At MetroHealth, it’s all about the culture of valuing, respecting and caring for everyone. This philosophy is how they attract and retain the very best employees. It’s why they raised salaries instead of furloughing or laying off employees when COVID-19 first hit. Why they host a Transgender Job Fair every year. Why they deliver high-impact virtual and e-learning training. Why they collaborate with the Cuyahoga County Board of Developmental Disabilities and Project SEARCH to train and hire employees. And why they created Military Veterans, Christian Fellowship, Emerging Leaders and other Employee Business Resource Groups. It’s also why they offer benefits that help their families stay healthy – physically, emotionally and financially. This includes health care with zero co-pays, a robust employee assistance program, tuition reimbursement and an Ohio Public Employee Retirement System pension.

MetroHealth also reaches out to their neighbors to expose them to, and help them prepare for, jobs at MetroHealth. This includes collaborating with the Spanish American Committee to start the Latino Construction Program and with Tri-C to provide job and career training through the Tri-C MetroHealth Access Center. It also includes partnering with the Cleveland Metropolitan School District on the Lincoln-West School of Science & Health inside their hospital, which allows them to easily provide mentors and career training to high school students.

And they listen to what their employees need – and provide it. After the murder of George Floyd, MetroHealth organized focus groups to hear employees’ concerns and increase understanding. During COVID, they provided meals, massages, subsidized child care and monthly appreciation gifts to lift employees’ spirits and show gratitude.

Finally, MetroHealth is doing what so many organizations avoid: partnering with their competitors, with other area health systems to remove barriers and provide training. The result: more good-paying entry-level jobs for low-income workers.

Ohio businesses have been challenged by drops in demand, raw material shortages, delays, and price hikes. Chief among these concerns is an increasingly tough talent market. Novagard, a local manufacturer of expertly engineered silicones, foam, hybrid sealants and coatings, has molded their solutions around the values of resilience, agility, courage, empathy, and respect.

These values inspired Novagard to avoid layoffs in early 2020 with rolling furloughs while federal unemployment was in effect. By that summer, though, Novagard was looking to significantly grow their workforce. The company used a mixture of strategic pay increases, added employee perks, like free Friday Food Trucks, and skills development opportunities to show appreciation for their existing employees while marketing themselves to new talent. To keep workers prepped and ready for advancement, they plan to partner with Skill Up to guide training plans for new technology coming in with help from a JobsOhio grant. With more positions to fill, they are in early discussions with Custom Rubber Corporation to approach local high schools and introduce students to careers in manufacturing. Since Summer 2020, these strategies have helped Novagard onboard more than 40 employees.

In order to retain and attract the best employees, ARM TruckCorp LLC – a state-of-the-art OEM manufacturing and heavy truck upfit facility that makes specialty equipment such as snowplows, heavy dump trucks and leaf and debris vacuums – put a plan in action to ensure knowledge transfer and training. They are exploring
on-the-job-training opportunities as well as creating a tuition reimbursement program to upskill certain employees with shop floor experience into engineering tech positions. They also created a supervisor training program delivered in house and custom to their needs. While they have increased wages, staying competitive remains a constant priority. As a result,they implemented profit sharing, as well as robust benefits packages. They hire largely by referrals, and this has served them well. They have a low turnover rate for the industry at approximately 17%.

MCPc, headquartered in Cleveland, OH, is an industry-leading managed endpoint computing, technology logistics, asset management, and sustainability organization that provides a proven, robust end-to-end lifecycle management protocol. Fortress Security Risk Management, a Division of MCPc, exists to help protect clients from the scourge of cybercrime. Fortress’ comprehensive, holistic, and integrated security services help organizations dramatically improve their security resilience. Both organizations have been working hard to find, train, and retain talent here in Northeast Ohio. MCPc has partnered with the Cleveland Metropolitan School District School of One internship program to provide work-based learning opportunities where students can obtain full-time jobs after graduation at their facility in Old Brooklyn, OH. Additionally, MCPc provided a yearlong Leadership Training course for all managers and supervisors ending in July 2021.

Furthermore, a new role was created at MCPc for a Director of Community & Employee Engagement and established a supportive Engagement Team to target areas on employee relations, career paths, development objectives, and increases in compensation. At the same time, Fortress SRM is working with Lorain County Community College (LCCC) to create cybersecurity internships. Currently, Fortress SRM has three LCCC students interning in their Security Operations Center. Fortress SRM also recently adopted an online training program that allows Managers to assign employees training focused on career development and professional growth.

Park Place Technologies, a global IT infrastructure services and solutions provider, has established relationships with many local universities, including Case Western Reserve University and John Carroll University to help fill their pipeline. The company works directly with professors to recruit and also share future talent needs and the emerging skill sets needed to fill these needs. Park Place also forms strong relationships between recruiters and hiring managers to dive deep into the jobs they recruit for, starting with one-on-one discussions to determine the KSAs needed for each job. The company’s recruiting strategy includes a broad spectrum of recruiting sources to optimize their visibility to diverse candidate pools and a dedicated resource that focuses solely on sourcing across campuses. Leveraging career fairs; company sponsored meet and greets and phone screens to communicate unique benefits that they offer are other strategies they deploy. Park Place finds that one of the most successful retention tactics is that their people enjoy working together by ensuring each candidate is a fit for the organization and that Park Place is a fit for the candidate.

Employees are provided multiple platforms to communicate their feedback on company culture. In their first year of hire, new employees take a series of employee engagement surveys to assess the onboarding process and participate in at least a yearly survey for the rest of their time at the company. Park Place is a fast-paced environment and while they work hard to accomplish their goals, they also value balance. From onsite yoga classes at lunch, gyms, mammograms, skin checks and flu shots, their employees are able to prioritize their health and their work.