By Karen Jacobs
ATLANTA, June 11 (Reuters) - Emory Bent says a job helped turn his life around.
Bent, 37, had been homeless, jobless and struggling with drugs before getting a job at Home Depot Inc. (NYSE:HD - News) in New York about three years ago. Last month, the former welfare recipient graduated from college with a bachelor's degree in psychology. Bent now says he wants to become a counselor to help others.
It may not solve the chronic unemployment that plagues some areas in the United States, where 5 million people are on welfare rolls. But service sector companies like Home Depot, where Bent works, see potential for hiring more workers from the ranks of welfare recipients, with "workfare programs" paving the way.
Bank of America Corp. (NYSE:BAC - News) has hired 6,000 workers formerly on public assistance and found that retention rates are higher than those for other workers. Others are reporting similar successes, with many employed under workfare programs since welfare reforms were instituted five years ago.
At a Home Depot store in Long Island City, N.Y., Bent works in the lumber department, but sees other career opportunities opening for him now that he has a college degree in hand. It's improved his long-term financial outlook because he's joined the company's stock purchase plan. Perhaps most important, Bent said, the job has helped him improve his people skills, and learn responsibility, since he has to be at work on time. He also said the job helps him stay away from drugs.
"Being (at Home Depot) was a whole new beginning for me," Bent said.
Home Depot sees opportunity as well in employing welfare recipients. Dent is one of 700 hired by Home Depot as part of its participation in the U.S. welfare-to-work program. That's still a drop in the bucket for the world's largest home-improvement retailer, which has about 290,000 workers. But with the retailer's plans to hire 150,000 additional workers over the next few years, such programs do help.
SHRINKING LABOR POOL
Companies aren't looking at job candidates who may have had strokes of bad luck just because it's the socially responsible thing to do. With the expected U.S. labor shortage that will hit in coming years as aging baby boomers retire and fewer new workers fill the void, tapping new staffing sources is critical, labor officials say.
"We're confronting in coming decades a fairly significant change in the demographics of our work force, including a smaller number of available American workers," said Emily DeRocco, assistant secretary at the U.S. Labor Department.
"Companies do understand that in the years ahead, they are going to struggle to find a sufficient number of workers," she said.
HARD SELL
Still, workers who have been homeless or on public assistance can be a hard sell to some employers.
"I've got people who are on welfare looking for jobs and can't find them, because companies don't want to make a commitment," said Lonnie Michael, manager of operations training and development at InfoUSA Inc. (NasdaqNM:IUSA - News), an Omaha, Nebraska, database marketing company.
But companies who have hired employees from the welfare ranks have found that, given the right training and support, the workers are very productive and fiercely loyal.
InfoUSA decided to recruit staff from Omaha's public housing project more than three years ago. It formed a partnership with the Omaha Housing Authority and put out fliers in public housing complexes encouraging workers to apply for jobs.
So far, more than 200 people -- many of them single mothers -- have been hired for jobs such as typing and fact-checking, said Michael. Many of them have moved out of public housing into apartments, he added.
InfoUSA, which has a total work force of 2,000, gives its public housing employees job training, while the housing authority sends vans to transport them to work at little or no cost.
But InfoUSA provides much more than work assistance. It helps the workers set up bank accounts, and has even filed for restraining orders to protect female employees from abusive boyfriends.
"We're doing things to empower them so you don't have that repeating cycle of dependency," Michael said. "When you do the right thing, you get people who are very loyal."
Karen Shawcross, a senior vice president in community development banking at Banc of America, said the dwindling worker supply was a factor in the bank-holding company's launch of its AmericaWorks program, which targets people on welfare, those with disabilities, the homeless and youth at risk.
As part of a partnership with Goodwill Industries International, the Charlotte, N.C.-based banking giant trains potential job candidates as cashiers and tax processors.
"We are only as strong as the communities we serve," Shawcross said. "If there are a lot of people in a community on public assistance and not working, that community is going to be stagnant and the businesses that serve it will be as well."