SAVED! Recruit or retain for best jobs? Why, both

Third of four parts on Jobs Plus and Kootenai County economic development

By MIKE PATRICK

Staff Writer

Nobody’s going to mistake Gynii Gilliam or Amber Conklin for Dorrel Norman Elvert Herzog.

But they have something in common.

Herzog, a former St. Louis Cardinals manager better known as Whitey, once said this about his defensive wizard of a shortstop, Ozzie Smith, who was less than feared as a hitter:

“If he saved two runs a game on defense, which he did many a night, it seemed to me that was just as valuable to the team as a player who drove in two runs a game on offense.”

Make no error, Gynii and Amber are driving in plenty of runs for Team Kootenai County as power hitters for Jobs Plus, Inc., the area’s economic development agency. They’re recruiting companies that bring good-paying jobs with benefits and fatten up local tax coffers.

But like Ozzie, they’re playing stellar defense, too.

“We’re not just recruiting businesses to the area, we’re also retaining them,” said Conklin, the agency’s business relations and communications officer. “Our goal is to help the existing businesses here flourish and succeed. We know that the majority of jobs are created by existing companies as they grow.”

Yet like Ozzie, now enshrined in the Hall of Fame, even the best players can’t stop everything.

They’re history

Sunshine Minting and its roughly 300 jobs apparently are leaving Coeur d’Alene for Las Vegas. Owner Tom Power hasn’t confirmed the departure, but Las Vegas news outlets have reported it, The Press has seen and shared public records out of Nevada strongly suggesting the move, and, well, even Idaho’s lieutenant governor hinted at it — without exactly naming Sunshine Minting.

In discussing the state’s best job-creation tool — the Tax Reimbursement Incentive — Lt. Gov. Brad Little told The Press editorial board: “I could tell you a business that would dearly like some of it and they’re not going to get any of it because they don’t pay high enough wages.” Asked if he was referring to Sunshine Minting, Little only smiled.

Conklin was more candid.

She said Gilliam and Coeur d’Alene Mayor Steve Widmyer met with Sunshine officials, and that “we knew there was a possibility of this [departure] happening.” She reiterated that TRI is available for qualified companies that bring in or create 20 or more jobs in Kootenai County with an average wage of at least $16.50 an hour — a standard Sunshine didn’t meet.

Gilliam also said recently that our community will soon lose another business, but a much smaller one — one with about a dozen jobs. However, the Jobs Plus president for just over two years said that sad announcement will coincide with a happier one; the loss will be more than offset by a new company that will provide 20 to 25 jobs immediately and 40-45 longer range. Oh — and the new company will pay better than the departing one, she said.

Otherwise, it’s been four years since a notable defection — Coeur d’Alene Mines headquarters moving to Chicago — even slightly stemmed the larger inflow of jobs and expansions by the likes of U.S. Bank, Alliance Data, Orgill, Inc., Odom Corporation distribution, and others.

So while major defections and attractive additions tend to make the biggest headlines, Conklin and Co. continue to work furiously on the little things that add up in the long run. It’s called BRE.

Teamwork

Business Retention and Expansion is that all-star caliber defense that would make Whitey and Ozzie proud. According to Conklin, the three-person Jobs Plus office — plus its very active board of directors — tries to put its arms around virtually all of the area’s 4,000-plus businesses. It’s possible because of time-tested, relationship-rich partnerships with the state departments of commerce and labor, Kootenai County government, the county’s cities, the Coeur d’Alene and Post Falls chambers of commerce, the higher education institutions in the area, commercial Realtors, banks, Panhandle Area Council, the Small Business Develop-ment Center in Post Falls, and others.

“We are not experts in every aspect of business, but we work with partners in every area who are experts, and we make the connections and work to come up with solutions for issues that don’t fit into the existing systems,” Conklin said. Helping local businesses stay afloat or, better still, “flourish and succeed,” as Conklin puts it, often comes down to helping them find or keep good employees. When the effective unemployment rate is virtually zip, as it is these days, that can be a tall task.

It’s a good news/bad news situation, according to Eve Knudtsen, chair of the Jobs Plus board.

“The economy is ever cyclical,” she said. “Right now we’re looking at a situation that is a good thing but also a problem: The county is at about 4.5 percent employment. There are a lot of people working. The labor pool looks a little more like a puddle.

“The good side of that is there’s competition for the labor force that’s out there. Whoever thought that we’d have an average wage in Kootenai County that’s $16.50 an hour and benefits?”

Some businesses can afford to pay more; others can’t, and they’re at risk of closing or moving.

Conklin wants to help them all.

Pay problems

“Mostly it’s the smaller businesses that can’t pay the same wages as competing companies,” she said. “Employers that are paying $14, $15, $16 an hour are not having a hard time filling positions. The employers that are having a hard time are the ones paying $10, $11, $12 an hour.”

Conklin says even the cash-strapped companies have some options, and she’s ambitiously working on at least two programs that could end up making a difference.

One of them is developing a “menu of options” she can take to employers — options that cost little or nothing but can be powerful retention tools for good workers. One example she said some companies are already offering are tuition reimbursement programs, the best of which apply not just to the employee, but the employee’s family. That helps the employees (and family members) improve their skills through certificate programs and other educational offerings and, essentially, make themselves more valuable as employees.

But Conklin emphasizes that money isn’t everything, particularly where there are two wage-earners in a household and one is taking home a sizable hunk of bacon.

“I met with an employer who had just this amazing working environment,” she said. “He didn’t pay as much as his competitors, but he had a really nice environment. He shut the lights off at closing time so people didn’t feel like they needed to stay and keep working. He made sure they were taken care of, that they had a work-life balance, that they were treated like family.

“Those people were loyal. They weren’t going to go anywhere because of the environment. Employee satisfaction is everything, as we know.”

All together now

Conklin hopes to spread the satisfaction sometime later this year with a massive outreach program to as many local businesses as possible. Partnering with North Idaho College, she’s putting together a free or almost free symposium “that’s much more than networking; it will focus on advocating for businesses on a state level.”

The symposium likely will be hosted by NIC, she said, on a day of the week most small-business people would be able to get away for a little while. She calls it “speed-dating for business resources,” where business owners and managers get full immersion into the many options and opportunities that already exist to help them “flourish and succeed.”

“I want this forum where businesses can come and at least get a gleaning of some of the services from our partners so that I’m hitting a much wider range,” she said.

As Conklin and Gilliam handle literally dozens of BRE actions every single week, they keep in mind one of their most effective retention tools. It’s called relationships.

Gilliam mentioned two large clients who moved here and still call on Jobs Plus for all kinds of things, which is just the way she likes it.

“I’ll get a call saying, ‘Do you guys have a couple of hours to drive a VP around and show them the place?’” Gilliam said. “It’s a relationship we built. Because we have that relationship with them, we’re still their one point of contact.”

Existing businesses, whether recruited by Jobs Plus or not, are Priority One, she said, no matter how busy the Jobs Plus staff might be when something is needed.

“All of it helps keep them here because we have that relationship with them,” she said. “The reason we keep that relationship is because if they ever become at risk, we want them to know they can call us.

“We tell them that just because you’re already here, we won’t go away.”

So while recruiting a new company to our area might be like hitting a home run, saving one is like a spectacular homer-depriving leap at the center field wall against an opponent.

“We love them because they’re already here,” Gilliam said, “and they’re an integral part of our community.”

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Next Sunday: The series concludes with a look at the strong foundation Jobs Plus is building for long-term economic growth.