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Hello again friends.

I'm Jason Edens, your host of Lakeland Currents.

Thanks for joining the conversation today and thanks for your ongoing support of Lakeland Public TV.

Economic reports released just this week indicate that the U.S. economy grew faster this past year than it has since 1984.

However, the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development revealed that job vacancies have never been higher in the State of Minnesota.

In fact, since 2005 job vacancies have doubled in every region across the state.

Fewer people are entering the workforce.

More people are leaving it.

Workforce shortages are clearly a part of the economic landscape going forward.

Here to help us better understand how this is affecting businesses locally are my two guests today.

Abby Randall is the Executive Director of the Bemidji Chamber of Commerce and Leon Merck is the Chief Executive Officer of Lueken's Village Foods in Bemidji.

Abby and Leon, welcome to the program and thanks for making time for our conversation.

Thanks for having me.

Thank you.

Absolutely.

Well first of all, Abby I'm curious, can you tell us just a little bit more about what the Chamber of Commerce does generally before we dig into the workforce shortages?

Absolutely.

The Bemidji Area Chamber of Commerce has really been a mainstay organization in our community for many many years and our sole mission is to serve our members and advocate for our business community.

So, our members consist of local businesses from small to large employers in our community and what we specifically work on are ways to help our businesses with exposure, resources to help their business grow, networking to get our business owners connected with each other because we all know that when we work together we can do so much more.

You know, one of the things I've been wondering about in advance of our conversation here today is how your services have changed over the course of the pandemic?

Of course, businesses have been in need of your services but how has that service delivery changed on your end?

Oh, that's a great question.

As I've mentioned before I started my journey as Executive Director of the Bemidji Area Chamber in 2020, January of 2020 and effectively we needed to just kind of throw out everything we knew before that date and start anew and our huge focus during the start of the pandemic was just purely communication.

There were so many businesses that needed to know what their next step was going to be.

We, you know, we didn't know about masks.

We didn't have a vaccine at that time and there was so much information coming out from the State of Minnesota, from the Minnesota Chamber and it was my sole responsibility to disseminate that information.

Drill it down to a local focus and then bring it back to our business owners.

We did that through a series of roundtable discussions virtually.

We all learned how to use Zoom together and it was a lot of listening because it was a time of fear for businesses.

It was a time to roll up our sleeves and help each other and do some research and figure out how we're gonna navigate this world.

That's a challenging time to start as Executive Director Abby.

Well, Leon this next question is for you.

Of course Lueken's is an institution in the Bemidji community and you're a substantial employer.

So, as a retailer in our community what are you actually seeing in terms of workforce shortages?

Is this a difficult time for you?

It has been a difficult time.

We've certainly had our challenges.

Certainly, when Covid initially came and we had a lot of individuals that had some anxiety and were a little nervous to work in the, you know, the environment that we didn't know really what we're up against.

So, we had some concerns going on there and trying to keep our our team together and you know supporting our community and we've done well.

We've certainly thrived going through it as far as, you know, just the efforts and it's amazing the amount of how our team grows together when you go through things like that and just to see them engage with each other and to support each other when there isn't someone able to work.

We have people coming in to cover other shifts and being supportive of their team members.

It's kind of heartwarming actually and but, you know, it was, we've been in the middle of a remodel.

We offered a lot more services up to our customers.

We kind of charged through the Covid at that time and we added a lot more services.

So we needed more labor force as well during that time and it's gotten better the last couple months and we're we're almost full capacity but we still have some needs in certain departments.

Well, let me be clear that about this are you saying that your workforce shortage challenges are on account of Covid or were these challenges something that predated Covid Leon?

We probably had a little bit pre-dating Covid because of the growth that we're having in our community and but I think the Covid was certainly something that created that anxiety.

Where we did have, you know, certainly people that dropped out of the workforce just because of the the fear of the, you know, just being part of the, you know, unknown culture and parents.

We have a lot of younger individuals that work with us and so parents were, you know, requesting them to stay home and things like that.

I think a large number of people that work that have been, you know, had symptoms and were nervous and have stayed home just because of if we have someone that's not feeling well, we ask them not to come into work, you know, because we don't want anything to happen or to spread.

So, we encouraged them to stay home if they're not feeling well.

So, I think that's part of the being proactive part of it.

I have one more question for you about the work at the Chamber and that is your Eggs and Advocacy program.

What exactly is that and how does it relate to workforce shortages?

So, with the Eggs and Advocacy program, it's a a cheeky name with putting a spin on local issues but really it's a networking opportunity where we offer breakfast to our members.

We come together and we focus on a specific issue that is affecting our businesses.

The sole purpose is to collect issues and then not to admire them or vent about them but to come together and find some solutions and learn from each other.

So, our last Eggs and Advocacy meeting was held at the Hampton Inn and we came together and we really rallied and and spotlighted this issue of workforce shortage in our community and we heard from local partners, the Bemidji Chamber partners with such as DEED, the Beltrami County Workforce Impact Center, Rural Minnesota CEP which centers around employment in our county and then also Greater Bemidji with the work that they're doing with their 218 Relocate program and also spotlighting a daycare shortage in our community.

Really, it surfaces up when there's a need for it and it's the main purpose of it is to come together and research these problems but there's hundreds of chambers around the United States that put on programs like this purely to advocate for their members and like I've said before in the chamber industry, we really celebrate begging, borrowing and stealing our ideas.

We, the industry itself is very inclusive and if any chamber has a great idea you're gonna bet that there's another chamber in another town that's gonna try to recreate it because we all are our missions are all the same in economic development and support of our businesses.

That cross pollination is really important.

You know, I'm curious not just recruiting talent, it's also retaining talent.

So I'm interested in hearing from you, Leon regarding how you retain the folks that come to work at Lueken's.

You know, we do a lot of recruiting.

We do rewards for recruiting as well.

I've got to say we were awarded the Awards of Excellence through the Chamber last summer there for workforce cultures whatever it is.

So, we were excited about that.

We do a lot of employee surveys, asking what our employees would like, engagement and try to get them, you know, communication and obviously that's a large thing and we do a lot of team meetings for recruitment.

The communication is key to everything and listening obviously to what the employees are wanting.

We are an employee-owned company.

We've been since 2012.

So, it's important that we get all of our employees engaged as much as possible.

We try to make it a fun workplace.

In fact, today I think is National Fun Workplace Day.

So, in the world here but so we do things that we try to keep it fun.

We try to get everyone engaged.

We have a lot of team meetings that we do.

We do a lot of performance discussions just checking in to see how people are, you know, enjoying or what experiences they're having and what we can do to work through them.

And, when we catch people doing something great we call it.

We give them a reward and try to praise them publicly and we do games throughout the year.

We have an ESOP committee, employee owned committee that we do things throughout the month that we, you know, we might do a trivia or a puzzle or and personal profiles.

We try to guess who, you know, someone is and things like that.

So that they're part of our community and our employees, no we do lunches.

We do a lot of things that we try to keep our teams engaged so to make it fun.

I was going to ask you about your status as an employee-owned company actually.

Do you think that people come to Lueken's, come to work at Lueken's because of that business designation?

You know, I think more and more people are being aware of it and we do get people that are long-term in place.

We do have some that are in the 50 years they've been here and we've got some that have been here for, you know, in the 30 years but as far as people coming to work here, I think there's initially, they may not know about it.

We're, you know, but I think once they get involved in it, it certainly does help with the retention.

It's a very nice program.

We get people involved.

It's a long term, you know, profit sharing and things like that that they get rewards on.

It seems like that would be highly motivating.

I'm interested, you said that you survey your employees about what it is that they want to see in a workplace culture.

What do you hear from them?

You know, mostly communication is always a key thing that they want to make sure that they're engaged and they're having an opportunity to have a voice in what we're doing and so that's kind of fun to see what they do.

They have a lot of people have great ideas and we want to help them grow as, you know, their careers and make sure that they have a long-term employment that they like working at and, you know, there again I always focus on trying to make it fun for them, trying to enjoy it and I like it when they go home at the end of the day and they're smiling and they had a great day.

So, and we focus on the employee experiences.

On our list we talk about that basically weekly.

We, in our team meetings and we do strategic planning meetings monthly.

Talking about you know employee engagement, employee experience.

Well, you're a member of the Chamber and so I'm curious, what are you hearing from your peers in the business community in and around Bemidji regarding workforce shortages?

Are other companies experiencing something similar to you or is it even more challenging?

What are you hearing from your peers Leon?

Well, I attended the Eggs and Advocacy breakfast there that we had and you know it was really interesting and there are still challenges getting, you know, getting a full workforce in the business environment I guess and it's a little bit of everyone coming back to work and trying to get everybody on board but it's challenging still.

It's, I think the restaurants and the drive-throughs and all that are still having the challenges and you know we're certainly trying to help support those businesses as well as Lueken's because I think, we actually buy gift cards for our employees.

We give them to them to use for businesses downtown or around town for restaurants and people that participate, you know, members of the chamber.

So, we're kind of trying to spread it around a little bit as well because I think it's important to support our local businesses and they've done a great job trying to, you know, fill their staff needs as well and I'm not too sure if they're, I still see a lot of businesses that are open on or closed on certain days, you know they're closed open maybe four days of the week or certain times of the day there's they're opening but it's still a challenge in many cases.

Well, speaking of those challenges, Abby what are you hearing from the rest of the business community?

No one knows as well as you, you've got your finger on the pulse of the business community.

What are other businesses experiencing in terms of workforce shortages specifically?

I think Leon hit the nail on the head right there is, I think we can all see that we're experiencing reduced hours, an inability to fill open positions and when you have that happening in your businesses you really have to take a hard look at your operations and decide how many hours can I effectively be open?

Do I need to fill this position or can I combine?

And when you have somebody that's working overtime or filling an extra position, what's going to happen?

We all know what's going to happen.

You're susceptible to burnout and with the current state of our affairs right now with lack of daycare, people working and filling open positions, business owners working multiple roles, wearing many many hats.

We're really at a crux in a situation in our society right now that honestly isn't providing the healthiest of working conditions.

So, as a business owner, we hear that.

We hear the fear of being able to provide a great environment for their employees and we're lucky for companies like Lueken's out here.

Leon doing his best to promote great culture, healthy environment and so on.

I think as a community we really need to be aware of supporting and being patient with these businesses.

You hear a lot of people saying "well they're just using Covid as an excuse."

We're still as a business community living Covid because we're living the repercussions of being shut down for an extended period of time, having to wear masks, vax, you know.

If there's a vaccine mandate, how are we going to pull this off?

How are we going to get testing?

These are all things that slow down business owners as they have to navigate this world that we're in.

So, I can't stress enough as consumers, we need to appreciate our local economy, appreciate our businesses that are out there in the forefront and then also be patient and come with a understanding of what our local businesses are going through.

But this whole issue though of workforce shortage is above and beyond Covid right?

I mean this is partly population geography.

There are fewer and fewer people entering the workplace and boomers of course are retiring.

So, what's the long-term strategy for dealing with what may become the normal, right?

The new normal in terms of workforce shortages.

What what are you advocating as the Chamber of Commerce?

That is a great point.

That's actually a point that I was really hoping we'd get to because when we attend Eggs and Advocacy and different events, the biggest question I hear from our members is where did everyone go?

Where is everyone to work and we have to point back to there's just not one factor.

We were heading into a workforce shortage crisis pre-pandemic.

So, that's the first thing that we need to acknowledge is that the numbers just simply aren't there.

Now coupling with, we are in a global competition for workforce right now.

Bemidji, Minnesota has individuals who are being recruited to work outside of our city limits because virtual is such a big game right now.

So, we really need to come together and appreciate our local economy and change our mindset that it is really important for people right now to be a part of our local workforce and be a part of something bigger than just ourselves.

It's part of our community.

But, then also to kind of walk that back and talk about specific strategies.

A big thing that we talk about is retention.

Of course, like Leon was mentioning but innovation.

You know, it used to be years ago that people would say oh technology stole jobs.

We can't have technology replacing people.

Well, at this point it's a race for technology because if you're not thinking about innovation and automation right now, now is the time to do it and to invest in that technology and try to help advance your business that way.

You know, I was actually going to ask you about automation specifically.

Is there a point at which we will see a lot more automation even in retail in Bemidji?

Should we expect to see robots in the aisles of Lueken's Leon?

Well, I don't know if we'll get to see a lot of robots but we're certainly hoping we don't but, you know, we work is very closely in trying to provide that customer experience and the hands-on employee to employee you know with the customer.

But, you know, we are looking for different things that are automation that we can do more efficiently and a lot of times we'll have we've just recently purchased, we did some remodels.

We've recently purchased like chicken rotisseries and things like that and they they actually have an automatic cleaning cycle.

So, it's like a dishwasher.

You close the door and hit clean and it does clean so and it sanitizes and stuff.

So, that has actually helped as well and then they also are cooking faster, so it's created a little bit more, you know, volume that we can provide quicker and better service to our customers.

And, then we have ovens now like that can cook a pizza in less than three minutes.

So, it's a full-size pizza in three minutes.

So, it's just amazing some of the equipment that is coming out that is a little higher technology and things like that and I know that we are seeing robots.

You know, we have scrubbers.

So that could be possibly you know something going on down in the future that we make a selection to buy a scrubber that might do something like that.

We try not to do that during daytime hours but you know but but for the most part we're cleaning throughout the day and we use as much technology as we can in our businesses and the computers are much more efficient today as well it gives us the information we need and you know recipes and things like that that are quicker to access.

So, automation is clearly one potential strategy but i'm interested in getting your impression on the following or your feedback on the following.

We're experiencing a workforce shortage yet at the same exact time right around Bemidji there are three native nations.

All three of which have relatively high rates of unemployment especially compared to the state's background rate.

Are businesses in and around the Bemidji community reaching out to our neighbors in our native nations in order to potentially find a solution?

That's a great point.

I was actually looking over the numbers for our county before we met and I think that when it comes to that, I'm hearing from local businesses that diversity has got to be a priority in our businesses.

I mean we look at all ethnicities.

We think of diversity but especially in our community, we need to start looking at our Native American partners and start thinking about, are we an inclusive and is there something that we can do to better ourselves and make sure that we understand the culture that we live in every day.

We have such a rich Native American culture in our community and we're fortunate for that and we need to as local businesses take a look at that.

Make sure that we understand that and we're providing the best atmosphere for that cohesion and to work together.

So, that's a wonderful point and I can only say that we're going to continue to see more dialogue about that going forward.

So, Leon just very concretely has Lueken's made an effort to reach out to native nations around Bemidji in order to address some of your own workforce shortage challenges?

We actually haven't called or reached out to address anything with any particular organizations or groups but we certainly always have our applications available.

We do have several Native American great workers in our company right now that do an awesome job.

We're excited to have qualified people that are looking for a good hard-working job.

It's fun.

Well, it sounds like your place of work culture at Lueken's is very appealing to others.

Something else that I wanted to explore with y'all is the minimum wage.

Of course, at the beginning of this year Minnesota raised the minimum wage by what is it two and a half percent.

To what extent would raising the minimum wage address some of your workforce shortages?

Abby?

You know, I hear a lot of our local businesses that are well above minimum wage at this point and that was a big thing with Covid.

That sped up our average I would say wage kind of a wage gap in our community.

I've long heard from other sources that Beltrami County was low on the pay scale map and what I'm seeing and what I'm hearing from local businesses is there was a desire to increase those wages that are offered in order to recruit.

Now, when you look at a business though and simply increasing your payroll is not always the end-all be-all response to filling and retaining good talent.

Like Lueken's has mentioned today that while it certainly helps in recruitment and it certainly helps in retention of employees, it's the culture and the type of work and the working conditions that often went out in terms of getting someone to stay.

So, overall I would say that Bemidji has become more competitive in our market to recruit individuals.

Again, you know, you're gonna see that our cost of living is less in Bemidji than those larger areas too so that's something you have to take into consideration when you're studying that.

So, I guess a little bit more pointedly though does the Chamber of Commerce or I should say does the Bemidji Area Chamber of Commerce have a position on raising the minimum wage as a solution to labor shortages?

At this time we do not have a position on it.

It's something that I anticipate we're going to talk more about.

I think that our local businesses are, you know, on board with paying the minimums obviously.

I don't think that we have as many businesses in this market that feel that they can get away with paying up into the minimum wage.

I think that we're seeing an increase across the board to make remain competitive.

So, it's not a topic that I get reached out to on behalf of the Chamber a whole lot.

Interesting.

Well, one final potential solution to labor shortages is immigration and I want to explore that as we wrap up our conversation here.

Because this isn't just about Covid right?

Labor shortages are not directly a result of Covid only.

Again the population of Minnesota is beginning to peak and even decline.

That being the case, to what extent will immigration address some of our labor shortages going forward both here in our region and potentially at the state level?

That's a great question.

It's actually, I feel like locally being in northern Minnesota, we don't really get positioned with that question probably enough but just pouring over I mean some of the numbers relating to this, our county that we're in right now, if you take a look at our numbers they're simply not there.

I mean we're averaging about 2,000 new residents a year.

When you break that into eligibility on the workforce, that's about 20 percent of those new residents are even eligible to hold a job at this point because, you know, you're looking at anyone over into that 65-75 age bracket you're going to get into retirement status and anybody under 14-15 years old is also ineligible to work.

So, when you're simply talking about where did the people go and where are they?

The problem is to your point in the numbers.

We simply don't have enough people.

So, we really have to take a look at businesses and get creative and look at the positions that we're offering.

We need to look at ages and what who's qualified for the positions that we're offering and then strategize from there.

Now whether or not immigration is the answer or not, I can't speak to that but when you look at net increase in workers we're definitely since the 90's, the 2000's were significantly behind in where we were.

So, I don't know, Leon I don't know what your thoughts are on that too but you know maybe you can kind of speak to your experience with high school students and developing some positions that really work for you and increasing opportunities for young folks as well.

We actually work with the Bemidji High School Career Academies as well.

We work with them on a monthly basis.

It's a great experience trying to help develop the younger team about, you know, students about what we're doing in our business and just to add real quick to it, I think the immigration will help us in the long run and we're a country of immigration so I think it would be very positive and there again, I think as far as a workforce just identifying some where are the people at.

I believe that there's a lot of people that are working less jobs or with the average already rates have gone up and Lueken's has made three wage, call it cost of living adjustments and we have a lot of people working overtime but they're only working one job now instead of multiple jobs.

So, I think that's kind of minimized some of the workforce somewhat as well, more people.

Abby and Leon, I want to thank you both for helping us better understand the labor shortage in our region and thank you for joining me today.

Thank you for having me.

Thank you Jason.

Absolutely and thank all of you for joining me once again.

I'm Jason Edens your host of Lakeland Currents.

You can Tweet us about today's episode or future program ideas at currentspbs.

Be kind and be well.

We'll see you next week.