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player ready...Despite this being the age of automated teller machines and banking by computer, local banking companies are almost desperate for qualified teller candidates.
The reason: tightness in the region’s job market.
“Given our 140-plus locations, I can assure you that each one has at least one opening,” said Ken Windisch, a human resources manager for Harris Bank. “We have had to go to creative methods to meet those needs.”
This year, Harris and a number of other local banking employers, among them LaSalle Bank Group, South Shore Bank and Pullman Bank and Trust, have joined with a number of city colleges, including Wright, Truman, Malcolm X and Harold Washington, to train and hire welfare recipients for jobs in financial and customer services.
Harris and LaSalle, for example, this week are interviewing the 11 students who make up the second “graduating class” at Wright College, which runs its 13-week program on its Northwest Side campus for welfare recipients and other interested candidates.
Of Wright’s first class of 17, Harris hired eight and LaSalle hired one. Teller jobs are considered entry level, generally pay $7 to $9 an hour and carry benefits.
Successful completion of the program is accepted in lieu of a year of bank experience or three to four years of cash-handling experience, which most banks require, noted Nancy Bellew, program developer at Wright’s Workforce Training Center.
“Essentially, this is the one final connection you need to see for people who are eager, self-starting and motivated,” said Chris Hartweg, a spokesman for LaSalle.
Follow-up: Helping welfare recipients or the homeless make the transition to self-sufficiency does not end, obviously, when a job is landed.
To help newcomers to the work force stick with their jobs, a Chicago-based non-profit organization, the CARA Program, launched a mentoring project this summer.
The group, which works in partnership with Old St. Patrick’s Church on the West Side and Catholic Charities, so far has recruited 30 volunteers to work with those “holding a full-time job for the first time in a long time, or ever,” said Eric Weinheimer, executive director of the program.
The volunteers are individuals from the corporate world. They work for a range of firms, including Bank One, British Airways, Morton International and Zenith Electronics.
The idea is to give the participant “somewhere to turn when there is conflict in the workplace or when they are figuring out their next move,” he said.
Age of wellness: If surveys can be believed, employees appear to be calling in sick a little less frequently than in previous years.
A nationwide survey released Tuesday by CCH Inc., a Riverwoods-based publisher, indicates unscheduled absences have declined this year to their lowest rate since the annual survey began seven years ago.
It found 2.3 percent of all paid time is for unscheduled absences, which translates to 5.8 days a year, down from 2.8 percent, or 6.9 days, in 1996–with midsize firms driving the decline.
The reason? Most employers with declines “mentioned loyalty to supervisors or work ethic,” said Paul Gibson, executive editor of human resources publications for CCH.
Another factor: fear of punishment.
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