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Good staff hard to find in good times

By Jon Springer

With retail chains growing and nationwide unemployment shrinking to a 25-year low, retailers are having a harder job than ever finding staff.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the people who will be needed most between now and the year 2005 are cashiers (562,000 new job opportunities), janitors (559,000), retail salespersons (532,000) and waiters and waitresses (479,000). All four of those fast-growing occupations are fed in abundance by shopping centers and/or retailers. But with unemployment near record lows (in February, 4.7% nationwide), finding candidates to fill those jobs is going to be -- or already is -- a tricky proposition.

But numbers tell only a small part of the story, experts say. Of greater concern to shopping centers and their tenants is the declining quality of the work force. The National Federation of Independent Businesses recently rated labor quality as its second most important problem -- ranking behind taxes, but ahead of issues such as government regulation and competition. For retail stores, which are facing increasing threats from nontraditional retail outlets such as catalogs and the Internet, a bad staff can be worse than a thin one -- and often the two are related.

To combat these problems, developers and retailers are realizing they have to go beyond traditional efforts to find and retain employees. A sign in the store window and an occasional job fair in the common area aren't enough anymore.

"Availability of people and quality of people certainly relate, but I think the main issue for retailers today is quality," said Wayne Snyder, chairman of Kravco Co., a King of Prussia, Pa.-based developer.

"Forget the numbers for a second. In a very competitive retail climate, the one thing that we [shopping centers] have that can differentiate us from other forms of retail is the quality of the sales personnel," he added.

Kravco is among a number of developers to have launched major programs in the last year to attract and train future retail industry employees. Other developers, such as General Growth Properties, Chicago, and Simon DeBartolo Group, Indianapolis, are responding to the staffing crisis by outsourcing recruitment services for their tenants.

Kravco has teamed up with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, American Express Corp. and the National Retail Federation to run a mall-based assessment and training center at Kravco's Court and Plaza at King of Prussia, a 2.9 million-square-foot retail complex outside Philadelphia.

The program, which started in March, offers skills assessment, education, career planning and job placement for applicants, many of whom are expected to join the 5,000 full- or part-time workers at the massive shopping complex.

Potential employees, who can join the program at no cost, train in a 5,000-square-foot office space at the mall. NRF staff work with students, emphasizing math and communications skills, and serving as mentors during in-store training. When students complete the program, they meet the standards adopted by NRF to serve as entry-level retail sales associates. Sales associates currently at the mall also have access to the skills center to upgrade their sales and customer service skills.

"This is a prototype center. We're interested in replicating this center in other centers across the country, not just in malls," said Katherine Mance, vice president of research, education and community affairs for Washington, D.C.-based NRF. "The idea is to deliver the skills standards to retailers in as broad a base as possible."

Since 1992, NRF has been developing skills standards for all retail industry jobs, Ms. Mance explained. Retail skills standards are part of an effort by the U.S. Congress-
appointed National Skills Standard Board to certify workers in all industries, she added.

The training center is needed to maintain the quality of employees and reduce turnover throughout the Court and Plaza at King of Prussia, Mr. Snyder explained. Small retailers without the time, staff or space to properly train employees will especially benefit, he added. "How do you train somebody in a 1,500-square-foot Gymboree store?"

A 1996 mall expansion which added Neiman-Marcus and Nordstrom -- along with thousands of new employees -- resulted in a "food chain" turnover at the mall, Mr. Snyder said.

"Stores at the top, such as Nordstrom, Neiman's and The Gap, which are known as good employers, started picking off the good people from other stores," he explained.

The sales training program will help replenish the supply with quality help for all mall retailers, he said.

In nearby Lancaster, Pa., a regional mall has taken the training center concept a step further. Park City Center, a 1.4 million-square-foot mall, is the site of Lancaster County Academy, a fully accredited high school where at-risk students and former dropouts can earn high school diplomas while working toward careers in retail sales and marketing.

The Academy leases approximately 2,500 square feet of vacant space in the center, which is owned by U.S. Prime Property, and managed by ERE Yarmouth, both of Atlanta. More than 100 students have graduated from the Academy since it began in its current form in 1993.

The school helps Park City Center find staff while developing careers for students who might not otherwise find productive work. The Academy also exists to clear up what a school official calls "a common misconception" about retail industry jobs.

"There's still a real stereotype about what a retail worker is -- that it's not a real career and you can't go anyplace with it, that it's all a dead end," said Rhonda Rumbaugh, service learning/school-to-work coordinator for the Academy. "We try to get people to look beyond that, to the management, buyer and design positions in the industry."

Students ranging in ages from 16 to 43 enroll at the school free of charge, pending passage of an entry exam. They study a curriculum similar to that of any high school -- math, biology, history and English classes -- along with an emphasis on "school-to-work" programs such as internships with various mall merchants.

Two full-time teachers and several part-time workers staff the school, which is funded by nine area school districts and Job Training Partnership Act funds from the federal government.

Around 10% of Academy graduates are currently managers or assistant managers in the mall, and more than half of the current students work there during the holiday season.

"It's been a good source of labor for the mall," Ms. Rumbaugh said.

Students have also worked on class projects that have helped all mall merchants. They plan and run a mall-based job fair and created a ride-share program among mall employees that eased the parking crunch in the center, Ms. Rumbaugh said.

"The Academy has been nothing but a plus for our center," said Sarah Vasquez, CSM, general manager of Park City Center. "We've had calls from malls all over the country asking about it."