The challenges of hiring, retaining, and training employees in the inner city are the same as they are elsewhere -- and then some. Here's how several CEOs of Inner City 100 companies build and manage their staff.
The challenges of hiring, retaining, and training employees in the inner city are the same as they are elsewhere. And then some.
At Jen-Cyn Enterprises Inc. (#91), in Camden, N.J., workers who come up a little short of cash know just whom they can turn to: their employer. "It's kind of like an unspoken thing out in the warehouse," says CEO Carol Ann Clements. But it adds up to serious money. Last year Jen-Cyn, a galvanized-steel distributor, advanced more than $26,000 to 30 of its 50 workers for unexpected contingencies. Sometimes the loans were for a few hundred bucks, money to buy an old car to drive to work in or to put down as a security deposit on an apartment. Part of the job of the human-resources director, whom Clements hired in 1998, is to keep track of all the loans, which employees repay, $50 to $100 a week, out of their wages.
Why pay people for work that they haven't even done yet? After all, the employees could easily quit before paying back the money. But Clements thinks the risk is worth it. "That kind of stuff goes a long way with these guys," she says of her employees. "They know that if they get behind the eight ball, they can go to HR."
In Camden, it's all too easy to get behind the eight ball. Clements hires from a labor pool in which the median household income is about $20,000 and the unemployment rate is 13%. But she has found good employees there. New hires may come in without skills or experience, Clements says, but if they have the motivation to show up on time, stay, and learn, they'll do fine at her company.
But how do companies find such workers? And how do they keep them, once they've found them? The CEO of a business based in a suburban office complex might woo employees with stock options or concierge services. In fact, some inner-city businesses are offering those perks, too. But they're also offering less glamorous, more pragmatic benefits. Clements reimburses all employees once a year for their OSHA-required steel-tipped shoes. And she gives new employees an advance to buy them. "Many of them don't have $30 to $40 up front for work boots," she says.
When you get right down to it, say Clements and other Inner City 100 CEOs, inner-city employees don't have goals or desires that are vastly different from those of any other employee. A regular paycheck. A chance to rise. A place where they feel they belong.
But don't forget about the work boots, either.
Searching out the best
For Scott Wolfe, good employees are like customers. Step one is getting them in the door. And to do that Wolfe relies on the same techniques that he uses to attract customers to Wagner's Meats (#31), his minichain of convenience stores, which are in some of the poorest neighborhoods in New Orleans. "I think inner-city people want the same thing suburban people want," says Wolfe. "They want to be in a nice, clean, safe environment, like everyone else."
So Wolfe has engineered his stores to create a sense of security in high-crime districts. He doesn't sell rolling papers or "adult magazines." He packs his stores with a range of services -- grocery, meat counter, and check cashing -- to keep them full of people. He uses shorter shelves to keep sight lines free. And his efforts have paid off, both in growth and security: $8.5 million in revenues and zero holdups.
When Wolfe hires someone for a job working a cash register or cutting meat, the odds are, that person was a customer first. Finding the best employees is more complicated than offering a safe environment, of course. That's why if you're looking for a job at Wagner's, don't even bother asking for an application. Wolfe doesn't accept them. Too easy to fill out, he says. "We only take résumés," Wolfe explains. "We ask for résumés from everyone, because we have discovered that if someone leaves our facility and goes home and writes up something, even if it's handwritten, we find that person really cares."
In interviews Wolfe prides himself on asking questions that candidates won't be prepared for. Who's your favorite band? What's your favorite TV show? What do you usually do on Saturdays, starting from the time you get up to the time you go to bed? He got the idea when his son applied to a selective high school and was hit with the same questions in his interview. Assessing an applicant's motivation is key. "You find out about character," Wolfe says. "Gee whiz, you can learn everything about a person!"
Or almost everything. Since an applicant's TV preferences won't necessarily reveal a past criminal record, Wolfe also takes advantage of the services of the Louisiana State Police, who check criminal histories on all managers free for stores that, like Wagner's Meats, offer video poker. Jen-Cyn's Clements relies on local employment agencies for similar screening, including drug testing.
"Drug testing wasn't something that we were eager to get involved in because it's a hassle," says Donna Pierson, human-resources director at Belkin Components (#30), in Compton, Calif. "But all the companies down the street were doing it, and we were getting all the people who failed the process."
In hiring, it also helps to know your neighborhood, say other Inner City 100 entrepreneurs. When Gary Fails, CEO of City Theatrical Inc. (#43), needs an entry-level employee, he just asks around in the South Bronx neighborhood where his company is based. "There's one guy who has an auto-repair shop and his own apartment building, so he literally owns a corner of the South Bronx," says Fails, whose company manufactures lighting accessories for the entertainment industry. "He knows all the young people getting out of school and the people getting out of the service."
Giving them what they want
Once a quarter A.J. Wasserstein gets to work early with doughnuts and bagels and makes himself available to his 45 employees for what he calls "the breakfast club." Any of the people who work at his records-storage company, Archives Management Inc. (#78), in Watertown, Conn., can come in and chat with the boss. That's how he found out what his employees really thought of the company's health-insurance program. "Our health-care program used to suck," Wasserstein says. "And someone made me aware of it."
