Kenosha business leaders go back to school

KABA intimately involved in education
Kenosha County businesses are working together to help ensure the availability of an educated, flexible workforce.
Initiatives of the Kenosha Area Business Alliance (KABA) help county businesses train their existing workforces, build ties to vocational schools and improve the performance of children in elementary schools.
Some of KABA’s efforts — such as the High Skill Students program which presses high school students from local vocational schools Lakeview Technical Academy and Indian Trail Academy into service in computer, manufacturing, foreign language and other positions — are plainly attempts to help members meet short-term needs. The organization also surveys members to find out what skills their current employees need to learn — and then creates a curriculum and hires trainers to offer cost-effective training solutions.
KABA’s employee training programs are aimed at small businesses that might not have the resources available to train employees internally in recent software programs, forklift operation and supervisory skills. But even a larger firm such as Cherry Electric, which employs 500 in Kenosha and in Waukegan, Ill., can benefit from KABA training.
Bob Terwall, vice president of Cherry Manufacturing and incoming KABA board chairman, credits the association’s efforts for attracting Cherry four years ago from south of the Illinois border. Terwall said the firm coveted the Kenosha County workforce, but had trouble getting Wisconsinites to cross the “cheddar curtain” to Illinois for work.
“KABA does supervisory development stuff, a lot of safety-related stuff, and forklift driving classes,” Terwall said. “A while ago they brought the Disney Institute in here for customer-service-related training. Any one of us — we can’t afford to develop those curricula. But they put these general curricula on — the whole community is able to access them in a cost-effective way — everything from classes on new tax laws to employee relations laws to basic skills. They do a nice job of informing us and promoting what it is that they’ve got going.”
The KABA training options can help companies such as Cherry cross a growing skills gap in the workforce, Terwall said.
“I would say there is a real need for the kind of training the KABA and others deliver,” Terwall said. “There isn’t a ready supply of fully capable, hit-the-street-running kinds of new hires. It’s probably gotten a little better lately, which I think has more to do with the fact that there are some good people out of work for the first time in a while.”
Terwall said math and science are core skills lacking in new recruits. Cherry manufactures switching components that go into other products — from computer keyboards to shift assemblies on Harley-Davidson motorcycles to dishwasher doors. Because products are manufactured to very exacting measures using automated production lines, employees must be able to understand complex written instructions and get the computer-driven equipment to bend to their wills.
Recruiting quality recent grads is a challenge. To that end, Cherry employees are active in the school system — and vice versa, according to Terwall.
“Next week we are going to have an elementary principal live with us in an externship,” Terwall said. “We have participants in internships from the tech academies here — including Lakeview Tech Academy. Our director of engineering and technology sits on the Site Council. We donate PCs to the academy and other schools when they serve their useful life in our engineering department.”
But Terwall said additional education is still necessary to keep employees productive in a changing environment.
“We find a need to grow our people here in basic math as it relates to the application of statistical process controls,” Terwall said. “The days are long gone when you brought strong hands and a healthy back to the job. Most people are running PCs at their workstations. There is an elevated set of skills required. We have found the need to help ourselves — the product we bring to our process is either material or labor — and the labor product is deficient in math skills.”
“We are very active in terms of trying to assist employers to upgrade skills of employees,” KABA President John Bechler said. “We work with the school system on things like youth apprenticeship and co-op programs. If you look at Racine, they have Racine Area Manufacturers and Commerce and Racine Development Corp., but they are not involved to the extent we are. If you look at our mission, we say that making sure that our children graduate from high school and having maximum employment is key.”
But some elements of KABA’s educational focus do not deliver immediate benefits to business — and some seem to be almost completely philanthropic.
“We help businesses form partnerships with schools,” Bechler said. “Teachers go into the work setting — and do career exploration in terms of career days with the schools. There is also our mentorship program that serves kids at risk in grades three through five. We have 180 business people mentoring students right now.
Terwall said mentoring is the right thing to do, but doesn’t give much back to participating businesses.
“Mentoring is perhaps the most altruistic program we support,” Terwall said. “These are third graders when they start, and it is pretty unclear whether they are going to grow up into engineers and want to work for Cherry Corporation. They are at-risk kids — at an age where it easier to get to them. It seems to be a pretty effective program. My wife is a mentor — and is just releasing her first student — she’s felt like she’s made a real difference in this kid’s life.”
Terwall encourages his employees to participate as mentors. Cherry human resources director Nancy Goralski, like Terwall’s wife, is just completing her three-year term of mentoring with her student, Charlie.
“I’ve been doing it now for three years,” Goralski said. “I got in it through KABA’s program getting businesses and people in business to help mentor children who are less fortunate — who might have self esteem issues, social issues. You start with them in the third grade and mentor them through fifth grade.”
Great pains are taken to protect children from the wrong type of influence and to monitor students’ progress, according to Goralski.
“They do background checks,” Goralski said. “And you meet with the school and KABA and talk about the students you are going to get. Then once a week meet with your student, work on academic things, talk and help them do projects.”
Goralski said she sees the program generating tangible benefits for the community — and her student.
“We have to get them interested and keep them interested in school so they do not drop out,” Goralski said. “Some of them are from single-parent families or very low-income families where both parents work at night. They go home to an empty house and have to be motivated to do their schoolwork. Having another adult in their livees can keep them on track.
But it is the benefits she has seen accruing to her own student that mean the most for Goralski.
“My student — Charlie — is a wonderful little boy,” Goralski said. “I started with him when he was in third grade and he just finished his fifth grade year. I’ve witnessed that he has a much higher level of self-esteem. I have learned through his parents and teachers that he is more centered on wanting to do well in school. I think his social skills have come a long way as well. Personally, just seeing Charlie grow has been a wonderful experience. When you have worked on something with him and all of a sudden he gets it — when you ask him to explain back what he has read, he is picking up on it more — it is very fulfilling.”
The mentoring program does not encourage mentors to spend time with their students apart from the in-school mentoring sessions, but as the three-year official relationship comes to a close, Goralski said she will maintain the connection.
“I’ve really become good friends with this little boy,” Goralski said. “I have started doing things outside of work with Charlie. They don’t encourage you to do that. He has done some things with my son and me.”
As a human resources professional, Goralski does not think her investment in effort and company time will ever come back to Cherry Corporation.
“I think it’s businesses’ responsibility to get involved in the community — not from the standpoint of what can they get out of it — but what can I give back to the community,” Goralski said. “I don’t know if they will ever become employees. But I know that, like me, they will be better off for the experience.”
Aug. 3, 2001 Small Business Times, Milwaukee