KENT KRIEGSHAUSER/The Register-MailMembers of the Carl Sandburg College Students In Free Enterprise group, SIFE, carry boxes of surveys to be mailed from the Galesburg Works office Tuesday afternoon. the questionaires will go to dislocated workers and will be used to help Galesburg Works and GREDA with marketing. Carrying the front box are Stephanie Ballew, left, and Joanne Sandy. Carrying the second container is Bob Stallings, SIFE president.
Survey says ...
Sunday, March 5, 2006
GALESBURG - It's not often economic development and dating are linked."When you want to be attractive to a new partner, you put on your best face," said Joanne Sandy of Galesburg. "We want to get over that old boyfriend that went to Mexico."
Sandy, a 15-year employee at Maytag and now a member of Carl Sandburg College's Students In Free Enterprise organization, wanted to help spearhead a pro-active approach to attracting new businesses to Galesburg that will mesh with the area's evolving work force.
Sandy and former Derby Fabricating employee Bob Stallings, the SIFE president and who like Sandy is majoring in mid-management/marketing at CSC, approached Nick Benedict with the Galesburg Regional Economical Development Association and Mike Haptonstahl with Galesburg Works to find out ways SIFE could be more involved in helping out with economic development efforts.
"We tried to zero in on how to better market the educated work force," said Stallings.
The result of that brainstorm was to put together a survey and distribute it to a number of dislocated workers in the area.
With many members of the work force gaining new skills and going through retraining, SIFE members thought it was important to document how the work force is changing locally.
"We mainly wanted to find a way to give Nick the information that he could use about our newly-educated work force to help market and attract businesses to the Galesburg area," said Sandy.
"We have all these workers that are getting new skills and new training and we wanted to find a more personal way to promote that development," said Benedict. "This is the initial step of what we've come up with."
The SIFE members compiled information and picked the brain of Dave Bevard, peer counselor with the AFL-CIO and former union president representing Maytag workers, to help determine the range of information they wanted from the survey. Once the survey was assembled Benedict and Haptonstahl offered some tweaks. The finished product was put in the mail this week, using Galesburg Works' mailing list of more than 1,600 dislocated workers in the area from Maytag, Butler, Cottonwood, Eagles, Gates, Holm Industries, Derby Fabricating and Derby Industries. The survey was accompanied by metered, return envelopes in hopes the response would be large and valuable.
"We're trying to make it as easy as possible," said Haptonstahl.
The three-page survey, titled "Wanted: Skilled Workers," asks the recipients a host of work force questions relating to manufacturing experience, education level, computer skills and knowledge, healthcare certifications and licenses, transportation and logistics experience, office and administrative skills, and employment status. The surveys are being returned to GREDA, and SIFE members will tabulate the information.
"We are looking to have them all back by mid-March and we will be going through them and analyzing the results," said Benedict. "Once we get the information back we are hoping that we find new avenues to promote our work force and maybe even get some testimonials to put a personal feel to that. This information is coming directly from the source of the labor and we would like to really put that 'come home to Galesburg' type of feel to it."
"It becomes part of our whole marketing package. We've got all that cold hard data that businesses love and need, and they know a good work force exists and there's a good labor environment for them, but we're hoping to identify new opportunities," added Benedict.
If the surveys indicate there's an abundance of workers retraining in a specific field, said Benedict, efforts will be made to promote that work force strength to potential businesses.
"We would like to see businesses come to Galesburg that would utilize all the skills that we're learning," said Sandy.
Stallings said the feedback received from the surveys may open doors to additional communication with dislocated workers pursuing new careers.
"I'm hoping that we have a great response and that we have a lot of work ahead of us," said Benedict.
"We would really like to see the surveys returned because that way these people can take an active role in changing their lives and promoting the work force. We all need to do our part," said Sandy.
