Businesses, and especially small businesses, live and die by virtue of the quality of the people they employ. I always tell small business owners that their employees are both their biggest assets and also potentially their biggest threats to their survival. Bad customer service and incompetence in providing what it is you say you are selling are impressions that travel fast and are hard to erase. The mirror images of these are excellent customer service and skill in doing a job, which are a business’ best marketing tools. That’s what keeps customers coming back, whether you are selling a service or a product, and that word of mouth also travels, especially along the coconut wireless.
So it really pays business owners to spend some time in identifying what they need in their employees and hiring or training accordingly. They can base this on how their jobs and their markets look now, on what it is they are currently lacking in employee skill sets, and on what they foresee for their businesses and the economy for the future. This is true now more than ever in today’s rapidly changing economy.
Recently I had the pleasure of attending an event sponsored by the Kona Kohala Chamber of Commerce on West Hawaii’s Workforce Needs at the Hawaii Community College Palamanui Campus. The event was based on a survey the Chamber’s Education and Workforce Committee conducted on what the business community saw as the training and skill needs in the local workforce.
The event, which was called Poha Ka Lima — Growing Our West Hawaii Workforce Together, was a way to focus and brainstorm further on these needs. A fairly large group of business owners, leaders and community educators reviewed the survey results and contributed their own thoughts on what we need here in West Hawaii to build our workforce. It became apparent by a review of the survey and by listening to the audience that we have many gaps in our employee pool in the skills and knowledges that businesses need. We lack training resources and sometimes local interest in even undertaking training; employers have to recruit from off island and they face skill deficiencies in the workers they employ; and as is the case with employers everywhere, but perhaps even more so here, they face the high costs of employee turnover. I encourage interested readers to check out the report on this event on the Kona Kohala Chamber of Commerce website for more details.
What occurred to me as I listened at this event was that there is also another kind of gap in our West Hawaii community. That is the gap between the very high skills and extensive experience of a not insignificant portion of our residents and the more limited skills of the pool of prospective employees that local businesses draw on for their hires. We have scientists, inventors, business people, artists, entrepreneurs, and educators, many of them world renowned, living here in West Hawaii on either on a full or part time basis and they have valuable and unique knowledge in their respective fields. Whether retired “snowbirds” or employed residents, in or out of the labor market, these people are a potential resource for providing training and mentorship. Wouldn’t it be great if we could find a way to bridge the gap between their high skill level and the needs of our workforce? To “normalize” paying forward the hard gained life and business skills and professional experience of many residents? To find a way that the experienced and accomplished people I meet every day could have an avenue and the motivational boost to share their experience and knowledge with our developing workforce?
Here at the West Hawaii SBDC we try to draw on people like these as instructors. An example of that is our upcoming workshop on QuickBooks for the Business Owner, which is being taught by Laurie Darleen of PT Bookkeeping on Saturday, Aug. 27 (please see our website, www.hisbdc.org to register). But business and the community need more. Here is my open invitation: if you have skills and experience in your chosen field and are interested in sharing some of those in an effort to improve the West Hawaii workforce, consider volunteering your time to share your knowledge. We’re always interested in trained professionals who can serve as instructors. As they say, we’re all in the same canoe. Think about making a contribution of your talents and skills, whether to the SBDC or to another organization, in helping us all keep that canoe afloat and moving forward.
Dennis Boyd is the Director of the West Hawai‘i Small Business Development Center