West side businesses join forces to help employees on, and off, the job

By: Deborah Johnson Wood

By hiring caseworkers and visiting nurses, or offering financial management classes or English as a second language, eight west side employers are reaping the benefits of higher employee retention.

American Seating, GR Foam Technologies, GR Spring and Stamping, Oliver Products, Michigan Family Resources, Ridgeview Industries, TrimQuest, and Wolverine Coil Spring have joined The SOURCE, a non profit coalition of small- and medium-sized businesses established to help employee maintain their jobs and advance their careers.

"If an employee has unreliable transportation or daycare problems they could lose their job," says James Vander Hulst, of WIRED's West Michigan TEAM, a key player in the coalition. "They can't get downtown for help, so a caseworker helps them keep their job by coming to them."

Costs to administrate the program are less than $115 per employee per year. The return on that investment averages 239 percent for participating companies and can be as high as 360 percent as employee productivity, capability, and other workplace measurables improve.

Once an at-risk employee is stabilized, employers can provide training so lower skilled workers can get better jobs. Through the coalition, companies can share the costs of training and send just a few employees each to prevent downtime on production lines.

Several companies also have advancement programs where employees transfer to another company in the coalition for higher wage jobs or to make career changes, such as from industrial jobs to healthcare.

"The smaller companies are creating the jobs," Vander Hulst says. "I think we can help them create more and bring more companies to the region. We're going to be able to ensure them that they have an adequate workforce."

Source: James Vander Hulst, WIRED West Michigan TEAM; Andrew Brower, The SOURCE

Deborah Johnson Wood is development news editor for Rapid Growth Media. She can be contacted at [email protected].