Untapped Talent: How Second Chance Hiring Works for Your Business and the Community
Jeffrey D. Korzenik
288 pages, HarperCollins Leadership, 2021
Nineteen million Americans—including one in three Black men—have a felony conviction, a formidable barrier to integration into society and the workforce. This tragically leads to high rates of unemployment and recidivism, wasting human capital and taxpayer resources, burdening families and communities touched by the justice system. Untapped Talent flips these facts, viewing this population, in particular the more than 600,000 citizens who return from prison each year, as a potential resource for an economy threatened by demographically challenged workforce growth. For people with criminal records, gainful employment is foundational to rehabilitation, but from the employer perspective, such “second chance” hiring requires a specific model of targeted recruiting and supportive employment to be a viable business strategy.
The book documents numerous examples of the types of innovations that the business pioneers of second chance hiring implemented to create second chance hiring processes that delivered highly engaged, loyal, and profitable employees. This excerpt is taken from a chapter dedicated to a single case study of JBM Packaging, a privately owned, second-generation manufacturing company in Ohio. Unlike some second chance employers, JBM did not start as a social venture, but rather a traditional company with a traditional challenge—talent acquisition and retention.
The excerpt begins after JBM began to build a population of “fair chance” (their nomenclature, interchangeable with “second chance”) employees, and understood that employment alone was not sufficient for success. CEO Marcus Sheanshang, COO Dan Puthoff, Change Coach Allison Rambo, and HR Supervisor Ashley Caudill constantly innovated to solve the challenges of this employee population and create new pipelines of talent. The spirit of innovation required for their fair chance program not only delivered a successful strategy, it transformed the entire enterprise.—Jeffrey D. Korzenik
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Even before Rambo’s arrival, JBM had realized it needed to line up support for fair chance hires. At first, such support was done on an ad hoc basis. Over time, the company was able to identify partners. Nonprofit Beacon of Hope provided a van service for employees from Cincinnati. The service is free for the first two weeks (until the first paycheck), then employees pay $5 each way for the transportation and JBM subsidizes the additional cost. Some of the halfway houses also provide transportation. More recently, the company has partnered with the nonprofit Wheels program. This charity provides free cars for those in need. While these cars are safe, they generally are older with a limited expected life, so JBM encourages its employees to set up a “trade-up” fund that the company matches, enabling their employees to buy decent, long-lasting vehicles within a year.
Other nonprofit partners included the New Life Furniture Bank to help with furnishing living spaces. The company enlisted help to support clothing and housing needs. Sharefax Credit Union made second chance accounts and a credit repair program available; team members who had not yet opened accounts received their pay on payroll cards (loaded debit cards) to avoid check-cashing fees. Rambo created a curriculum of life skills classes, often in conjunction with outside partners, called Cultivate Classes, teaching everything from parenting skills to budgeting. Wellness is provided through YMCA/ YWCA memberships or subsidies for those who wish to join health clubs. Sheanshang summed up the investment in education and nonprofit partnerships: “We probably spend a couple hundred thousand dollars a year on this program and it is worth every penny of it.” He advises prospective second chance employers, “You need to be ready to spend some money.”
JBM has enlisted the help of parole officers in sustaining the employment of the fair chance hires. As with nonprofits, not every partnership is successful, but the successful ones have become deep relationships and even referral sources. The company allows parole officers to meet with employees privately on-site, a convenience for both. “I’m not going to say it’s all been good, but we have three or four different parole officers who have been fantastic…We’ve had some problems they’ve helped us navigate…“It’s been about 75 percent good/25 percent bad,” in Sheanshang’s assessment.
Members of JBM’s Executive Team often take a particular responsibility for mentoring the second chance hires. Ashley Caudill explained, “We like to stake our claim on people.” At the supervisory level, JBM encourages understanding and empathy. After fair chance hiring had already begun, the company’s life coach at the time delivered an education session to the leadership group about addiction and other issues that may have been significant challenges in the lives of the team members they supervise. Caudill observed that a little genuine interest in their fair chance hires can go a long way, recounting how she checked in with a second chance hire who had been having difficulties. Before answering, the employee exclaimed with surprise, “I’ve never had anyone ask me, ‘Are you okay?’”
Sheanshang is also working to build a culture of mentoring within his fair chance cohort. At his ninety-day review with each employee, he encourages second chance hires to help coach the newer second chance employees. “I think we are going to reach a tipping point when our [second chance] population is about 25 percent or so. We’re hitting more and more people who want to be here for the program.” Mentoring among returning citizens is not exclusively within the company. As JBM’s fair chance hires start to move into supervisory roles, Dan Puthoff is facilitating relationships with Nehemiah Manufacturing’s formerly incarcerated supervisors and managers.
JBM’s Fair Chance Program has experienced its share of unsuccessful hires, particularly in the earlier stages. One hire “got in the face” of a supervisor (i.e., no physical altercation, but an inappropriate response to direction and criticism). The most common failures were employees who slid back into drug addiction, faced transportation issues, or simply weren’t ready for employment. Sheanshang also admits that in the early stages, “We were not fully prepared.”
Addressing underperforming employees is always a challenge, but this was particularly complex for JBM initially. The company recognized that accommodations were needed for its second chance hires, but not where to draw the line. Sheanshang admitted: “We led too much with the heart, but have learned that we can only help those who are ready We still struggle with that. It’s a fine line.” Allison Rambo added, “This work is about having a whole lot of compassion and empathy, but having an insane amount of boundaries.” Several members of the Executive Team shared their rule of thumb: “If we have to work harder to keep you employed than you do, it is not going to work.”
Quantum Leap Second Chance Hiring: Going to the Next Level
The successes of the Fair Chance Program bred even more innovation. If JBM had stopped at establishing a talent acquisition pipeline with a number of prisons and supplemented that with solid support services, it would have been a great, solid example of a successful practitioner of the True Second Chance Model. But Sheanshang and the company took it further.
Pickaway Correctional Institution (PCI) had been one of several referral sources to JBM, but PCI had something special—a print shop. On the surface, the print shop had the attributes of “prison labor” that are abhorrent to prison reformers—low-paid work whose output is purchased by state agencies. But the printing trade is a skill, and PCI also offered work experience in other industries as well as certificate programs within the prison administered by Sinclair Community College. Far from being a nightmare version of a Victorian workhouse, PCI had strong progressive elements, like a reading room that allowed incarcerated parents to have a comfortable and welcoming space to read to their children. It was also home to OASIS Therapeutic Community, an addiction treatment program, created jointly by the prison, the ODRC, and the state’s Department of Mental Health and Addiction. The OASIS initiative, like other therapeutic communities, has shown success in breaking the addiction-driven cycle of reincarceration.
JBM had already had a very positive experience with hiring a resident of PCI who worked in the prison print shop. Even more important, the PCI print shop meant that the facility had electrical and ventilation systems capable of sustaining the type of equipment used by JBM. The print shop had the potential to become a training site for future JBM employees. One element was missing—a full-time trainer, but hiring one just for this specialized project made no economic sense. The missing link was supplied by a former JBM employee who had made a mistake that landed him in the Ohio prison system, but not at PCI. In 2016, JBM’s team worked closely with PCI and the state authorities to pull all the elements together, ultimately placing the first of two paper-folding machines donated by JBM within PCI and transferring its incarcerated former team member to that facility.
Sheanshang was careful to ensure that the program treated people enrolled in the PCI program as the valued team members he hoped they would become. Participants receive a training stipend for the three to six months they are in the prerelease training program. No goods produced behind bars are sold, and any materials created are simply recycled. In addition to the former employee imprisoned at PCI, JBM supplements the training, initially sending a team lead to the facility to train inmates two to three times a week. Ashley Caudill, the HR recruiter, and Allison Rambo, the change coach, also visit PCI every one or two weeks. PCI residents who have been enrolled in JBM’s training program at PCI will already have built substantial relationships with JBM’s management by the time they arrive as employees. Creating a pipeline of job-ready candidates not only improved JBM’s talent pipeline, but also allowed Sheanshang to offer more: “When they are trained, they can hit the ground running, and I can pay them more.” One negative about the program is that there have been some anonymous complaints that these hires are accorded preferential treatment.
Epilogue
JBM sought to solve a labor shortage. In finding the solution, the business transformed the lives of those in its Fair Chance Program, transformed the legacy employees, and, most surprising, transformed JBM itself.
That people with records who are given the chance to succeed can do so is the inspirational outcome of every true second chance company I have studied. What struck me about JBM is the way its program also changed the lives of employees. Ashley Caudill observed that the longtime employees who had been most resistant have become the most accepting, complimenting the “fair chancers” (a classification not encouraged by management, but used on the plant floor) for their old-school work ethic: “They work harder than anyone.” Some employees have referred family members and neighbors into the program.
Caudill has been inspired by the experience: “I’m ready to go... I love going to the prisons… There are so many lives to change, so many people who need help.” She is planning practical steps to move forward in her career, telling me with infectious millennial enthusiasm: “I’m super excited about this… I’m going to get my master’s either in social work or criminal justice.” But that doesn’t mean she has plans to leave JBM: “I feel honored to be part of the company for doing this.” Allison Rambo developed a twenty-week personal development curriculum dubbed The Benaiah Project. The ODRC has approved the program for use in its prisons, and participation by residents provides time credits that allow earlier release to a halfway house. Like the courage required by the biblical warrior Benaiah to face his battles, the curriculum seeks “to encourage and assist inmates in confronting and overcoming the many barriers that exist when transitioning back into society.” Rambo facilitates this training for the men participating in JBM’s training program at PCI and hopes that it will expand to other Ohio prisons.
Other executives changed, too. Before the Fair Chance Program, Dan Puthoff admitted, “I still maintained a fairly cold and punitive view of criminal justice.” He still recalls the impact of his first visit to Nehemiah Manufacturing: “That visit did more to help me understand the concept of ‘social justice’ (still within the construct of capitalism) than my sixteen years of Catholic education, or perhaps sixteen years of Catholic education unknowingly prepared me for that moment when my views would change.” When we spoke in June 2020, the country had witnessed mass protests spurred by the death of George Floyd’s interaction with the Minneapolis police. Puthoff identifies their progress in the context of our national challenge: “How I and JBM can work to ‘interrupt’ racism; our work inside of the prisons provides an interesting platform to begin making a difference.”
For Sheanshang, the Fair Chance Program changed his entire vision for the company: “As we learned, it really did change who we are. This was a revolution, not an evolution.” The company changed its name from JBM Envelope to JBM Packaging with a broader view of its business and what the company represents. In Sheanshang’s words, “We are certainly a packaging business, but we are more than that.”
Most telling is the change of vision from “Dominate targeted small, open-end envelope markets” to “Be the role model for a profitable, purpose-driven company.” Fair chance is now an intrinsic part of a purpose-driven company. Coupled with the new vision was a statement of purpose: “Better Solutions, Better Lives, Better World.” The change in the company’s purpose flips the narrative with JBM’s sales team. Where once the point was to sell more product, tied to the mission of dominating the envelope market, now Sheanshang tells his sales group, “You have to sell a lot so we can transform more lives.”
The statement of purpose has focused the company on new solutions using its expertise and experience in dealing with mechanized paper-folding techniques. The company is increasingly growing its packaging business using glassine and other paper-based materials, part of the plastic-to-paper transition that is reducing plastic use worldwide. To highlight the biodegradable nature of its packaging solutions, the company trademarked the phrase, “We create packaging products with their death in mind.” JBM proudly shares its Fair Chance Program with prospective customers as part of the fulfillment of its purpose. Says Sheanshang, “I want our people out there talking about this.”
Excerpt from Untapped Talent: How Second Chance Hiring Works for Your Business and the Community (HarperCollins Leadership, April 2021) by Jeffrey D. Korzenik.