Addressing Regional Workforce Challenges In Northeastern Arizona
October 7, 2022 Update
After convening tourism and healthcare employers to gain a broad understanding of their current workforce challenges, Local First Arizona (LFA) created and distributed a survey to participating employers in each industry. The results of that survey provided quantitative data that informed LFA more specifically about the depth of the workforce challenges that employers identified during the roundtable discussions.
Equipped with information gathered from both the discussions with employers and the survey, LFA spent the summer of 2022 developing solutions to address some of the top challenges employers identified. LFA created Recruitment and Retention Strategy Guides for the healthcare and tourism industries. Recommendations cover elements like organizational culture, marketing effectively to reach job seekers, and the hiring and onboarding processes. The guides also provide additional resources that employers can consult as they implement new recruitment and retention strategies. The goal is to provide employers with the knowledge and resources to address the things within their control that may be negatively impacting their hiring and retention efforts. While some systemic issues are largely beyond employers’ control, they can improve upon their marketing and hiring practices to increase their chances of finding qualified candidates, and evaluate their internal policies and procedures to look for ways to improve retention.
Where It All Began
Employers in rural Arizona face not only the challenges that come with running a business in any environment but also a host of other challenges unique to rural areas. When it comes to staffing their businesses with qualified employees, rural business owners often face more difficulty recruiting, retaining, and training workers. Bringing employers together for collective conversation is critical for local partners to make informed decisions and provide employers with the resources and guidance they need. Local First Arizona (LFA) partnered with ARIZONA@WORK Northeastern Arizona to convene employers in Gila, Navajo, and Apache Counties to hear directly from them about their most critical current workforce challenges.
LFA facilitated roundtable discussions between employers from two in-demand industries: healthcare and tourism. During these discussions, held in Payson, Show Low, Winslow, and Globe, employers identified several shared workforce pain points.
Healthcare employers consistently expressed that they are struggling to compete with facilities in metro areas of Arizona. Small, rural communities do not offer the same amenities of larger cities. That presents a challenge for rural employers, especially as they try to recruit and retain young adults. Healthcare employers told LFA that they often cannot compete with metro employers when it comes to wages, which makes their other offerings, like benefits, company culture, and work-life balance very important to attracting and keeping talent. However, with rural communities in the region having such a shortage of any available housing, let alone housing that is affordable for the local wage levels, those other benefits are often not enough to attract enough workers to fill open jobs. One employer noted applicants who accept job offers can then back out after being unable to find affordable housing in the area (something LFA continued to hear from employers in several sectors in different rural markets).
Despite obvious differences between the two industries, tourism employers expressed similar sentiments as healthcare employers. Tourism employers who attended the convenings were also finding it incredibly difficult to fill open jobs. While most of the employers said that they were willing to hire people with little to no experience, they were still struggling to find quality applicants who would consistently show up and complete satisfactory work. Turnover is high, in part because employees will leave one business to go work for an employer down the street who offers them an extra dollar an hour. Several employers agreed that they don’t feel like their employees are invested in the work or in their business These employers' perception was that employees don’t see these rural areas as places to start a career that can grow right there locally; they see their current jobs only as stepping stones to entirely different career tracks, often in larger markets.
