active as the others, but the
complications in creating employment were significantly reduced. Sometimes
in seeking the Big Bang of a corporate account, job developers may
be creating more work than necessary.
The Problem
Looking for jobs in big companies makes sense. Cultivating relationships
with HR people is one important aspect of identifying opportunities
for employment that often result in fringe benefits and long term employment
tenure. But, it is just one part of the equation.
Driving down “the strip” in any community reveals all
the same box stores. The home improvement company, the department store,
the discount store, the fast food giants. And while these employers
are happy to employ people with disabilities, they can also be the
toughest to break into. Big companies have standardized approaches;
their job descriptions are developed far away at corporate headquarters
by HR people and labor attorneys; and when they advertise positions
available, 200 applicants show up for the same job opening. The competitiveness
of this job market, the sluggishness of the corporate office to approve
a local job carve, and the dead-end nature of ubiquitous part-time
positions must be a consideration for job seekers and developers alike.
In a recent job development seminar, Cary was reminded by over 40
Employment Specialists working in a community of 6 million people,
that HR staff complain regularly that someone from a human services
agency is always knocking on their door. These developers suffer from
Big Sign Syndrome. That is, they are the ones driving the town’s
commercial strip, pulling into the lot of every corporate chain store,
and seeking ready-made jobs. Over the course of a year, every agency
visits every store. Of course, the small businesses, many hidden from
view and requiring a networking effort to crack open, remain beyond
the view of these “job cruisers,” they often have no set
application method, they hire based on word-of-mouth, and a written
job description can be a rarity.
The Small Business Fix
Getting off Main Street may be the most obvious fix for Big Sign Syndrome.
But, getting onto Elm Street sometimes requires a network. Those are
easy enough to develop of course, and involve at least a few of these
items:
- Using a Board of Directors member to get a lunch
or an informational interview with small business
owners they know who might have employment opportunities
related to the interests of a job seeker;
- Joining a Service Club (the Lions, Rotary, the Chamber) and getting
to know the diversity of business and industry in the local community;
- Completing a relationship map with others in the agency to identify
staff family and friends who own or work for local businesses;
- Completing a relationship map with families and consumers to identify
in which local companies they spend their money for goods and services,
and what family members either own businesses themselves or can serve
as the entrée into businesses they frequent or work for;
- Identifying the suppliers of the many goods and services the rehabilitation
agency buys and enlisting them as employers or as connectors to other
potential employers in their networks.
Having identified smaller employers who may fit the employment needs
of specific consumers is just one step in curing Big Sign Syndrome
though. Because many small businesses are under-capitalized and surviving
on limited profit margins, a job creation approach is often required
to create jobs or intrigue employers. In fact, breaking the cycle of
entry level employment for people with disabilities generally mandates
a creative re-thinking of positions and opportunities. The typical
scenario for people with significant disabilities is part-time, minimum
wage jobs for a lifetime. One successful approach we’ve used
for years now is Resource Ownership. This approach recognizes that
small business could sell more goods, better satisfy customers, or
increase market share by adding a person with particular talents or
technology. For instance, a baker we worked with recently heard customers
complaining that they could not buy an espresso to go with their fresh
Danish. The baker simply couldn’t afford a $4000 espresso-maker.
But, a young lady itching to go to work in a coffee shop, through a
Customized Employment project in Georgia and some Vocational Rehabilitation
dollars, was able to purchase the machine and create a new position
within the company. This mutually beneficial approach helped a struggling
entrepreneur and created a career track based on an individual’s
work preferences. And, happy customers mean more business, which means
higher wages all around.
In this case, the espresso machine is the same lever that a college
degree or a welding certificate represents for other job seekers. Having
exploitable resources, whether it be brain-power or a color Xerox machine
that boosts customer satisfaction at the local copy shop, is critical
to creating jobs a few rungs up the career ladder from entry-level.
Resource Ownership is simply the concept of acquiring materials, equipment,
or skills that an employer uses to make a profit. For instance, many
people spend $50,000 or more on a college degree, and that degree is
a symbol of exploitable resources. Employers reason that they can profit
from a graduate’s intellect so people with degrees get hired.
In essence, the graduate gives the employer that degree in trade for
wages. The same occurs when a truck driver who owns a tractor-trailer
applies for a hauling job. Without the trucking equipment, the trucker
is possibly forced to face unemployment, or a less satisfactory, lower
paying trucking job in which the employer has to buy the equipment.
The point is that people have to have exploitable resources to get
a good job, and by putting the means of production in the hands of
people with disabilities, it makes them more employable.
IBM and Boeing can afford their own equipment, and negotiating these
job creations in companies of this size will likely end in a bureaucratic
tangle of policy and regulation. Small business is the perfect place
for job creation strategies such as this, however, because the job
developer and job seeker are likely dealing with the owner or manager,
there are few, if any, layers of approval to be navigated, and management
is less likely to change and reverse previous hiring decisions. A small
business owner can also see immediate results in the bottom-line by
adding valuable products or services, and employers still tell us that
they enjoy creating jobs for people. Giving back to the community by
employing one’s neighbors is one of the joys of owning a business.
Conclusion
This article is limited in scope, but does point out that with literally
millions of small businesses across the country, no job developer should
ever run out of employer prospects for any sort of job seeker’s
dreams. Driving down Klements Lane, no outsider would ever guess that
so many opportunities for job creation exist. There are thousands of
miles of country roads, inner-city avenues, and suburban cul-de-sacs
that hold a potential job match . Get off the strip and start looking
for the small-sign/no-sign shops that fuel this American economy.
|
