Chamber of commerce program helps keep workers on the job

Key Takeaways

Employers are thriving in Audrain County, Mo. because their workers are thriving. But that wasn’t always the case.

When the Mexico Chamber of Commerce, in the county seat, saw 85 employees leave a single business in one year, it was apparent that worker dissatisfaction could be a crack in the county’s economic foundation. In a county of 25,000 people, that’s a significant exodus.

The chamber estimated that turnover costs employers roughly $5,500 per position in administrative time, coworker burden, overtime pay, hiring search firm or temp agency, advertising, interviews, pre-employment testing and lost productivity. 

“We hear all the time about how businesses are having problems retaining their workforce, they can’t find employees to stay, but our chamber is really addressing that,” said Commissioner Leslie Meyer, a fellow in NACo’s Rural Leaders for Economic Mobility (RLEM) program. 

Audrain County welcomed the leaders program cohort in September to see how the Workforce Resource Assistance Program (WRAP) developed and addressed those needs. 

The chamber and its partners started by understanding what led employees to leave. That shifted their thinking about not only the needs of workers but also how conditions of poverty create barriers to not only getting a job, but keeping it, too. 

Community leaders studied the book “Bridges Out of Poverty” and consulted with co-author Ruby Payne to understand the 24/7 experience of living in poverty. These lessons provided a framework for community-wide poverty reduction through understanding the “hidden rules” of different economic classes, generational long-term poverty versus situational poverty that is often caused by a specific event, the importance of relationships and communication and the importance of resources beyond money, such as social capital and emotional health. 

Based on that understanding and empathy for residents facing grinding financial hardship, the chamber worked with local employers and community leaders to create the Mexico Sustainability Project. 

Guided by another resource, the book, “Workplace Stability” written by consultant Ruth Weirch, these Audrain County partners created WRAP to overcome key obstacles for low-income workers to stay employed and slash employer turnover costs. 

The program’s key components provide real solutions to external stressors that lead workers to quit. The program’s staff conduct workforce stability training to ensure workers understand employer expectations and to develop strategies for on-the-job situations that typically lead to dismissal or departure. 

Workforce specialists are on-site and on-call to respond immediately. Workers can participate in the WRAP financial wellness program and an emotional wellness program that support workers to manage stressors that may arise through family and home conditions. 

The program’s Emergency Small Dollar Loan Program has enabled workers to escape the predatory practices of payday loans to cover unexpected or one-time expenses, such as car repairs, medical care or back-to-school expenses for children. 

“We have payday lenders in Missouri that charge interest of 500%,” Meyer said. “If a family has an emergency, bridging that money gap could put them back months or years.”

To provide an affordable alternative, WRAP secured local donations for a collateral fund to provide the financial backing for its own loan program guarantees. 

Chamber Workforce Specialist Darlene Shopher worked with three local financial institutions to offer loans of up to $1,000 at a 7.99% interest rate to employees in good standing who have worked at least one year at the WRAP partner companies. After four years, WRAP made 114 loans valued at a total of $110,485 with an estimated cost savings of over $250,000 for participating employees who no longer drew on payday loans. 

WRAP’s Financial Wellness Program helps employees gain the knowledge and skills they need to not only work hard but save for a more prosperous future. WRAP partnered with FINRA Investor Education Foundation to provide monthly in-person education classes at work sites. 

Topics include budgeting, how to manage debt, understanding credit scores, saving for emergencies, investing and preparing an estate plan. 

At their workplaces, employee participants have 24/7 access to the online financial literacy platform ENRICH. They can also meet with a financial coach with ongoing support via phone and email. One business owner told the RLEM program members that his employees appreciate this free support more than any other benefit he provides. 

Another business owner highlighted WRAP’s Emotional Wellness Program component as essential for preventing staff turnover and contributing to a healthy workforce. Interested employees attend workshops to learn about the biological basis of trauma, effective communication, impacts of exercise on mental wellbeing, coping with anxiety, managing stress and confronting addictive behaviors. The business owner shared with the RLEM members an example of how an employee was able to use this learning to provide support to his son struggling with depression. 

Darlene and the business owners at the RLEM presentation summed up by outlining the tangible benefits WRAP has provided. 

For employees, they are more aware and better able to navigate support resources, including coordinating services with the court systems that has enabled participating workers to be heard first on the trial docket. 

WRAP’s loan program has solved temporary financial emergencies, stopped payroll advances and decreased 401k borrowing. For employers, WRAP has helped them to reduce human resource staff burden, decreased absenteeism, increased retention and dramatically lowered costs associated with these improvements. 

“It’s an all-encompassing approach that I just haven’t seen before,” Meyer said. “If it wasn’t for Darlene Sopher or Dana Keller at the Mexico Chamber, I don’t think this program would be anywhere as successful as it is.”

Originally funded through a locally secured grant, WRAP is now self-sustaining through employer contributions. Business owners explain that they can’t afford not to support this effective and cost-saving initiative. 

As an RLEM participant, Meyer along with Presiding Commissioner Alan Winders (who sits on the chamber’s Board of Directors) and Commissioner Tracy R. Graham (who sits on the Mexico Sustainability Project Board) decided that the county will be using part of its RLEM subgrant to expand WRAP programming to other underserved areas of the county.