For businesses throughout Johnson County, keeping the employees they’ve invested in and trained has become an increasingly worrisome problem.
Often, those people choose another job based on issues apart from the work: problems with reliable transportation, lack of child care and challenges with housing.
With the help of a grant from Duke Energy, the Johnson County Community Foundation hopes to create a program keeping local workers in the county.
The community foundation received a $5,000 grant that will go toward creating an employee-driven network aimed at workforce retention. The goal is to create a resource for businesses where they could direct employees struggling with an issue to a designated coach and get them the assistance they need.
“If someone were having problems, they know they could go to this success coach and get help with what they needed,” said Gail Richards, CEO and president of the Johnson County Community Foundation. “What excited us about it, it’s not just social services, but anything someone might need.”
The grant was awarded by the Duke Energy Foundation, which provides philanthropic support to meet the needs of communities where Duke Energy customers live and work. In Indiana, the foundation provides about $2 million in charitable gifts to a wide variety of nonprofit groups.
This round of grants is focused on supporting workforce development programs, and more than $220,000 was given to 15 entities in nine counties throughout Indiana.
Funding will support workforce education and training programs that address the most pressing skills gaps in local communities.
“We recognize that, for a variety of reasons, not all people have equal access to the same educational and training opportunities as others,” said Stan Pinegar, Duke Energy state president for Indiana. “We can help improve that access by making investments in training and education where it is needed most.”
The grant will help the Johnson County Community Foundation create a resource network for Johnson County businesses using the Employer Resource Network model. Overseen by ERN USA, the nationally tested program places success coaches in the workplace of participating companies.
Success coaches are confidential resources that employees can access, providing a direct conduit to community resources for issues they may be struggling with. Employers who participate in the program buy “shares” in the success coach, and the coach then allocates their time according to those shares.
The idea is to give employees a trained person to go to when they’re struggling.
“Employers in the county were having trouble recruiting and retaining employees. They told us early on, don’t put a plan in place where you come in and train our employees, then they go to work someplace else. We need to keep these employees in this space,” Richards said. “But their (human resources) departments didn’t have the time to connect people to outside resources, like rent assistance or child care. This network will help with that.”
The community foundation has been working with businesses and organizations such as Aspire, the county’s economic development and Chamber alliance, on creating such a network. They hope a bulk of it will be funded with a large-scale $200,000 grant from the Lilly Foundation, though even without that grant, the foundation is committed to the program, Richards said.
Over the next six to 10 months, the foundation will work with ERN USA and local employers to create the network. The hope is to launch it in early 2021.
