A hidden source of talent - finding jobs for welfare recipients

Government and industry must work as true partners to help welfare recipients find work and provide employers with a new source of qualified applicants.

In 1965, President Johnson created Head Start "with the hope that poverty's children would not be poverty's captives." Now, six presidents later, we have fundamentally reversed our approach to the problems of poverty and dependence. Welfare reform is about to plunge into the job market an unprecedented number of people who have very little work experience.

The challenge for employers will be to match real career opportunities to the demand that people take responsibility for their own support. After all, the true aim of welfare reform should be placing in a job every person capable of working.

To truly make it possible for people on welfare to find gainful employment, two fundamental issues need to be addressed: jobs needs to be available and welfare recipients need our help in matching their talents, abilities and potential to actual opportunities.

Even under the best circumstances - when. jobs are available and qualified applicants have the advantage of education and experience - an essential ingredient is still needed for success. Through our assessments of more than 1 million individuals for more than 21,000 companies, we have found that people can only succeed when their motivations and abilities are in sync with the requirements of the position they are filling.

The question for employers is which of this inexperienced individuals can succeed in entry-level management, sales, customer service, technical and support position.

LESSONS FROM THE PAST

In the late 1960s and early 1970s our organization spearheaded four projects in New York and San Juan to help welfare recipients Find gainful employment. (See "From Welfare to the Workplace," HRMagazine, July 1995.) In those projects, anti-poverty agencies, such as the Department of Welfare, the Office of Unemployment, and several civil rights organizations referred people to our program. Individuals took a battery of personality and skills assessments and then we interviewed them.

Those individuals who possessed the ability or potential to succeed in an available job were enrolled in a work preparation training program. During several weeks of training, participants received counseling to help prepare them for job interviews and equip them for the best possible job match.

Participants that were hired underwent extensive coaching and mentoring. In addition, counseling was made available to assist the new employees with any concerns that might arise, and regular follow-ups were conducted to make sure everything was going well.

Because the testing had shown that these individuals possessed the raw potential to do the particular job - despite their lack of experience - employers were more than willing to provide on-the-job training. Through this program, nearly 3,500 people made the transition from welfare to the workplace in the course of four years.

JUST LIKE YOU AND ME

At the beginning of this year, we wanted to reaffirm our findings from a generation ago. We assessed the potential of 58 welfare recipients in programs to help them find jobs in New York City and Cleveland.

These individuals were part of America Works and Cleveland Works, two unrelated organizations dedicated to helping low-income individuals make the transition from welfare to the workplace. Both organizations are paid only after they have successfully placed a qualified applicant who stays on the job for an extended period of time.

"Over 650 employers work with us because our retention rates are very good," explains David Roth, executive director of Cleveland Works. "They know that the applicants we provide will stay on the job and care about the work they produce."

Cleveland Works provides 400 hours of training over the course of three months to interested applicants, most of whom have been on and off welfare for an average of 10 years. These applicants are assured a safety net of day care, legal advice, a health clinic and employment training.

The graduates provide a solid answer for businesses beset by high turnover, apathy and absenteeism, particularly when these companies are trying to fill entry-level positions. In the past decade, more than 7,000 men, women and children have gotten off public assistance because of the efforts of Cleveland Works.

In our random sampling of welfare recipients seeking employment through the training programs of America Works and Cleveland Works we found an enormous amount of innate ability - just as we have with our historic assessment of more than 1 million job finalists for a broad cross-section of industries throughout the past 35 years.

We have traditionally found that approximately one out of every four people in the population at large has sales potential. Of the 58 welfare recipients we assessed from New York and Cleveland, we found 14 had the innate qualifies shared by successful sales-people - virtually the same percentage as we find in the non-poverty sector.

In addition, two of those individuals had management potential - they were assertive enough to be fine leaders, and had the ability to focus and motivate others. They were also able to see the big picture, take calculated risks, and make tough decisions. And they were good communicators who commanded respect, were able to delegate, and treated others fairly and with consideration.

Twenty-five of the individuals we tested had the personality attributes we look for in customer service representatives. They were conscientious, driven to please others, flexible, secure, outgoing and adept at solving problems.

Eleven of the individuals possessed qualities that would enable them to succeed in technical positions such as data entry and mechanical repair. These 11 individuals, we found, were detail-oriented, more focused on things than on people, responsible, well-organized, careful in their approach to work, and capable of following a defined structure very well.

The findings in the sales, service and technical areas relate very closely to our findings in dealing with the nonpoverty sector. They also relate almost exactly to the findings we gleaned from our studies in San Juan and New York nearly three decades ago. Clearly, individuals in training in the poverty sector possess the same range of raw potential as people in all other economic strata.

THE POTENTIAL TO SUCCEED

Determining people's potential, particularly when they have had very little work experience, can go a long way toward helping them succeed. When people are in jobs that draw on their inherent strengths, success follows. Unfortunately, welfare recipients trying to get out of the system are often forced to accept whatever position they are offered, even if that job holds absolutely no interest for them and in no way plays to their true potential or natural strengths.

All too often, people in welfare-to-work programs are offered jobs for which they have absolutely no inherent ability, such as the person with poor eye-hand coordination who is offered a position as a welder. Then, when welfare recipients fail in inappropriate jobs, it is easy for skeptics to say, "See, they didn't want to work anyway." But if that same callous approach were taken to all job placement, middle-class job seekers would fail in their positions in the same proportions as welfare recipients.

Imagine, instead, the benefit of hiring people who are motivated to get off welfare and move into positions that play to their inherent abilities. That combination is very powerful. Every employer wants to be surrounded by talented, committed employees.

Employers and HR managers must think about the difference in saying, "Take this job because we have an opening and you should be grateful for it," as opposed to saying, "Take a job for which you are eminently suited, start at the bottom, and you can look forward to a real career."

OPENING DOORS OF OPPORTUNITY

These are trying times, but with programs like America Works and Cleveland Works taking hold, I am very encouraged.

The whole aim of welfare reform should be to get jobs for those who are able to work. The only way that will happen is if employers and HR professionals recognize the very real benefit of having highly motivated people enter the workforce and design programs to help them find positions for which they are ideally suited.

Under those circumstances, training programs can be very effective in helping welfare recipients gain certification in a particular skill and instilling a healthy work ethic. Although training will be critical to the success of welfare reform, training someone who is not capable of doing a job is futile and wasteful.

If government and industry fail to work out a true partnership and simply try to push people off welfare, those people will not be pushed into jobs, but into the streets. Employers need to look at welfare reform as more than a social conscience issue; it is an effort to open the door to the very real possibility of hiring people who can definitely make a difference. And in the process, we can turn an otherwise defeating situation around.

It will take a huge commitment, along with the dedication of time and resources, but the benefits can be enormous. At the very least, employers may find a new source of employees for hard-to-fill positions - employees who are committed to improving their lot, fulfilling their potential, and contributing in a very positive way.

Herbert M. Greenberg Ph.D., is president and chief executive officer of Caliper, a Princeton-based human resources consulting firm. A recognized authority on the relationship between personality and job performance, Dr. Greenberg has spoken widely and written extensively on the subject including articles in The Harvard Business Review, and in his book, What It Takes To Succeed In Sales.

COPYRIGHT 1997 Society for Human Resource Management
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