What should we expect of employers that get public money to hire and train?

Why and how to start a conversation with employers using government money, guest starring owl pendants and carved fruit.

Real quick.

I really appreciate your readership of JOBS THAT WORK. I’m doing a midyear reader survey before we go into a very, very busy few weeks, and I would love it if I could get your feedback. It will help me shape what content you see here, where you see it, and how you see it.

The issue.

What employers are the best investments for workforce training incentive dollars?

A hypothetical.

Let’s imagine two companies. One is a medium-sized-ish business named Owlco that makes customizable owl pendants through decent-paying craft and manufacturing work. To make this hypothetical more relatable, the other is a bastion of American business—Edible Arrangements.¹

So Edible (the big company) and Owlco (the medium company) both need skilled labor. Edible Arrangements because it’s really struggling to fill out its ranks of heart-shaped pineapple carvers. Owlco because it’s looking to expand into the lucrative world of duck pendants with braids made from hemp.

Edible Arrangements just doesn’t feel like the people who are out there to hire today are qualified. Can some of them make little kitty cat heads out of strawberries? Impeccably. Could that skillset cross into carving heart-shaped pineapples? It’s been theorized.

But it’s also not The Edible Arrangements Way. This is an empire built on chocolate-dipped strawberries and melon shaped like flowers. Even if it’s struggling to find people to do the work, it should not have to settle for anything less than those who carve the finest of pineapple hearts. Here. Now. Today.

Meanwhile, Owlco is still operating out of startup mode, even if it’s very much not one anymore. It’s not too far from its job interviews being “Can you start in the next half hour?” and “Can you bring your own folding table?” The company’s founders don’t want to go back to that—some of those early owl pendants were gnarly—and it would like to hire people who want to be here and stay for awhile. That’s been hard. They have seen enough to think that maybe they need a more developed hiring process and they’re open to training on the job.

Apprenticeships? Skills-based hiring? Hiring only people named Greg, regardless of gender? Owlco’s leaders are up for anything, really, so long as it works and helps them move into the hemp duck pendants that are increasingly popular on Center-Left Golfer Girl TikTok and fill out the backlogs on owls from those apocalyptic crypto bros really into “transhoomanism.”²

Enter the government. It has money and it would like to give it to employers to do workforce stuff, and its political leaders would like to discuss that workforce stuff in association with the phrases “created jobs.” Credibly, even.

The government, just like any other funder, would like to ensure that it has a good partner. This agency has seen too many employers take their money, hire workers for crap wages, then shrug off whatever structures they put up to get the money once the project is through.

So which is the best employer to invest in? And what’s the best way to do it?

Well, as I say in the headline, the better question—and the best way to find an answer—is around expectations for the employers. Governments are going to hurl money at employers no matter what in hopes the employers spit a lot of jobs out. In my experience, governments’ default is to not have too many expectations or requirements for how that money gets spent. Sometimes because of the helpful nudges of business lobbyists, sometimes because of fear from policymakers that no one will take the money.³

I think that’s a mistake. Employer groups may chafe here, but if you take anything away from the above hypothetical—other than owl pendants and empires built on chocolate-dipped strawberries—it’s that employers might not always have the best reasons (or any reason) for why they’re not training people on the job or even hiring people to fill a job.⁴ They’re run by people, often harried ones with a lot on their minds, who might not think about how they’re doing stuff until either they have to.

Money is a hell of a good way to start a new conversation. It can guide a newish business to finally think about how it wants to hire people now that it’s no longer a startup. It’s also a great way to motivate entrenched corporate leaders to get over their personal hangups and maybe consider that just because they’re successful, it doesn’t mean every aspect of their operation is infallible. Maybe.

I won’t go so far as to say it doesn’t matter which company you invest in—more on my thinking on that in a second. But setting expectations for how the employer will get there—in black and white, with clear requirements for the type of training and working conditions set out at the beginning of a funding conversation—and trying to move them to a better, more sustainable version of employment is an underused tool

Will it all work out in the end if you do exactly what I say? Maybe, maybe not. But the point of workforce development shouldn’t just be propping up employers who don’t ask deep questions as to why they’re struggling with finding workers.⁵ If only for the sake of the employers, who can and do benefit a ton from new ideas that workforce development programs can leak into their operations.

Cool. So which company should get the money? And how should they get it?

I’ll be honest: my lean is toward Owclo⁶ because you’re getting better return on investment on limited resources from a company that is more likely to be a responsive partner. They’re still a newish company, they’re really thinking about how they hire people for the first time, and the government is more likely to actively generate new jobs by giving them money. That’s quite a lot of bang for the limited government buck.

In contrast, my alternate universe version of Edible Arrangements—titan of American business that it is—has more locations, more people, and more entrenched attitudes. A little bit of money might not make much of a dent, especially if limited thinking is operating at scale.

But I don’t think you can design funding that outwardly omits big corporations—both as a matter of good policy thinking and an acknowledgement of raw political reality. So if I were designing a grant for this purpose, I would put a priority for the funding toward a small business as defined by the Small Business Administration⁷ and seek more specific and detailed commitments from larger businesses, such as more specifics on the training method used, how it was designed (and locations chosen) to make it most effective, and the long-term prospects of success. That approach maximizes the value of either type of investment and avoids consequential shaking of fists from groups representing large businesses.

And regardless of who gets the money, I would want hard requirements and guarantees around the quality of jobs offered. As I wrote earlier this year, I think that’s the most effective—and most underutilized—way of ensuring that training programs lead not just to jobs, but better quality work that benefits both the employer and worker.

Plus, if the transhoomanists are right, maybe the owls will be kinder to us if we pick Owlco.⁸

Card subject to change.

One, reader survey! You can take it here!

Two, it’s going to be a fun few weeks here before appropriations battle starts. College as workforce and college sports! Skills-first hiring! The magic of the state of Utah!

Three, on Friday, I’ll have an update on where things stand on the funding front. Around $10.5 million of that missing DOL money appeared today, so I imagine I’ll talk about that too.

1. Because this is a thing that needs to be made especially clear right now, this is all parody and not a reflection on the actual internal workings and business practices of Edible Arrangements, which now goes by “Edible.” JOBS THAT WORK congratulates Edible on its new cupcakes and assures that Edible was only chosen because the author believed it to be the answer to the question, “What would be the most hilarious corporate employer to use in this newsletter?”

2. Of course, legend says The Great Owlqueen will leave no room for humans after The Moment of Many Hoots, but the crypto bros are fairly certain they’ll be able to join the party once the owls learn how much money they made off Hootcoin.

3. I have done this long enough for this sentence to mean something: I have heard a lot of angst over the years that a grant expected too much of employers, but I have never seen a shortage of employers willing to take the cash.

4. I don’t get into it in the main text because I wanted to unpack some different dynamics today, but job quality is always worth asking about if you’re an employer struggling to find or keep talent. Are you paying good-enough wages? Is your scheduling reasonable? Are you offering the right benefits?

5. One thing I also don’t cover in the main text that I want to note here: this doesn’t have to be onerous as hell for the employers or the government. As I wrote a few weeks ago about apprenticeship, there is no purification process that comes from overloading government money or programs with mountains of procedure.

I would prefer to offer as many easy buttons for employers as possible to set up training with the money, such as giving them menus and tools for how they can use their grant money to help create good jobs. Because if government is making it easier on employers to offer good jobs, then it’s reasonable for government—and the public at large—to expect more good jobs as a result of that investment. Procedure can’t guarantee that.

6. Hoooooo.

7. I acknowledge that definition can encompass some not-so-small businesses, but it provides a good, safe marker for government decision making.

8. They won’t.