National Skills Summit

National Skills Summit
Skills Summit Highlights

Statement from

Bettye Harris Jackson, President, Jackson Airport Enterprises

Bettye Harris Jackson, President Jackson Airport Enterprises

On the importance of training: When I first purchased my TBCY franchise, I did not have a clue about how to put together a yogurt machine. President Bill Clinton had just been elected president and the TBCY headquarters is located in Little Rock, Arkansas. So, of course, I had to go down there for training. The training director said we had to do on-site training at a store. I had worked very hard to get a master's degree and here I was putting on khakis pants, a polo shirt and a sun visor for on-the-job training. As small business owners, we have to have that 'hands on' experience so that we can transfer it to our employees during their training. We have talked a lot about collaboration and soft skills training but how do we pull all of these factors together for a fast food business?

You would think that a food and beverage franchise with an additional general merchandise product line would be fairly easy to operate. A traveler walks up to the counter and requests a pretzel, a cup of frozen yogurt or a beverage and we sell it to him or her. It is not that simple.

We have high quality standards that we have to adhere to. We handle dairy products and if that yogurt is not kept cold enough or if the chili for our hot dogs is not maintained at a certain temperature, our customers could end up with an airborne illness. We could have an airplane full of sick people. We can't have that. So when we interview for our associate positions we have to take all of this into consideration. You would think that if we are interviewing a high school student, this person could read English. This person can write. Give them a uniform, provide them with training, teach them how to sell products and put them to work. It is not that simple.

You have to talk with young people about the proper temperatures for different foods, the rotation of products, point-of-sales, general merchandising…those things are not simple. On a daily basis, we interview young people, who are high school graduates, who cannot count back change to people. When we went to a system of micro cash registers - like McDonalds - the register tells the worker how much change to count back. But, if anything out the ordinary occurs - say the customer gives the associate additional change after the sale has been rung up - the employee sometimes stands there dumbfounded because she or he cannot count change. This may be a simple thing but it is a big problem.

We began to talk to our high school counselors and community colleges. The retail industry has to have people who are skilled in basic mathematics, who are skilled in communications. What we have done in the City of Phoenix is to encourage business people to participate in community workforce investment councils. This is important. I am the immediate past chair of my local private industry council (PIC) and currently serve as the president of the local Industrial Development Authority. The Industrial Development Authority issues the bonds for all the manufacturing projects in our community. As the president of this board, I can ask the manufacturers applying for development bonds, what is your employment plan? We require that people have an employment plan in place. We ask them, how do they plan to increase the employment of local workers? What kind of return will our city receive if you decide to do business in our town? I would encourage all business owners to get involved in these types of voluntary organizations. That's how you become familiar with local government and your community.

When the City of Phoenix developed its local workforce investment plan, they asked business leaders what they needed in a workforce. If you are not sitting at the table and you are not involved, then you will not know where the resources are. You will not become familiar with the community-based organizations that are in the trenches working with your future applicants. It is not enough to give a person a job, a business owner also needs to know about the housing needs in that community. If a worker does not have a good place to live, if they do not make enough income to care for their families, how can they be productive workers? It is well and good to have a passion for business but you must also have compassion for the people that you hire.

It is important to have a holistic approach to hiring workers. We are a seven-day operation. How do we get the former welfare mother that has children in daycare, and no car, to work? How does she pick up her children and get home at night when the buses stop running at ten o'clock? And, there is no bus service on Sundays. We talk about the superhighway, but sometimes just getting our people on a dirt road would be a major improvement. Just to be able to communicate, understand simple math and get to work. These are some of the issues and challenges that retail business owners face.

You are on the right track, Madame Secretary, about the need for more collaboration and partnership between the community, non-profits and the private sector to close the skills gap. As we like to say in Phoenix, we are all on the same team. The business community needs community colleges and community-based organizations to get the job done.