Helping companies, one worker at a time

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Career Resources Group is helping some of Iowa’s largest companies, one employee at a time.

The firm’s five consultants specialize in human resources-related issues and helping companies increase worker productivity, fields in which opportunities are growing as competition forces businesses to operate more leanly and as talented workers search for brighter opportunities and displaced workers look for new jobs. Managers are increasingly finding that the actions, training and knowledge of individual employees are becoming more important factors to revenue and profit growth.

In helping companies wring productivity from their workforces, the consultants at Career Resources are both riding a trend and contributing to it. Productivity rose at an annualized rate of 8 percent rate in the third quarter from the second, the U.S. Department of Labor said earlier this month. Since 1980, the productivity of the average U.S. worker has risen by 56.2 percent, according to W. Michael Cox, chief economist of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

“We help companies manage the human side of change,” said Dick Reasons, one of three partners at Career Resources. Reasons was a former manager at DuPont Co. who ran the chemical giant’s joint venture with Pioneer Hi-Bred International Inc. until DuPont purchased the entire company in 1999. “As managers of firms look at the notion of productivity, there’s a strong focus on performance management. They’re focusing their attention on performers and those who have the skills and will to deliver. There’s less patience for people who aren’t delivering.”

Career Resources, which has eight employees altogether and access to additional expertise through partnerships, was born 10 years ago, the brainchild of Tom Keating, who earlier in his career had been chief executive of a manufacturing company. Earlier this year, Keating was looking for a way to exit the business. Three people stepped in to buy it, including two who worked at the company: L.T. Smith, a former executive at MidAmerican Energy Co., and Robert Wigger, who previously had run the human resources department at NationsBank Iowa, which today is part of Bank of America.

Initially, the company specialized in career consulting and later developed expertise in other areas, including teaching managers how to better coach their workers and developing tools to help companies attract the right workers for the jobs available.

Transition-related issues still account for the bulk of Career Resources’ revenues, though the company has seen a decline in that business in recent months, a sign of an improving economy as the number of people without jobs declines, Reasons said.   Clients include Pioneer, Principal Financial Group Inc., American Republic Insurance Co. and GuideOne Insurance.

When it comes to training, Career Resources’ top customers are companies that have between 250 and 2,000 workers.

Traditional employee training doesn’t work, according to Reasons, especially at small and medium-sized companies, because the lessons taught are too theoretical and because those firms generally can’t afford to have their workers spend days in classrooms rather than on the job. It also fails because it results in a disconnect between what employees are taught and what their managers think they’re capable of, he said said.

“The boss doesn’t know what I learned, and he doesn’t have a clue what to do to bring that learning into the job,” Reasons said.

Instead, Career Resources consultants offer training in half-day increments and spend a great deal of time on role-playing in small groups. Groups meet in a series of one-hour sessions that may be stretched over a period of weeks. Each role-playing session introduces more complex situations.

“It’s like peeling an onion in reverse,” Reasons said. “We start with the simplest lessons and add more difficult layers as we go on.”

At the same time, the consultants are educating managers about the training that is taking place and helping them find ways to apply the education to specific jobs.

Using such a method helps boost employee loyalty, Reasons said, because it creates a more supportive workplace and bridges gaps between managers and their staffs. The biggest reason workers quit their jobs is that they have a difficult relationship with a direct supervisor, he said.

“Everything is focused on what the company is trying to accomplish,” Reasons said. “If you’re driving that, you’re going to be driving revenue and customer satisfaction and productivity.”