Twenty-five organizations from throughout the state were presented Arkansas Governor’s Quality Awards by Governor Asa Hutchinson during the 24^th Annual Awards Celebration for the Governor’s Quality Award Program on Thursday evening, September 13^th at the Marriott Hotel in downtown Little Rock.

More than 350 business and civic leaders from throughout Arkansas attended the celebration.

J.V. Manufacturing, Inc. of Springdale, Springdale Water Utilities, Unity Health – White County Medical Center of Searcy, and Washington Regional Medical Center of Fayetteville took top honors in receiving the Governor’s Award for Performance Excellence.

The Achievement Level Award was presented to North Arkansas Regional Medical Center of Harrison and Unity Health Harris Medical Center of Newport.

Organizations receiving the Commitment Level Award were: A & A Fire and Safety Company of Cabot, Allen Engineering Corporation of Paragould, Arkansas Department of Labor of Little Rock, Briarwood Nursing & Rehab of Little Rock, and Salem Place Nursing and Rehabilitation of Conway.

Organizations receiving the Challenge Level Award were: Arkansas Department of Career Education of Little Rock; Ash Flat Healthcare and Rehabilitation; Avenir Memory Care at Fayetteville; Avenir Memory Care at Little Rock; Highland Court, A Rehabilitation & Resident Care Facility of Marshall; Mercy Crest Assisted Living of Barling; Northwest Health of Springdale; Premier Health and Rehabilitation Center of North Little Rock; Saline County Emergency Communications of Benton; Seven Springs Rehabilitation and Health Center of Heber Springs; Southridge Village Nursing and Rehab of Heber Springs; Summit Health and Rehabilitation Center of Taylor; Valley Springs Rehabilitation and Health Center of Van Buren, and Window Mart, Inc. of Royal.

The awards ceremony includes four award levels of Performance Excellence (in descending order of qualifications): the Governor’s Award, the Achievement Award, the Commitment Award, and the Challenge Award. As well as the recognition, recipients receive an in-depth evaluation of their management systems and a written feedback report citing strengths and areas for improvement.

The goal of the Governor’s Quality Award Program is to encourage Arkansas organizations to engage in continuous quality improvement, which leads to performance excellence, and to provide significant recognition to those organizations. Created as a not-for-profit organization, the program is dedicated to assist in building a strong infrastructure for Arkansas businesses. That dedication is reflected in the program’s vision to be a catalyst for excellence in organizational performance. The Governor’s Quality Award program partners with the Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce.

The Chairman of the Board of the Governor’s Quality Award program is Myla Petree, NEMA plant manager, ABB. Organizations and companies interested in participating in the program should contact Governor’s Quality Award Executive Director Sue Weatter with the Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce by calling 501-372-2222 or go to www.arkansas-quality.org.

 

 

 

by Dwain Hebda – Arkansas Money & Politics

There’s no quicker route to the truth than through Randy Zook’s office at the Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce.

As President and CEO of the organization, he’s a wellhead of information and anecdotes about what’s going on in the state’s business community from one end to the other. Not only that, he’s committed to the cause of economic progress in the Natural State, enough to call things like he sees them.

“We are doing some very good things [but] facts can be brutal,” he says, flatly. “You have to start with the facts, and the facts are that we have enormous room to improve.”

Zook is no mere curmudgeon; he’s quick to point out that Arkansas’ economy is enjoying a spate of prosperity and optimism it hasn’t seen in a while. He readily hands out credit to the governor and state legislators who have helped make this happen. He shares at will the numerous individual success stories of companies statewide doing interesting, innovative things.

But all that doesn’t undo the systemic issues rotting the state’s current and future workforce from within and fundamentally crippling Arkansas’ ability to attract people from elsewhere. As much as lower taxes or access to capital, education is what will determine whether Arkansas business realizes its potential, says Zook.

“The fundamental, significant improvement we need is better performance by the public school system, the K-12 system,” Zook says. “The K-12 system in many parts of Arkansas is simply not doing an adequate job of educating our children. This is widespread across the state.

“There are many really fine, excellent, high-performing school districts,” he adds. “But there are way too many — I hate to use the word failing, but it’s hard not to — low-performing, inadequate results being achieved in many school districts. That needs to change and change quickly.”

The Arkansas Department of Education reports the state’s high school graduation rate for 2017 was just under 88 percent, but an alarming number of districts ranked in the 70th percentile or lower. Notable in this group are Pine Bluff School District (66 percent), Hot Springs School District (68 percent), North Little Rock School District (73 percent) and Pulaski County Special School District (78 percent). The state’s largest school district, Little Rock, graduated slightly more than 80 percent of its high school students last year, according to the report card.

U.S. News and World Report’s most recent rankings also reinforce Zook’s argument. The survey ranked Arkansas 42nd overall on education and worse on individual measurements, including K-12 math scores (44th), K-12 reading scores (45th), college readiness (47th) and attainment (47th). And despite having some of the more affordable tuition in the nation (16th), Arkansas ranks a dismal 49th in educational attainment among 25-year-olds and older.

All of this negatively impacts the ability of employers to secure quality workers to support their growth and spur innovation, Zook says.

“We have way too many kids graduating high school who really are not prepared,” Zook says. “They can’t read at a ninth-grade or tenth-grade level. They can’t do reasonable levels of math, which is vital in a business setting to understanding anything, being able to measure things, being able to understand the relationships of things. Those are critical thinking skills that are absolutely required in today’s work world.”

Individuals who do get to the post-secondary level face additional challenges, Zook adds, especially in the kind of skilled training so desperately needed throughout the state’s manufacturing and construction sectors.

“These are jobs that have in-demand skills that pay well; it’s everything from diesel mechanics to CNC machine operators to computer programmers and systems analysts and all those kinds of high-tech positions, to say nothing of the whole health-care world. That’s where we’re just exploding in demand,” Zook says. “We’re behind the curve on every one of these fields, and we need to accelerate the pace of improvement and change.

“When you go through a diesel technology course at a [post-secondary] institution, you should expect to be trained on current-generation equipment, not stuff that’s 20 or 30 years old and completely out of date and a waste of time,” he adds. “If you’re going through a nursing program, you should expect adequate instruction in current-generation technology. If you’re learning how to run a CNC machine tooling operation, then you ought to be operating on current-generation equipment.”

The educational deficiencies in Arkansas are a substantial drag on a business climate that’s ripe for acceleration. Even in areas of high opportunity — such as the entrepreneurial community — optimism is being tempered by lack of workforce.

“A lot of young people want to be their own bosses; that’s good,” Zook says. “That’s exactly what we want young people doing, is taking chances and understanding reasonable risk and being willing to sail into that and start and grow businesses. That’s what drives the economy: the desire to create something and run your own business.

“So those are very good things and we’ve got all the right conditions in Arkansas and those conditions are getting better,” he adds. “We’ve had corporate tax reform on a national level. We’ve had reasonable regulation improvement and regulatory improvement at a national level as well as the state level. Everything’s green lights and opportunity is abundant.

“That’s why the K-12 school system is so fundamental to everything we do. In a given community, that’s where it starts and frankly, that’s where it ends.”

Legislative measures also tie into this picture, Zook says, and the next session will see several issues that impact both the state’s ability to prepare the citizenry for success and the funding required to pay for it.

“The first [issue] is going to be the governor’s commitment to continuing to reduce income taxes, both individual as well as corporate,” he says. “We’re a high-tax state, and that’s the tension. We do need revenue to support all these things we provide, especially K-12 education, higher ed, job training, all those kinds of things.

“That’s pretty costly and it makes it even more imperative that the institutions be up-to-date and accountable to providing the absolute best results possible with the current resources.”

At this, a cock-eyed grin springs up one side of Zook’s face.

“It’s a chicken-and-egg thing. If you develop the talent, the businesses will gravitate toward the talent,” he says. “I heard an interesting thing on a trip to Virginia looking at similar subjects. At a conference there, one of their community leaders said, ‘Gosh, if we train and educate these kids on all these sophisticated skills and everything, a bunch of them are going to move off and what will we have done? Just spent a lot of money.’

“It was kind of quiet for a minute and finally one other fella spoke up and said, ‘Well, what if we don’t train them and they stay?’”

Initial Ruling Simply A Step In The Process LITTLE ROCK – Pulaski County Circuit Judge Mackey Pierce issued a ruling Thursday, September 6th stating that the Secretary of State shall not count votes on Issue 1. That ruling was appealed Friday morning, September 7th to the Arkansas Supreme Court in an effort to preserve Arkansans’ ability to cast their ballot on civil justice reform as referred by the Arkansas General Assembly. “As previously stated, regardless of how the judge ruled today, this issue is going to ultimately be decided by the Arkansas Supreme Court. Because this case began in the lower court, today’s ruling is simply a step in the process of presenting the case to the Supreme Court. A large majority of the Arkansas General Assembly appropriately referred Issue 1 to the Arkansas voters,” said Carl Vogelpohl, campaign manager for Arkansans for Jobs and Justice. “I am confident that our Supreme Court will ultimately let the people decide. Our broad-based coalition expect to fight the trial lawyers all the way to November to pass Issue 1 so that Arkansas can compete to grow jobs and recruit doctors to care for Arkansas families.” About Arkansas for Jobs and Justice Arkansans for Jobs and Justice is a broad coalition representing a diverse group of Arkansans that have joined together to advocate for voter approval of Issue 1 to provide commonsense legal reforms to help make Arkansas more competitive with surrounding states and better protect every Arkansan. For more information visit YesOn1.com

LITTLE ROCK – More than 60 individuals from across Arkansas have been selected for Leadership Arkansas Class XIII, a program operated by the Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce / Associated Industries of Arkansas.  The Underwriting Sponsor for the 2018-2019 Leadership Arkansas program is The Citizens Bank of Batesville.  The Presenting Sponsor is ARcare. Statewide Program Sponsors are Electric Cooperatives of Arkansas, Entergy Arkansas,  Farm Credit Services of Arkansas, Nucor Steel Arkansas, Southwest Power Pool, and Walmart. The members of Class XIII are:

Ashten Adamson – Riceland Foods

Dina Bates – Arkansas Farm Bureau Insurance

Dan Beranek – McClelland Consulting Engineers

Len Blaylock – Bradley County Economic Development Commission

Darrell Boggs – Arkansas811

Jordan Burgess – Delta Dental of Arkansas

Col. Tom Crimmins – Arkansas Air National Guard

Chip Culpepper, II – Mangan Holcomb Partners

Hollie Cummings – Walmart, Inc.

Kerrie Diaz – Snyder Environmental

Chase Dugger – JCD Consulting Services

Bailey Faulkner – Ozark Mission Project, Inc.

Rebekah Fincher – Conway Regional Health System

William Fletcher – Kinco Constructors, LLC

Kent Fonvielle – MISO

Kristin Garner – Legacy Equipment, LLC

Pody Gay – Museum of Discovery

Lisa Gazaway – Gazaway & White Real Estate

Katherine Gentry – Arkansas Economic Development Commission

Anna Beth Gorman – Women’s Foundation of Arkansas

Chris Gosnell – Farmers Bank and Trust

Michael Goswami – Rose Law Firm

Adrienne Griffis – Dover Dixon Horne, PLLC

Jordan Hale – University of Arkansas-Fort Smith

Burt Hicks – Simmons First Investment Group, Inc.

Michael Hoggard – Citizens Bank

Kendra Jones – Tyson Foods, Inc.

David Kelley – Southwest Power Pool

Kelsey Kelton – Arkansas Economic Development Commission

Chris Knollmeyer – Ben E. Keith Foods

Victoria Lamb – Electric Cooperatives of Arkansas

Laura Landreaux – Entergy Arkansas, Inc.

Sarah Lane – Citizens Bank

Margot Lemaster – Northwest Arkansas Council

Gregg Long – Crafton Tull

Jason ‘J.D.’ McGehee – Office of Congressman Bruce Westerman

Jim McGill – SFI

Vanessa Moody – Office of Senator Tom Cotton

Jaimie Moss – Wright, Lindsey & Jennings LLLP

Bob Mouser – Ritter Communications, Inc.

Dr. Keegan Nichols – Arkansas Tech University

Jason Orlicek – Signature Bank of Arkansas

Meredith Pettigrew – Mitchell Communications

Mindy Pipkin – University of Central Arkansas

Dawn Prasifka – Girl Scouts (Diamonds of Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas)

Gregg Ratliff – ARcare

Matt Rickford – Nabholz Construction

Anna Roepcke – Batesville School District

Reggie Rose – Simmons Bank

Jennifer Schalow – Craft Beer Cellar

Payton Smith – Metro Disaster Specialists

Bill Solleder – Visit Hot Springs

Luke Story – Arkansas Broadcasters Association

Nacole Sweeney – City of Harrisburg

Hilary Trudell – Clinton School of Public Service

Kevin Weldon – Nucor Steel Arkansas

Lea Whitlock – Arkansas Community Foundation

Lawren Wilcox – Garver, LLC

Temeka Williams – Arkansas Hunger Relief Alliance

Emily Wood – University of Arkansas

Amiee York – Black Hills Energy

Co-Chairs for Leadership Arkansas Class XIII are Jill Dabbs, Mayor of the City of Bryant, and Mark Scott, Senior Communications Manager, Walmart, Inc.

The Vice Chair for Leadership Arkansas Class XIII is Kim Lane, CEO of Conductor, of Conway.

Leadership Arkansas Class XIII launches its activities on Sunday, September 30 at the Red Apple Inn in Heber Springs.

The mission of Leadership Arkansas is to challenge, inform, inspire and engage current and future business and civic leaders to enhance the economies of – and the communities within – the state of Arkansas.  Leadership Arkansas’s vision is to work to build a strong and vibrant state by training skilled community leaders to recognize and capitalize on opportunities, motivate others to act to strengthen regions and communities, serve as ambassador for the potential and growth of the state, and promote the election and appointment of officials who understand the diverse aspects leading to growth of Arkansas.

Leadership Arkansas comprises a nine-month class program consisting of nine multi-day sessions held in different locations throughout the state. The sessions feature Arkansas leaders who represent a wide geographic base and who have diverse backgrounds and vocations.  The members are given broad exposure to the many social, political, geographic and environmental complexities of the state; on-site demonstrations and tours; unique cultural experiences; insight into the people, places and history that influence public policies; and fun and casual settings which foster new relationships and camaraderie.

Leadership Arkansas has educated and engaged over 600 alumni since its inception in 2005 and represent nearly every Arkansas county.

 

By Wesley Brown, Talk Business & Politics

Arkansas’ top job recruiters empathized with manufacturing industry leaders recently concerning the growing U.S. jobs skills gap that is hurting productivity and leaving thousands of key positions unfilled just as the economy picks up steam.

Arkansas Economic Development Director Mike Preston and Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce President Randy Zook shared those concerns during the Arkansas Manufacturer’s Executive Roundtable panel discussion held Aug. 22 in downtown Little Rock at the Statehouse Convention Center. The two-day event, sponsored by industrial technology giant Rockwell Automation, brought together dozens of manufacturing and production professionals, equipment builders and system integrators together to discuss and display new industry innovations.

In his brief speech, Preston first shared his normal economic development pitch about how the state’s manufacturing sector has been the leading edge of nearly 391 economic development deals that AEDC has closed since Gov. Asa Hutchinson took office in January 2015. Preston then told the roomful of manufacturing executives those same agreements with global companies that have boosted the state’s economy by $8.3 billion have also helped to max out the state’s labor pool with a near-record jobless rate of 3.7% and a peak civilian workforce at more than 1.2 million workers.

“So, we are literally at full employment. You want a job in Arkansas right now, you can have a job,” said Arkansas’ chief job recruiter. “Our problem is actually finding the people who want jobs to come in and fill them – that’s our biggest challenge to get through right now.”

Preston, who was headed to Washington, D.C. after Wednesday’s event to meet with Trump administration officials to discuss the impact of ongoing trade tariffs on Arkansas companies, said AEDC is prepared to compete with other states and countries for good-paying manufacturing jobs but must find answers to help Arkansas employers fill key jobs.

Highlighting an oft-cited 2015 study by Deloitte Consulting and the Manufacturing Institute that predicts nearly 3.5 million manufacturing positions will be needed by 2025 to keep pace with the nation’s ongoing economic expansion, Preston challenged the industry executives to invest in new technologies and better worker training and education to help Arkansas get its share of those jobs.

“When you look at it, for every one dollar spent in manufacturing, another $1.40 is added into our economy. In fact, (manufacturing) has the highest multiplier effect of any economic sector, so when we are evaluating an economic prospect and we are doing our … cost benefit analysis, we look at things like that,” said Preston, adding that manufacturing contributes $2.7 billion to the state economy annually.

On the other hand, Preston said the 2015 Deloitte report also forecasts that 2 million manufacturing jobs will likely go unfilled over the next decade if Arkansas and the rest of the U.S. don’t solve the job skills gap.

“Arkansas has to keep pace, better yet Arkansas must lead in this if we want to be able to fill those jobs,” said Preston, mentioning Gov. Hutchinson’s workforce training, computer coding, data analytics and technology-related job initiatives.

BUSINESSES ARE ‘CONSTRAINED’
Following Preston’s exit to catch his flight to the nation’s capital, Zook continued the same “jobs unfilled” theme by sharing several anecdotes he’s culled from many of the chamber’s 1,200 members across the state.

“It has gotten to the point where businesses are not just scared, they are not just challenged — they are constrained by the lack of available talent and people that are willing, able and ready to work at the right places at the right time,” said Zook, who is also the chief executive for the chamber-affiliated Associated Industries of Arkansas, Inc.

The state chamber CEO told manufacturing leaders from across the region there was now over 60,000 “open jobs” in Arkansas that need to be filled. Of that total, 30,000 are related to normal worker turnover and attrition – leaving another 30,000 vacant positions that are tied directly to lack of skills or no work history, education and failed drug tests.

“How in the world do you deal with that?” Zook asked rhetorically. “We’re trying our best, along with many good solid businesses across the state, to sound this cry about how difficult this challenge is and what it means, and how it translates into slower economic growth …”

Later in his speech, Zook told a few anecdotal stories of manufacturers investing to build new or expand older factories in Arkansas that have been unable to meet job recruitment thresholds necessary to reach full production capacity or meet customer demand. For example, Zook said a South Arkansas lumber company that invested more than $75 million to bring a shuttered sawmill back online has been unable to reach its AEDC incentive commitment to hire 130 people at an average annual salary of $60,000. On a tour of the new facility, Zook said the plant manager said the company has topped out at 112 workers with “help wanted” signs everywhere to fill the remaining 18 jobs.

“We screened 1,000 people and we can’t get past 112,” Zook said, repeating his recent conversation. The longtime chamber executive said most of those job applicants were eliminated as potential hires because of failed drug tests, no work history, long periods of unemployment, and lack of 9th-grade level reading skills needed to operate factory machinery.

“Those are our three biggest challenges. Other than that, it is fantastic,” Zook said as the crowd roared with laughter.

Besides Preston’s and Zook’s stories, two Rockwell Automation executives and Ken Stuckey with Pace Industries also served on the roundtable and gave presentations that offered a sobering look at the industry’s struggles across Arkansas to find workers to fill key positions in manufacturing and other key sectors.

INTELLECTUAL KNOWLEDGE
Tom Bradbury, Rockwell’s regional vice president of sales and services, said his company has undergone a decade-long transformation to prepare for the “connected” economy and innovations that most manufacturers are now facing.

“I think in the industrial operations space over the next five years, we will see more radical change happening than we did in the last 20 years,” said Bradbury, citing the workforce challenges, global competitiveness, risk security and implementation of network of connected devices and technologies known as the Internet of Things, or IoT. “This is a significant thing to think about because change does come quick in our space.”

Bradbury said Rockwell’s transformation began after the world’s largest company dedicated to industrial automation and technology completed several key international acquisitions more than a decade ago. That buying spree left the company with dozens of locations and manufacturing plants across the globe with disparate technologies and operating systems, he said. Today, the Milwaukee-based industrial conglomerate now has more than 22,000 employees who work at more than 22 fully-integrate plants across the globe. Bradbury said that companywide transformation has helped the company improve efficiencies and productivity by 4 to 5% each year.

And although Rockwell helps other companies develop, implement and support plant-wide automated systems that improve performance and productivity, Bradbury said the industrial automation giant still faces the same challenges of its customers and competitors in finding and keeping high-skilled workers on payroll. To highlight that dilemma, Bradbury said 65% of the employees who report to him are near or at retirement age. In compounding that problem, the Rockwell exec said two of his longtime “boomer” employees recently announced plans to retire by year’s end.

“That hit me square in the forehead this week. I have two employees that announced their retirement. That’s 70 years of intellectual knowledge walking out the door, so I’ve got to figure out how to replace that,” said Bradbury, joking that those workers will be replaced by a millennial “who has never seen a corded phone and probably doesn’t known what a typewriter is.”

“Yet, that is who is going to replace this person who’s just left with 36 years-plus experience,” he said.

The Arkansas manufacturing conference comes on the heels of a St. Louis Federal Reserve report released last week that predicts 60% of the jobs across the expansive 8th District could face automation over the next 20 years. The St. Louis Fed District stretches over all or parts of seven Midwest states, including Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee.