Staffing issues troubling for local businesses

Locally and nationwide there is a crisis of an abundance of job openings and not many people applying for jobs. Here in Thermopolis, the lack situation hits home hard with many business owners/managers finding themselves frustrated while desperate for workers to keep their businesses afloat and to relieve their existing staff from the overload.

They are concerned about extending unemployment benefits and giving out free government money; according to business owners these things actually hinder businesses from thriving.

One Eyed Buffalo

Jennifer Fisher, owner of One Eyed Buffalo Brewery and Saloon, said that her businesses are trying to find people to apply. She said of the ones that do apply,  “We typically start a dishwasher at $9 an hour which is pretty decent for a dishwasher. Now we are having to offer $10, $12 an hour just to get them in the door and they still don’t think it’s enough. I don’t know if unemployment benefits were giving more than that. So, on top of that situation where we are having to pay more to get people in the door. We have rising food costs and everything going on. Just getting people in the door without having to pay them $15 to $18 an hour is the hardest part.”

For the brewery downtown they have several positions open. Currently Fisher said that she is sharing staff for both of her locations to cover the needs of both businesses. 

When it comes to why this is happening Fisher said, “I don’t know what it is. I guess people got used to staying at home and not working. Now when they can go back to work their time is worth $15 an hour versus last year, it was worth $12. I don’t blame anybody for wanting to make more money but the rest of the time you can’t pay that wage. You know it’s not an easy job and they last a week or two and say, ‘I don’t like cooking, I don’t like washing dishes.’ So, honestly I don’t know what the root cause of it is.”

Does unemployment insurance benefits factor into the struggle? Fisher says she thinks it does. “I had two cooks leave me in April or May and their exact response was, ‘We can make more money on unemployment than they’re making from me,’ And I said, ‘well, there’s the door.’ Then a couple weeks later they [the State] announced they are getting rid of that extra unemployment. So, I do know for those two, the unemployment benefits were a driver. I do believe extended unemployment benefits for an extra $300 per week is probably 60-70% at fault for this. I think the other 30% is people who have just gotten used to staying home, not working, not going anywhere.”

They had three interviews this week. But this is the first three interviews we’ve had in about three weeks or more. Fisher said, “We hired them so we’re hoping they pan out.”

Fisher added about making adjustments to get more people interested in working for her. She said, “When I first opened One Eye Buffalo Brewing Company, my dishwashers were making $8.50 an hour. And now I am paying $12, $13 an hour just to maintain or just to keep them or to hire them and keep them interested in coming to work. Seems like anything less than that people are like, ‘Nah!’”

 Fisher also said that “Employee retention has been going fairly well. We’ve had a lot of crew that’s been with me for years and years.”

Fisher also made an appeal to the public and to customers as they too are affected by the worker shortage. She said, “As an update to the public, just be patient with us, please be kind. If you don’t want to wait that’s fine, we understand, but if you do choose to wait for a table or at a table, just realize we are operating on a limited staff.”

Big Horn Enterprises

Restaurants are not the only businesses affected with the shortage of workers. Garry Freel, CEO of Big Horn Enterprises and Kevin Simpson, Director of Rehabilitation, told the Independent Record about their situation. Freel said, “We have openings, we have full time openings, part time openings, substitute openings. We rarely get an application in the door. And when we do most of the time they don’t show up for the interview. We just had this happen this week. We had it all set up, the person never showed.” 

Simpson said that they even had hired someone and set them up for training but didn’t show up for the training and they never returned their phone calls. 

Currently they have two weekend full-time positions, one morning position, a part time weekend position, also a pool of substitutes to fill in. 

Big Horn Enterprises provides day services and residential services for people living in a group home, 24 hours, seven days a week, or people living in the community such as people in apartments or houses. They provide them support, help teach them how to clean their house, cooking, grocery shopping. This is for developmental adults with disabilities. 

When asked why they think this is so difficult? Freel said, “It’s easy to have unemployment [insurance] and get that $300 until the end of June. I think it really hurts finding an employee.”

BHE struggles with wage competition sometimes. Their service’s reimbursements rates are set by the State. But for their doors to stay open they can only do so much. There is a breaking point of what revenue they can make and what they can pay to employees and also offer them benefits.

Simpson commented that he recently traveled the Midwest part of the country and every fast-food restaurant he saw had signs looking for help with wages starting at $15 or $16 per hour.

In Florida McDonald’s is paying $50 just for someone to show up for an interview. The issue is nationwide. BHE has done some recruitment incentives. Freel said, “It didn’t help.”

Simpson said, “Unemployment benefits incentivise people to stay home. They can make as much to stay home as they can to come to work.” Freel added, “Not quite, but enough to live on.”

For BHE, Covid did bring some employees out of state because they were looking for a school that was still open. However, recently many applicants were young who were simply reporting to put in an application somewhere to keep their eligibility going. Pre-Covid they received a lot more older applicants that had done caregiving for a long time but now they haven’t seen them show up. 

BHE’s employee retention is also a challenge. Their current turnover rate is 23% overall but with residential services it is much higher about 60%. They are looking for staff all the time. 

Simpson said, “The employees we currently have on board we have been very fortunate they’ve stuck around. We appreciate everything they’ve done for us. They’ve worked a lot of extra hours. I know it’s hard for them. It’s not necessarily something they are required to do. We can’t make them work, but they care enough about the people we give the services to that they understand the situation we are in.”

Elle’s Restaurant and Bar

Danielle Yarrington, new owner of Elle’s Restaurant and Bar, said that she observed some behaviors in applicants when it came to those receiving unemployment benefits.

She said, “We noticed that before the State cut unemployment on June 16, we would get a lot of applications in but getting people to actually show up for an interview or get hired for a job was a completely different story. Which means they were probably getting their applications to turn them in for their unemployment check. We would hand out a ton of applications, we would never get them back, or I would respond to them and ask them to come in for an interview. There were plenty of times I was here for that interview and I would be waiting for up to an hour afterwards and no one would ever show up.”

Since the June 16 change in unemployment benefits Yarrington said, “So far, we don’t get any applications at all anymore. I think the only application I have received recently is one for a part time position yesterday.  

When asked why this is so difficult for many various businesses Yarrington said, “I don’t know. I know that the restaurant industry itself took a huge hit and everybody fought to get them back open. There’s people that left the industry to go find hourly paying jobs when the restaurant industry was shut down as strictly as it did during Covid. And people went into other fields, but there are other fields struggling to find help just as bad as we are. I honestly can’t figure out why because everybody I talk to from our beverage distributors to our beer distributors to our food distributors, everybody is struggling to find help.”

Since Yarrington has opened the bar, she has hired only one person and received only one application since then.

For their employee retention, Yarrington said, “It’s going fairly well. The staff that I have right now besides the ones I just hired, I’ve had since we opened.”

As far as the staff handling the workload Yarrington said, “I think we’re managing it ok. The transition to the bar and dinner has helped with the short staffing. People are getting used to their new work schedule, so we are not as crazy as we were for breakfast. Which kind of is a double-edged sword, you want to be busy, but it also helps with the transition.”

Yarrington added, “I think it’s scary facing all of this because that means our economy is failing. If you can’t get people back to work, there’s only so many taxpayer dollars that’s going to support those people for so long. As a business owner, the fact that you might be the next business to go under from the repercussions of this pandemic is really kind of terrifying.”

“Everyone was just trying to do their best and there’s people like myself that are very pissed at how it was handled because we are now suffering for it. But I also remember at the beginning of this pandemic there was somebody that said, ‘we will never know if we did too much but we will always know if we did too little.’ If you lose too many people, you didn’t do enough. But also I think we are suffering the repercussions of too much,” added Yarrington.

Day’s Inn

Jenni Dorman, general manager of Day’s Inn, relayed her experience in the tourism and lodging business when it came to finding new hires.

Dorman said, “They’re not even applying. That’s our biggest thing. It all started when we laid everybody off from Covid and then all the free money came. And once we got to the point where we can start bringing people back to work nobody wanted to come back. I don’t understand how these people are living. Now that the free money is done, where are they getting money to live on? ” 

Dorman added, “We are always looking for housekeepers and we have other openings, too.”

When asked as to why this is so difficult Dorman said, “My opinion is that they are just lazy. I don’t know, I don’t understand it. I don’t want to say it’s just Millennials, because it’s not. Our generation was raised with better ethics. And when you got a job, you stuck with it. And you went and had to get a job. Your parents said if you want money you have to work for it. Today’s society everything is just handed to these kids. But it’s all ages. We’re seeing that more. We had older people in their 30s, 40s, whatever that worked for us before and once we laid them off they didn’t come back.”

When it came to unemployment insurance benefits and Covid relief funds Dorman was asked, how does it affect human behavior? She said, “To me it’s a free hand out. So, they are like, why work when I can get money for free? I think it’s their mindset, why work if we’re given free money?”

Dorman added there are consequences for their business. “We suffer tremendously because we can’t clean stay over rooms. Granted right now, Wyndham doesn’t let us into a guest’s room that has been here more than one night that is staying, Covid rules. But if we did not have Covid, we couldn’t get all the rooms done every night. Right now everybody’s tired of being cooped up at home, so everybody’s traveling and we’re full every night. We’re struggling just to get the rooms done with the staff that we have. There are days that I have to leave this position and go make beds because I can’t have them here until six o’clock at night. Our check in is at 3 p.m. We have to have rooms done by 3 p.m. There myself, the dining room manager, the front desk manager and the front desk staff have all gone to clean rooms so we can have them ready by 3 o’clock.” 

Dorman continued, “The existing staff are overloaded and can’t take vacations. And then we get bashed because service is bad. Sorry, we’re doing the best we can with what we have. I don’t know what the solution is. I don’t know how to make people understand how to be patient. The customers do not understand. “

Dorman also mentioned how their business is a revolving door. She said, “We’ve seen a lot of repeat employees from the Holiday Inn days and even the Day’s Inn days. They quit, they come back, they quit, they come back. We’re all about giving them another chance but sometimes it’s costing us more to rehire them because we retrain. They quit showing up. They don’t call. Nothing.”

But for those who want to work, Dorman said, “We’re here for anybody. We’re willing to give anybody a chance and give them a job.”